Escort Missions
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Ah, the dreaded escort mission. Not very fun in video games, and not terribly exciting in real life either. Especially as a young kid. One thing that makes it all worth it though is not only do you get to meet a lot of really cool people, but it involves time travel and you see things nobody else gets to see.
Not trying to toot my own horn or anything, but even as a kid I was highly intelligent and had a lot of skill. I had extensive VR training and had already done a lot of investigative work by that point. I could outshoot and outsmart a lot of people, and already outranked many other adult MIB at that time.
People were afraid of me. Partly because of my skillset, but mostly because if I was already that skilled at such a young age they could only imagine what I would be like as an adult. They didn't want to be on my bad side and have me pissed off at them later in life. No telling what I would do.
One of the things I used to do a lot was escort VIPs. I may have just been a kid, but the reputation I had already garnered at the time had enhanced my ability to provide protection. Sure, a child alone might not be very threatening, but if you knew what he had been up to you didn't want to mess with him or the person he was with. Plus, if someone were to go after the VIP, one of the last things they were expecting was a shank to the liver from a little kid.
I had training in all the vulnerabilities of human anatomy. Some of the training involves learning how to take down much larger and stronger opponents than you. With and without equipment. You also learn to scan for and identify vulnerabilities not yet known. It's intense, and specifically for the reason that you might encounter unknown threats from off world or other dimensions. Taking down some fragile primate hitman wouldn't even be a challenge.
It was easy work. Rarely did anything actually happen. I just had to be in an area, and word would get around that I was there and nobody would want to make a move. They would be too afraid to. It was kind of hard for me to wrap my head around this at the time because for me it was no big deal. I didn't understand why people would be scared of me, because for me, all that training and stuff was just "normal". I thought everyone had been doing it from a young age.
Some of the time I was using Thermoptic Camouflage. It renders you invisible to the naked eye and infrared. The funny thing is, you have this little kid that knows how to kill people, but still wants to hold your hand when walking around. We had to sort of rehearse how to walk, because the VIP couldn't walk around with one arm not moving. It would give away my position.
They had to keep one hand open like it's not holding anything while moving naturally. For me, trying to hold their hand and walk like this actually tired out my arm. I had to try and follow the natural movement. I pretty much gave up on that idea and just followed them around normally.
Part of the reason for concealment was that people would know I was there, but they wouldn't know where I was EXACTLY. I could be anywhere. They wouldn't know what I looked like or what kind of equipment I had. Makes it difficult for nefarious individuals to come up with a plan of attack. It has a nice psychological effect. Makes them paranoid and provides a tactical advantage. I could be standing right behind them ready to lay the smack down as soon as they drew their weapon for all they know.
Many of the VIPs I had been escorting were actually extremely dangerous individuals themselves. Fully grown adults with extensive combat training and access to weapons. Whenever they would come to collect me for one of the missions I would usually ask "What do you need ME for?", followed by something like "You're the strongest warrior I know.", or "You have a sword!", or "You have implants!". I couldn't understand why all these extraordinarily capable soldiers would need MY help.
From that point they would usually have to try and convince me to come with them by luring me in some way. You can't really just order a kid around in a militaristic fashion, it doesn't work. You might be able to get them to do a couple little things here and there, but that's about it. Besides, I already outranked them anyway. However, if you do things in just the right way, it's surprisingly easy.
Kids hold very different values on things than adults do. If you want an adult to do some boring guard duty, you'd pretty much have to pay them money. If you want them to do a good job and they also have a lot of training, then you have to pay them well. That can get expensive. For a kid though, the "currency" they tend to regard a lot of value towards is sweets.
One of the things that seemed to work was to say I could eat as much cake as I like afterward. Any kind I wanted, and they would get it. It was kind of funny though, because when you're a kid you think you could devour a whole cake by yourself, but when you actually get one in front of you the sickly sweetness of it makes it so you've had enough after only a couple of pieces. They didn't mind though. They just got some elite bodyguard protection for the price of a grocery store cake, and they could just save the rest for later.
As you get older though, your values change. All-you-can-eat cake doesn't work anymore, no matter how many chocolate chips it has. From that point, they had to offer me something else to eat. Women would step up and volunteer to offer me sexual favors. EXTREMELY attractive women. They would line up and say I could pick any one I wanted.
They were all going by codenames. Like "Cherry Pie", "Caramel", "Sugar", "Cream", "Chocolate", that kind of thing. I don't recall all of the names at the moment, but they were mostly, if not all, food related. What I do remember though is that I used to pick "Cherry Pie" a lot because she had big boobs and was dressed the least modestly out of the rest.
They would all be standing in a line and I would walk past looking at them and they would all be smiling. Some of them almost unnervingly. Like the kind of smile you would see just before you're about to get devoured. Once I picked one, the rest of them would go "Aww!" sounding all disappointed because they didn't get chosen. It was adorable. They're all exceptionally nice ladies, not just pretty on the outside.
It's a lot like dog training. In order to get a dog to do what you want, you have to have some kind of "currency" to offer them. It could be head pats, play time, or treats. It works on people too. The better the treat, the more eager they are and the better job they'll do.
The other thing is something like when you have a tiger in a circus performing tricks. How do you keep a dangerous wild animal that could kill you in one swipe from hurting you? By keeping it fed.
