Short Stories

I Am a hell chaser

There Is never a bad or good side in this world. It's only bad or worse, for humans we are the worst. Some humans are good but can be corrupted by power and greed, or even emotions. It doesn't take long before someone cracks under pressure. For example a few years back I was hunting this bounty of a pack of trolls on the board of Mexico. I went there and found myself going with two other hunters. A married couple that dares challenge the hunting job and love at the same time. Endless say the male was ripped in half by one of the trolls and the female went in a mental rage over the lost love and went guns blazing towards the pack of trolls. I of course backed out of the contact for a week until they were calm again. I returned to find the female was turned into a baby maker. It was not pretty and she begged to be put out of her misery. So I strapped her with enough explosives to level a mountain and blew the charges, ensuring a quick death for her and sealing the trolls inside to starve. Needless to say, romance and hunting don't mix well. Anyone I talk to is instantly put in danger from a number of UB. Which stands for unofficial bounty, it's basically a non-human that has not harmed or attacked humans yet to have a bounty on them. 

It's not frowned upon to kill UBs but it is controversial between hunters. We are called "Hell Chasers." By the governments we work for. Anyone can be a Hell Chaser, you just have to apply for the job and pass the test. I won't go into too much detail but let's say you make mistakes on the test, you won't be alive to retry.  The way we make a living off of the bounties is by bringing in a part of the bounty that can identify what it is from. For example you would take fur from a werebear, teeth from a vampire, tail of a mermaid ect. The reason I say it's controversial to kill a UB is because we have UB try out to be hunters or just trying to get by in their life. Also if a UB is attacked by humans and they defend themselves they will be placed on a bounty board. I have had my fair share of that exact situation with multiple UBs. The reason I hate most humans is because this one bounty I received on a siren. 

I investigated the area where the siren was heard and found a middle aged man had a siren butchered to the point they were unable to escape and forced themselves upon the female siren. I found the body of the man outside of the shed he kept to the siren in dead from brain Trauma. I entered the shed to see the siren had recently died as her body was being carried from the roof by rushed chains attached to the numbs of her limbs by bolts. Her legs and arms were chopped off of her body by the chainsaw they made. Her wounds were poorly wrapped causing infection and the leading cause of her death. Unfortunately I wasn't the only one there and while I was expecting the corpse of the siren a male presumably heard her cries came to save her. I aimed my gun at him and said "give her a proper burial. As I put away my weapon, I took one of the fingers from one of the arms and burned the home of the man inside making it look like an accidental death by  fixation and him knocking over a nearby candle starting a fire. I shamefully turned into the body and claimed I killed the siren when it was far from the horrible truth. 

That said Hell Chasers has a ranking system on how dangerous a bounty or UB is.  First thing to know is a hive, which a hive bounty is a group of weak bounty all hiding out in one location. It's smart as you know hunters are coming so why not plan for them with other wanted bounties in your weight class. Second is a different type of hive, which is Apex hive, the only difference is there is an extremely dangerous bounty inside a group of weak bounties. Not to be confused with a super pack bounty which pays the big money because it's a handful of powerful bounties in one place that work together to kill anything that dares step to close. All my 30 years of hunting I only saw one super pack bounty and I'm still spending the money from that bounty even though it was split 10 ways. That was 15 years ago, so yeah they pay very well. Next on the bounty list is a haunting, which it's a bit confusing. It basically means a bounty is like a ghost, it attacks humans if they stay too long and rarely is seen. The haunting bounty normally falls on goblins, or a small variety of non-humans. I do have a story of one time a haunting bounty turned out to be the first recorded actual spirit haunting. Next you have a casual bounty which are known as normies, they can range from small to human size bounties that had one or two bad run-ins with humans. The last two types of bounties are town killers or globally. The difference between the two is that town killer takes up between 10-20 hunters to take out like a super pack bounty but it's only one bounty. The globally bounty is only an end of time threat and requires all hired hell chasers to take care of or all life is extinguished.