Day 18: Spiderwebs (Seth & Kate, post season 1)

Seth's eyes narrowed, slowly moving his gun to try and cover all the half-dozen people standing in a semi-circle in front of him.

This was just fucking typical, wasn't it?

He and Kate had made a trip up to the border to meet with Vanessa, because she'd found someone to give Kate's crossbow an extreme upgrade (and okay, yeah – divorced for good reasons or not, he still missed her sometimes) ; Kate and Vanessa got along so well that it always made Seth a little antsy. After she'd handed over the crossbow, Vanessa told them about the favor her twin's ex-husband had asked her for in return.

Kate had argued that it would be a nice mini-vacation (as much as they ever got, anyway), and while Bobbi had always disapproved of him in a High School President sort of way, her ex and Seth went way back – in fact, it was Hunter who introduced him to Vanessa in the first place. Lance Hunter was a professional merc (until he'd decided to sort-of go civilian) and he, Seth and Richie had worked on a couple of jobs together back when they were barely old enough to drink.

But now, Seth really wished that Vanessa had had a better idea of exactly what alphabet agency Bobbie and Hunter worked for – because the mysterious disappearances? Were all from of an honest-to-God haunted house!

One that just happened to have a film crew working for a reality show roll up right before he and Kate started doing recon.

Some of that footage was of him and Kate together – so if it didn't get destroyed, Seth was going to have all the FBI on his ass all over again, as well as the Rangers. No matter how tight Gonzales still was with Katie, he wouldn't piss on Seth if he was on fire. (Which was fair enough, all things considered.) But not even Gonzales could keep the Rangers off Kate's ass if she was officially listed a 'person of interest' in the Gecko brothers case, and one of Kate's main protections from dangers who weren't culebras was her spotlessly clean record.

But none of that footage was getting wiped out, unless Seth and Kate worked out which of the people in front of him was the shapeshifting ghost who'd killed twenty people in the last five years – and two of the film crew in the last three nights.

One breath, two – and Seth fired, the big pistol thundering in the old house.

At the exact same time the sound guy jolted from the bullet, a slim bolt of hawthorn wood sprouted from his throat.

While the film crew all screamed/staggered/had hysterics, Seth just tilted his head back, and looked up at the balcony where Vanessa and Kate stood as backup.

"How'd you know?" Seth called out curiously.

Kate smiled like that kid in A Christmas Story, and patted her new T-1000 crossbow. "He's the only one who didn't show up in my brand new night-vision scope! You?"

Seth made a face and brushed off the shoulder of his jacket. His first new suit in months, and he'd all but ruined it in this rundown place. "He was the only one who wasn't covered in fucking spiderwebs!"

Wondering about doing an extended version of this for a bigbang – maybe even casestory, if they have a 2015 round... and the mod forgives me for punking out in 2014.

I also don't own A Christmas Story and Ralphie, or his expression when he gets that BB gun.

T-1000 is, of course, a reference to T2: Judgment day.

If you hadn't already guessed, in this canon Vanessa's identical twin sister is Bobbie Morse of Agents of SHIELD, (for obvious reasons, if you look at Adrianne Palicki's bio) with her ex, of course being S2 cast member Lance Hunter.