Black Tusk Comms: Specialists

**Dancer:** It doesn't feel right.

**Scope:** What doesn't? You see something?

**Dancer:** No, this entire operation. It's just been one clusterfuck after another. How long did we spend preparing for the invasion? All the meticulous planning, the sabotage, the psych-ops. We took the entire D.C. metro area in one night! And we lost it all, along with about two-thirds of our best operatives and equipment in like two weeks. Months and months of planning, and it fell apart in a couple weeks.

**Harley:** What's your point?

**Dancer:** It doesn't make any goddamn sense. How did we let the Division steamroll us? I mean, the BTSU were the most highly trained, elite units we could bring to bear. We lost Brenner, Sumner, Wyvern, Galveston. All taken out by a handful of agents in such a short time.

**Wolf:** Well, if I can be honest for a moment, Schaeffer probably picked the most dysfunctional team he could. Wyvern was barely stable on the best of days. Brenner was a gloryhound, Sumner was smart but stubborn as a mule, and Galveston bet everything he could handle three Division agents in a straight up fight on his own. He bet wrong.

**Harley:** I'm surprised Bonney hasn't bit the bullet yet. I thought that jackoff would've been the first to go.

**Dancer:** You guys are missing the point. This is going too easy for our enemies. From the beginning, it always seemed like some higher powers pulled every string in our favor. When the shit hit the fan, we were more than prepared. We had battle plans, all the right personnel and equipment. Domino after domino fell in our favor. And we took this city completely unprepared.

**Wolf:** Well yeah, no shit. I think we all know some very powerful people want us to succeed. How else would we have been this prepared?

**Dancer:** We were picked because we're the top specialists in the world. We have equipment decades ahead of what the U.S. military had access to. We shouldn't be getting steam-rolled like this. It doesn't make sense. Unless...someone wants us to fail.

**Scope:** What are you saying?

**Dancer:** I think somebody high up, either in our chain of command, or someone who's funding us, has decided we'd be more useful as a failure than a success. Like the failed coup against Caldwell in 2011. Sometimes, secretly backing a failed operation can work in someone's favor, if that was the goal all along.

**Harley:** That's just ridiculous.

**Scope:** Hang on. Alright, Kay, let's say you're right. What would be the endgame then? What would some shadowy cabal gain from pouring billions into hiring the world's best soldiers, developing the most advanced equipment, all the logistics and support, just to throw it all away?

**Dancer:** Amherst was deemed 'not a credible threat'. An AI didn't make that decision, a person did. Someone high up in the chain. They must've known what he was up to, and they *wanted* it to happen. The deadliest viral outbreak AND terror attack in human history. The collapse of the military and government. And then a multi-national, shadowy group of black-clad mercs with advanced tech invade the capital and try to impose a new government of their choosing? How easy would it be to forge a couple documents, pick a couple enemies to act as a fall-guys, and use it as an excuse for a power grab?

**Wolf:** You're saying whoever funded us, they want us to fail, use as an example to impose some new agenda themselves? Like what?

**Dancer:** Whatever they wanted! Start a war. Impose a dictatorship. Throw out the fucking Constitution! They could do whatever they wanted, using us as a source of fear. Remember Dollar Flu Campaigns. We have to start a war with x country to prevent another attack like that. How many laymen know how and why this virus started do you think? The Division didn't even know till Amherst was already dead. What makes you think Billy Joe Patriot in rural America won't blame it on North Korea or Russia or Iran?

**Dancer:** It's a simple process to power. Have the glorious government heroes take out the shadowy invaders. Restore order. Convince people that some other country were responsible for both us and Dollar Flu. And you have the perfect excuse for the Patriot Act on steroids. An endless stream of brainwashed masses willing to throw down their lives in WW3. An entire grief-stricken populace willing to accept whatever it took to never go through the pain and loss of the 'dark years', even if it means accepting a dictatorship and giving us their rights.

**Dancer:** The way I see it? We've always been supposed to lose this war. The Division was always supposed to win. We're the perfect boogeyman to scare the American masses into the one thing every budding dictator wants. An entire country of obedient, patriotic, and zealously loyal citizens who won't care if every street corner has a security camera, if they have a microchip in their necks, if they have to pay a tax to fucking breath, if it's justified under the banner of preventing another Black Tusk, another Dollar Flu.

**Dancer:** We've been told we're going to be the Praetorians. But no, the Division are the Praetorians. We're the Barbarians, the uniting menace that the deep state Julius Caesars need to turn a republic into an empire.