Trail 47: The Morning After A Nightmare

--- Jon ---

He heard his door opening and half opened his eyes to see his mother peeking through.

“Ma?” He blinked drowsily.

“How’re you feeling kiddo?” His ma asked stepping into the room. “Not like you to call in like you did.”

“I know just… tired this morning… feeling better but-” He yawned before running a hand down his face. “Still not a hundred percent.”

“Yeah, downside of people who never get sick. When you finally do it usually puts you down hard.” His ma nodded in understanding as she put a hand to her forehead before putting it to his. “Well at the very least you’re not running a fever, so that’s a good sign. You’re still looking a little pale and have rings around your eyes though.”

“What time is it?” He frowned, knowing he hadn’t gotten to bed until almost nine.

“A little after noon.” His ma answered. “Just got off work and figured I’d see how you’re feeling.”

“Tired…” He admitted, because even if he could get up and force himself to keep moving that didn’t mean it would be a pleasant experience. (Especially not after a night full of adrenaline highs and lows.)

“Yeah, you look it.” His Ma smirked, running a hand through his hair. “You hungry? I can probably scrounge something up before I crash.”

“Little bit.” He shrugged before giving her a look. “Sure you don’t want me to cook?”

“You’re sick, it’s my job to take care of you when you’re out of it kiddo.” His Ma reminded him. “Besides, even if I can’t cook like you, I can still open a can and work a microwave.”

“Can still burn it in the microwave too.” He reminded her as he tried to roll out of bed.

His ma snorted as she kept him from getting up. “Don’t be stubborn.”

“But I’m your son.”

“Ha! That you are kid.”

---

With little else to do, and his Ma refusing to let him leave the house while he was still ‘sick’ -(And him refusing to ignore her when she was worried about him.)- he decided to restock the molotovs he’d burned through the night prior, because while he still had a few left he was pretty sure he was going to be using them before Halloween was over.

(Hmm, starting to run low on bottles.) He frowned, shifting through his backpack.

That had been the one advantage of the quartermaster’s drinking habits, he’d had a small mountain of bottles always ready to be used to make a molotov or two.

(Going to have to look into finding a place to get more bottles soon.)

Scene Consequences

-Jon has restocked his supply of Molotovs.

--Jon Currently Has:

---(Potions: (3 +1)=4 + 1Remaining=5) Regular Molotovs Counters and (Potions: (3+1)/2=2) Special Molotovs Counters.

---

“You know I feel like I’m being taken advantage of here.” Travis told him.

“Sorry about that.” He apologized, knowing that this was more his fault than anything else.

“Personally I’m glad they liked our cooking.” Daisy smiled as they watched a gorged Pix laying on top of an equally gorged Melon, both having eaten anything and everything they’d put in front of them.

Which likely wouldn’t have been too much of an issue if Melon hadn’t proceeded to summon a small horde of Flufflepuffs who also ate anything put in front of them. (And like Daisy said it’d be rude to feed only one Flufflepuff when so many were hungry.)

“Yeah, I guess but they didn’t exactly leave us any to take home.” Travis pointed out. “What’s more we’re going to need to restock everything after feeding so many.”

“True…” Daisy nodded with a frown. “Guy is going to be disappointed I didn’t make him any snack cakes like I promised.”

“Well at least the big lug will just be disappointed, Sarah is going to hold me at spellpoint until I feed her sugar addiction.” Travis sighed, rubbing the back of his head. “Cooking is supposed to be my de-stresser, not a source of stress.”

“Again… sorry.” He apologized once more.

“Don’t be.” Travis frowned at him. “It’s not your fault my… roommate can be a child about this kind of thing. Besides once I figure out how to work this potion of yours into their meals it’ll make things significantly easier to keep us going after our rougher jobs.”

“Oh, definitely.” Daisy clapped in agreement. “Even if Guy and I aren’t Arcane I’m sure this potion you showed us will come in handy. Coming up with something like this was ingenious!”

“Uh, not really.” He shook his head. “The basic formula is one I found in this book my, um, mentor gave me. The only thing I really figured out was how to make it work with Pix’s affinities given how I was missing the actual magic the potion needed.”

“And finding work arounds like that is the mark of a good practitioner.” Travis assured him. “Since we don’t have the same internal magic of Arcane we’ve got to use our knowledge of how magic works and make it work for us rather than just brute forcing it. Trust me kid, figuring out how to make something work as needed is even more important than making it work as intended.”

“Oh, definitely.” Daisy nodded in agreement. “For instance I only know a few spells but I’ve figured out that by using the right mix of demon flesh, blood, and bones you can make those spells do all sorts of fun things to the demons in question!”

“Right, and I’d just finished repressing the time you carved a spell circuit into a Creep to make the rest explode.” Travis laughed hollowly before whispering. “After they screamed in agony for five minutes.”

(Huh, I wonder if I can get her to teach me that spell?)

Scene Consequences

-Gained 1XP to Cooking, Occult, and Potions.

--Currently: Cooking Lv. 9 (8/20), Occult Lv. 7 (14/16) and Potions Lv. 7 (3/16)

-Reset Pix’s potion counter to 3 Turns before her next potion.

-A/N: We would’ve gotten a few actual ‘potion counters’ for Pix from this but Melon and her pile o’ fluff ate all of them. (Except for the one Pix fought tooth and nail for.)

---

“Hey, uh, Audrey I had a question I was hoping you can answer.” He told the leader of the magic club, remembering that of the Southside Coven she was the one to actually possess a Hunter’s license.

“Oh, and what question is that?” Audrey asked, as she continued to take care of one of her plants.

“Um, you were at that meeting for hunting the Halloween Creeps, right?” He actually remembered her being there, but he felt he should ease into the actual topic he wanted to talk about.

“Yeah, and so were you.” Audrey nodded with an amused smirk as she slowly removed a flower bud from her plant.

“Right…” He nervously rubbed at the back of his neck. “So, uh, those Creep things… How exactly do you Hunters collect those bounties?”

“Oh?” Audrey gave him an interested look. “Are you interested in hunting a couple of them? Because I’m sure Val would love to go on a hunt with you sometime.”

He felt that was a fib on her part to try and make them work through the issue that had sprouted from him attacking her in the middle of her duel due to his own misunderstanding of the situation. (But I can’t really blame her for trying to make her friends get along.)

“Er, sort of?” He frowned, still not entirely comfortable with bringing his more… violent hobbies up in conversation with someone not from Blackwell. “There was this… thing crawling on the walls of my apartment the other night, and with it looking like one of the monsters from the dossier… I may have… dealt with it.” He grimaced.

Audrey blinked apparently having not been expecting that. “Huh… uh, what did you do with the uh, corpse?”

“I left it in one of the storm drains, and it’s probably still sitting there.” He answered figuring that was technically the truth.

“Okay… that’s good.” Audrey told him before shaking her head. “The uh, the body would’ve broken down if you left it in the sunlight, and you need the body to confirm a kill. Something about someone once taking a single Creep corpse and repairing it to keep collecting bounties on the one Creep.”

“Hmm, that’s… bad.” He frowned, the beast in his head immediatly disliking the idea of a (fake hunter).

“Yeah, well, to collect the bounty you have to call Sanctuary or the Heroes’ Guild and hand the corpse over to them at which point they’ll take your information and mark you down for payout at the end of this whole mess.” Audrey elaborated before tilting her head. “That said, you probably won’t get the full bounty since you don’t have a Hunter’s License.”

“Why not?” He didn’t actually care all that much, since he hadn’t killed the Creeps for money so much as to get them off of the streets, but it seemed like something it’d be useful to know about given how things kept going for him.

“To maintain a Hunter’s License you need a bunch of secondary things such as insurance in case someone or something gets hurt and an understanding of the city’s proper channels to report everything in case a situation escalates.” The other teen explained. “If you’ve got these you get the full bounty, if you don’t you get about a third of it. The idea being that if you can essentially double if not triple your money with a few safety precautions and a license, people are more likely to follow them rather than just go Creep hunting without knowing what they’re getting themselves into and in turn getting themselves killed.”

“I see…” He nodded in understanding, seeing how if greed beat out a person’s survival instincts then it might also force them to use said survival instincts.

“Though if you want there may be a slight loophole you could use to get, not the whole bounty but definitely more of it.” Audrey told him.

“What loophole?” He asked.

“Well technically the Bounty needs to be claimed by someone with a Hunter’s license to recieve the whole bounty, but that doesn’t mean the person who killed the Creep actually needs said license.” Audrey gave him a look.

“Meaning if you claim the bounty we’ll split the full amount.” He figured, guessing that that was where she was leading him.

“Yep.” Audrey nodded before raising a finger as if something just occured to her. “Though if you plan on hunting anymore of these Creeps than just this one, you’ll probably need to register as an affiliate of my license. Which is fairly easy enough, it’s just that if they recognize a pattern in the dead Creeps that doesn’t fit me or my other affiliates -that’s Val and Arty by the way- then I could lose my license which would screw all of us over.”

“I wouldn’t want to do that.” He admitted, knowing that he was still on shaky ground with both Val and Artemis himself.

“Like I said, registering is easy enough.” Audrey shrugged. “Won’t even take a whole hour, and you can make a fair bit of money off hunting like this.”

(Maybe, but it’ll also mean Sanctuary will have their eyes on me.) And if there was one thing he learned from his Ma when it came to the government, it was that you never wanted their attention if you could avoid it.

“Hey, I’m not trying to pressure you into anything.” Audrey told him raising both of her hands, having apparently mistaken his reluctance as being upset at her. “You’re free to do whatever, and like I said I can easily claim that bounty on the one Creep for you and then give you all of the money when the Haunt is over. Honestly, given how this my first year with the license even one or two extra Creeps will look a lot better on my resume in the long run.”

“I’ll, uh, I’ll consider it.” He promised, not really sure if the money was worth drawing attention to himself. (Especially given how many Creeps I killed the other night.)

Scene Consequences

-Jon can now claim his bounty or ask Audrey to claim it in his stead.

--Note: Jon does not have to claim all of his bounties.