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Egg Hunter: Cluster Headache
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Chapter 12: The Egg Not Hunted
Doris wasn’t particularly happy to be working at this particular library. Oh, it certainly paid better than the newer library only a few miles away, where she had interned at before graduating, but the better pay didn’t quite offset the strange vibes this place gave her. Until today, she always assumed that the place probably had a hidden mold problem that someone refused to deal with. Now though… she couldn’t deny that there was something much stranger going on.
She didn’t want to say anything about it though. This was, after all, only the start of her third week working here, and her first day of not being supervised by one of the senior librarians. She couldn’t let any of her co-workers think that she might be going crazy. She needed this job!
So she started the day doing the same thing that she had done for the last two weeks. She ignored the nonstop rumbling coming from the basement and she ignored the pressure in the air that gave her vertigo and caused pressure on her sinuses. She had already mentioned those on her very first day, to which the other librarians simply assumed that a garbage truck was passing through.
The only one of her co-workers who took her claim even slightly seriously was the head librarian, Ms. O’Flaherty. She’d been kind enough to offer her some tea that had helped those uncomfortable feelings go away. She was a nice older woman… one that Doris couldn’t help but admire on some level. Unlike the rest of the librarians here who she just felt a quiet contempt for.
Doris wasn’t sure why she felt that way towards the other librarians. They were all just normal, moderately attractive middle aged women. They weren’t quite up to the standard of the stereotypical ‘sexy librarian’, which was somewhat disappointing since the library she had done her internship at definitely did have a few of those.
To be honest, the ‘sexy librarian’ stereotype was the exact reason why Doris had chosen to be a librarian in the first place. Not to ogle at them, of course; Doris had gotten over her lesbian phase years ago. No, her goal was to be one of them. To be one of the sexiest librarians around. She couldn’t think of a better role-model of the feminine ideal, after you excluded all of the ones which were just bimbos.
Her plan had been simple: get a easy job as a librarian, put all the effort that she would otherwise use working to focus on maintaining her appearance, find a successful and intelligent man to marry among the library patrons, have exactly one kid (preferably by c-section), and be set for life. It should have been so simple, so why wasn’t it!? Shouldn’t the job of a librarian have been to just organize books on shelves and harass people that didn’t turn their books in on time?
Her father constantly went on about how it was a good job for a woman and that she was living up to his expectations. He had also constantly gone on about how so-called “women’s work” was mindlessly easy and that women didn’t need an education to do them. So why did she have to spend the last seven years of her life in college to earn the damn Master’s degree required for this damn job!?
She was getting off track, wasn’t she? This library was weird. Today especially!
It had all started with that couple that had come in with the kid, not too long ago. Doris assumed they were a couple of gay guys. She hadn’t expected in the least that the twink of the couple would suddenly ask for the head librarian. He had even used her ‘other name’... the one that wasn’t Americanized.
Doris was aware that Grace O’Flaherty wasn’t the head librarian’s real name… or at least it probably wasn’t her birth name. She had her ‘other name’ on a couple of things in her office. The name she likely used before she emigrated to America. Not that Doris had any clue on how to actually pronounce that name. She could barely make heads or tails of what the twink had even said despite it being obvious that he was talking about Ms. O’Flaherty.
It almost sounded like he had said something halfway between Grainy and Granny. Considering the odd headache that hit her almost immediately after he had said it, it might have even been some incomprehensible lovecraftian language. She’d made a fool of herself by trying to pronounce it too. She could practically feel the smugness radiating off of him at her mistake.
Nevertheless, she was professional enough to let it slide and told the head librarian that Hunter Kaur was here to see her. Bless her heart, Ms. O’Flaherty had noticed her headache immediately and offered to give her some more of that tea that helped get rid of the other uncomfortable feelings she got while working here.
The headache hadn’t been the only thing weird about that guy either. After Ms. O’Flaherty had come out to get him, he’d left the newspapers he’d been looking at in a complete mess. A mess that she had to clean up! That in itself wasn’t that strange; patrons failed to reshelve things properly all the time. The strange thing was that something was off about those papers that he had messed with. The moment that Doris had touched one of them, she had been hit with a wave of vertigo that almost made her throw up on the spot. It wasn’t even limited to just one of those newspapers. Not all of them, but a handful of them, caused that same feeling to rise up everytime she touched them. Things almost felt like they were getting back to normal after that. Until the damned ghost showed up, that is.
She couldn’t believe it when she saw it out of the corner of her eye during reshelving duty. She had come across an honest-to-god ethereal beauty and Doris’s heart skipped a beat at the sight of it. It was too androgynous to tell if it was male or female… it might have been neither. The tall ears that stuck up from the transparent teal body’s head at least let her know that the thing wasn’t human!
Clearly Doris was hallucinating! She tried to ignore the ghost, but the moment she tried to… something weird happened again! It felt like being at the beach and getting hit by a wave strong enough to almost knock her off her feet. It had to be her imagination! The feeling of something crashing into her and the rustling of bookshelves just next to her… it must have been the wind!
Dear sweet christ, it isn’t the wind! The ghost was right up in Doris’s face staring at her. Did it realize she could see it!? Would it do something to her if it knew she could!?
Doris did her best to ignore the ghost. She put on as neutral of a face as she could and pretended to just stare at the bookshelf as she waited for the thing to leave, but despite ignoring it, it didn’t want to leave her alone.
It was bad enough when the ghost just stared at her face, and she had to fight to keep a blush off her face. Soon enough it wasn’t just her face that it stared at. It started staring at her neck, her shoulders, her hands, chest. Suddenly, she had to fight to keep a scowl off her face rather than a blush. Eventually, the ghost started bending downward, and that was the last straw. Doris hated her body enough as it was, but she could live with it when people kept a respectable distance and being objectified like this crossed her bottom line.
The ghost’s gaze brought attention to all the things she hated about herself. The parts that disgusting men fetishized… those damn useless lumps of fat and the hole that did nothing for her but cause intense pain once a month. She tightened her fist into a ball while holding back the urge to swing a punch at this ghost. It would probably just go through it and hit one of the shelves.
With barely restrained fury in her voice, she asked curtly, “Can I help you with something!?”
The ghost seemed surprised to hear her talking to it but ultimately seemed to think that she was instead talking to the kid that the gay couple had brought in. Could that kid see the ghost too? It seemed like he could. It was more likely that he was calling out to the ghost with bunny ears rather than the bunny on the cover of Watership Down that someone had clearly put back in the wrong place.
Doris and the ghost both tried to get the kid to go away. Whether things ended with her cussing at the ghost until she ran out of words or with the ghost continuing to gawk at her, they both seemed to agree that a child shouldn’t see that.
“I swear to god! If I catch you staring at my crotch one more time… I will find some way to drag you out to the back alley and beat the everloving shit out of you!” Doris whispered quietly enough so that only the ghost would be able to hear her, once the kid finally left.
There was so much more that she wanted to say though. So much anger that she needed to get out of her system… but she also needed this job. She couldn’t explode here. Not here. Not over this. If she gave in to the urge, she would be ruined. There was no way that she could claim that she was being provoked by a ghost. Thankfully, the ghost decided to walk away first.
Doris shoved the book in her hand onto the handcart then pushed it toward the elevator in a huff. There were still plenty of books on the cart to be reshelved, but her head was hurting so much right now. She needed to lie down somewhere.
First there was the headache from when that twink talked to her, then the vertigo from those newspapers, and now that wave of energy that had crashed into her just a moment ago. Each of those were compounding on top of each other leaving her feeling abysmal. The rumble that constantly came out from the basement was starting to turn into a roar… one that was only drowned out by the sudden ringing that was filling her ears. She stumbled into the elevator as the dizziness was making it so much harder to keep her balance.
The tea from Ms O’Flaherty which always helped her feel better had already worn off. Maybe she should go back to her and ask for some more? Her hands were starting to shake as she pressed the button for the first floor and-
Another hand entered Doris’s vision, phasing through her body to hit several elevator buttons in quick succession-
Doris stumbled backward into her handcart, nearly knocking it over. The handcart phased through her body as it was pushed out of the elevator by another librarian… except, there wasn’t another librarian there and the pushcart was still digging into her back, where she fell into it. She could have sworn someone just walked through her, but just as quickly that person and their handcart were gone.
The roaring sound from the basement disappeared completely, as did the tinnitus, vertigo, and most of the headache. She stood there dumbfounded as the elevator door opened up into the staff area of the first floor. In a daze, she fixed her handcart and pushed it out of the elevator before telling one of the senior librarians that she was taking her 15 minute break.
***
The break wasn’t as helpful as Doris was hoping. The noise from the basement had returned, as had the faint vertigo, but luckily they were at the same level that they usually were. Someone else had taken over restocking duty, so Doris found herself being ushered back towards the front desk to handle check-outs and returns. It almost seemed like her work-day was getting back to normal, other than the moderate headache that still hadn’t gone away even with the help of Midol.
Doris suddenly stiffened up as the library’s entrance opened up and a weird looking guy rapidly approached the desk. He wore a dusty beige boiler suit that was covered in iron-on patches with the Ghostbusters logo as well as the names of several ghost hunting shows that Doris refused to acknowledge were guilty pleasures of her.
“Hello! Can I help you with anyth-” Doris’s extremely polite and professional greeting was suddenly cut off by a screeching sound that came from the gizmo in the man’s hand. Her headache throbbed in as much annoyance as she felt. She hated having to put on her most feminine voice, the least he could have done was not interrupt it.
“By any chance Milady, have you noticed anything recently that could be described as supernatural?” he asked in a grating, nasally tone. She really wished that she could just deck him in the nose. Let him look the way he sounds… like he has a broken nose. She could already tell that he was one of those ‘nice guy’ types.
“Actually-” Doris was just about to ‘politely’ tell him to fuck off, when she realized that this guy might actually know something about what she had just seen.
“For the last time, there are no ghosts in this library!” one of the senior librarians suddenly shouted at the man. Doris hadn’t noticed her approach. “I don’t know who is spreading these rumors of the library being haunted, but there is no reason for you to be harassing our patrons with your nonsense!”
The guy seemed surprised at the librarian’s sudden interruption. “...I apologize, but I am not like those other guys who have been here in the past. I’m actually working on a master’s thesis on the subject of-”
“Doris! Be a doll and fetch Grace, please. She knows how to get rid of these types.”
“Of course, ma’am,” Doris replied. It was another reminder of her ever present feeling of disgust at being called doll, ma’am, babe, chick… milady… She was good at suppressing the urge to let her disgust show on her face at least.
Doris headed back up to the second floor and froze just steps away from Ms. O’Flaherty’s door. There, laying on the ground in front of her door, was the ghost again. Cautiously, she approached.
“Going for upskirt views now?” she asked after looking around and confirming that there was no one in earshot.
The ghost didn’t react to her words and continued staring blankly upward. At least, Doris thought it was staring. The ghost was mostly transparent and while she could kinda see its spectral blue outline, there wasn’t a lot of detail visible. She could see where its eyes were and that they were open, but there was no pupil or iris in those eyes that she was able to make out. It just continued staring upward as Doris stood over it to get a better look.
Doris prodded the ghost with her foot, and while she appeared to pass through it, the ghost reacted slightly as it’s head lolled lazily to face directly at her crotch again.
“Staring at it isn't going to make it sprout a dick!” she said in a low growl.
Believe me, I’ve tried, she added mentally.
The ghost didn’t react to her provocation… weird…
Doris carefully stepped around the ghost to stand in front of the head librarian’s office. Touching the ghost with her foot triggered another flare up of her headache and the rumble underground was joining in as well.
Doris knocked on the door. There was a good thirty second wait before Ms. O’Flaherty called her in. As she opened the door, there were two things that instantly caught Doris’s attention. The first was that that guy, Hunter, was sitting in an armchair, seemingly meditating. The second was the drop of blood slowly trickling out of the head librarian’s nose. She seemed to notice the blood as well though, as she quickly dabbed a fresh tissue at the nosebleed. Doris’s eyes were drawn to the trash bin next to the desk that was full of bloody tissues.
“Can I help you, Doris?” her boss asked curtly. She didn’t seem to be in the best mood.
“There’s a man downstairs causing a disturbance,” Doris said with her professional voice turned back on. Bosses loved it when she put on that voice and a happy boss usually meant extra breaks and faster promotions. This time though… her boss didn’t seem to be happy to hear speaking in her melodic voice. There was a frown growing instead.
“He was dressed like a ghost hunter!” Doris quickly added.
The intense look that had been appearing on Ms. O’Flaherty’s face disappeared in an instance, to be replaced with an exasperated sigh. Suddenly her boss was reciting a dewey decimal number, book title, and author’s name without even waiting to see if Doris was ready to write it down. “Take that book to our guest and refer him to chapter three. Open the book to it and shove it in his face if you have to.”
This was the reason why she liked her boss so much. The old bag didn’t have to bother with the pretense and insincere kindness that Doris was still obligated to put on. She couldn’t wait until the day that she could act the same way openly. “On it!”
“One more thing…” her boss suddenly added before Doris reached the door. There was a hint of hesitation before she suddenly continued, “Could you go to the LGBT section and find me a book explaining what it means to be transgender for friends and family.”
That seemed like an unusual request. She understood wanting someone else to deal with the weirdo, but the head librarian would usually do her own research. Maybe she was too busy with whatever she was discussing with Hunter? It seemed like something that could have waited though.
“I’ll get that for you right away!” Doris chirped, despite making herself cringe internally by doing that.
“Take care of our guest first, please.”
Doris ignored the ghost on the floor and headed for the first floor where she knew both of those books would be. She quickly scanned over the LGBT display and found a book targeted at the parents of transgender teens and figured that that would be close enough to what her boss needed. Then she headed over to the nonfiction section where she found the book she had been told to get.
“Research and Analysis of the Phantasmal: A Beginner’s Primer Vol. 1 by Keeva O’Flaherty…” Doris quietly read the title of the book aloud before turning it over and to her surprise finding a portrait of the author. The woman on the back cover was almost identical to her boss in every way except for being a few decades younger.
Out of curiosity, she flipped through the book to the third chapter and froze as a wave of vertigo exploded through her. The rumbling from below the library transformed into a roar again and pain assaulted her head as she dropped the book. As the book hit the floor, a disembodied hand started flipping through the pages, turning it back to the chapter three title page. A pen suddenly appeared in the hand which began writing on the page ‘Stay Off My Turf!’. Just as suddenly, the hand and the writing both disappeared, returning the book to normal once again.
Doris stood there staring at the open page in fear as her headache spiked and the library started spinning around her. Her eyes focused on the only words still remaining on the page; the ones that were printed there: Chapter Three: Spirit Detection Devices - Functional or Fake?
Carefully, she kicked the book closed before picking it back up. The room was still spinning around her and the ringing sound drowned out all the other noises in the library, but thankfully picking the book up didn’t make it get even worse.
She stumbled over to the ‘ghost hunter’ who still being held back by the senior librarian. She pushed the book into his hands and said, “Read chapter three!” She might have shouted it by accident… she wasn’t sure. The ringing and the roaring kept her from even hearing her own voice.
She needed to get back to Grace! She needed more of that Tea! Her limbs were shaking like an addict’s as she slowly walked towards the stairs. She didn’t care what the other librarians thought of her appearance as she stumbled away. What was happening to her!?
The vertigo eased slightly by the time she reached her boss’s office, but in her haste Doris completely ignored the ghost still lying in front of the door. It had sunken halfway through the floor and as she stepped on it, her headache exploded in intensity once more. She could barely keep hold of the book her boss had asked for.
Doris was so out of it that she didn’t even remember to knock. Instead she pushed the door open and stepped through. Immediately another wave of vertigo hit her and she tumbled to the floor. She couldn’t tell where she was anymore. The room was suddenly so much different. Bare concrete floor and half built walls. The sound of construction was barely audible under the noise of the basement.
Doris retched as something was shoved into her mouth. Minty leaves… pleasant tasting still but causing her to instantly purge her stomach into the bin that she hadn’t even realized had been placed in front of her.
“There there…” a kind voice spoke as she felt someone gently pat her head. It felt patronizing to be cared for like this but still, the comfort helped as she repeatedly heaved. The noise, dizziness, and headache all vanished completely over the course of a minute, leaving Doris in blissful silence.
Slowly, she got back onto her feet with the help of Ms. Flaherty. She was back in her boss’s office. The guy was still meditating in the armchair and out the doorway, the ghost was completely gone.
“What are you looking at dear?” her boss asked her patiently.
“Th-there was a ghost over there a minute ago… Short and androgynous and it had rabbit ears…” Doris hated the thought of anyone thinking that she was crazy, but whatever her boss had just given her had helped. She must have known what was wrong and she needed the help in case whatever was happening happened again. She was just going to be honest and hope that her boss believed her.
“You don’t see hi- er… her anymore?”
“No… she’s gone now…” It was a girl ghost, huh?
“Is something the matter? You seem upset at her?”
“It… she… do you see her too?” Doris couldn’t help but ask.
“I do. She was visiting my office earlier this morning,” her boss responded.
“What’s her name?”
“It’s… actually, to be honest, I’m not quite sure yet.” Ms. O’Flaherty seemed to consider it for a minute before adding, “I think it is probably Alice. What did she do to upset you?”
“She um… she er…” Doris couldn’t help but blush as she remembered Probably Alice getting up in her face. Neither could she help but scowl as she remembered what happened after. “She was… leering at me. All over. It made me very uncomfortable.” Putting on the shy maiden act was humiliating, but it was effective at garnering sympathy.
“I apologize about that…” Her boss sighed. “She… well forgive me for this, but she seemed to be under the impression that you may be a man.”
“Me? A man!?” Doris couldn’t help but bark out in laughter. She knew the truth was anything but that and the thought of anyone confusing her for a man was completely absurd.
Ms. O’Flaherty’s gaze seemed to sharpen and took on an almost predatory look. “That is an interesting reaction. Most women would find the insinuation of being a man to be insulting. You find it humorous instead?”
“Oh course I do! It’s such an impossibly ludicrous idea! I could never become a man!”
“...Become? I would have interpreted that statement as her thinking of you as a man dressed as a woman. But instead you are thinking about becoming a man?” The purr of satisfaction that her boss gave off had Doris’s hackles raising. What had she said wrong to get that reaction?
“What woman doesn’t think about becoming a man? Freud himself said that all women feel that envy,” Doris said defensively.
“I certainly don’t,” Ms. O’Flaherty stated as a matter of fact before immediately changing the subject. “Why don’t you tell me what else you saw today?”
Doris welcomed the change of subject. The last one felt uncomfortably like some kind of personal attack. So she began telling her boss about the strange things that she had experienced today. The sudden headaches and vertigo, the roar of noise from the basement, the newspaper, elevator, and book. The disappearing people and disembodied limbs. Her boss listened intently.
“It sounds like you have a talent in psychometry.”
What is that?
“What is that?” Doris asked.
“Psychometry is the psychic ability of seeing the history of an object by touching it. It means that you are a psychic.”
“NO!” This couldn’t be happening! The headaches and noise were all because she was a psychic!? She couldn’t be! She couldn’t be that kind of freak! She needed to be normal! If she wasn’t normal, she’d never have the life that she was supposed to have. The one her parents expected for her and the one that she suffered so much for on the promise that that life would be what makes her happy!
“That… that can’t be right!” Doris begged. She needed her boss to reveal that this was all some kind of prank. The deadly serious look on her face told her otherwise.
“I know why this is happening, and I know how to stop it,” Ms. O’Flaherty said slowly.
“What is it!?” Doris demanded, not even caring that she dropped the fake voice that she usually affected.
“Underneath this library is a Ley Line. Some people might call it a psychic nexus, although that would be woefully inaccurate. The Ley Line does far more than simply amplify psychic powers.” Her boss seemed to scoff slightly as she glanced over at the man still mediating in the armchair.
“So, how do I get it to stop?”
“Stopping it is easy enough. Quit your job here and the Ley Line’s influence on you will disappear after enough time has passed.”
“I need this job!” Doris pleaded. She had too much student loan debt and this library paid more than any of the others in the county. Not to mention that nobody else was hiring right now… she’d checked after her first day here…
“Well, if you insist on staying then your other option is to train your psychic powers to learn to control them.”
“I… I have to learn to use it? Won’t that mean more headaches and fainting?”
“The headaches and fainting are a symptom of overusing your power. Until you’re able to control that power, it will continue activating at random and draining your energy.”
That… could she deal with those symptoms recurring and possibly getting worse until she learns to control it?
“There’s no way I can continue working if this just keeps happening!”
“There are ways to keep your powers under control while you train. The herb that I fed you earlier can disable your powers for a few hours at a time. Enough to get through the work day and wear off by the time you need to train,” her boss explained.
Could Doris do that? She’d be reliant on those herbs for as long as she worked here. She thought back to the shaking she went through earlier. That need for the Tea. Staying here would be the same as willingly choosing to become an addict to those herbs. And for what… a few extra dollars an hour?
“Can… can I think about it?” Doris asked.
“You have until the end of the day! Take sick leave for the rest of the day if you need to. There’s no point in you coming back here if your powers are running rampant and you can’t focus on your job!”
She needed to think about that for a moment.
“What… what would this training look like? How long would it take?”
Her boss let out another sigh. “The first thing that you would need to do is register yourself as a psychic. It’s illegal for a registered psychic to offer training to an unregistered one. Next, I would help you secure a supply of Dist-herb and Mentali-tea.” They both seemed to cringe at those names. “One will suppress your powers to help you cope with them activating uncontrollably while the other can restore your mental energy for the times that you need to activate them purposefully.”
Herbs and Teas that would be necessary to function normally. They sounded like they weren’t any better than taking drugs. Was that what was really going on? Had Doris been being drugged since her first day on the job? The whole thing just an act to get her hooked so they could milk her for all that she’s worth?
“After that, I would find someone to teach you how to control your powers,” her boss continued. “I must stress that the training is less for you to learn how to activate your powers, and more to teach you how to control your powers so they don’t activate when you don’t want them to.” She pointed over at Hunter. “Most likely, I would have my nephew, Hunter, there teach you. H- sh… ahem… He already found someone in need of training and him taking up a teaching role would be the most convenient. I’m sure one more student wouldn’t be too difficult.”
Someone else in need of training? “His son?” Doris asked.
“Excuse me!?” Her boss seemed legitimately surprised at that.
“The boy he came in with? He was able to see ‘Probably Alice’ just as easily as I could.” At least she assumed that the kid could also see Probably Alice.
Her boss chuckled, “Ah, no. Hunter and his roommate are just babysitting that child.”
Sure they were. Doris totally believed that those two were just ‘roommates’.
“Doris… Take the rest of the day off! Think about it and get back to me before work starts tomorrow.” Her boss grabbed the book that Doris had asked her then hesitated for a moment before finally adding, “And if you decide that there is another name you would prefer to go by, please let me know. I guarantee that no one here will discriminate against you no matter what you identify as.”
With that, she was dismissed just as Hunter seemed to stir from his meditation. She didn’t see Probably Alice again as she walked out. She wasn’t sure if the ghost had gone somewhere else or if that Dist-herb made her unable to perceive it anymore.
In a daze, she wandered back to the first floor to grab her stuff before going home for the day, but as she walked past the aisles of bookshelves, she found herself pausing in front of the row that the LGBT section had been in. She felt dumb thinking about those books. Her lesbian phase was already over. She wasn’t big enough to be accepted as butch and pretending to be lipstick just made her sick to her stomach.
Her hand reached out under her as if it had a mind of its own and grabbed a seemingly random book off the shelf… Burn That Bridge by J.R. Gray. She was too tired to think about why she had grabbed it. The least she could do was check it out and take it home with her. Since she had the rest of the day off, she might as well try reading something new.
for those who don’t want to do it themselves, a quick google search tells me that burn that bridge is a story about a trans guy who comes out at the start of senior year (unclear whether high school or college) after previously having been a cheerleader. exactly what bridges get burned is unspecified, but given that the story takes place in rural alabama and he’s also dating a boy the answer is probably “most of them”
Thanks! Makes a lot of sense.
Y: Yes! It's very helpful context to have shared! Doris is not a cheerleader, but has similarly been attempting to fit in a position that he thinks is very feminine. Similar to how some trans women try to escape dysphoria by joining the military or doing some other stereotypical hyper-masculine activities.
Whether the similarities between Doris and the character of that book extends beyond that starting point is still to be seen...
Everybody in this story is broken in a way that just delicious for the reader to experience.
It's weird, enjoying the hurt and stress, but it only builds up the investment, the expectation and hope for when all of it breaks down and they find themselves.
Y: it's equally enjoyable to write as well, yes!
Damn, hope he figures himself out. The poor guy... Also, H... You dense ass baby, trans men exist you dumbass...
Y: Just like how it's hard to find egg fics with a transmasc protagonist, Hunter has a blind spot in this area...
Thanks for the chapter!?