Snap.

Pain shot through Michael as the loud crack of tree limbs filled the air followed by a strangled groan that filled his throat. His head throbbed as he tried to make sense of the world around him. It was bright, humid and forested, a far cry from the office he should have been standing in right now. He struggled to get his bearings as a harsh voice yelled at him as he was sent airborne once again.

"Damn it, Hunter!"

Michael wasn't sure if it was the shout or his flying state, but he forced himself to regain some sense as he rolled to avoid another tree. However, the move was graceless, and his shotgun slipped from his grip into the underbrush.

It was hard to figure out what was going on. A few moments ago, the Triplets were congratulating them on their last development project and now he sprawled out in an unknown location with a relentless attacker.

A log crashed beside him as he rolled on instinct to avoid the massive splinters the exploded from it. But his movement lagged and if not for a sudden yank from behind he would have been skewed though.

"What the fuck?" The words slipped out as he turned to look at his savior and found a massive timber wolf. The beast only gave him a cursory amount of acknowledgment before returning to her master's side.

"Help me and shoot the damn thing!" The harsh voice finally broke through his hazy as Michael quickly surveyed the scene.

In this forested grove, he stood face to face with a fifteen-foot hulking beast. A thick dusty green hide was pocked marked by pellet wounds. Sickly yellow puss leaked from long gashes across its torso and legs, marks left by the wolf that nipped at its ankles and thighs. The misshapen body looked more out of a fairy tale than reality as its thick fingers gripped half a log. Two rows of large dull unblinking yellow eyes divided their attention between the three enemies. Pitiful ragged wings were barely visible on its back as it turned to swing at the wolf again in retaliation for another scratch. These wings were the only remaining marker of past elegance this fae beast once had.

This was an Ogre. Hulking, raging and beyond repair. All that it cared about now was destruction and food as the hunters dodged an explosive attack.  Long curled tusks almost merged back into its face as it let out a monstrous dissatisfied roar before it judged the two. Perhaps it was luck or fate, but it judged the woman as the better target and focused its attacks on her.

While she was agile, the monster was shockingly flexible and quick for its size. With a thick fist it caught her in the ribs and knocked her to the floor with a dull thud. But where most humans would be dead, she easily rolled away from the slam and stared point blank at Michael.

"Get your fucking gun and be useful!" While the command was simple, the execution was a whole other thing as Michael quickly turned to find his lost gun. Loud explosions and a steady stream of spells rattled off behind him. It was enough to keep the hairs on the back of his neck raised as he shifted through damp underbrush.

Within moments he found his lost weapon and quickly familiarized himself with it. It had been a while since he last used this model of shotgun, but he was fast to remember.

"This was supposed to be a lesser Ogre!" His companion wallowed in her own complaints as she constantly fired at the beast with her pistols as her wolf did its best to support her. She barely had any time to pay attention to him as a flying log smashed her through two trees.

Michael kept to the side and quickly found a good angle to take a shot.

Bam!

The iron pellets buried deep into the creature's torso as a sickly smoke rose from the wounds and a loud ear-piercing wail filled the air. If not for his mental fortitude, Michael would have dropped to the floor from the noise. Instead he took aim and fired another two shots into the Ogre.

Even as he got his shots in, his mind grew increasingly erratic. The adrenaline that surged through him made it difficult to remain calm.

Caution was far from his mind as he went to sidestep a swinging arm and underestimated his positioning. 

Pop!

His next shot sent a sudden bolt of pain through his shoulder as his grip slipped on the shotgun's recoil.

Through gritted teeth he stumbled as the pain snuffed out his growing blood lust and helped him regain his clarity. It was what he needed as a few world facts quickly sank into his mind. First there was the name of the woman who was fighting alongside him. Giselle Ortega. Hunter, beast summoner and a woman with the personality of a chain saw. She was the one who dragged his ass out on this mission for the promise of half the bounty.

The second fact that settled in was the fact he had no magic. Which made hunting these giant, powerful magical creatures a little problematic.

Well, it wasn't like Michael was completely without skills as he fired his last shot and pulled out a large Bowie knife. While normally it would be made of steel, the one he wielded today was specially crafted for dealing with fae. Made of iron and with several runes carved into its surface, he weighed the knife a few times before he took a step back into the tree line.

With a burst of speed, he shot forward. The Ogre had managed to knock the wolf away and grab Giselle in its tight three fingered grip. She struggled and kicked, but quickly lost her breath as it tried to crush her. However, it was the perfect distraction as Michael got a foothold on the creature's calf and flew onto its back.

Before it had the chance to react, he had already scrabbled up and straddled its shoulders. He clung on like a child, tightening his hold so not to get bucked off. One hand clung onto its neck as he tried to stab at it a few times. Each hit sank into the upper chest but did not slow the creature down as it struggled to grab at him.

This was the opportunity Giselle needed to free an arm as its grip grew slack, unable to concentrate on two things at once. Michael couldn't make out what she was doing as he switched up his stabbing spot and instead took a swing at the encroaching hand. The iron burned as it recoiled back. In that move he switched to the Ogre's eyes, running the blade across the two left side rows to blind it.

The heavy pulse of the monster's fanatic heartbeat pounded against his legs as it bucked and reached for him. But it was futile, Michael had thighs of steel.

Finally, it just threw away Giselle and tried for him again. Even among the panicked energy of the messy fight, Michael couldn't ignore a sense of mundanity as he managed to cut off one of the Ogre's fingers. It hit the grass with a thud and covered him with more of that sickly puss. He suddenly regretted his action.

"Hunter!" Giselle yelled again but her voice was drowned out by the angered shouts of the Ogre who wanted him gone. He could only lightly nod and decide it was time to put an end to this mess. The wolf returned to divide the monster's attention as Michael jammed the Bowie neck into the junction between its neck and jaw. With ease the knife sunk in was quite a surprise as he pulled across and slit the Ogre's throat.

His knife and hands became slick with yellow blood as it spurted forward covering everything in its way. The wolf skillfully dodged the foul liquid, but Michael wasn't so lucky as he just held on for the remainder of the ride.

Because it thrashed and fought so hard, it’s blood drained quicker. There was little energy left for it to fight as it gave one last hard yank and Michael was finally dislodged and sent crashing into a tree. The heavy thud he made wasn't reassuring but watching the creature grab at its bleeding throat. There was little left it could do as it fell to its knees. Remaining eyes wide and wild before crashing before the scrambling Giselle.

"Shit." Michael coughed. That last toss had definitely broken something as he slide down to the ground and looked at his kill. Even though the enemy was dead, his heart still sung in his ears. On the edge of his mind, a faint desire of bloodlust rose up again before he harshly crushed it and let out a laugh. "Bounty done I'd reckon."

Giselle took a second to stare at the dead Ogre, its neck pitifully spurting what little blood was left. A slight grimace crossed her lips before she turned to the sitting Hunter. Her mind was running a mile a minute, but the entire time she couldn't make sense of his sudden competence. "Where the hell have you been hiding that?!"

Her yell made his oncoming headache worsen as he just sneered and fixed his messy black hair back into a ponytail. "Just tag it, Giselle. I'm tired, dirty and I want to head back." The woman wanted to say more, but knew they had a good few hours of driving ahead of them as she pulled out a green rope from her hip pack. With the action she gave a quick glare at Hunter. He had a habit of teasing her about it being a fanny pack even though it was attached to her hip. Michael, however, was relaxing as he lazily eyed her work from his seat.

She poked the Ogre one more time to make sure it was really dead, before stepping around the pool of blood to make a cut in the creature's malformed massive ear. After the rope was pulled through the pressure around them changed slightly as a light buzzing entered their ears and then quickly vanished along with the kill.

Even though Michael had only been here for a few minutes, he already had an idea of where it had gone. He thanked the creator's benevolence for adding in such an easy system of clean up. With that taken care of Giselle made a quick hand sign before breathing out two foreign words. The dirt rumbled slightly before the Ogre's blood fade from sight. What she did was a quite useful trick to help prevent unexpected eyes from coming across an odd bloody scene. All that now remained of their fight were smashed trees and shattered logs.

Michael watched with half interest as Giselle kept fixing up. While his eyes followed her, internally he tried to contact Overworld. But with each call out, he found it eerily quiet. He couldn't even feel the normal light connection that shadowed them into each world. There was no other word for this but trouble. Even after throwing some of his energy into it, the signal came up blank, so he gave up for the moment. He was alive at least and he knew somewhere in this world his troublesome husband was also experiencing difficulties.

"Let's go." Giselle didn't spare him a glance as she started toward their truck. He only grunted in agreement and stood up. His body ached the entire way as he plopped into the passenger seat.

Neither had anything to say and an unbreakable silence filled the air. Only the light sound of the radio tried to clear some of the awkwardness as Michael dug around in his pack to find a pair of fast acting pain pills to deal with the throbbing in his chest. After downing the two pills with a bottle of lukewarm water, he closed his eyes and took the time to break down what he knew about this new world.

Though try as he may, the only information he could bring up was about his character.

This time he gotten the role of a young hunter named, cleverly, Hunter. It was obvious the creator of this world had put a lot of planning into him with his name and three lines of history. Michael had to hold back a chuckle at how minor this character was. The only concrete information available about his setting was that his hunting partner was Giselle who was the only hunter willing to work with him. He was a coward who often avoided combat and that he died while on a mission with Giselle and another hunter known as Ellen. Just looking at the supposed scene of his death, he already guessed that Ellen was this world's main character. Apparently, he gets his heart ripped out by a Baobhan Sith. Lovely. A classic throw away character.

Even if there wasn't much to work with, he had experienced enough worlds to get a gist of what was going on. This was an urban supernatural world placed in the USA, specifically Florida. Which meant Michael got to look forward to all sorts of supernatural beasties. There was a hunting organization and a peace keeping government body. But when all was said and done there was little substance to the world in its current state. While as a World Developer it wasn't impossible for him to work with little to nothing, there was just too much uncertainty that currently surrounded him. He would have preferred a far more mature fragment.

'Dandelion? Dahlia? Daffodil?' Michael tried to reach out to one of their System Administrators. He even thrown in over half of his available energy only to be met with silence. Through gritted teeth he shifted in his seat, agitated with the lack of success.

What happened? With a hand full of failures, he gave up for the moment and turned his attention back to his character.

While he complained about the emptiness of the world, he didn't think the bare bones nature of this character was too bad. As an experience Developer, even without the help from Home Team, he could still do some work. After poking around a little bit more he was able to find a few scraped ideas that had been planned for him. While the finalized Hunter had no personal life, Michael quickly began to build his circle of friends with the help of these scraps.

From friendless cannon fodder to a tired mama's boy. Michael gave Hunter a mother who raised him single handedly and had lost her vision due to a car accident when Michael was in high school. The accident also affected her legs making it difficult for her to walk without some assistance. Because of the cost of surgery and rehabilitation, along with his mother's inability to work, they had acquired a large amount of debt. In order to support himself and his mother, Hunter had taken on several side jobs. One of which was as a late-night convenience store clerk that left him alone in a barely populated area of his small town of Easter, Florida.

During a long, dull night shift, his luck ran out and he ran into what he thought was a common robber. It hadn't been so simple, instead it had been a witch out of their mind. The store was wrecked but Hunter survived and had now seen the hidden world. From there he joined up with the local branch of the Hunting Organization and started taking jobs all over Florida as they paid far more than his part time jobs.

The robbery sparked Michael's interest as he saw a wonderful opportunity. He applied some of his Developer privileges to add his own interpretation of events. Since things had already progressed outside of the creator's original intentions, he found little resistance. So, he gave Hunter a special skill that had helped him out that night. A high resistance to magic. Perfect for a hunter who specialized in fae. It was just useful in general since most supernatural phenomena in this world was considered magic.

Besides from his mother, Michael also gave Hunter two longtime friends, Shelly, a radio DJ at their town's local station and Peter, a manager at a medium sized company in Orlando. He worried about giving Hunter too many since he wasn't sure if his personal energy reservoir could support it as he fleshed out the two friends a little more. Though as long as he stayed and developed the world, he was sure more friends and connections would naturally appear.

Satisfied with his work, Michael could finally relax a bit. While nothing was as he would like it, at least he could feel that this world had potential. Even in its sparseness, there was a desire to grow and thrive. He could tell just by how easily he was able to expand his character settings. Once he found his bastard of a husband, there would be plenty of points to develop from.

At the thought of Alexander, Michael felt another spark of agitation as he bit his inner lip. Even if they weren't close to each other, he knew Alexander was in this world. No matter the distance, they were bound together after all. He was also pretty damn sure that it was that demon's fault they were in this situation.

A/N

Hi, Trash Floridan here. (￣▽￣)ノ Nothing like setting an urban fantasy arc in good ol' Florida. Haha, swamp, mosquitoes and the legendary Florida Man. (☆ω☆) This arc will be around 26 chapters long and I have the rough chapters written up to Ch 18. I will be updating between 2-3 times a week.