Apocalypse Redux

Chapter 93: Interlude World

“You do realize I’m not a soldier or a spy, right?” Habicht asked, glaring balefully at the nondescript man on the other side of the table. And in this case, nondescript really did mean that if he’d met the man on the street a mere hour after leaving this meeting, he wouldn’t have been able to recognize him. Clearly, there was some kind of [Skill] at play here, one that made him functionally impossible to recognize.

In theory, Habicht should have had [Skills] of his own to counter that effect, but he hadn’t had a typical law-enforcement [Class] since his first [Evolution], choosing to instead focus on improving his combat and leadership abilities.

And that basically left him about as prepared to deal with an intelligence operative as a normal person on the street, unfortunately. Now why the hell had anyone decided that making a guy like that brief him was an even remotely good idea?

“I know your listed job is leader of GSG-13, this nation’s anti-supernatural strike force.” The nondescript man, who’d introduced himself as Jonatan Schmidt, said, leaning forward “But can you really sit still and do nothing in the face of threats just because they’re outside this nation’s borders?”

Habicht shot the man a dark glare. Right now, they were solidly in the middle of the creation of the Bundesargentur des Übernaturlichen, the Federal Bureau of the Supernatural, normally shortened to BAU and a lot of wires were being crossed.

Under normal circumstances, he’d have been cursing the people responsible for this custerfluck to high heaven, but as things stood, he could understand why things were this chaotic. Even just assinging the various portions of the [System] to several different parts of the existing law enforcement apparatus was a massive amount of work he couldn’t reasonably expected to have gone any better than it had.

But now, the powers that be were trying to pull all that together into a single coherent department, yet things were still nearly as messy.

And all of that was ignoring how loosely defined their area of operations was and how they’d be stepping on toes as a matter of course. Right now, they were meant to deal with anything supernatural, which included crimes with a significant amount of [Skill] involvement, something that was solidly the police’s area of responsibility, and that was just the start. That whole thing was going to become a huge mess until the various other law enforcement departments would be able to deal with standard [System]-related crime. But until then, chaos was practically a guarantee.

Yet here was this guy, trying to convince him to step on the feet of literally every military, intelligence and law enforcement department in the country and out of it.

“I’ve got to listen to what you have to say for the duration of this meeting, because that’s what I’ve been told to do, but you’re not my boss, in fact, I probably outrank you.” Habicht said, leaning back in his chair until it was leaning backwards, leaving him balancing on the back two legs, and put his feet on the table.

“So, let’s get this over with. Inform me about how bad things are in out there in the big bad world, tell me why I should consider moonlighting for other departments until the BAU is fully set up, convince me why this entire meeting isn’t a giant waste of time.”

He finished up that little speech by quirking a single eyebrow, staring Schmidt down, daring him to open his mouth. In this complete mess of a situation, sometimes you weird directives and this was one of them, getting a briefing from this spook about how chaotic things were out there, which would likely be followed by a request to do something outside of his normal area of responsibilities, something he couldn’t actually be ordered to do.

The real issue was that, right now, it was hard to tell where orders came from, or who he could safely tell to fuck off with varying levels of politeness, or even if a given order was fully legitimate so long as it originated somewhere within what would one day be the BAU. So, when it came to something relatively harmless like having to be talked at for an hour or so, he just obeyed and wound up the other person as much as he felt he could get away with.

“Are you aware of the rise of people attempting to create independent fiefdoms in existing natures, declaring an area to be theirs now, taken by right of might? Thankfully, we haven’t had that issue in Germany yet, and as much as I’d like to trust in the good sense of our countrymen, there is still a distinct possibility of someone trying to pull a stunt like that. Remember that mess in Texas last week? If the world weren’t amidst such upheaval at the moment, that would have been cause for worldwide headlines.

“And we both know that the issue was made worse by how the responding people stuck to outdated protocols that barely worked even before people got magic powers, yet you don’t seem to be willing to even consider doing anything other than slavishly follow the rules, and wait for something to go wrong before reacting.”

Habicht chuckled softly. This was hardly a laughing matter, but it would serve to annoy this prick.

“I’ve actually talked about the whole ‘fiefdom’ issue with a few people, you might have heard of them. The President of the Bundespolizei, the vice director of the Verfassungsschutz, and the Minister of Defense dropped by for a few minutes. Sure, I might not have been one of the primary contributors at that meeting, but I was invited.

“And do you know why we figured the risk another firefight with a self-declared king in Germany is low, why we haven’t had anything even remotely like it happen yet? It’s not that we’re more sensible, or anything even remotely like that, and it’s real obvious to boot. Care to guess?”

“Not particularly.” Schmidt said sourly.

“Bah, you’re no fun. Like I said, it’s simple. Population density and distribution. Over eighty percent of the US population lives in large cities, and two thirds are concentrated at the edge of the country, living within a hundred miles of the border. There are vast tracts of open land in that country, ripe for the picking, whereas in Germany, trying to annex an area a fraction the size of what normally gets grabbed would inevitably involve trying to claim ownership of people’s homes and the like, which is going to be a hell of a lot harder than declaring yourself the owner of a large stretch of empty desert.

“And when something like that crops up, believe me, GSG-13 will deal with it using all the force that is required, and not an iota more. So, next issue?”

Habicht could feel the irritation come off the intelligence officer in such volume that bordered on outright hatred. He didn’t care, though.

“Perhaps you’re going to appeal to my sense of justice, tell me about some horrors in the developing world to convince me that I need to transfer from the police to the military and go out as a member of the special forces, because I can do more good there?” he continued, certain that had been the next point on Schmidt’s agenda.

Because fundamentally, there weren’t many places that had come out of the chaos directly following the [System’s] arrival mostly intact, and you didn’t hear about most of the awfulness on the news because there was just so much of it.

The Los Angeles incident, for example, was the most well known mass casualty event to have happened in the United States, and then there’d been that recent chaos in Texas where a man had gotten into fire-and-magic duel with the FBI, but those were hardly the only ones, just the one’s most widely known.

And even with that, the US had gotten off somewhat lightly. It was nowhere near the most intact of places, but it still ahead of most of the planet.

Places in the middle of conflict, on the other hand … they were in real trouble.

At the end of the day, some of the most inhospitable places, with the most destitute populations ended up managing handle the issue the best. It had been a tad surprising at first, but it made sense when you thought about it.

The [System] allowed people to summon creatures made from water, soil, or meat fit for consumption, so through careful and judicious use, one could get everything one needed to survive just with a few basic bits of summoning material and a little mana.

People who’d had to spend their entire life being incredibly careful with everything they had because there would not be anything once that was used up tended to be careful with something like this as well.

Between those two facts, there were a lot of poverty-stricken areas that weren’t also embroiled in a violent conflict which had managed to flourish since the [System] had arrived.

But a lot of countries weren’t as comparatively safe and free of large-scale, systemic, conflicts as others, and they had been hit hard. Countless warlords had died within hours or days of [System] day as people grasped [Classes] that provided immediate power with both hands and used them to burn away the rot that was destroying their country with fire and fury.

Even as many people settled down in the aftermath of the regime change, using the [System] to better their lives and gain resources they hadn’t been able to get before, others had learned, truly internalized it rather than merely being aware of it on an intellectual level, what power could do for one’s standing in life.

And then, things usually went south at a truly astounding rate. Others saw rising stars as future warlords in their own right and reacted accordingly. If things went badly enough, you ended up a situation like Zamfara, where anyone who was at a decently high Level was seen as intending to become the next warlord, then usually got hunted down and subjected to the justice of the mob. The whole area had ended up in a vicious spiral of a few people getting above Level 10, gaining access to [Inspect] and becoming able to point out others at a high Level, which inevitably ended with almost all the powerful people six feet under, rinse and repeat.

‘Wouldn’t you like to fix that, save those people?’ was a pretty nice hook to convince someone like Habicht to do something, but it suffered from a few issues like the fact that those issues were incredibly complicated and a bunch of foreigners crashing the proverbial party to announce that only they were able to fix the situation would only make things worse. If you thought about it for more than a few seconds, you’d realize that, but Habicht was pretty sure Schmidt saw him as little more than a blunt instrument.

The spook folded his hands in front of him and took a deep breath before continuing, looking right at Habicht’s face and ignoring the feet on the table.

Schmidt had managed to hide his irritation well, but not nearly well enough, making Habicht smirk.

“As a police officer, even one in what is technically a federal anti-terrorism task force, you’re limited to operating within the borders of the Federal Republic of Germany. But we’re pretty fortunate when it comes to [System] related incidents, and a lot of the incidents we do have are down to foreign agents illegally acting on our soil. Can you honestly tell me you aren’t interested in dealing with those before things go truly off the rails?”

“Sure … if I actually thought you lot capable of accurately predicting those incidents.” Habicht shrugged, pulled his feet of the table and sat up straight again. That way, the next time he felt he’d made a good point, he could lean and put his feet up again.

“I’m aware of the chaos happening out there in the world, in fact, I’ve got access to more information about that than most people who aren’t creepy fuckers who live in the shadows, spying on people, and I use that access, but I’m also fully aware of how complicated this all is. I’m a blunt instrument but neither that nor a crude tool is going to be particularly helpful in a situation that requires a scalpel.”

And with that, he leaned back in his chair and planted his muddy combat boots firmly on the table once more, within a few centimeters of the spy’s hand.

The spook’s mask slipped ever so slightly, unnoticeable to practically everyone.

Habicht’s grin, on the other hand, was quite broad.