Fanfic / Hunter (UnwelcomeStorm)

Hunter, written by UnwelcomeStorm is a Worm x Bloodborne crossover in which Taylor triggers with the abilities of the Good Hunter. She visits the Hunter's Dream and Yharnam whenever she falls asleep, and as the events of Bloodborne play out, their effects bleed over into Brockton Bay.

There is an associated thread for the in-universe version of Parahumans Online.

This story can be read at Space Battles and Sufficent Velocity.

Dead Fic

Beware unmarked spoilers below!

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Tropes:

• Abnormal Ammo: Quicksilver Bullets, as per usual. A single shot is powerful enough to blow a man's head clean off.
• Anachronic Order: The story tends to jump around to different months. Word of God says she's experimenting and practicing this particular writing style as well as to build the horror and suspense associated with Bloodborne.
• An Arm and a Leg: Armsmaster loses an arm in PRT (10).
• Animalistic Abomination: Beast!Sophia
  It was not quite three stories tall, but it seemed to loom far larger. It was animalistic in appearance, in the same distorted way a carnival mirror's reflection is still humanoid. Its limbs were too long, its hands just a little too like hands and not paws, its eyes a little too aware. Its scream was high and desperate. It was a human girl's scream, birthed in a throat framed by too many teeth.
  • Nightmare Frontier!Hookwolf, showing what happens when a shard gains Insight/Beasthood.
  • Ludwig in the Hunter's Nightmare.
  And it was a thing, there was no misjudging that— it couldn't be anything else. Sophia saw legs, too many mismatched legs and arms, jutting from an animal trunk. She saw a face, stretched out to grotesque proportions like a muzzle, and a mouth filled with huge blocky teeth and a jaundiced tongue. She saw a mass, a moving writhing grasping opening near what might have been a neck, and she saw it staring back at her. The creature moved, lumbered towards them like it was alive, like it was an actual thing and not a collection of parts that did not fit.
• Annoying Arrows: Crossbow bolts won't do much against Beasts.
• Another Dimension: Winslow has been so affected by Taylor it has transitioned to what is basically a part of the Nightmare Frontier (author calls it Nightmare of Winslow). Both Armsmaster and Miss Militia, who have the highest Insight of the PRT, end up there by PRT (9). Velocity joins them later.
• Anti-Hero: Taylor. Despite her well-meaning attempt at cleaning up her city, she does have a body-count of over 50 people.
• Ascended Extra: Taylor's interactions with the characters have expanded their roles, such as Djura helping her develop a weapon capable of killing Hookwolf, using his knowledge as a former member of the Powder Kegs.
• Asshole Victim: Sophia was still... well, her. Few mourned her fate, if undeserved.
• Ate His Gun: Taylor does this Taylor (14), right in front of the PRT, claiming she's just going back to sleep. She wanted to go back to the Hunter's Dream.
• Beast with a Human Face: Patches the Spider.
• BFG: Miss Milita's power decides to give her a cannon when they have to deal with Hookwolf in the Nightmare of Winslow.
• Blood Lust: Sophia's descent into insanity started when she started following Taylor's nightly escapades and witnessed her first hunts in Brockton. Having caught Sophia, Taylor gave her a vial of her blood as a reminder of her changes. Eventually she gave into temptation and drank of the vial despite Taylor's warnings. By the time she finished drinking it - and become dependent on it as a doping agent - she had enough Insight to call up the Messengers and have them steal Armsmaster's sample. Eventually her consumption of Yharnam blood led to her transformation into a Cleric Beast.
• Bleed 'Em and Weep: Taylor, after killing Gascoigne, as he was the first hunter who she witnessed turned into a beast.
• Body Horror: Being a Bloodborne crossover, this is a given. Sophia turning into a Cleric Beast in PRT (1) may be the best example.
  • Daniel Herbert's CRI in PRT (8) reveals horrifying details on what his daughter's mere presence has done to him. He has non-cancerous tumors all over his body that are filled with eyes, teeth, and more. His Corona Gemma, instead of flaring out into the frontal and temporal lobes, had stretched downwards, reaching dozens of thin tendrils through the grey and white matter, the thin growths twisting down to the brain stem to look like a spider more than a human's brain.
  • Hookwolf in the Nightmare of Winslow.
    Hookwolf's ribcage shuddered, then opened, the curved teeth pulling back like an open maw. Inside the chest cavity hung suspended the body of Brad Meadows, his sides speared through by the hooks and chains he was famous for. A silvery liquid seeped from his eyes and mouth, pooled in the wounds on his sides.
• Bullet Time: How Velocity sees the world when running at Super-Speed.
• Cop Killer: Between her involvement in Sophia's death and actually cutting down PRT Troopers and Police trying to route her in Taylor (14), Taylor is treated as this.
• Crazy-Prepared: Armsmaster has his armor set to lock down if his arm is severed from his body. Why? So no one can use his finger-prints for a biometric scan.
• Cruel and Unusual Death: Hookwolf kills Taylor in Brockton Bay (2) by turning himself into what amounts to a wood-chipper and then lunging for her while she is bound.
• Deadly Prank: Sophia feared the Locker Incident turned into this, mostly because it had her fingerprints all over it.
  A prank was one thing. Someone dying of dehydration or infection was entirely too much. Especially if she still had Sophia's fingerprints on her.
• Death Is a Slap on the Wrist: For Taylor, being bound to the Hunter's Dream and all.
• Detect Evil: Taylor words her <Impurity> Rune so that she can perceive those that meet her definition of corrupted (Enjoyment of violence and disregard for the lives of others), making them seem to glow in her view regardless of obstacles. When she sees it on herself after her rampage in Brockton Bay, it makes it clear that by her own definition she had become corrupted.
• Enemy Mine: Not in the Taylor vs Hookwolf rematch. The PRT attempts to arrest both of them.
• Exact Words: When teaching Taylor about Caryll Runes, Valtr offers her the Impurity rune, which allows her to mark "impure" targets with a shining form of the rune depending on a definition she can set when first accepting it. He advises her to be careful when doing so, citing a Hunter that worded it to mark child killers, and died when it failed to mark a murderer who only killed adults.
• Fate Worse than Death: Sophia ends up in the Hunter's Nightmare after she turns into a beast and dies.
  • Hookwolf ends up as basically a metallic Bloodletting Beast in the Nightmare of Winslow.
• Fire-Breathing Weapon: The Flamesprayer that Gilbert gives to Taylor.
• Forced to Watch: Amygdala waits until Taylor is watching before killing Miss Militia.
• Foreshadowing: Taylor notes in Taylor (6) that her father enjoys watching the blank screen of the TV almost as much as the news, and mentions she doesn't see the appeal... news in Brockton are always the same.
• Gameplay and Story Integration: Taylor's memory is impaired by Insight - she cannot remember things, places and actions she's seen or done without having enough of it to understand. While at the moment it's no issue, when trying to remember it later it only comes out as Missing Time. For instance, she doesn't recall giving Sophia that vial...
  • Frenzy affects people differently depending on different coping mechanisms, experiences, and psychological profiles. Miss Militia suffered a mixture of pain, crying blood, and memory loss (remember, her power is supposed to prevent this, so it's really messing with her). Taylor, by contrast, suffered an emotional containment failure: all that stress, angst, fear, and other inconvenient experiences she's too busy with the Hunt to properly sort through comes crashing down and breaks her self-control.
  • Insight counts as a measure of perspective, equipping them with the tools to find the information or wisdom. Armsmaster started recognizing patterns and parallels between people, which then allowed him to make the leaps of logic he was after. Danny started literally perceiving the things around him, giving him a wider point of view to start considering things retroactively. Taylor's started picking up on things that aren't being said (names, implications, fragments of memory) and experiencing non-physical sensations (the pressure of Master Willem's attention, for example.)
• Genre Savvy: A group of Japanese vigilantes in Brockton Bay (6) are mentioned to have cut off all internet access to the outside world the second they heard that the Amygdala videos have some sort of memetic properties.
• Giant Spider: The Amygdala.
• Godzilla Threshold: After fighting Hookwolf in the Nightmare of Winslow, Armsmaster loses an arm and steadily begins to bleed out. Some time later, Miss Militia and Velocity bring Taylor to him. Her first idea is to feed him her blood. Miss Militia vehemently opposes it, seeing what happened when Shadow Stalker did something similar, while Velocity is more desperate to save Armsmaster's life at any cost, not wanting his boss to resurrect in the Nightmare as a monster like Hookwolf did. Taylor takes another option and instead feeds him a vial of Arianna's blood.
• Heel Realization: Taylor realizes that she's the bad guy in Taylor (14), just before she nearly kills Assault, and does kill several PRT Troopers and Police. Her next chapter compounds it by showing that she has the mark of <Impurity> on her.
• He Who Fights Monsters: Taylor realizes she runs the risk of falling into this during Taylor (10).
  There was something about that thought that seemed wrong to me. It took me a few moments to understand, and when I did, fear prickled cold sweat along my spine. I felt my thoughts grow clearer with the chill. Of course: blood. I was near drunk with it, my brain humming and my veins thrumming with excitement. I had just watched a young woman meet a terrible fate, at my hands no less, and here I stood basking in the sensations her death left me? I felt an inkling of shame flicker to life in my gut, and I grasped at it, held tightly to it. Guilt followed, swift and crushing.
• Hidden Depths: Gehrman is a surprisingly good artist.
• Horrifying the Horror: By Sophia (7), Sophia is outright terrified of everything around them, including Taylor. Moreso when she was ordered to massacre the village of infected Yharnamites on the way to Byrgenwerth.
• Hunter of Monsters: Taylor takes the role of the Good Hunter from canon, but also extends her hunt to Brockton Bay.
• The Hunter Becomes the Hunted: Father Gascoigne shows Taylor how it looks from the other end of the Hunt.
  This was a nightmare, one determined to repeat itself. Any time I left the Dream, he found me. He could smell me, track me through the streets, and every time I fled he ran me down. I screamed, he snarled. I pleaded, begged, cried. He didn't care. It was all just animal noise, to him.
• Implacable Man: Taylor. You cannot stop her. You cannot kill her (not permanently at any rate). If she wants you dead, you will be hunted and slaughtered.
• Inn Between the Worlds: The Hunter's Dream for Taylor.
• Invisible to Normals: Things like the Messengers can't be perceived by those without enough Insight, as evidenced in PRT (4) when video footage shown to several others only show things floating on their own.
• Ironic Hell: Sophia being pulled down in the bloody mire and stuck there in the Hunter's Nightmare is, by Word of God, a recreation of Taylor's locker.
• It's All My Fault: Armsmaster considers Sophia's ultimate fate his fault... then he starts blaming Taylor.
  • After Taylor (14) he starts blaming himself for both Sophia and Taylor, believing that he could have stopped things from escalating if he had noticed what was happening sooner. He also reveals to Dauntless that he always feels responsible whenever something happens to Protectorate and Wards members under his command.
• "Just Joking" Justification: Sophia claims this to Taylor about all the bullying, while begging her to help get free of the bloody mire in Sophia (6). Taylor nearly leaves her behind before deciding against it and tossing her a summoning bell to get her free, remembering that she's no saint herself after her own actions against the PRT. However, she's well aware of the weakness of Sophia's argument due to the Impurity rune she can see on her.
• Kill Me Now, or Forever Stay Your Hand: Taylor gives Velocity a version of this when he readied to pull a knife on her after learning about Miss Milita's death.
• Leave No Survivors: Taylor orders Sophia to do this in regards to the village they pass on the way to the lake with Rom in Taylor (20).
• Losing Your Head: Hookwolf lost his metal head when the Boom Hammer hit it hard enough to explode, but remained alive until she found his core.
• Ludicrous Gibs: What was left when Hookwolf killed Taylor. She returns the favor later on with the Boom Hammer.
• Mercy Kill: How Taylor comes to regard dealing with the madwomen of the charnel houses.
• Missing Time: Anytime that Taylor ventures into an area without high-enough insight, she can't remember what she did. This includes the Chalice Dungeons and encountering Rom.
• Mix-and-Match Weapon: Taylor gives Sophia a Rifle Spear in Sophia (8).
• Morality Chain: Assault, in a strange way, befriended Taylor. As a result, he ended up as this after her Dad was brain-dead.
• Mordor: The Nightmare of Winslow, an alternate-reality version of Winslow that exists within the nightmare of a Great One/Elder God.
  Instead, Winslow was sitting in some sort of badlands, the ground dry and cracked, and littered with tombstones that oozed a red substance. A few silver-colored creatures prowled in the distance. Armsmaster walked to the window, and peered out in silence at the dead land under the cancerous sun.
• Must Have Caffeine: Taylor guzzles down caffeine and energy drinks when trying not to fall asleep, so she didn't enter the Hunter's Dream. Once she comes to terms with it, she reduces her intake.
• Names to Run Away from Really Fast: The PRT names Taylor's murderous persona 'Bloodmoon' because of the pattern she works under.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Velocity ends up foaming Taylor in place, stopping her in the middle of a hunt... right when Hookwolf drops by unannounced, forcing him to retreat while leaving her helpless as he kills her. Though, and Word of God confirms it, had his backup arrived they would have tried to protect her.
• The Nose Knows: In the very first chapter, Sophia manages to smell a number of scents off of Taylor... including one that shouldn't exist.
  A sweet, coppery smell, not quite hiding a more musky odor, like she'd been rolling around with dogs. And under that... Sophia took a sharp breath as something in her brain pulsed, twisting like the start of a migraine. It was the faint scent of the color of moonlight, so completely impossible to think of because it didn't exist.
  • Taylor as well when she finds a pearl slug husk.
  It was full of an oddly luminescent, pale slime, and it smelled... odd. Something not quite like moonlight. Starlight, I decided, after I held the shell to my nose for a minute or two, breathing it in. It smelled of starlight.
• Oh, Crap!: The general reaction in PRT (1) when they discover that Beast!Sophia still retains her Intangibility powers.
• Only Works Once: Velocity tried to tag Taylor a second time with containment foam grenades. She nearly guts him for it, stating he doesn't get her twice.
• Poisonous Person: Taylor's blood is essentially poison to everyone else. It's even caustic enough to stop Hookwolf from healing.
• Power Incontinence: Miss Militia's powers actively gives her lethal weapons when she wants a non-lethal one during the encounter with Beast!Sophia in PRT (1).
• Reasonable Authority Figure: Assault/Ethan for Taylor, according to Word of God.
• Roaring Rampage of Revenge: When Taylor learns the PRT has her father, she cuts through everyone in her way until the heroes show up, and narrow avoids killing them because Assault tried to reason with her.
• Sanity Slippage: Taylor mindset gets more and more unstable as she continues to explore Yharnam.
  • Because she's tied to the Moon Presence through the Dream, when she's back on Brockton Bay she's not right in the head. Which is why she never noticed what happened to her father until it was too late. The moment she eats a Third Cord, the memories start rushing back.
• Scarily Competent Tracker: Father Gascoigne in Taylor (4):
  He could smell me, track me through the streets, and every time I fled he ran me down.
• Serial Killer: The PRT has pretty much decided that Taylor is one. They're not exactly wrong, since she goes out to hunt Gangbangers during the Full Moon.
• Shell-Shocked Veteran: Djura, as evident in his talks with Taylor. He might've stopped dreaming, but he never did escape the Hunt. Taylor comes to realize that she's just as trapped.
• Slowly Slipping Into Evil: Taylor's starting to embrace the Hunters' mindset, spurred by the horrors she's encountered so far, the realization she's become the very thing she swore to hunt, and Miss Militia's death.
• Spared by the Adaptation: The Little Girl in the Window was escorted to Oedon Chapel by Elieen.
• Super-Speed: Velocity.
• Taught by Experience: How Taylor comes to learn to defeat Father Gascoigne in Taylor (5).
  He was old, and strong, and experienced, and I was young, new, and tired. But while I could be killed, I could not die. Winning was only a matter of time. I just had to learn from him. Learn how he moved, how he would shoot, learn how to dart in and bite with the teeth of my saw, then dance away again in the same breath. Necessity is an excellent teacher.
• Tempting Fate: Some idiot on the PHO in Brockton Bay (3) questioned whether or not Bonesaw had decided to pay a visit. The end of the chapter has her deciding to go there for a vacation after reading the comment.
• Textile Work Is Feminine: The Plain Doll is learning to sew, including making little hats for the Little Ones.
• There Are Two Kinds of People in the World: According to Sophia (predator and prey). To her utter horror, Taylor is the third kind: a rabid beast.
• These Are Things Man Was Not Meant to Know: Insight, in a nutshell. Whenever someone gains it, they get a migraine and often start to notice things that are Invisible to Normals.
  • In Brockton Bay (6), people start watching videos with the Amygdala in it. One person notes that every time they watch the video, they see things that weren't there before.
• Tired of Running: Taylor only fights Father Gascoigne because she couldn't run anymore.
  Eventually, one night, I came to a stop, heaving for breath. I turned to look where Gascoigne was rounding a corner, his breath coming in pants like a beast. My hand found the grip of my pistol. I'd like to say I did it because I found my nerve, that I'd finally taken Eileen's entreaty to be brave to heart. That I'd recognized that Gascoigne needed to be put down, because he would never ever stop hunting me. I didn't.

  I only stopped because I could not run anymore.
• Tragic Monster: Taylor.
• The Unmasking: The PRT figures out who Bloodmoon is in PRT (6) by checking her home.
• Unreliable Narrator: Taylor's issues with Insight push her here.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Taylor sent many people to the apparent safety of Iosefka's Clinic.
• Villain Protagonist: Taylor, from the Brockton Bay perspective. She is a Serial Killer.
• The Walls Have Eyes: When Sophia gains enough Insight from spying on Taylor, she starts seeing eyes on the walls.
• Wham Episode: PRT (6) has the PRT find out who Bloodmoon is, and revealed that Danny is essentially been turned into a walking machine by gaining too much insight.
  • Taylor (15): Taylor has been branded with the mark of <Impurity> and found the first of the cords, which she eats.
  • PRT (11): The Amygdala from Winslow has become visible and is branded an Endbringer.
  • Rogue's Gallery (1): Brockton Bay has been quarantined, over 700 people have gone missing from Winslow, at least three heroes (Armsmaster, Miss Militia, and Velocity) have been lost to the Nightmare, and the S9 is on the move above Boston.
• Wham Line: From Brockton Bay (6): "Good morning, Mr. Ethan."
• What Measure Is a Non-Human?: Djura, as per canon, tries to reason with Taylor that the beasts of Old Yharnam were still people. Taylor herself believes that some Humans Are the Real Monsters and that she has to hunt. They later reach something of an accord.
• X-Ray Vision: It's revealed in PRT (7) that Danny can somehow perceive what Armsmaster is doing when there is a solid wall between them. He didn't even recognize that it was strange, indicating that he may have gained "eyes on the inside" that provide this.
• You Can't Go Home Again: Taylor can't go home again since the PRT knows who she is.
• Your Days Are Numbered: Word of God has confirmed that in-universe, the situation in Brockton will spiral completely out of control in June 15, the next full moon.
• Your Head A-Splode: Velocity gets a front-row view as one Gang Banger gets shot in the head by Taylor and this results.

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