Finally. Finally. FINALLY got this thing done! This was not fun for me to do. I know it doesn't seem that bad to you guys, but for me… this is enough to induce night terrors. Admittedly the only thing that got me through this chapter was listening to Escape the Fate's "One for the Money". If you're writing battle/fight scenes I recommend because it's got that heart-pumping drive with it. And I don't care if it's considered "goth" or "emo"—good music is good music, people! Good music is good music! Haha!
But also, the reason I'm so late with this is because of family stuff and personal commitments I've had the past month or so. And also, ya know, laziness, because I'm a lazy bee-otch.
Alice Gone Madd—"… kinda, sorta, not really…"? How about "not at all"? Because I'm still terrified of zombies.
Guest—I'm glad you enjoy it. And good to know: will be looking for you. :)
AllSpark Princess—Yeah, you're tellin' me. -_-'
Okay, onward! They'll be another chapter with Hunter after this one and depending on how long that is there might be another chapter. We'll see. I make plans for chapters and they never seem to stay in place. I'll never actually be an author if this is the manner in which I conduct myself, but I guess that's how the cookie crumbles.
I do not own Transformers or anything in relation. I only own Hunter, the Hybrid race, and any other character that you may not recognize.
Mick Gordon; Welcome to Hell
22
Ω Ex Circulus ad Circulum Ω
(From Circle to Circle)
Slowly, moving just increments at a time, Hunter turned her head in the direction of the horrid sound. Her gaze first fell on what was wrapped around her upper arm: a hand. It was twisted and gnarled with age and decay. Most of the organic flesh had rotted from it, leaving only the rusted metal musculature in its wake. But this metal was much like that of a Cybertronian protoform—soft and yielding—and even some of that had rusted out and fallen away to reveal the metal bones of the hand's skeletal structure.
The arm it was connected to was in much the same state. There was more flesh on it—if you could still call that dry, shriveled, crusty, parchment like, nasty tan-beige stuff that was still crumbling away "flesh"—but not by much. Plenty of rusty metal muscle was bared, and there was a large rusted out spot that started just below the elbow and ended just below the shoulder, showing more skeleton that was just as rusty and crumbling. A few faded, thread-bare scraps of what had once been clothing dangled from the arm.
Hunter's gaze continued to follow the arm until is disappeared through the crack that she'd put in the side of a large, heavy, stone sarcophagus by smashing into it. That ungodly growling noise was coming from within the coffin. The teen sat frozen in terror, staring through the crack into the dusty darkness of the tomb, her spark thundering in her ears. Something moved inside. A glowing, magenta orb appeared at the crack and seemed to lock on Hunter, the growling sound becoming a roar.
Time to move!
The sixteen-year-old leapt to her feet and away from the coffin. The hand came with her as it was still holding onto her arm with a death grip. With a screech, Hunter seized and ripped it off, throwing the offending thing back into the rubble. Her eyes widened as the hand proceeded to pick itself up, walk back over to the arm it had previously been attached to, and reattach itself to the appendage. Gross!
When it was reattached, the hand and arm flexed, as if to make sure they really were one with each other again. Then they withdrew back into the sarcophagus.
A second later the coffin exploded apart with shuddering boom!
A large section of the stone flew in Hunter's direction and the redhead slammed a fist through it, smashing it into gravel! A gasp was pulled from the girl's lungs. She'd never, in fact, witnessed her grandmother's necromancy power in action—only ever heard of it. And now two reanimated Hybrid corpses were standing right in front of her, empty, lifeless eye sockets alight with Luna's spell, and a command to apprehend her undoubtedly acting as their sole operating function. That was a little more experience than she wanted with it!
The girl watched on, face twisted in horrified disgust, as the zombies stretched and flexed in very unnatural, halting way. Evidently their joints were a little locked up with age and rust. "Good," Hunter remarked to herself as the thought occurred to her. "Maybe that'll slow 'em down a little then." Something told her that these zombies weren't the naturally slow and bumbling kind, so anything that caused some sluggishness on their part would be a blessing.
Then one of the corpses released a roar and lunged in her direction with lightning speed.
"Or maybe it won't slow 'em down at all!" Hunter shrieked. She leapt back out of the way just seconds before the zombie came crashing down right where she'd been standing, slamming its drawn fist into the ground and creating a small crater. The teen landed in a crouch atop a gravestone. But she didn't stay there long, as she was startled off by another hand breaking through the earth at the foot of the stone. Then, as she sat there on the ground, two more hands reached up out of the earth and grabbed at her arms. "Ahhhh!" Screaming, Hunter lunged to her feet, trying to get away from the hands. Unfortunately, these corpses didn't seem to be quite as decrepit with decay and age, so the hands didn't rip off them like the first one's had. Thus, Hunter actually pulled those zombies out of the ground. They continued to grab at her and try to hold her down, but the redhead managed to tear herself away from them and leapt away again, taking refuge up on a large stone memorial near the edge of the burial ground.
Panting, the sixteen-year-old's wide-eyed gaze darted around the cemetery. The graves—they were all breaking open and sprouting up zombies! Every single one!
The horrid stench of rotting flesh suddenly wafted across Hunter's nose and she violently gagged. The corpses were all in various stages of decay and evidently more than a few had obviously been fairly recently buried. That just made this whole scenario even more unsettling.
Hunter covered her nose and turned her gaze over the cemetery in the direction of the control building. That was still her destination. And, luckily for her, she didn't have to go through the zombies in order to get there. The teen launched herself off the memorial, flames jetting out of her free hand and feet, and soared over the reanimated corpses towards the building. At least that was the plan.
Hunter's nerves suddenly tingled and she turned her head just in time to see a corpse flying through the air at her. It tackled her and dragged her back down to the ground.
"Ugh!"
The two of them crashed into a headstone, the zombie on top and straddling Hunter. With bone-chilling shrieks and growls, it started pummeling the girl, slamming its fists against her face as hard as it could. It was as if it wanted to crush her skull in!
Hunter did her best to try and protect her face and get in some returns shots. It wasn't easy. For one, the rancid stink of the corpse was so overpowering that it was hard to focus on anything except the pain in her sinuses (her nose had already begun to bleed even without being hit in the face) and the challenge of not vomiting. Plus, it wasn't easy to see through watering eyes. And for another, it was kind of hard to focus when your brain was being rattled around your skull because your head was being used as a speedbag and being bashed into the ground. "Ah! Uh! Oof! Ugh!" It was going to kill her! This zombie was going to pound on her until it had caved her skull in and killed her! And she was probably going to come back to life in a prison cell afterwards.
Hunter couldn't let that happen! She needed to get out of here, away from her grandmother and the cult, and she wasn't about to let anything stand in her way without being handed a fight! Especially not these rotting bastards!
The teen let off a sonic scream again, blowing the zombie off and away from her, then she leapt to her feet. "Come on then!" she fumed, extracting her razors and activating her energy shielf as she stared down the hoard. "Bring it! Who's first, huh?! Come at me! I'll put you all back in your graves!"
And almost as if they were waiting for that invitation, the hoard surged forward towards her.
With a roar, Hunter charged into the fray.
The teen spun and leapt and dodged and dived this way and that, slicing and dicing through the field of zombies, trying to deliver as much damage as she could while limiting her own intake of it. She wasn't necessarily successful. There were just so many of them! And they just refused to stay down! The girl would take some down, turn her attention to more, and before she knew it the corpses she'd just cut down (and she could usually tell which ones they were based on the damage done to them) would be right back in the thick of it all coming for her again! The reanimation spell of her grandmother's was no joke!
The only thing that seemed to ensure a permanent kill of the monsters was the crushing of the spark itself. (Hunter had discovered this when she'd punched one of the zombies through the chest.) Even decapitation only seemed to slow the zombie down long enough for it to retrieve its severed head and replace it before it was attacking again. Once she'd picked up on this information, the young Hybrid set about targeting the sparks, sometimes ripping out sparkchambers two at a time depending on the circumstance. But this wasn't the easiest task. And there were still so many zombies to deal with, even with their numbers diminishing (and that was happening at a painfully slow rate anyway). Hunter decided she needed to come up with a more efficient plan and quick!
"Hrah!" Hunter plunged her fists into the chests of two of the zombies, grabbing the sparkchambers, ripping them from their positions out the backs of the bodies, and crushing them to dust. Then, for added measure—and since the now lifeless corpses were already skewered on her arms—she bashed the carcasses together and dropped them. Panting, she glared up at yet more of the oncoming hoard. "Damn!" the sixteen-year-old quietly cursed, wiping sweat from her eyes. "I don't know how many more of those I have left in me." She charged again, leapt into the air, and came down amidst the beasts again. "I need to find a way to crush more of their sparks at one time," Hunter told herself. "If I was in robotic mode I could definitely do more damage at once. Question is, can I transform here? Or has Luna done some sort of spell against that?" There was only one way to find out.
Leaping back away from the hoard, Hunter tried transforming to her Cybertronian form. It worked! In the blink of an eye the femmling was towering above the zombies in all her scarlet and black-and-silver striped glory. She raised a foot and slammed it down atop some of the closest zombies. When she lifted it again, the Hybrid was greeted with the site of mangled and crunched bodies. The glow of the spell was leaving them, signifying the destruction of their sparks. Hunter actually laughed. "Now this is more like it!" she whooped. "Hah!" She stomped a foot down again and again, crushing some more of her opponents. Then she punched a fist into the ground, taking out some more. This was definitely saving her energy! "Hoo-augh!" The teen swiped her hand along the ground, sweeping some more of the zombies up into the air before clapping them between her hands.
That's when Hunter felt something like bugs crawling up her legs and back. She looked down to see that the zombies had started climb up her body, still trying to drag her down and stop her despite the fact that they themselves couldn't assume their robotic modes. The femmling snarled. Grabbing some of them up, she smashed them together. "Fraggin' insects!" she hissed, brushing more off, only to have others climb up and take her place. "Ahh!" Hunter yelped as some of the zombies started pulling at her armor as if to peel it off. She spun and swung around, trying to brush them all off, but quite a few were now on her back and the girl was unable to reach them. So she threw herself down on the ground and started rolling around. Not the most dignified let alone cool way to fight back, but you did what you had to do when you needed to, right?
The tactic did work. But it also backfired, in that, while she was successful in taking out the zombies on her back and any that came within range of her and were unable to move out of the way fast enough, still more managed to avoid being crushed and scrambled or jumped atop of her. And just because they were smaller than Hunter and were in fact dead didn't mean that they weren't just as strong as she was. Maybe stronger, being supercharged on that reanimation spell, and having no conscience or reserves because of it. And now they had the perfect chance to pin the teenager down.
"Ack! Ugh! Rah!" Hunter struggled to try and get back up and out from under the weight of her opponents. No! She wasn't going to go down that easily! Gathering up all of her strength, the girl forced herself up into a half-kneeling position, successfully throwing off some of the zombies as she did. (Of course they only came running back to pile on.) "Ah! Hah!" She did it again and got up on all fours. Progress, but there was still more of the hoard and they were all coming at her and climbing up her arms and legs.
And then it happened.
Another wave of magic came, this time rippling out through the air, and wafting over Hunter. A sensation that was very much akin to the feeling of being forcefully shoved into a small, confined space that she was much, much too big to fit in came over the sixteen-year-old, and she found herself, unwillingly, transforming from her Cybertronian form back into her human form. It was quite painful. "Ahh-ah!"
Hunter now found herself in human form at the bottom of an ever growing pile of zombies that were intent on tearing her apart. This was hardly an ideal place to be. Panicking, finding it ever harder to keep her wits about her because of it, and dazed from the spell she'd just been hit with, the teen frantically tried to claw her way out of the pile. She locked her eyes on the ever shifting spaces of daylight she could see through the arms and legs of her many attackers. That was her goal. She had to make it there! She wouldn't die again like this! She wouldn't die here! She wouldn't go back!
Apparently the zombies didn't agree. For every centimeter of progress the teen made towards the sunlight beyond the pile, they dragged and forced back into the very center of their hoard. They grabbed and tore at her, ripping away the Field Acolyte armor she wore bit by bit.
"Ahhh!" Hunter cried out as one of the creatures clawed at her leg and tore a gash in the back of her thigh. Tears pricked at her eyes. They were all starting to tear into her flesh now, they'd already ripped away so much of the armor. Still she tried to crawl away from them. Using all of her strength she forced her way through the crowd and final—finally—flopped out into the open air.
But she was there only for a moment. Dozens of rotting hands reached out and grabbed her, dragging her back into the fray.
Screaming, Hunter clawed at the dirt, doing everything she could to keep from getting pulled back into that rancid hell. She kept trying to pull away, despite how unsuccessful she was. "I'm not going back!" she panted desperately, fighting as hard as she could to stay in the light. "I won't! Yipe!" A foot suddenly connected with her face and the teen was wrenched back into the hoard of zombies. They all closed in, the daylight being blocked out. Desperate to get away, Hunter's control snapped. "I AM NOT! GOING! BACK!"
There was a deafening explosion. The whole cemetery went up with a whoosh! in a pillar of fire so pale blue it was almost white. With blood-curdling shrieks, the zombies all withered and melted away into ash and molten slag. The pillar quickly died down, leaving behind a smoldering, smoking, burnt-to-a-crisp field. And slowly rising up out of the smoky haze and a circle of flames that were still crackling at the origin of the explosion, was Hunter. She looked utterly malicious: covered in dirt and grime and energon; hair a tangled, ratty, disheveled mess; half-naked due to most of her uniform being torn and then burnt/melted away in the fire; and to top it all off, that absolutely, viciously murderous gleam in her sapphire eyes. The teenager released a ragged breath. Smoke almost seemed to roll out from her nostrils and between her teeth as she did so, like she was some kind of human-formed dragon. She was seething—positively livid!
The girl's gaze drifted to land on the army of Acolytes—Field and Court of all classes alike—that had gathered at the edge of the burial grounds. She bared her teeth. The hair on the back of her neck stood up as she savagely hissed, "Stay the fuck away from me!" To emphasize her point, Hunter swiped out a hand, sending a massive, hot wave of flames in their direction to force them back. Then she slammed her palms into the ground and channeled a field of lightning through it to drive them even further away.
Movement in the direction of the mansion caught Hunter's attention and she turned her sights there. She spotted Luna standing there and watching on disapprovingly. The witch was accompanied by Ray and Steel. Not to mention the small handful of Acolytes who had managed to reach such high levels in their training and gain such trust from Luna, that they'd been permitted into her Inner Circle.
Now while Ray and the Inner Circle shared much the same expression as his wife (maybe even a bit angrier) Steel looked worried and concerned. Hunter's rage wavered a bit at that. Unfortunately so did her attention, because without warning an explosion went off under her feet and blasted her backwards. "Ahh! Ugh! Uh…." The sixteen-year-old slammed into another stone memorial, her head cracking against it. She slid to the ground. Sucking in a breath as she grimaced, the young Hybrid squinted up to see the Acolytes advancing on here. She couldn't just sit here—she had to fight! There was no way they were taking back into that hell without at least that much!
Hunter forced herself back on her feet, dizzy and shaken as she was. Shaking her head, she tried to get her focus and senses back into place before turning her complete attention to the oncoming army. The girl froze confusion. Wait a second… why were there more? There appeared to be twice as many Acolytes coming her way now! Yes, her grandmother's army was extensive but where did that many more of them come from so fast? There wasn't any teleportation smoke—so they hadn't teleported in.
As the teen tried to figure it out the numbers suddenly doubled again right before her eyes. Then tripled. Then quadrupled! What in the AllSpark?!
Staggering backwards against the stone, Hunter could only stare in horror as the numbers of her aggressors continued to increase hundreds at a time. This didn't make sense! It just didn't make any damn sense! There were so many—where were they coming from?! The redhead started to hyperventilate. Her gaze darted around, trying to calculate just how many Acolytes were coming at her. T-too many! There were just too many of them! There were too many for her to take on and even have a chance of getting through! "No…. No. No! Stay away from me!"
They kept coming. And multiplying.
"I'm not going back! Do you hear me?! I won't!"
Still they came, paying no heed. There were so many of them now it was absolutely ridiculous! Luna's army—while large—didn't have half as many members as there appeared to be now. But Hunter was in too much of a desperate tizzy to think logically. First zombies and now any army of Acolytes that kept multiplying and multiplying and multiplying before her eyes backing her into a corner? It was all a little bit more than she could take! "I WON'T GO BACK!" The teenager determinedly slammed a foot down into the ground as she screeched this.
No sooner has she done this than a pillar of sparkling, purplish-black energy streamed down from the heavens, permeating through the forcefield with a thundering boom! As quickly as it appeared the pillar disappeared. Or so it would seem.
Crying out in misery, Hunter doubled over and wrapped her arms tightly around herself, as if to keep herself from breaking apart. Agony! Utter agony! Worse than any physical pain she'd felt so far, and that was saying quite a bit. It felt like her body was about to detonate! And the sensation only kept bubbling higher and higher and getting worse!
Then the ground immediately adjacent around her began to quake and rumble. Rubble from the damaged pillar behind her began to rise up into the air on and hang there as if being levitated. The girl's fiery mane did the same.
Luna's eyes widened in horror as she saw this. "We must retreat below grounds!" she gasped. "Steel! Hurry now!" Grabbing her husband's arm, the sorceress quickly teleported away to some bunker far below the surface grounds of the estate.
Steel watched on for a second more, trying to decide it he was more afraid of what his grandmother was terrified was going to happen or what was happening to his cousin. In the end, the young man decided to follow Luna's example, and he too disappeared.
More than a few Acolytes—most of them Field Acolytes and Court Acolytes of the Senior level—had started to pick up on what was happening as well, and were disappearing in plumes of smoke. Many, however, weren't quite so lucky.
Unable to hold back anymore, Hunter unfolded herself and arched backwards with a blood-curdling scream.
The estate was bathed in a blazing white light that streamed out of Hunter, forcing everyone left in the field to turn and avert their eyes, or risk going blind. At first there was no explosion. In fact there was no noise at all; it was almost as if someone had pressed a mute button on the entire world. The light was suddenly sucked back with a reverberating warble, as if imploding in on Hunter, and everything went black as a moonless midnight for a few brief seconds. Then it returned with an explosion. A resounding, god-awful, ear-bleed-inducing, shrieking sound of an explosion!
"Ahh-ah! Ugh! Uh…" Naked, Hunter collapsed on her hands and knees to the charred ground beneath her feet. While the intolerable pain from seconds earlier was gone, her nerves still tingled with an irritating sharpness that left her with the sensation of fleas crawling all over and biting her body. Had she not been so exhausted and disoriented, she would have noticed it. She would have also noticed the icy, numbing wind and driven snow that now beleaguered the open field.
Gasping and wheezing for breath, her ears and head ringing, Hunter looked up with half-lidded eyes. She was perched atop a pillar of earth ten feet in height and just big enough around that were she lay down, stretched out, the tips of her fingers and toes would just reach the edges. Everything else beyond that radius—the cemetery, the mansion, all of the grounds of the estate, even the forcefield and part of the surrounding mountain range—was gone, vanished in a smoking, hazy wasteland. It appeared as though a small nuclear bomb had gone off.
"Wh-What…" Hunter didn't have time to finish speaking as the fatigue became too much. (Which didn't matter because, currently, there wasn't anyone alive around to be speaking to anyway.) With a heavy sigh and moan, the girl fell flat on the now snow covered ground, slipping from consciousness. Just before she went, an imposing silhouette suddenly appeared before her bleary eyes and knelt down, reaching out to grab for her. "Won't… go… back…."
The sound of a spark-monitor beeped softly and steadily in her ear. A warm hand gently caressed her forehead and cheek followed by the sensation of a kiss being pressed above her eyebrow. She moaned. Slowly blinking her eyes open, she looked over and found his kind face and adoring, sky blue eyes. "Da-Daddy," she croaked, a slight smile parting her lips.
The Prime smiled back. "My Shooting Star," he crooned softly, soothingly. Leaning forward, he pressed several gentle kisses to her forehead and stroked her cheek with the backs of his digits. "Welcome home, Hunter," he whispered.
She could feel tears pricking at her optics. "You… you found me," she barely breathed. "You found me…." The tears began to trickle down her cheeks.
"Of course I found you," her spark-father murmured, touching his forehead to hers and cupping her cheeks in his hands. "I will always find you, Sweet-spark." He gazed deep into her sapphire optics. "Always."
She stared into his gaze for a long moment before wrapping her arms around his neck and hugging him tightly. "I missed you, Daddy!" she sobbed. "I missed you so much!"
Optimus returned her embrace, holding her as closely as he could, and rocking her as he sat on the edge of the medical berth. "And I you," he responded in kind, a whimper in his voice, "so very, very much, my little one." The Prime cradled the back of her helm in his hand. "I promise you, Hunter," he whispered, "never again. Never again shall I allow anyone to take you from me: never again shall I allow us to be separated in such a way. I promise you this."
"Daddy…." She buried her face deeper into his shoulder, never wanting to come out, never wanting to leave his arms again because here she was safe. Here nothing could hurt her. Here no one would ever dare to invade and try to take her away again.
"I love you, Huntress Starstreaker James."
"I love you too, Daddy."
The massive Prime pulled away and smiled down at her.
She smiled in return. Then she noticed something quite strange and disturbing: her father… he was fading away! Like a shadow! "Dad?! Dad! No! No, Daddy, don't leave me!" But he was leaving her, fading faster than snow in boiling water. As was everything else. The walls of the med-bay disappeared, followed quickly by Ratchet's tools and work benches, until the only thing left of the room was the medical berth. And soon, that too faded away. She was surrounded in nothing but stark whiteness, save a swirling black chasm some distance beneath her that grew larger by the second. The only thing that kept her from falling into it where the shadowy, translucent arms of her spark-father. They wouldn't for much longer.
She clung to what was left of Optimus, refusing to let go, refusing to look away from his gentle eyes and loving smile. "No!" she screamed. "Dad, don't leave me! Don't let me go! Please!"
The Prime didn't let her go. He didn't have a chance to. In the blink of an eye he'd faded away completely, and she was left all alone, falling through the empty expanse of white into the black hole below, tears flying from her eyes. She shrieked, reaching out to where he had been: "DAAAAAAAAADDYYYYYYYYYYYY!"
The New Moon;
"DAD!" Hunter jolted awake with a horrified gasp. Sapphire eyes tripled in size, the sixteen-year-old's gaze skittered frantically around the room, searching for her spark-father, for her friends, for anything that was remotely familiar and friendly. She found no such thing. Instead she found an unfamiliar medical bay as her surroundings, and it was filled with her grandmother's underlings. The girl finally remembered and realized: she was back! Back in this hellhole! Despite her best efforts, despite how hard she fought against countless opponents, despite everything that had happened, she was back in the Lunation's clutches! Her efforts had been futile!
This fact alone was enough to bring tears to Hunter's eyes. "No…" she croaked, gritting her teeth. "No…." She screwed her eyes shut, hoping that this was another dream to wake from. "Primus, please, no…."
"Ah, so you're finally awake I see."
The voice pulled a startled gasp from Hunter's lungs. Eyes snapping open, the teen sat up and looked down to see her grandmother, standing at the foot of her bed, dressed magnificently as always, and holding a bouquet of brightly colored flowers in her grasp. The alarmed look quickly left the redhead's face and was replaced by darkness and anger. "Luna!" she hissed malevolently.
"Well, I'd say it's safe to say that your memory hasn't been affected despite what's happened. We were somewhat worried you might have amnesia after what you did, but you seem to remember who I am just fine."
"Unfortunately you're kinda hard to forget."
"Ah, yes, I do seem to have that impression on people. As do you. It's obvious that you must get that quality from me."
"I am nothing like you."
"You'd be surprised to find out how wrong you are in that, my child."
"Take it and shove it!"
"You are my granddaughter after all."
"Shut up!"
"My blood flows through your veins, as does my power. It always has and always will."
"I said shut up, you rancid bitch! Rrah!" Enraged and wanting nothing more than to rip the witch's tongue and throat out, Hunter tried to lunge off the bed but found herself being held back. Snarling, the young Hybrid looked around to see what dared to do such a thing. That was the first time she noticed the shackles: she was bound to the bed by both hands and feet with Leviathan chains, and there was even a manacle and chain around her neck. Needless to say, the girl wasn't going to get up to pee much less tear her demon of a grandmother limb from limb. Hunter glared back at her grandmother. "What's the deal, Witch?" she growled. "What, you don't think you're strong enough to take me on, so you ordered your lackeys to chain me up? Tied down or not, I'll still kick your ass!"
Smiling snidely, Luna gave her granddaughter a superior look and countered, "You really believe that?" With that she made a small wave with her hand.
"Ah!" The collar around Hunter suddenly neck suddenly jerked sharply backwards, dragging her back own to lay on the bed. Choking and gasping, the girl instinctively tried to reach up and loosen the binding around her throat, only to have the chains on her wrists shorten to the point that she couldn't move her arms at all. The chains at her feet did the same. Then more chains appeared. They wrapped themselves around both the girl and bed, trapping them together, before constricting tighter and tighter until Hunter could hardly breathe. Soon, the sixteen-year-old was unable to move at all, save her head, and that too was constrained as another chain wrapped itself around her forehead and crushed her head to the mattress to hold it in place. Painfully uncomfortable, Hunter bellowed out in rage. She struggled as hard as she could against the bonds, but it was no use, she was hopelessly trapped to the bed. And she soon found herself growing too tired to keep trying to escape.
Heaving for breath, which was not an easy thing to do under the chains, Hunter slumped into the bed, the chains tightening even more to make up the space. Weak…. She felt… so… weak….
Chuckling darkly, Luna sauntered forward, her heels clicking on the metal floor of the med-bay, until she was level with Hunter's head. She tenderly placed the flowers on the bedside table. Then she met her granddaughter's scathing eyes. "It never fails," she remarked. "No matter the situation you find yourself in, my girl, you can never seem to keep that sharp tongue of yours in check. You'd think after all this time you might have learned to keep at least a bit of control over it, but it's quite clear that you haven't even managed that. Such a shame. Your impertinence is hardly endearing, Huntress, especially when it's been made quite clear that you do not possess the upper hand in the situation." Even as she scolded the teenager, that cutting sneer of hers never left the Sorceress' face. With a shake of her head that, accompanied with the smile, made it appear as though she was gently telling a toddler that was trying to tip over and glass of water 'no', Luna stated, "Whether or not I can break you of that habit I'm not sure, but I will do my best to try. I can't have a granddaughter that acts as such an undignified young lady."
Hunter's eyes narrowed at the threat. If Luna thought she could actually accomplish such a thing she had a prayer! "I'll see you in Pit first," she rumbled.
"Ah, see, there again—the cheek. Most unladylike."
"Get. Out."
With that the smile faded from Luna's lips and was replaced with a glower. "Now you listen to me, Huntress Starstreaker James," she spat. "I am your grandmother, and I will not be spoken to like that or given by you. Anymore of the brazenness and I will be forced to muzzle you. And don't think for a second I won't!" She smacked Hunter hard across the face, earning a yelp from the teen. "Besides, don't you want to know what happened to put you in the medical bay, and where you are now?" That condescending sneer of hers had returned.
"The only thing I wanna know is when you're finally gonna get the concept that I want nothing to do with you through your thick head and let me go," Hunter declared.
Luna sighed heavily and shook her head. "I can see the challenge that lies before me with that mouth of yours will be a most difficult one." She delivered another solid pop to the girl's mouth before sitting down on the edge of the bed. "You see, Hunter, during your escape one of your yet dormant powers became unlocked." The Sorceress smiled down at her granddaughter in a way that was almost… proud. "Asterokinesis: the manipulation of cosmic energy—not unlike what you are capable of in the Primus-state, but on a smaller scale."
"Meaning?" Hunter questioned. She hated her grandmother with a passion like none other, but the fact remained that this asterokinesis was a relatively new power in her arsenal (at least when she wasn't in "over-powered" mode) that she'd like to know more than next to nothing about. As Luna was the only one currently around who knew what it was, it only made since to ask her. Didn't mean Hunter was happy about it though….
"As I'm sure Greasy has mentioned to you in your training, in the Primus-state you are capable of manipulating all of the cosmic energy in the universe. When you're not you can only control a small portion of it—in this case the cosmic energy that moves throughout this galaxy. But despite that miniscule amount at your disposable, you are more than capable of doing some magnificently extensive damage."
Blurry, half-finished images were starting to come back to Hunter: smoke, piles of rubble, upturned earth, snow on an irradiated wasteland. "I…" she began a little hesitantly, but the memory was becoming clearer the more she focus on it, as was her certainty, "… I… destroyed the estate."
"Yes," Luna conceded, "you did. Completely "nuked it" as I believe you would say."
A sudden thought occurred to Hunter at this point: she was out! She was out of the force-field—it was down completely! Her energy signature wasn't cloaked by it anymore—she wasn't hidden! That meant Team Prime could find her! They could come for her! They could…
"Don't fall under the false impression that your so-called "family" will be able to find you now," Luna suddenly spat, as if she had just read the girl's mind. "They won't be able to. Yes, you are no longer being hidden by the force-field, but thanks to that little blast of cosmic energy of yours, your energon levels are currently too low to register on any frequency." The woman chuckled as she tenderly brushed some hair from her granddaughter's face. "You could be right under their very noses and they wouldn't be able to find you."
Hunter laid there completely frozen, eyes locked on the ceiling, as her hopes of being found and rescued came crashing down. She really was alone in this. The teen could feel tears biting at her eyes and bit her lip, trying to will them away. She wouldn't let Luna see her cry! She wouldn't give her that victory!
"And by the time your levels are back to normal—and that should be within the next couple of days—we'll already be stationed at the estate in Egypt," Luna continued, tapping the girl's cheek with a finger. "And that precious, little life signature of your will be hidden away again."
Hunter couldn't stop the tear that trickled down her temple. She tried as hard as she could to swallow the lump in her throat.
"Oh, no, my dear," Luna crooned, wiping away the tear. "No, this isn't a moment for weeping, it is one for celebration! All of your powers are now unlocked—you are at full strength! Or soon will be once your energon levels return to normal. And you can now celebrate this milestone with your family. Your true family—because we are all here."
Hunter's lips pressed together in a thin, pale line as the anger inside of her boiled at that deranged statement. "We. Are not. Family!" the girl hissed through clenched teeth.
Luna shook her head helplessly and sighed as she sat back from gazing directly down in Hunter's face. "Hopeless," she muttered. "Simply hopeless." She began to stand. "But mark my words, my child, someday you will let go of these insane delusions and come to recognize the truth."
"I already know the truth!"
"And when you finally step into that light," Luna continued, undaunted, smiling in a sickeningly fake way of love down at the young Hybrid, "I will be delighted, and welcome you home with open arms."
"Take it and shove it," Hunter growled.
Luna snorted amusedly. "I must admit that fire of yours, while infuriating, is rather remarkable." Suddenly her attention was drawn back over to the bedside table and to the flowers that she'd placed upon it. Picking them back up, she daintily sniffed them. "Poppies," she commented. "Such simple but beautiful flowers." The witch met her granddaughter's eyes again with a small smile and gently laid the bouquet on the girl's chest, right beneath her nose. "I thought you might enjoy them: they were your mother's favorite you know."
For a long, long time, Hunter stared at her grandmother in bafflement, trying to comprehend what she'd just said. And then the shadow of rage fell over her face. Her brows knit together and her lips pulled back in a rancorous snarl as a thunderous growl rumbled deep, deep in her chest. "You… you… you…." The redhead was so enraged she couldn't think of any insult great enough to hurl at the woman.
Seeming to sense this, Luna's smile broadened to an infuriating point. "I'll be taking my leave," she stated and turned away.
"I'll kill you," Hunter rasped after her.
"And don't believe you've escaped punishment for you escape attempt," Luna informed the girl. "Once your levels and strength are back to normal and we're safely tucked away at the Estate I intend to bring the arm of the law down upon you in full force. You've been a very naughty girl, Huntress."
"I'll kill you."
"I'll be back to check on you again later, my dear."
"I'll kill you!" Hunter was straining as hard she could against the chains again, trying to get at her grandmother, trying to carry out what she was threatening.
"Get some sleep now." The doors of the med bay opened and Luna walked out them.
"I'm not done with you yet—get back here! I'll kill you, you hear me?! LUNA! LUNAAAAAAAAAAAA!"
Confession #48:
The title of this chapter is actually inspired "Dante's Inferno", something that I have never actually encountered any more of be it video game or the actual epic poem 'Divine Comedy'. Chuck really needs to stop making allusions and references to things she only knows about on a face value only. You uncultured swine!