Previously, on The Vampire Diaries: Connor the vampire hunter tried to hunt down all the vampires in Mystic Falls. Jeremy lured Connor into a trap where Damon and Klaus could blow him up, but after finding out he was one of “the five,” Klaus ended up saving him instead. Stefan asked Caroline to help him stay the non-ripper, and Elena continued to feed on Matt.

The episode opens with a bunch of buff shirtless dudes hanging out in the forest in 1110 A.D. There is a woman standing in the middle of their circle who is chanting something. She then sets down the cauldron of fire that she’s holding and sets their swords ablaze. The fire travels up to each dude and marks him with tattoo-like symbols. Each of them then holds up his sword and it has a symbol on it like we’ve seen on Connor the vampire hunter’s stakes.

Back to 2012 A.D., Damon Salvatore (Ian Somerhalder) is carrying all of Connor’s stuff into the Salvatore mansion. He tells Stefan Salvatore (Paul Wesley) that he’s searching for a supernatural handbook. I think it’s actually a rule that if you are un-human, you have to have a book about it for others to accidentally discover, thereby putting your race in danger. Many “supes” have argued against these handbooks, but I’m sorry…it’s the rules. Stefan asks what makes Damon think Connor was supernatural, and Damon says Klaus mentioned him being one of “the five,” and that he’s hoping there’s something about that in chapter one of the handbook.

Sheriff Forbes calls Damon and he says whatever she has to say is concerning, but he refuses to tell Stefan what the call was about because “they’re in a fight.” Stefan insists that he’s mad that Damon let Elena feed on him, but that they aren’t in a fight. So Damon tells him that they didn’t find any remains of Connor the vampire hunter at the explosion site. Damon tells Stefan he needs him to follow up on things while he takes Elena to college so she can learn how to feed.

Elena Gilbert (Nina Dobrev) is standing in the forest, telling Stefan it must be a doppelganger curse, because she can’t drink animal blood or drink from a blood bag – she can only drink from the vein. Stefan tries to shoot Elena with an arrow and she dodges it. They then take turns trying to fight each other in their “hunter preparedness class.” Elena says that Damon has to be the one to take her to college because Caroline has too much self control and doesn’t understand her needs, and she doesn’t want to take Stefan back to his ripper days. Stefan tells Elena not to get caught up in “the feed.”

Matt Donovan (Zach Roerig) is at his job at the Mystic Grill when Rebekah (Claire Holt) shows up with the keys to his new truck. It’s sitting outside all insured and everything. Matt refuses to accept her apology and tells her she should go apologize to Elena instead. Klaus (Joseph Morgan) tells Rebekah she’s trying too hard and she asks him why he hasn’t left town. Klaus says he’s stumbled upon one of “the five.” Rebekah says she doesn’t care about “the five” and she doesn’t care about Klaus.

We’re at Whitmore College now. We’re supposed to know this is college because there are a bunch of kids sitting around in a “quad” while in the distance other kids scale up a rock climbing wall. Um, is this how college really is these days? I went to a small liberal arts college where the only bunches of students you saw outdoors were all huddled around smoking cigarettes, so really, I have no idea. Damon drives up with Elena and Bonnie Bennett (Kat Graham) and he just parks in the middle of the sidewalk. What? Is this not a reasonable place to park? Reasonable? You’re on a sidewalk! This is the sidewalk! Apparently Damon watches too many movies.

Anywho, so Bonnie is at this college because the teacher who has taken over the witch class that her Grams taught wants her to come. The three walk into the guy’s seminar, and Damon starts giving Elena tips on who to feed on. The prime goal is the self-absorbed blonde.

Klaus has Connor (Todd Williams)  chained up on some kind of board from the Inquisition. Stefan is there too and tells Klaus that Connor can’t be compelled. They leave the room with Connor in it, and Stefan asks what the deal is with “the five.” Stefan says he started to get suspicious when Klaus healed Elena from the werewolf blood without asking for anything in return, and now he wants answers.

Klaus explains that the Brotherhood of the Five was a group of highly-skilled vampire hunters who the Originals crossed paths with in the 12th century in Italy. Klaus and his brothers and sisters had been eating their way through the countryside which had exposed them to the hunters who began hunting the vampires. Rebekah fell in love with one of “the five” and he told her all his secrets. Connor is the first hunter Klaus has seen in 900 years, however. Klaus tells Stefan he will tell him all the secrets of “the five” IF he gets Rebekah to go over to Klaus’ house. Klaus wants to make peace with Rebekah so he can get some important information from her regarding the hunter. Stefan asks what’s in it for him, and Klaus says the hunter holds the answer to all his prayers.

April Young (Grace Phipps) is at the Mystic Grill with her “friend,” Rebekah. Matt tells Rebekah he’s still keeping the truck, and Rebekah tells April that Matt is off-limits. Stefan comes over and immediately compels April, telling her she won’t remember any of this. He then asks Rebekah to help him so he can figure out what Klaus is up to. He tells her that if she helps him he’ll be willing to start over with her and give her a clean slate, and he’ll talk to Matt about giving her a clean slate too.

Damon and Elena leave the seminar and start following a blonde girl. Elena tries to compel her but then sees a picture of her little sister on her phone, and she tells the blonde to leave. Bonnie walks up and Damon tells her that Elena is educating him on the importance of feelings. Bonnie says the professor dude found some stuff of her Grams and that he’s going to give them to her later. She also gives Damon and Elena a flyer for a frat party.

Rebekah shows up at Klaus’ house with Stefan and asks how Klaus knows that Connor is one of the five. He says their tattoos aren’t visible like the previous “five” that they knew, and then they sit down to eat. Rebekah says she’s not eating until Klaus apologizes for breaking her neck. Klaus says that she threw out all of Elena’s blood. Rebekah says that he took her for granted, and then Klaus says that’s what big brothers do. Stefan says he’s going to name the million other people he’d rather be having dinner with, and finally Klaus apologizes. Rebekah says she’ll take forgiving him into consideration.

Klaus tells Stefan about Rebekah’s beau, Alexander the hunter. He didn’t suspect they were vampires because they were all wearing daylight rings. Elijah (Daniel Gillies) is there in the flashbacks as Alexander tells the Originals the Brotherhood of the Five have the ultimate weapon with which to kill vampires. In order to find the weapon, the vampires need to solve a puzzle, which seems to have disappeared. The invisible tattoos are the puzzle, which are a map to the weapon. Klaus brings in Jeremy and takes away his “come back to life if you get killed” ring.

Elena, Damon, and Bonnie show up at the frat house, and some random frat dude tells them that bloody marys are free until midnight. Okay, I may have gone to a liberal arts college, but I’ve also been to state college frat parties, and I know for a fact this doesn’t happen. Maybe Bonnie and Elena would get free booze but there’s no way a bunch of frat guys would give sexy Damon free alcohol. The professor is at the frat party, which seems totally inappropriate. Elena sees a guy give a girl a roofie and she decides to go after him. She pulls him into a room and starts to suck his blood until Damon tells her not to kill him. She compels the douche to forget about it and leave, and then tells Damon she wants more.

Matt is drawing out Connor’s tattoos when Connor asks him why he set him up. Jeremy says Connor was trying to hurt people he loves, and Connor says he doesn’t understand how a sympathizer can see his tats. Jeremy asks him where his tattoos came from, and Connor says years ago he met someone with “the mark.” The guy had an intense desire to kill vampires and told Connor that if he could see his tattoos then he could be trained to hunt too. Connor lost track of him, but then one day the tattoos just started showing up. The more vampires he killed the more the tattoo spread.

Stefan asks Klaus for more information about the tattoo, and Klaus says the hunter’s sword is the key to reading the map. In the flashback, Alexander asks Rebekah to go with him when he leaves to follow the map, and she says yes. Alexander also shows Rebekah his weapon for killing the ultimate vampire…it looks like a dagger covered with white oak ashes. Alexander stabs Rebekah, and Klaus says that he and his “the five” brothers put down all the Originals that night. The daggers didn’t work on Klaus however, because of his werewolf side, and Klaus took his revenge on Alexander. The Originals come back to life and Klaus asks Rebekah what Alexander promised her to make her reveal herself as a vampire. Rebekah says that Alexander said the tattoo map leads to a cure for vampirism.

Stefan asks why they never went after the cure, and Klaus says that after they killed all of “the five” that night back in the 1100s, the tattoos disappeared, so they were unable to follow the map. For 900 years there was not another whisper of a hunter until Connor showed up. Rebekah asks what they’re going to do now, and Klaus says “we” are not going to do anything because she’ll just blab their secrets to the first guy who calls her pretty. Poor Rebekah, thousands of years old and she still has the self esteem of a 16 year old. Rebekah figures out that Klaus wants the vampire cure for Elena so he can go back to creating hybrids with her blood. I just don’t know what he needed Rebekah for in the first place if he already knew what the map leads to.

Stefan is wondering the exact same thing as me (we’re like soul mates, basically), and he asks if Klaus got what he needed from Rebekah. Klaus says the map is worthless without the tool to decipher it, and that he needs Stefan to find out where Alexander’s sword is from Rebekah.

Bonnie is by herself with Professor Weirdo of the witch class. He says he has her Grams’ stuff – some family photos, a first edition Stephen King novel… He asks Bonnie if she practiced like her Grams did, and Bonnie says not anymore. The Professor says there are other ways to practice, if she’s interested, and that he’ll show her if she’s interested…eww what a creepo. In the meantime, Damon and Elena are busy devouring co-eds at the frat house. They start dancing together and getting kind of freaky. But then Elena sees Bonnie and she freaks out and says they have to get out of there.

Klaus checks in on Jeremy’s progress and gets mad that Jeremy is leaving parts of the tattoo off his drawing. Jeremy says that that’s all of it, but that every time Connor kills a vampire, the tattoo spreads. Klaus lets Jeremy go home and leaves the room, telling “Nate” to keep an eye on Connor. While Nate tightens Connor’s chains, he manages to rip an earring out of his ear.

Elena starts freaking out and says she should be going through everything with Stefan. Bonnie tells Damon that Elena is acting different because of him, and Damon says she’s acting different because she’s a vampire now… Duh, Bonnie. Damon says the difference between him and Stefan, and the reason he can drink from a human and get his fill and not rip their heads off, is because he can revel in it and have fun.

Rebekah shows up at the Salvatore mansion and Stefan tells Rebekah that no one deserves to be treated the way Klaus treats her. Stefan says he wants the cure for Elena because there’s not a single vampire that hasn’t killed a human, and once Elena kills a human she will switch off her humanity, and then they’ll never get her back. Stefan says he would do anything to save Elena, and Rebekah says she envies that. She says she knows Stefan wants her help, but she can’t allow Klaus to get what he wants. Stefan says that if it meant he could have children with Elena, grow old and die with her, then he would take the vampire cure too.

Rebekah says she really did believe that Alexander loved her, and that even after he tried to kill her she buried him with his sword at the church where they were supposed to be married. Klaus shows up and tells her she’s a fool, and then he stabs her with the dagger and the white oak ash. Klaus tells Stefan he has a plane waiting and that he is going to get the sword. He tells Stefan to hide Rebekah, to erase everything that Jeremy’s heard, and not to tell anyone about the cure.

Damon walks Elena to her door, and Elena says she’s sorry things got heated at the party. She says she believes him about how a vampire should be, but that she doesn’t want to be like Damon. Stefan opens the door to the house, and Damon says “she’s all yours.” Elena says she learned how to feed without hurting someone, and that it was awful. Stefan says that it’ll get easier, and Elena says she doesn’t want it to get easier, and that she doesn’t know if she can get through this. Stefan hugs her and tells her that they’ll get through it.

Back at Klaus’ house, Nate the hybrid is bringing Connor some food and water when he gets loose and kills Nate. Part of his tattoo grows, and we see that Professor weirdo has a picture of his tattoo on his wall. Connor walks in to Professor Weirdo’s office and asks why the hell he sent him to Mystic Falls…duhn duhn duhn.

Next time, on The Vampire Diaries: Connor takes Matt, April, and Jeremy hostage.

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