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chasseurdeloup · 24 days ago

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TIMING: Before the farm fire PARTIES: @chasseurdeloup & @bountyhaunter LOCATION: The 3 daggers SUMMARY: Kaden and Daiyu look at the bounties! They also communicate very well. CONTENT: Allusions to hunter upbringings.

Kaden hadn’t walked this path in a while but it felt just as familiar under his feet. The hunter bar was tucked away in a barn, hard to find if you didn’t know where to look, and had once been a small comfort to the ranger. He knew from the moment he stepped foot in Wicked’s Rest that his hunting habits weren’t going to match most others in town, but there was a camaraderie in a place like that all the same. It was something familiar in a way that felt safe enough to indulge in when he first got to town. The more connections he made, the less he went and he’d all but exiled himself from it when he learned what Monty was. It made him too anxious to know that any number of the patrons there wouldn’t hesitate to kill his partner without a second thought.

Funny to think the reason he was showing up now was on his behalf. Not that it was what Monty wanted or asked him to do, but Kaden couldn’t sit back and not investigate. Not after what happened with the animals. If there was any lead on who could be doing this shit, he couldn’t let it sit uninvestigated.

The ranger inhaled deeply, letting the breath fill his lungs and sit there a moment before huffing it out and swinging the doors open. The bar was unchanged from the last time he’d been there months and months ago. Couldn’t say he was surprised. Kaden knew he should probably go to the bar first, get a drink, make himself less suspicious, but he went straight to the bounty board. He had to know what was there, he had to know if someone in this very bar was trying to orchestrate the downfall of everything his partner had worked to build.

Kaden was so focused that the side of his arm collided into someone’s shoulder. “Sorry,” he muttered to the person seemingly headed in the same direction. Normally he’d step aside and let them go first but this was a matter of–

Hold on. He knew this person. Putain de merde. Just his fucking luck. “Hey, Daiyu,” he said, trying to position himself in a way that she couldn’t dart past him to the board before he could get a good look. “Good seeing you again. How’s it going? Less snow werewolves I’m assuming.”

—

She’d garnered a bit of a reputation with the people at the 3 Daggers by now. Daiyu was the short, fiery hunter that often hopped in with a duffel bag filled with some kind of proof of a bounty succeeded. Mark knew her order by heart at this point (it was easy, admittedly — she always wanted a coke, preferably cherry) and she’d found herself building a back-and-forth with a few of the regulars.

The bar was a nice reprieve in Wicked’s Rest, even if it brought some complicated feelings at the same time — but that seemed to go for everything Daiyu did anyway. Nothing was ever simple, no matter how much she tried to simplify it in her mind. Still, she kept coming back. To find new bounties, to collect rewards, to rub elbows with some hunters and to eat a bit after a long trek in the woods.

Today she needed a new challenge. And a cherry coke, of course, but that was something she’d already gotten a hold of. She was moving towards the bounty board now, yelling something over her shoulder at one of the few hunters her age in the bar, “I’ll hold you to that Anton! I’ll get a whiteboard up here and we’ll tally it and I’ll prove you once and for all that I’m better at hunting hellhounds.”

She was grinning as she moved over, but then an arm hit her in the shoulder. Daiyu angled her head up (she had to do that a lot — she missed Jade, her fellow short-gal hunter) and looked at Kaden. Her grin grew a little wider. “Better look out where you’re going, big guy,” she said, demonstratively rubbing her shoulder as if she hadn’t also bumped into him. It seemed he was heading to the board too, which made her feel a hint of frustration. Kaden had seemed like a good ranger, and she really didn’t need the competition.

“Oh, totally awesome, with me. Snow werewolf season has ended, but I’m gunning for some pollen monsters next. Like a pollen lamia or siren or something, could be cool,” she said, speaking rapidly. Kaden was very tall and built, so she couldn’t catch any sight of the board. “Don’t see you around here much. Nice to see you though — you doing good as well?” She tried to look past him, but couldn’t. “Gonna have a try at killing Flappin Flann’?” It was one of her life goals. She hated the idea of Kaden succeeding where she hadn’t yet, and not just because he was taller than her. “It’s impossible, man.”

—

For how short she was in comparison, it was still hard to block her from the board without being obvious. Kaden didn’t want to dodge left and right with every crane of her neck and tip his hand. Not without knowing a little more about her first. “Pollen monsters?” he asked, brow raised, wondering if she was joking or not. Sure it sounded implausible but that didn’t mean shit in Wicked’s Rest. He never thought he’d see a snow werewolf either so who was to say a fucking pollen siren wasn’t on the table. “Going to hope that remains theoretical. I don’t want to keep fucking sneezing while trying to stab something. Sounds like hell.”

Kaden tried to get a closer look at what was on the board, eyes skimming frantically for anything about zombies, gatlin fields, a farm, anything at all. Right, he should probably try to be casual and not a panicked goddamn mess. He took a breath and looked back at Daiyu. “Yeah, I don’t get out much anymore. Guess I’m boring like that. Or something. But fine, I’ve been fine. Really fine.” He hadn’t nearly died and then watched as half the farm animals and Prickly Pears got slaughtered on the same night. Not at all. He was fine. Which is why he was so eager to find any listings that might be of interest. Because he was fine.

“Flapping what?” He snapped his head to look at her, almost forgetting that they were in a conversation. “What’s that? Is it undead?” Putain, that was stupid to ask. They were both rangers. Not that he didn’t hunt outside of his specialty often enough and he had to assume she did as well, especially if she survived off of bounties. “I mean, not that it– I just hadn’t heard of it before so figured it might not be a beast. All that.”

—

“Oh, yeah,” she said, nodding, “Totally theoretical, but like, not entirely implausible, am I right? We’ve had snow monsters, so they’re absolutely next.” She turned towards the other ranger a little so she could more easily talk to him, even though he was much too tall to stand next to comfortably. Daiyu grinned regardless. “You know, I’ve heard that being allergic to pollen is just a character deficit. I personally would not sneeze once when confronted with a pollen monster, because I’m built better.”

It seemed Kaden was desperate for a bounty, which would be understandable if it weren’t for the fact that he had a proper job and everything. “Eh, not going out doesn’t make you boring. I don’t count this as going out, anyway, though I guess stuff can get pretty heated and shit here when the hour’s late.” She shrugged. “But cool, glad that you’re doing fine.” Though she didn’t know Kaden very well, he seemed like an alright bloke and a good hunter. Daiyu didn’t want him to be doing bad or whatever. Just common courtesy.

She stared at him for a moment, raising a brow, “Bro.” She turned toward the board, scanning it quickly before pointing up and jumping to tap one of the postings. “Squonk. Big fucking squonk. It’s my life goal to cash this bounty. It’s been here since I’ve been here, apparently for a long fucking time … how d’you not know about Flappy? Notorious creature, that one.” She scrunched her face up. “Gets people trapped in its flaps and all. Not at all like –” She probably shouldn’t mention that she had a pet squonk now, so she redirected her sentence. “– most other squonks.”

—

“I’m going to hope they stay theoretical in that ca— Hey!” Kaden spun to face her. Was she calling him deficient? “It’s not a character deficit. Or defect. It’s just…” Right, what was it? “I don’t know, genetics or something.” Then again, couldn’t allergies be treated or something? He thought he’d heard something about shots from someone. Probably other hunters talking about if they could build up immunity to other kinds of monsters if they treated them like allergy shots. Kaden was pretty sure that experiment failed, come to think of it. “You’re not built better, you can barely even see the board.”

That didn’t stop her from jumping up to point out the listing for Flappy. If he was feeling generous, he would have complimented her on it. Instead, he crossed his arms as he listened to her. He expected a harrowing tale passed down by some pissed off hunter years ago. He didn’t expect it to be—

“A squonk?” The word practically stuck on the lump in his throat. It had been a long time since Kaden thought about squonks. A very long time. He tried to keep the word “wrinkles” from floating to the front of his mind, but it was impossible to suppress. The memory pushed its way to the forefront without permission every damn time. He shook away the image of the knife slicing through wrinkled flesh and the sounds of pitiful squealing, opting instead to get a better look at the bounty in question.

It really was for a fucking squonk of all things. “Wait, you’re telling me a squonk is a notorious threat? A squonk.” He repeated it like it was something one of them didn’t understand about this exchange. “You know, a squonk. The wr— flappy dog looking monsters that can barely harm a fly? They just cry all the time. The worst they can do to you is get you a little soggy and salty. How the hell are people getting caught in its flaps?” No matter how many times he read it over and tried to make it make sense, it just didn’t seem right.

Kaden rubbed a palm down his face. “Someone is really trying to kill an innocen— harmless squonk? Really? Putain de merde, the hunters around here clearly need to get a hobby. There’s way more dangerous game to go after for fucks sake.” Was he really going to have to find this thing to try and protect it from the bounty hunters in the area?

Right. He caught a glance of Daiyu and turned to look at her properly. Would he have to protect it from her? “You haven’t tried to go after him, have you? I mean, have you seen him?”

—

“Bad genetics are just a character deficit,” Daiyu said, looking up at him with a challenging expression. It was typical hunter talk — or rather, it was typical Volkov talk, though she lacked the insight to realize that. To think herself somehow above other rangers for something like a certain surname had been instilled in her from a young age, and even though she was good at breaking things, breaking that habit had yet prove unsuccessful. “I don’t need to be taller to read what’s on the board. You’re just absurdly tall.”

She took in Kaden’s reaction with a bit of surprise, noting the way he wasn’t aware of the threat this particular squonk posted and how he called it innocent. Fries was a harmless squonk, mostly — the creature was definitely doing some kind of water damage to the hardwood floors of her rented cabin, though.

“Yes, I know what a squonk is, and I’m telling you — this one is not like the others. It’s like …” She frowned for a moment. “What King Kong is to gorillas, you know? And man, that must be a horrible way to go. Just getting stuck in those sticky, wet flaps and slowly suffocating. I’d prefer to get mauled for sure.” It was the end that befit a ranger and Daiyu was often surprised it hadn’t happened yet. Her body wore the proof that it, too, was surprised. “It’s far from harmless, though. People died, Kaden.”

She didn’t seem particularly moved by the people who had died as she said it, perhaps because it was all a little ludicrous. Or because she’d never really been raised to be a hunter driven by the deaths of innocents. “Besides, what kinda hobby do you suggest I get?” She gave him a glance, wondering what he’d come up with. Daiyu would like a hobby, but none seemed to fit her. Unless owning a dog was a hobby.

At his question, she shook her head. “Nope. Super elusive, that one. I have tried, you know, but I can’t find him! Anyway — if you’re not going after him, what are you looking for today?”

—

“Guess that makes you full of character deficits, then,” Kaden shot back. “You’d have to be full of them if you’re this absurdly short.” He knew full well she wasn’t that short but years of banter between himself and Keira had found its way into the conversation with Daiyu seamlessly. It prickled at his skin, whatever the feeling was, uncomfortable and comfortingly familiar at the same time.

All he could do was blink in response to the description of the giant squonk. It was hard to imagine any of them as dangerous creatures but the present picture being painted was unquestionably horrifying. Suffocation by squonk wasn’t an ideal way to die, he couldn’t argue that one. “King Kong just wanted to be left alone and wouldn’t have killed anyone if people had managed that much.” He was far from a movie buff but he was pretty sure that was the gist of the King Kong story. “Probably the same for the squonk. People wouldn’t die if they left it alone. Can’t suffocate you if you don’t get near it.” Sounded sensible enough to him.

“I don’t know. Running? Knitting? Gardening? I don’t fucking know what you like to do.” Hobbies had hardly been encouraged growing up and he had to assume it was similar for her. Hunters and all. There was never any extra time to fill that couldn’t be filled with training or hunting. Something useful. It was hard to shake that inclination, even now. “I don’t know but I heard they’re good for you. Hobbies.” He shrugged, not sure he’d mastered those on his own, yet.

“Me?” There was no reason for Kaden to be shaken by the question and yet he found himself rubbing the back of his neck and shuffling his weight from one foot to the other. “Oh, uh, nothing in particular. Just seeing if there was anything about a farm.” He cleared his throat, unsure if he was saying too much. How much should he trust her? He wasn’t sure but he couldn’t pass up the opportunity for info, either. It was why he was here. “Or undead. Which isn’t— I mean, ranger but there were some complaints to animal control and I wanted to see if there was some overlap here. You know. See if it was more supernatural than animals.” Very convincing. Surely.

—

“Hey!” Her voice was like a burst from her body, a shot through the air. One finger pressed into Kaden, “Shortness is no character deficit. Just means I don’t need to take up as much space to make an impression.” And leave impressions, that Daiyu tended to do. She gave a glower to Kaden to punctuate her point, which was a comeback she had made many times before. People loved to hold her shortness over her head (literally) and so she had had practice.

“Okay, the metaphor doesn’t go that far. I’m telling you, it’s a problem. People aren’t smart enough not to get close, so what?” Daiyu felt a kind of moral superiority that was rare to her. She wasn’t even sure if she felt any type of way about this or if she just wanted to win the argument, though. “They deserve to die just because they’re a little foolish and curious? Tsk.” Hunters were supposed to have some kind of purpose to protect others and though she barely ever felt like a protector, it was nice to pretend to be one now.

Her face scrunched up at the other’s suggestions, “I run plenty. The rest of those sound bad.” She didn’t have the patience for knitting or gardening. Hobbies were a novel concept to her, especially those that lead to some kind of fostering or creation. The closest she came was trying to become better at bouldering and caring for her pet, but those were just things she did.“You sound very convinced of that fact.”

She frowned a little at Kaden’s reaction, figuring that his suspiciousness was pointing towards him trying to hide something but not knowing what kind of thing it could be. Maybe he was after the big squonk after all. Daiyu scanned the board, “Nothing about a farm, plenty about undead,” she said, shrugging. “Don’t worry, sometimes I go after those not-dead ones too. You know, why limit yourself? Maybe that’s my hobby. Expanding my horizons. Anyway, done looking?” She gestured at the bar. “First round’s on me.”

#writing #wickedswriting #para #c: daiyu #bountyhaunter #bickering bounty board buddies

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