Division in the Ranks (Tom Clancy’s The Division x Worm)

[Kindle Fea]

Division in the Ranks

Disclaimer: Wildbow owns Worm and Ubisoft owns The Division

Summary: The Gift of a Mother gives rise to an effective agent.

Prologue:

The day of her mother's funeral came and went with naught but a whisper.

Even now weeks later the whole forlorn event just didn't feel real to Taylor.

Annette had always been a strong insurmountable figure in Taylor's mind, the fact that her mother had died to a car crash of all things, just didn't seem real or feel right.

Staring down at the watch that Annette had entrusted to her, Taylor couldn't help but remember the words Annette had told her so long ago.

"This watch is a vow Taylor, a duty and obligation. And all who wear it have a heavy burden to carry when the time calls." Taylor still didn't really understand what Annette had meant by that, Taylor was keen to learn.

Pulling on her mother's watch, Taylor quickly finished getting dressed before making her way towards her basement.

Annette had left many, many videos behind to help aid in her training.


DitR

Opening her locker Taylor wasn't surprised to find that once again it had been vandalized. It was routine at this point. Not that she actually bothered leaving anything of value in said locker, and honestly hadn't since the first day of high school three years ago.

Honestly the only reason she bothered to check in on her locker was because the camera would most likely die or run out of memory. Plus having a routine made for a wonderful aliable and cover.

Not that it hadn't backfired spectacularly at least once.

Specifically her sophomore year after winter break when the Trackstar and her ex best friend decided that shoving her into a locker filled with used and rotting tampons would make for a great "prank".

Honestly the only reason she hadn't gone to the police yet was A) Sophia was apparently fucking Shadow Stalker resident edge lord Heroine working for the government. But also because B) she was waiting for Emma and Sophia to turn eighteen so she could slam them with all the evidence she'd gathered on their crimes and have them charged as adults for all the shit they'd put her through as "kids".

Not even Emma's asshole lawyer daddy would be able to get her ass out of that particular fire.

"Extremis malis extrema remedia," Taylor entoned softly to herself before slamming her locker shut, her task completed. She'd backup the data she'd pulled from the hidden camera in her locker later.

It was a moment that Taylor would remember for the rest of her life. The end of the world as you know it is kind of memorable like that.

It started with the sound of sirens. Deep resonating tones that struck terror in everyone it touched. It was a sound that Taylor had only heard once before.

An Endbringer was coming to the Eastern Seaboard.

 

[hellbolo]

Oooooohhhh this is gonna be gooood!
*Maniac cackles*

 

[O’Brien]

I have no idea what the The Division is, but I will read this to know more about it.

 

[Rin_Morita]

Hm. I wonder if SHD agents have the same amount of authority as they do in-game? Very few people trump the authority of an agent, with agencies having more authority rather than just a single person if I'm remembering correctly.

Only question I have for now: are both games having tech/skills pulled from them, or just one of the two?

 

[Kindle Fea]

Hm. I wonder if SHD agents have the same amount of authority as they do in-game? Very few people trump the authority of an agent, with agencies having more authority rather than just a single person if I'm remembering correctly.

Only question I have for now: are both games having tech/skills pulled from them, or just one of the two?

Click to shrink...

SHD Agents orders supersede any order save for those that come from a more senior agent or the president.

And I'm pulling tech from both games though more so from D2 then D1 as I'm actually currently playing it.

 

[The Revanchist]

Is Taylor. Considered a agent

 

[Kindle Fea]

Is Taylor. Considered a agent

Click to shrink...

Normally I'm against spoilers but it's really not.

So no. But she's going to be mistaken as one.

 

[Death by Chains]

Having the gear and the watch means that will be an easy mistake to make... right up until an actual Agent sees her in the field and realises she has no goddamn idea what she's doing. You can't just pick up SHD combat-training from videos and a solo exercise routine; it takes tutors, and facilities, and most of all it takes years and years of reps to embed it in your muscle-memory and subconscious.

On the other hand, I have to say this much for her: she'll never be the disaster that Aaron Keener was. He completely disintegrated and went Rogue because he had no idea how to deal with genuine adversity, whereas by this point, the Bitches Three have given Taylor years of practice in ignoring and recovering from setbacks to build character and grit.

 

[hellbolo]

Having the gear and the watch means that will be an easy mistake to make... right up until an actual Agent sees her in the field and realises she has no goddamn idea what she's doing. You can't just pick up SHD combat-training from videos and a solo exercise routine; it takes tutors, and facilities, and most of all it takes years and years of reps to embed it in your muscle-memory and subconscious.

On the other hand, I have to say this much for her: she'll never be the disaster that Aaron Keener was. He completely disintegrated and went Rogue because he had no idea how to deal with genuine adversity, whereas by this point, the Bitches Three have given Taylor years of practice in ignoring and recovering from setbacks to build character and grit.

Click to shrink...

To me, it read like Annette has trained taylor as a division agent, and that Annette was the real agent. so it seems plausable that taylor would know MORE about what she would be doing than someone without training. and yeah, she probably wouldn't be a second aaron keener.

 

[Death by Chains]

Annette left the watch and the gear to Taylor, along with a lot of video tutorials, from which Taylor presumably cobbled together an exercise regime and some basic understanding of the various gadgets... but what she could figure out solo is not even close to the instinctive grasp she actually needs to do the job in a real firefight, let alone a crisis warranting Activation of Directive 51! Where'd she get her firearms training? With what weapons? Has she learned the first thing about hand-to-hand combat? Shooting at immobile paper targets on a static range — which is about the only kind of practice a civilian can get in many parts of the US, assuming they even let a teenaged kid through the door in the first place! — is not even a pale imitation of realistic firefight conditions. And what weapons would they let her practice with? In-game, your Agent is equally (devastatingly!) effective with every single firearm they lay their hands on, be it a pistol, an SMG, a semi-auto rifle, an assault-rifle with selectable full-auto fire, sniper rifles, and light machine guns. She needs military-grade hardware to practice with, and military-grade instructors and facilities to learn how to use it — and when not to, which is one of the key differences separating Agents from Rogues.
So, unless Taylor has somehow come into a power that's dumped about fifteen years' training in weapon-handling, combat instincts, and 'how to function usefully while being shot at' into her head when none of us were looking, in the fashion of Ain't It a Drag, she's not going to be a patch on a street-cop, let alone even the greenest of actual Agents, and by all the laws of natural consequences she should end up as a grease-spot on the pavement, just one more corpse with an orange-ringed watch for the bad guys to loot for weapons and tech.

 

[hellbolo]

*logical argument, if brockton bay was a NORMAL city*

Click to shrink...

this is brockton fucking bay, how many people do you think would NOT teach their kids how to function while being shot at when gang violence breaks out often, AND LUNG AND ALL THE FUCKING GANGS EXIST?!

 

[The Revanchist]

I hope this continues

 

[Kindle Fea]

Annette left the watch and the gear to Taylor, along with a lot of video tutorials, from which Taylor presumably cobbled together an exercise regime and some basic understanding of the various gadgets... but what she could figure out solo is not even close to the instinctive grasp she actually needs to do the job in a real firefight, let alone a crisis warranting Activation of Directive 51! Where'd she get her firearms training? With what weapons? Has she learned the first thing about hand-to-hand combat? Shooting at immobile paper targets on a static range — which is about the only kind of practice a civilian can get in many parts of the US, assuming they even let a teenaged kid through the door in the first place! — is not even a pale imitation of realistic firefight conditions. And what weapons would they let her practice with? In-game, your Agent is equally (devastatingly!) effective with every single firearm they lay their hands on, be it a pistol, an SMG, a semi-auto rifle, an assault-rifle with selectable full-auto fire, sniper rifles, and light machine guns. She needs military-grade hardware to practice with, and military-grade instructors and facilities to learn how to use it — and when not to, which is one of the key differences separating Agents from Rogues.
So, unless Taylor has somehow come into a power that's dumped about fifteen years' training in weapon-handling, combat instincts, and 'how to function usefully while being shot at' into her head when none of us were looking, in the fashion of Ain't It a Drag, she's not going to be a patch on a street-cop, let alone even the greenest of actual Agents, and by all the laws of natural consequences she should end up as a grease-spot on the pavement, just one more corpse with an orange-ringed watch for the bad guys to loot for weapons and tech.

Click to shrink...

Annette had also been training Taylor daily as well. Also you're forgetting to take into account that Division Agents are a civilian agency with training that is and needs to be done discreetly as to not cause any suspicion that the agent in question is anything other then what they appear to be prior to activation.

Meaning that all their training needs to and is presented in such a way that a normal everyday civilian could do these exercises openly and no one would bat an eye.

Going to gym and being a member of a higher tiered training program, taking hand to hand combat classes from particular establishments, taking certain courses at gun particular local gun ranges and that short of thing.

When you actually stop to think about it, Taylor has a lot more options for getting combat training then any other agent, and not just because she lives in Brockton Bay

Taylor is a teenager, so her going out and playing paintball and airsoft isn't out of character or possibility.

And finding Mil Sims for either of those is ridiculously easy

Meanimg it's ridiculously easy for Taylor to get live combat training. Paintball more for combat and airsoft for weapon handling. Especially the places with the metal guns because they make you learn how to strip and maintain the guns.

which funnily enough (and I say this as a gun owner who went shooting religiously before Covid shut down 95% of the ranges) the weapon maintenance for airsoft and real firearms? Not much difference honestly.

Sure airsoft doesn't teach you how to handle weapon recoil and shooter strain. But that's what going to the range is for. While the mil sim battlefield is their to train reflexes and field tactics.

Plus your underestimate how much material Annette Hebert an English professor left for Taylor. Videos upon videos and books upon books.

"That's no substitutions for being trained by a real professional!" I can practically hear you banging out onto your keyboard. And again I remind you. Civilian Agency a lot of the training is self trained anyway.

Also I think you're severely over estimating just how much training it takes to be able to use a gun effectively.

guns by and large a very, "you've fired one you've fired them all." The operation and bits and bobs might be a bit different but even a little experience with guns will let you quickly figure out what goes where and who does what.

Stripping and cleaning, will of course be an issue but that's why you stick with weapons you're familiar with and know how to maintain.

 

[(REDACTED)]

Plus your underestimate how much material Annette Hebert an English professor left for Taylor. Videos upon videos and books upon books.

"That's no substitutions for being trained by a real professional!" I can practically hear you banging out onto your keyboard. And again I remind you. Civilian Agency a lot of the training is self trained anyway.

Click to shrink...

That's not taking into account the mill sim groups mentioned earlier. the more formal ones typically train you.

 

[Kindle Fea]

Division in the Ranks



Disclaimer: Wildbow owns Worm and Ubisoft owns The Division

Summary: The Gift of a Mother and a slight oversight lead to a Division Agent's rise where none should have been found.

Taylor Hebert daughter of Annette Hebert here to stand in the boots her mother left behind.

Extremis Malis Extrema Remedia

"Isaac Talking"
"Human Talking"
'Human Thinking'
"Radio Talking"

Chapter 1: Venice 2.0

The first sign to Taylor that things weren't going to get better in Brockton Bay after Leviathan's attack was when the waters didn't start receding.

Brockton Bay was a port town on the east coast. Getting flooded and slammed by tropical storms was a daily occurrence sometimes. So the city planners had done a great job of ensuring that the city could and would easily shrug off any flooding that tried to build up.

That didn't happen though, not this time. This time the water stayed, filling the streets and floors of all the buildings in the lower levels of the city.

Turning Brockton Bay into the east coast's equivalent of Venice Italy.

The fires and riots started a few days later, a state of emergency after that, and rampant gang violence after that.

In the squat span of a few weeks Brockton Bay had descended into complete and utter madness.

So Taylor wasn't at all surprised when her watch finally, FINALLY lit up. The L.E.D. border of the watch meant to denote the time glowing a bright fluorescent orange and stayed that way.

"Finally," Taylor whispered with a relieved sigh, very much glad she hadn't wasted the last three days sealing the bottom floors and basements of the houses on her block with flex tape (hey that shit actually worked) and the week after it took to drain and dry out all the water and find all the leaky holes to also seal with flex tap.

Hard work, and extremely difficult to do alone. But now she had a base of operations set up and a number of safe houses for supply storage.

Going down into her basement, Taylor quickly moved over to the steamer trunk that sat in a corner of the room, pieces of brick and cement still surrounding it, evidence of its fresh excavation from the wall. Well that and the giant hole in the wall behind it.

Popping open the steamer trunk, Taylor was truly glad to see that her mother's last gifts were still there, waiting for her.

"I hope I'm worthy mom." Taylor whispered reverently to herself. Reaching into the trunk Taylor quickly pulled out the go-bag stored within. It would have most of what she'd need immediately stored inside.

"Contacts, Isaac Brick, Earpiece, Pulse… it's all here!" Taylor cheered softly to herself quickly putting in the contacts and earpiece before activating the Isaac Brick, and pairing the contacts and earpiece to the device.

"Warning! Unknown user detected! Please state your credentials!" Came a robotic though undeniably male voice, presumably Isaac… or so Taylor hoped.

"User, Hebert A. 953BB514." Taylor stated with a confidence she didn't have. Hoping against hope that the codes and phrases that her mom had left her would work.

"Hebert A. 953BB514 is registered as deceased please try different credentials." Came Isaac's immediate rejection, which in of itself stung slight. Five years since her mother's death and still it hurt.

"Legacy user, Taylor A. Hebert 953BB514." Taylor tried, Annette had warned her that Isaac could be stubborn.

"No such designation is available. Please try different credentials." Isaac stated with all ardor of a toaster.

"Isaac please! The call has gone out and I'm a local resource who has already secured several houses for agent usage!" Taylor argued, formulating an idea and quickly went through the process of handshaking her watch with Isaac's brick. "I've even gone through the same training as a normal agent!"

"....Very well Agent… you are lacking in a number of qualifications… but I shall leave your deployment status to the Division Commander." Isaac stated after a long pause (which in itself was surprising considering he was some sort of country wide hyper intelligent A.I.) a notification popping up in Taylor's scantek lens notifying her of the creation of her profile and in system credentials.

"Thank you Isaac. I won't let you down." Taylor swore pulling on her gear and ensuring that Isaac's brick was secured to her backpack.

"It was determined that you would have attempted to continuously interfere with Division operations in an attempt to render aid." Isaac drawled, as Taylor moved away from the steamer trunk and marched to a gun safe partially hidden under the stairs. And removed a revolver and a double barrel shotgun stored within.

Sliding the revolver into a thigh holster, Taylor cracked open the rifle and cleared the two dummy shells out of it before flipping it shut with a satisfying click.

"Yeah, I honestly would have. Extremis malis extrema remedia Isaac." Taylor admitted a satisfied grin stretching across her face as she slipped the shotgun into its sling, before finally leaving the basement and making her way up towards her room and exit. The couple hundred shells and bullets that she had stored under her bed sounded like a decent enough amount of ammunition to carry with her. No need to pull anymore out of the ammo safe.

"Extremis Malis, Extrema Remedia Ms. Hebert."

DitR​

The sea, a vast unknownable conundrum. Simultaneously devoid of all life and absolutely teaming with it.

For Johanna Shepherd the sea had always been a place of comfort and serenity. A place she could go and unleash all her self doubts, fears, and indecisions. A place she knew without a shadow of a doubt would never judge her or decry her worries.

For the sea was simply a place of dreams with no memory. A place of serenity that Johanna Shepherd was desperately trying to drown herself in. For she knew without a shadow of a doubt that her destination that lay beyond it was a city of nightmares.

A den of iniquity and madness that only the truly deranged ordained to willingly stay within. A place that Johanna in all her years as a professional soldier (and who had seen multiple combat tours) still did not feel even slightest bit adequately prepared to have to face again.

"Commander Shepherd? We'll be arriving in Brockton Bay within the hour, and have already received multiple rsvps from Agents living/local to the area." Came the voice of Johanna's aid, cutting through the near meditative fog she had slipped into.

"Thank you Tali. Rouse the rest of the first wave agents. Knowing this shit hole of a town, some of the more violent locals, are going to be more than happy to greet us when we make land." Johanna sighed, resisting the urge to reach for her cigarettes. She'd had one today already, and Tali would pitch a fit if she caught Johanna with more.

The constantly suited medic and germaphobe was predictable like that.

"Got it Commander. Should I send a warning to the Local Agents?" Tali quarried her muffled voice still somehow managing to carry her concern through the triple layered filter mask she wore.

"They're Brocktonites. I'm sure they have everything well in hand already." Johanna replied, waving her hand dismissively.

"If you say so commander."

[Chapter End]​

 

[hellbolo]

Division in the Ranks

Click to shrink...

Oh, taylor's gonna be SO FUCKING ADORABLE!
*Squees in anticipation of taylor being an adorable terrifying agent*

 

[Terrence Mitchem]

The Mass Effect character names really hurt the immersion.

Other than that, good job!

 

[Kindle Fea]

The Mass Effect character names really hurt the immersion.

Other than that, good job!

Click to shrink...

I actually know someone named Tali, she's a germaphobe and I met her at a comicon in an actual environmentally sealed Tali Zora cosplay.

Also I'm ever so sorry that the name Shepherd is the most generic ass generic name that was ever given to a soldier, that EA decided to use it as the main character's last name.

having been to Marine Boot Camp (I dropped out) I knew like 9 different Shepherds. They everywhere.

 

[Terrence Mitchem]

I actually know someone named Tali, she's a germaphobe and I met her at a comicon in an actual environmentally sealed Tali Zora cosplay.

Also I'm ever so sorry that the name Shepherd is the most generic ass generic name that was ever given to a soldier, that EA decided to use it as the main character's last name.

having been to Marine Boot Camp (I dropped out) I knew like 9 different Shepherds. They everywhere.

Click to shrink...

I didn't even notice the "Shepherd" by itself. It was only when I saw "Tali" that my mind started screaming "Mass Effect!".

 

[Kindle Fea]

I didn't even notice the "Shepherd" by itself. It was only when I saw "Tali" that my mind started screaming "Mass Effect!".

Click to shrink...

Congratulations. You Are A Nerd.

then again you are reading a fanfic which I wrote so I ain't got a lot of room to talk.

 

[WickedTruth]

so Anette gave Taylor her gear but never set up an 'Account' for her? That seems a bit odd and a good way to get your kid killed.

 

[Kindle Fea]

so Anette gave Taylor her gear but never set up an 'Account' for her? That seems a bit odd and a good way to get your kid killed.

Click to shrink...

She couldn't Annette wasn't a recruiter. And specifically saying teaching her daughter and setting her up with the gear is/was technically illegal.

 

[Rickshaw]

Taylor's gonna be the best agent they've ever had, and they're going to DREAD it.

 

[Rakaan]

As someone who hasn't played the Division, a lot of this went right over my head.

 

[Death by Chains]

As someone who hasn't played the Division, a lot of this went right over my head.

Click to shrink...

Operation DARK WINTER was a two-day exercise conducted in mid-2001 designed to test the capacity of existing government agencies, legal structures, and other infrastructure to handle a major bioterrorism crisis, such as the deliberate release of smallpox in a major population centre. The wargame predicted that in the absence of drastic measures, near-absolute societal collapse would result within weeks; public order would implode, emergency response agencies would be utterly overwhelmed by the scale of the disaster and functionally disintegrate, 'normal' people would stop doing their 'pointless' jobs in favour of simply hunkering down and hoping not to get sick themselves, and with no-one maintaining essential services like power or water, or transporting simple necessities like food, medicine, and clothing around the country, everything would become so rare and precious that those who survived the actual disease would literally riot over distribution of MREs, bludgeon each other to death over a can of soda, or shoot random passersby to steal a coat or hat that looked warmer than what they already had.

In the universe of The Division, the response was the signing of Directive 51, which created the Strategic Homeland Division and its mandate to "protect what remains". SHD established a nation-wide network of sleeper agents, highly-trained and equipped with bleeding-edge equipment, embedded within American society to respond to such a crisis and do whatever was necessary to restore essential services (including law-enforcement), and thus stabilise society and restore something resembling normalcy. Upon the activation of Directive 51 within an area, the Agents on the ground abandon their normal civilian lives — probably forever — and do whatever it takes to put the situation back to rights; they can and should coordinate with local agencies out of respect for their local knowledge and whatever authority they still retain in such circumstances, but if need be have full authority to order them around, override them, and even shoot them out of hand if they deem such 'disciplinary action' necessary to achieve their objectives; they coordinate with other Agents as possible and needed to get specific things done; but they answer only to their local Commander, and the Commander answers only, and directly, to the President of the USA. Their only strictures come from the consciences and sense of mission of individual Agents and those Agents around them; otherwise they have no rules, no limits, no outside checks on their authority. They can do whatever they believe necessary to get the job done, and Directive 51 gives them explicit authority to use whatever force they deem appropriate to remove obstructions to their activities, including summary executions.
(Side note: when the game was released in 2015, all of this was merely skeevy and disturbing as fuck. In light of subsequent developments in the American political scene, it's fucking terrifying.)

ISAC (Intelligent System Analytic Computer) is a supercomputer module that rides on the shoulder of an Agent's gear and is controlled through their smartwatch, both of which prominently feature the iconic orange rings signifying their status as an SHD Agent. (If the rings are red, ISAC has flagged them as Rogue, which means they're off-mission at best, if not actively working for hostile interests. If an Agent has red rings on them, they are a threat to the mission — get away from them ASAP.) ISAC is linked to a nation-wide network of control nodes, through which it controls access to, and use of, the technical capabilities an Agent needs in the field. ISAC manages the various handy gadgets an Agent can use, controlled through an AR projection into the Agent's field of view that can show either a 3D map or a HUD that tracks the status of their weapons and skills as well as a 360-degree local-area threat-warning display (with red spokes being BAD GUYS OVER HERE GENIUS). Through the national network's virtually-unlimited processing power and universal access to government (and many 'private') databases, ISAC can also hack virtually any computer or portable device on the market, open electronic locks, and collate and interpolate surveillance data to generate brief life-size 3D recordings of significant recent events at a site (known as ECHOs).

This intro movie, Agent Origins, was made as a promo for the (first) game itself and shows a typical Agent team before and after Activation, in this case after a bad actor released genetically-engineered smallpox (later known as "Green Poison" or "The Dollar Flu") on Manhattan. (Being an enviro-freak and anti-consumerism ideologue, he made a specific point of doing it by spending tainted $20 and $50 bills at major malls and sales outlets on Black Friday 2015. By Christmas, society was in full collapse.)

​

At 24:24, Mia uses a skill called Pulse, which identifies and tags all people within a given radius. ISAC flags and tracks all armed hostiles on the AR HUD as red wireframes for a certain duration, which is not only exceptionally handy for situational awareness, but also makes it easier to hit them in vital areas and behind soft cover (as shown at 28:03). At 26:36, she deploys a Seeker Mine, a self-guided smart-bomb that can fatally surprise bad-guys who think cover will save them.

The movie also showcases three of the factions in New York, one friendly and two hostile.
» The jokers in the HazMat gear with the flamethrowers are Cleaners, mostly comprised of former New York Department of Sanitation workers, led by their union chief, Joe Ferro. Joe lost his wife to Green Poison and has become convinced that the only way to destroy the virus is to burn anything and anyone that might be infected — symptomatic or not, proven or not, if the Cleaners even vaguely imagine someone or -thing might possibly have been in contact with The Dollar Flu, they torch it. Now, to objective observers they're obviously nuts and going way over the top about things, not to mention their operations are compromising the efforts of trained professional epidemiologists and virologists to actually analyse Green Poison and come up with a proper vaccine or cure, but at least they're doing what they do out of honest conviction.
» Orange jumpsuits, on the other hand, signify Rikers, a band of former inmates on Riker's Island who flooded onto Manhattan in a mass escape orchestrated by the charismatic, sociopathic, multi-murderer Larae Barrett. All they want to do is murder any 'uniforms' (JTF, q.v.) they can get their hands on, ideally with maximum possible agony and torture, and loot and steal whatever they can to live as large as they can for as long as they can. Now, conditions on Riker's have never exactly been wonderful, and admittedly when the Green Poison got really bad the Corrections Department guards did abandon their posts and leave most of the really hard-time hard-core offenders locked in their cells to die of the disease or privation, so their desire for revenge is understandable to a degree, but Larae's encouraging them to the worst kind of sadistic excesses has led them to kill off the very people trying to keep NYC alive and destroy the last vestiges of public order. Rikers don't get much sympathy from me.
» At the aid distribution point (10:04), the good guys are JTF. The Joint Task Force consists of every single local emergency-response agency, including various police bodies, EMS, fire department, National Guard, local FBI offices — basically anyone who worked for NYC or the Federal government in a uniformed, law-enforcement, humanitarian, or armed capacity, all amalgamated under a single unified command-structure to eliminate protocol barriers and increase response speeds, operating at the direction of CERA (the Catastrophic Emergency Response Agency) to handle the crisis, maintain order, and (as shown) distribute aid. Unfortunately, a lot of them have been killed or rendered ineffective by the virus, the chaos, and the hostile factions (see above), and a lot of others aren't showing up to work any more, either from loss of hope or because they're seeing to their families first, so by the time the game starts, the Manhattan JTF basically consists of anyone who's still willing to show up to work, put on a uniform, and pick up a weapon; any skills and experience they might actually have are purely bonuses. In the game itself, each district of Manhattan has a safehouse for Agents where the resident JTF officer coordinates operations, and the ops-officers are an... eclectic bunch, ranging from a hyper-caring Jewish mother (at Camp Clinton) to a mob boss in the Flatiron and an animal-rights activist over in Kip's Bay. (If you ever play the game, don't listen to the Ops Officer at the Base of Operations if you can help it. Things might be desperate, but her pessimism and negative attitude do nothing to help matters.)

Now, in this particular story, the emergency left behind by Leviathan is localised enough that the PRT, Wards, and Protectorate heroes might not get absorbed into the local JTF(-equivalent), and the hostile factions are probably going to coalesce around Brockton Bay's pre-existing pests, but I'm going to wait and see on that score.

 

[Kindle Fea]

Now, in this particular story, the emergency left behind by Leviathan is localised enough that the PRT, Wards, and Protectorate heroes might not get absorbed into the local JTF(-equivalent), and the hostile factions are probably going to coalesce around Brockton Bay's pre-existing pests, but I'm going to wait and see on that score.

Click to shrink...

Nop! Why? Reasons and Spoilers! You see them next chapter which I'm hopefully able to finish tomorrow.

EDIT: Change of Plans I convinced one of my friends to draw Taylor in her Division outfit! So the chapter will debut with that picture attached!