[Group Chat: Evan and His Sidekicks]
Computer Chip: So....
Computer Chip: I take it that you guys have already heard the news?
Dumbbell: About us being your bodyguards for this fundraiser thing?
Crow: Yes, we most certainly did.
Spool: For the record, that wasn't our idea. Our sister is forcing us to go in her place.
Dumbbell: Why?
Computer Chip: Because she's a bitch.
Tree: I'll admit that I wasn't expecting to work with you guys again so soon.
Computer Chip: And Elizabeth and I greatly appreciate your efforts!
Crow: So...are we just going to be your private security from now on?
Crow: Not that it's a bad thing.
Dumbbell: It could be worse.
Spool: Hopefully not. I'd prefer not to annoy you guys every time we try to leave the city.
Tree: Hey, it's a part of our job. No big deal.
Computer Chip: Anyway, meet us at our house two hours before the event's start time.
Computer Chip: And thanks again. I promise I'll make it up to you!
-(o)-
Deep in the forests in the western region of North Carolina, the young trio of Iznana operatives was doing a walkthrough of their secret base.
"We've finally hit our goal." Aaron said to his sister in a stoic tone of voice. "As of now, we have two hundred cryptids at our disposal."
Hannah smiled at the news. "Excellent! And not a moment too soon! I was worried that we wouldn't hit our target before the fundraiser."
The group's leader was more than a bit relieved that things were moving in line with their projected schedule. Months of careful planning and preparation were finally paying off. All of those hours that Hannah and her partners spent gathering up cryptids and resources under the radar were time well spent.
'I'm so happy that we have this cave. If the boss didn't buy it for us then we wouldn't have been able to hide all these damn monsters.'
The group's current hideout was an old lead mine that had been abandoned a couple of decades back due to safety issues. One that still had plenty of its primary resource to spare.
As was common knowledge for those in sorcerer society, lead was one of the few elements that could shield mana signatures from the DPA's satellites and radar. Hannah herself didn't remember why exactly this particular element had such a special property, and frankly, she didn't care all that much. But the fact that they were able to use this place to keep their operation hidden was a major advantage for them.
And thanks to a bit of help from some 'earth magic' users under the boss's employ, they were able to fix all the issues that led to the place being abandoned in the first place.
"God, it fucking stinks in here!" Mikayla scowled as she covered her mouth and nose with a surgical mask. "I thought we fix the ventilation in this damn place?"
Hannah rolled her eyes. "It's a mine, not a hotel. The ventilation's just as good as it needs to be for us to be able to breathe."
The trio came to a halt when they entered the central cavern, the place where all of their captured cryptids were currently being housed. The beasts were neatly organized in separate areas of the cavern in cages that were specially designed to keep them in check. The group looked on in slight amusement as they visually scanned over the weapons they had at their disposal. Most of the cryptids were C-rank or below, but there were quite a few that were B-rank and above.
It didn't really matter what their overall strength was, though. Most of the creatures were going to be either killed or recaptured by the time the group's operation was over with anyway. This was the reason why Mikayla never bothered to spend the extra cash on procuring some of the more dangerous and powerful ones. No use spending money on a creature that only had a one-time use.
Once the trio was finally noticed, one of their lackeys approached them.
The boy couldn't have been any older than fifteen. However, despite his apparent youth, he still managed to be one of their more diligent underlings. Which was expected, considering they were giving him a place to live. If Hannah remembered correctly, the brat ran away from home after accidentally killing his cousin or something, soon after he awakened. It was a typical sob story that the woman didn't invest too much of her time in caring about. As long as he and the others did their jobs properly, she didn't care what their life stories were.
"Here's the final count of all the cryptids that we have, ma'am." The boy handed over a clipboard with a list of all the beasts in the cavern.
"Thanks." Hannah gave the boy a fake smile. She had to keep up appearances after all.
"We'll be getting the blueprints for the building in a few hours." Aaron announced to his two partners after placing his phone back in his pocket. "I'm having one of my guys pick it up right now. It'll be waiting for us once we get back to the warehouse."
Mikayla smiled deviously at the news. "And we already know what exactly those rich dickheads are going to be auctioning off. Once we have the blueprints in our hands, we'll be able to finalize the plans!"
"That's only half the battle, though. We still need to execute. Remember, we need to make sure that we grab as much as we can. The boss already has buyers in place for whatever we can get, which means the more merchandise we can procure, the more we get paid, too."
"I know, I know..."
Before anyone could say anything else, one of the cryptids further towards the back let out a loud roar. A roar so loud that it managed to scare a few of the other captured creatures who were right next to it.
"I still can't believe we managed to get our hands on a manticore." Mikayla eyed the creature from beyond the room.
The 'bone magic' user was still upset that her partners wouldn't let her sell the thing. Even if it wasn't fully grown, a creature like that would go for well over fifty thousand dollars on the black market. Letting it roam around the fundraiser just to cause a bit of chaos and get killed off in a few hours was a total waste, in her opinion. But alas, there was no point in crying about it now. The amount of money they were set up to make from this operation would more than make up for the missed opportunity.
"That thing's certainly going to cause quite the ruckus. But I guess that's the reason why we spent so much time capturing it."
Without a word, Aaron moved towards the cages to get a better look at the creatures. His two partners quickly followed suit and joined him as they tried to figure out how exactly they were going to go about organizing where exactly to set the cryptids free once their operation started.
'Soon....' Hannah said to herself as her heart rate began to elevate. 'Soon, all this will be over and we'll have the life that we wanted. All we have to do is make sure that this job goes off without a hitch. If we can do that, then we'll be living the good life from here on out.'
-(o)-
[September, 2022]
A corpse, Cyrus decided, wasn't anything pleasant to look at.
Not only did the sight make him want to vomit, but there was something incredibly sad about the lifeless body so crudely sprawled against a random tree in the middle of the woods.
The deceased appeared to be a woman in her early thirties with neon pink hair and brown eyes. She was dressed in some sort of blue robe and fancy necklace that he couldn't recognize, and in her hand was a book with a weird pentagram design in the middle of it.
Unfortunately, those were the only positive things that Cyrus could say about the woman's appearance. The rest of her had been so badly mangled and eviscerated that any other potential identifying features were irrelevant at this point.
"It sucks, doesn't it?" Ayako asked the young man as she wrapped a bandage around her forearm in hopes of stopping the bleeding coming from the large cut on her arm.
"We were too late." Was all that Cyrus could say in response. The young man's face was covered in dirt while half of his suit jacket was soaking wet. Aside from that, he seemed to be perfectly fine.
Earlier that morning, Cyrus and Ayako were ordered by their boss to head out to the town of Wilmington to go dispatch a B-rank cryptid that had suddenly appeared in the area. What the 'tree magic' user assumed to be a routine mission quickly turned south when they came upon the cryptid in question in the middle of devouring a the now-deceased woman.
As soon as she saw what was happening, Ayako sprang into action to try and take down the beast and save the woman. The cryptid, a fully grown wumpus cat of all things, proved to be a tougher opponent than either of them expected it to be. Unlike the one they faced all those months ago, this one actually knew how to fight.
All in all, it only took the duo less than ten minutes to destroy the beast and send it back to wherever the hell it came from. However, despite that, the damage was already done. The woman, just a regular human, was already dead by the time they showed up. The light long faded from her eyes once the two finally had the chance to check on her.
"It happens." Ayako replied to her partner's words in an oddly calm tone. "This isn't the first time I've seen something like this. And the worst part is that it could've been avoided."
Cyrus tilted his head in confusion. "What do you mean?"
The woman then pointed to a rock formation about twenty yards north of them. "Look over there."
The young 'tree magic' user directed his gaze toward where his partner was pointing and immediately noticed what she was talking about. In a small clearing just ahead of them was some sort of stone altar surrounded by some basic wooden pillars with various plants around them. And in the center of it was what looked to be a goat's skull propped up on a pole in the middle of the pile.
"What is that?"
"A pagan ritual altar." Ayako answered as if she had expert knowledge on the subject.
"Seriously? You mean like the kind that people who practice witchcraft use?"
"Exactly."
Ayako then began walking toward the altar at a brisk pace. Cyrus hesitated for a moment, taking a second to look back down at the woman's body before joining his partner.
"This isn't going to be the last time you see this, so pay attention."
"Okay..."
The woman then stepped toward the center of the altar and grabbed a bowl filled with what looked like some sort of mixture of plants and herbs surrounding a still-burning stick of sage.
"When it comes to witches, Wiccans, pagans, hippies, or whatever the hell they want to call themselves, they have a lot of rituals and ceremonies where they mix a bunch of incense together and burn it to clear their chakras or whatever. There are entire books written on what combination of stuff they can throw together to achieve different effects. However, the problem with this is that a lot of these recipes just so happen to be bona fide cryptid bait."
Cyrus was shocked to hear this. "Seriously?"
"Yup!" Ayako stood up from her kneeling position while still holding the bowl in her hand. "And the stuff is pretty damn potent too. My family uses a few of these recipes whenever we need to catch a cryptid to train one of our youngsters, so I was able to see a lot of this firsthand. Unfortunately, non-sorcerers don't know how dangerous it is to just burn this stuff out in the open."
The 'tree magic' user couldn't help but find this information to be quite fascinating. His mother grew up around a lot of hippies near Spokane while she was growing up. So, he wasn't a complete stranger to hearing about this kind of stuff, but something about this was weird to him.
If he remembered correctly, all of those occult witchcraft recipes were well over a hundred years old. And most of the books that printed them just recycled and repackaged the same stuff in different forms. If what Ayako was telling him was the truth, then people have been unintentionally luring cryptids to them ever since they first started appearing.
How many hundreds, if not thousands, of people have died over the years because of something like this? People just like this woman. People who, while practicing their specific form of worship, had inadvertently invited their own deaths just because they didn't know of the side effects that it could have.
"So...what do we do now?" The 'tree magic' user then asked his partner.
Without missing a beat, Ayako pulled out her phone and slid her finger over the screen. The woman then placed the device up to her ear before speaking into it.
"Hey, boss! You're gonna need to send out the clean-up crew from Station Ten over here. We killed the wumpus cat, but one civilian was already dead when we showed up.... No, she wasn't a sorcerer, just a normie. She made some cryptid bait at an altar in the woods and got herself eaten before she even knew what was going on.... No, there's no one else around. This place is pretty out of the way."
The woman listened to their boss's instructions for another thirty seconds before saying her farewells. Once Ayako was done, she then looked at Cyrus with a serious expression on her face.
"The boss is sending out some guys from the other station to come make it look like this woman got mauled by a random cougar. Once they've sufficiently altered the incident area, they'll then send an anonymous tip to the local police and let them deal with it from there."
"Really? That's it?"
"Yup, sure is."
"Wow...that seems kind of...fucked up, doesn't it?"
"It's quite the opposite, actually." Ayako replied to her partner's words. She understood where the guy was coming from. On top of that, he was probably still in shock from seeing his first-ever corpse. "At least this way, her family will still be able to have a body to bury. To be honest, she's one of the lucky ones. Most people who get devoured by cryptids barely have any trace of them left. During my first year as an agent, I came across a high schooler whose entire upper half was already eaten by the time my brother and I showed up to kill the cryptid that took him out. I can only imagine what his parents must've thought. To this day, they still believe that he was eaten by a bear. I'll admit that does feel wrong to lie to these people about how their relatives met their ends, but it's better than the alternative."
Cyrus certainly couldn't argue with that logic. Secrecy was the DPA's primary objective after all. And the 'water magic' user had a point. So long as the families had something left of their loved ones to bury, then whatever they think happened to them is inconsequential in the grand scheme of things.
Luckily for them, and the organization as a whole, vicious attacks by wild animals are such an easy excuse to make. No matter where you go in the country, there's always something lurking about that could kill you before you knew what to do. This did get Cyrus wondering, though. How many of those wild animal attacks that he'd seen on the news over the years weren't actually animal attacks?
"Alright, let's get out of here. Our job is done."
"Right!" Cyrus said with a nod. The young man gave the deceased witch one last look before falling into step with his partner. Although he wasn't a religious man, he sent a silent prayer to the soul that was lost today. He doubted that it would do anything for her, but it felt like he should've done something since they were just leaving her there.
'I hope I'll never have to see one of those again for a while.' Was the last thought that crossed the young man's mind before hopping into the car and making the three-hour journey back to the station.
-(o)-
Info Card: Strong Mana Region
Strong mana regions are areas across the planet with exceptionally high and dense natural mana, much more compared to other areas. These areas are also known for their particularly high levels of cryptid activity. Many sorcerers who wish to train their abilities often go to these places despite the known danger associated with them. Strong mana regions are also popular among 'beast magic' users due to the high probability that they'll be able to find strong cryptids to turn into companions.
Recognized Strong Mana Regions:
-Bermuda Triangle (North America)
-Grand Canyon (North America)
-Congolian Rainforests (Africa)
-Amazon Rainforest (South America)
-Gobi Desert (Asia)
-Black Forest (Europe)
-Himilayas (Asia)
-Andes Mountains (South America)
-Alps (Europe)
-Mount Olympus (Europe)
-Yucatán Peninsula (North America)
-Lake Victoria (Africa)
-Bikini Atoll (Oceania)
-Outback (Australia)