Chapter Text
Where time had gone Huntsman had no idea. There was both no time and too much time. Syntax had everything he needed to rebuild and reprogram the spider bots and he’d been doing everything he could to try to replicate the venom with little to no success, much to the increased frustration of the Spider Queen.
She wasn't upset at him, not really. Huntsman knew she was just taking out her frustration at the situation on the poor scientist. Had it been in the weeks before Huntsman would have brushed it off and told him to deal with it.
But now... he felt bad for him. He could tell Syntax was trying his best. The human turned demon wasn’t quite as harsh and clinical as he had pin pointed him as, that much had become clear when he had noticed Huntsman’s odd behavior. His behavior since he has started sneaking out to visit Sandy. He never pushed, never pried, but did make a point to remind him to charge his communicator and to message him on the nights he was out.
Huntsman wasn’t stupid. He knew that Syntax knew he was lying. There was no need to go out and search for materials or do more recon now, the scientist knew that. But he never pushed, never yelled at him to stay and help (though that was probably because he knew that this stuff was not Huntsman’s line of specialty), never prodded about exactly where he went.
Though he had to know by now.
He’d pointed out the smell of motor oil and tea clinging to his clothes once, when they were alone. The cat fur and nip that has stuck to the edges of his undershirt another day. The saltwater that made his hair stick awkwardly to his face and lingered in the air yet another. Huntsman realized over a week into his nightly visits that there was a GPS built into in his communicator.
Syntax wasn’t stupid either. He knew Huntsman was visiting Sandy. He had to have. Huntsman did not trust him to not have turned on that GPS remotely on that first night to learn where he was.
So why stay quiet?
And why was Huntsman thinking these things, things he wouldn’t have thought weeks ago had he been doing something similar in other circumstances?
... he knew why... and it had to do with where he was. And who had been slowly starting to make him look at others with a more critical eye outside the hunt.
He let these thoughts roll around in his head, thoughts he has pushed down and down and farther down until over the course of the last 18 days, 2 and a half weeks and nearly a month since he stole the Crimson Jimsonweed petal from Sandy and the other reached out a hand in kind, until this moment.
It was just past 2:30 in the morning. Huntsman was laying on Sandy’s couch, only the third time he had stayed since that first late night, the other having gone to bed himself. And that blue cat with the matching mohawk was sitting on his chest.
“Get off me,” he hissed, only to be met with a low hiss from the feline. Not a warning or a threat, more a rebuttal to his own. Mo, he knew his name was, and he was the favored cat of Sandy. Always with him, on his shoulder or somewhere nearby. A smart and feisty little thing. He simply stared at the spider demon, moving to sit more firmly on his chest with a thump of his tail and a low purr. “Do not give me that look, cat. Or the purr. That cute act is all just a lie, I know you don’t like me being here.”
Mo did not reply, as he was simply a cat. But he blinked slowly at Huntsman, something Sandy told him cats only did with people they trusted not to hurt them, and he narrowed his gaze at the cat in suspicion.
“I’m getting mixed signals here,” he said, sighing as he sat up in defeat knowing he would not be resting any time soon with his racing thoughts. Instinctively, as he’d done this many times before with the other cats on the ship, he wrapped his arms around his stomach and let Mo slide into being held to his chest. The cat seemed to smirk in victory, as if getting him up and messing with him was his plan all along. “You’re weird. But then again so am I. So is everything about this... whatever this is.”
He reaches up, scratching behind the oddly colored cat’s ears and earned no reaction aside from the continued stare of the cat.
“Don’t think I haven’t noticed that you watch me every time I come over,” he continued, stopping his scratching before roughly picking him up and holding him out across from him to glare at the cat. “How you always sit where you can watch me, are constantly glaring at me and growling when I get too close to your owner. How you just don’t trust me even though I haven’t done anything to you or him since that time on the mountain. But why would you trust me anyway, I just showed up one day in your house after we attacked you on New Years so... I can’t really blame you...”
He frowned, putting the cat down far more gently than he had held him up. He rubbed his face, looking down at the communicator that he wore with a sigh.
“... everything we did on the Lunar New Year was a mistake,” he muttered to himself, grazing the communicator with a claw. “I never asked any questions. Just went along with what my Queen asked of me. If I had asked something, anything, maybe she wouldn’t have accepted that spirit’s help with her plan. I was her advisor until Syntax came along, I should have said something! I’m supposed to be a hunter but I couldn’t even realize we were the ones being hunted until it was too late!”
This seemed to catch Mo’s attention. The smirk on the cat’s face faded into something of confusion, if that was possible for a cat, and he took a step forward and placed a paw on Huntsman’s leg and mewed up at him.
The spider demon barely reacted, not pushing Mo away like he normally would.
“If I had said anything Syntax would probably still be human, I’d still be advisor, and we wouldn’t be scrambling like headless chickens trying to figure out what she’s planning on using us for! Or Syntax wouldn’t because for some reason I’m here, on this couch, instead of in our lair! I’m here running away from the problem, giving them the barest scraps of tech I weasel out of your owner with nice conversation and company for tea because... because what!?”
He growled, curling in on himself a bit as he bit down on one of his fingers in frustration. But the words kept coming, maybe it was because he hadn’t slept since the night before or maybe it was just a long time coming. Maybe being constantly somewhere he finally felt safe when he hadn’t realized how unsafe he felt in the lair over the last few months broke down his walls that he spent so long building up. Maybe the talking he’d done with Sandy did it.
Or maybe there was no reason aside from him feeling safe ranting at a cat.
“I came for help at first but I didn’t need to keep coming. But I have every day and I know why but I just-I can’t! I can’t keep coming here every day like this, we’re running out of time! But I don’t want to go back, not with her there. But I have to, my Queen and Goliath and Syntax the smarmy bastard are there without me and I just... I can’t do this even though Sandy says I can. I’m...”
“Scared,” Sandy’s voice came from the nearby doorway, startling the spider demon from his ranting and making him realize that at some point Mo had actually crawled into his lap and was pawing at his hand.
“How long have you been standing there?” Huntsman asked in horror, not knowing how he could have possibly managed to miss the large form of the blue demon just. Standing there.
“Long enough,” he said softly, coming over and grabbing Huntsman’s wrist with the gentlest grip he could manage and pulling it away to inspect the bite he had inflicted on himself. “Huntsman, you-”
A soft bing rang through the air, the text notification from his communicator, breaking the tension between the two as Huntsman pulled his arm back to check it quickly.
‘Huntsman, Spider Queen is demanding your presence. She is getting angry. If you are awake you must return at once. Immediately, if possible.’
Another one came in, typed so fast he could barely finish reading the first.
‘Goliath is getting worried about her. Scared. She’s angrier than I’ve seen her since the festival and won’t listen to us. We need you here.’
And another.
‘I need you back here. Please come back. Please.’
Please...
In all the time Huntsman had known Syntax the other had never said that word without being condescending... but something about these texts... and the timing...
“Something’s wrong,” he said to Sandy, standing quickly and dropping Mo onto the couch gently. “I have to go.”
“Home?” Sandy asked, reaching to grab Huntsman’s coat without another question.
“Yes,” he replied, realizing that... oddly, that felt like the wrong answer to him. Somehow. “Synta-”
“You don’t have to explain,” Sandy interrupted, pushing a small parcel into Huntsman’s hands. “Not if it slows you down. Go, it’s the piece you said your friend needed.”
“... thank you,” Huntsman said, after a short pause, feeling like he should have done more as he rushed out the door and into the warm dark of night.
He thought he heard Sandy’s phone ring as he left but couldn’t be certain.
~
“You keep going,” Huntsman said after a short pause, turning back in the direction they came. “Just in case. But I have something I want to check.”
“Uh, be careful!” Goliath yelled back as Huntsman broke out his mechanical legs and sprinted back toward where they left the mech.
He may not know the Monkie Kid well, but Sandy had told him enough about MK that he thought that maybe... maybe...
Maybe if he came clean to Spider Queen...
He thought he heard a distant yelp that almost sounded like Syntax.
When he had returned Huntsman had found that Syntax was telling the truth. Their Queen was working in a near frenzy, trying to rush through the building of their mech. Syntax was trying to explain to her that there was not enough time to complete it at the rate she was requesting without the venom, that even with the extra materials the bots had gathered with the tech Huntsman himself had proffered they weren’t fast enough.
Then the Monkie Kid had literally fallen into their lair.
Huntsman didn’t know why he was there. He knew that Sandy couldn’t have told him what they were doing, he knew the other wouldn’t do something like that now after all the time they had spent together. His only guess was that one of the things that the bots had grabbed for the mech had belonged to the young man.
He heard the sound of fighting, his Queen and the Monkie Kid yelling, and somewhere distantly... he thought he heard Goliath yell too.
He almost turned around, almost went back, but something kept him going.
Until he burst into their little hideaway in the lair, a flash of golden light and the Monkie Kid standing over his Queen laying on the ground with the mech head destroyed behind him. They didn’t see him, but he could hear them clearly.
“Haven’t you figured that out yet?” His Queen argued. “There’s no running from what she is!”
Whispers on the wind followed and in flash of more brilliant, powerful light, there she was.
“Spider Queen’s right,” the Lady Bone Demon, the Lady White Bone, The White Bone Spirit, agreed as she stood tall and imposing and terrifying above them all. “Destiny will always catch up.”
Huntsman didn’t know what she did. Something, clearly, as the Monkie Kid held his head in clear confusion and agony and backed away from her in fear as Spider Queen stepped between the two of them. And without thinking he rushed forward, moving to stand behind MK and glower at the possessed girl before the three of them.
“Ah,” LBD breathed with a smile, tilting her head playfully as she looked at Huntsman and drew the other’s attention to him. “I was wondering where the final unnecessary piece ran off to. No matter, captured or not you’re only an extra in this little game anyway.”
“You!” Spider Queen snapped, turning her attention back to LBD once her surprise at seeing Huntsman had worn off.”I should have taken you out the second you walked into my lair!” She turned to MK and Huntsman with a look the elder demon knew to be full of disguised fear of her own. “Both of you! RUN!”
It happened so fast. Lady Bone Demon did something and... and Syntax was there. And Goliath. But they weren’t, it wasn’t them, not as they were. Blue and white and cold and ghostly instead. His Queen lunged at them and LBD and his own survival instincts took over as he grabbed MK’s arm and RAN. He barely registered when the young man pulled away from him and golden light flashed and suddenly they were going up.
There was something gripping his shoulder, sharp and small and he realized that somehow, some way, MK had turned into a bird and was flying out of the sewers with Huntsman and a sign of some kind in either claw.
There was more blue, a brilliant flash from that shot up into the sky, and the two of them plus the sign crash landed onto a roof.
A roof with a pig demon, a young girl with green streaks in her hair, an oddly well dressed for bed attire man who looked at him with more recognition than the other two... and Sandy.
Sandy, who looked down at him and MK with a mixture of confusion and slowly dawning horror at where MK must have gone and what them being together must mean.
As the Spider Demon stood, slow and clumsy in his lack of sleep and the shakiness of adrenaline, he looked back to the young man who had pulled him out of harm’s way without a single question.
“We have some explaining to do, kid.”