[<u>Everwood Hunting Ground - Dust</u>]<br/><br/>"Test it, try to determine the cause of the changed behaviour, what the infection does exactly and where it comes from, then ideally release it back into the wild if it can be cured, or put it down if it can't."  Vianna shrugged, then her nose wrinkled, and Dust caught a faint scent of something sweet and rotten on the air, a<i>wrongness</i>that put his hairs on end.<br/><br/>Then he caught it, a glimmer, like gold out of the corner of his eye.  Something that glittered in the sunlight, nestled in the crook of a tree branch, drawing the eye.  It certainly looked far too metallic to end up in the tree, how did it get there?  And what was it?  Vianna didn't seem to have noticed it yet...<br/><br/><br/>[<u>Everwood Hunting Ground - Alistair</u>]<br/><br/>Her claws were up and forwards, and many of Alistair's strikes were deflected on the hard scale that sheathed her forearms, scoring only a scattering of actual damage upon her.  Her furious attacks were wild, and more predictable than they might have otherwise been, but while Alistair was wearing the Kut-Ku girl down, she was also wearing his swords down, and the mixture of strikes and deflections could not be anything but hard on those sharp edges.  He had no worry that the swords would break under the stresses of the combat, but he was doing less and less damage as the edges blunted, making it harder and harder for him to actually hurt her even as she began to tire, her strikes slowing to grant slightly better openings at last...<br/><br/><br/>[<u>The Primal Forests - Kaze</u>]<br/><br/>The Rathian was a surprisingly heavy weight in Kaze' arms, a reminder of how easy it could be to forget that while she had the appearance of a woman and the ability to fly, she was still covered in many places by armoured scales.  Still, for all that she was surprising, she was still relatively easy to cradle and carry in his arms, stirring only slightly as he made his way towards the campground.  He would get funny looks for carrying her in there, and the guild would likely try to take control of his 'capture' if he did at that point.  He could even face trouble for poaching if he attempted to steal away with her, so perhaps it would be easier to skirt around the camp and simply make his way back on the road, slow going, and running a higher and higher risk of her waking up properly again.  Unless he thought he could smuggle her through to a cart in camp without anyone noticing...<br/><br/><br/>[<u>The Ancestral Steppes - Sonya</u>]<br/><br/>The Seltas went after Sonya quickly as the Huntress tried to clear space, but as it closed on her, a powerful explosion tore into it's flank, causing it to stagger drunkenly under the force.  "Ha!"  Nat shouted, and the Seltas spun slowly, trying to regain it's bearings.  Sonya had an opening to grab her sword, and whether or not she went for it, she could see the side of the shell was a mess of cracks and oozing green ichor.  Nat was reloading again, and identifying her as the source of it's pain, the Seltas had a run at the other huntress again, forcing her to halt mid-reload and use her gun to block the vicious swipe.  Hurt monster or not, those claws were still viciously sharp, and both girls couldn't help but wince at the scream of metal on edge as the claw bit through the gun's casing and ground against mechanisms within.  It was a robust weapon, but with a strike like that, it was a matter of luck as to whether it would fire again without some repairs...