The 14-year-old Asher Everton slid the patio door behind him closed slowly, listening as the screaming match inside slowly turned into muffled, unintelligible noise. The moment his hand left the handle, he felt the tension leave his shoulders. A breath he didn't know he was holding slipped out, and he turned towards the backyard.
Luckily, the lights outside weren't on, so he was able to trudge forward into the darkness. The grass grew longer, brushing against his calves. Once it felt like he was far away enough, he turned around, looking back at his house.
It stood like a welcoming fortress in an abyss of shadows, yet to Asher, he barely felt like going back. He sighed, turning his head upwards, towards the stars. With neighbors so far away, and no streetlights, the light pollution wasn't too bad— he could actually see the stars here. He tried to patch together the Big Dipper, the dog ones, the zodiac signs…
Eventually, he just tried to make his own— and he found a perfect fit. Ten stars, perfectly spread apart to be in the shape of a star, if you were to connect them all in just the right way. For the first time in days, he smiled a bit. When Asher felt it, he closed his eyes, letting the moment last before it eventually died down…
And when it did, he opened his eyes, looking up at his constellation, and… there was another star. Right in the center, an extra, an eleventh. It seemed to shine so much brighter than the others… and it was bigger, too.
He blinked, and the star grew. For a moment, Asher thought it could be a shooting star, so he made a wish, probably for something silly.
And the star got closer still.
On the night of August 8th, 2023, a red sedan came cruising into the rarely-visited town of Stonefalls, Wisconsin. The driver-side window slowly rolled down, and the driver, Iris, flicked a cigarette butt out onto the road.
She felt it in the air, the way it pushed against her, even when the car was completely stopped. The way she had to breathe deeply now, to force it down into her lungs. This job wasn't gonna be easy.
Iris pulled off the road into a gas station, setting up the pump before reaching for her cigarettes. She grabbed one from the carton, letting it hang between her lips, and almost bought out her lighter before she remembered where she was.
Letting out a little grumble, she reached for the Supernatural Affairs Union file instead. The Everton family had completely disappeared, cars still in the driveway, nothing of note missing from the house. The only neighbors were almost two miles away. Cops couldn't figure it out, so they threw up their hands— just gave up. Iris felt her eye twitch a little. Of course they fuckin' gave up.
After a few days of sitting in the national database, an SAU insider flagged the case. In this day and age, disappearances usually have more… supernatural meaning behind them. Something most people just weren't equipped to handle.
Iris flipped a few pages forward. From what she could tell, the Everton family wasn't doing too hot. A local priest testified that they'd been having marriage troubles— counseling with the church. Their kid, Asher, never seemed to have much energy.
The original detectives thought it could have been a murder-suicide or something, but that just didn't sit right with them. Besides, they'd searched the entire town ten times over. They were just gone, and if they were dead, they didn't leave any bodies behind.
But the house was still there. If there were any leads, Iris would find them there. So when she heard the gas pump click, she paid and started up the car, finally lighting the cigarette that had been hanging in her mouth before turning onto the street.
Almost 20 minutes later, Iris parked in the Everton's driveway, running over a bit of hastily placed crime scene tape to get there. She locked her cigs away in the glovebox— smoking on the job had gotten her in trouble before.
Sighing, she got out of the car and popped the trunk, retrieving a red cardboard carton from inside. Opening it up, she looked at the red paste inside, and was about to dip her fingers inside, when she stopped.
Iris set the carton down. She wouldn't need it. Instead, she turned her attention to the true tools of her trade. For the basics of her kit, she liked to go with a standard polaroid camera around her neck, and a flashlight and a small knife on her belt… but otherwise, she went by intuition.
Her fingers hovered over her shotgun for a moment, before she nodded her head. Instead, she reached for the fireaxe. The red paint on the handle had almost completely chipped away, and it was pretty dull… but still heavy enough to do some damage.
She thought about bringing something else, one of her holier items, maybe, but for some reason, she had a conviction. She wasn't going to be attacked by anything incorporeal in nature. But she'd be attacked— Iris always seemed to bring trouble wherever she went. Perhaps any threats could just tell she was coming for them and lashed out in fear.
…that's what the nerds at the SAU liked to think, at least. Iris would always chalk it up to luck.
So, trusting in her luck once more, she heaved the fireax over her shoulder, and stepped towards the house, looking up at it. It was around three stories tall, with a rustic vibe. The kind of house that could have entire rooms lost between the folds of its blueprints. The Stonefalls Police Department didn't have much experience beyond dealing with the occasional traffic violation or teenage brawl— they probably missed something. Iris' eyes narrowed. Cops would always miss something.
She knocked on the door once, then twice. After a pause, she went for the doorknob, only to find it unlocked.
Before she could feel any amount of surprise at this fact, something brushed the back of her neck.
In the span of a millisecond, Iris contemplated. Perhaps she'd met her match this time— finally gotten unlucky. Plenty of hunters never come back from jobs, it was about time that she joined them. But in that same moment, her muscles screamed, reminding her of her practice, her whole life, all of the threats she'd previously survived.
Instinct.
Iris spun back, swinging her fireax downwards with all of the force she could muster.
She felt the shrill echoes of a scream in her eardrums, the splattering of something oily onto her face, the slick glide of the ax through something resembling flesh. Then, she saw it: some kind of humanoid, about five feet tall, with ultramarine skin. It was falling backwards, gripping its neck.
For a moment, Iris pitied it. But that thought was quickly pushed away— she refused to look it in the eyes. She just watched it fall, and knew she couldn't give it the chance to get back up.
When Iris was hunting, she never held back. It felt wrong to not use every tool at her disposal, every bit of her strength. It could be the difference between her and them. But sometimes, her foe was just outmatched.
Like an old farmer slaughtering a chicken, she dashed to its side and swung her ax downwards, taking a chip out of its neck. And again. Again. Again. With each hit, taking out more and more lumps of blueish flesh, splintering the spinal cord inside. She paused for a moment, but the thing was still making noise— so she went back to chopping, bringing her ax down onto its body, onto its head, onto its limbs.
Eventually, it went still, but Iris didn't stop swinging. If she had been taking a logical approach, she could have simply been making sure it wasn't faking her out— playing dead.
Iris was not taking a logical approach.
But after a few more minutes, she finally stopped, stepping back as she gasped for air. She didn't want to look at it, at the corpse. She had an idea of what was coming.
She heard its ribcage cracking, like it was being torn apart. Then, a hole appeared on its abdomen, and a viscous, purple fluid came oozing out. When it dribbled onto the ground, it bounced a few times before hardening into a little pyramid, dazzling in the darkness.
Iris took a deep breath. As she fetched the pyramid, zipping it into a metallic SAU Artefact Pouch, she couldn't help but see the corpse's body change. Its skin went from a deep blue, to a pastel, to… tan.
She snapped her head away, marching back towards her car, where she tossed her stuff in the trunk, got in the driver's seat, and pulled out a radio. "Iris, SAU Hunter 105. I've got an update on the Everton case. I need a cleanup team at their address. There's one, uh…"
Iris looked towards the corpse.
"One body. Got infected by a Color. Must've been waiting for someone to be alone around here. Probably got his family, too. I'll be going to the Wisconsin branch soon to drop off the stone."
There were a few more things to report, but Iris gulped, setting down the receiver. She couldn't take her eyes off of it— off of him. After a few minutes, she felt an indescribable rage towards the sky.
All the things she has to deal with— mythical beasts picking off townsfolk, malignant ghosts in elementary schools, freak scientists wandering the streets— and now, space itself turning teenagers into monsters!
After she managed to calm down a bit, she felt like laughing. She just couldn't catch a break, could she?
Taking one more glance towards the house, towards the poor kid bleeding out on the front lawn, Iris sighed.
She couldn't… but it's not like anyone else could either.
So Iris drove off, knowing she'd be hunting until the day she died.