A couple weeks later

An inexperienced man pulled up his shirt and wrapped his hand around his gun, a Glock 19X in that exclusive tan color that it was produced in with a color matched red dot sight. He pulled it up from his holster just enough to clear the plastic before pushing the gun forward and firing five shots as fast as he could. After firing those shots, he paused for a moment and aimed carefully before firing three more. He folded his arms in toward himself, keeping the gun forward before grabbing another magazine from a holder on his belt. He wrapped some fingers around the baseplate of his magazine and ejected it, quickly shoving the new magazine in before shoving the partially spent magazine into his back pocket.

Michael stepped forward and tapped his shoulder. “I like that three of your shots landed in the five,” he said in a flat tone, “but your head shots grazed his ears instead of cutting that T-box, and when you fire a five shot group, you don't have a better three shot group. You have a really wide five shot group.” he pointed with his arm over the young agent's shoulder at the two that landed in the 4 and 3 section of the target on the range.

“I’m training to fight enhanced dudes,” the young agent said nervously, “they gotta be shot more than everyone else.”

“More?” Michael questioned, “we can die from the same things everyone else can.” He grabbed the glock from the young agent and aimed it at the target. He fired two shots, paused, fired two more shots, a shorter pause and then two more shots. He set the gun in the agents hand before stepping out of his way and letting him observe the new holes in the target.

“You shot his stomach, neck and chest?” the agent asked.

“It’s not that you need greater volume of fire,” Michael said sternly, “you need to place those shots where it matters.”

The agent nodded. “You’re one of those guys who preaches the spine line, aren’t you?”

Michael smirked. “Yes,” he said softly, “That guy at the hospital I had to kill? We shot his legs out to immobilize him so we could finish killing him.”

“But you pounded that guy to a pulp,” the agent said excitedly, “and you crushed that traitor's neck and made his head pop off.”

“I also shoot people a whole fuckin lot,” Michael said with a grin. “Focus on putting those shots in the right place before you sporadically throw your ammo away.”

Lani walked onto the range and stood next to the agent. “Wanna know another way to keep someone dangerous from using a gun on you?” she said with her eyes scrunched and narrowed. The agent nodded with hesitation. “Okay, do that cool guy race draw you just did and shoot that paper all fast.”

Nervous, the agent took a breath and went to yank his shirt up to draw his pistol again. He lined up to place the first shot when suddenly his finger was pulled from the trigger. Lani had grabbed the slide and pressed her hand against the sight, moving it out of battery. She twisted the gun sideways and yanked it up away from him. “What the fuck?” he exclaimed loudly as he saw the gun leave his grasp.

Lani giggled and dropped his magazine from the gun, locking the slide back to toss the gun from him. “Can’t get shot if you deny the gun.”

“But I can’t snatch guns like you can!” he said as he threw his arms up in defeat.

“But you can use bullets to break them,” Lani said before giggling and walking away.

Michael smiled as he watched her step out of the range. He turned his attention back to the agent. “That makes my point even more so,” he said as he turned to go with Lani, “place those shots where they need to be placed.” He started walking out of the range to let the agent practice what he had been told.

He followed Lani to their office. There were two big desks with their backs to the corner, each having their own computers and materials. In fact the only thing the room had that was shared was a coffee maker, refrigerator and an executive grade multi-paper printer with laser, ink and photo printing capability. Under the desks were gunfighter belt rigs configured with rifle magazines and pistols. Both of them had Glock 20’s with red dot sights installed, a doing of Michael’s to help justify acquiring 10mm ammunition for the 1911 model that he had gotten. The rifle magazines were loaded for the G36C’s kept under their desks. Given adjustable “AR” style stocks and modified to take the very common USGI STANAG magazine that Heckler & Koch offered for their products to make multinational cooperation possible, these were one of the few company standard rifles that were issued. Michael and Lani had way too many of their own guns, but they opted to accept whatever weapons that Task Force Gift were willing to provide, now that they were official agents and not simply contractors working on their own with company support.

On top of Michaels desk sat a big box with his last name on it. The shape was familiar, much like something he used to do before his enhanced days. He expected to pull standard issue army gear out of it and issue it to someone. His mind had wandered down the rabbit hole of his past.

One vest, outer tactical, double check the size he thought to himself. Neck gaiter, make sure you don’t lose it. All the MOLLE III and stuff. Make sure they remember that there’s pouches inside the assault pack that they need to check on. Paperwork is confusing, that thing they’re calling a ‘woobie’ isn’t written as that, it’s a ‘poncho liner’ but how would you line a fucking poncho?

Lani watched Michael stare at the box and space out hard. He looked practically frozen in place. She slowly approached him and moved in front of him. As she came into his view, she watched as he blinked a few times and looked down. “Yes,” she said softly, “you zoned out. Where did you go?”

“Back to a time when I was a private,” he said softly, “before enhancement, what’s in the box?”

Lani shook her head, “we’re gonna get to the bottom of your little mental trips you keep taking,” she said with firm concern in her voice, “but your new vest came.” She walked over and pulled the box open and lifted the new kit out of the cardboard. She set it on the desk and started pulling out the pouches.

Michael still had a blank look on his face, but he began to move behind his desk and start grabbing the pouches and removing tags from them. He set the vest out and started laying out the items as close to how he had his previous vest which he had lost in the hell-realm.

“So,” Lani said, “you get the front half of your vest burnt,” she recalled of his story, “then used the back of your vest to smash it over a devil's head and kill it?”

Michael nodded. “I mean he managed to either fuck up my other shit,” he mumbled, “or I ran it out of ammo.”

“I’m just glad I still have you,” Lani said, realizing that she was making him trudge up fresh pain.

“And I’m glad I have you too,” he said a little more clearly, “I’ve barely kept myself together this week with having nothing to focus on to keep the intrusive memories out of my head.”

Lani crossed her arms. “We need to find something for you to do,” she said worriedly, “just training agents to kill things isn’t occupying your mind enough to keep the intrusions out.”

A tap sounded on the door a moment before it opened slowly. Tom walked in with a folder in his hand that he set on Michael's desk. “We have intel on these crystal chosen cells,” he said in a low and morbid tone, “They’re out there in quite a few places far and wide.”

Michael opened the folder and began skimming through the pages. “You wanna send agents to fucking Chernobyl?” He looked closely at the map. On it was a big red shaded circle with a question mark on it. “These people set up shop in an irradiated un-russianable piss bowl.”

“That piss bowl has some of the finest bunkers of its time,” Tom said with half a chuckle to his voice, “and with the few pockets of radiation left, nobody would be stupid enough to wander in and stumble into their activities.”

Michael continued to read the details in the documents. “Electronic interference?” Michael said as he looked up from the paper, “not Russian Electronic Warfare, but naturally occuring interference?” He continued to read. “The intel is so fucking spotty and questionable that I doubt anyone even did any research. It’s almost like someone played an old video game series and decided that was what was there.”

“The local government had a small cordon unit to keep people from stumbling into the radiation,” Tom said as he rolled his eyes, “but they got hit hard by some people who apparently shot really well and moved way too fast for them to do anything about it.”

“Enhanced,” Lani said quietly from behind her own desk, “which is why you’re about to send us.”

“Bingo,” said Tom who seemed less than his usually amused self with the obvious statement.

“Are we eradicating the place?” Michael asked, “Are we patching the holes in this intel?”

“All of the above,” Tom said with a little more energy now that he felt the conversation had shifted in the right direction. “And you’re gonna be taking some other people with you on this, while working with host nation assets.”

“You’re fucking kidding,” Lani said as she turned from her computer screen, looking at Tom with an annoyed look as if she hoped he was joking. “We have dealt with worse by ourselves.”

“You two experienced a burnt down hospital, a blown up house and some backroad vehicle destruction by yourselves,” Tom said with slight annoyance in his voice, “You’re actual agents of this task force now, I have to treat it like a normal operation and staff your team as if you weren’t a pair of super badass kill-all’s that can shut down the planet without help.”

“That’s actually a fair point,” Michael interjected, “besides, with the scope of this entire thing we’re gonna need all the help we can get. Not to take ground but to hold it. We’re gonna have to essentially take this entire area piece by piece.” He closed the folder and shoved it into his desk drawer. “Exactly what kind of host nation assets are we talking about?”

“There’s a recon company,” Tom said as he walked over the coffee pot and started serving himself a cup, “And there’s an infantry company that they support. Aside from that, the rest of your support is Task Force Gift.”

“We’re leading someone else's military operation?” Lani asked as she raised an eyebrow.

“We’re leading a task force operation,” Michael said with a smirk, “someone else’s military is supporting us.” He grabbed a piece of paper and wrote some things down. He then handed it to Tom. “Ukraine is a 5.45 and 5.56 country, but we’re not their special forces. We’re gonna need to spin some people up on the AK-74 and the Dragunov.”

“How much time do you think they need to spend on this?” Tom asked with serious interest.

“An afternoon,” Michael said with half a shrug, “5.45 acts like 5.56 once it flies through the air, but the controls aren’t M4 controls.”

Tom nodded and folded the paper into his pocket. “I’ll gather your team then.”