I'm getting kind of good at this.

 Last night, I was sure I was gonna die.

Obviously, I didn't, as I'm writing this report right now. I'm glad I survived, too- not just for the obvious reasons, but also because I had a sappy 'If you're reading this, I'm already dead' post-mortem letter written up that would've been a sendoff for this blog or something. But yeah, impending death puts a pretty weird take on things. I mean, when what could be your last meal on earth is some leftover fried chicken and stale coffee, you start thinking about how the hell you wound up in this situation. I would've sprung for steak, but I was too busy getting ready (also, sort of broke).

Last night was a mission that we've been building up to for the last year or so- an out and out commando raid on the CUT headquarters. To be honest, we had a little less manpower on deck than I hoped for, but we still pulled it off. Here's the breakdown:

We started with Apophis, Dr. Watts, his buddy Rick, and another viking-wizard-apprentice guy named Jose teleporting to the roof of the CUT church where they beat up a spirit ghost thing. I think. I really don't know how this crap works, but apparently they did a good job of it, so kudos to them.

Meanwhile, everybody else- (me, Brayker, Kendrick, Artemis, Jacques, Weylin, Ash, and Luke the demon guy) pile into a stolen van and drive up to the Church building. After Ash and Artemis did some spirity-magic stuff to make us harder to detect, we roll up to the back door. I managed to jimmy the lock (surprising what you can do with a credit card) and we're in.

Things went pretty smoothly until we got to the basement- where we find none other than Spiers (the fucking brain teleporting wizard) waiting for us, along with two SWAT looking dudes and some kind of black-hole anti-magic ghost ninja (who was also that wizard ninja Lance guy we thought we killed a few months ago). From what she told me, Artemis' magic prevented Spiers from teleporting us to wherever, so things came down to an old fashioned shootout.

I killed one of the tactical goons. I'm not sure what to feel about this. Or really, I don't feel anything about it, which has got me kind of worried that I'm going to turn into some kind of creepy monstery sociopath now. But on the other hand, the dude was obviously a Servant, so I guess splattering his head across the wall is okay?

I didn't have much time to think about it at the time, as next thing I knew I'm getting kicked in the ribs by the fucking antimatter ninja dude. Somewhere along the line Kendrick went down, but after a nasty brawl, Jacques and Weylin ripped Spiers and Lance to bits. Werewolves are fucking scary, for the record. I may have also accidentally grazed Luke. But he's not dead either, so no harm, no foul, right?

We wrapped up that fight, hooked up with Apophis' team, and patched ourselves up with crazy magic shit (like, Jacques used his Harry Potter spirit owl to put my ribs back together, and I don't even know how that works). Luke pulled some hard drives off the Church's servers, so that'll hopefully be a great source of intel later.

There was some big warded door thingie, which Artemis managed to open...and that's when we met Romanati. Mr. Big Fancy himself. He had two of the remaining CUT board members with him (only all mutated so they had big bitey mouths) and a pair of Abominations: The Lone Ranger and Tanto.

Romanti yelled at us loud enough to make our noses bleed- but we pressed on, blasting the shit out of him and his minions. Dr. Watts breathed fire (does that mean he's a viking-dragon-wizard?), and Jacques and Weylin hulked out and ripped the shit out of Romanati before the dude could do anything more. The rest of the monsters there were pretty nasty too- but at the same time, there were more of us than there was of them, so we were able to take them out after a hard, hard fight. Weylin nearly died, I think- like, I don't know how werewolf anatomy works, but I don't think you're supposed to see what color their bones are (white, for the record). Watts did some healy stuff to help him pull through.

I got the killing blow off on the Lone Ranger, for the record. So that's two notches I can put in my proverbial gunbelt, I guess. Is there an official Accordy way of keeping track? Can I use this to get free drinks?

For the record, here's the 'score'

1 Corrupted Spirit Thing, DEAD...or dispelled, or whatever happens to spirits when you hit them a lot.

Spiers, the crazy ass space wizard, DEAD

2 Servant minion dudes with shotguns, DEAD

Damien Romanati, Head Honcho and Church of Ultimate Truth Pope Candidate, DEAD

That Lance guy, who turned into an anti-magic ninja ghost, DEAD (or dispelled?)

Melissa Redding, DEAD

Miriam MacDonald, DEAD

2 Abominations, in the form of the Lone Ranger and Tanto, DEAD (or melted, or whatever)

It's worth noting, however, that Lester guy (the half vampire) and that Pine kid (the one Miss T. has a doorway into his brain) are still at large. So I guess we need to keep an eye out for them- still, hell of a haul this month. Yay us.

So yeah. We won. Nobody died (even though Weylin came damn close). We pushed through another door...where we find an evil artifact TV, with twelve little chairs in front of it (conveniently labeled with the CUT's board names on them), and a tear. So, like, I guess Romanati and his culty bastards sat down to watch TV, which is what made all those Lone Ranger and Batman and other TV based abominations we've been fighting all this time. Proof Television rots your brain.

Again, it was one of those tears that can be closed through the almighty power of Pessimism, so we wrapped that shit up pretty quickly.

This done, we set the church compound on fire and booked it out of there commando-style, courtesy of the helicopter Ash was able to flag down with her Quicksilver Knight contacts. Go her.

On a side note, technically the Council didn't want us killing Romanati, as they would've rather had us slander him instead- but it's not like we can really tell the evil Boss Monster Servant “Hey, just hang tight and don't fight us because Dracula said we weren't supposed to kill you yet.” (And now I'm talking like Dr. Watts).

BUT.

Because I'm a fucking brilliant criminal mastermind, I've realized how we can get the best of both worlds out of this. See, it's not like there were any witnesses to the brawl, since, y'know, it was in a basement. It's the sort of thing that'll probably get filed under 'mysterious circumstances.'

BUT.

I've already got people working on forging some documents showing that Romanati took out a multi-million dollar insurance policy on the CUT building about a week ago. Once we have something properly incriminating, we'll leak it to the media, and pitch it as 'Romanati dies while trying to pull off insurance scam.' Dude's still dead, and we can have him remembered as a crook, instead of a martyr. Everyone wins.

Man. The longer I hang out with you guys, the better I'm getting at this 'secret occult conspiracy' bullshit. Does anyone else find that disturbing? 'cause it feels pretty damn disturbing to me.

I'll worry about that later, though. Right now, I'm going to pour myself a drink. And probably a few more drinks after that. It's just that this time this is 'celebratory' booze, instead of 'oh god what the fuck just happened' booze.

 There's a difference.