After Action Report: Operation Tide Turner

F13 doesn't think I should be called New Guy anymore.

I've kind of been doing this Accord thing for a few years now. She says that you guys should call me like “Wise Guy” (which makes me sound like a mobster) or maybe “News Guy” or something. Personally, I prefer the irony in a multi-year veteran of the war for reality still going by “New Guy,” kind of like how the biggest dude in the gang is called “Tiny,” but still. Also, y'know, I'm justifiably paranoid for all sorts of reasons.

Anyway, in case you haven't been paying attention to The Lists, some shit just went down in Tulsa. The local cell leader put up a flare (metaphorically), based on two things. One, that Hathaway guy was doing a rally in town, and two, there was a Research and Applied Technologies (RAT for short) super-underground base thing full of monsters to deal with. Like, RAT has two main branches, one that makes killer robots out of The Black, and the other that does weird combo-monster stuff by stapling two different monsters together. Nasty shit.

Just add more killer robots and insane cultists. 

And so, Operation Tide Turner was kicked off. From Houston, I ran into Cora, Ash, and Kendrick-- as well as a bunch of other operatives from places as far off as Japan. There honestly weren't as many people there as I'd seen in, say, Operation Redemption, but you still had everything from were-cougars (the literal feline kind, not the “your mom is kinda hot” kind), to demons, to changelings, to various wizards, and probably more shit I don't even know about. No vampires, though, 'cause Hathaway's rally was during the daytime. Oh, and some changeling dude thought I was a wizard, which made me laugh so hard beer came out of my nose.

As it happened, I was able to take a break from my SUPER SECRET MISSION-ing, so I swung by Tulsa to help out. And no sooner have I arrived in town, F13 finds me and appoints me as the operation's Myrmidon, because I am responsible and shit. Great.

I got to start Myrmidon-ing right at the start of things, as these two dudes appear out of nowhere and set a microphone down in front of F13. This … goes about as well as one would expect. Thankfully, nobody got shot or bitten or whatever. Turns out these two dudes, Bob and Neil, were a pair of weirdo bullshit-wizards who were refugees from one of those other dimensions. Because, y'know. That's a thing. Still, they were Accordists (even if they were really bad at explaining themselves).

Tits were calmed, and explanations were made. I eventually managed to connect with them as a fellow Journalist (even though I'm more of a Newspaperman at heart), and sat them down in a little corner somewhere and let them, well, report. I explained the whole secure protocols I've got going for this blog, so eventually, they'll send me what they've put together, and I'll post it up here. Building a veritable journalism empire here, man.

So yeah. We then split up into teams-- three to take on the RAT super lab, and another team to go after Hathaway. Given my particular press expertise (along with my general puny mortal squishiness), I went on the Hathaway op, which was led by Selma.

So the ORIGINAL plan was to distract a dude named Dr. Buckley, Hathaway's RQ-pinging advisor, and get Hathaway alone. At which point Selma would do her shapeshifty succubus thing to seduce the guy (while posing as a sexy hispanic male intern). Get it on tape, and boom, scandal/blackmail material. Simple. Easy.

So, Hathaway does his speech, which was TRUTHY AS FUCK. Seriously, dude was going on about the various “Rays” of the church and other bad guy lingo. Hathaway himself still doesn't ping on the RQ-ometer, though, so he's being used as a patsy. I'm pretty sure the bullshit-wizard radio dudes from another dimension recorded said speech-- I'll hopefully post it later, if their sound quality isn't all jacked up. Seriously, once you point them in the right direction, they do good work.

Anyway, during said speech, I notice a twitchy looking guy in the front row. With RQ. And another twitchy looking guy at the other end of the audience. And then I noticed the glint of a rifle scope up in the rafters.

So much for the original plan.

I clue in the other folks, and we moved to intercept. Angel, the were-cougar, and a local out of Tulsa by the name of Detective Henry took out the sniper easy. As for the other two, we managed to keep them away from Hathaway … but we weren't able to keep them from EXPLODING THEMSELVES INTO TEARS. Yeesh.

Naturally, everything went to shit. We immediately went on damage control, and sealed the tears, while another Tulsa local by the name of Lola did some weirdo feelings magic to make the bystanders calm down. Tulsa's cell leader, Martin Dean, also pulled a solid, using his ties as the local Chief of Police to help control the situation. Selma and I did our best to control the media reaction, but with all the phones that were getting pulled out, people are already comparing this to the shit that went down in Vegas last year. Apparently the would-be assassins were some of Langley's weirdo Pilgrim dudes, which … are a thing, I guess?

Speaking of Vegas, once these tears were closed, they left little shiny crystal whatsits, just like they did in Vegas, apparently. Detective Henry had a brilliant surge of insight (being a detective and all) and said that they were somehow, like, Truthy menats. Greeeeat. That's a thing now.

Bob and Neil popped back in a few minutes later, as they'd apparently done some weirdo psychic bullshit to track down Buckley, who was alone in his hotel room. So, I wound up leading Selma, Angel, Detective Henry, and Lola to said hotel to take care of him.

I'd like to say I put together a masterful plan, but it really just boiled down to 'open up the door and go in hot.' I was a little concerned, as Lola's spirit magic mojo detected a vague presence of Death in the room, but for lack of a better plan, we went in anyway.

Buckley went down easy, but the ninja-ghoul guy who appeared out of nowhere managed to chop Angel up pretty bad before we took him down. She got better, though, so there's that. Detective Henry took the lead on the cover-up, and also scooped up a bunch of CUT-y clues, including Buckley's phone, which Henry said she'd turn over to Icarus and The Vault to go all hacker on it.

And we had the easy gig.

I can't give you a play-by-play on the raid on the RAT facility, since I wasn't there. From what I've gathered, it was fucking batshit crazy. Like 'giant robot spiders' and 'zero gravity rooms' and 'naked clones/Alternate Reality Duplicates/Whatevers' of other Accordists, such as Ben the Were-Eagle with the Worst Love Life Ever. F13 got an arm ripped off by an abomination, but … then somebody sewed it back on and she got better? Seems like more of a Frankenstein thing than a Robot thing, but what do I know. I thought there'd be more bolts and shit.

It was a hard fought battle-- and not without casualties, either. There was a guy by the name of Deus, from Puerto Rico, who got himself killed … but he got better. Unfortunately, Arco, the Cell Leader of the Tokyo cell, wasn't so lucky. I never knew the man, but we all know every time one of us dies, The Truth gets a little stronger. Luckily, this goes both ways, so let's see about making Arco's sacrifice worth it.

So yeah. The RAT team hit the big red self destruct button on the evil lab, and blew the whole thing the fuck up. Good for them. I think somebody managed to get some weird Black crystal … thing? More things for The Vault to poke, at the very least.

With our jobs done, an exhausted and bleeding bunch of crazies trailed back to home base, and … well, that was it. It's weird, getting back to a normal routine (well, 'normal' as my life is these days), but that's about all we can do. So keep up the good work, Accordists. Tulsa was a win. Tulsa shows we can, we will, and we must win.

The Truth is out there, and we just kicked it in the balls.