Mental log date xxxx. Agent Hunt reporting.
One week ago The Agency was alerted of a Class C situation in a small city west of REDACTED. It fell on my team leader to assemble a team of operatives to bring the situation under control. I will proceed to break down each member of my squad for the record. You can find exact details in the attached dossier of each member, but for the sake of concision I will keep descriptions brief.
The first is team leader Amanda Watson. 32. 5’9”. 135 pounds. Tall South African woman. Lithe and beautiful, in all my years as a soldier I would be hard pressed to think back to someone with a more powerful charisma. This affects not only her ability to rally even the most untrained, ramshackle troops and leading them to victory, but is likely the primary factor at the forefront of her real skill. Disguise and infiltration.
In the short time I’ve worked with her I’ve seen several situations where her palpable charm alone defused potentially catastrophic situations. To give an example, one such time the enemy captured our junior operative, one Jian Chen, whom I will break down later in the report, and held him hostage. Instead of risking his life and storming them to protect sensitive information, which I was more than ready to do, Commander Watson managed to convince the enemy that it was in his best interest to release the prisoner. Said enemies were then subsequently subdued and incarcerated.
While she has formal self defense training, in general she remains weak in hand to hand combat with stronger opponents, making up for it with her cunning and subterfuge. While this leads to risks during solo infiltration missions, I have yet to see a time where it has been a problem. Also trained with handguns and seems to be an above average marksman.
Next is professor Karl Alberg, research and investigations. 43. 5’5”. 235 pounds. Short, overweight German man. At first I’d questioned the CO’s decision in bringing him on, but for all his eccentricities (really, who breaks off mid sentence while giving a report telling us if the air is safe to breathe to go on a tangent about the intricacies of the closed, self-contained ecosystem in a volcanic caldera?) he has deeply cemented himself into the team.
With three scientific masters in geology, applied mathematics, and engineering, and a PHD in both general biology and chemistry, I doubt I have to list his strong suits. While his geological expertise rarely comes into play, his skill in engineering, chemistry, and, surprisingly, biology helped out several times throughout the mission.
Not remotely a frontline soldier, as he seems to lack even the most basic self-defense training. Though he has developed an almost encyclopedic knowledge about many subjects, he still seems to lament over spending all his youth studying. Also prone to emotional outbursts and waxing poetic. Seems particularly touchy about his “receding hairline”, though I feel almost incapable of calling his ring of curly gray hair anything less than “balding”. A passable marksman with a handgun, where he really shines is his almost masterful, and somewhat unsettling, skill with both the creation and use of explosives.
Earlier I mentioned our junior operative, Jian Chen. 16. 5’6”. 120 pounds. Chinese. He’s a prodigy in every sense of the word, and has studied magic theory for what is apparently almost his entire life. While he has a complete lack of field experience, Commander and The Agency both believed his instincts and knowledge would make up for his lack of experience. While I was skeptical at first, not only because of his age but because of his specialization (In my experience individuals who invest their time in studying the magical arts are have a kind of predetermined instability) I was certainly taken aback by seeing a true prodigy at work.
He’s small, but in a limber, muscular monk way. Apparently has some martial arts training of his own, as I’ve seen him hold his own in hand to hand combat a few times. Mostly calm demeanor, and I actually believed he had the patience befitting his monk-like attitude and appearance. I say believed because there was one instance in which the next operative, Ms.Okar, mistook him for Japanese heritage instead of his actual Chinese.
His strength caught me off guard when I was forced to restrain him to keep him from attacking Ms.Okar, and was surprised to learn that his vocabulary and creativity with profanities rivals that of some Russians I know. Truly an asset, but lack of experience and overall hot-headedness leads to a degree of unpredictability. Still, the reward far outweighed the risk. Sub-par marksman.
Fourth is our tracking specialist, Zandra Okar. 23. 5’10”. 170 pounds. Indian. Heavily muscled, no doubt through intense training from her former job as a bounty hunter. The second youngest member of our team, and probably second biggest behind me. Considering the other three members, however, that isn’t saying a whole lot.
I had high hopes based on reputation for tracking and apprehending Traktirnikov Yaroslav, the notorious Russian magic smuggler that ran lines from North Korea, through China, and all the way to Chersky. While apprehending him would have been enough to garner my respect, apparently she managed to track him in the middle of a Siberian snow storm while he was on a run.
With first rate perceptive and tracking abilities and firearms training combined with her apparent training in the Indian martial art of vajra-mushti, a style relying heavily on grappling and punching, she is certainly a force to be reckoned with. Adept with rifles, but particularly shines in close quarters combat. In spite of her impressive resume she still somehow seems incredibly humble, giving credit for most of her feats to ‘dumb luck’ or ‘stupidity on the part of the quarry’. Likely enjoys instigating people into confrontation a little too much, as demonstrated with Jian.
Finally there’s me. Combat specialist Akecheta Hunt. 40. 6’2”. 225 pounds. American Indian. The largest of us by a margin, I have extensive combat training in both firearms and martial arts, as well as combat strategy. I am a heavy weapons specialist and have decades of experience with all manner of heavy machine guns and medium machine guns, mortars, rocket propelled grenade units and other anti-tank weapons, and more minimal experience with flamethrowers.
My superior size and strength, combined with my close quarters training and experience lead me to believe that I and the rest of our team could curb the situation in little to no time. I fear that my short sightedness and overconfidence was severely misplaced. I will go on to recount our delve into the catastrophe itself.
We’d arrived at REDACTED no less than two days after The Agency assembled our squad. Dr.Watson was the first on point, collecting samples of the surrounding area with several devices that I’m not paid enough to know the name of. Ms.Okar split off from the team to track several different leads at once in hopes to pick something up before the trail fell cold. Without any outright orders I took it upon myself to scout the lower districts.
While I may not be the best man for an outright reconnaissance mission, I’ve always found that people have a hard time ignoring my large stature during interrogation. While I was unable to contact my team, I assessed the situation and decided that Intel regarding the surrounding area was a high class priority, and believed that if I brought back a general assessment of the living situation of the locals then it was worth the risk.
It wasn’t long before I came upon two hooded individuals dressed in black cloaks silently meandering through the streets. Both common sense and my instincts told me that they were suspicious, and I made up my mind to tail them. I’d managed to follow them for several blocks without being noticed, until finally the individuals slipped into a run-down, condemned church.
Upon entering the church I found that the individuals had blended into a circle of a dozen similarly dressed people, all of which stood in a circle around some kind of glowing red symbol I didn’t recognize. At the center of the circle stood a woman garbed in a vibrant violet robe, lifting a chalice into the air. Behind her, in the middle of the ring of black-cloaks, was a bald man garbed in deep scarlet. Almost as if they’d started their meeting the moment the two fell in line, each of the hooded individuals hummed words under their breath, giving it an unsettling vibrating echo effect.
Unsurprisingly, the two individuals I’d decided to tail were apparently members of some local cult. I’d believed I had the situation tied up right then and there, and even for a moment wondered why the situation was categorized as Class C. A grade reserved for situations that, if allowed to get out of hand, would lead to international panic.
Unfortunately my size worked against me, and just a few minutes after entering the church I was spotted by the man in scarlet, who by this point I had assessed was the leader. He ordered his subordinates to quiet and ordered me to step out from behind the debris I had until this point used for cover. I took a deep breath, drew my handgun, and separated from the wall. I’d made my third faulty decision in deciding that, even if I was discovered, I could still pressure the leader for answers.
When I tried to question the cults leader about the strange happenings in town the high priestess offered to show me I swiftly prepared for combat only to be blindsided by the her apparently mystic powers.
My body was quickly transformed into a helpless state and now my only hope is that the rest of my team will be able to stop this cult and rescue me from my fate, though I fear they will have difficultly recognizing me as I am now.