Hunt 35: Chapter 5 [The VerbenaVerse]

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~~META:
title = Hunt 35: Chapter 5
~~

//Game was 5/8/21. I think.//

====== Hunt 35: Emotional Fallout - Chapter 5 ======
===== Wednesday November 24th 2010 =====

==== Judgement Night ====

Now that the hunters have broken into the Goshen Congregational Church without being spotted by the Long Night cell, they face an important decision: do they attempt to parlay or attack? They step away from the doors to the event hall to have a whispered discussion. Leta initially supports a violent, full-out assault, and Anita declares, "I support fire." Josh disagrees and replies, "I see them as foils, but not necessarily enemies. Also, they have allies too." Leta insists, "We don't start shit," but she considers Josh's words and concedes, "We go to murder, not start a murder."

William realizes that this is Leta's way of conceding the point, but he finds himself conflicted. On the one hand, an outright assault and more death doesn't sit well with him, but he finds that he is still deeply resentful for the Long Night stealing and keeping Bruce Schofield's body. Polly is clearly struggling to keep her temper in check, and she admits, "I'm all for going in there, guns blazing, but I'm self-aware enough to realize that my history with religion is coloring my views."

Mick admits he wants to play peacekeeper and politician here, and Abby concedes, "I could go either way. However, they sent attackers after our friends, and these friends helped us with Schofield while they didn't." They acknowledge that Abby has a solid point and then they all turn to Doctor Ranjip. They realized very quickly but the good doctor is feeding off Tobias's fears, but he says, "Whatever you want to do, I'm technically hunter-adjacent." Leta retorts, "You're a brown changeling, they'd kill you if they could."

==== Breaking Up Is Hard To Do ====

The cell realizes that they're leading more towards a parley first, before switching to violence. To that end, Anita carefully describes the event hall as best as she can remember when she was here inside back in April. She concedes, "The last time I was here, there was a man in a wheelchair, so there has to be an access ramp or an elevator somewhere. People came and went through the main door here, but I think I saw another door on the far end of the hall."

William decides, "That I think it best we split up. One group stays here while the other group goes back upstairs and tries to find the elevator to keep both exits covered. However we split up, we should keep Leta and Anita separate." Both Leta and Anita offer halfhearted protests, but Anita concedes, "Actually, I want to try using the Boneyard Haunt again, so it's probably best if I stay here and people keep an eye on me." The other members of the cell agree, and decide that Josh, William, and Polly will remain here with Anita, while Leta, Abby, Mick, and Doctor Ranjip try to find the elevator. They also agree to have Anita unlock the Boneyard after ten minutes.

==== Shadow Play ====

As they sneak away and head back upstairs, Leta turns to Mick and threatens, "If you disturb raccoon-time again, you're on your own." Mick sighs but can't really argue with her. As they head upstairs the shadows once again reach out and swallow Leta, but she uses this to help cover for Mick, shepherding him around squeaky floorboards and the like.

After a few moments of tense silence, William, Josh, Polly, and Anita are all hit with the smell of old blood, decay, fur, and that final, unidentifiable stench. The Long Night hunters also notice the smell and they can hear someone's metal folding chair clattering to the ground as Tobias cries out, "It's that smell, it's back! It's here!" Pastor Sheffield insists, "Calm yourself, Tobias. It can't get past the demon trap!"((Also known as 'the ward that Mick disrupted.'
))

Leta's group finds the service elevator at the back of the church, and realize it was installed much later after the building itself was constructed. They also find a small concrete staircase which doesn't fit the architecture of the old church at all but presumably was installed at the same time as the elevator. They hustle down the staircase quietly, but then they too notice the smell. Then, both groups notice that the shadows are elongating and writhing around them! Anita insists, "I'm not into that!" In the other group, Leta turns to Abby and asks, "Anita is not doing anything, is she?" Abby shakes her head and replies quietly, "Nope." The shadows suddenly start reaching for everyone in both groups, but as they approach William, his hieroglyphs suddenly flare up and glow with pure golden light; the shadows retreat quickly from him.

In the back staircase, the shadows all swarm towards Leta first, and Doctor Ranjip muses, "Huh, that's interesting." The shadows suddenly encase Leta, and she feels multiple textures, all changing rapidly â€“ satin turns to sandpaper then turns to feathers then turns to rough concrete and so on and so forth. Leta steps forward to try to get out of the shadow; she steps back into the back staircase without any resistance but leaves behind a Leta-shadow! All other shadows are gone, having merged to form this Leta-shape. Leta stares at her shadow-doppelganger for a moment before making a movement and watching as the doppelganger does the exact same thing. She grumbles, "This is some Peter Pan shit!"

==== The Haunting Of Goshen ====

Once the ten minutes are up, Anita unlocks the Boneyard Haunt, centered on the event hall. Anita dims the lights in the room almost entirely; she extends her senses and then warns the others, "It's just the four men, but they have firearms on hand and they're right by a small arsenal of rifles." Suddenly, the shadows emit a deep, happy purring, and then everyone in the Troy cell has a shadow-doppelganger! Not only that, but they all find they can see in the dark without issue, a sensation that William finds deeply disturbing. The shadows on the walls in the church start pulsating, and Anita immediately says, "That's not me!"

Inside the event hall, the members of the Long Night cell began to pray, although Tobias is still freaking out. Their prayers do have an effect as the shadows recoil, but then the shadows push back and start forming non-Euclidean shapes on the walls! In the back staircase, Doctor Ranjip suddenly giggles, and the others realize he's practically overdosing on of the fear the Long Night cell is producing! He's so gorged on fear that his fairy mien flickers into view!

Leta hisses, "What's in your bag? Anything helpful?" Doctor Ranjip offers her a disconcerting smile and replies cheerfully, "I got you, Boo," which the echoes throughout all the shadows in the basement! Suddenly every shadow, including the doppelgangers, form a bleeding caduceus on their foreheads! The praying from inside the event hall increases, but then as the others watch, Doctor Ranjip shadow-walks from the back stairwell into the event hall! As Leta creeps closer to the door, Doctor Ranjip calls out, "Hello, gentlemen!"

Unable to locate the source of the voice, the members of the Long Night cell shift their prayers towards banishing the agents of darkness. That continues for a few moments before Doctor Ranjip interrupts, "Gentlemen, I'm Hindu. That's not going to work." He then pulls out a couple more of the gourds, blows on their stems, and gently chucks them at the feet of the Long Night cell before murmuring, "Shit, inhalant hallucinogens are probably a bad idea here!"

The weird sugar-cinnamon-broccoli smell fills the event hall and then the four members of the Long Night turn to face each other and start singing a hymnal in an unnatural, synchronous voice. Once the hymnal is finished, the four men suddenly lie down on the floor! Leta, Abby, and Mick burst into the room but find the members of the Long Night cell with their eyes open and breathing steady, but they do not react as Leta plucks the guns out of their hands. William, Josh, Polly, and Anita enter the room as well, and Leta announces, "These guns need to be ungunified!" Mick and Polly start removing ammo clips while Anita tries to end some of the haunting effects of the Boneyard. However, her attempt fails, and she announces, "Well guys, this isn't my darkness anymore!"

==== Conversations ====

The four members of the Long Night cell remain completely unresponsive, until suddenly Tobias sits up! He looks at them all carefully, scanning each one of them individually. The hunters realize he's seeing more than most, as when he examines Anita and Abby, he also looks over their shoulders, seemingly able to see the geists! When he eyes Leta, his eyes travel up further past her head, presumably to the tips of her horns when in demonic form. He murmurs, "Oh?" and then starts reading William's skin!

Once he's finished, Tobias asks, "Is this your doing?" Anita replies, "Yes," but notes Tobias seems very calm, a marked change from his usual paranoid personality. Leta asks him, "That smell. You said you've smelled it before?" Tobias eyes them all and correctly guesses, "Corrupted the demon trap, right?" Leta scoffs at the primitive ward, but Tobias insists that it works. He tells them but the smell started appearing a few weeks ago, first in the deep woods and then throughout most of Goshen, manifesting in people's homes and businesses, seemingly at random. Tobias stresses, "However, whatever it is, it doesn't cross into Williamsburg."

Everyone in the room suddenly feels that stabbing sensation as the-thing-that-should-not-be apparently focuses its attention on the group again. Tobias asks shrewdly, "You knew of the attack? How?" Leta replies, "Irish ninjas," which clearly doesn't help Tobias at all. He asks, "How many of the Sword, Covenant, and Arm are still alive?" Leta replies bluntly, "None, there was a big hairy bear. One of the cops threw pretzels in its face! It didn't like that."

Tobias murmurs, "That was Mitch, wasn't it?" Leta nods and then asks about the SCA militiamen. Tobias freely admits, "Terrence knows them. I think he may have been one of them once, or possibly still is. He wanted to strike the cult first, and then you. Why are you defending them, anyway?" Leta retorts, "Because they didn't do anything! And they stood with us against Schofield, while I didn't see any of you there." Tobias admits, "I wouldn't know, I blacked out after you left last time."

==== Emotional Appeals ====

Josh demands to know, "Why do you insist there's a demon cult in the Cummington?" Tobias retorts, "Because I saw it? Almost twenty-five years ago. It definitely wasn't a vampire, or a werewolf, or a ghost-walker." Josh asks, "Ghost-walker? What's that?" Tobias inclines his head to Abby and Anita, and Anita amuses, "That one's not too bad either," and Abby nods in agreement. Anita continues, "However, you seem calmer. Clearheaded. You like that? Then may I recommend intensive therapy and psychiatric drugs?"

Tobias readily concedes, "I do like being able to think clearly, yeah. Maybe." Josh interjects, "What's your beef with us anyway?" Tobias stares at him and says slowly, "Because you claim to be hunters, but you embrace the monsters?" Josh once again insists that they work with supernatural creatures that aren't hurting anyone while Leta derides Tobias's blinkered thinking. Tobias retorts, "You're one to talk. You have a big set of horns!" Leta insists that he's looking higher than her horns actually are, but Tobias declares, "Yes, they are. It's like you're the daughter or granddaughter of an archdemon!"

Leta admits, "Granddaughter, technically." Tobias laughs harshly and replies, "That makes you a second generation. Do you realize how rare that is? Your friends in the Lucifuge are called the Children of the Seventh Generation for a reason! The question you need to ask is, are they here to guide you, or to monitor you?"((To quote the Falcon, "He's out of line, but he's not wrong!"
)) Leta waves away his arguments while Josh continues his defense of the Troy cell's methods. Leta points out, "Not everyone can be Pokemon collectors, Josh!" Tobias mutters, "I get that reference."

Josh then pleads to Tobias, "Next time, call us! We may be able to explain something before you go charging off! We don't necessarily have to be allies, but a better back-and-forth is good. Tonight, your group just got decimated, and it didn't have to happen this way!" Tobias snorts and gestures to William's body before demanding, "Are you affiliated with any vampires?" Leta declares angrily, "Fuck no! Are you?" Tobias mutters, "Not anymore," but he won't go further than that.

==== Body-Snatchers and Hedonists ====

Tobias asks, "What about the body-snatchers? Do you work with them too?" The members of the Troy cell stare at him blankly for a moment before assuming he's referring to sorcerers like Solomon. They quickly insist they do not, but their comments lead Tobias to frown and state, "I don't think we're talking about the same thing. I'm talking about hunters who go after monsters to harvest them! I once worked with a couple of them years ago, and one of them released a swarm of wasps from his wrists, and another one spat acid! They hunt monsters to harvest their organs and then implant them into themselves! They literally implant things like werewolf spleens!"((Obviously, he's referring to the Cheiron Group.
))

Leta declares, "No, that's gross! We don't do that. We also don't capture monsters for sport." Tobias asks, "Oh, are you talking about the hedonists?" In a dismissive tone. Leta grudgingly concedes, "For once, we agree." Tobias shrugs and says, "What happened to them, anyway?" Leta retorts, "They're not alive anymore."

Josh asks him "Wait, you didn't send vampires after us?" Tobias stares at him and replies firmly, "No." The hunters press him for more details about his experience with the vampires and Tobias eventually gives up that he was forced to serve one.((This was initially a mistake on my part; Terrance was the ghoul, not Tobias, but a story idea popped into my head, so I'm leaving it as is.
)) Leta recalls tales from the werewolves about the Na'Goth War and asks Tobias, "Was this in the early 2000s?" Tobias answers in the affirmative and Leta declares, "Was it a Smithy vampire?" The other stare at her in confusion, but she insists, "There was a bunch of vampires at Smith in the early 2000s. At least, I thought they were vampires."((Leta's mistakenly referring to the Maiden's Blood Sisterhood, a group of female hunters.
))

==== "I Bid You Adieu." ====

Tobias gestures to the writhing shadows all around them and Anita jokes, "They're actively lap dancing for you!" Josh quickly adds, "Lap dances aren't demonic!" He insists on open lines of communication, leading Tobias to eye Anita quickly. She raises her eyebrow inquisitively and Tobias tells her, "I was going to say that all of us would give our lives to the Vigil, one way or the other, but I realized you might be an exception." Anita shrugs while Josh repeats his claims that not everything is demonic.

Tobias snaps, "And sometimes it is! There are demon cults out here in the hill towns. We fought them before, and they were definitely linked to the forces of Hell. One of them is linked to the sex cult." Leta derides that, but Tobias retorts, "They spread sickness, and they actively called upon demons! With Satanic regalia, sure, but many cults like that thrive out here in the isolation of the hill towns. And one such cult is linked to your friends in Cummington, or at least one member is in both, and some weapons have passed hands. You have your things down in Northampton, but the situation is very different up here."

Tobias starts to visibly flag, so once again Josh insists on communication. Tobias slurs, "Any such communication with you must remain //sub rosa//. I'm open to it, and I suspect Jonas would be as well. Pastor Sheffield? Definitely not. Terrence? That's a firm hell no!" He starts to sway erratically and announces, "I think my time here is done, so I bid you all adieu." With that he slumps back down to the floor and passes out!

==== "I Am What I Am." ====

The hunters find that all four members for Long Night cell have closed their eyes and appear for all the world to be simply asleep. Anita gently pokes Tobias, who makes a Pillsbury Doughboy sound but doesn't wake up. Acting on the imp of the perverse, Anita rearranges Tobias into a different position so he's a bit more comfortable and that has him cradle an empty AR-15. She then concentrates and successfully releases the Boneyard, and the shadows start to fade as the lights go back up. However, their shadow-doppelgangers remain but no longer seem to be fully in sync with the hunters. Leta turns to her doppelganger and demands, "And what do we do with you?" To her annoyance, her shadow-doppelganger simply shrugs.

Before Leta can offer a retort, the hunters all hear the unmistakable loud noises of a bear running down the stairs! Veltis runs into the room; he stinks, but to be fair he was rutting with bears. Breathing heavily, Veltis looks around and says, "Sorry I'm late, although it looks like you had things well in hand." Leta demands, "Did you fuck it?" Veltis retorts, "Yes! Of course I did! It was in line."

Leta shakes her head in exasperation, but Veltis retorts, "I am what I am. I am an incubus. However, I think I may have finally found something that I will not stick my dick into. Everything felt all wrong. For those of you who possess vaginas or have inserted a part of your body into a vagina, or both," as he nods his head to Polly before continuing, "Vaginas are not supposed to be ice cold!" That brings the other hunters up short, and Polly concedes, "No, they shouldn't be."

==== Bear Piss ====

Veltis laments that the physical sensations kept changing as well, leading Leta to draw comparison between the textures she felt when encased in the shadows. She then demands to know what it is, but Veltis shrugs. He says, "I couldn't tell you. I can't think of a way to explain it to you that you will understand. For once, I'm not trying to be a dick here, but I default to a Judeo-Christian paradigm because that's an aspect you can grasp."

Leta retorts, "I get it, we don't paint with all the colors of the wind." Josh snorts as Veltis shrugs and says, "Basically, yes. Whatever it was, it waited in line and then we smashed. We smashed in different dimensions. Possibly even in the Underworld. At one point I think we were the Underworld!" He then turns to Anita and warns, "So be careful on Friday," Anita grumbles but thanks him for the warning. The hunters notice the shadow-doppelgangers have vanished.

Veltis then reveals, "Whatever it is, it's contained in this area." Leta admits, "Tobias did say it couldn't seem to enter Williamsburg.((Also an effect of the Na'Goth War?
)) She then laments that she really wants to kick Terrence while he's unconscious, but Veltis retorts,"We don't have time for that. Do you have any idea how much I need to pee?" Leta sighs but then Veltis frowns and says, "Why don't you all head upstairs, and I'll meet you up there in a minute." The hunters quickly realize he's planning to urinate on the Long Night hunters, which leads Anita to joke about the stench of 'bear-a-mones'((Instead of 'pheromones.'
)) and bear piss. However, Leta concedes, "They'll never get that smell out!"

----
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[[{}wod:hunter:recap:35_chapter_4|<= Chapter 4]]
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[[{}wod:hunter:recap:35_chapter_6|Chapter 6 =>]]
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