Since Nico had a vision revealing Jack's miraculous healing powers, on the following morning she accused Jack of healing his wounds miraculously. Jack quipped that he simply was a fast healer. In frustration she turned on her heel and stormed off. Her amulet wasn’t vibrating but that didn’t mean he wasn’t a treacherous pact-maker or parasitic demon. He chased after her and convinced her to return to their room so he could explain. He stated that he was human, had never made a pact, but was a witch capable of healing himself.
Since she also had regeneration and counted herself as human, she was open to the idea.
They returned to chat to Dr. Gruber who was going to retrieve the monster's brain from its corpse today. Since Nico didn’t have the time to get her posse together let alone to reach the leaper spawn point, she elected to go with them instead and hold off the monsters as they surgically removed the brain. They went out shortly before noon in the ambulance and she marvelled at how quickly one got from place to place in a car. The brain retrieval went relatively smoothly though they had to kill a bunch of feasting leapers to get at it.
Nico got her shiny silver sword out of it which seemed more durable and sharp than she had expected. Jack wasn't so keen on the blade. He argued that keeping monster bane weapons would only attract those monsters. Nico likes the idea of that. It'll cut down on travel time.
Her Infernal Visions about the sword that night involve a comic book Vampires versus Werewolves montage. Oddly enough she doesn’t take that too seriously. Werewolves, really? Bah humbug!
Nico convinced Jack to join her spawn-point killing posse and they went over to rouse a few more people over at Warehouse 13. She stayed the night, planning to leave in the morning, and during the night she was approached by a mysterious man wearing red-lensed glasses who asked for her assistance. He had a contract for her to kill a sewer-dwelling homicidal man who kept targeting the people at a mysterious settlement called St. Helios – a settlement which wasn't publicly known. If she took the job, he could give her a $1000 of Helios money and the right to enter and even dwell there. She accepted but told him to return in three days as she had another job to do first.
Nico gathered up half a dozen people at Warehouse 13 + cowboy + apprentice + Al who’d fled the ‘Skinless Man’ earlier + Jack and headed off to Bob’s Home. They then picked up the rest of the posse, slept the night and headed out to where the leaper generator allegedly laired. From what Dr. Gruber had told her earlier, there was some kind of plant bulb inside the building that was creating more of them. He had also warned her that if they struck any side of the plant it would summon all of the lurkers nearby.
So they sneak into this office building, working their way up through floors wrapped in purple roots, up staircases, across cubicles, taking out the odd leaper here and there until finally they reach a largely open section of floor with what looked like interwoven trunks and the first traces of leafy vines. Everyone was being very cautious as they went. Quiet and careful steps. Checking to ensure that they don't tread on any roots.
So naturally Al tripped over a root and hit the floor.
A big clump of plants in the middle of the large room quivered and large arachnid-like thing pulled free of the plant. It had four sharp pointy legs with a flexible armoured trunk instead of an abdomen which ended in a tooth maw. It took a lot of concentrated fire to even slow it down but it wasn't until Al redeemed himself by crawling underneath it and shooting lead all the way up and down its trunk before it died. Nico grabbed his feet and jerked him out from beneath it before it fell down on top of him.
Eventually they reached the top floor where a bulb sat upon a leafy nest, pulsing with slowly forming life.
Nico sets up five of the posse to guard the stairwell with the rest of the posse lined up near the rear wall to fire into the bulb on her count.
The plant reacted to the first bullets by extruding a green woman-like protuberance who stared at us in horror before causing a shiver of vines which unleashed a wave of long thorns at the posse. Moments later she animated (or perhaps simply controlled as she could have just been a part of the plant) the branches to attack and constrict the various posse members. Nico escapes this and keeps firing, finally destroying the bulb and causing the female plant figure to slump.
While the others do the nice thing of pulling each other from the branches that constrict them, she simply takes the machete another woman was holding and goes to hack the bulb apart to ensure that it's dead. She then takes the feet that had joined the woman to the bulb.
Why always the feet? Dunno. They’re a good size for the bag.
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