Gaia Trulove's Story

They were so slow. Every angle discussed, every feeling enunciated and fawned over. Gaia didn't want to be there anymore than anyone else - her heart beat to the sound of bass and techno, not this do-good prattle about changing a whole culture. Humans hate monsters. What's the big deal? Just hide yo' kids and yo' wife and no foul. No humans be gettin' into my crib. Perhaps these monsters had no way to hide themselves?

In truth, Gaia knew very little about her kind, abandoning her home at the age of 12 and joining the rebellious, hormonal youth on the dance floor. Her experiences with humanity had been unfriendly at worst and life-changing at best. In the awesome, open-your-eyes kind a way. Gaia had a lot to give to humanity and enjoyed doing so. If she took a little in return, so what? She had never gotten any complaints before.

Even though she usually had a strict no leadership policy, this here group had trouble wiping their own ass. Time to bust out the heavy duty baby wipes. "You all are being right pansies about this whole thing." her tone was fun-loving and mocking in one,"I mean, hell! I bet you all have trouble deciding which side of the bed to lay on." She smiled, a broken smile, asymmetric with several bent teeth. It always came off as a smirk even when Gaia meant to communicate empathy.

"You know what I'm gonna do? I'm gonna go on down there and I'm gonna pick one at random. Done! Brilliant, I know." She peered out at the monsters and found a couple of beauties in the mix. Maybe this whole shindig wouldn't be so bad after all. "It doesn't have to be so complicated, gents! We don't really have a choice in the matter, so stop your prattling and get on down to the nitty-gritty."

"We gonna adopt us a new pet!"

Alia rolled her eyes at Gaia's annoying, flamboyant outburst. She had been so nice and quiet the majority of the night, which was a nice reprieve from having to listen to the strange women for the past couple of weeks. But now, now she had to open up her big, and rather pretty (hey, she can appreciate something decent to look at), mouth, and spit out the thing that definitely takes the cake most naive thing said that night, which is saying something, considering the dream walker was in the room. 'Adopt us a new pet' ? Really? There is nothing pet-like about those killers. It was ludicrous- in fact, the only redeeming thing about it is that it stopped the dream walker with continuing her ‘joke’, or whatever it was. However, Alia recognized that right now, the quickest way to get this ridiculous thing done is to just get it over with and not argue with her supernatural ‘peers’ (if you could even call them that, as Alias’ years on this planet far outnumber theirs).


So instead of verbally destroying Gaia, like she so wanted to, Alia simply said, “While I think there are many other… better ways, I think that the dream walker and the mutt have a point in that we don’t have enough time to come up with a better plan then just choosing at random. So, I don’t know about the rest of you lot, but I’m going to waste as little time as humanly,” Alia smirked, “possible, and go down there and, like she,” Alia nodded towards Gaia, “so cleverly said, ‘get on down to the nitty-gritty’ and just choose already.” With that, Alia got up and led the way, heading toward the direction the dream walker had been going, scoffing at the memory of her ridiculous attempt at a 'joke'.

Anthony sighed when Gaia began to speak up. Really? She had to go on talking about the humans like they were pets? Had to insult her 'peers' at the same time when they tried to settle the matter civilly? He didn't much like the way she spoke to them but there was no use getting into a verbal debate over the terms and what not. It would get them no where and would lead to just aggravating everyone as if this situation wasn't stressful enough as it was. Well, it seemed like there was nothing to it but to do it. Oh man he hoped he picked a human that he could get along with. If he and his human couldn't get along... well the whole project would be fucked and they'd never get anywhere useful during their time together.

"I agree with Gaia and Alia then. Just picking our human partner seems like it would make things simple enough," he stated out loud.

Anthony followed Gaia and Alia down to where the humans were being kept and waited while Alia went second and picked her human. He didn't want to waste any time down here so he moved closer to the cell door and looked over the humans as he debated. He didn't want to grab one of the men. Men were far more stubborn in his opinion and harder to reach a tie with. Though it probably made him look weak, he had a much easier time getting to know women regardless of which gender he took on himself. He nibbled his lip and his eyes strayed to the pretty brunette.

"Well, I guess I'll go with her," he said and gave Nichole a nod, indicating to everyone else who he was choosing.

Ash had already left and was waiting for the others down amongst the cells for the others. She didn't really have a pen, it'd been part of the miniscule joke she'd made, so if they'd actually chosen to draw papers they were out of luck. Luckily, as they appeared, they seemed to have decided to just randomly pick and that actually worked well for her. It really did, she didn't want to leave it completely up to chance that she'd end up with someone that would actually make her want to kill them. It could prove amusing for certain others in the group, but useless when it came to convincing the Hunters of the innocence of Supernaturals. Then again, she often trusted her luck, and it often payed off for her. So, through the childish solution of 'Eenie-Meenie' running through her head, she came to one of the male hunters.

"I'll take him, then," she said, nodding in Artemis's (though she didn't yet know his name) direction. He'd seemed like one of the more spirited ones at the hearing before, "The apparent drop in such energy somewhat worried her as she studied him from outside of the bars, drops in spirit were not usually good. She'd seen such things lead to suicide, and no one needed that right now. Especially not with the job they were responsible for now.

---

Nathaniel had been opening his mouth to speak, most likely more words fueled by his coping mechanism. But that's when the Monsters began arriving, the first seeming to simply wait before others showed up. These were to be the ones "changing" their minds, whispering lies and orchestrating events to get into their heads. Then, they began picking them out, like picking kids for a team, or more like picking a toy to play with. He stayed silent, his usually nice enough gaze becoming an obvious glare.

Listen to them. Play friendly. Didn’t they know how dangerous it was to listen to monsters, even for a moment? Some creatures were just born with serpent tongues, meant to slither into the mind with pretty silver words that tarnish inside your head. Monsters could manipulate like no other, and Artemis wasn’t about to give them the chance.

But in his head, Artemis knew that Nicole and Jayde were right. Their best bet was to act the part, let the monsters think they were cooperative. He just couldn’t help it that, emotionally speaking, he couldn’t tolerate the thought. So he came up with a compromise. “I refuse,” the hunter said straight out, glowering at the ground. “It’s a good idea. You guys go ahead, but it’ll be suspicious if we’re all suddenly meek and open-minded. I’m just volunteering to be the bad guy.”

He wasn’t about to change his mind on this. It was a solid plan, if a little dangerous on his end, but it was what he felt most comfortable with. Besides, if he could make his teammates seem more cooperative in comparison, it would just give them a better chance to get out of this hellhole. Of course, these were just excuses to justify his careless actions – the thought of giving into these monsters was making him lose his cool – but if the others had anything to say on the matter, they didn’t get a chance, because the monsters started to filter in one by one.

Oh look. It was the one he couldn’t identify. The one that seemed so sickeningly human. He was disgusted to think of how many innocents it might have lured into false security with such an unassuming form. “I’ll take him, then,” it said with a nod towards him, and Artemis grew dark, narrowing his eyes. He had his gaze cast downwards – he knew better than to make eye contact with unidentified creatures. For all he knew, gorgons weren’t the only things that could turn people to stone with a stare. He stayed quiet and still, simply observing, waiting for any slips of information. Identifying this monster was top priority in order to stay alive.

Jayde looked up in surprise when a small group of supernatural entered their holding area- she would have thought that they were going to wait until tomorrow to start to engage with her group. Her surprise turned into confusion when one of them- a women with short hair and an abundance of tattoos over her arms- stepped out of the loose band of 'monsters' and went over to stand in front of her (well, as much as she could, considering there were long metal bars, and a good 6 feet of space between them). The woman looked her up and down and said confidently, “You look like you could be fun." What could the strange woman mean by that? However Jayde's befuddlement only grew as the woman (who had no visible supernatural characteristics) continued to convey her apparent interest in Jayde by adding "Fancy a romp out on the night?”

Jayde blushed slightly, both embarrassed by her being singled out, and the strange words coming out of the supernaturals mouth. Nonetheless, she knew she couldn't let anyone (including the person in front of her) know that she felt anything but distaste for the situation she was in. She cocked her head, and willed away her blush, responding with, "And what the hell do you mean by that? I'm not your toy, or something, and I'm not going to be fun." Jayde put as much contempt and loathing into the words as she could possibly muster, but realized that she might have stretched it a bit too far. Oh well. Too late to change her words now.

Gaia pursed her lips, "Ooo, touchy, touchy." She smiled then, all gums and teeth, an endearing goofiness that seemed out of character to Jayde. "It's gonna be a long 6 months, doll. You can either make it miserable or tolerable. I think you'll come to find that I'm not as bad as you're led to believe." Jayde simply shook her head, opting to not say anything. She still didn't know quite what the women was talking about, but decided to not make a fool of herself again by being too aggressive.

Ash waited then, watching her new responsibility with curiosity. Responsibility... funny. The only responsibility she'd ever really had in life since her family passed was herself. Now she had to suddenly try and ease the poisoned thoughts of this human's life teachings out of his mind, and educate him in the truth all Hunters seemed so oblivious to. Subconsciously leaning back on a wall, her gaze wandered and one of her left arm went to rest against her stomach while her other hand rested at her clavicle in thought. What exactly would happen to these humans, state-of-mind wise, if they were to realize all of their mistakes. They'd been murdering innocent (for the most part) creatures simply because some adults told them to and fed them age-old lies. What if they were overcome with grief and resentment? What if depression took place of the fire in their souls? What would saving their lives have done then, other than sentence them to another of self-loathing if they were emotionally and mentally strong enough to handle it. But of course... these were Hunters... she probably had nothing to worry about with them despite them trying to escape and/or kill the Supernaturals in their way.

Ash snapped out of her thoughts then, not wanting to go to much darker depths than that. She ate nightmares, dealt with them each time, she'd seen a lot of horrible things in both the Dream and Earth realms. But a young dreamwalker with a heart like hers could only take so much darkness. She slid down the wall now to sit on the floor, her gaze once again moving to her charge to visually analyze him. Around her age, dark haired, dark eyed, a glare of cold steel, and what seemed like an impregnable stubbornness. Yeah... yeah, this guy would be alright. With this uplifting thought, a small and nearly unnoticeable smile tugged the corners of her lips upwards.

Then realization came to her over why he might be avoiding eye contact with her now... many Supernatural's abilities could activate through eye contact. For example, a gorgon's very literal stony gaze, and her own kind... really those were the only two she could think of off the top of her head, but there were most definitely more. So, with a sigh, she reached into a front pocket and pulled out a pair of sunglasses before pushing herself up and towards the barred figures with the shades held toward, for lack of anything better to call him (due to not knowing his name), her Hunter.

"Here," she began, "I guess... you'd feel more comfortable with a barrier?" She shrugged and waited for whatever might happen. Acceptance would delight her, but she'd deal easily enough with rejection.