It was possible, but the ways were kept secret, for obvious reasons. Sadly, to some, if they couldn’t get what they wanted willingly, they tried to force it. It was a death or life sentence for such things now. Not that it stopped people.
That being said, to protect the humans that could so easily be manipulated, sentences against Cryptids were just as harsh. Not to mention, living forever left a long time to fuck up, so their sentences tended to be longer than humans were. Which was slightly fucked up...but ehh, he kind of understood the discrepancies.
The splitting of government worldwide had led to the destruction or restructuring of many secretive government agencies. For example, in the USA, the FBI and CIA were not what they used to be. The only secrets they had left were by how much their power had actually been stripped.
The splitting led to the rise of the Cryptid Enforcement Bureau, run independently with its own rules. While overseen by the World Government Council, which consisted of two representatives from each country, the final decisions were in the hands of the story makers, or rather a species called the Fates. Was species the right word, when really it was all one family?
The head of the Bureau, Etholus Grimm, the oldest of their kind, was at the very top of everything—the one in charge.
The Cryptid Bureau had seven main branches, one on each continent on Earth, and a similar amount on Mars, Venus, and Mercury. The amount on the Moon of Earth, Titan, Ganymede, Callisto, and the numerous other moons varied.
It was a toss up to which country ran which city on the other planets and moons. For the most part, the CEB was in charge of the judicial systems in space, with decisions more heavily leaning towards what the collective of the World Governing Council decided on in terms of policies. Which…really just meant that changing shit in space took a hundred times longer than it did on Earth.
The cities would vote, then the governments would vote, and then the Council would do a vote, and then the head of the Bureau would vote, and yeah, around and around it would go until everyone agreed.
Anyway, each CEB main branch was run by a Grimm family member. There were also smaller branches scattered around each country and planet—also run by the Grimm family. Severo often wondered how long it would take for them to run out of people to manage these offices, as Earthlings continued to explore space.
Though, personally, Severo was more interested in knowing how long it would be until they finally met extraterrestrials. Surely they existed. It was highly arrogant to think that Earth was the only planet in the galaxy and beyond that held intelligent life!
Aliens aside, Severo currently worked at the main branch in North America, located smack dab in the middle of the USA—in Rain Burrow, Kansas, to be exact. While the Heads of the big and little branches were Fates, the agents—the workers—were all some sort of Cryptid variety. No one purely human worked for them, besides in an external way, nor would they ever. It would defeat the point of the Bureau’s creation.
To oversimplify what the Bureau did, the organization was created to handle three broad tasks. The first task was to capture and punish individual Cryptids who had broken the law, if and when normal law enforcement found themselves too incapable of handling them. Though the punishment was often a joint decision between their organization, the local authorities, and the court systems in the location where the crime took place. There was more to the first, all-important task, dealing with corruption and whatnot, but that was not Severo’s department. His role was capturing criminals, not prosecuting them.
The second task was also not Severo’s area, but still very necessary. They were to protect Cryptids by investigating any reports of unfair treatment. He'd heard that the departments in that part of the agency had even more paperwork than his did—he shuddered at the idea.
And the third and final task, also completely unrelated to his job, was more about what services the Bureau could provide. Like help with housing, job finding, health care initiatives, adoption services, and much, much more. No matter what it was, if a Cryptid was in need of something—as long as it was legal—the CEB likely had a service or program available for them to use.
Though he supposed it was slightly related to his job, as he’d been able to gain the training he needed to become an agent through one of the Bureau services. Fun times…
To be honest, Severo did actually enjoy his work, much more than when he was human bounty hunting. Cryptid criminals put up a good fight, most of the time, and it paid a hell of a lot better… BUT, right now, he wanted a nap, so he was going to disregard that. He had only just sat his ass down in his chair mere moments ago.
“Are you even paying attention?”
Severo blinked. “What?”
Cyrus’ jaw clenched, and he heard the faint sound of teeth grinding before the man growled, “Read the damn papers. Or by the threads, listen, read, or do whatever to it on your tablet. It’s already been uploaded. Then I want your ass to drive out and talk to the locals before making your way to the city of Oden on Mars! Also, get a copy of the full file there. Half of it is fucking missing, including the autopsy!” With that his boss stomped away.
Severo spun in his chair to watch as he yelled out, “You should really stop grinding your teeth so much! Don’t want to chip a fang!”
His boss spun around and gave him one of those looks that said,if I could kill you and get away with it, I would. Severo laughed and spun his desk chair back around. Cyrus would never actually kill him, the man secretly ‘loved’ him.
“You really ought to stop pushing him. He may really snap something one day. But it will most likely be your neck, not his teeth,” Ansell Bellion drawled as he passed by his desk with a cup of coffee in hand.
How the Minotaur stood the taste, he didn’t know. He personally thought Cyrus purposely made the coffee bad so he didn’t have to replace it often.
“Nah. Boss loves me too much. He knows he’d regret it in the end!”
The fellow agent snorted, shaking his head before walking out of the room, no doubt headed to his personal office. Severo had worked there for the last hundred and fifty years. Long enough to have one of his own, and he had been asked. It wasn’t as if there wasn’t room for him to have one in their twenty story building, but what was the point? Severo was never there long. All his missions usually took him out of state, country, or planet.
He eyed the room. The top floor of the building was massive, and busy with people and things. Black walls with silver floors. There were tons of curving silver desks with purple edges, green desk chairs, many, many floating clear screens, and the odd sections of wall that randomly divided them. It was loud, with people running around and talking… So having someplace of his own to nap without noise would be nice. But having his desk right outside of Cyrus’ office meant he had less of a walk when he had to turn his paperwork in.
Sighing, he forwent the paper packet that was usually made just for filing, and picked up his tablet. For once it wasn’t buried. Which was good, because the damn thing was clear, and hard to see under things.
He wondered what it would be this time… The woman he just caught had been a serial killer, and a pain in the ass.
Field agents like himself each had specialties, on crime that was. Petty crimes, financial crimes, and all that, they were not his stick. Nope, Severo dealt with violent crimes exclusively, mostly murder. However, he wasn’t the only one who did… So either he was just unlucky enough to have arrived right when everyone else was out and busy…or Cyrus had plotted away in an effort to torture him… Both were possible.
Tapping the device, the thing lit up, a screen now showing on what was once see-through. The login box popped up and created a hologram that floated above the tablet.
