Chương 88: The Ranger's Report

Claire There was so much paperwork and it wasn't even the official kind. I'd finished that hours ago when I filed the weekly Managed Interaction Zone Status Report with enough bureaucratic padding to keep the Bureau happy without actually telling them anything useful. No, tonight was for the private documentation I kept in a locked drawer in a fireproof safe under my bed. As an added precaution, it was written in a personal shorthand that nobody else could read.

This was the real record of what was happening in the Ozark Supernatural Preserve. I poured a glass of wine and opened my laptop to scan the day's news before settling in. The local feed was the usual post-Gaia chaos. Another class-awakening incident had happened at a Walmart in Branson. Some teenager had manifested a fire ability in the cereal aisle and melted a display of Pop-Tarts. The insurance companies were going to love that. There was a piece about the Order of the Sacred Raccoon's latest filing.

They'd submitted formal blueprints for a community center in Harrison. Elder Graystone had given another interview. He was getting better at it. His messaging had shifted from, "We worship a literal raccoon" to "We are a faith community seeking to participate in civic life." Someone was coaching him, probably one of Kathy Whitmore's people. Then I saw something that made me set my wine down. A website, brand new. It had a black background, with a raccoon silhouette with glowing eyes.

The white text said, "The Church of the Sacred Raccoon - Find treasure in what others discard." It wasn't the Moon-Eyed People's site. Their web presence was formal and carefully managed by whatever PR person Graystone had hired. This was something else. This was a human-made website with a five-minute embedded video of a young man in a raccoon t-shirt turning into an actual raccoon in a forest clearing. The video had been uploaded six hours ago. It already had forty thousand views. I clicked through the site.

There was minimal content so far, just the video and a short statement of beliefs that read like someone had taken notes from the Moon-Eyed teenagers' Discord posts and turned them into a manifesto. There was a comments section that was already filling up with a mix of true believers, skeptics, and people asking where they could get shapeshifting lessons. The site's domain registration was public. It was published by Marcus Smith from Little Rock, Arkansas. Curious, I ran his name through the database.

There, I discovered that he'd registered at the Class Registration Office in Little Rock two days ago with the Shaman subclass. A human shaman had visited the Ozarks, received shapeshifting instruction from Loki, and recorded the whole thing on a hidden camera. Damn, Abe's going to be pissed, I thought when I saw that Gaia had apparently said the price Loki charged was a steal. I put my head on the desk.

"Abe," I groaned.

"Every single thing you do has consequences." He didn't even know this guy existed. He probably didn't know the Moon-Eyed teenagers were posting on Discord either. Hell, he probably doesn't even know what Discord is. Abe probably had no clue the posts had reached someone who'd take the information and run with it. The pipeline was Abe to Bambi's church to the Moon-Eyed People to their teenagers to the internet to Marcus Smith to a website with forty thousand views and counting.

I made a note in my private file to monitor the website. With Abe's luck, it would defniitely go viral and get picked up by the mainstream media. Then I poured more wine. After that, I scrolled further. Then a headline caught my eye.

"Ozarks-Region Fertility Clinics Report Unprecedented Demand; Sperm Banks at Critical Low" I frowned and clicked through. The article was from a Springfield NBC affiliate. It was a standard local health reporting with interviews of clinic administrators and concerned doctors. The gist was that recently, fertility clinics across southern Missouri and northern Arkansas had experienced a massive, unexplained surge in demand for donor sperm. Multiple clinics had been cleaned out entirely.

Two had temporarily suspended new patients. A sperm bank in Fayetteville reported that their entire inventory had been acquired in a single week by "a private medical group representing an underserved rural community."

"That's weird," I muttered. On fertility facility adminstrator said, "We've never seen demand like this. The acquiring group paid full price, completed all legal requirements, and provided proper medical documentation. There's nothing wrong exactly. It's just an unprecedented volume from a single source."

"Damn, you know the conspiracy nuts are going to have a field day with this," I muttered. A second article noted a related anomaly. Blood banks in the same region were at an all-time high, both in donations and usage. Donations had surged over the same period, primarily because the businesses were offering more money. I stared at the screen, coming to a realization.

"No," I said aloud. This novel is published on a different platform. Support the original author by finding the official source. My mind was already racing backward to the first meeeting with the supernatual community. Abe had told the fae to use fertility clinics. I guess they listened. But really? Can't they be a little more discrete?

Did they have absolutely zero understanding of how conspicuous it would be when a "private medical group" walked into every fertility clinic in a two-hundred-mile radius and bought out their entire inventory. The blood bank surplus suddenly made sense too. Abe probably suggested something similar to the vampires. From what I understood, vampires were synonymous with old-fashioned and unchanging. Apparently, they'd listened to him also. I made a note about these in my private files. Then I poured even more wine.

Finally, I opened my government email and reread the message that had arrived that morning. FROM: Regional Director Marcus Webb TO: Claire Davis, Acting Zone Commander - Ozark Supernatural Preserve RE: Permanent Appointment Ms. Davis, After review of your quarterly performance metrics and the sustained stability of the Ozark Supernatural Preserve under your management, I am pleased to confirm your permanent appointment as Zone Commander for the Ozark Region, effective immediately.

As you are aware, Special Agent Hendricks, who was originally assigned to assume command of the Ozark Zone, has been permanently reassigned to the Great Lakes Emergency Response Team following the escalation of aquatic incursion events in the Michigan/Wisconsin corridor. (See attached briefing - Level 4 classification, eyes only.) Given the ongoing resource demands across all Tier One Zones nationally, and the exemplary stability of your region relative to comparable zones, Command has determined that your continued leadership represents the optimal allocation of existing personnel.

Your new designation carries expanded authority, including: Direct reporting to Bureau Regional Command (bypassing district intermediary) Authorization for independent tactical decisions up to Level 3 Budget allocation for zone-specific resources and personnel (see attached fiscal guidelines) Classified briefing access (Level 4) Congratulations. Keep doing whatever you're doing. — Webb P. S. — Seriously, the Great Lakes team lost three boats and a helicopter last week.

Whatever's happening in your zone that's keeping things quiet, don't change it. I read it three times. Then I leaned back in my chair and laughed until I cried. They'd promoted me because everywhere else was falling apart. The Michigan zone had lake monsters. The Pacific Northwest zone had something in the old-growth forests that kept relocating entire campsites into other dimensions. Florida was still Florida, but now with zombies and alligators that could apparently cast minor hexes.

And the Ozarks had Abe, who seemed to be some lucky rabbit's foot. There was no other possible explanation. He did have to deal with cannibal dwarves and the freaky Raven Mocker. However, that didn't seem like much when compared to everything else happening in the world. My zone was the most supernaturally active region in the country.

It had a talking raccoon deity, a Norse god teaching shapeshifting, a church of reincarnated animals with stone gargoyle guardians, a dragon in a garage, and a nationally recognized raccoon-worshipping religion. However, it was also the most stable zone in the country. What the actual fuck? It was weirdly surreal. The church provided community for awakened animals. Loki's teaching provided structured training for adventurers. The druid council provided governance. The werewolf pack provided security.

The Order of the Sacred Raccoon provided legal legitimacy. It was messy, unplanned, and held together with duct tape and divine accident, but it worked. Meanwhile, Special Agent Hendricks, who was supposed to replace me, was currently in Wisconsin trying to negotiate with something that lived in Lake Superior and had eaten a Coast Guard vessel. I toasted him silently. Better you than me, Hendricks. Finally, almost reluctantly, I moved on to the third item was the one that kept me up at night.

I pulled out my private file and flipped to the section labeled "Threat Assessment." It was getting thick. The plague rats were the most immediate concern. Abe had briefed me two days ago. Ninety plague rats were heading south toward the Ozarks' high-mana concentration. They were immune to poison, dangerous to burn, and made healing difficult. The fact that my "superiors" hadn't told me pissed me off to no end. I had to wonder, What else aren't they telling me? At least Abe said he has a containment plan.

I believed him because Abe's plans, however insane they sounded, tended to work. But "tended to" wasn't a guarantee, and ninety plague rats could devastate the region if anything went wrong. I requested hazmat resources from the Bureau without explaining why. The requisition form had listed the reason as "precautionary biological containment measures related to potential fauna incursion." It sounded bureaucratic enough to avoid questions and specific enough to get the equipment.

Beyond the rats, the Wild People were mostly eliminated, but "mostly" wasn't "entirely." A few had fled and hadn't been found. Their underground tunnels hadn't been fully mapped. I added a note requesting satellite imagery of known Wild People sites so that I could check for new excavation patterns. Then there was the dragon situation. I'd included it in my official reports as a "juvenile draconic entity, non-hostile, contained." What I hadn't included was what Ignis had told Luke about his parents.

They were on the other side of Gaia's barrier, and according to Ignis, they'd eventually find a way through. When that happened, "non-hostile juvenile" would become "leverage in an inter-dimensional custody dispute with creatures that killed gods." Yep, no baby drama here. Well, except for that between Pierre and Shelly. God, what did Abe do that pissed off Shelly so much. Sighing, I closed the file and stared at the ceiling. The apartment was quiet. It was always quiet.

I'd moved to a rental cabin six months ago, and I hadn't done much to make it feel like home. There were boxes I still hadn't unpacked. The walls were bare. The fridge had wine and a block of cheese that was probably past its date. I thought about Luke for a moment. He was a good man, but he was with someone. That was the end of that thought. I wasn't the kind of person who went after taken men, no matter how much I wished the timing had been different.

Maybe someday I'd meet someone who could handle the fact that my job involved filing reports about raccoon gods and secretly coordinating with supernatural communities. But probably not, especially not with my personality and trust issues. I washed my wine glass, double-checked my locks, and went to bed. Tomorrow I'd call Abe. I needed to give him an update. I smiled before falling asleep.

I couldn't wait to see the expression on his face when he realized just how much he had lost on Loki undercharging for his teaching.