Sebastian didn't take any missions for the rest of the day, out of grief. He had just killed, in his eyes, a kind, gentle, and majestic creature. And he also had to pay 300,000 for destroying 15 of Kristoff's drones.
The following day, four agents are called in by Benedict for a briefing regarding an S-rank mission in the war room. These four are Rina, Harley, Kristoff, and Ghost – an agent wearing a black, full-faced, futuristic helmet. The helmet had no visors or any face-like elements. The entire upper part of the helmet was just a smooth, black, metallic surface and from its ear going to the chin is another metallic, protective gear of some sort. He was wearing two black gloves. Under his suit is what looked like a full, black armor. Not an inch of his skin was exposed, his appearance a complete mystery.
The agents gather around the table, several holographic images of a grayish-white deer with pale blue spots covering its brown antlers along with some written information in the middle of the table.
"This is Wendy the Deer," Benedict sheds light on the holographic deer they were all staring at.
"Cute, not gonna lie," says Harley.
"And dangerous. Wendy here killed three of our scientists at the Redwood lab, 12 Outer agents, and demolished all security personnel on her way to freedom," Benedict gives a brief overview of what had happened at the lab that the murderous deer had escaped from, also providing slides of the bloody, ravaged lab.
From the looks of the crime scenes, Wendy was no ordinary deer that had just gone amok. The victims all looked like they had been hit with a cannon. The metal walls were adorned with scorch marks. The doors had holes burned through them. It was as if someone took a fragment-powered grenade launcher and shot it all over the place.
"Wait, so this isn't technically a monster?" asks Rina.
"Just a roided-out deer from the looks of it," Harley answers her question.
"Isn't this exactly what we're chasing off Crowe for?" she asks again, this time her question directed right at Benedict.
"So why is it still happening?" She makes a good point.
"These are simply animal test subjects, experiments sanctioned by Eden," he answers, defending the organization from the slight shade Rina was seemingly throwing. "Crowe was doing these and worse on living human subjects. Apples and oranges."
Rina didn't argue further. She knew there was no scenario in this where Benedict wouldn't jus deflect everything.
"What have they been doing with this thing?" asks Harley, baffled at the thought of this ordinary-looking, generally harmless animal wreaking this much havoc at an Eden facility.
"You said it yourself, it's a roided-out deer," Kristoff answers. "I wouldn't be surprised if the only thing flowing in its veins is pure essence."
"So what's the plan?" asks Rina.
"First, a rundown of everything we know about our precious Wendy," says Benedict.
"The most important thing and what we're going to be basing our strategy off – her invisibility."
"A homicidal stealth deer, great," Harley comments.
"She's highly dangerous, has incredible sensory ability, and can turn invisible. It is for this reason that this will mainly be a stealth mission," Benedict explains.
"Taking her head on will be nigh impossible. She'd sniff you out 10 meters away and even if she doesn't, chances are she'd just go stealth mode the moment you get close."
"Don't we have anti-stealth tech or something?" asks Rina.
"We do. But it won't work as efficiently in this case," answers Kristoff.
"Apparently, the deer has excellent, near-perfect camouflage. So excellent that you wouldn't be able to reveal it right away even if you were scanning it point blank," Kristoff was one of the first people who were called on the case since it was reported.
"We even thought the deer was using teleportation instead of invisibility because we scanned the entirety of Redwood from up in the air and we couldn't find a trace of the damn thing as soon as it got out. Nine seconds later and we started getting visual on it and discovered that it was using some sort of camouflage ability," he added.
"So if it does turn on stealth mode, we wouldn't see it at all for at least a few seconds?" Rina asks.
"For a full nine seconds, yes", answers Kristoff.
"Why don't we just keep scanning the entire time so even if it does go stealth, we'd still see it 'cus scanners are just there," Harley throws out a suggestion.
"That's what we're doing, but it still wouldn't work. Even if we're scanning the entire area like we are, if it disappears, it disappears completely for the duration of the nine seconds. Only after those nine seconds we'd be able to regain visual," Harley's suggestion is shot down by Kristoff.
"And that is exactly why this is strictly a stealth mission," Benedict joins in on the discussion.
"The most viable and efficient way of taking her down is by doing it without her knowing and doing it in one go as much as possible."
"One go?" Harley asks, confused as to what Benedict meant.
"Aside from invisibility, Wendy is also capable of regeneration so if you mess up your shot and it goes stealth, chances are it just runs away and heals the damage you did," Benedict explains.
"Jesus, the fucking deer has everything," Harley voices out what everyone was thinking.
"And the cherry on top, Wendy is capable of shooting beams of energy from its antlers. It's incredibly fast and incredibly destructive. If it decides to do this while on stealth, who knows what'll happen."
"Our main offensive options will be Agent Everhart and Agent Schmidt as they are the two who are capable of long-range combat and assassination. The close-range combatants, Agent Walker and Agent Ghost will be close by, follow the target's movements closely, and are only to engage for sure-kill situations."
"Are there any questions? Ghost?"
The agent who was completely silent the entire time simply nods 'no'.
"I have a question," says Harley, raising his hand.
"Instead of going through all this work, why don't we just nuke the damn thing right now. You know, drop a big-ass bomb from the sky and we won't have to go through all this trouble of stalking it."
Everyone looks at Harley with disapproval and judgement written all over their face, except Ghost whose face no one has even see yet.
"Alright, good luck on your mission, agents," Benedict ends the briefing, completely disregarding Harley's question.
"What, come on! That was a smart plan!" exclaims Harley while his fellow agents were leaving.
About an hour and a half after the Wendy assassination team left for Redwood Forest, Sebastian warps in right outside Benedict's office, responding to his call and busting in like usual.
"Yo, what you got for me?"
"S-rank. And you're meeting up with Cade."
Sebastian was slightly shocked after what he heard. Cade Vanderwood is another Inner Circle agent. In terms of combat prowess and efficiency when it came to missions, Cade is the second best – next only to him. One would argue that on paper, Cade was the better agent as both were capable of clearing S-rank missions alone. The only difference is that unlike Sebastian, Cade didn't have a habit of cherry-picking missions and would take on any mission that would be assigned to him. Incredibly strong and knows how to follow orders, Cade was the ideal agent. Sending the both of them would only mean that this mission was no joke.
"You're sending us two?"
"We have to," Benedict answers. "This is a matter regarding Crowe."
In the abandoned city of Pripyat, a site inside the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, a man in a suit with two blades strapped on his back emerges from a cloud of thin, black mist.
SHHOOM
He arrives at the top of a 16-storey apartment building. Not exactly where he wanted, but he'd have to make do.
Sebastian's teleportation ability wasn't as easy as one would think. This ability requires two conditions for him to use, the first being that he needs to be able to see where he wants to go. This is relatively easy for short-distance jumps where he can literally see where he wants to warp to. As for long-distance jumps, he needs to be able to clearly and near-perfectly visualize the place he wants to warp to. This is the reason why long-distance jumps are usually difficult and require a ton of mental focus to do. It is especially hard and borderline difficult for places he hasn't been to since he has little to no familiarity with it and therefore, cannot visualize a warp point. However, he can still use this method of long-distance jumping through the use of photos. Since the ability is mainly reliant on visualization, he can instead make use of photographs to help him visualize the warp point without physically having been there. Although this would be even more difficult as he would need to see different vantage points of the area for him to effectively visualize the warp point. Using this method, if he were to warp inside an empty room he hasn't seen or been in before, he would need at least three or four images of the room taken from different angles in the room each.
As for the second condition, it doesn't necessarily require him to "see" the warp point but instead, visualize it in his head entirely from scratch. He is able to do this by learning the warp point's geographic coordinate and carefully visualizing where it would be with the help of the coordinates. This takes an incredible amount of focus and more often than not, it is an inaccurate warping method as it usually doesn't take him to the exact coordinate's location but instead, somewhere near it. Add the fact that he is absolutely clueless as to where he will pop up at making it also slightly dangerous. This is the method he used this time resulting to him warping at a random building's rooftop because he would rather this than hours of vehicular transportation.
He starts walking around the literal ghost town, looking for suits or any familiar face that he should be meeting. He walks through the town center, passing by several abandoned buildings and infrastructure. He arrives at the main square where he catches a glimpse of some black cars, approaching them to be escorted to the actual destination – a large building with a decaying signage at the top which he couldn't understand, but read "Hotel Polissya".
In front of the building were several other cars and suits, one of whom he immediately recognized – a dark-haired man with a short, undercut hairstyle, holding a katana with his left hand, having a smoke. It was Cade.
He approaches Cade, stands beside the man burning one, pulls out a pack, and does the same.