"Listen, I just explained some things and they suddenly didn't care anymore. Other than that, I don't know what to tell you about the stigma and why it doesn't effect your teams." Jay talking to Bo-Kan about his support teams.

Kurt found himself in a position he never thought he would be in, at least not again. He was currently standing on a catwalk fifteen feet above a series of halls, walls and rooms. Below him was his current group of charges, namely the Tacoma team.

For the past three days, Kurt had been leading the teams on training for this operation. His first half a day was a waste since he assumed a level of competency that none of them had. Even his team, with Kristi and Val already doing some room clearing, was not what he would call great.

"They are very aggressive." Bo-Kan said as he leaned on the railing next to Kurt. His manner of speaking was interesting, the cadence of his words being slower with strange inflections adding more meaning to certain words.

"Funny how that works isn't it, Kan?" He commented dryly in return. He just kept on making notes on his pad of paper as the team of three ran through the shoot house yelling 'Bang-Bang' as they engaged targets.

The big orc turned his head and squinted at him. "Ironic would be the appropriate term."

Kurt rolled his eyes. "You are correct, but I find the irony to be humorous at times."

"Ah, I see." Kan nodded. "I think this is an interesting exercise and am curious to see what you do next." The orc was not taking notes, instead observing intently as each of the three teams did dry runs through the shoot house.

After Piper and her team finished, everyone reconvened at the staging area of the training facility they were in. It was mostly an open space with many long, high tables in it, with a few simple rooms of to one side for training materials.

"Ok, so we have all run through the shoot house. I have a base line for all of us to work from and we can build up from there." Kurt said as the teams, their handlers and the support team leaders gathered round.

One of Kan's people, a gnoll that liked shotguns, raised his hand. "Will the support teams be entering the buildings? I was under the impression we would be acting as a reserve force and securing the exterior."

"Good question." Kurt said, acknowledging the concern. "While that was the plan, we don't know if that will be how things play out. This info will also be good for you to have in the future to pass to your teams." That got some grumbling of agreement and thoughtful looks.

"Besides my team, who has conducted urban operations or room clearing?" Kurt asked, seeing two hands go up. "Great, be sure to share your experiences with the others."

Kurt signaled Kevin to turn on the projector. "Ok, listen up, I want to make this super quick since power point sucks and we all want to do shit hands on and get to the shooting part." That got a few little laughs, and he began to take the assembled teams through the basics of urban warfare.

They had gotten recent satellite imagery and some scrying feedback to confirm what buildings were which on the estate. That information was crucial to how Kurt was structuring the teams and planning the assault. He was also planning the operation since Jay couldn't be bothered and didn't care much how it was done as long as he got results.

He took them through a few demonstrations on squad responsibilities, and sectors of fire. His goal was to make sure they understood that they needed to be flexible and that not every situation was clear cut, with real life scenarios being far different than the training area.

Then he wheeled in a door prop, which was just a two by four frame of a door and did some play-by-play entry procedures. That took some time since the others with room clearing experience had only ever used the low ready position and never tried high gun like he used in the ranger battalion.

After the door prop, he took them to one of the simple, one room mockups and they all went through the entry drill before moving to the actual shoot house. Once there, they ran sever iterations of moving through halls and entering rooms.

One big departure he was moving away from was the yelling. A lot of teams yelled things and rushed into rooms and houses, relying on speed and violence of action to carry the day.

Kurt was showing them a new strategy, being quiet and slow while having the element of surprise. None of the others had considered that if nobody knew of your presence, then you didn't need to be fast. It took a few attempts before the small teams were able to actually begin to work through the drills and concepts he was teaching.

"How many times are we going to run this?" Val asked in a whining tone. She was beginning to get impatient after their tenth run that morning.

"Oh, five or so more times before we call it for lunch." Kurt answered and got a groan in response. The groan was not just from Val but also from the other teams in the hall who overheard him.

"Then we can do some live fire stuff to round out the afternoon." He followed up, getting a little cheer from the response teams and the Tacoma team.

Kristi leaned in. "That means we get to show off right?"

"Yeah, but first we need to get this out of the way." Kurt said and motioned for Kevin to come over. "Hey, Kevin, can you summon Jay for me?"

"I am not the kind of demon that needs summoning." Came the voice of their boss. They all turned to the desk in the corner where the demon in question was sitting at a laptop like he had been there all along. For all they knew, he had.

"Great, I would like you to do your little compulsion thing on these guys." Kurt just decided to skip over the whole 'I was here the whole time' thing he was playing at.

Jay just shrugged and stood up. "You know it actually takes a lot of energy and experience to do this, right?"

Kurt nodded and summoned a few boxes from his storage ring. "Yeah, that's why I asked you."

"Haha, good point." Jay said before whistling loudly and waving the teams over.

"The support teams too, please." Kurt called and that got the large mass of people moving.

Once they had all gathered on the benches, Kurt looked at Jay, and he gave the same 'none of this leaves this room' talk that he had given in the boardroom. The compulsion that a demon could impart was strange, not exactly a firm order but more of a suggestion that made the person avoid doing something. The only way it worked is if there was a firm power imbalance that both parties understood. In this case, Jay was their boss and significantly more powerful personally.

Kurt then opened one of the boxes and pulled out a bracelet. This bracelet was made from three bands, two copper and one silver, that had been braided flat into one unit with a small bit of mystery crystal in the center.

He had spent the last few nights knocking them out with the help of his new enchantment setup. They were rather simple enchantments, and the engravings didn't take too long since he didn't do any inlay, only having to affix the crystal with some solder to hold its mounting.

They had decided that these items would be 'unit equipment' that Jay's special project group would own and issue as they saw fit. The other option was to charge these people for the items, and he didn't want to do that. He had seen firsthand how the fear of missing out on something would drive people to make bad decisions with their finances.

"Listen up folks." Kurt said and got the chatter to die down. "We are going to issue each of you a couple enchanted items. These are Order issued equipment. They are all the same, nothing bespoke and nothing super fancy. I have exactly enough for all fifty of you."

A rather sullen-looking hob goblin raised her hand and Kurt pointed at her. "What does the enchantment do?" That got her an elbow to the ribs and a hissed 'just accept the damn thing'.

"These will increase your speed, reflexes and mental acuity. All three parts of this work together to make you literally think and move faster. The reason I am handing these out now is because you need to train with them. Before you ask, you will probably see a ten to fifteen percent increase in those attributes."

Kurt waived his fellow field agents up to him so he could hand them the boxes to pass them out. "Don't worry, I have different ones for us so just smile and nod, I will pass ours out later." He said in a low voice and got firm nods in return.

The Tacoma team, Rupert and Val went to pass them out while he continued. "Consider this your one and only official brief. Do not put them on until I explain them to you and how they work." That stopped a few of them in their tracks as they were about to slide them over their wrists.

"These run on mana. Because you might not have the ability to access or manipulate mana, I enchanted them to be self-powered by siphoning from the environment. They will also borrow some from you if you have some to spare." He gave them a hard look. "This means they are limited in their operational time."

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Another hand, this time from the gnoll he talked to earlier. "How long is the run time?"

"At a base line, it will not use any power. Once it senses you exerting yourself, it will activate. There is an auto on-off that has a throttle effect. Once it activates, it will slowly wind up over the course of several seconds, giving peak performance for two hours."

"And what happens after the two hours?" The gnoll followed up, a little wonder in his voice.

"It will begin to step down. It will reduce in effectiveness by approximately ten percent every fifteen minutes until it reaches half power. At that point it will last another hour before fading completely." Kurt saw both looks of amazement and consideration on their faces.

Kevin raised his hand from where he took notes. "Will they interfere with other enchanted items?" That question made a few heads pop up with concerned expressions.

"It shouldn't unless you have an enchanted item that already affects the mind in an active manner. If that is the case, come talk to me and we can confirm."

"Recharge time?" One of the several humans in the group called while standing.

"Depends on the mana density around you." Kurt said. "Think of it like a phone, if you hook it up to a fast charge cable it's way faster than the wireless kind. It can also be used before fully recharged if you manage to drain it all the way." He thought about it for a moment before finishing his answer. "I think if we take the current mana levels at the Order into account, it would be eight hours? So, on Earth it would be ten to twelve.

"Can I manually charge it?" The same human asked.

"Sure, just channel mana into it. If you have a magical battery, you carry around with you, that works too." He looked around to make sure there weren't any more questions. "Right, the next one."

Instead of passing out more items, he figured this would be better served with practical example. "I need a volunteer." He said while looking at the crowd. Naturally, everyone looked around before the hob goblin from earlier was literally thrown forward, out of the crowd to land in front of him.

"She volunteers!" Came a voice. Kurt recognized the speaker as one of the goblins' squad mates and then pointed to the lizard kin who had spoken.

"Great, you can help."

"Shit." The man covered in orange scales sighed under his breath. He got up and trudged forward to stand next to his very unhappy squadmate.

Kurt looked them both up and down before turning to the short greenish lady. "Ever use a wand before?"

"Only my special one when I am alone." She answered in a sarcastic tone that got a laugh from the gathered teams. Kurt rolled his eyes but laughed along.

"Right, well, take this one." Kurt reached into his other box and pulled out a four-inch-long metal tube with a double ended clamp around it. He handed her the device while he explained. "This is a wand of mild paralysis. It is activated by the button on the back." He pointed to the little clicky tail cap.

"It looks like a flashlight." She said while inspecting it, though wisely not pointing it at her face.

"That would be the point." Kurt agreed. "These are made to attach to your rifle to make them easier to aim. It is point and shoot but it is still easy to miss. What are your names again?" He asked both his 'volunteers'.

"I am Hakas. She is Bytice." The scale kin said.

Kurt nodded. "Great. Hakas, can you step back by like fifty feet?" He turned and began walking away until he figured it was far enough. "Bytice, go ahead and try to fire that wand at him."

The hob goblin did her best and aimed the wand at her companion, who now looked slightly distressed, while the class watched. She tapped the button and there was a clicking noise, not unlike a stun gun. Hakas braced himself, wincing in anticipation to only frown when nothing happened.

Turning to the class, Kurt began to give the lecture while drawing a simple diagram on the whiteboard. "These have a range and a spread. They max out at around forty feet for any noticeable effect." He waved for Hakas to step closer then stopped him at that range. "Try again."

When Bytice fired the wand again, her counterpart flinched a little. "Oh, that's weird." Hakas said. "It's like when you have an illness, and your body feels numb."

"Exactly right. Can you come closer now and sit down." Kurt pulled out a chair for the man. "Great, hit him again." He said and Bytice fired again from only ten feet away.

Instantly all the little sympathetic movements that people make stopped and Hakas went completely still. Even his eyes couldn't move, staying in their half-lidded state. The only part of him that moved was a gentle rise and fall of his chest as he continued breathing.

Kurt let the demonstration go for a few seconds so everyone could see what it looked like. Then he cast the counter spell that he had worked up. He had cast it before so his nanobot colony made it instant, which was nice since it took a long time to draw the complex rune circle.

"Go ahead and describe what you felt." He said to the now moving scale kin.

"Numb. Like I was half asleep. I could hear everything around me but couldn't bring my body to move. It's honestly a surreal experience."

Kurt picked up another wand from his box and turned it over, so the tail cap was up and the business end was pointing at the not-so-silently laughing goblin next to him. Tic-tic-tic-tic. Her eyes froze in a half-widened state, and he reached out to keep her from falling over.

"As you can see, I can manipulate a person that has been paralyzed." He said, moving her arms freely and they stayed where he left them. "This is going to be helpful for actually securing anyone you shoot with one." He then gently lowered her to the ground and placed her hands behind her back. "Be warned, the effect only lasts an hour, less if the person or creature has a lot of mental resistance."

After seeing that everyone grasped the concept, he gave them their next instructions, after freeing the hob goblin. "Alright, go back to your training and experiment with the bracelets. They will automatically resize and come on or off as you will them. We will practice with the wands later on when we attach them to your weapons. "

With that, the gathering broke up, except for one dwarf who stayed behind to talk. Apparently, he had an enchanted item that helped to sharpen his senses and wanted to know if that would cause problems, but Kurt assured him that it shouldn't unless he stubbed his toe while running or something. The dwarf man moved off with a laugh about stubbed toes while the other agents moved in.

"So, what did you have for us?" Sam asked in a flirty tone while trying to look like he wasn't interested. Piper nudged him and told him to behave which only made things worse as the vampire shape shifted into a female form and acted even lewder.

"Today? Nothing." Kurt said, quickly adding on after seeing the expressions on their faces. "I am working on ours since they will have a few more features that I have to put in. They should be done in the next few days."

"But shouldn't we have them now to train with?" Rupert asked. "I wouldn't want to wear something untested on a mission."

Kurt sighed heavily. "Yeah, you are right, but I didn't want to just make more of those when it made sense for us to have something better. I know we all have some aces in our sleeves when it comes to personal power, but I think there is more room to improve."

"How about we just schedule some more training time?" Piper offered. "We can all make it work to get an extra day of training this weekend."

There was a murmur of consent that went around the agents. They all agreed to get Kevin to reserve this range again before heading back to the training area and doing a few more runs before they broke out the live ammo.

*****

Kurt was in his workshop, staring at the five strips of gold and half dozen small crystals that he had just finished shaping. He had worked out the enchantments he wanted to use while on the range that day and seeing how the other support teams were getting along with the new hardware.

He saw some room for improvement but also didn't want to spend the time on those teams when he had already given them a huge leg up. They had all been much faster in their training. To the point that they almost seemed twitchy because of how quickly they reacted.

He decided to stick with those enchants but also added in two more physical ones. The first was supposed to increase strength to a certain degree based on the materials and the person wearing the item. The second was increasing the durability of the bones and soft tissues. This second one was crucial if they didn't want to get hurt from the strength enhancement.

With a little calming breath and by lighting his torch, he began to assemble the parts, weaving the gold strips into a wide band. He was careful to evenly temper the metal so that it wouldn't crack or deform as it bent, and he flattened it. Thankfully the inlayed mystery metal was very pliable in the same way the gold was.

After fifteen minutes, he had finished weaving the strips and placing the fixtures for the crystals he had picked out. After some well-placed high-heat solder, he was able to mount the little gems and run everything over a buffing wheel to remove the little discoloration from the torch. He then picked up the magnifying glass and began to inspect it one final time to make sure there weren't any cracks or splits. Once he confirmed it, he moved over to his new enchanting base plate.

Kurt put the bracelet on the plate and plugged in his two sets of batteries. He had made his new plate a little more robust, using the same hardened steel that he made his containment box from. When making it, he decided to add in ways to connect his batteries and engraved rune lines to better channel the mana through them.

After setting down the base enchantment circle and then the active one, he began to push energy into the bracelet, causing it to glow a bright green color. He thought that was odd but didn't question it since mana did strange things at times.

After the light faded, he inspected his newest creation. His enchanters lens showed him that he would have a nearly twenty five percent increase in strength while the speed and reflexes would be up nearly thirty. The best part was, that because he used so much more of the mystery crystal and its metal derivative, the enchant would last nearly six hours at full power. It also seemed to be taking a charge rather quickly, but he didn't have a lot of time to test how quickly.

"Another success?" Kristi asked from where she was sorting her equipment back into lockers.

Kurt had just finished recording his findings in his grimoire when she came up to look over his shoulder. "Yeah, I think this will be one of the most useful things I have made, after the storage rings of course."

She took the bracelet and inspected it before handing it back. "It only took you an hour to make, before enchanting. So, I would say it's a great success." She gave him a kiss on the cheek. "I'm heading up. Don't stay up too late tonight. You have been burning the midnight oil far too much."

"Alright, I promise." Kurt said, returning her kiss. "I love you." He said. The look on her face every time he said it was simply amazing to him. It always seemed that she was on the verge of a significant emotional event every time, but he knew that she needed to hear the words more often than not.

"Love you too." She said and gave him one more kiss on the cheek.

Kurt watched her leave, well, he watched her butt sway back and forth as she walked out of the vault. He then returned to his work and pulled out the remaining strips of gold he had made. It was his entire take from his latest trade with Renee but he thought it was worth it to make sure none of them came back in a bag.

After another hour and a half, Kurt called it quits for the night. He had carved all the enchantments and decided to stop before inlaying. So, he sorted them into neat piles and was just leaving the vault, locking the door just as Val came down the stairs.

"Oh Kuurrrrt!" She said and he turned to see her at the bottom of the steps, wearing nothing but a bathrobe. "I think someo-oh… sorry, I thought I was going to have to lure you out of there." She had stopped immediately upon seeing him.

Kurt looked at her frowning face and made a logical leap. "Did you want to drag me back upstairs by my ear, talking about how I need to take better care of myself?"

"Kinda." She admitted. "Honestly I was hoping to have to entice you with my body to join us in the shower but now I feel like sailboat without a breeze."

"How's that?"

"All ready to go but no way to get there." She said.

"Hmm… want to play some grab ass and I chase you up the stairs while seeing how much of a handful I can manage to get ahold of?" He offered with his now distinctly lupine smirk.

Val didn't say a word as she turned and ran for the stairs, Kurt chasing after her. His fingertips only ever making the faintest of contact with her robe clad bottom as he chased her into the bathroom. He made it through the door only to see Kristi lounging in the steamed-up shower, opening the familiar red cooler.

He turned to Val with a raised eyebrow, and she smiled. "Hey, we need some quality time and pampering too, ya know."

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