Hunter Session 30

Previous: Hunter Session 29

The next day was the last day of classes before spring break, so everyone tied up loose ends in their respective mundane lives and got ready to set off for Whitefish, Montana and (they hoped) Witness1. For Charlotte, this meant not only dealing with midterms at the university, but also meeting with Kurt and Shirley as promised to work out the child-support issues that had been raised the night before. Since the three of them only had a few hours to talk, they didn't make much headway, but Charlotte managed to keep things relatively civil. The fact that they were talking at all struck her as a definite improvement over how things had been beforehand.

A few hours later Kurt left, all the guardians and hunters in the apartment building started feeling a strange pull toward the center of Minneapolis, a few miles away. Curious but apprehensive, and noting that many other people in the building were beginning to respond to the call, the hunters decided to go check it out. As they drove toward the source of the feeling, they were able to pinpoint its center as being on the top level of the Radisson Hotel's parking garage. They drove to the top and found Kurt, a large hunter code symbol for "summoning" drawn on the pavement with spray paint, and a large group of confused and intrigued hunters and guardians gathering around it.

Immediately, Melba got in Kurt's face and asked him what he thought he was doing in her city. He started yelling right back at her and said that it was his city because she hadn't been doing anything to clean it up. He said that the Twin Cities were in a complete shambles by his standards, so as long as he was in town to take care of the child support issues, he was going to use his power to do what Melba couldn't. A screaming match resulted, with both Melba and Kurt becoming extremely childish and irrational. Finally, Charlotte stepped in to calm both of them down and asked Kurt what he wanted to do. He took out his own bundle of newspaper articles about the deaths at the construction sites and said he'd gathered everyone together because he wanted to fix this problem right away. He had mapped out all of the construction sites where people had been getting killed, and said that if the group of hunters and guardians split up to go to each one and kill anything they found there, they were practically guaranteed of finding whoever (or whatever) was responsible.

Melba, Charlotte, and Randy stepped aside to discuss this. Randy wondered out loud whether whatever Kurt would find at the construction sites would need to be killed, but that idea got shot down pretty quickly when Charlotte and Melba pointed out that anything that had been killing apparently innocent construction workers probably shouldn't have been allowed to walk around in the first place. Finally, they decided that having Kurt take care of this problem would most likely help more than it would hurt, and Charlotte told him so. When he asked if she and the rest of her group would be coming along, she said most likely not because they had to leave early in the morning for their Witness1-finding trip. Kurt seemed to accept that, and they left just as he was beginning to divide up the night's labor amongst the volunteers.

In the car, Melba chewed out Charlotte for saying that they wouldn't be going along. In her view, the group needed to keep an eye on Kurt in case he tried to do something that the group wouldn't support. Charlotte argued that, while Kurt's methods differed from theirs, he wasn't stupid, and he was assured of getting the job done - especially now that they'd agreed that getting rid of the creature causing the deaths was the only real option. Besides, it would look like they were deferring to Kurt completely if they went back now after saying they weren't going to help. But Melba insisted on at least keeping tabs on what was going on, and when Randy joined her side of the argument Charlotte grudgingly conceded. The hunters paid some girls in the apartment building a truly ridiculous amount of money to serve as last-minute babysitters, then set off in Arie's Humm-Vee with Chet and Saria in tow to spy on the members of Kurt's impromptu army.

After re-checking the information that Charlie had given them, the hunters decided to start out at a construction site on a highway in the eastern suburbs of St. Paul. After parking out of sight and scaling a fence, the hunters soon noticed, as expected, a number of other hunters from the group approaching the site from a different direction. The other hunters paused as if to consult information and come up with a plan, then walked up to a nearby Port-A-Potty and kicked in the door. Immediately, a bizarre and disgusting creature that seemed to be made entirely of human excrement burst out and began attacking the other hunters. Then another creature burst out of a different Port-A-Potty and joined in the battle. Randy and Charlotte turned on Discern and noted that, strangely enough, the creatures registered as vampires. The vampires were also connected to each other by a blue line of energy, and a red one extended away from them and disappeared into the distance. The vampires were strong, but the hunters had the advantage of larger numbers, and they dispatched their enemies quickly. As the vampires died, Randy and Charlotte noticed that the blue lines of energy connecting the creatures disappeared, and the red one detached itself and began to move away from the dead vampires, shooting through the sky at a rapid pace. The hunters opted not to make their presence known to their comrades, and instead got back into the Humm-Vee and took off in pursuit of the mysterious vanishing red line.

The red line proved elusive and difficult to follow, but the hunters paid attention (with Melba driving and Randy showing the way) and eventually made their way to another construction site. After more sneaking around, they came across a scene similar to the first one, only this time their fellow hunters were standing around confused and making a call to Kurt, letting him know that they had come to fight the vampire but as soon as the battle started he'd just fallen over dead. Confused, the hunters sneaked back to the Humm-Vee to debate what this meant. Eventually they remembered Kurt saying something about this kind of vampire being connected to others of its type, so that if you killed the most powerful one you would kill all of its underlings along with it. Realizing they didn't have any time to waste before this red line disappeared, too, the hunters set off again to trace the problem to its source.

The source turned out to be a highway reconstruction project in the northern suburbs of St. Paul. After talking their way past a bored late-night worker by claiming to have car trouble, the hunters made their way to the block of Port-A-Potties on site. They began to open doors and brandish guns at anything inside. Halfway through their investigation, the door on the last Port-A-Potty flew open and another reeking monstrosity emerged. The hunters drew their weapons, the guardians assumed their battle forms, and the fight began.

The battle dragged on for a very long time. Since only fire seemed to be having any effect on the vampire, Charlotte did most of the attacking with her Cleave-enhanced sword, and resorted to striking the monster with improvised pieces of plastic and metal when the sword disintegrated. Naturally, this made Charlotte a major target for the monster's attacks, but Saria was able to keep her on her feet with a constant stream of magical healing. Melba tried to hold the vampire off with a Ward, but it broke through easily, demonstrating amazing stamina and resistance to damage. The group's defense was thus limited to Randy Blustering everything that the vampire could dish out. Eventually, the vampire became frustrated, picked up the half-destroyed Port-A-Potty, and threw it at Randy. A very fortunate Bluster knocked the toilet aside, but the vampire's next blow hit Melba full in the face and nearly killed her. She dropped to the ground, unconscious.

With Melba near death, the guardians otherwise engaged, and Randy unable to deal much damage with his crossbow, Charlotte knew that it was up to her to finish off the creature. She raised her improvised weapon...and it disintegrated in her hand before she could strike. She looked around for another piece of debris, but none were in sight. The vampire knocked Randy aside with another blow and began to advance on Charlotte. She closed her eyes, prepared for the worst yet still determined to find some way to save her friends...but opened them just as suddenly when she felt something hot clasped in her hand. A flaming sword had appeared, unbidden, out of nowhere. With a cry of rage, Charlotte struck, burning away the monster's rancid exterior until it lay dead at her feet. As Randy got to his feet, she looked at the sword in wonder as it vanished out of her hand just as quickly as it had appeared...then said, "That should not be possible," and collapsed unconscious.

Saria healed Melba, Randy threw Charlotte over his shoulder, and everyone set off for the Humm-Vee content that the vampire problem had been solved. Chet hung back to make sure they hadn't left anything incriminating at the scene of the battle. Melba urged him to hurry, and he turned around...only to fall to the ground, clutching his leg, as a shot rang out in the distance. The group realized that a sniper had hit Chet from a distance - just as a second shot hit his other leg. Charlotte came to just in time to hear Randy's screams of anguish as he reached out to try to pull Chet back to cover and caught a sniper bullet in his forearm. Charlotte turned to Saria to ask her what was going on but found her unresponsive, curled up in the fetal position, rocking back and forth, and muttering "Situation 19, Situation 19" under her breath.

Chet raised his head and looked over at the hunters. "Leave me," he said. Melba realized that the snipers were using Chet as bait, trying to draw the rest of the group out into the open to save him so they could pick them off one by one. The group racked their brains for a way to solve the problem, but came up with none. Chet was so insistent that they needed to leave or die that they finally decided to take his advice. Everyone started to head back to the car, with plans to find the snipers and stop them from taking Chet, until they realized that Saria was doing something else.

The hunters saw tiny cracks run through the crystal around Saria's neck and the crystal splintered apart just as they had seen it do dozens of times before. But this time, the light that emerged from the crystal was not blue but red, and Saria assumed a different form. Instead of becoming an ethereal and beautiful woman, she became a hideous crone with wild hair, claws, a belly swollen as if in pregnancy, and blood running down the insides of her thighs and pooling on the ground beneath her. An unseen wind came out of nowhere and knocked the hunters over. Saria let out a blood-curdling shriek, levitated a few feet off the ground, and flew away at top speed down the highway.

Charlotte suggested that maybe the group should take this opportunity to rescue Chet. They got him into the Humm-Vee and set off in pursuit of Saria. Just then a ball of red energy shot up into the sky and hit an overpass about a mile and a half up the highway. The overpass exploded in a cloud of metal and concrete, showering the hunters' car with chunks of debris and sending a severed human hand through the open sunroof and into Charlotte's lap. Ahead of them Saria was hovering in midair, perhaps scanning the rubble for survivors. They brought the vehicle to a halt. The hunters emerged carefully, unsure how to proceed. Though Saria didn't show up as wrong to second sight, Randy had his doubts. He got Saria's attention and tried to Insinuate her by asking, "Why did you do that, Saria?" She simply stared at him, seemingly unaffected.

Then the hunters heard Chet's weak voice call out from inside the Humm-Vee, "Saria, honey, I'm okay. Just calm down so we can get out of here." She closed her eyes. Abruptly, the red energy dissipated and Saria crumpled to the ground, unconscious. Still uncertain what they had witnessed, the hunters put her in the backseat next to Chet and took off, deciding it would be prudent to get away before the authorities showed up to investigate.

Next: Hunter Session 31