Monster Hunter pt 4.

The metallic boom of a detonating shell ricochet around the towers of mineral deposit that lined the coast in clusters and echoed through the shallow rock pools that sat serene among the stacks. Flora and fungi shuddered on their fixtures as displaced air buffeted them about and curious shepard hares and scavenging beetles peered out from their homes to see what all the fuss was about.

In the southern region of the ancient forest, on a rocky plain where the fresh water from the distant mountains converged in slow moving streams and collected in shallow pools before flowing into the sea, several Kestodon lay dead. Seifer cleaned off his gunlance on one of the beasts' hides and then stuck it point first into the rock. Some meters away Quistis was collecting flowferns - a type of bright blue fern with an inclination towards the element of water. It had been 2 days already since their discovery of the Anjanath and their quest for supplies had yielded some interesting, but largely useless crop. Seifer's gunlance relied on shells shipped in from the old world and wasn't really capable at this point of elemental attacks, so the ingredients that Quistis was so diligently collecting served no purpose in their team. When he had pointed this out to her she had replied, somewhat huffily, that if he could find no use for them she would give them to the other teams. Kilmitt was a blowgun based team and would no doubt be grateful of the flowfern as they could turn it into water elemented ammunition. There was, unfortunately, no ice elemented wildlife on the coast, so they would not be able to extort that area of Anjanath weakness. For Seifer's part, he had decided to prepare by upgrading some of his armour and weaponry. His old world gear was perfectly serviceable in normal conditions, but after a chat with the forgemaster it became apparent that the familiar supple leather of his much loved armour would offer little to no protection against the scorching flames of the Anjanath. He would have to get himself some new gear. He had spent a little time browsing the forgemaster's wares, but nothing stood out, so the forgemaster had struck a deal with the hapless Hunter. If he obtained the materials, then the forge would craft him the best armour that money could buy.

So here they were, Quistis collecting useless little bits of plant, and him, harvesting his kills for monster components and digging out any bits of suitable material that could reasonably be expected to be crafted into armour. Seifer had before him two male Kestodon and three females. From the females he collected scales, slipping his hunting knife underneath the skin at the base of their skulls and then ripping off the hard strip of thick scales that ran upright along the tops of their spines, all the way to the clubbed tips of their tails. He separated the club as well with a hard chop between the second and third last vertebrae and dumped the lot in a pile in one of the little rivers that flowed a small distance away. From the males, he intended on salvaging almost everything. The massive bipedal dinosaurs had very thick hide which could be cured and turned into armour, and their beaks - if they could be separated from the rest of the skull - made excellent tips for lances and arrowheads, but the most valuable component of the male Kestodon was the sold bone mantle that adorned their heads like great horny crowns. Roughly 8 inches thick and totally solid it could be carved into any one of many different pieces of armour. Seifer planned on turning his into pauldrons. He spent some time dissecting his way through the flesh behind the mantle, all the way down to the spine, and decided simply to sever their heads from their necks completely as he couldn't think of any way of separating the skulls from their crowns out here in the wild.

Poking a hole through the thin piece of bone that separated their nasal canals, he strung their heads together with a length of wire and tried hauling them up onto his back. He failed miserably of course because each one was almost as big as he was and to lift them both was, naturally, impossible. Puffing with exertion he staggered over to where he had thrown the produce from the females and dragged the male's heads into the water. He collapsed on the ground next to the stream just as Quistis came over to see how he was getting on.

"You look like you're struggling." She said blandly.

"You try lifting one." He snipped. Poxy weakling, poking fun at him for not being able to lift something two times his own weight. She gave the severed heads a distasteful look.

"Do we really need to take the whole head back?"

"Unless you can find some way of separating the crowns, yes."

"Can't you chop it off with your lance?"

"The lance is a stabbing and slashing weapon, it's not for hacking with." He said dryly. Sure her record was a sparkling array of qualifications ranging from Alchemical Science to Zoological Studies and everything in between, but there were certain areas in which her knowledge was definitely lacking and the comparison was stark. Not to mention irritating.

"Then get an axe." She said, beginning to inspect the strips of scale that lay in a tangle, the running water having washed what little blood there had been away and leaving them to resemble giant white worms.

"From where?"

"From your pack. Or do you mean to tell me you came out here unprepared to process your kills?"

"Oh shut up, Trepe. All you've done it pick fucking flowers while I've been doing all the really hard work. You're in no position to be bitching at me about what I did and didn't bring, or how useful any of this is!"

"These 'flowers' as you put it will be invaluable to our colleagues when it comes to bringing down that Anjanath! Much more useful than a load of severed heads! You better not give yourself a bad back with all this." She gave one of the heads a kick.

He growled in indignation at the suggestion that a couple of monster heads were enough to give him a bad back, but before he could conjure up a retort to save his reputation, a deafening roar broke the air around them. Alarmed, Seifer whipped around in his position on the floor to face the direction of the noise, only to find, to his abject horror, that one of the herd of Kestodon had survived. He didn't know where it had been or what it had been doing so far from it's herd, but it had evidently just now returned and was enraged to find that its family had been killed and their heads gathered in a pile between the Hunter and his Handler. Giving another furious roar the beast pawed the earth with its back feet and lowered its head for a charge, horned crowd pointing forward like a jousting lance.

His lance! Panic swept through him as Seifer realised that he didn't have his lance! He had left it by the harvested bodies of the dead Kestodon, point still stuck in the ground a good 20 meters away from where he sat. Adrenaline catapulted Seifer into action, leaping over the Kestodon heads and running for his weapon. With his shield he might have stood and fought, but that had been left at the camp and now he was totally unarmed. They didn't have a hope in hell like this, even against a lesser monster like a Kestodon. Especially an angry one.

Reaching his weapon he grabbed it by the handle, wrenched it out of the rock and turned to look back at the charging beast that was making a straight line for Quistis. Unaccustomed to combat, she had not had the instincts necessary to galvanise her into immediate action and now the angry herbivore was nearly upon her.

"QUISTIS!" Seifer yelled, breaking into a run. His shout broke her from whatever fear-fueled stupor she had been in and quick as a flash her whip was in her hand. With an expert flick she sent the barbed end of it straight into the eyeball of the attacking monster, but while it roared in pain and tossed its head, it was not enough to stop its gallop and it crashed into her a moment later, tossing her up like a ragdoll.

Seifer launched himself into the air with a mighty leap and plunged his lance into the Kestodon's side like a spear. The force of the blow staggered the skewered creature, who let out a high-pitched shriek of pain and toppled over sideways. Seifer mounted his lance and drove it further into the writhing monster's flesh. When metal touched rock he pulled the trigger and, having nowhere really for the shell explosion to go, it blew out through the belly of the beast, spraying blood and chunks of stone and entrail in a thick, steaming streak across the rock.

A few meters away Quistis lay motionless. He hurried over. She was on her back, limbs splayed out, a little puddle of blood growing slowly around her head.

"Shit, shit, shit!" Seifer swore, popping open the collar of Quistis' shirt and pressing a couple of shaking fingers just underneath her jaw. "Please don't be dead!"

Her pulse fluttered weakly under his fingertips and relief flooded through him. It wasn't too late. Patting himself down he fished out the mega potion he'd taken from her earlier but hadn't had to use. Gently, tentatively, trying his best not to bobble her about, he slid a hand under her neck and tilted her head every so slightly so that it wouldn't drown her when he poured some of the potion into her mouth. She coughed reflexively and then swallowed. He poured a little more and she swallowed again. He shuffled a little closer to her on his knees and continued to pour the mixture into her mouth bit by bit until the bottle was empty. She was breathing heavily by this time and when he felt for her pulse again it was encouragingly strong. Now satisfied that she wasn't about to croak at any moment, he set about assessing the true extent of her injuries.

She had evidently raised her arms in front of her for protection before the Kestodon hit her and her forearms were already coming up black and blue. They began to yellow before Seifer's eyes as the mega potion did its work, but he doubted she would be using her wrists again for a while. Which would be a bitch if the supply of potions she had made for him ran out before the Anjanath fight. She had some light bruising on her left hip and down the side of her thigh, but the main casualty from her run-in with the beast was the back of her head, which had met the floor first. Her clip had flown off at some point in the impact and now her loose blonde hair was soaked orange with fresh blood. Her skull felt like it was intact - or at least it didn't feel squishy, which Seifer was immensely relieved to be able to say - and from a preliminary inspection with only his fingers it seemed that all this blood loss was the product of a few little gashes in her scalp. He found another bottle of megapotion in one of Quistis' skirt pockets and popped the lid off. Then got an idea.

Moving around so her head was between his knees, he put the potion aside and took a hold of one shoulder and the base of her skull. Carefully he sat her up and shuffled forwards so that she could lean on his chest. Searching about for something which would serve as a suitable bandage he settled for tearing one of the sleeves from Quistis' bilaud and soaked it in the megapotion before holding it to the back of her head. He repeated this soaking process a couple of times before Quistis began to stir.

She groaned and shifted a trembling arm, trying to raise her hand to touch her head. "Sit still," Seifer whispered, careful not to be too loud. She made a blathering noise, which he interpreted to be 'what happened', so explained. "You took a hit from the Kestodon and smacked your head. You've been out cold for a while."

She moaned in understanding - or pain, he couldn't tell - and tried to turn her head, but only succeeded in making herself sick. Waves of guilt rose up over Seifer to replace the fear he'd felt only minutes ago and he held her under the chin for support as she draped forward, a line of bile hanging from her mouth. He scraped her hair back out of her face with his other hand. She looked like shit. He thought about how stupid he was to have left his weapon so far out of reach and then for having left her behind in the path of danger when he ran to fetch it and cursed himself. She coughed weakly and spat the last dregs of bile from her mouth. He set his mouth in a grim line. He was tough, he had armour and trained reflexes and the skills and power enough to withstand a head on collision with a raging monster. Even just in terms of the protection offered by muscle mass he was a hell of a lot better off than she was. She hadn't really stood a chance. He hadn't really thought before about how delicate she was - she hardly seemed like it the way she was bossing him about and giving him what-for - but now her blood was on his hands and there wasn't anyone else to blame for the situation besides himself.

Once he was sure she was done vomiting he eased her back onto his chest and let her head loll. He picked up the remains of the potion he had been applying to her wound and held it in front of her mouth.

"Here," He said, "Drink the rest of this."

"But… it's got blood in it." She voiced her disapproval quietly.

"It's your blood. Please just drink it, it will help."

Reluctantly she drank it and he watched her tongue dart out to clean the drips from her lips.

"How are you feeling?" He asked hopefully.

"Pain." She replied, holding up a shaking hand by way of explanation and flexing the fingers, the muscles in her arms reeling from the crushing blow they had received.

He murmured his understanding and looked around at the bodies that lay about them and the landscape on either side. There was a lot of blood on the air now and it wouldn't be too long before a predator of some description came to see what was going on and, while Seifer wasn't adverse to fighting them off, he didn't want to risk exposing the vulnerable handler to further hurt.

He laid her carefully back down and went to collect his lance, strapping it securely to his back before returning to pick up Quistis. He took a hold under her shoulders and knees, picking her up and arranging her so that her head was upright and lying on his shoulder. He cast an eye over the monster debris that lay about them. Fuck his kills, he would come back for those later if he still had the time. His priority now was to get his handler safely back to base. He only hoped that this little accident hadn't ruined their chances of being included in the Anjanath hunt.

"Hmmm… Hmmmmmmmmmm… Mhmm…. Hmmmm…"

"Well?"

"Hmmm… I'd say you've been lucky."

He breathed a sigh of relief. The moment Seifer had got his feet back on the deck in Astera he made a beeline for the infirmary, his precious cargo not having stirred since lift off on the floodplain three hours ago. The infirmary was run by the Professor, Professor Kadowaki he now knew she was called, and she had been horrified to see him. He had spared her the gory details of what had really happened, going only so far as to far that he had had a lapse in concentration out in the field and Quistis had gotten hurt because of it. Unimpressed, Professor Kadowaki had nevertheless instructed Seifer to a bed and was now stood on a stool at Quistis' bedside, examining her under a magnifying glass by candle-light. Nimble fingers prodded at the closing fissures in the barely-conscious handler's scalp and moved deftly over the rest of her skull, around her neck and over the collar bones checking for breaks or fractures. She turned Quistis' forearms over in her hands and tutted at the patchwork array of bruising, shaking her head.

Seifer stood on the other side of Quistis' bed, arms folded but eyes concerned. Kadowaki regarded him too, observing the guilty expression, the blood on his hands and armour, the shiny residue left by the megapotion when it dried and the gore that otherwise coated the rest of his body and legs. Whatever had happened it was a lot more than a simple stroll in the woods.

"Are you injured?" She asked. He shook his head.

"Just her."

"These injuries have been looked at."

"I gave her a couple of mega potions, and tried dabbing some on her wounds."

"Direct application?"

"Yeah, her potions are a lot higher quality that the usual shit and I saw a guy pouring a bottle directly into a mortal wound one time in the old world. The hunter lived on that occasion, so I figured her potions ought to do the same thing. It was worth a shot at least."

"So… Did you consider that this might also be a mortal wound?"

"..."

She tutted again and hopped off the stool, trotting over to a large bookshelf covered in phials and bottles, rolls of bandage and pots of different coloured powders and sludge, each labeled with a spidery scrawl to denote their contents. A ladder was attached to a rail that ran along the top and bottom of the bookshelf and she moved this to where she wanted, clambering up it like a squirrel up a tree. After a little ferreting about she returned with a roll of bandages, a compress and a number of bottles.

"Hold these." She said, hopping back up onto her stool and giving three red bottles to Seifer. He cupped his hands around them and waited. Kadowaki poured a couple of bottles of substance into the compress and held this to the back of Quistis' skull, winding the bandage around the girl's head with practised ease. When this was done she took the bottles from Seifer and emptied them unceremoniously into Quistis' mouth. She sputtered and coughed, but swallowed. And then grimaced; whatever it was was not pleasant, but the colour returned to her face almost immediately and her eyes fluttered open. Puffing his cheeks out, Seifer breathed a sigh of relief.

He hadn't totally broken her. Thank Hyne.

His reprieve was short-lived however because Kadowaki beckoned him over to the far corner of the room, far enough away that Quistis wouldn't be able to listen to their conversation.

"I'm not even going to begin to press you for details on what happened out there," the little Professor said, hands on her hips, "But I will tell you this. Your handler is not a buffer and should not be treated like one. You might be capable of surviving a few knocks, but she absolutely is not and any more of that-" She pointed a finger at the groaning girl on the bed who was gingerly fingering her bandage, "And you'll bringing her back in a bag. You won't be the first hunter to have lost their handler, but believe you me when I tell you it will ruin you for life."

He sighed and averted his eyes from the Professor's steely gaze, choosing instead to look at his bloodied hands.

She continued, a little softer in the face of his silent apology. "You both have heart, and fortitude, and I have no doubt that she was just as prepared to put herself in the middle of it as you were, but try to be a little more selective about where you let her go."

"Let her?" He exclaimed, and then whispered when Quistis groaned at the elevated volume, "It's not a case of me 'letting her' go anywhere - she's like a will unto her own - just does whatever she wants, goes wherever she likes, bossing me about like…"

He trailed off when the kindly Professor patted his hand gently. "I know, I know. Intelligent women always have a hard time letting others take charge - and I speak from experience. I don't expect you to try and control her - that will only end in an argument - but just… bear in mind that she doesn't have the same kind of hazard awareness that you do and it is up to you to keep you both safe, even if that means forcing her to do something she doesn't like and stay in the camp while you go out to hunt."

"And how am I meant to do that?" He asked, feeling irritation creeping up again. It was all well and good for this pip-squeak to say things like 'make her stay in the camp' - she wasn't the one getting an earful the second they set foot outside the settlement gates!

"You're a smart lad," The Professor said, unhelpfully, "You'll work it out. Now, she's not to get out of bed for the next 24 hours at least, keep her well watered and feed her something that doesn't require much chewing. She should take one of these with each meal-" A phial of green pills was pressed into Seifer's hand, "-and she is not to leave Astera until I have personally signed her off as being fit for duty."

"How long will that take?" He asked nervously. "The Anjanath hunt is only going to be a few days away."

"Hmm…" the Professor put a finger to her chin to mime thinking - in the same way that Quistis had, but far less genuine - before saying cheekily, "That depends on how attentive a carer you are, doesn't it."

He blinked, tried to come up with a response and then gave up as the Professor patted his hand again and trotted out of the room without another word. Quistis was watching him from the bed, looking doe-eyed and fragile. Seifer slunk over to her bedside and pulled up a chair.

"You look like shit." She whispered.

He laughed at that. "Maybe, but you should have seen the other guy."

She hummed amusement, then sucked in a breath and touched her forehead, grimacing. Seifer toyed with the idea of doing something helpful to alleviate the pain, but didn't really know what he should be doing, so just sat and looked awkward instead.

"Did you get your monster heads?" She asked after a while.

He shook his head.

"Why not?"

"Wh-?!" He looked at her aghast. "What do you mean, 'why not'?! You were injured, that's why not!"

"But you could have gone back for them, couldn't you?"

"When?!"

"When you were done with me…"

"Done with-?!" Anger flared in his chest in an instant and whatever feelings of guilt or fluffiness he might have been feeling about her injuries dissipated like smoke on the wind. He opened his mouth to say something, then shut it again when he couldn't find the words. When he was 'done' with her? She made it sound so… So blase, as if he was the type of person to eschew her personal safety for the sake of a couple of monster heads. Like he would treat her life and injuries so lightly… As if he might as well just throw her away once she'd sustained even the slightest scratch. As if she truly believed that he was the type of person to do such a thing.

By the time he had formulated an intelligent response he was stood up and breathing hard through his nostrils. He fixed her with a blistering glare, "I might not be the nicest guy on the block, Trepe," She flinched under the ferocity of his reaction, "but I have enough common fucking decency to put your life above a couple of stupid fucking monsters."

And with that, he turned on his heel and stormed out into the fading light.

A/N: I've always thought that Quistis had a poorer opinion of Seifer than he deserved and while we can all agree that he's argumentative, I don't think he's as bad as she makes him look. After all, he gets along with Raijin and Fuujin just fine - if he was really that much of a monster he'd be Billy-no-mates but he isn't - she just brings out the worst in him by nagging until he snaps.

Two strong-willed characters with differing opinions makes for an interesting ride, wouldn't you say?

Anyway, please leave me a review and let me know what you think!

-Lapin