A/N: I've read the first comic of Hack/Slash with Herbert. While I like it just fine, I wish they would have formed a relationship between him and Cassie rather than her father since I feel the two of them would understand each other in a weird way. So this is AU – nothing to do with the comics.

Herbert West wasn't particularly fond of Cassie Hack. She had had no right to intrude upon his experiment that had been in process at the time, and ever since then he'd been trying to think of ways to get rid of her.

He wasn't even sure what she was trying to prove by knocking on his front door one night and inviting herself and her impossibly large and dull-witted partner in crime inside to question him. She wasn't a cop; women who dressed like her belonged on street corners, and more preferably in the dumpsters dead and forgotten. He was trying to defeat death, yes, but some people were simply better off dead, especially since he and Dan hadn't been back from Peru for a month yet and the experiments weren't going as planned. Interruptions from little girls in short skirts weren't helping to aid the process, seeing as Dan started eyeballing her the minute he opened the door.

After all, Dan had to have been the one to answer the door in the first place, because if Herbert had done it himself, it would have ended right there, but no. Dan being hesitant to assert himself as always, let them in, and before Herbert could complain, she was sitting on the ratty old couch in the living room with a gun strapped to her leg, blatantly peeking out from under the scrap of fabric that only passed as a skirt in the conventional sense.

She didn't question him the way a cop would, either. She was eerily well-informed; she knew things about his time in Switzerland that Herbert hadn't even told Dan, and the way she talked about the incident at Miskatonic Medical School, one would have thought she had actually been there. Her lumpy- headed friend on the other hand, stood there and breathed mist out of what Herbert supposed was a gas mask. If it was meant to intimidate him, it wasn't working, since nothing much could scare a person that had once been strangled to a would-be death by Dr. Hill's intestines.

He had tried to give them just enough information about the so-called zombies wandering around town to satisfy them and send them on their way, but oh no – he'd had to leave the basement door open! He'd had to forget to check the straps on the table before re-animating the subject, and before he knew it, Dan was being thrown into the wall.

At least Hack and her friend were physically adept at disposing of such creatures, that much he could admit. Granted, it had to be because the subject was twice his size, highly reminiscent of that first subject in the med school morgue, and was proceeding to strangle him while sitting on him. Being sat on was nothing short of unpleasant…but still not as bad as intestines.

When the man with the mask cut its head off with a knife that was really larger than physics should have allowed, Hack cocked an eyebrow at him in what he supposed was fascination as she yanked him to his feet while her friend tried to rouse Dan who'd been knocked unconscious. Herbert supposed her look had been because he didn't flinch or even acknowledge the fact that he'd been sprayed heavily with blood, but it didn't make her want to leave, either. It only made her want to explore the basement. Damn. And also check him over by touching him. Like she knew anything about how to treat a strangle victim.

Even though he'd tried to stop her, she'd gone into the basement, shoving him out of the way as if he were an empty cardboard box. He didn't like to admit it, but he wasn't surprised that she was stronger than him. The girl had more muscle than Dan could ever hope for.

As she kicked the door that led into the lab open, he briefly considered grabbing the shovel over in the corner, but decided it wasn't logical. He didn't want a repeat offense and besides, if the big oaf upstairs came down to find her dead, then he'd would have a bigger problem to deal with.

Although oddly enough, the lab didn't shock her. Most women would scream, but she just gasped and snorted out of disgust. She even went so far as to pick up a severed hand that he'd been defrosting to examine it before dropping it back down onto the table. When she turned around, he was morbidly impressed – at both her composure and the icy glare she was giving him with the one visible eye that wasn't covered by a curtain of black hair. It scared him just a little bit, mainly because when he glared at people like that, they didn't make it back upstairs. But of course, he wouldn't let her know that.

The regular argument ensued – it was the same one he'd had with Dan on multiple occasions. In fact, everything that came out of her mouth was on a mental list of standard Moral High Grounds filed away in his brain somewhere. It wasn't even worth repeating because the phrase "You can't just experiment on human body parts" was beginning to see cliché'd, and he was tired of giving the "Don't judge my work" reply.

The abrupt sock to his jaw however was something new. Cassie Hack had a nice right hook for anyone, her gender aside. And what did she have to say for herself after interrupting his tirade with violence? It wasn't what one would think:

"Sorry. Had to find some way to shut you up."

Much to anyone's surprise, Hack let him off with a warning. A warning! Who the hell did she think she was to be letting him off with a warning when she was the one who'd forced her way into his home? And to make things even more laughable, she told him she'd be checking up on him! Was that supposed to scare him? That a morbid little girl with black lips and tight clothes would be coming back to see if he was as she put it, breeding more would-be slashers?

What the hell was a slasher? Not that he cared, but he hadn't even been aware that "slasher" was a real word and not just something coined by these idiots that enjoyed watching that sort of movie. In hindsight, he decided he really should have killed her. If he'd have done that, he would at least been able to think and work in peace without the hindrance of her occasional visits.