42 Strange Behavior

♪ I didn't know what I would find, When I went lookin' for a reason, I know I didn't read between the lines, And baby I've got nowhere to go ♪

Cthylla sings loudly along while driving, luckily we are already near Bobby's house, and this torture will end soon...

People always sang and made music even in my tribe, and for nearly ten millennia, the music has been fine, till people started to enjoy this kind of music if you can even call it that.

♪ I tried to take the road less traveled by, but nothing seems to work the first few times, am I right? ♪

"Turn right at the end of the road, and we are there," I say to her while she sways around, not really caring about the road and continues to sing.

♪ So, how can I ever try to be better? Nobody ever let's me in, And I can still see you, this ain't the best view, On the outside looking in, I've been a lot of lonely places, I've never been on the outside ♪

But she seems to have heard me and turns towards Bobby's salvage yard, then stops the car in front of the gate.

Afterward, she simply continues to sing, not really caring that we have arrived...

♪ You saw me there but never knew, That I would give it all up to be, A part of this, a part of you, And now it's all too late--- ♪

"Hey! I want to finish the song!" complains Cthylla angrily after I silence the car player.

"No, last time I let you finish a song, you made me go to every Celine Dion concert with you..." I say to her and get out of the car.

"Yes, and I would do it again! And I'm pretty sure you enjoyed it there and even shed tears when she sang 'My Heart Will Go On'!"

I don't hear her shout from the car because of a disturbance in the force or something like that and walk towards the house, so she has no choice but to follow me.

"I kinda have a feeling that I will buy a lot of CDs after this..." she says with an evil grin after catching up to me.

"Sure, let's go shopping after visiting him," I say with a smile because I also need to buy an old car player where you can only listen to cassettes...

"Woof, woof!"

When we come closer to the house, the good boy Rumsfeld looks up from his usual spot and starts to bark happily after seeing me.

So I walk towards him and start to give him some well-deserved pats.

"Hey there boy, how are you doing," I say to him as he rolls around happily.

Cthylla sees this and looks softly at us before coming closer to pet him too.

"Grrrr"

But when she tries, he gets up and warns her not to step closer.

"What the... and I thought I finally found a pet that doesn't discriminate against eldritch beings... why some strange dog even likes you?" she asks after watching me annoyed play with the dog.

"No idea, but I had a connection from the start with him. It was kinda like with you." I say with a shrug and continue to pet him while she rolls her eyes and stays away.

It's true what she is saying; most animals don't really like eldritch creatures because they can probably sense that they are something unnatural.

In my old world, Cthylla always stayed away from them since they would get aggressive when she came closer.

"Again taming my dog I see... well done Rumsfeld to keep people away from here," says Bobby after coming out of the house.

"Woof!" responds the well-behaved boy happily while panting, to his owner's annoyance.

---

"Hey Bobby, grumpy as always, I see."

"I'm not grumpy..." he says grumpily, then looks towards my annoying but beautiful girlfriend and asks, "So she is the one?"

"Yes, her name is Anna Milton. Anna, this lively man is Bobby Singer. I told you about him."

He walks to her, and they shake hands.

"Hi, I heard that you tried to help this ruffian find me and got into trouble because of it, so I want to apologize for that."

"Don't worry about it, it is part of the job. Let's go inside; we have a few things to talk about," he says then goes back into the house, and she follows suit, leaving me dumbfounded behind.

What the hell was this? Why are they so friendly to each other? When I met him first, he tried to shoot me and then gave me salty water...

I sigh and follow the two new besties inside.

"Take a seat," says Bobby and points to the couch while grabbing three glasses and one of his cheap whiskeys.

"Do you drink, or are you too young for that?" asks Bobby after already pouring her some.

She is still twenty in this world, so technically she is not allowed to.

"She is---" I want to stop Bobby from breaking the law but get an eldritch fist to the head instead...

"Yes, don't worry about it. Whiskey is actually my favorite beverage," she says happily and starts to drink it.

"Good then, enjoy it, I guess... I have one question: you two are a thing right? Not that I judge you or something like that, but you look more like an old married couple than people who have known each other for a few days..."

"We do?" asks Cthylla happily, then says, "It just happened. Romantic people would probably call it love at first sight, or something like that."

Well, for me, it was curiosity at first before turning into romantic feelings during our time together.

Bobby looks at me, then sighs and sits down, "This explains why this idjit is so eager to get killed by those things. Well, at least you seem not to be on their side..."

"No, I'm not. I think no one would like to be seen as a breeding machine for a... creature like that." she says with a complicated expression.

I told her not to reveal her connection to her father or what she really is. For her safety and for Bobby's, since I don't know how he would really react even when he doesn't see everything in black and white...

"Do you two know what this means to you both? You will be hunted by the craziest creatures I have seen so far and probably will not survive this..." says Bobby with an expression that only people have that have already seen someone close die, and the room becomes quiet.

Well, not if I hunt them down first before they get stronger...

I break the silence and ask, "You said you found something that can lead me to them, right?"

"Yes, wait a second, let me grab a map." He says and walks towards the stairs that lead to his basement.

Cthylla then turns to me and says sadly, "This poor man experienced a lot of pain. I can sense that."

"Yes, I know..." I say and pour myself more whiskey.

No one becomes like that without experiencing something that turns your world upside down and leaves you no other choice but to become something that other people would fear.

---

Bobby comes back with a huge map and places it in front of us on the table. There are a lot of red circles on it with dates that span over the last five years.

"I spent nearly the whole time after you left gathering information about the possible movements of the cult. These red circles are all bloody cases where probably the Followers appeared and young women like Anna were involved." says Bobby while pointing at the circles.

Well, Cthylla had laid wrong traces by giving infants a bit of her essence energy... So it is possible that these red circles were all women with this energy.

Bobby's words make her look thoughtful at the map, but everyone would probably be dead by now if she hadn't done that to hide herself...

"And is there a pattern?" I ask him.

"Yes, it seems to have started five years ago, near Stanford, and wandered towards the east. Simultaneously to our meeting with them, there was also a case in St. Louis a few weeks ago."

Well, in the end, they managed to find her after eliminating all traces...

"The strange thing is, after you informed me that you found her, more cases happened in Nebraska where young women were kidnapped, and their families and the people they were with were killed.

There was only one survivor who described the attackers, and his description seemed to fit. The attackers had a strange shine in their eyes, were extremely strong and fast, and some even had sharp teeth.

"The Follower's forms can vary depending on what enhancement they got through Cthulhu's essence, and it's possible that some weak ones have only sharp teeth without other mutations," says Cthylla while looking at the map.

"The question is why do they do that? They already know how you look so they don't need to search for other young women..."

This makes Bobby look at me shocked. "Wait a damn minute! They know how she looks already?"

Oops, it seems I forgot to mention that...

"Yes, we ran into them in Ohio..." I say, and Bobby grabs his forehead as if he has a migraine.

"Great, now your chances of surviving this are even smaller, because they know exactly who to search for... But then their new actions were really strange. Why do they kidnap them? Can they maybe breed some small octopus monsters without you?"

Cthylla thinks about it for a few seconds, then says, "No, I don't think so, but they also never were in a situation like that where the Followers are dying left and right. Maybe they plan something with them, if this is even the work of them."

"Well, the only way to find out if this is Cthulhu's work or not is to get there and check it out. If it's them, fine, I'll take care of them, and if not, it's also fine because I want to hunt some monsters anyway."

"Did you become now a full-fledged hunter or what? My suggestion is to drop your plan to hunt them down and take her on a vacation as far as possible from here," says Bobby with crossed arms while looking at me.

"Sadly, that is not possible since they get stronger and more tricky every second they are alive, and this would make it more difficult later on when they eventually find us," I say in response.

The best example of this was New York in my old world... where the Alpha became the mayor, and made us enemy number one to catch us.

And here they are already using people like zombies. Who knows what they will do if we give them more time.

"So our next destination is Nebraska?" asks Cthylla, and I nod at her.