The ride in the van was uncomfortable to say the least. Melody had tried to get out 4 times. Every time she did, Hippolyta had become slightly more annoyed. Echo, on the other hand, couldn’t stop laughing her ass off. On Melody’s last attempt, she’d even helped her sneak out of the van by distracting Hippolyta. Melody was pretty sure that the only reason Echo was helping her at all was because she was certain Melody had no chance of escaping anyway.
After her fourth attempt though, Hippolyta had pointed her rapier at Melody and told her that if she tried it one more time she would cut some of the tendons in her legs so she couldn’t walk anymore. Melody stopped trying after that.
When the van finally stopped, she was quickly escorted out and was surprised to find them parked in front of ‘Defenders’ Donuts’, one of the biggest donut chains in the world. Echo walked up next to her and grinned at Melody’s look of confusion.
“By law, we’re not allowed to reveal the magical world to civvies, but since we need to interact with the mundane world on a regular basis, headquarters decided that a restaurant chain would help us hide in plain sight. It also makes ordering some of our more questionable necessities surprisingly easy.” Echo smirked and then motioned for Melody to follow her.
She was brought to the back of the store and was guided through a door that should have led outside, instead, the door opened to a comfortable office space about the size of the store itself. She was made to take a seat as the group of people who’d arrived to clean up the scene also came streaming through the door. The entire group seemed to consist of 15 people, all of them nearing their thirties except for Echo.
While Hippolyta started talking with Perseus just out of earshot, Echo brought her a box of donuts and some hot chocolate. “I don’t know what kind you like so I brought the most popular ones. Don’t worry about what happened, worst case scenario is we put you into a blank room and make you forget. Don’t think that’s what’s going to happen though. But hey, I’ll make sure that they treat you decently.” Echo gave her a big thumbs up and then she started sneaking closer to Hippolyta and Persues to listen.
Melody wanted to chuckle until she saw all the color draining from Echo’s face. Echo tripped and drew the attention of her sister. Hippolyta shook her head and looked at Melody darkly. “Now what do we do with you?”
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Uther observed Melody being chased by the ghoul expectantly. If the Hunters took too long to act, he would definitely step in but at the moment he deemed it unnecessary. This was a good experience to show her that the world of magic wasn’t just unicorns and rainbows. He was surprised when Melody pulled out a silver knife though. One that was made to be brittle and leave shards in the wound if it got heated up. That was Hunter’s equipment, and pretty rare equipment at that. The alloy used was a well-kept secret of the oldest hunter families.
Then he saw the youngest hunter take a shot with her bow, one that was definitely going to miss. Uther altered the movement of the wind slightly, redirecting the arrow into the ghoul’s eye. Then he lighted a cigarette and waited for the clean-up crew to arrive. He would step in the moment they took her into the blank room, making sure she felt indebted to him enough that it would be easy to make her agree to become his … To Uther’s surprise, they didn’t immediately put her in a blank room. In fact, as he looked more closely, they didn’t have one with them. As they forced her into one of the vans, Uther didn’t know what to think.
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Hippolyta really wasn’t ready for all the bullshit that was going to come for her. She’d known that this night was going to be a pain the moment she’d seen the knife the girl had taken out. And when she’d felt magic interfering with the flight of her sister’s arrow, she’d known for sure. The magic had been subtle enough that it hadn’t left a trace after it had fulfilled its purpose. The only person who lived here with that amount of skill was the Magus. And if there was one thing Hippolyta knew, it was that Magi meant bullshit and paperwork.
As her sister took care of the girl, Hippolyta looked at Perseus expectantly. He hadn’t been willing to explain why he had blacked her request for a blank room so she hoped he’d had a really, really good reason. “I couldn’t find anything on her Ma’am.” His voice trembled a bit, he was new and had only heard about her from the stories told at HQ. If not for his sound judgment and fighting skill, she’d have sent him back within a week of his arrival.
“So? When they’re civvies, we wipe their mind. I don’t see the problem here.” Perseus shook his head. “No, you misunderstand Ma’am, it’s not that she’s a civvie, it’s that as far as our systems are concerned, she doesn’t exist. I tried looking finding her via governmental channels but again, there’s nothing. As far as any systems are concerned, she isn’t real. Then I tried to find her on social media, and any device I tried to use just crashed. Which as far as I know, means that she has an informational barrier around her. An extremely powerful barrier.” Hippolyta started massaging her temples, she hated it when she was right about bullshit.
“I have two guesses where the barrier came from and either one is going to be a pain to deal with. Perseus, I need you to check the perimeter for Uther Pendragon.” Perseus’ face paled, and Echo tripped, drawing attention to the fact that she was eavesdropping. Perseus moved and Hippolyta walked up to Melody. “Now what do we do with you?”
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Catherine was getting worried. Melody should have been home 2 hours ago. When she looked at the phone tracker she’d installed on Melody’s phone, she cursed. Those bloody Hunters were going to ruin everything. She shivered at the thought of what would happen to her if Melody was ever truly hurt. ‘Best not to focus on that.’
She put on her coat and drove to their ‘regional office’. During the drive she cursed herself, she should have rejected the informational barrier, it was the only reason they’d take Melody with them instead of wiping her mind. But ever since that damned Magus had taken notice of her daughter, she’d felt the need to be more careful. If anyone realized what Melody was, Hestia protect them all. But she still had time, as long as she didn’t willingly become the old goat’s disciple then it’d all be fine. Catherine prayed she wasn’t too late.
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As Uther approached the donut shop, he couldn’t help but feel excited. He had been listening in and what had happened was even better than anything he could’ve hoped for. An informational barrier that even HE couldn’t feel? The girl just got more interesting by the second. Whoever was trying to hide her wasn’t doing a very good job at it though. It wasn’t that hard to remove the veritable stink of power washing of the girl but they’d been too late in doing that. The barrier had to have been placed after he’d found her, otherwise, he wouldn’t have been able to sense her potential. The Hunters obviously couldn’t feel the power cascading off her so it did hide her from humans and most probably also hid her from the nine arcanes’ gaze. Sadly, they hadn’t taken into account the almost magnetic pull the more animalistic of the supernatural races felt towards people with that much potential. It was like catnip to them.
The door swung open as Uther prepared to enter it and standing in front of him was a terrified man. “Bring me to the girl called Melody.”