Episode 17
Observation
The group continued plastering the Twin Cities with orange hunter posters and waiting for any response in their P.O. box. The next night, Arie, Charlotte, and Randy waited at the bus stop for the "hunter bus" to show up. They were the first ones to get on, but Steve (the driver) greeted them as if they were old friends. As they waited, a number of other hunters boarded and introduced themselves: John, a Martyr; Natalie, a Judge; Pam, a Redeemer; and Pete and Pete, two Visionaries who looked like bums. Their leader was an imperious woman named Lisa, who carried an implement that looked like a very large chopstick and said she was also a Judge. Lisa immediately made a negative impression on Charlotte by poking and prodding her with a chopstick, commenting on her missing left arm, and saying, "It's good to see that people are out there actually going on the hunt instead of just talking about it, even if they aren't always successful." Arie, however, found himself compelled by Lisa's presence and "kill them all, and let God sort them out" attitude toward the hunt.
When all the hunters had arrived, the meeting began. The group distributed the fliers Melba had made to a resoundingly positive response from the other hunters. But Arie, Charlotte, and Randy soon realized something they had never considered before: as groups of hunters went, theirs was relatively "soft" when it came to supernatural creatures. The hunters on the bus seemed to kill just about every monster they came across. That night, the major topic of conversation was a werewolf that was known to lurk in an alleyway near the U of M. Some members of Lisa's group thought it might have connections to some murders of homeless people that had been taking place in the area and were reporting on their efforts to look into things further. Randy volunteered to join the investigation, perhaps hoping to bring a different perspective to the group, and report back to them at their next meeting in two days. Lisa gave him permission, and after the meeting ended he convinced Arie and Charlotte to come with him to check it out.
After stopping at a grocery store to get turkey sandwiches and potato salad in the hopes of appeasing the beast with food, Charlotte drove Arie and Randy to the alley in question. They got out of the car and started looking around. Shortly afterwards, they saw a large, mangy dog approaching from the other end of the alley; Randy's Discern revealed it to be a supernatural creature. Charlotte set down the food and began talking to the dog in a futile attempt to befriend it. It only growled and began to slink away. Just as it was about to vanish from sight again, Randy stepped forward and unleashed his secret weapon—Insinuate. It was effective, perhaps a little too effective. The dog howled as if in pain and slammed itself into a wall, then ran away as fast as it could. The group soon lost track of it.
Just as the three hunters were about to go home and call it a night, Charlotte noticed something unusual: a man in a jogging suit running past the end of the alley, even though it was approximately 2 a.m. and long past the time for safe jogging. She pointed him out to the others, and Randy's still-active Discern revealed him to be a werewolf as well. As quietly as possible, the group began to trail him in Charlotte's car. They didn't have to follow him very far before they saw him jog up to the front door of Dana, Samantha, and Phil's dorm, open the door with a key, and go inside. It would appear they'd finally seen the werewolf the student hunters had claimed was living with them.
The next day, when the group shared what had happened with Melba, she became rather frustrated and reamed them out for going into a potentially dangerous situation so unprepared. Still, she agreed that the potential threat of the werewolf needed to be looked into, and that perhaps the best approach would be to establish a talking relationship with him now that Randy's abilities had opened that door. Toward this end, she began taking food to the alley every day and leaving it there. Though she never actually saw the werewolf, every day when she came to the alley the previous day's food would be gone.
That night, the group went out to dinner together, partially to celebrate their progress so far and partially to get everyone together to discuss what to do next. After the dinner meeting, Melba went home to cocoon with Paladin, and Charlotte and Randy spent time with Charlie, but Arie's night was just beginning. His views on the hunt had always been considerably more direct than those of his fellow hunters and ran towards kill or be killed, and nothing else. Meeting Lisa and her group had, he thought, opened his eyes to just how ineffectual his group's approach was, and he decided to take matters into his own hands. So he got into his GTO and started cruising around Uptown, looking for Haji. As luck would have it, it didn't take him long to catch sight of the vampire, climbing into a car with several other guys Arie thought he recognized as part of his gang. The car pulled away from the curb, and Arie tailed it for a long way, never once losing sight of it and (he thought) never once being seen.
After a long and convoluted drive, Haji's car pulled into the driveway into a nice house in a quiet, suburban neighborhood. He and his friends got out and entered the house. Shortly thereafter, Arie saw lights go on and heard music emerging from the house—the vampires were having a party. Parking nearby and taking his backpack (containing, as always, an Uzi and a pound of 'shrooms), Arie started looking for a good hiding spot close to the house. His plan was to wait until Haji came out, then open fire and take as many of them down as he could. He decided a clump of bushes would serve his purposes very well, got settled in, and waited.
Several hours passed uneventfully. No one entered or left the house. At one point, a large raven above Arie's head let out a squawk and flew away, but he didn't think anything of it at the time. But as the night wore on, something rather alarming happened: he began to get tired. Arie fought sleep as long as he could, but it was a losing battle. He soon dozed off, still hidden in the bushes with his arch-nemesis fully awake and only a few hundred feet away...