Another pretty short one, but it's to finish off the last one. We'll see if I can get back to full size chapters.
I've gotta say (again fairly late) that the fandom did an amazing job. Ratings recovered from the colossal drop I mentioned to near peak season one levels. Which, as even cable ratings go isn't that high, but enough to give us a season 3! (Or so I heard)
Waverly met Nicole in her patrol car across the street from the same office Doc and Wynonna visited. The two staked out the site, waiting for any hint of activity. Mainly, for anything to leave the office.
"Remember," Nicole cautioned. "Anything could leave that office. The suspect may not appear as expected. He may not look male, or even human."
"Uh-huh." Waverly seemed strangely distracted. She seemed to be paying far more attention to Nicole than the stakeout.
The redhead cop was not entirely oblivious to this fact. She noticed her girlfriend's intense stare, it was almost enough for her to wonder if something was wrong. For the moment however, she just brushed those concerns aside and focused on the mission.
That didn't last long though. Moments later, she felt herself pushed against the door of the cruiser. She turned in shock just in time to see Waverly Earp lunging at her the moment before their lips connected.
She was being kissed.
Rather forcibly so, in fact.
After the moment's shock passed she pushed the smaller girl away.
"What the hell Wave's?! What are you doing? Not on the job. This is important. We can't just mess around." She was clearly shocked and indignant.
The Earp looked confused for a moment before gathering her wits.
"I- I'm sorry. It's just, we're stuck here together in a small car, nothing to do, and I'm not really used to doing this." She looked sincerely ashamed and apologetic.
Nicole looked at her warily before sighing.
"It's all right. Demon slaying doesn't train you for stakeouts. It's just that we already mess around enough when I'm on duty. I can't let it start to interfere with actually doing my job. For Black Badge or the Purgatory Police."
"I understand." Waverly nodded.
The two of them resumed carefully watching the door. Eventually, they saw movement.
"There it is. The door is opening."
The door to the small unmarked shop did, indeed, push open. However, nothing visibly came out before it simply fell shut again.
"Shit!" Nicole cursed. "He's using the brooch."
"Should we close in? Call for Wynonna?" Waverly rapidly questioned.
"No. No, don't panic." Nicole firmly reassured. "Just because he's been tipped off that something is suspicious doesn't mean he's spotted us. Just watch a moment."
Waverly nodded and calmed herself. They watched the lot closely for a few moments, waiting to see what would happen. And shortly, something did.
"Look! Over there." Waverly pointed to one of the cars in the lot. It's door had just opened and shut even though no one had been anywhere near it.
The car quickly started up and pulled out. Waverly and Nicole caught a glimpse of the driver; an older gentleman, completely unlike the description they got of the man in the office.
"He was trying to throw pursuers off. It could easily have worked." Nicole mused.
The pair pulled out themselves and proceeded to cautiously follow the car from a healthy distance. It slowly meandered through the town before eventually pulling up at a rather lonely house on the edge of town.
The building was an old, yellowish cream colored building. It wasn't completely dilapidated, but it wasn't pretty either. Nicole was careful to not even drive on the block.
"Call Wynonna. Tell her we found his hideout." She advised.
"On it." Waverly smiled widely. "Now is the time to fix everything."
"Maybe not quite that far." Her girlfriend chuckled at the rather hyperbolic statement. "But we can bring Dolls back."
Wynonna and Doc arrived around twenty minutes later. They met around the corner the next block over.
"That's definitely his hideout. Be careful though; I'm almost certain he suspects something." Nicole warned as they stepped out of their cars.
"Fine by me. I've dealt with angry revenants, scared revenants, horny revenants, suspicious revenants shouldn't be a problem." The older Earp quipped.
"You can't just storm in there." Nicole firmly cautioned. "He could be invisible right behind the door and you wouldn't know until your already dead."
"I believe I have a solution to that particular problem." Doc spoke up from where he had walked to the back of the Earp's pick-up truck.
He slung out two large sacks. They looked to be new and were both labeled "Flour".
"I like your style." Wynonna nodded approvingly. "Alright then, if that's everyone's advice on how not to get killed let's go."
She headed towards the house cautiously handling Peacemaker, but did not drawing it yet as they were still on the street. On the way she looked over at Waverly briefly.
"Hey, you got nothing on this one? You've been awful quiet for getting to come along on foot for once." She prodded the younger Earp.
"Huh? Oh. I think we've got a solid plan. I'm just really eager to get this all done." She offered a relieved smile after the brief confusion.
"Ugh. You and me both." Wynonna agreed. "Those assholes cannot just take my Dolls and get away with it."
The building was two stories and had a small front- and large back-lawn. The front lacked a porch or fence, but privacy was afforded by a ring of rather overgrown bushes around the lawn.
The group cautiously reached the front door, keeping quiet and staying low the whole way after rounding onto the same block as the house. Wynonna quickly pressed to the right side of the door and signaled Nicole and Doc, who followed suit by standing in front and taking the left respectively. Waverly ducked behind the bushes clutching her shotgun.
"3… 2… 1…" Wynonna mouthed, followed by a quick hand signal.
The others immediately leapt into action. Nicole kicked in the door, and Doc flung the sack of flour in sideways, spraying its contents across the room. Wynonna, only a fraction of a second after, span into the doorway pointing Peacemaker.
"Clear." She announced seeing nobody and nothing within the powder coated entryway. "Doc, you take the back, make sure he isn't escaping. Nicole, Waves, check the rest of the ground floor. I'm going upstairs."
They all rushed through the door, except for Doc who began to jog to the back.
Nicole headed forward, to what looked like the kitchen, Waverly broke left to the living room, and Wynonna headed to the stairs.
"'Nonna!" Before she got far though, the older Earp heard her sister quietly whisper-shout to her. Looking down from the bannister, she saw her waving her over with the hand grasping her shotgun while making shushing motions with the other. The taller sister mouthed "What?" as she cautiously crept over. Waverly frantically gestured to something on the opposite end of the room. Wynonna passed the threshold into the room and curiously peered to where Waverly was pointing.
*Crack!*
Crushing pain exploded through Wynonna's head collapsing her to the ground before she could even make a sound. She was so disoriented that she barely even felt as Peacemaker was kicked out of her hands and out the door.
"Stop it Waverly! Let me finish this." The quiet hiss of… Waverly? Narrowly registered in her disoriented, pain-filled mind.
Sounds resembling an awkward struggle ensued very briefly before the explosive boom of a shotgun shot erupted.
"Fine then. If you won't let me finish the job." Waverly's voice mumbled quickly. Almost immediately, another blast sounded, followed by a scream.
"Aaagh! Nicole!"
Nicole had already started running the moment she heard the gunshot. However, when she heard Waverly's scream she barreled through the house at breakneck speed bursting into the living room just in time to see her girlfriend leaning against the wall flushed with pain and blood leaking from her right foot. Also disturbing was Wynonna lying sprawled across the ground.
"Waverly! Are you okay?" She hurriedly embraced the smaller girl and helped to support her off her injured foot.
"Yes but-Gah!" She hissed in pain. "You've got to stop him. That's not Wynonna. He ambushed me. Fought over gun. Shot into ground, but managed to wrestle it off of him and knocked him out." She managed to explain with a pained grimace.
"Where is Wy-"
"He's getting up, stop him!" Nicole started to inquire before being interrupted by Waverly's scream.
The officer drew her gun in a single swift motion.
"Don't move!" She aimed at the crumpled form and loudly ordered.
"Nicole, please." Wynonna just barely gasped out while very slowly recovering from the devastating blow.
"Ah!" Waverly screamed in shock. "Just shoot him and we can find Wynonna to finish it off."
Haught kept the gun firmly leveled at the crumpled form, but otherwise made no move to act.
"I don't think we're in any danger. Just call the real Wynonna." She instructed.
"Shit." Waverly cursed as she collapsed onto the ground, her bloody foot clearly giving out.
"Waves! Oh my god!" Nicole kneeled, keeping her gun loosely leveled at Wynonna while her attention mainly fixed on Waverly.
"I'm losing more blood than I thought. Just finish him so we can find Wynonna and get out of here." She moaned.
"Doc!" Nicole called out. As she did so, she began to haul Waverly towards the stairs up.
"What are you doing?!" The shorter girl asked, a little bit of anger seeping into her tone.
"Doc can watch it while we find Wynonna. Come on, if something hadn't happened to her already she would have heard all this by now."
"What if he turns invisible? You can't really think it's safe to leave him alone for even a second?" She urged.
With a single flip of her hand, Nicole aimed her gun at the body and fired.
"Finally." Waverly began to breath a sigh of relief.
Before being interrupted by the butt of a gun to her face. The blow was powerful enough to knock her out instantly.
"Oh my god are you okay?!" Nicole began cradling the wounded Wynonna, trying to gently ply some response out of her. After a few more moments she stirred again.
"You shot me!" Were the first words to come out of her mouth.
"I grazed you. I needed to be absolutely sure before I knocked out the girl I love." Nicole protested.
"You shot me!" The Earp repeated frustratedly.
"I'm sorry! But you bled human blood, so it was really for your own good."
"Screw you. If you weren't my sister's girlfriend I would teach you a lesson in your 'own good'." The wounded woman grumbled threateningly.
"I think your older sister already tried that." The redhead quipped back.
"Fine, we'll call it even. What made you suspicious anyway? Why did you work so hard not to shoot me?"
"I wasn't really suspicious at all at first. Waverly had been acting a little odd, but not enough that I didn't think something was just bothering her to talk out after the mission. It's that I want to be a good cop. If I could be pressured into shooting someone who was no threat to me, even by the woman I love, what kind of officer-and person would I be?"
Wynonna smiled softly up at her.
"I don't know, but you're a damn good one now."
She helped Wynonna, who now had a small wound running up her left leg from the graze of the bullet, to stand.
"We didn't just, like, have a moment, right?" The injured woman held a straight face as she inquired.
"What the- I'm with your sister Wynonna!" Officer Haught indignantly shouted.
"Seriously? You don't think I haven't broken up couples like that on accident before? I'm the total package Haught Stuff. Your hearts in the right place though, because I'm just going to tell you right now, this top shelf ass is off limits for her sake." She teased.
"Why did I ever say that." Nicole grumbled.
A moment later the redhead was again pointing her gun as they both heard footsteps at the open front door.
"This rascal was trying to escape out the back."
Doc Holliday stepped in holding a flour covered man not unlike the one at the office earlier in the day with one hand, and a small brooch in the other.
"Wait just a minute." Wynonna spoke up confused. "If that's the shapeshifter over there, why the hell did my sister just try to kill me?"
"Great." Nicole sighed. "This is going to get complicated."
Read, review, be bad ass and don't give a shit like Wynonna would. (RRBBADGSLWW for short)