Chapter 25: High time for Hysteria (Vol 3 Prologue)

October 2nd, 2020. Northern Alberta, Canada....

Bars were always a place of heightened activity on Friday nights. But the Bear's Claw Bar and Grill was in the midst of entering another dimension in terms of celebratory intensity and problematic regulars.

A group of bearded grizzled men being almost the sole cause of such a scene in their drunken stupor. They'd downed at least a few dozen beers split between the six of them and they seemed to have no interest in slowing down. The Avengers themselves wouldn't even celebrate this much after defeating a worldly threat. Whatever had them in such high spirits must've been something incredible.

"Noah-- Noah look!" One of the men yelled over to his drinking buddy while pointing at the tv. It was a small tv with a cracked screen, mounted up high on the wall for all bar regulars to see with little to no effort. The volume wasn't loud, but it was enough for the tv to be heard over the musicians across the room and the dull chatter throughout the bar.

"They're talking about our kill." The man said to Noah with a devilish grin.

Noah looked up and tuned into the tv. It was the news. Noah didn't like the news. Full of lies and agendas. Even so...

"Reports of crimes-- especially missing persons, over the last year have been on the steady uptick until a few months ago. Statistics seem to be leveling out continually. Along with this, word of the famous urban legend, the Wendigo, is slowly fizzling out-- along with word of of a possible group of hunters that have actually taken down the Monster in the Mountains--"

The Hunters erupted into cheer over the table as they listened to the tv with excitement.

"Damn right! That's us! JUST WAIT!" Noah and the others yelled in excitement as the other bar goers watched them with confusion, irritation and speculation. They continued listening after their cheers died down.

"Along with word of the Wendigo fading, another fantastical figure seems to have fallen on the lands of Alberta. According to eyewitness reports of potential kidnappings and strong-arm robberies, a beast-man made of lightning and ice with swords for fingers had come to their rescue." The reporter-- a young woman with vibrant brown hair and a red nose due to the cold, looked exhausted as she sighed, "Ladies and gentlemen, what can I say? Wendigo's.... heroic beast-men from the blizzards. Let's not forget it's October, also known as high time for hysteria."

"Won't be hysteria for much longer-- we killed that bastard, eh Noah? For our families."

Noah nodded as he burped, the smell of old beer strong enough to singe a man's eyebrows. As he did, memories of the day before entered his mind. The travel into the mountains north of the bar. Armed with night vision goggles, rifles and poison tipped crossbows. They were armed to the teeth, and the creature was ready for them. It's den marked on the tree's and smashed earth. Boy was it ready. But, not ready enough....

Noah grinned. "It'll be dead in a few hours if not already, then we can go up there and secure what's o--"

His words were cut short as the doors into the bar burst open. The suddenness combined with the aggression behind the action silenced the bar in ways never before seen. The only sounds left radiating through the bar being the sound of the tv still playing the news. Weather reports of record-breaking amounts of storms and blizzards for this time of year.

After a few seconds, someone stepped into the bar. A man. He wasn't very tall-- barely six feet. But he was big. Well-muscled-- not entirely lean, but not entirely bulky either, visible even beneath his leather jacket and blue hoodie. Dreaded braids hung down to his shoulders and hid his face from most of the people in the bar. He was dark, shown from the skin on his hands. Knuckles scarred and bloody.

Visibly an outsider. But none of this could've drawn as much attention as he was currently drawing. It was all due to what he was carrying.

A Bear. A massive Bear. At least nine feet tall and who knew how many hundreds of pounds. He carried the Bear as if it were a rug slung over his shoulder. In the silence they could hear his breaths. Not tired in the slightest.

Everyone inside the bar jumped slightly when he shrugged the hulking animal off his shoulder and let it fall to the floor. It laid out on the dirty wood floor like a pelt rug that was meant to be in some aristocratic millionaires' mansion. Only it wasn't a rug. It was a carcass. With a crossbow bolt sticking out of its back. The hair around the wound was gone, the flesh foul and gangrenous under the artificial light of the bar.

The man cleared his throat suddenly, drawing everyone's attention back to himself as he rolled his shoulders, causing a symphony of cracks to rattle through his body before he pulled a set of earbuds out of his ears.

"Who did this bullshit?"

Silence.

The man nodded his head, "Alright...." and then he crouched down by the bear to take out the arrow.

"Hunting is legal... this is not. This Female Grizzly had three cubs. Grizzly bears in these parts are hard to find-- high in the mountains and territorial, you feel what I'm saying?" The man surveyed the silent bar.

Noah felt like his throat was caught in a vice, a memory of the bellowing roar of the beast played on repeat in his mind, followed by one of his Hunting partners comments. "Sounds almost like a bear, eh?"

"Let's be real, it's impossible to run into one of these blindly. They mark their territory.... they score the trees with their claws..... tufts of fur hang in the snow where they roll around. You gotta be a full-on dumbass not to notice. Even dumber to hunt an animal with a modified poison crossbow bolt!" The man took the bolt out of the bears back with a level of aggression that got another jump out of the people inside the bar.

He stood up with an unnatural grace and looked around the room.

Noah's throat tightened again, followed by his whole body as the man's eyes fell on him. He was young in the face-- couldn't have been over twenty. None of that matter as he began walking over to their table. His steps were silent-- but heavy. He could feel the floor creak and give under his mass, as if his bones were iron.

"What do you think you're doing, eh?" One of Noah's Hunters said as he pushed up out of his seat to face the man approaching them.

"Teaching." The man grunted; his accent wasn't Canadian at all.

Noah felt his stomach lurch as the one of his Hunters dove in to punch the man square in the face. He had more than five inches on him and was about two hundred and fifty pounds. For some reason Noah didn't feel any more confident with that knowledge.

He knew why as the Hunters fist connected with the outsider's face and broke as if he punched a steel wall.

Some of the people in the bar shouted in shock, others cringed.

The Hunter stumbled backward yelling in pain as he grabbed at his busted wrist and knuckles. His buddies quickly crowded him, forgetting about Noah. Maybe they were conscious of their reaction, maybe they just wanted an excuse to get away from the outsider.

Noah didn't get to ask or receive an answer as the dark-skinned outsider pushed past them and sat on the table beside Noah.

"You thought you had a Wendigo huh?" His voice was smooth. Upon further inspection Noah could see that he had animalistic fangs on his top and bottom teeth. They glistened from the shadows of his hair.

"I- I did!" Noah forced out.

The outsider leaned in close suddenly. Noah tried to move only to realize what had been keeping him so still was the outsider's right hand on his shoulder, forcing him down into his seat.

Noah could smell the rain and outside air on his braids as he said flatly to him.

"Cap."

Noah screamed as the outsider stabbed the arrow into his thigh.

"Next time you go out looking for glory, educate yourself, yea?" The outsider said as he grabbed one of the men's spare drinks and poured it over the wound.

"ACK!" Noah yelled as the wound began to burn with an intensity that he was sure matched hell. Speaking of hell, that would be the rest of his life if he didn't get the arrow removed and treated. In a panic he rose to his feet and ran off for his car to find the nearest hospital. His fellow Hunters followed him along with a few people who succumbed to their fear and headed for the door.

The silence didn't fade as the Hunters left. Instead, it increased as they watched the outsider get up from the table he sat on and head for the bartender's table. Along the way, people began to whisper and question where the Bear carcass disappeared to. It was gone, almost as if it was never there.

That's when the door came open again. The people inside were beginning to question if they'd ever view doors the same ever again.

"Oh brother, you sure know how to make an entrance-- don't ya!" An unnaturally tall pale skinned man said as he stepped in with three other people of unique appearance. His red hair looked like fire under the dim bar lights... and somehow, that was his most tame feature.

Ahead of the trio was a young woman of Hispanic descent. She was pretty, with or without the mean mug. The young girl following her copied her mannerisms, it would've been cute if they hadn't all just seen a bear carcass and a man get a poisonous arrow slammed into his leg.

On the opposite spectrum of cuteness was the man walking beside the redhead. He was of a build similar to the first outsider-- he looked older than the rest. Angrier too, but the further he stepped into the bar, the more everyone seemed to calm.... almost unnaturally.

The dreaded outsider took a seat at the bartenders table and tossed a stack of one's. "Slide me a beer, please."

The other outsiders came and sat around him, clearing out the area as they took seats.

"Slide me one too." The Hispanic appearing woman said from beside him, followed by the older angry man.

"Do you guys have apple juice?" The younger girl asked innocently followed by the redheaded man asking for copious amounts of chocolate.

The bartender did what he could in hopes of avoiding arrows in his femur, when the job was done, he watched them along with everyone else. After a few minutes, adrenaline rushes faded, curiosity in its intensity faded if only slightly and the eyes of the entire bar was no more. People still watched of course, but that was unavoidable.

Suddenly the man with long braids spoke.

"So, ya'll hiring?"

The bartender almost choked on his own spit.

"What?...." Their collective stares told him that was the wrong answer, "What position?"

"Bouncers." two of them said.

"I can clean!" The younger girl said. "Me too....hehe." The readhead added.

Having bodyguards sounded like heaven when considering the amount of brawls they had inside and out of the bar. They were inches away from a lawsuit. But the group seated in front of the bartender didn't exactly make the best first impression. Even so, the idea was.... vexxing. They'd already intimidated everyone inside the bar. A double-edged sword.

Still, one of them hadn't said anything, "....And you?" The bartender asked the man with braids and darker skin.

He wasn't looking at the bartender. He was watching the band across the room who stopped playing the second he entered the bar. After a few seconds he looked back to the bartender.

"..... I make music."