I heard she killed an entire platoon of US soldiers with an eraser. A fucking eraser.
2034, Site-212A Tavern
Cigar smoke lingers in the air like thick smog, coating the room with a haze altogether not atypical for Scottish pubs. Dozens of off duty NTF personnel, guards, and even the rare whitecoat researcher, are spread across fifty or so booths and tables.
"So, we get to the objective up on the hill, after more than a week of firefights, maneuvering, and constant spell bombardment and what do we find? The biggest trap we ever walked into." Silus Smith took another drag from the cigar and blew another bit of smoke, before picking up his glass. "That Sorceress had glyphs, spike traps, razor nets, anything you could think of waiting for us and command told us to just waltz right on in."
"Nightmare and a half, I was still just a fucking gun happy cadet." Jane Sandora takes a long swig from her glass, dark hair let down. "I'll be seeing the blood fountains in my dreams."
"What did you tell them, when they gave the order?" Ochev leans in, picking up her glass in one hand, the other preoccupied with a wrench tightening a bolt on a jury-rigged device sitting in her lap.
"Nuts." Silus thumbs through his cards and throws a few more chips into the ante-pot. "Nuts. You want us to die?"
"Sure felt like they did that particular fucking day." Jane matches his bet, leaning back in her chair with feet up on the table. "Best first date of my life, but holy shit."
“Your priorities are a mess Jane.” Silus lays two cards on the table and slides them to Sheffield.
Robert Sheffield pushes glasses up his nose. "Surely it can't have been worse than 4700, right Captain?"
"We didn't lose anybody during the 4700 op. Sure we, and I mean the collective we, lost people, but nobody in recon. Can't count the subs going down, that's out of our control." Silus takes another puff, and then a long sip of his whiskey. "Only people who came out of Polynesia were Jane, Rugio, and I."
"2010, 2014, 2017, bad years for recon." Jane takes another long gulp. "I'll never get over it, Silus, I got robbed of my fucking date night on Fiji. If second dates don't happen within four years, they don't happen at all! That's the rule."
Silus rolls his eyes. "Just go ask her for a duel, she's still around."
"It's not the same and you fucking know it. The magic's gone." Jane sulks for several seconds, before, miraculously, getting over it. Silus, Jane, Rugio, and Wong slide cards over to Sheffield. He distributes cards back from the deck.
Jane glances at her haul and tosses a few more chips into the pile. Rugio, Wong, and Silus all meet the ante.
Jane grins and lays down her cards. "Full house."
"Dammit Jane, how do you not have tells!" Rugio exclaims, laying down his two pairs.
"Sniping's a game of chess Rugio. You just need to git fucking good." She grins, as Wong also shakes his head, and lays down his cards revealing a three of a kind.
"Who are you talking about captain?" Sheffield asks, looking up from the book that he's been nursing between dealing cards.
"Royal flush." Silus lays down his hand, and leans back in the chair, a rare and smug smile spreading to his lips.
"Motherfu— You're fucking impossible to read!" She throws up her hands.
"You're just bad with men Jane." Silus takes another drag of his cigar, and leans forward, looking at Sheffield. "Decimus."
The whole table freezes. A half-shuffled deck of cards in Balet's fingers dropping to the table in a chaotic pile. Ochev stops mid-hammering, stilling her jury-rigged abomination. Wong nearly shatters his glass on the floor, almost dropping it from his shaking hands.
"Wh-who's Decimus?" Sheffield asks at a slightly elevated volume, swallowing from the reactions of the others at the table.
The doors to the tavern, behind where Sheffield is sitting, open. Like a forest in the presence of an apex predator, the whole tavern drops into eerie silence. Seasoned NTF veterans, guards, and researchers crane their heads to look. No one moves, the only sound crashing through the silence are boots treading heavily on wood. If a pen had dropped right then and there, it would have been as loud as a gong.
"This is why we don't talk about Polynesia or Fiji," Jane says quietly. "Let’s move on."
"No, no. The boy asked, and he's about to find out." Silus leans back in his chair. The floorboards creak as something, no, someone predatory moves across the room. The rest of Recon deliberately looks anywhere but this cataclysm, as its gaze sweeps the room. They only dare to look in the direction of the steps when its attention is elsewhere. Sheffield, utterly oblivious to impending disaster, is fully absorbed in Silus's storytelling.
"Carissa Decimus to be precise." Silus takes a long drag of his cigar, fingers thumping sequentially on the table. "Something you need to understand Sheffield is that, of all the things we are likely to face in the field, the Hand has always been one of the most dangerous. Higher ups like to depict them as bumbling, unorganized wizards, but those on the front lines know the truth. The Hand, they strike fast and hard, always where you're vulnerable."
"Ok but—" Sheffield stops, Silus holding up a hand.
"We've had plenty of run-ins over the years, and they always end roughly." Silus pauses to take an exaggerated swig of his drink.
Jane, Rugio, Ochev, and Wong all look towards the bar. Anxious conversation rises again throughout the room, but at a much lower volume than before.
"But there was always a pair of Hand operatives that everyone knew about. It didn't matter if you were Delta-7, a localized MTF, or just a security guard." Silus makes a calculated, quick glance towards the bar, and then focuses back on Sheffield.
Floorboards creak as a quick conversation at the bar trickles through the room. The clink of a glass on wood, and the sweet serenity of hard liquor crackling against ice wafting lazily across the space.
"So, this Decimus… she was just some infamous serpent-lover?" Sheffield's lips purse and his forehead wrinkles in confusion.
"That fucking 'serpent-lover' wiped two whole Recon Squads," Jane hisses, eyes darting to the menace as it moves away from the bar, floor creaking beneath methodical steps. "Then she pissed on an MTF for breakfast, and they all caught on fire and died horribly."
"Sometimes she has the help of that sorceress." Ochev fiddles with her tiny wrench, as the creaking floorboards get closer. "It was always worse with the sorceress."
"I heard she killed an entire platoon of US soldiers with an eraser. A fucking eraser," Wong hisses, eyes widening as shadows approach their table.
"I saw that tape; it was more than single platoon. I could not sleep for whole week after." Ochev takes a long and shaky swig from her flagon.
"The Hand wanted to get rid of her in the 50's, so they gave her a ludicrous task. Something no one could do. The blood she collected that day, the bodies she dropped, opened the floodgates that brought the GOC down." Silus's eyes leave Sheffield, panning up as the creaking reaches its apex.
"They called her 'Star-Shooter' because she shot a fucking star out of the sky and vaporized a full GOC strike team on contact," Balet says almost at a whisper. All sound ceases. A requiem of the calm before the storm.
"I-Is all of that really true? Surely no one like that can exist." Sheffield's words stutter as he looks around the table, oblivious to the terror standing behind him.
"Oh, I promise, I'm very real." Sheffield slowly turns his head to look at the hand now gripping his chair. Sharp, claw-like nails dig into the wood. He tracks up to meet the predatory gaze of yellow eyes. "Boo."
Sheffield freezes for a fraction of a second, before fight or flight completely takes hold and he scrambles out of his chair, screaming. He takes off at a dead run, clean out of the tavern screeching as loud as he can, "Hand infiltrator we're all dead!" until he's out of earshot.
The cataclysm known as Carissa Decimus turns her head to look back at table, ears remaining swiveled in the direction of Sheffield’s panicked steps until she can no longer hear them. "So. Still telling ghost stories about me, huh?"
Rugio, Ochev, and Wong immediately break eye contact, looking anywhere but Carissa as she flicks her tail.
"Decimus," Silus says, with tension in his voice. "Didn't know you were back on site."
"They got tired of using me as a fucking errand girl for a bit." Carissa sits with her pitcher of liquor, refusing to arrange herself in the chair like a normal person.
Jane tenses. "So, what, you just happen to hone in on us again?"
"What can I say, I have a built-in radar for dangerous women." Carissa smirks and takes a long swig as the rest of the table shifts uncomfortably.
"Where's your matrimonial terror?" Jane lets the jab twist in the air between them. "Stirring a bubbling cauldron somewhere?"
"Asleep. Timeline convergences tend to exhaust Sorceresses." Carissa taps her fingers on the table, her claw-like nails digging into the wood and leaving divots.
"I'm sure they do." Silus takes a long drag of his cigar.
Carissa looks at Silus, evaluating the aging commander, before her attention returns to Jane’s previous statement. “Piece of advice Sandora. I’d be careful not to make those remarks where she can hear them. She might infer you’re calling her a witch.”
Jane licks her lips. “I live for the edge.
“Not for this one you don’t.” Carissa’s ears half droop, as her tail flicks several times in quick succession. She pulls out a pipe and presses a pre-prepared roll of tobacco into it.
Tense silence settles over the table as Recon nurse their drinks and Carissa’s appraising gaze rinses back and forth across their proverbial bows, before pivoting away to a nearby TV.
"Mrs. Decimus," Wong begins, and almost withers as Carissa's gaze swings to fully focus on the hapless scout.
"Oh, come on, how do you fuckers have the nerve to be in the field if you can't even ask me a question?" Carissa barks with laughter, finally dropping the menacing act. "I'm on your team now."
"Are you really though?" Balet asks with a squint.
Carissa doesn’t answer Balet, instead; flicking him a middle finger. "What's your question, runt?"
Wong swallows. "Is it true… what they say? About what you did to the GOC?"
A smirk slithers, like a sand viper preparing to strike, across Carissa's lips. "Do you want to know?" she asks, leaning forward. "Really want to know?"
"Uhm…" Wong shrinks in his chair. "Yes?"
"Then try not to piss your pants. You’re about to come to terms with just how close you came to utter annihilation 20 years ago.” She snaps a finger, a flame appearing just above the tip of her pointer finger as she lights up her pipe, takes in a long drag, and blows out a smoke ring. “This is the story of how M and I kicked off the cascade that would bring the GOC to its fucking knees."
