[Glacial Caverns - Kaze and Whitey]<br/><br/>See Each Other's Posts for Now.<br/><br/><br/>[En Route to the Frozen Seaway - Genji and Kyra]<br/><br/>See Each Other's Posts for Now.<br/><br/><br/>[The Ancestral Steppes - Sonya]<br/><br/>The problem with a bowgun is that it is too heavy to sight with, and thus, highly inaccurate while moving.  Nat was a good bowgunner, with good instincts in most situations, but here, she did the worst thing she could possibly have done.<br/><br/>Her volley of fire down at the Jaggi as they descended upon Sonya was pin-point accurate, and six of them were downed in the space of seconds but that left more than ten of them still buffeting Sonya to keep her down while they tried to pin her beneath them.  The females in particular taking advantage of the opposable thumbs of their more humanoid forms to try and grab the huntress' arms and legs.  Even if that was enough to give Sonya a chance to get free as the monster immediately around her fell -letting her move freely for long enough to rise to her feet at the very least before they were upon her again- Nat's mistake was in that she had exchanged one plight for another.<br/><br/>Sonya had a slim chance of escape now, but Nat hadn't been moving, and that meant that as she reloaded for another volley she lost her own chance to flee as several Jaggi swarmed up the cliff towards her and leapt at the huntress, knocking her down from behind as she cried out in fear!<br/><br/><br/>[The Port City of Val Habar - Alistair]<br/><br/>"Jitters...  Irritation..."<br/><br/>Helena shuffled in her seat, looking just about anywhere but Alistair's face.  "I think half the reason so many guys become hunters is for exactly what you didn't do...  And even those that don't end up wrapped up in it...  I just..."  She hesitated...<br/><br/>"At first I though you must be lying, or perhaps gay, but then, I just sorta...  You're telling the truth, at least, I think..."  She spoke slowly, as though she was working through her own thoughts as she processed them into words.  "Even my partner...  He means well, but I know he'd happily fuck just about any monster girl, I just..."<br/><br/>"I just don't think it's fair you know?  Huntresses face Monsters, and death is hardly the worst fate that one can suffer from defeat...  Yet for a hunter...  Oh sure, death is still a possibility, but..."<br/><br/>"My point is...  Well...  It's that I don't understand, but I'm grateful to you...  For telling the truth...  I feel like there are some things we don't talk about as hunters, it's all about the glory, the sex, death and pleasure...  I'm afraid that there might be a darkness in our society, a darkness of humans more than monsters..."<br/><br/>It was cryptic, but she didn't seem to want to say anything more, and it was at least somewhat informative...<br/><br/><br/>[The Port City of Val Habar - Kojirou]<br/><br/>There were many other hunters, and while some looked youthful and inexperienced, the vast majority moved with the easy confidence of experience, and to anyone with any knowledge of hunter culture it would be easy to tell that many of them were at least moderately experienced by simple fact of the armor they wore being made up of scales and hides rather than the manufactured leather or metal armor that hunter apprentices or mercenaries wore.<br/><br/>"Low Rank hm?"  Speaking of which, Irina was talking to Kojirou, eyeing his armor.  "There are Seltas and Great Jaggi causing trouble in the steppes, always good fodder to hone your abilities on if you're not interested in the glamour of resource gathering...  There's also a rare monster sighting ranked for your level, a Velocidrome they call it, suspected to be female and lurking around the everwood...  Hmm..."<br/><br/>The Guildswoman was lost in thought for a moment, then offered another idea.  "If you were to bring along another hunter with you, I could authorize a Tetsucabra hunt, there's one prowling around the sunken hollow right now."<br/><br/><br/>[The Everwood Hunting Ground - Dust]<br/><br/>"Watch out!"  Vianna cries the warning as she fires and the round strikes the dragon-girl in the shoulder as she reels from the heavy blow to her head, exploding into a haze of blue-white powder.  The monster girl pulls away, blinking madly and coughing and Dust would catch an ever-so-slight whiff of something that makes his eyelids feel heavy for a moment as a little of the burst grazes him as well...  Sleeping agent, a powerful one likely designed for monsters, though even with a faceful of it Dust and Vianna's opponent seems only slightly slowed.  Monsters must have tougher constitutions that expected...<br/><br/>Another shot flies towards her but the Monster girl has refocused, and moves away from Dust, circling to try and get at Vianna now, clearly having determined the bowgun user to be the greater threat for the moment, covering her motion away from Dust with more blasts of that purple miasma, trying to harry him away from her...