[One Week Later]
"Die!" Valerie shouted as she plunged her machete through the head of a bladehopper. A particularly nasty type of cryptid that resembled a mix between a praying mantis and a grasshopper with reddish skin, black eyes, and blade-like appendages. The woman then twisted her blade inside the creature's skull before performing an upwards slash and splitting its head in two.
"And done!" The blonde then gave out a satisfied sigh. This particular hunt may have been last minute, but the enjoyment she got out of doing her job certainly made up for it. She had no clue as to why, but Valerie found it oddly gratifying to slay these creatures whenever she got the chance. Almost like she was scratching an itch that came up whenever she saw one of them.
Maybe it was just her competitive nature taking over her mind whenever the opportunity presented itself. But getting the chance to prove her strength against a tough opponent was exactly what she needed.
Now that her job was done, Valerie pulled her phone out of her pocket and dialed back to the office. Only having to wait a couple of seconds before the other end of the line opened up.
"Go for Freddy!" The station's resident gopher answered in a cheery tone.
"Have I ever told you that I hate the way you answer the phone?" The blonde chided her coworker.
"Yes, you have. Many times."
"Anyway, the cryptid that I was sent out to kill has been taken care of. It was a bladehopper. An adult judging by its size."
"Good to know! I'll put down in the system and let the Chief know. Good work out there. But I guess I shouldn't really be surprised at this point."
"Thank you for acknowledging my greatness! Your praise is very much appreciated!"
"Right, right...."
With that, Valerie pushed the red button on her screen to end the call. This hunt was the last thing she had to do for the day before clocking out. And the young woman wasted no time hopping back into her car before going back to the station and taking a quick shower to clean the traces of blood off her face and hands. How these creatures completely dissolved when killed but still managed to leave behind evidence of their existence made absolutely no sense to the young sorcerer, but stuff like that was for the scientists and nerds to figure out, not her.
Once the woman was done cleaning herself off, she gave a quick goodbye to the Chief before rushing home. Barely managing to pull into the driveway just in time to make a mad dash down the street to make it on time to see her favorite headache getting off the daycare shuttle with some of the other kids who lived in the neighborhood.
"Val!" Her energetic little cousin shouted with a smile on his face upon seeing the woman waiting for him. The boy had shiny black hair, dark brown eyes, and a somewhat pale complexion. His looks greatly favoring his father's over his mother's.
"What's up, runt? Did you have fun?"
"Sure did!" The boy happily replied as the two began walking back towards the house. "We got to play soccer today with some of the older kids!"
"That's good."
"Oh, oh, you wanna know something cool?"
"What is it?"
"I saw a cryptid today!" Lionel announced with a grand gesture by waving his hands around.
"What?!" Valerie's feet came to a sudden halt upon hearing that announcement. She then looked down at the boy with a face of pure and utter shock. Almost as if he had said the most ridiculous thing in the world. "What did you just say?"
"I saw a cryptid today! It was a small, slimy one the size of a puppy. It looked like one of those...those...gel things in some of Dad's books. The ones with the big eyes. I got away, though. So I didn't get to see it all that much."
Okay, there were several things wrong with what this child was saying right now.
The first was that it shouldn't be possible for him to see cryptids yet. He was only five years old. Most sorcerers who aren't first generations don't develop the ability to perceive mana until they hit puberty. That was the case for Valerie and pretty much everyone else in her family. Second, his mana core hadn't even activated yet. Which the tall blonde was certain of considering she couldn't even sense any coming from him at the moment. It was pretty much guaranteed that Lionel was going to be a sorcerer, considering his father is one. But to be able to see them this early made absolutely no sense.
Valerie then crouched down to get a good look at the boy. Everything seemed alright with him from what she could tell. And his apparent lack of mana wasn't something that she would miss.
'His eyes.' The woman then thought to herself as she leaned in closer to inspect the boy's eyes. Only to see that they looked completely normal.
Lionel's father, Lucas, had an extremely rare ability known as mystic eyes that allowed him to perceive mana at significantly greater levels than what a normal sorcerer could. Even the amount inside a person's body. It was something that only one in every few thousand sorcerers possessed. And the likelihood of both a father and son having them was practically zero, since the ability was basically random.
Deciding to see whether or not the boy was just telling her a tall tale, Valerie quickly looked around to make sure that no one was watching them before holding up her hand and creating a ball of pure mana within her palm. The baseball-sized creation was noticeably unstable, but sturdy enough for her to maintain without fear of it literally blowing up in her face.
"Can you see what's in my hand right now?"
"Yeah!" The boy nodded gleefully. "That's your mana, right? I never knew it was orange colored. Is Mom's mana the same color as yours?"
'What the fuck....' The woman internally groaned. This was not what she was expecting to come home to today. A situation like this was like a parent walking in the door only to see their toddler walking around without a care in the world. Valerie had absolutely no clue what to do about this. It was way too early in the boy's life to be experiencing things like this to happen.
Seeing as she had no other option, the tall blonde decided the best thing to do right now was to just call the boy's parents and let them know what was going on. She had no clue how they were going to react. But knowing them, Chief Chandler would probably freak out about it, while Lucas would probably drop everything that he was doing at his job and hop on the first plane out of Boston to see for himself.
"Kids these days, man..." Was all that Valerie could say before grabbing the boy's hand and walking him back to the house. Genuinely hoping that wouldn't have to be the one to give him "the talk" concerning his newfound abilities.
-(o)-
[Unknown Location]
Somewhere in a heavily forested area miles away from the nearest town or city, a small group of men and women wearing black hoodies were gathered around a large ritual circle of some sort.
The circle had a faint red glow to it. And all around them was the sight of both captured cryptids and regular animals being held up in cages at specific points along the edges of the drawing. All of which were raging against their constraints while giving out pained howls and whimpers.
"Another failure, huh?" One of the hooded figures, a man by the sound of their voice, said to the person standing in the center of the circle.
"Yes." The person at the center replied in a feminine voice. "It looks like there's no way around it. We can use the beasts that Hannah captured to hold open the gate temporarily, but we're going to need humans to make the connection permanent."
"It's not like that'll be hard to find!" Another member spoke up in a cheery tone. "We can just use some death row inmates when the time comes. And if that doesn't work, there are plenty of homeless people and runaways scurrying about that could be of use."
"We'll come up with a plan later after we finish the other business that we need to attend to. Besides, that other asset that I told you about should be ready when it's time to begin." The first female figure, who seemed to be the leader of the group, replied in a calm tone. "For now, let's just get rid of the evidence and get out of here."
"With pleasure!" One of the males in the group chuckled before several fireballs were launched at the caged beasts. Incinerating all of them before they even had the chance to cry out in pain.
What followed was a strong gust of wind with enough power to cover the area where the ritual circle once was with dirt. Making it appear as if the creation never existed in the first place.
"If anyone needs me, I have an emergency meeting with the other branch heads. So I'll be busy for the next couple of hours. Either Hannah or Mikayla is supposed to call me around that time. Let me know if they have anything important enough for me to care about."
"No problem, Boss."
"Y'know...sometimes I almost feel bad for you. Being an Iznana branch head seems like more trouble than it's worth." The second woman said to the Boss.
"It is sometimes. But you can't deny that being a part of the organization has helped us out a lot. Especially when it comes to our plans."
"Good point."
With nothing else left to say, the group dispersed. With only two staying behind to get rid of the cages while the other two headed north to their base of operations. As they retreated from the scene, the Boss couldn't help but think of how this new revelation was going to affect her overall goal. But even with this slight hiccup, nothing was going to stop her from getting what she wanted.
-(o)-
A few days following Lionel's partial awakening, things had gone back to normal in the life of Valerie McKenna.
Everything was peaceful around the office. Even with the sudden increase in the number of cryptids around both the city and the state, Valerie's fellow agents were dealing with them just as fast as they appeared. And she had gotten to take down more than her fair share of beasts over that amount of time.
From what she knew about the beasts, their frequency in appearance varied throughout the year. It was more common to see a cryptid in the warmer months as opposed to either late autumn or winter. And considering that they were currently easing in the middle of summer, it wasn't surprising that the things started popping up more often than they did before.
The woman would be lying if she said that she wasn't interested in how all of that worked exactly, however, she wasn't particularly inclined to sit down and actually do the research. Mainly because it sounded too much like learning for her. In all honesty, Valerie hated school and anything that was even closely associated with it. All of that academic stuff never came as easily to her as stuff like sports and martial arts did. The blonde knew very well that a lot of her former high-school classmates and cousins thought that she was dumber than a bag of rocks. And her grades pretty much confirmed that, even though she hated to admit it.
School and learning were just one of those things that she wasn't good at. Sitting inside a boring classroom while some brain-dead teacher droned on and on about stuff she didn't care about made her want to rip her silky blonde hair out. She mostly preferred getting up off her ass moving around. After all, working up a good sweat was way more productive than memorizing the contents of some bland textbook, in her opinion.
It really wasn't her fault, though. ADHD was a pain in the ass for anyone who had to deal with it. No matter how hard she tried, the constant need to get up and move around drowned out any semblance of desire she may have had to put any great effort into any academic pursuits. And her admittedly low attention span towards anything she couldn't either punch or cut in half just added to that.
Sometimes, Valerie felt that the world was against her. Not only did she have shitty control over her own mana, the universe decided to bless her learning disorder that made her problems even worse. And trying to fix either of those issues just frustrated her to no end. It was the main reason why the young blonde was happy to have a job as a DPA agent. The job allowed her to play into her strengths while casually disregarding all of her weaknesses.
Now, was the proper way of going about it? Definitely not. The woman knew very well that sooner or later, she would have to do something about it if she ever wanted to achieve her goals. But such things were so far in the future that she was willing to ignore them for the time being. After all, why worry about it now when she could put it off until it actually became an issue? Yeah, that was the best course of action in Valerie's mind. The simplest solution that required the least amount of stress on her part.
'Urgh...why am I even thinking about this right now?' Valerie shook her head as she scrolled through a few of the social media apps on her phone. Patiently waiting for either another cryptid to appear close by or for her aunt to give her a task would help her burn some time away until it was time to go home.
This was the part of the job that she hated the most, the waiting. Just patiently standing by until the time came for her to add yet another victim to her flawless hunting record. It was a feeling that she would liken to sitting in a dentist chair while the doc fucked around inside your mouth for longer than you could reasonably tolerate.
Little did Valerie know that in the coming weeks, she would finally get her chance to truly prove her worth to those around her. Except, not in the way that she was hoping for.
-(o)-
Character Profile: Chief Chandler
Name: Zoe Marcella Chandler (née McKenna)
Alias: Longshot
Gender: Female
Age: 45
Birthday: July 4th
Birthplace: San Francisco, CA, USA
Height: 68in
Weight: 160lbs
Hair: Brown
Eyes: Blue
Race: White
Magic: Fire
Occupation: DPA Agent
Stat Chart: A
-Physical Strength - 3.5
-Intelligence - 4
-Magic Amount - 5+
-Magical Control - 4 (5 Prior to Injury)
-Magic Sensing - 4
-Special - 4
Fun Fact:
-Has a personal arsenal of weapons that is said to be worth over $45 million. She has openly admitted that the majority of her weapons are souvenirs (stolen) she gained from previous battles during her time in the military.
-Alma Mater: United States Military Academy