Exposition

Ω▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬Ω

Introduction...

We are taught as children that the noises of the night and images in our eyes are only figments. We are told that our overactive imaginations are just playing tricks on us. That these figments and tricks are nothing to be scared of. Our parents—our guardians, our protectors—try to teach us at those young, fragile ages not to let our imagination fool us and fuel our primal fears. What we don't know...


...is that we should be scared. Those noises, those images are evils of the darkest nature. Natures even more perverse and demented than our own disease of humanity. Our guardians cannot truly protect us from the dangers that they believe are just figments of the imagination—how can you protect anything if you're too blind and ignorant to see the danger yourself?


The world does not go unprotected from these demented dangers of the shadows; unspoken guardians patrol the streets and hunt the predators—though some blur the line between the two—in attempts to preserve the world's ignorant state of bliss. Those sometimes monstrous guardians work for the PTNF, formally known as the Paranormal Threat Detection Agency.

The origins of the PTNF are unknown; some sources trace it back to the Illuminati while others goes as far as the Druids of the Iron Age and even Pagans before them. Irrelevant of its past, the PTNF works to prevent the metaphysical and paranormal from interfering in normal, every-day life. The PTNF works off-the-books; documented by no government, yet receiving funds from them all. Whether it is known or not, the organisation can easily claim to have touched the lives of almost every one every where on the Earth in some—even if minute—way.

...blood pooling on streets.

Tears streaming down cheeks...

...Darkness consuming everything...

In the beginning, the only teams that existed within the PTNF were made up of impromptu agents strung together for a brief, yet paramount mission. This remained protocol for centuries until the incredible successes of the first permanent PTNF team. Despite an intense level of animosity among teammates, this team – a team that never even acquired a name – managed to achieve greatness and organisation-wide fame that to this day have yet to be matched. A level of fame so high that they were trusted with a mission to kill a threat to not just our world, but all worlds connected by the Nexus. A mission that would be the downfall of this team, and the decline of the PTNF...

The team consisted of six specialized individuals whom before were legends among their own peers, and together created a force that policed the entire paranormal world. These six were known separately as the Immortal Gunslinger, the Master Medium, the Scarlet Mantle, the Half-Blood Demon, the Alien Essence, the Timeless Flower and the Fallen Angel. But, separately, each member was an entirely different entity. Some of whom didn't mix so well. Most of this friction spawned from Inkubus and West, colloquially the Demon and Gunslinger, because of their individual prides and lack of trust in each other. Regardless of the reason, the friction that spawned would soon become the bane of the team, the PTNF and possibly the world.

A mere fourteen months since the founding of the group of six, and their downfall ensued. A creature of unknown origins named Recnac posed a threat to humanity, and the group was set to kill it. Only later on this mission would they learn that it was created in a laboratory, using the symbiotic cell structure of the Scarlet Mantle, better known as Red. Although this creature had qualities from ffrom most of the group, its true form closely resembled that of Red's Wolf, and this would become the cause of hysteria that would lead to the breakdown of the team which spurred the the coming of a demon that not even Hell was ready for...

Red was the heart of the group. Even West and Inkubus would drop their disputes if she was in danger. When she became paralyzed in fear and subsequently wounded by Recnac in his true form, it sent a quake of rage through the group. However, despite their combined, enraged efforts, they could not kill Recnac, only wound him severely before letting him escape. It was this brief moment of guilt and rage that West and Inkubus blamed each other. Without anything to stop them, it seemed as if one would finally kill the other. Possibly to an unfortunate extent, this was not the case. In his intense rage, Inkubus let loose a darkness that some consider a worse plague than Recnac himself.

Inkubus' father was a Knight of Mammon, the highest rank a demon can achieve under a Prince of Hell. Releasing the relatively awesome power of the Knight, Inkubus not only tore through West, but the other three members of the team as well. It seemed as if things were hopeless against Revnak until PTNF reinforcements arrived. Even against the odds, Revnak escaped and caused numerous casualties. This day has become known as the Advent of Darkness, for it was the darkest day in the recorded history of the PTNF, and set forth years of terror and instability.




After the Advent of Darkness, the Agency was forced to take drastic measures to make up for their losses. New protocol for Agents and better distribution of funding were the fields that went under the most revamping. Agents are now considered assets to the organization and are often even required to take a series of classes on basic team functions and mission protocol, whereas before they were toss-away soldiers and rarely required to even be briefed. Agents now also have a type of classification system that determines their duties as an agent. New forms of management have also been implemented, and overall the organization runs much smoother, at the cost of freedom to the Agents.

Out of the classes an Agent can be, Class 3 is the lowest. Comprised of inexperienced, weaker Agents, agents of this class are normally assigned to small areas. In the United States, every state county is assigned a single Agent. This is how the Agency minimizes mission casualties as well as best uses their human (or inhuman, depending on the case) resources.

Second class Agents are generally state overseers, sometimes academy teachers and if their abilities are suitable they may even be put on a ranked team. These Agents are easily the "middle management" of the Agency and are normally well-known as noncombatants, however that is not always the case.

The first class is reserved for the most powerful Agents, and almost always are on Ranked Teams. Due to the efficiency of teams, they were kept around despite their horrid past. West was made Executive Secretary of the Agency, the second highest rank within it. He oversees the Ranked Teams, and is leader of the current Rank 1 Team. The teams are ranked by their "potential capabilities", and thus the power of a team is considered in direct relation to their rank. It should be mentioned that West has his status by merit, not experience.