Monster Hunter R
"To be a hunter is to walk a road of blood and solitude. There will be no time for friends, for the friends you make will die in the field next to you, and the reward you receive in the end will not seem so great." -- Chief Kazumagi, Arrow's End, 3ME 287
Chapter One
Feet on damp ground. Scream in distance. Echoes of sanity drifting out of her control. Sakura ran as best she could through the muddy jungle, blood pouring down her leg. It was too dark to tell it apart from the rain. She could hear the vicious creatures snarling as they pursued her, but she could not sustain her speed. It hurt. It hurt too bad. Her friend, the friend she had loved since childhood, since memories were faint and fuzzy, was just ahead of her, running at full speed. Kai, her beloved Kai. She wanted nothing more than to hold him, feel his warmth and leave the dark jungle behind. But she knew they would probably both die here.
Finally her leg gave out on her, and she slipped and fell down into a small, muddy hole. Kai heard Sakura fall, and he stopped cold in his tracks. Spinning around, he pointed his bowgun off into the darkness, rain blurring his normally acute eyesight. Their snarling had stopped. Sakura had disappeared from view. All Kai could hear was the pounding of rain against the jungle brush, and his own shallow breaths.
"Sakura?" he called out into the night. That was his first and final mistake. A large, inverted foot with three, webbed toes slammed against his back, pressing him face-first into the mud. The scaly, grey foot had wicked, curving claws on the end of each toe, all the more sickening when they sunk into Kai's spine. He screamed in pain but it was overshadowed by a deep bellow from the creature. Dozens of others like it responded from the nearby thicket of foliage.
Their ominous call sounded like a distorted, high-pitched whale. The way it wavered made it seem as if they were laughing maniacally. A long neck stretched out of the trees to the edge of the muddy trail. It was eyeless, and quite featureless other than two nostrils and a small mouth with teeth that were too large to stay within, instead protruding out and curving down the side of its maw. The horrifying creature walked out from the brush, moving onto the trail in an awkward gait, as if it were sewn together from old bits of leather. It was very large, easily twelve meters tall, and both legs were inverted, and had long blades sticking out of the back of the knee. Its neck extended down to a slim but muscular body, with armless wings and a slender tail. As the creature stepped down onto the path, it forced all of its weight onto Kai, crushing his shoulder blades and bending his spine. He was paralyzed already.
Sakura sat sobbing quietly in her hole, invisible to the strange animals that were too busy being drawn to the fallen prey ahead. She crawled up to the edge of the pit and stared out into the rain. Immediately she returned to the hole where she curled up into a ball and began convulsing in fear. Kai's arm was being torn from its socket by the creature. The monster's jaw seemed to unhinge, revealing a massive array of sharp teeth inside. Kai was silent as it picked away at his shoulder. Others were shuffling towards the kill, making odd, high-pitched squeaking noises, almost like birds.
Sakura attempted to crawl out of the hole, but her leg slipped on the mud, and she yelled as she fell, hitting her injured leg. Something rumbled to the right of her. It wasn't thunder. Then she heard splashing as the creatures, one by one, began to approach her. Sakura suddenly realized in a stunning revelation: that despite all the meticulous planning, the long nights of training and preparation, the promises made by her beloved Kai, despite it all, she would die here, in the cold, storming jungle. Paradise, she had been told.