• Once upon a time some nut thought he was first horsemen of the apocalypse. Seriously the moron thought he was Pestilence and that his purpose in life was to spread the plague. Now normally he'd just be locked in a padded cell and we'd all wish him the best, but this guy was able to fool everybody for a long time into thinking he was perfectly sane.

    Long enough to gain access to some CDC facility in his country that contained a number of super strains of diseases that the CDC was trying to find cures for before they became a problem. Long enough to walk out with one stuffed in his pocket, buy a horse, and ride through the nearest major city waving the open container around like a jackass and committing the worst act of mass murder since WWII.

    When all was said and done the human population was suddenly down a quarter and every non human species was eager to use it as a chance to step into the light, at least figuratively for some. That's right Vampires, Werewolves and Kitsune were real living and breathing folk who were tired of hiding in the shadows, behind veils and inside little pocket dimensions because humans didn't like to share, but now with the recent drop in the human population they didn't have to.

    "Great story and all but you do realize I know all of this already and it also doesn't explain why I'm standing in the rain in the middle of the fricking night." Complained Sam Silvernest.

    To be fair he had the right, Michigan weather was a b***h on a rampage. Right now it was spring which meant you could experience at least three out of four seasons on a given day, and right now it was very much a ******** your life spring rain shower. Not that it was really a problem at the moment for me since I was hiding nice and snug inside Sam's winter coat. Sometimes it was good to be one of the little folk.

    My name is Puck Silvernest and I am a pixie, well half pixie and half fairy, but I preferred pixie (don't ask). As a result of my mixed heritage unlike most pixies I actually had a pair of wings but no magic like the fairies had. I didn't mind, flight was enough for me, but it did bring some unwanted attention from the fairies on many an occasion.

    "I know you know, but what I was getting to was something you might not know." I told Sam

    "And what's that?" He asked.

    "That not every supernatural came out of hiding." I answered.

    This caught his attention. Sam was completely human but had grown up in a house of supernaturals or Supernats for short. I had found him nearly twenty years ago shortly after the First Horseman's Pestilence virus crossed the Atlantic to hit the American continents. By then a cure was being passed around so the death toll wasn't as bad as it had been overseas, but it was safe to say that the real estate market was going to be in a coma for the next century or two.

    Which was actually why we were standing out in the rain instead of at home eating a hot meal. Michigan's economy had been struggling for well over a decade before the First Horseman and the Pestilence virus hadn't done it any favors. So finding a successful real estate agent in Michigan was like finding a four leaf clover and I had it on good authority that even leprechauns had trouble finding those damn things.

    I was a security specialist by trade and had recently been hired by one Judith Slaughter. Despite her admittedly awesome last name Judith was a rather nice woman who was rightfully concerned about very small people getting into her office. So she had hired me and Sam to relieve those concerns.

    Now a successful real estate agent wasn't a cause for alarm by itself no matter how bad the market was. No it was the sickness that clung to her that worried me. Even though I couldn't use magic I could still see and sense it. Judith carried a magical aura of success that was draining the life out of her. Now it could have been a Leahnan Sidhe but they were much more careful about how fast they drained their victims and they usually only went after those of an artistic persuasion anyways.

    Whomever was draining Judith didn't care how long she lived and after she divulged that she had trouble breathing at night I knew exactly what the problem was.

    Lidercs were a nasty parasite that liked to boost a humans financial success, drain their life and walk away with all the loot. The males had a thing about sitting on a victims chest while they slept, and it wasn't hard to convince Judith of this since she had been having what she thought were nightmares of someone doing just that.

    So now me and Sam were out here waiting in the cold that was even starting to penetrate Sam's coat, for a gold digging pervert to assault our client.

    "So what exactly do we do with him after we catch him?" Sam asked after I finished explaining things, but before I could reply Sam suddenly took off across the street towards Judith's house.

    "What are you doing?" I demanded while trying to climb out of the coat.

    "Something big and naked just flew into her window!" Sam was nearly shouting as he busted the door down.

    I decided that there were more pressing matters to deal with than reminding Sam that Judith had left the door unlocked for us as we raced up the stairs. Bursting into the room we found the Liderc squatting over Judith likea grotesquely fat chicken laying an egg. Sam tackled him to the ground but was quickly thrown back off. The Liderc tried to pounce on him but a facefull of Essence of Onion from me had him back on the ground clawing his eyes out. Normally onions were used to ward off Oni but I found that Essence of Onion worked like dunking someone's head in a tub of pepper spray on everybody else just as well.

    Unfortunately it seemed that to take down a Liderc you'd need at least two tubs. The Liderc suddenly traded it's solid form for a gaseous one and made a beeline straight for me. Leading it downstairs I pulled out a bag of Dragon Tongue Extract and headed back outside hoping that the wind and rain would mess up his gaseous body more than it would me. So of course in the span of the few minutes between racing in and racing out of Judith's house the weather had gone from a ******** me sideways rain shower to perfect for a evening stroll. Damn it.

    For the next few minutes the Liderc chased me up and down the street. I could have used the Dragon Tongue Extract but it held quite a bit more kick than a firecracker and this guy wasn't a good enough flyer to justify explaining to the authorities why I was carrying such heavy ordinance in an urban area. Still I needed to bring this chase to an end so I veered off into the nearby park to find a tree I had noticed earlier.

    It was a well known fact that Lidercs hated trees and the best way to get rid of one was to trap it inside of one. Now I didn't think the Liderc was stupid enough to follow me in, in fact I was counting on it. While the Liderc circled the tree or whatever I could pull out some Gaseous Molasses that would essentially paralyze him in his gas form. I really should stick my day job.

    Someone would later inform me that one of the many reasons Lidercs hate trees was that they couldn't see them in their gas form. Fortunately he was so surprised to be in one that he accidentally pushed me back out, and Sam who wasn't one to sit on his a** was there ready with a roll of duct tape to seal the hole. If there was something duct tape couldn't't fix this wasn't it.

    "Dad are you okay?" Sam asked.

    "Yeah son I'm good." I replied.

    After going back to make sure that Judith was okay we called the police, both of them. When the Supernats started to settle back into the world it became clear that regular law enforcement wasn't enough to handle the new status quo. So the U.S. came up with the Bureau of Supernatural Affairs or BSA for short. Of course the BSA was exclusive to humans and wasn't even that capable so the Supernat community came up with their own agency. Lots of them.

    Sharing a common disdain for humanity didn't mean the community all got along so different factions came up with different agencies and they all held regular measuring contests with each other and the BSA. While Grand Rapids was a city it wasn't so big that it really warranted more than two Supernat agencies. Also not being obsessed with acronyms the way humans were they were called Hunters, a diverse group of specialists who tried hard to work with the BSA and the Nightstalkers who were comprised of mostly were, ogres and vampires who weren't all that concerned about Supernat on human crimes. Which was only one of the reasons we called the Hunters.

    Specifically we called Susan Witcher, and yes that is her real surname. She was a witch but she was also an orphan so she made Witcher her legal last name since she really liked those games, Susan was also family.

    When I found Sam crying with a diaper full of s**t and two parents dead from the Pestilence virus in the next room, I wasn't sure what to do. Normally since the Supernats weren't out yet I would have discreetly lead some humans over but since the virus had reached the States people had developed a bit of pyromania and I sure as heck wasn't going to just leave him. I also wasn't going to be able to take care of him, not without help anyway.

    So I reached out to a nearby group of brownies. Brownies loved kids of all races, if kids were cats then brownies were the crazy cat ladies of the Supernat community. They rushed over, fed him, changed him and helped me burn his parents on a proper pyre in the backyard. Since the house was now vacant and it was unlikely to be checked on soon given the current crisis we all decided to stay there and over time the family grew.

    Years later a six year old Susan would join our family till she reached sixteen and began to manifest her powers. Arrangements had already been made by that time for her to go live with another witch for training but we were sad to see her go regardless. She had recently moved back to the city to join the Hunters and maybe finally act on what she thought was her secret crush on Sam. Well she had kept it from him so far at least.

    "So who's bright idea was it to play Winchester brothers?" She asked.

    Sam pointed at me, the little snitch.

    "Oooh mamma Marion isn't going to be happy about this" she said smugly.

    "You let me worry about my wife. I can handle her." I lied. "More importantly how much trouble can we expect for outing the Lidercs like this?"

    She sighed. "Maybe try and think of this beforehand next time you decide to play monster hunter. Fortunately no one likes a Liderc, so not much. Probably not any since their spines don't seem to ever get solid."

    "Well that's something. So what about our claim?" I asked.

    "Solid." She told us. "The local BSA are happy with the evidence gathered from his nest so they're willing to leave his cache behind. They do want to talk to you before you go though."

    "No problem." I told her.

    After we gave our statements and forensics cleared it Sam and I went to the Liderc's nest which resided under Judith's front porch. While the Liderc's nest was simply under the porch his cache was another matter and was probably the real reason why the BSA let us have it. Lidercs preferred to keep all of their loot nearby and in traditional currency such as precious metals and gems, and they usually kept them in a pocket dimension with the entrance hexed to the nines.

    This meant a few more hours under Judith's porch carefully applying Portal Remover till it's anchor was broken and we could take the portal, cache and all back home. It wasn't till around dawn that we came out from under the porch and Judith was waiting for us there with some hot coffee and a couple of bear claws from the local cafe. She also left her personal number in the bag for Sam. He got that a lot. A real chip off the old block that one.

    So off we went back home. Hopefully with enough loot to justify my wife ripping me a new one. Given how fat the sucker was it could be a close thing.

    Okay the average pixie was about four inches in height and Marion came in just under that, because of my mixed heritage I came in just over five inches and Sam was a little taller than average for a Caucasian male at six foot three inches. Theoretically we could have taken her. It says something that neither of us dared to try. Mostly don't piss off Marion Silvernest.

    "What in the nine circles of hell were you two thinking!!" Marion demanded as she whacked us both on the head with her broom and before either of us could reply she cut us off saying. "Not a damn thing that's what. Taking on a filthy Liderc like your fricking superheroes!"

    This went on for a good while before my youngest saved us with a demand for food or a new diaper. Marion was a pixie but had been raised by brownies after some sprites had killed her parents. She stayed on with them after coming of age and had been part of the group I called on to help with Sam. We'd married a couple years later and had about twenty kids so far.

    One of the reasons I'd decided to take on that Liderc was because I'd hoped to bring in enough for us to move somewhere safer for all of them. As lately more and more fairies and sprites had been moving into the area and while they tended to respect brownie territory it was only a matter of time before their hatred for us pixies led them to violate it.

    So with Marion distracted Sam and I headed for our local bank, which was upstairs, in a closet. Our local bank was actually a leprechaun named Shep who lived in a closet on the second floor. Shep wasn't one of the orphans we'd taken in over the years but after the Pestilence virus died down and the Supernats settled in it became necessary for us to fit into the new status quo and pay rent on the house.

    That's where Shep came in, he needed a home and we needed someone who knew enough about the human economy to negotiate with the bank that kinda sorta owned the house. Yeah things like who owns what property was one of the things that got tossed up in the air after the virus.

    Anyways Shep was the one who got me most of my jobs and was as keen for a change of scenery as I was since word was getting around that a leprechaun was living somewhere in the neighborhood. He was also better equipped to dehex the portal than I was.

    "Well well if it ain't my favorite superheroes. Giant-Boy and Wee-Man." Clearly he had heard Marion chewing us out and just as clearly he was a jackass.

    "Not the sidekick." Sam declared. Damn it.

    "Har de har har. Very funny. Now can we get down to business?" I asked.

    "And what business would that be exactly?" He replied. "Ms. Slaughter sent me a wee bit more than the job called for so either Sam gave her a good enough ride that she felt the need to tip or there's more to the job than I was told.

    "No ride as of yet but we did do a little moonlight hero work." Sam told him.

    "Oh?" Shep asked. "And I'm guessing since the tip wasn't that much more you two got a little extra for your troubles elsewhere?"

    "Oh yeah." I answered as I pulled the portal from my pack and handed it to him. "She had a Liderc on her and we took care of it in exchange for it's cache."

    Shep spit. "Nasty vermin them Lidercs. How fat was it?"

    "On a scale of Healthy to Damn. It was a solid Oh Hell No!" Sam told him grimacing at the memory. Some things just couldn't be unseen.

    Shep spat again. "Tsk. Cache probably ain't worth the effort then. Shoulda called the Hunters to take care of it."

    Regardless he fiddled with it anyway till it was cleared and then set it to expel it's contents rather going in to check it out. The next thing they knew gold and silver coins along with a variety of gemstones gushed out of the portal. I had to fly up, Sam and several of the other big kids that had been on the second floor had to stand as it came up to his knees and Shep along with a few pixies and brownies rode the wave down the stairs.

    "HOLY s**t!"