Having finally subdued the entire team, Bazel looked at who had escaped his trap and even got a few good shots in on him.
'In a real scenario, if he had a higher caliber pistol I would have perhaps been done in right there. It seems I need more practice myself, as well as a better way to defend myself. Defense through offense is fine and all, but the moment the tempo of battle is taken from me I am extremely vulnerable.'
The one who was dual wielding pistols, and extremely accurately at that, was a small statured young man who was even younger than Bazel.
He had a permanent evil look on his face, due to the sleep lines under his eyes, as well as a permanent glare that could be chalked up to genetics. At the very least his hair was taken care of, combed to the side neatly like a model student.
"That was an excellent move..." began Bazel, looking at the officers name tag for his information, "Corporal Saul."
Corporal Saul's glare increased even more than its natural state for a moment before he nodded and saluted, returning to the sidelines where the rest of his team had gone after being knocked out.
'An odd fellow, but seeing as he signed up for what could be considered a death squad he must have his own story to tell.'
Such curiosities would have to wait till later as Bazel still had plenty of time to burn.
The next several hours were filled with what exactly had just transpired, Bazel continued to spar with the new DASF members the entire time.
At the start he was still able to go easy, but more and more he found that even he himself was finding him having to continuously refine his current strategies so that he could still defeat the groups of four.
He was still handicapped in the fact that his feline friend was not participating, which limited the speed and flexibility of his moves by a decent margin, but the practice made him far more familiar with his abilities than ever before.
'It even seems that my portals have a weakness I never noticed before. I have to use at least one thin tendril of shadow to make the start and exit, so a keen observer could see where they start and end if they know what to look for' thought Bazel as he witnessed Loera's group do just that.
After all of his men could no longer move a muscle, something he made sure of, he took the dossiers of information that Neto had finally finished for him.
Each dossier was a packet of information, guidelines, procedures, and suggested tactics for combating Gift users. Everything that both the department and Bazel knew was written down on these valuable documents, of which every member of DASF was handed.
During the day the members of DASF would be worn down physically by Bazel and during the night they would be drilled and questioned by Neto and Schwarz until they memorized everything.
----
A week later the hellish training had finally come to a stop, well, mostly. A new type of training would soon begin instead, one that involved plenty of new toys...
Leading sixteen men wearing black uniforms with a new DASF logo pinned on their chests, Bazel and Neto walked side by side as they headed towards a new firing range that had been set up in the past week.
Opening the large warehouse that had been cleared out for DASF's use only, the lights flickered on one by one revealing the treasure trove within.
The warehouse was segmented into two parts, one being a long firing range and the other an armory of sorts.
On the side of the armory were racks upon racks of powerful weapons that one would normally be hard pressed to find. Not only were there standard weapons, but also a variety of consumable yet highly destructive ordinances like grenades and C4 charges.
"Gentlemen, these are our new toys," said Neto with excitement in his voice, "look around you and behold the power of government funding."
The armory was sectioned into organized block, with Neto pointing at each of these block one by one and saying,
"Beautiful and sleek desert eagles, small hand cannons with amazing stopping power.
"Destructive and easy to carry LMG's, to cut those monsters to ribbons.
"Top of the line tactical shotguns, drum fed mind you so feel free to let loose.
"Mastercraft combat knives and machetes, ready to slice through all our problems.
"Grenades to clear out buildings, body armor made from the flexible and powerful spiderthread kevlar, and even grenade launchers that can be outfitted with impact, smoke, or the reliable high explosive grenades.
"As well as old reliable AR's to handle most situations...and finally!"
Neto walked forward into the armory, motioning for everyone to follow him, and stopped in front of two large objects covered in a tarp.
"And finally the best of all, and most expensive of all:"
Neto pulled the tarps off one by one, and as they slowly fell they revealed the sleek black metal of the vehicles hidden underneath.
"Armored Personnel Carriers, APC. Two of them to boot, custom designed for law enforcement. I even got them to quickly add on a 'DASF' logo on the sides.
"These are surprisingly fast and have great maneuvering, but they are extremely well protected from top to bottom.
"Not to mention the two HMG's that pop out from the top, that come with a large bullet proof shield to protect the users from return fire."
Sighing at the apparent beauty of what he was standing in the midst of, Neto turned around and addressed the DASF members.
"All of this will be your second best tool against this new terrorist force, the first being what is up here," said Neto whilst tapping his forehead, "but a lot of you will probably have not had too much practice with military grade weaponry like this. Not to mention the wide variety we have on display here.
"In fact, all of this will just be the standard loadout for you lot. You will be expected to carry all of this wherever you go, although you can store it on the APC's when we move out in them.
"The versatile AR's for most situations, deagles for when you are fighting a foe that just won't go down, tactical shotguns to cover close range, and trusty melee weapons when shit hits the fan.
"Not to mention all the high explosive toys we have available, for when the situation calls for something a little extreme.
"Each and every one of you will be spending your every waking moment of the foreseeable future training in all of these weapons.
"You will know how to accurately shoot and use them all, clean them all, and switch between them as the situation demands it.
"We have a range right here for all the weapons, and there is a basement area created just for testing out things of an explosive nature."
Having finished his introduction, Neto immediately had the men get to work and grab each one of the new weapons along with its accompanying ammo. He then lead them to the firing range so that they could start shooting immediately, more than happy to blow through thousands of dollars of ammunition just for training purposes.
Bazel watched as both Neto and Schwarz demonstrated how to use the weapons, clearly both of them had practiced to not be shown up by those below them.
But watching Schwarz shoot, Bazel noticed that he was deadly accurate no matter the weapon he used without ever missing a shot.
'I do not think that kind of accuracy is something you get from a little bit of practice, I wonder if he has a military background?'
Regardless, all of the men practiced firing their new toys with glee.
After all, they were not paying for it and to shoot them was extremely exciting to say the least.
All that was left now was for them to slowly become more proficient and then to incorporate their new weaponry into the tactics they have been formulating, all to stand against the still oddly silent House Sanguis.
A silence that was soon to be broken.