[<u>The Port City of Val Habar - Genji and Kyra</u>]<br/><br/>The Guildswoman did credit to her post by looking genuinely concerned at<b>Kyra</b>'s words.  "Are you sure?  If you can't handle a Basarios...  Zamtrios are incredibly powerful, telegraph or no telegraph!"  The woman wasn't a hunter, but she did have the authority to make judgements and block people from quests if she so chose, though a guild block did little to stop a hunter from making their way out on their own dime and taking on a hunt anyways...<br/><br/>Before the guildswoman could make up her mind whether to allow Kyra to take the hunt or not though,<b>Genji</b>barged across into the scene, a rumpled piece of paper in one hand, cutting between the two women.  The Guildswoman recovered quickly, trying to get him out of the way, giving only a cursory glance over his armor and weapons to assure herself that he could handle the hunt.  "Of course sir, let me just get those tokens for you, unless..."  She hesitated briefly, wondering about something for a brief moment.<br/><br/><br/>[<u>Everwood Hunting Ground - Dust</u>]<br/><br/>"What?"  Vianna didn't look, though she finally caught sight of it when Dust moved towards the glint, turning to follow him.  "Where do you think you're...  Hm?"  She approached behind him, eventually coming alongside him to look up at the glittering shape.  "That looks like a scale..."  She murmured, reaching up towards it with a pensive expression.  "But I don't recognize it...  What could possibly possess such coloration?"<br/><br/>She muttered to herself quietly as she turned the golden scale over in her hands delicately, but in the mean time, Dust caught sight of something else.  A figure in a clearing, a woman by the looks of it, only...<a class="link link--external" href="http://i.imgur.com/zGfbWcP.jpg" rel="nofollow ugc noopener" target="_blank">Not quite...  Human...</a><br/><br/><br/>[<u>The Port City of Val Habar - Kaze</u>]<br/><br/>There weren't many alerts for monster girls when Kaze awoke, but he had more pressing problems on some levels.  The Rathian had marked him well, to the point that with the wounds still healing there was almost nothing he could wear that could properly cover them all, and while logically few besides hunters would actually notice or know specifically what had happened to him, it still had to be at least a little awkward to go out in public with so many marks on display.  But go out in public Kaze had to.  His armor was in tatters after all and needed repairs...<br/><br/>However, while he waited by the armorer's stand, a young man sidled up next to him slowly...  "Hey uh...  Nice scars you got there..."  He was a cocky guy, and he held up one hand placatingly.  "No insult, I promise, you must have had one hell of a day, recently too...  It's quite something isn't it?"  He spoke softly, his voice lost to the crowd around them, for Kaze' ears alone.  "But look, point is...  If you know what it's like...  To have one of them...  Well...  A guy I know has got a job for you, if you're interested..."  He held out a small piece of paper to Kaze, melting into the crowd the moment the other hunter took it.<br/><br/>An address.<br/><br/>Any legitimate job would go through the guild, so whatever he was getting into if he went there, he would be working outside the law...<br/><br/>Who knew, tomorrow there might be better quests for him to take?  Other chances at monster girls?<br/><br/>Or perhaps he could see where this rabbit hole could lead him...<br/><br/><br/>[<u>Everwood Hunting Ground - Alistair]</u>]<br/><br/>She fought madly, but with Alistair fighting more defensively, attrition slowly slid in his favor.  He took more wounds, deeper ones too, but with every strike she made, she tired more and more, and eventually he managed to land the telling blow he needed, cracking her across the head with the flat of one blade so hard that she dropped like a stone even as the blade itself snapped in two with an echoing *CRACK* of sheared metal....<br/><br/>It took all he had not to collapse as well as she slumped to the ground...<br/><br/>After long minutes, standing just to make sure he could keep doing so, Alistair finally found the strength to move again.  He was cut in dozens of places including several nasty gashes on his right arm where he'd been just a bit too slow pulling back from his strikes, but he was alive and awake, and both Kut-ku were unconscious on the forest floor...<br/><br/>The guild would be pleased indeed.<br/><br/>The reward was one and a half times as much, and while Alistair might have been disappointed he didn't get paid double for two captures, they did offer to repair his armour and reforge his broken blade on their dime rather than leaving him to do it on his.  As it turned out, the blade itself was a write-off, but with the Kut-ku parts the guild eventually delivered he could forge a new pair, or -the smith offered- he could turn the handle and guard of his old blade into the basis for a shield instead, a new weapon, stronger for the reforging too...