Joseph Gilmore:

Height: 166 cm

Weapon: Long Sword

Monster: Nargy (Nargacuga)

Age: 24

Place of origin: Tanith Village

Hair colour: Dark Blonde

Eye colour: Blue

Trivia: Is convinced that he's learned the order of the alphabet, but no one's told him that he's got the second half backwards out of pity.

"Attention all new members!" Alexandra yelled out "I've noticed that almost all of you are new to hunting! So, if you want to improve your skills, then I shall help you to train!"

Lyra and Shoot declined immediately, as they couldn't be bothered. Ed suddenly disappeared from view. Natalia and Natasha also couldn't be bothered.

This left Terrence, who turned towards Joseph.

"Sure, if ya want." Joseph explained "She's kinda crazy, but effective, so if you think that I'm not good enough go right head."

"Ok, thanks." Terrence quickly replied before running off.

Joseph stared in stunned silence.

"Weren't ya fine with it?" Zach asked.

"I said that but like… I wanted him to refuse and say I was better." Joseph bitterly mumbled.

"Well, it's kinda funny this way anyways. It's the most experienced and the least experienced."

"Haha yeah" Riko added "Wait what?"

"Well she is the most experienced."

"But I'm the oldest."

"So?"

Riko responded with silence before turning to Anthony

"Is it just me… or does it feel like we're being overlooked?"

"Yeah sorta, it feels like everyone introduced when we were has started to overshadow us, while all the screentime's going to the new characters cause they're so new."

"Then, there's only one thing to do." Both of them then got up and set out on a training journey, which was so amazing that it cannot be described, so it won't be.

"So you were the only one that interested in training, then?" Alexandra asked.

"Yeah, I guess so." Terrence replied.

"Oh well, it's good to see there's at least someone else here interested in improving. It starts tomorrow." She then turned to walk off.

4 AM, the next day

Terrence woke up to the sound of something at his door, only to look around and see that his door was being cut down.

He quickly ran over and grabbed his bow, but when he opened the door he just saw Alexandra standing there.

Before he could say anything, she interrupted "What are you doing? It's already this late. You need to start training."

This confused him greatly, but she then took off running at full speed. Still without an explanation, Terrence decided to follow without any time to fix his door.

He was unable to catch up with her and after having run for an hour at the same speed he felt he was about to die. Finally Alexandra stopped, but before he could ask what was going on she turned around and ordered him "Now do 10000 pushups, situps and squats, then use your weapon for practice 1000 times."

Since bows took a lot longer to use than lances, he was only able to get part of the way there by the time Alexandra was done, not that he could even count that high.

By the time she was done Alexandra then turned and explained "Ok, now it's time to begin quests."

"Why?" Is all Terrence could manage.

"Well you won't get any hunting experience if you just spend all day training." With that she then took off again, leaving him behind.

Terrence eventually found his way back and collapsed onto a very confused and lonely Demi.

The next day, this repeated, with Terrence still coming close to death and being unable to hunt.

The exact same routine continued to repeat, Terrence still unable to move afterwards.

After possibly about a week, Terrence finally managed to question her properly. "Why do you do this?"

"To be strong."

"But why? It just feels… pointless. Aren't you good enough now?"

Alexandra then looked away "If you just stay like you are all the time… there's no guarantee that life's going to be the same in return."

She then walked off, leaving Terrence incredibly confused alongside his almost dead.

After getting back from another hunt, she found herself now complaining about her problems.

"It's been a while since you've been here, you know" Zenya began "The readers are gonna have to go all the way back through to remember who I am, even then I only showed up once in chapter two."

"Don't break the fourth wall please, I'm trying to be serious here. Sorry for that by the way, I was kinda exiled for a while. Besides, you don't need to worry about me slacking, I was training the entire time."

"Well, anyways, this kid that's annoyed you… I think your problem is that you just thought he'd be like you, right? Trying to improve constantly isn't a thing hunters tend to do too much, you do remember that right? So, you probably thought there was someone you could relate to, then you pushed him so hard and got surprised when he broke so easily."

"Well, I didn't push him that hard."
"How long has he been a hunter for?"

"Not long…"

"See, he wouldn't stand a chance doing what you do now."

"Well, I guess so. Still, he has to be prepared in case life throws something unexpected at him."

"That's… difficult to understand without going through."

"Well, I guess I should go talk to him, then."

"See you, then. Don't take three years to come back this time."

"Got it, don't worry."

As she walked off, Alexandra then thought back to where this began.

Near the end of 1340, a much younger looking hunter looked around a gathering hall, before finally settling on a group of three she saw talking before her. They noticed her staring at them after a few minutes and looked over.

"Um…" She began, instantly regretting her decision "If you wouldn't mind… may I join you on a quest?"

An energetic looking girl, appearing to be the leader quickly replied with "Sure, got anything you wanna do?"

"A… Tetsucabra, unless there's something else…" The solitary girl muttered.

"Sounds good!" The welcoming girl interrupted "I'm Jude, nice to meet you." She then signalled to the others behind her.

"The name's Leo." An man with tied back long hair called out.

"Stop introducing yourself like that." A more muscular man complained, before turning to her "Cyrus."

"My name is Alexandra." The girl then finally answered, before they set out on a quest.

Alexandra reached where she'd left Terrence behind before, only to find that he'd moved, so she was left without any leads, causing her to aimlessly wander around while still mid-flashback.

The Tetsu hunt wasn't going well, with them already being two carts in. Alexandra felt a great deal of guilt, seeing as how both of those had been her fault, so she was determined to recover from this by being useful.

Jude fired at it from a distance with her HBG, Cyrus slashed at its sides while in sword and shield mode as Leo jumped all around it, throwing down attacks from above with his glaive.

Alexandra charged forwards, only to immediately crash into the Tetsu crunching a boulder.

After waking up, she realised the failing of the hunt had been completely her fault. She got up, only to find that she wasn't immediately yelled at she expected to be.

"Aren't you angry?" Alexandra asked, confused as to what was wrong.

"Not really, why?" Jude replied.

"I caused the quest to fail."
"Well, yeah, I guess so, but, you did your best, right? Then it's good." Jude smiled.

Alexandra got up in silence, unsure how to respond to this.

"Oh yeah, I was sorta meaning to ask this if we won, but you wanna join our group?"

"Eh?"

"Well, we wanna reach the top, but so far we only got three members, so more's useful."

"But… how would I be able to help."
"Well, that's fair, but we can make you improve. After all, we're the group that's gonna reach the top! That's why I called it sky chasers, you get it, cause it's like we're chasing-"

"Yeah I understand." Alexandra interrupted, before realising that was kind of rude, so she smiled somewhat weakly back instead.

After some more walking around, Alexandra finally spotted Terrence.

She began the conversation with "I need to apologise for earlier and after some thinking I-" only to be interrupted by Terrence also wanting to start the conversation with "I don't want to train anymore."

Both of them were then in silence for a few seconds to process this, before Terrence then took the lead.

"Well I understand that there's some deep meaning to why you do it, but also I don't know what it is you just walked off without explaining anything, also I'm seriously not going to get anything done soon if I keep training like that, and it's not like being ridiculously strong's what I want to do it's just seeing the world and/or my dad, so…"

Both of them then parted ways without much further conversation, since there wasn't anything else left to bring up there now that was over.

As she went to go take a quest, Alexandra's memories continued onwards, reminding her why she had to do this.

After successfully hunting a Daimyo Hermitaur, the group was in high spirits. As they celebrated their victory, they heard a rumbling in the corner of the cave they were in.

A flying wyvern with the texture of rocks climbed out of the ground, its single horn raised towards the ceiling.

After noticing the hunters, it planted its feet into the ground and let out an ear splitting roar, stunning them into place.

As soon as they could move, the group of four took off sprinting, knowing that they couldn't fight this.

Cyrus ended up tripping up on something, at which point Leo attempted to distract the monster by jumping at its side, only to be knocked away by a tail swipe. He crashed into a wall.

The Monoblos crashed into Cyrus, something he was just barely managing to block it and attempted to stab at its side, but had no success.

He continued struggling, but this was quickly cut off as he was crushed into the wall behind him.

Everyone else started in a stunned silence, until Leo yelled something incomprehensible and charged forwards, only for his sudden burst of energy to be crushed as well, underneath the Monoblos' tail.

Alexandra remained frozen in place, unable to process this.

Jude kept yelling "Alex!" at her, as the Monoblos charged and began to charge for the lance user.

Jude then charged forwards without thinking, pushing her out of the way. Alexandra snapped into reality instantly, looking over at Jude. Jude then began with "We need to get out of her-" before the Monoblos' horn pierced her from the side, cutting her off completely.

Alexandra then took off running without looking back, before finally reaching the surface, the base camp.

Everything processed for a few seconds more, before she finally began to scream.

After she made it back to town, it continued to plague her.

"I'm sorry."

"It's all my fault"

"If I had been stronger, then I could've saved everyone."

"All I did in that group was be dragged along, I had no intent of improving."

"Therefore, I caused its end."

"I'm sorry."
"Yet it's still been done."

"It was my own selfishness that caused this."

"I'm sorry."

This continued for however many months or days or years it might've been, until she decided that she would at least face the wrath of those who had suffered because of her but were still alive.

She was unable to find any relations of Leo or Cyrus, but by chance she found one lead for Jude.

She walked into a tavern, after having waited outside for a few hours to make sure it was empty first.

Before the one woman working there could say anything, Alexandra quickly asked "Are you the mother of Jude Witherell?"

The woman's expression then shifted quickly "Yeah, Zenya's fine though. Coming in here just to ask that implies you knew her. So, who are you?"

"I'm… Alexandra. One of the members of Jude's hunting group." She said this with her head pointed towards the ground at all times, afraid to look up.

"I see… so you're the only one that survived that then." Zenya replied with more disdain in her voice than before.

"I've come to apologise… after all, you've probably already realised that it's all my fault that happened."

Zenya was silent this time.

"I don't know… how I can fix any of this… but at least this will be better than nothing."

"Jude… what did you think of her?"

"She was incredibly upbeat, always. Even someone as useless as me was accepted by her. I suppose it was infectious, now that I'm not with her I'm feeling nothing like how I did back then."

"Yeah, I guess that's how she was. She wanted to be the greatest hunter, you know? From when she was a kid. Sky chasers was the group she wanted to take the top, she never changed that name once for whatever reason."

Alexandra thought about how she had taken this away, but then realised something.

"I'm still a member of that group… right?" She asked.

Zenya was silent in response.

"Then… at least… I can do that for her."

Zenya then quietly responded with a sidewards look and "Yeah, I guess that'd work."

With that, Alexandra took off, attempting to aim towards the top. Years of intense training followed, with what would normally be unthinkable becoming daily routine.

Eventually, she established a better relationship with Zenya, but those feelings of guilt still followed her no matter what she did.

Until she could reach the top, until she could reach atonement, nothing was going to rest.

Terrence walked into the tavern, where the others had been for a while now.

Zach greeted him with "Oh, ya finally appeared."

"Yeah…" Terrence somewhat lazily replied "It didn't work, all that happened was that I almost died for a while."

"Huh, well, what have ya learnt from this?" Joseph asked.

"What have I learned from this?" Terrence asked back, genuinely not knowing.

"That my training is the best, and ya should never leave again, ever."

"Yeah, that's fair, I guess."

"You're still upset over something like that? Pathetic." A voice called out from the shadows.

"Whozzat? Wanna die?" Joseph snapped back.

"Hey now, that's no way to talk to a team member." An incredibly muscular man, 300 cm tall, emerged, inexplicably having been hidden the entire time.

Everyone was confused by who this could be.

"...Oh it's Riko." Lyra pointed out without much surprise, causing a lot from everyone, including Riko himself.

"Where are the similarities at!?" Joseph yelled, followed by Riko backing him up with "Yeah, this is a complete change of appearence!"

Lyra shrugged, not really getting it herself.

Another voice called out "Guess, you just didn't change enough, unlike me." before another similar looking man emerged from the shadows.

"Oh, it's Anthony." Everyone said in unison.

Anthony was silent out of not knowing how to respond to him having been so much more obvious, so Zach then continued the conversation with "How'd you both fit manage to hide in that same dark corner anyways?"

"Dunno, but still," Anthony replied "can't you see how important our super cool training journey to hell and back has made us?"

No one could respond to this, except for Lyra, who then pointed out "Even if you fill the frame now... that won't work if there's no frame to fill."

"Oh yeah good point." They both noted in unison before instantly but still incredibly painfully reverting to normal size.

TO BE CONTINUED

Well there was a chapter that I've been sort of planning since the start, sort of just made up as I went along.

Alexandra was characterised in my version from near the start by being the only serious one, because I couldn't work what else to do with her, so hopefully this sort of explained why she's really the only one of the group to do what hunters in the games are pretty much expected to.

I don't have much to say here if I'm not apologising, maybe I should miss deadlines by a year more often.