And like that we were off to Colorado, to hunt some Klounhs.

  The flight over was fun, with lavish meals and an in-flight movie, an animated movie based on the works of Poe, a set of vignettes, one of which is narrated by Bela Lugosi.

  Edge had introduced me to Poe back in 919 and I was familiar enough with his work to thoroughly enjoy the movie, even if it went over Love's head.

  We arrived in Crested Butte to an eerie silence, there were cars parked neatly in their carports of the houses on the mountainside but no people, we went to the next town over and booked a motel so we could begin investigations.

  Our investigations were stopped before they started, however, when we all developed altitude sickness upon arrival, except for Singleton, who was very disappointed when none of us felt up to the first trek into the mountains.

  In response to this bullshit, Singleton brought us some pseudoscience bullshit called "adjustaid" which was supposed to help us adjust to the altitude.

  It settled our stomachs, so I guess it was effective, but whatever. I refuse to give credit to anyone who puts "full of essential oils" on their product.

  After each of us downed the horrid liquid, we were made to do six push-ups to get our blood flowing and hopefully help the weird mixture to circulate properly.

  We left the motel into the night and were immediately greeted by some oddly sweet-smelling mist, it smelled like every carnival rolled into one, I smelled funnel cake, cotton candy. Hot dogs, popcorn, pretzels, the works.

  We were dazed and confused; it seemed to have an analgesic effect on us as we inhaled it.

  In all our studies of all the supernatural creatures we had been told about, the course on Klounhs never mentioned tasty fog, I was befuddled and unable to stop from chuckling.

  "It smells like a carnival..." giggled Love.

  "Where's the Klounh?" Mumbled Edge.

  "Mmmmm..." was all that Wolf could say.

  It wasn't long before even Singleton got into sniffing the fog, "holy shit, is there a... wait a FUCKING minute!"

  His tone snapped us all out of our stupors, looking around as he continued, "This is some sort of miasma, this shit smells too good to be fog...something seems fucky."

  I had just enough time to watch everyone nod in halfhearted bleary-eyed agreement before we were all scared into attack mode by a Klounh standing just beyond the trees! Illuminated in part by our flashlights, in part by the streetlamp some four feet from the trees, casting a wide enough beam to catch the top of the Klounh's massive head and its shock of blue razzberry-colored hair. Its made-up face, colorful costume, and childish, bouncy demeanor were offset by the amount of blood that it had been drenched in, as well as the corpse of a child that it was dragging. It pointed at us and made a laughing gesture, only emitting a series of honks that sounded like they came from one of those clown squeeze horns.

  The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

  "Oh, THERE'S the Klounh!" Sighed Edge before Singleton clapped him on the back, shaking his brain free of the fog later than the rest of us.

  "AFTER IT!" Singleton shouted as the Klounh dropped the corpse and ran the other way at an unnatural pace, I popped off a shot that put a hole in the thing's back before giving chase, out of the hole flew a spurt of that glitter powder as well as a series of red "handkerchiefs" that had been tied in a rope, as it ran, more and more handkerchiefs came out, leaving a clear trail for us to follow.

  I checked the bullets in my revolver and replaced the one I had used as we arrived at the trailhead.

  "I think its a trap." Says Edge with a slur, still breaking up the brain fog as we caught up to where the Klounh had been standing.

  Love picked up the dead child with mortified anger in her eyes, "I'm going to kill that thing..."

  Wolf looked at Singleton who had stopped at the bottom of the hill we had to run up, "how many did the report say?"

  Singleton shook his head, resting his hand on the duffel he was carrying, "indeterminate, more than ten in the pictures I showed you guys."

  Wolf growled, "Edge what are the statistics of success if we just burn down the forest?"

  I looked at Wolf with surprise, "Afraid of Klounhs are we, Agent Wolf?"

  She punched me in the chest, "Just so happens that I am scared, I can still kick your ass though so don't FUCK with me right now."

  Love got between us, still holding the child's bloodless corpse, and pointed at the trail, it was retracting.

  Green took off after the trail, Singleton straight behind, "Fuck it, if we walk into a trap, we have what we need to kill these things right?"

  As we're walking after the quickly receding Handkerchief rope through the moonlit mountain woods, Singleton asked me the oddest question I'd ever heard, "better question, what level Tangible are these Klounhs?"

  "Level?'" I look up at him as I wait for the rest to follow, "are we in an RPG game?"

  Singleton sighed, stepping over a log, "In the Houska Bestiary a Tangible's level is determined by how many Agents one creature can kill before getting killed, how has this not come up yet?"

  Edge shrugged with a disgruntled look on his face, as he stepped next to me to address Singleton, "At Trigram we were taught that we weren't to assume anything like casualties before the outcome of a fight, because the JAB was supposed to be a game changer, one Agent to replace that army of 10 gun-toting idiots."

  Singleton scoffed, "You want me to believe that each of you is level 10?"

  Edge responded with an annoyed groan as he kept pace with Singleton behind me, "Enough with the levels...I'm having trouble with variables and strategies as it is...I'm sure I'll adapt but until then, keep it at a minimum"

  Singleton looked pissed, "you work for Houska, you should have been briefed on the Tangible ranking system!" After a long silence of remembering all the training material on how to deal with Klounhs, and remembering the death toll associated with the first documented Trigram encounter, I finally decided on an answer, "25."

  Singleton looked at us, "say again?"

  I looked back at Singleton, "Each Klounh is...level 25...that's my estimate."

  Singleton looked slightly comforted, "that means that if it's just the one we can-"

  Wolf cuts off Singleton, "It's never just the one Klounh, there's a big top somewhere."

  Singleton looked at Wolf as we began to pick up the pace, "...a Big top??"

  Edge shushed us, the trail had come to a halt, we got ready for a fight and Green hissed, "Guys, they're right on top of us." Allowing Green to use our eyes, he saw something I hadn't seen at first, I could see through the darkness, the bright green eyes of three Klounhs crouched just beyond the trees in front of us, including the one we'd been chasing who had fallen on its belly in the middle of the path, seemingly having succumbed to its injuries.

  its arms and legs shaking violently as the other 3 slowly moved from cover