WOOOOOO, I DIDN'T THINK I WOULD GET THIS CHAPTER UP UNTIL TOMORROW BUT I WAS WRONG, THIS IS AWESOME! :D *throws a party*
Anyway...
We're gonna meet my other OC here and learn about how Claire ended up becoming a hunter, then we're gonna get some monster ass-kicking action, woo!
I OWN NOTHING (except my OCs) AND DENY EVERYTHING!
Shortly after her eighteenth birthday and everything that had happened that day, Claire Novak began entertaining a certain idea that had come into her head as she'd said goodbye to Castiel and the Winchesters, and that idea was that maybe she should become a hunter herself. After all, she'd lost both her parents to the supernatural forces that were at work in the world, and she felt like she'd seen enough of what was really out there and knew enough about it now that she might just be able to pull it off without being a complete royal screw-up. Plus, she'd already killed an angel, so why not try killing demons and other stuff, too? And there was also the fact that Castiel had said that if she ever needed to, she could call out to him and he would come, so counting the Winchesters along with him, she already had three allies, which was more than most newbies probably had. And she did still have that angel sword in her bag.
Still, she was on the fence about it.
That was, until she met Crystal.
Crystal Abbott was a year older than Claire with gunmetal blue eyes and cropped hair with asymmetrical bangs that was what she herself referred to as "the most platinum of platinum blondes on the planet, so mother effing pale it's nearly white, I shit you not," though this wasn't apparent because she kept it dyed the same shade of orange that Johnny Depp's hair had been when he played the Mad Hatter with a neon green streak at the front of the bangs. She had two piercings in her left ear and three in her right, she wore a black suede choker with a winged heart, and had a bunch of clothes and jewelry with an Alice in Wonderland theme, because she absolutely loved all things Alice, and her favorite t-shirt was black with the white outline of an upside-down top hat underneath the words "WE'RE ALL MAD HERE." She was constantly wearing either tights or high socks that were either a crazy color or had some kind of pattern or design on them, even when they were hidden by jeans or some other pair of pants that covered them up, and she always wore the same shoes, a pair of brown-and-black ankle boots with a one-inch heel that laced up in front and were modeled after Victorian coal mill boots. Her favorite tights were the striped black-and-neon blue ones, and she knew all sorts of random trivia about various things.
She had also been a hunter since she was sixteen.
The way Crystal told it to Claire was that she'd been born to a teenage mother who gave her up for adoption, and at six months old, she had been taken in by a gay couple. Partly because it had been an open adoption and partly because this was just the kind of people they were, her dads had decided that they thought it would be nice if Crystal's mother continued to be part of her life, so they had kept in touch with her over the years, even letting her be Crystal's baby-sitter when the need for one arose. For a long time, things had gone on this way with the five of them very happy, and Crystal growing up in a very supportive environment with not two, but three parents, all of whom she had always felt quite close to, though perhaps not all in the same way.
And then, one day, her mother had died in a car accident, months after which both her adoptive fathers were killed by a kitsune, which would have also killed Crystal if a hunter hadn't showed up when he did and killed the creature, after which Crystal had quite naturally demanded to know what that thing was and why it had killed her dads, so the hunter had taken her away from the scene of their deaths to calm her down and explain things, and immediately afterwards, she had decided that in order to keep her dads' spirits alive and honor them, she wanted to become a hunter so that she could kill things like the kitsune that would otherwise kill innocent people like it had killed her dads.
So that's exactly what she'd done, and she'd been at it ever since.
Meeting Crystal and hearing her story helped Claire finally make up her mind, and she decided that like Crystal, she wanted to honor her parents' memory by helping prevent things like their deaths from happening so that others wouldn't have to suffer the way her family had suffered because of the supernatural world. When she voiced this to Crystal, the older girl smiled and asked if maybe Claire would like to team up. They could both benefit, she said. Claire would have a more seasoned hunter to help her learn the ropes, and they'd both have someone to watch their backs, someone to talk to who understood what it was like to lose loved ones to that hidden side of the world, and to help them get out of tight situations and things like that. Claire thought it over for a moment, and then, seeing no reason not to and deciding that Crystal had a pretty good point about the benefits, she agreed to the partnership.
And that was how Jimmy Novak's daughter began her career as a hunter.
Something or someone was shaking her, but Claire did her best to ignore it, rolling over in bed and shoving her head beneath the pillow. She had gotten back to the motel she and Crystal were staying at pretty late last night after dealing with a changeling situation, and she was tired from the whole mess. One thing that she'd quickly learned about being a hunter was that nearly getting killed by all these various creatures could be pretty exhausting business. It was definitely one of the things about the job that she considered to be more of a downside, though getting to kick monster ass was, in her opinion, totally worth it, especially when she got to use really good sassy, snarky, and/or sarcastic comebacks and comments and stuff, which was something that Crystal was really good at. (Crystal was what Claire liked to refer to as a "SassMaster," or, in this case, since she was female, a SassMistress.)
However, the shaking only got more persistent. Still, though, Claire somehow managed to ignore it until suddenly, it stopped. Then, just as abruptly as the shaking had ended, her pillow was forcibly yanked away from her head and somebody started repeatedly whacking her with something.
"Ow, hey, what the—I'm up, I'm up, cut it out already, geez!" she cried, shielding herself with her arms as she sat up in bed. The whacking stopped, and she lowered her arms to glare at the offending person, which turned out to be none other than Crystal, who stood there next to Claire's bed with one hand on her hip and the other gripping Claire's stolen pillow.
"Oh, good, you're awake!" Crystal said. "Up and at 'em, girlfriend, we got work to do!"
"Oh, God, my head," Claire groaned. "What time is it, anyway?"
She looked at the clock on the nightstand.
"Dammit, Abbott, it is way too early, are you crazy?!" she demanded.
"Mad as a hatter, Novak, mad as a hatter," came the reply.
Claire groaned, flopping backwards onto the mattress.
"Seriously, though, we've got work to do," Crystal said matter-of-factly.
"What kind of work, what are you yammering about?" Claire asked.
Crystal tossed the pillow at her, and she caught it as she sat back up, hugging it against her chest while she listened to her friend talk.
"Two hours ago," the older girl was saying, "I went out to re-stock on snacks and stuff before we hit the road tomorrow—er, I mean...today, I guess. Anyway, that's beside the point. Like I was saying, I went out to re-stock on snacks, and I overheard the cashier at the gas station talking to someone, I assume a local, about some guy that had come in earlier who the cashier had never seen before. Said the guy was dressed kind of funny, spoke with a British accent, and he was asking if anyone in there had seen two teenagers, a boy and a girl, but the descriptions didn't sound familiar and nobody had seen anyone matching them and blah blah blah and how the whole thing was just weird, right? So then the guy he's talking to is like, 'Oh, you think that's weird? You clearly haven't heard about the body the police found earlier.' And so the cashier's like, 'What body?' And the guy goes on to describe how the cops apparently found this body that was like totally drained of blood, and so I hear this, and of course, now I'm thinking, 'Oh, shit, sounds like we got some vamps in the area, I better go back and wake up Claire so we can take care of this before it gets out of hand and someone else gets killed,' right? So anyway, long story short, I went ahead and tracked the vamps down, they're in this cabin out in the woods, there's maybe four or five, possibly six, from what I could tell, and I peeked in one of the basement windows, and get this—two people are tied up in there. Two teenagers. A boy and a girl."
"You think they're the ones that British guy was looking for, don't you?"
"I think it's possible, and that either way, they need saving, so are we gonna go kick some vamp ass or what?"
"Let me get dressed and get my gear, then yeah, let's kick some vamp ass."
So Claire hauled herself out of bed, threw some clothes on, she and Crystal geared themselves up with weapons, then they left their motel room and stepped outside, where the sky had only just begun to lighten. Early morning mist was all over the place, giving everything a somewhat eery look, but the girls had been inside places that looked way creepier than what they were seeing at the moment, so it didn't bother either of them one bit.
Crystal led her companion to the woods that were on the outskirts of town, and when they entered the trees, both of them pulled out blades as their senses went on high alert, each of them ready to protect the other as well as herself and put up one hell of a fight in doing so. They crept through the underbrush with caution and as quietly as they could manage given the foliage and the leaves, sticks, and other things that lay on the ground. Finally, after about twenty minutes, they came to a clearing with a cabin with the lights on in the front windows. The girls got as close as they dared, then crouched down behind a tree with a trunk wide enough to keep both of them out of sight should anyone exit the cabin or look out a window.
"Alright," Claire whispered, "what's the plan?"
"I'm thinking we pull the distract-and-break on 'em," Crystal whispered back.
"Who's doing what this time?"
"You distracted last time, so I'll do it this time."
"Got it. Where's that basement window?"
"Around back. There are some steps leading down to a door. You'll see it, trust me. Just be careful."
"Always am. Alright, here goes. Good luck."
One thing that a person might not be able to guess just by looking at her was that Crystal Abbott had a beautiful soprano voice. A friend of hers who was all over Phantom of the Opera the way Crystal was all over Alice in Wonderland had once told her that she sounded kind of like Sierra Boggess, which, that friend had assured her, was a good thing. Another thing a person might not guess about Crystal and her voice was that while she did sing very beautifully, she could was also quite good at deliberately sending herself way off-pitch and hitting insanely sharp notes. When she did this, the result could be rather unpleasant to listen to, and she had figured out long ago that she could use it to her advantage from time to time while hunting, such as by using it to distract monsters.
Having determined who was going to do what, Claire pulled out a pair of earplugs that she carried around exactly for this reason, quickly stuffed them into her ears, then gave Crystal a thumbs-up. The other girl nodded, then skittered out from their hiding place, standing in the clearing in front of the house. She took a deep breath, then let out an ear-shattering, off-pitch high C-note.
It served its purpose perfectly.
When the vampires came out to see what was going on, as soon as she was sure that all their attention was fully focused on Crystal, Claire and her knife crept out of hiding and when around the side of the cabin, and from there, to the back of the building. Sure enough, just as Crystal had said, there was a short flight of stairs that led down, at the bottom of which she was met with a wooden door. She tried the handle, but it was locked, so she set her bag down and pulled out the lock picking kit that she kept in one of the side pouches on it, then made short work of the tumbler. As soon as she heard the click, she put the kit away and opened the door, still on high alert and hoping that Crystal would be able to keep the bloodsuckers busy long enough for her to get in, find these two kids, then get the hell back out. She was also hoping that they weren't already too late.
"Hello?" she called softly. "Anybody in here?"
There was a muffled cry in response, and when Claire looked in the direction it had come from, she saw a pair of teenagers that looked maybe a couple years younger than she was tied to chairs that were facing back-to-back in the corner of the room, both of them with gags in their mouths. She sheathed her knife and hurried over, removing the gag from the girl's mouth, only for her to immediately start spitting in that way that suggested she was trying to get rid of a bad taste.
"Thanks," she said in a London accent, "much longer with that thing there, and I'd probably have gotten mouth herpes or something."
"No problem," Claire replied, smirking at the girl's comment as she took off the boy's gag. When she did, he sent a big wad of spit flying across the room.
"Levi, that's bloody disgusting," the girl said.
"You can't even see me, you don't know what I did," the boy replied, also with a London accent.
"Just 'cause I can't see you doesn't mean I don't know what that sound was, you pillock," she retorted.
"That's men for ya," Claire remarked as she pulled out a smaller knife than the one she'd been wielding before. "Now hold still, both of you. I'm gonna cut these ropes off and I don't want to hurt either of you on accident.
There was a sudden commotion somewhere upstairs that ended with a very loud bang and a furious male voice shouting, "Where the bloody hell is my daughter?!"
"Dad!" the girl exclaimed, her blue eyes lighting up.
"Blimey, he sounds pissed," the boy commented. "Don't think I've seen or heard him anywhere near that angry since—"
"DAD!" she shouted, cutting him off. "DAD, I'M DOWN HERE, LEVI'S WITH ME! CAN YOU HEAR ME? DADDY!"
"Shut up, you idiot!" Claire hissed. "You'll draw attention and then they'll come down here, is that what you want?!"
Before she could get a response, there were several pairs of pounding footsteps overhead running in the direction of the basement.
"No!" Crystal's voice screamed. "Don't go down there, you'll get them killed!"
"I already lost her mother," the same male voice replied, "I'm not losing her, too!"
There was a bang as someone or something rammed into the door, then a rattling sound as they tried to open it, followed by a strange noise that Claire had never heard anything like before, then the door at the top of the stairs leading from the main house into the basement flew open and a male form all but flew down the stairs with a cry of, "Alex!"
"Got it!" Claire announced triumphantly as the ropes finally gave way and snapped apart beneath her knife, allowing the other girl and her friend to stand up. Perfect timing, too, because just then, the man who had come rushing into the basement flung himself at the girl and they threw their arms around each other.
"Oh, thank God you're alright, I was worried sick!" he said. "I thought I told you to stay put!"
"It wasn't our fault, Dad, we didn't want to leave!" she replied. "They forced their way in and—"
She was cut off as four people, three female and one male, came down the stairs, one of them being dragged by two of the others and struggling against them. The man who had come down first immediately turned around upon hearing their footsteps, pushing the girl who was evidently his daughter behind him and holding up a strange device in a threatening manner that carried a strong suggestion of protectiveness over the girl behind him.
Claire's heart sped up when she realized that the person being dragged was none other than Crystal.
"So, Doctor," one of the female vampires said, "we meet again."
"So it would seem," the man said. "How'd you know it was me?"
"Oh, please, you're the only creature to carry that silly toy you've got there."
"Wait," Claire said, "you know each other?"
"Know each other," the vampire said, "please, he helped kill my first nest, I only survived because I promised not to cause anymore trouble!"
"And yet here you are kidnapping my daughter and her friend," the man retorted.
"I saw that box of yours and knew I'd found a chance for revenge," the creature replied.
"Avenge this, bitch!" Claire shouted, and then charged at the monster with her big knife drawn. There was a faint whooshing sound as the blade cut through the air, and next thing anyone knew, the vampire's head tilted to one side before falling clean off the neck, the body slumping to the floor and landing there in a crumpled heap. The boy's jaw dropped and his eyes went wide, the girl covering her mouth with her hands as she turned away from the sight and made a gagging sound. Taking advantage of the shock the other two were in, Crystal broke free of their hold and drew her own weapon, slicing off the male's head, then the female's in a single fluid motion.
In the stunned silence that followed, the man that the vampire had called Doctor put his odd device in his pocket, then turned around and put his arms around his daughter, who seemed like she was about to throw up. "Come on," he said, "let's get you out of here before your stomach empties itself, shall we?"
She nodded weakly, allowing him to guide her out the door that Claire had entered through. Everyone else followed them outside, heading up the stairs. By the time they reached the front of the house, she seemed to have recovered. Claire turned to Crystal.
"I'm assuming you got the other two already?" she said.
"Yeah, just before this psycho here showed up," Crystal replied, jabbing a thumb towards the man.
"I am not a psycho!" he protested. "Well, okay, perhaps I am a bit mad, but I wouldn't say psycho! What are you, anyway? Hunters? Bit young, don't you think?"
"Wait," Crystal said, "how did you know we're hunters? You don't look like one yourself."
"Oh, I'm not, but I've met a few in my time," he replied. "I'm the Doctor, by the way, nice to meet you. This is my daughter Alexandra and her mate Levi."
"The Doctor?" Crystal echoed.
"Yep, that's right," he said.
"Doctor who?" Claire asked.
"Exactly!" he declared with a broad grin.
Yeah, this guy's mental or something, Claire thought.
"Thanks for untying us," Alexandra was saying.
"Huh? Oh, yeah. No problem," Claire replied.
"Can we go back to the TARDIS now, Dad?" the other girl asked. "That place made me feel all icky, I want to take a bath."
"Of course we can, just a minute," the Doctor replied. Turning to the two hunters, he said, "Well, it was nice meeting you, thanks for helping get Alex and Levi out of there. Come on, you two, let's get going! Raxacoricofallapatorius isn't going to travel to itself, you know, and we need to figure out why we came out of the vortex before we got there. Hope she's not throwing a temper tantrum on us again. Off we go, come on!"
And just like that, before Claire or Crystal could say or do anything to stop them, the strange trio was gone.
Yeah, I'm not good at writing fight scenes, which is why the vamp deaths were so quick and to the point. :/
Um...yeah...For once in my life, I have absolutely nothing to say except please review.
