Old Habits Die Hard

I'm not Cell Leader anymore.

I'm not even Voice anymore.

But I'm writing this anyway. Lucky you?

Anyway, after all the business in Tulsa, I had some free time. Which … I naturally used to start muckraking, because I might not remember how to function in normal society anymore. It's your fault. Yes, you.

ANYWAY.

So in my digging around, I find out that one of Houston's City Councilmen is not only pulling funding from the CUT, but he also declared he was going to unveil some big-ass art instillation in the middle of downtown. This immediately set off my 'bad shit' detector … so I figured I'd drop into Houston to give y'all a head's up.

And hell, it's barely been six months since I left, but holy crap have things changed. I mean, meeting in Ash's bar is one thing. But it was kind of weird stumbling across a bunch of new faces. Which is kind of depressing-- as meeting new people (and/or monsters) is nice, I guess, but every new 'recruit' means the Truth is getting that much stronger. Fuck. Oh, and y'all had a mole or something? So, y'know, double-fuck.

Some dude named Simon gave me the third degree as soon as I showed up. I can't fault him, I guess, because paranoia is a fucking virtue in our line of work. Still, I can't help but find this slightly hilarious in retrospect. “OH SHIT, IS THIS COMPLETELY, TOTALLY NORMAL HUMAN IN LEAGUE WITH THE TRUTH!?” Not to mention I've been at this longer than a lot of you sons of bitches, but that's just me getting drunk and belligerent.

I came back clean, by the way.

So yeah. Having made my not-quite-triumphant return, I lent my particular investigative talents to the mole-hunt. In what might have been the easiest investigation I ever did, I verifed Cora, Ethan, and Aiden Black the scary vampire ninja murderhobo were assuredly NOT working for The Truth. Oh, and some new zombie-ghost dude named Hector showed up, and he's not a Servant either.

So yeah. After I vetted some folks, Ash put me in charge of the away team to go chase after Councilman Truthy's art project. Great. Simon gave us all some kind of magical pep talk, and then I set off with Fr. Frank, Scruffy the Bear, Alia the not-bitey werewolf, and Hector the zombie-ghost. Heck of a team.

So yeah. We rolled up on the big thing downtown, and SHIT IS FUCKED. Like, Councilman Truthy Dude wasn't just truthy, he was a straight up Abomination. Like, one of the more gnarly, scary ones I've seen. Only in disguise. So as the 'human' part of him was shaking hands, this big knobbly mask-monster thing was like licking faces and marking people and I honestly don't want to know how the fuck that shit works. We kept track of who the Abomination spirit-face-licked, at least, so that's gonna be something to look into later.

So yeah. We tailed Councilman Abomination for a little while … and when we had our shot, we took it. And not only was the COUNCILMAN an Abomination, he had a smaller, scrappier abomination in his suitcase. After a lot of gunfire and flailing and actual regular fire, we killed them both. So, y'know, go us. It was a little cagey, and Hector and Scruffy both got lit on fire, but we still won. Somebody write us a fucking ballad already.

MEANWHILE, while I was leading a commando monster assault team, shit went down at Ash's joint. As apparently, Jacques or somebody stumbled across some bugs (as in the listening device kind) that had been planted in the walls. Cora did her psychic stuff, and found out that Stain, that vampire dude we rescued awhile back, was the one who planted them.

Stain was the mole.

So, y'know, fuck vampires.

Speaking of vampires, Penny tracked Stain down to some hotel, beat the shit out of him, and drug his ass back to Ash's bar. Interrogations were done, at which point we learned Stain was working for some crazy fuckers called 'The Penitents of Samael' or … something. There's something about an eyeless angel, I think, which has something to do with Apophis' tentacle-baby, I think? At least there were no Japanese schoolgirls involved, but seriously, what the shit. Squid-Frankensteins are the worst.

But yeah. We killed Stain, so that's one less thing to worry about. And apparently Stain was carrying around a little glass ballerina. Just like the kind of glass ballerina we took off of Lester Rothschild before we whacked him awhile back. So this shit's been going on for awhile.

Oh, and we also put together a team to collect the big scary sculpture from downtown. (For the record, Ellen the Sharkgirl is terrifying. Girl can bench press trucks) And, uh … once we pulled it out of the ground, it started going RQ-y … so we broke it … which made the RQ go UP. Oops. I think we may have killed a Believer that got Medusa'd or something. (Are Medusas a thing?) Thankfully, Aiden did his Lex Talionis voodoo to make it less terrible, but still. Watch out for Medusa'd people in the future, I guess?

So … the running theory is, that little glass ballerina is the key to Penitent of Samael HQ. Again, I'm not Cell Leader anymore, but I've got the feeling this is gonna be a nasty, nasty op. So clean your guns, sharpen your knives, and listen to whatever crazy story Simon has to tell you, 'cause it's gonna be rough.

And y'know what the worst part is? I'd probably be locking and loading with you guys next month, if I could.

Be careful.

-New Guy.