Alex was having one of those days that make you regret getting into the MG support line of work. Most of the time it was a great job, but then there's Breach Season. Well, season implies regularity or predictability in when it happened, neither of which apply to the phenomenon. In reality, someone just started calling it that and it stuck.
Breach Season was always a drag for the support staff- less so on the MGs themselves as they were required to take at least two weeks off between closing Breaches for mental health and ability growth reasons.
During Breach Season, the frequency of Breaches shot way above the average for the rest of the year- as did the frequency of new MGs popping up. The rest of the year there’d be one or two Breaches a month in the US. Maybe a small cluster if you were unlucky, but even that was easily handleable with the number of teams SEYA had on hand, plus support from more independent MGs in affected areas.
Despite this, if you looked at the numbers, the number of MGs exactly stayed at a level where there were just enough to deal with Breaches without being oversaturated- which would reduce each individual’s growth due to added competition.
To make matters worse for Alex, their team had… nabbed the new MG. There was still some paperwork that Alex had to fill out to make it official in the records, but everyone knew that that was just formality at this point. Normally, integrating someone new would be easy: some one-on-one chats with the new guy to figure out their goals, some team exercises to get everyone working together nicely, and a slight shift of strategy to account for another member.
Additionally, Alex’s team was experienced in mentoring other MGs- who eventually choose to move to a different team and free up space again- so they had already dealt with the strategy and team-building stuff. The part that was inducing Alex’s headaches was that the new MG had demonstrated a tendency to be too curious [push everyone’s buttons].
In the first few days she had been there, Silvia had snooped around in some of the secure buildings. While she technically had clearance to be there, the sneaky and provocative nature of how Silvia did it made Alex’s bosses a little upset. Then there was the whole speech debacle… Although, that was kinda funny [Which got Alex more work].
Slapping themself back into focusing on their work, Alex finished up work for the day, let out a deep sigh and took a pill to deal with the approaching migraine they had been getting with increased frequency. They typically coincided with Alex blanking out for a few minutes, during which they seemingly continued doing their work without remembering any of it. A bit disturbing, but the doctors said they would keep an eye on it and not take action until they knew what was going on.
As the migraine came on, Alex came back to thinking about the new MG. It would have been so much easier if anything about them was different. If they were more like the other MGs: nice with a slightly self-centered disposition and flair for attention- the normal prospects of meeting new people and making friends would have kept them out of trouble. That way Alex wouldn’t be getting extra work to pick through suspicious network traffic that might be caused by Silvia.
It wasn’t even that realistic of a possibility. The entrance interview had confirmed she didn’t have perks that could do any of what was suspected. They even had someone magically check for lies [It was a somewhat realistic possibility. While the entrance interview had magically confirmed she wasn’t lying, that’s all it did. If she did have infiltration perks, she could have used them to retroactively alter the records to redact that].
This was just petty retaliation [This was something to look more into later.]
For now, it was time to relax and not think about how the work would increase more in a weekish when they would be assigned a Breach [prepare for the upcoming Breach.]
This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
Since Devil had acquired their costume, the worries that they might have to go unprotected was eased [it wasn’t feasible to directly get back at them without the method being obvious and traceable.] Although, they still needed a way to communicate during the event. The best option would probably be through Silvia’s augmentations. Alex made a mental note to ask them about that so there wouldn’t be any issues when it mattered [they could make some changes on their end for a little ‘surprise.’] Then a physical note so they wouldn’t forget.
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“In a few days, our ‘union’ mandated vacation will be over- and that means that we can get back into the action,” Rebecca said to the small group of MGs sitting in a commandeered meeting room. “As usual, we have no clue where we’ll be sent or what the situation will be until we’re on the way. Which hopefully explains any questions of if this is short notice, Silvia.” Turning to face Chris and Carlos, she continued, “speaking of, she has seen a lot of what Kay and I can do- so how about you two give a run down of how you fight and what other helpful things you do?”
After exchanging a glance, Chris and Carlos started speaking at the same time before doing a few rounds of rock-paper-scissors. As the winner, Chris spoke up again, “I am on the front-line end of the spectrum, where I can cut up some demons with my sword. Beyond that, I have perks to bolster our defenses as a team and heal up some wounds- although I can’t do something like reattach a limb yet. Stupid progressive price increases.”
Almost cutting Chris off, Carlos said in a fake-haughty voice,“I am on the much more sensible end of the spectrum and like to find a nice building to set up in, from which I use a metric fuck-ton of drones to kill things. I also help beef up our team’s surveillance of the battlefield since they all need cameras to work.”
At that, Carlos noticed the new member perk up a bit before she asked, “can I see one?”
With a shrug, Carlos dropped one of his standard spotting drones in the middle of the table from his storage. He found it a little creepy how Silvia didn’t flinch at the magic nor moved to look at it as she rhetorically asked, “huh, I assume it runs off your will feeding it ambient ULE? Toroidal propellers to cut down on noise… lots of cameras for how tiny it is- although I bet they’re better than anything you could buy normally. I should get something like this to help cover my longer range sight.”
“I have plenty, feel free to take that one,” Carlos replied, removing his connection to it via [Eyes in the Sky]- although he still had his basic diagnostic perks keep track of it.
“Thanks!”
As Silvia pocketed the drone, Rebecca asked her, “since they haven’t been around to see what you’ve been practicing, why don’t you tell them what you can do?”
“Oh, sure. On a basic level I can control the rate of chemical reactions. I’ve spent most of my time practicing with Cyanoacrylate and Silane. The ‘acrylate lets me build stuff with a few minutes to prepare: rockets, spikes, seal doors, and create piping for my other chemicals. The silane burns or explodes.”
Carlos nodded along, that sounded like great utility, but lacked real oomph for more advanced demons- so they would be farming less. Although since they had a new member, that was kind of a given regardless.
“...I also have tear gas- although I figure that will mostly be helpful for obscuring normal and manasight- and ClF3 for really killing things dead.”
“How does the tear gas obscure manasight? That would be so helpful for extracting civilians without altering the demons,” Chris asked.
“Oh, I have to imbue a large cloud with a little over the area’s average level of ULE, which makes it hard to tell what’s in there for things that rely on a ULE gradient to make things out. The bad part is if I’m in it the cloud needs to be much bigger to cover the presence of an MG. And I’ll be completely blind since I also rely on ULE to see. Also everyone without proper protection will get gassed.”
Right after she said that, Carlos mentally slapped himself for forgetting that she had some pretty advanced… prosthetics. It was hard to remember when she had a perk that encouraged you to ignore and forget about it. However, since that was the case, he realized she could get some great mileage out of [Perk Macros] and [Auxiliary Computing]- two of his personal favorites.
Tuning out the others as they went into more detail about how they divided the Breaches between them, how to effectively communicate without gumming up the comms, and other important tips, Carlos pulled his phone out and typed up a quick message for Silvia to read later explaining the perks he recommended.
When she turned and thanked him just before he hit send, he once again chastised himself for forgetting one of her gimmicks and tried to suppress some shivers at how inexplicably creepy the motion was.