W. Blackstone vs. Dinos

By: Yghjd the Almighty

Posted on: August 14, 2022 (Introduction) and September 14, 2022 (Chapters 1, 2, 3 and 4)

Cover Image: Monster's Looming

Cover Image by: Mirai Matsui

Classification: Photography

Year: 2022

Introduction

Silencers are agents who deal with dinosaurs and the mysterious animals called “monsters” and “nightmares”. It all started 35 years ago, in the year 1987, when the first monster appeared. Back then, various world governments hid the existence of the “monsters” from the general populace. WWI had ended, and as people were in a period of rapid progression, a biologist in the USA noticed an unusual animal in a forest near the coast. It was a dinosaur. It resembled a tyrannosaurus rex. The man was excited by this discovery and decided to consult the authorities. The animal was promptly captured, and the biologist was paid to keep his mouth shut. However, this was only the beginning. 2 weeks later, just 25 kilometers from the last site, was a second discovery by the same person. This time, it was of the same species. 9 days later, local military personnel dispatched to investigate saw another one. The area was sealed off under the guise of a forest fire. However, the sightings increased in frequency, to the point where there were multiple in a single day. Then, 4 months after the initial sighting, the first “monster” appeared. It accompanied 3 t-rexes, who were following it as if in a trance. It was similar to the other tyrannosauruses, except for 2 distinguishing features. It was slightly larger than the others and had another shocking feature: it had shiny transparent plates covering its skin, leaving no gaps. The military tried to capture it alive, but tranquilizers, bullets, and missiles didn’t even dent its armor. It was only when someone tried using a flamethrower out of desperation that they finally felled the beast. Later analysis of the plates of the beast revealed that they were made from quartz. After these occurrences, the reports lessened in number, until eventually, none were left.

However, the story did not end here. One year later, a similar incident involving Utahraptors occurred near the coast of Egypt. The raptors also had an abnormal individual. However, this one’s differences were different from the previous incident. This time, it had evolved iron spines and had stronger muscles, along with being smaller in stature. It was dangerous, however, as it dashed around at speeds upward of 320 km/h in bursts that lasted around 1 second each. It was only when it dashed into a tank sent to dispatch it that it became concussed and was captured. Upon examination, it had more aggressive behavior than the rest of the others. It had to be put down after it killed over 20 people that were sent to manage it.

After the second incident, the government decided that these animals were dangerous, and referred to them as “monsters” as they possessed extremely adapted traits for killing.

Within the next 3 years, 4 more incidents like this occurred around the world. The world governments, tired of these happenings, decided to hire people to resolve these issues. These people had to be intelligent and resourceful, and as a result, 5 people from across the world were drafted, having been paid millions each to risk their lives to keep the “monsters” and the dinosaurs a secret from the rest of the world, as well as to dispose of them as they see fit. These were the world’s first silencers.

In the year 2002, a new horrific type of beast appeared. In this case, there was only one such beast. However, the effects were devastating. This happened in BC, Canada. There were several differences. For one, the “monster” that appeared unlike last time was a herbivore: a triceratops. Secondly, it was 240 meters tall, making it easily visible. Thirdly and most importantly, it had seemingly supernatural powers compared to the other monsters. It was able to manipulate gravity to some extent. An international decision was even made to use nuclear weapons. However, even that did not harm it. What finally ended the beast was unknown, but it was found dead near the shore. Because of the many sightings, it was already beyond the world governments’ abilities to keep it hidden. The news spread worldwide about monsters, with various ex-silencers revealing more about the monsters.

After the incident with the triceratops, the world governments dismissed the triceratops as an abnormality. However, 10 years later, in 2012, a gigantic iguanodon in Spain caused a similar incident, and was found dead in the same way: it was completely undamaged.

This caused the world governments to relabel these special incidents collectively as “nightmare” events. Ever since then, similar to the “monster” ones, “nightmare” events have been becoming more and more frequent.

“In the bag, we have provided for you, you will find a tablet we have specifically prepared for you. It contains detailed information on all recorded “monster” and “nightmare” species and variants. Use this to deal with any incidents in the future,” informed by the Head of silencers.

Agent Blackstone, a new recruit, fell asleep at that point. He was too tired to pay attention to the briefing any longer. Of course, his boredom was justified…

Chapter One The Secret Mission

Agent Blackstone was ready for his first job. This time, it was to capture an albertosaurus variant categorized under the poisonous category known as Jack’s Albertosaurus. It was a low-danger target. Of course, like all other “monsters”, carelessness could still have a lethal effect. For one, entering anywhere near its range or places where it had been without proper protection essentially guaranteed death. It was because its primary weapon was its roar rather than its bite. Specifically, its bodily fluids had extreme concentrations of up to 50% botulinum type H toxin, one of the world’s most poisonous chemicals. Because even its breath was lethally toxic, it was the third most ecologically destructive “monster” known.

It was still considered a low-danger target because it had no protection, and was often alone due to nearby dinosaurs being dead, so sniping usually finished the job quickly.

Agent Blackstone was supposed to be sent in with a team. However, that day, due to two of his teammates being sick, one being in the hospital from a car crash, and one serving time in prison for stealing and selling confidential information, he had no choice but to complete his mission alone. It was no problem, however. Within 5 hours of entering the region where the target was last spotted, he saw the target 4.5 km away. He prepared a remotely operated drone and used it to electrocute the target. It rendered the target paralyzed. He then proceeded to switch to tranquilizer rounds, rendering the target unconscious. He then called in the pickup crew. However, the first helicopter that came was part of an illegal research operation that hoped to use the target as a source of biological weaponry. As silencers were instructed not to show mercy to illegal activity, Agent Blackstone used a homing missile to shoot down his attackers. The missile destroyed the target.

Thirty minutes later, the government successfully secured and transported the Jack’s albertosaurus using a giant drone.

In the aftermath of the government’s departure, Agent Blackstone pulled out an unusual device not issued by any government. It resembled a cell phone but was entirely covered in one giant screen. He put his finger on the device and traced a unique symbol.

With three fingers, he swiped away from himself on the screen.

“Commencing scan in…

3…

2…

1…

Scan complete. Mutating factor identified. Capturing mutating factor.”

Agent Blackstone gently set the device on the ground and walked away.

Slowly the poison left by the “monster” evaporated, and a mechanical, crystalline cube began materializing.

Why was he messing around with the scene? Because he was secretly a member of one of “/-\.|\/|.|_|.|)”, a special organization that knew the truth behind the “monsters”:

The monsters were created by a group of mysterious beings known only as “The Scientists”.

The nature of “The Scientists” was unknown. They could be humans, artificial intelligence, or something else entirely. However, what was known was that they

a) had access to live dinosaurs;

b) used unusual technology to modify dinosaurs;

c) released the dinosaurs, “monsters”, and “nightmares” into the world;

d) never show themselves to the world.

While operating outside the watchful eyes of the world, “/-\.|\/|.|_|.|)” had the goal of discovering and quietly solving the “monster” issue to save the earth.

Wildfire Anthony Blackstone was the head of this organization, and gained the position after the previous head Erick T. Josan retired.

Since then, Agent Blackstone has been upholding the meaning of the name “/-\.|\/|.|_|.|)”:

/-\ll

|\/|onster

|_|ltimate

|)efense

Of course, that was not just enough for Agent Blackstone to step up himself. He did so because there were likely confidential documents possessed by the world governments that could offer various hints about the true identities of “The Scientists”.

Agent Blackstone had a plan to gain the required documents, but it was a very risky one. And after the mission he had just completed, he needed only one more thing to complete his plan…

Chapter Two An Exceptional Target

There was one thing that Agent Blackstone needed to gain the documents. This one thing was a cube. Not just any cube, but a time-traveling cube, similar to the one the Jack’s albertosaurus left behind. Each cube could be engineered to utilize its properties to temporarily mutate humans in similar ways that it can mutate dinosaurs to turn them into monsters. However, the cube would need to be supplied with an immense amount of energy to activate it, making it impossible to use carelessly. Cubes require the amount of energy to power the USA for 1 second for every charge, with each charge lasting between 4 minutes to 24 hours, depending on the type of cube. The reason a time-traveling cube was needed was that there were no alternatives, and there happened to be a time-traveling “nightmare” ankylosaurus rampaging in the sea near Australia.

The target was observed thus far to have the following tendencies: typically, there was only one copy at any given time. However, there would sometimes be two copies. The original would disappear after being disturbed. When a new copy appeared, a spherical area of 200 meters in all directions would be overridden by a similar area, with some differences.

Based on this information, it was concluded that the “nightmare” traveled back in time after being disturbed, bringing back nearby terrain along with it.

Knowing this, Agent Blackstone concluded that it would be absolutely imperative to avoid being overridden, and as such, stay clear of areas within 230 meters of any location that the “nightmare” had been. As a result, capturing the cube of the “nightmare” required targeting and neutralizing the nightmare at a distance before it recognized the disturbance and time traveled.

Agent Blackstone had a special device prepared by “/-\.|\/|.|_|.|).”It was an AI-powered cannon that was in the form of a 4”x4” x4” disposable box with a touchscreen and a single hole that would fire a dart. The dart used was rather expensive, costing 4 billion US dollars to produce each shot. The darts would fly at Mach 108, easily hitting the unsuspecting target and temporarily absorbing all electric signals in the “nightmare”, rendering it inactive. Of course, the nightmare would have to then be destroyed entirely while in this state so that it could never time travel to interfere.

The next day, Agent Blackstone traveled by submarine to an area 1500 meters away from the “nightmare”, which was near the maximum distance away from the “nightmare” before its eyes could transfer the sight of the shot to its brain. He searched for a nearby rock and set up a small, reinforced iron raft. Then, the submarine left the vicinity. He then set up a soundproof shield so that the projectile from the box would not rupture his eardrums. He then set the box’s target to the “nightmare” and started the launch countdown. He quickly activated the shield and turned away. In a massive flash of light, the dart was shot, shattering the box and launching the dart.

The nightmare was incapacitated. Agent Blackstone then used a powerful but slow-charging laser canon to blast into the weak point of the target: the eyes. This did no damage to the stunned “nightmare”, however. Agent Blackstone was pushed to find alternatives. Using botulinum toxin would make cube extraction very difficult, so he decided to rule that out. He decided that using an EMP to fry the gargantuan beast would be too damaging and risky, which ruled that idea out too. The next idea he came up with was considered a last resort: using a cube to finish the job. To be more specific, he was going to use a teleportation cube (also from a nightmare) to decapitate the target. He charged and applied the temporary mutation from the cube, and managed to destroy the still-incapacitated target after waiting 18 hours for the materials to be prepared and delivered. Then he used an advanced extraction device, reminiscent of the small device from the Jack’s albertosaurus collection. This one was different in that it was larger and cost many rare elements to create. A cube was successfully extracted and stored for use in the next plan.

Agent Blackstone then rode an invisible “/-\.|\/|.|_|.|)” supersonic helicopter back to the “/-\.|\/|.|_|.|)” base while reflecting on a few facts about the “nightmares”.

First of all, the “nightmares” never naturally died. Since the beginning, they simply had their cubes extracted by “/-\.|\/|.|_|.|).”

Second of all, “nightmares”, unlike other monsters, could only ever produce one cube, and would only truly die when their cubes were extracted.

Third of all, even after a “nightmare” was killed, its body could still regenerate for up to 4 hours after death, leading to perfect corpses becoming a common occurrence.

Laughing at the fact that the rest of the world was completely clueless about these important bits of knowledge, Agent Blackstone was now finally ready to activate his plan.

Chapter Three A Risky Plan

Agent Blackstone’s plan involved using the override function of the time-traveling cube. As the position overridden was relative to either the earth or something on earth (this was unknown to “/-\.|\/|.|_|.|)”), the position was controlled to be in a hidden compartment secretly installed under an undersea rock by an “/-\.|\/|.|_|.|)” agent.

First, Agent Blackstone dived into the undersea compartment, which contained the documents from the future, and copied all the data on them. He then used a full disappearance suit developed by “/-\.|\/|.|_|.|)” that muffled all nearby sounds, prevented heat signatures from entering, and allowed full invisibility. This allowed him to enter the facility.

There were multiple gates that blocked his way. However, as his identification proved him to be a silencer who had completed a recent job without having yet had a review meeting for his job, the security system became unable to process it as “insufficient authority,” and instead registered this as a review meeting. He entered the archives of the facility and replaced the existing documents with the ones that he time-traveled with.

Agent Blackstone then returned to the hidden compartment and left the documents there, and used the charged time traveling cube from the ankylosaurus “nightmare” to send the documents to the past.

Having obtained the documents, Agent Blackstone went back to “/-\.|\/|.|_|.|)” headquarters to review them with the discovery team.

Although the information on the documents did not hint at much on their own, combining them with the data from “/-\.|\/|.|_|.|)” proved to be rewarding. By combining the two sets of data, Agent Blackstone and the discovery team discovered that there was a “Scientist” working somewhere in an area within the Pacific Ocean.

What they discovered about “The Scientists” as a species was even more shocking.

According to the combined evidence, “The Scientists” were a group of extremely intelligent beings that evolved directly from the dinosaurs. Not much detail was known about the appearance of these scientists, but what was known was that they were using the cubes to mutate the dinosaurs for some unknown purpose and that this was only the weakest of their technologies.

If “/-\.|\/|.|_|.|)” carelessly provoked “The Scientists”, an apocalyptic war could easily occur. As a result, “/-\.|\/|.|_|.|)” as a whole needed to be careful with any actions directly involving “The Scientists” until they could learn more.

Agent Blackstone also figured out something, but decided to keep it from the rest of the group:

The Scientists likely had spies within “/-\.|\/|.|_|.|)”, in the form of either mind-reading devices, controlled people, disguised individuals, or any one of a countless number of potential spy technologies, perhaps even in combination.

While merely a possibility, there was no doubt that it was a likely one, and there were no known ways of blocking mind reading technology known to “/-\.|\/|.|_|.|).”

Now recognizing that it would be difficult to use large-scale operations, Agent Blackstone decided that he needed to learn more about “The Scientists”. He was also going to have to do this alone, and there was no further known information about them.

Chapter Four The Study

Agent Blackstone decided that the best course of action to take would be to study why and from where the “monsters” appeared, as no one had ever seen a monster appear. Using data from old “monster” sightings, Agent Blackstone discovered that the sightings always seemed to be near each other, and the areas where “monsters” were identified gradually shifted.

Furthermore, Agent Blackstone discovered that there were 3 such moving spots, and that they were never close to each other. One of the spots also seemed to be capable of producing “nightmares.”

Noticing these trends, Agent Blackstone decided to investigate one of the two spots that did not produce “nightmares.”

Flying a private hovering jet, he arrived at the 40 km wide area where “monsters” had been appearing at the time. He then activated special cameras from the sky to capture any movement in this area.

After a few hours, Agent Blackstone noticed a microraptor variant known as the red-plated microraptor walk into the wild from seemingly nowhere. Reviewing the footage, he saw that it ran headfirst out of what was likely an invisible vehicle, alongside hundreds of ordinary microraptors. Keeping his distance, he activated the invisibility function of his plane and deployed drones to identify any traces of the mysterious vehicle. However, there were no environmental traces. However, Agent Blackstone knew that there was likely something there, as the microraptors were alive even when they had only partially appeared. However, all this led him to consider another possibility:

What if the “monsters” and dinosaurs were being teleported in from somewhere through a spatial portal?

Previously, he had discounted this as a possibility due to the seemingly restricted areas of appearance. However, he reconsidered this due to two main possibilities, among countless others:

There could be a device that travels around that creates the portals.

The proximity in location is specifically planned by “The Scientists” to deceive humanity.

Taking these possibilities into account, he decided to investigate further. He used millions of smaller drones and spread them throughout the area.

Two days later, another “monster” appeared. This time, based on his observations, Agent Blackstone was able to confirm something else.

While there were seemingly no traces of anything where the “monsters” and dinosaurs appeared, there was one clue that hinted at a portal of sorts. Behind where the “monster” and the dinosaurs appeared, there was a small disc-shaped region that seemed to muffle any sound by 3%. Agent Blackstone decided to observe for another week. This was a consistent factor in the 3 observed appearances throughout that week. As this was consistent, Agent Blackstone came up with 4 further theories regarding the nature of these portals:

The portals had some form of camouflaging effect that made the “monsters” and dinosaurs disappear up until a certain distance.

The portals had a camouflaging effect on the “monsters” and dinosaurs for a set amount of time.

The portals had a spatial distortion effect that either shifted the dinosaurs forward or the disc-shaped effect backward.

The “monsters” and dinosaurs were in a different form or state of matter, and either decayed or normalized to a point where they could normally interact with the local environment.

Agent Blackstone then continued to analyze the data that he had and noticed that when the dinosaurs turned back, they were still visible. This made the first possibility impossible for when the “monsters” and dinosaurs re-entered the range, though the occurrence was still possible if the dinosaurs turned back when they were still hidden. However, even this possibility was thrown out of consideration when Agent Blackstone noticed that the appearance of the “monsters” and dinosaurs was too uniform and perfect.

He then went on to the second possibility. This was not possible, as the dinosaurs specifically had an average 0.25% difference in speed to the average speed, but still appeared at the same point, leading to Agent Blackstone judging this as an impossibility.

Now left with 2 possibilities, he decided to examine the third possibility. Based on the data acquired, he deemed this possibility likely, as there was no evidence against it. It would explain most of the data.

He then decided to move on to the last possibility. He deemed this one out of consideration because of an obvious issue: the “monsters” and dinosaurs would fall apart while either decaying to matter or normalizing in their state. As the other form of matter, by effects of the surroundings would have been proven unable to interact with ordinary matter, the “monsters” and dinosaurs would have been released as loose particles instead of complete creatures.

Now left with a single possibility, Agent Blackstone prepared to continue his study on the source of the “monsters” and dinosaurs. Of course, he took into account that he could be completely wrong and that his efforts so far could have been for naught…

(To be continued)

[Writing Editor: Min Ji Choi]