Melvin Jack - The Subtle Cynicism Diaries

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Pasonia
Posts: 175
Joined: Wed Jan 13, 2010 12:43 am

Melvin Jack - The Subtle Cynicism Diaries

Post by Pasonia »

Part of the "Melvin Jack" series of events.

April 12. Sunny.

At least, that's rather fine weather.

Everything about today sucked, though. Pretty damn obvious when Walter Dan (that's the commander's name that no one else was supposed to know, apparently) had to go stab Hailey in the neck with a t-dart. Not pretty.

Considering I was one of those dicks out like a light when the EFP struck, I had no right to say whether Hailey did a damn fuckin' fine job or a damn fuckin' shitty gig. She was the one who had stuck out for eighteen months, while I was merely supervising the workflow from safety (of course, interspersed with missions in between, but that's another tale for another day.)

But damn, two days out of medical center and still not coming back to work. I hope that bitch is fine, because she's one of the best we got.

In the meantime, I've been assigned to a show-off. Name's Gerald. Wouldn't stop flexing his muscles in front of the ladies (though I had some, too, but still, what the flying hell?) I've got a really bad feeling about this dude, but we have to concentrate on the tasks at hand, which was dealing with more cells of that rogue organization we've been at the heels of for the past five years, so whatever help, I suppose.

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April 22. Drizzles.

They let her go. Stranger things keep happening around Black Talons the more I know of it. Even Walter was saying stuff like, "What on earth is wrong with Black Talon these days?", and he's the kind of guy who doesn't care much other than we get the job done, so that says something, I suppose.

On the other hand, however, we have show-off Gerald buying more gun accessories than I've ever seen a Blackie ever take on a mission. Seriously, all we ever wield here are assault rifles; that said, does anyone ever need to put a red dot sight with a holographic sight on top of a magnification scope? How does that even help the missions?

But we've got one which we're supposedly going to be deployed for in five hours. Seems to be some swampy area up in Cambodia with the Khmer, or what the rogues want us to think is a simple Khmer camp.

As usual - raze the place down to the ground. Yeah, such an original mission objective. I bet more of these will lead the people into thinking that America is trying to do another Vietnam, but it's never like Walter Dan ever gave an actual damn, so what the actual fuck.

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April 30. Smoky.

So yeah, Gerald and I spent five days locating the village, because our intelligence was way off and our communications were cut. Roaming around swamps in the faint hope of fish seemed like a really bad idea, but we managed.

Or rather, I managed, and Gerald fed off of what I could. Bloody wanker insists on keeping every single gun accessory on. I would have shoved those down his throat and asked him to shit it out so we could at least have shit for fire fuel, but then 1. it's going to stink like hell and 2. it's going to make painted targets of the both of us in the middle of Nowhere, Cambodia. Fuck no.

Still, it kinda blows when we're clearing up the camps in between our final destination and our starting locale; Gerald repeatedly expended unnecessary rounds into the rogues before taking actual pictures (I know that he's trying to make it seem like he took out every target, but I'm too lazy to give a shit). I don't know what he was going for, resume bloating? He's already in the Black Talons, isn't he? What a douche.

I end up having to supply some of my own to him, and we're running out of rounds before we're even getting to the last place and getting out of this shithole.

Great. Shitty partners for the actual win.

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[to be continued...]
Pasonia
Posts: 175
Joined: Wed Jan 13, 2010 12:43 am

Re: Melvin Jack - The Subtle Cynicism Diaries

Post by Pasonia »

May 6. Rainy.

Finally got through the portal and went back to base. Even the canteen lady's shitty-as-hell grub tasted like heaven compared to the horrible fishes and wild boar.

And the mission. It's done. We even managed to secure some solid intel on a location in Fukuyama as their next target. There's apparently some old Ether technology back there that they're probing hard at, and if they get to it we'll be in more trouble than we did with the EFP.

Then again, the rogues weren't the issue. In fact, it seemed like the village near the base didn't really mind their presence, or welcome it, in fact.

In fact... the base Gerald and I razed... has more green than grey. Perhaps, given it's a countryside, but it's much more vibrant than it needed to be. Thinking about it, when Gerald set the place on fire with nary a care, I had some friggin' doubts about this gig with the Black Talons.

Essentially, I realized I was doing the exact thing I didn't ever want to inflict on other people. I was making people lose their families.

I was made to feel everything is so right in what we do. Suddenly, at that moment, that just feels so damn wrong.

I kind of get what that bitch must've been thinking, but I don't think I'll ever get to her level of emotional investment. I just sit aside, watched the place burn, and took a picture of it as we left. In the process, the village must've been affected by its burning down and its dead people, but it is beyond my ability to care.

I'm a Panzer. I'm not supposed to be attached to humans.

...or was that just a fuckin' lie all along?

============

May 9. Clear skies.

It's official - she's transferred to Weapons Ops, ostensibly because she has the best learning agility in our entire group. I remembered her getting used to any gun she held in just half an hour. I remembered tossing one for her in the midst of a gunfight right before the Mall, and she took, like, thirty seconds to pump two pistol rounds into rebel heads. Amazing stuff.

Still, the more annoying thing is about Gerald pacing around Walter Dan's office clamouring for more credit from the last mission. "Come on, commander sir, I did so much more!" Yeah, sure, just take all the credit you need. You'll be the one in a body bag much faster than anyone else, dickwad, I've seen three persons gone down in that fashion while trying too much to be a hero.

Just a while ago, I was talking to the old cleaning lady who takes care of our compound without fail every evening. She was lamenting about how her child - apparently a doctor who has some specialty in Ether medicine - didn't even bother to visit her for years.

Madam, I'll have had you known, if I had bothered, that I only get to go to the graveyard. Be glad you're alive to lament about it.

Sheesh. Those memories are hard to clear out, they're just annoying to me every time I think of mom and pop. I wished they were around, but if they were, I probably wouldn't be in Black Talons.

Come to think about it, isn't this a vicious cycle...?
Great, here we are espousing just how smart the Panzer race is again, aren't we?

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May 17. Rainy.

This time, our mission intel was spot on so we didn't need to spend more than a week in Cambodian jungles. The intel at Fukuyama was a little late; we'd arrived at a safehouse intending to fight, but all the information was gone by then.

Gerald opted to shoot up the whole room, saying he could at least take a picture of a battered room so it didn't look like we wasted our time in Japan. I let him do whatever he wants - I'm kinda lazy to stop him - but yeah, whatever, there wasn't anything much to show for our work in the first place.

They did leave behind a note though, though I doubt it was intentional; it had something to do with Aaron. A strange coincidence, because that's my father's name, but then again, there are hundreds of thousands of Aarons out there, so it really is a coincidence someone out there could have had my dad's name.

At the very least, I certainly hope so. Maybe I'm just over-thinking this.

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Pasonia
Posts: 175
Joined: Wed Jan 13, 2010 12:43 am

Re: Melvin Jack - The Subtle Cynicism Diaries

Post by Pasonia »

May 21. Pitch-black.

It's all gone to hell.

Gerald is dead, but damn, what an inconvenient time for him to be dead.

I'm writing this from some citadel old place out in Portugal; we'd just gone through a lake when the both of us were caught in an ambush on the roads. The rebels knew we were there for the intel. They so totally knew, but we so totally reacted. Knowledge isn't absolute power, nope.

Gerald would've survived, had he not chosen to pump the rebels with rounds. I was out and away while he was still shooting, thinking he'd be fine by himself (we always do - precisely because a Black Talon is a Black Talon). Next moment, he overdoes it and hits someone in the chest who's carrying five grenades. I'm not in favor of picking up any of Gerald's 1. head, 2. torso, 3. pelvis, 4. legs and 5. rather mangled arms, so I'd just record his death, I reckon.

But that's a pretty damn fine time to die, because I have no fucking other way to infiltrate the citadel alone. The cream at the lab that got to me, kinda helped me with the dark skin by totally hiding it and making me look like a European, but the rebels aren't as skin-deep as the Portuguese villagers are.

I'm in trouble if I keep hiding here, but backup is slow. Damn, I wish I had that bitch here to tough this out, but she's dived deep into Weapon Ops and I can't call 'er up these days.

Sheesh, where's all the help when you needed it?

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May 23. Pitch-black.

You know, there are moments in your life when you're told to reap the rewards of your labour. In Black Talons, the reward is usually the eerie gift of peace that descends on the places we raze to the ground; to destroy all that opposes the Panzer Governments, and to eliminate the misguided rebels and bring them back to our fold... or kill them when they don't.

Well, shit.

I'm probably burning this page once I'm done written it, too; having this lying around won't help. I'll probably pretend this thing is a smoke.

But shit.

Cutting the crap: I did manage to finish the mission alone, though it wasn't so easy as I might make it. It wasn't easy, with my stature, to slip past so many layers of security to get to our mystery intel guy. It wasn't easy, after committing myself deep into the castle, to even shaft a knife into the intel guy's back and take the intel he was storing in the briefcase right before he was about to shuttle it to London.

It wasn't easy trying to get out of the building with the entire camp aware of my existence. But I managed to get away in one piece by blowing up their power generators... and of course, getting my hands caked in a couple more guys' blood. Not pretty.

So I figured, if I had to go all the way down deep to pluck intel out of someone's hands in such a violent manner (that is, quite literally), I may as-the-fucking-hell-well take a look at what's inside, so I took the intel and hacked into it. Thank technology for electrical signalizers, I was able to hack into the data and figure out what was wrong with these guys to hate us so much.

But then the word "Aaron" caught my eyes again. This time, there were no mistakes at all - the name mentioned was my dad's - Aaron Denton Jack. Bonus surprise - even mum's name was inside! Sally Tennor, the woman Aaron Jack married and made me out of.

Of course, anyone would think, why the hell would their parents' names show up in what was supposed to be rebel intel? Turns out, my parents were all involved in the development of the EFP countermeasure, as star students who graduated straight into the deepest and most top-secret levels of Weapon Ops.

The EFP was originally the Pulsor, a piece of technology that was meant to keep better track of Panzer activity in the major regions without excessive, give-away exposure like we previously had with pure human scouting. My parents, though, wanted it for peacetime purposes, and were successfully able to get it.

Sounds like a rosy story, but of course that's where it all. Fucking. ENDED.

Some twenty years ago, they were taken out by a bunch of street hoodlums who robbed them of their bags, and with it went blueprints. As it turns out, we already had EFPs as they were, but we're not told we did. Those street hoodlums were not part of the plan to privatize the Pulsor patent and turn it into civilian use for keeping track of friends on the go.

They were other Black Talons, and one of the is Walter Dan.

In other words: Walter Dan was the one who killed my parents.

Fucking jackass.

And I'm the bad tab they needed to pick up, so they took me in.

Fucking dickwad.

I still remembered Walter Dan telling me all that "sorry, your parents are gone, I'm so sorry, we should take you in now."

I didn't know he was so capable at lies. I've been played the fool for this long - it's amazing. He kept up this fucking pretence for years.

I guess that sometimes the Panzer old wife tales are right - Panzers are unnatural people; half the race is less human and half the race isn't even human. I thought it was something of a joke, but now I see where that came from.

We already have Walter Dan, and as it is... even if he's now someone I can't trust, I cannot bring myself to the conclusion that he's the worst the Panzer race has to offer.

Who knows what's there up there in HQ right now? Cold-blooded monstrosities who would kill in the name of science? Evil men who would seek to take over the world by erasing the one populated by the inferior human race?

I shudder to think of that.

That's not what we Panzers are supposed to be. We're people who merely broke away from regular human society in constructing our own - why are we now trying to impose *our* realities on them?

So maybe, I should be it?

If there's a chance at all that Panzer society is fucked because someone too high is trying to screw society around with absolute power, I'm going to have to be it. Or one of it.

The only way out for me is to re-establish contact with Hailey. That bitch... I'm thinking she's probably on that now. Knowing all that I just did painted the picture so much clearer than before. I guess she might be able to help me out on this, but for now, I'll just take in the lies.

And opt to transfer out. I'm going to do this as dramatically as I can.

Maybe, if I start doing stuff in Japan. Maybe if I have a mental breakdown. So many options, but which ones should I take?

Sheesh.

Y'know what, dawg? Screw that. I'll probably let a dime decide that.

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Pasonia
Posts: 175
Joined: Wed Jan 13, 2010 12:43 am

Re: Melvin Jack - The Subtle Cynicism Diaries

Post by Pasonia »

May 24. Pitch-black.

Of course, that's not actually near the reality of the situation.

The skies were pretty sunny outside before I went back in with the intel. Those guys took the briefcase off my hands, and they kinda tried, I suppose, to make sure nobody accessed the intel. Of course, they didn't know I schooled myself in that computing shit, they didn't bother knowing me for anything else other than me being the large point-man, so they wouldn't know my access log.

In fact, I made sure that the briefcase I gave them was a dud. It should be messed up enough to take at least several days to piece them back - because I made sure the file wasn't complete garbage, so the techies would have hope in finding something useful.

Unfortunately for them, there's nothing inside there now but garbled information of the first season of The Anti-Hero... or something like that.

I got the photographic proof to show that I took the original briefcase. That's what we all need to do whenever we go on missions.

I just didn't have photographic proof of me copying out all that intel from the inside into a memory chip, that's all. Wouldn't want trouble up my ass, duh. Wouldn't want them to know that I'm such a cheesy rebel, duh!

Like hell I'll give my parents' murderers my parents' life-defining work back. Not over my dead body.

Speaking of which, the grub at the canteen is fantastic today!
Maybe it's because my mood is just as fantastically devious today!

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May 26. Pitch-black.

Of course, again this "pitch blackness" has nothing to do with the weather.

It has everything to do with the way the Black Talons handle matters, though. I mean, sure, for most of us in Black Talons, the thrill of fighting gets us on our toes (try asking Gerald's dead pieces, for example).

The intel boys would work hard figuring out what exactly we need to do next to hit at the rebels, usually if the regular command thinks we're our best shot. We're the deniable people, so anything goes and everything will go.

But lately, I realized while going on missions and asking the other fire teams, that often we're only told to do very mind-bogglingly simple objectives - take that intel there, blow up this place here, recover something very far away. None of the missions we take are interconnected, even so for the teams, who regularly exchange mission locations between each other.

You'd think that if you get the same teams to perform missions along the same path, then things would be easier for everyone. Familiarity and all.

But no. Walter Dan made sure that wasn't the case, but nobody ever questioned Walter, and that boggles the mind. Sure, I follow everyone else in generally "not questioning" Walter, but something about all of these seemed really off.

As in, really, really, really off.

I fear, though, even though I hate Walter Dan inside with a passion, that someday they would off me if they found out I knew about my parents. So today I submitted a transfer request to Weapon Ops, and as expected they actually asked if the previous mission was too much, they being worried about psychological impact of Gerald dying and stuff like that.

Nice try, no cigar. I'd stuff that up Walter Dan's ass if I get the chance.

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June 4. Bright.

Because the transfer request is approved... by none other than Walter Dan himself, who specifically directed me to the special ops-only Walking Tank Project... or something like that.

Great. From one hell hole into another. Which citizenry body are we trying to oppress this time?

Well, I suppose I'll know once I get there. Maybe I could check out on that bitch too.

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