Zach Gilmore:
Height: 180 cm
Weapon: Gunlance
Monster: Zappy (Royal Ludroth)
Age: 24
Place of origin: Loc Lac
Hair colour: Black
Eye colour: Yellow
Trivia: Has become more open about calling his afro Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann. The afro, after defeating many foes, has now earned this title.
"Shit, we're near new years." Zach noted.
"Since when?" Joseph asked back.
"Like… uh…this month?"
"Huh. Cool."
"Wanna go to the festival tommorow?"
"Sure."
The next day, most of the group met up, except for Alexandra who had gone to hunt and Sean who was nowhere to be seen anywhere.
"Well, this is as good as we're gonna get." Zach muttered, before the group began to aimlessly wander through the crowd.
Since about half of them had never really experienced crowds before, the mood was sort of awkward as they adjusted to it.
"It kinda sucks that we can't bring our monsters with us." Anthony thought aloud.
"Well, Sanchez is here," Callum replied "He's just dematerialised."
"What's that mean?" Natasha asked.
"Sanchez introduces new power systems all the time," Zach explained "you just get used to it after a while, it's not like any of us are powerful enough to question him."
They walked a while further, before seeing a bunch of people gathered around one spot. Upon looking over, it was the heads of the guild.
There were now eight this time, a clear improvement on the four that showed up last time.
He was able to recognise the previous four, seeing as how they hadn't changed at all since three years ago, but the others were a mystery.
He looked over to Callum. "Oi, give exposition."
"I'm listening though."
"Just quickly then."
Callum sighed then pointed first to an incredibly short yet still quite angered for no apparent reason girl. "Morgan Tanashi."
He then pointed at a flamboyant long haired man, who was somehow constantly sparkling. "Gol Platin."
Next, to a girl who was asleep on the floor, who Joseph hadn't even realised was meant to be there until Callum pointed. "Kara Kanap"
Finally, he pointed to a glasses wearing woman, who was constantly adjusting them while quietly mumbling something incomprehensible. "Corra Fay."
Joseph noticed overlap with the other glasses wearing hunter.
Despite how disorganised the subordinates seemed, the leader continued her speech anyways.
"We have gathered here today to celebrate the history of hunters themselves!" She began yelling "Without hunting, none of us would be here today. So, we of the Guild have prepared much to learn today about the history of hunting, as well as to learn of the tales of extraordinary hunters!"
"What, so this is kinda pointless." Joseph thought "They're just tryna make more people interested, I guess."
Even though he felt sort of uneasy around the higher ranked hunters, he decided to leave anyways, with the rest of the group gradually following.
"Ya reckon there'll be fireworks at midnight?" Ben asked.
"Prolly." Matt replied.
"Wanna go the place outside we went to last time?" Riko suggested.
"What?" Ben asked again.
"...When we first got here."
"..."
"What's the point, we already had two fireworks chapters." Alicia pointed out "Can't we focus on somethin' else for once?"
"We got a new cast now, and we're allowed one for each new character." Zach explained "So we can use this to stall for time while the author does everything except work on his story."
As they continued to walk, Alicia suddenly was dragged by forces beyond human control to the left, after noticing her disappearance everyone gradually turned in that direction to find Sean.
It was a shooting gallery, unsurprising for the one of the bowgun trio.
They then watched as a couple walked up, with one of them pointing at what they wanted and the other trying to shoot. Usually, you'd expect them to win it, it'd be a nice scene. But, the prize refused to fall.
After losing pretty much everything they had on them, the couple retreated, with no flags having appeared.
"Wait, so do these guys just have shit aim?" Zach thought, before Lyra suddenly appeared behind him.
"I checked. The prizes are nailed down."
Everyone then turned to Sean. "The zeni is just so they can shoot the gun. I never said anything about being able to win prizes."
Everyone had no idea how to respond to this, but when Alicia finally began to lecture him about how immoral this is he interrupted with "If you can knock down the prize at the back I'll go on a date with you."
She was then silent, before quickly and silently paying the 100 zeni and raising the gun.
The rest of the group turned to walk away in unison, but Alicia quickly grabbed Matt.
"You're helping."
Matt understood that the only way to get out of this situation alive was to cling to the hope they could succeed.
"I don't get it." Natasha asked "Why's she doing it even when she knows it won't work."
"To cling to hope despite seeing only doom is a foolishness only humans are granted." Ed said, reminding everyone he was still there.
As they walked further, Zach looked over at some weapons for sale. "Huh… the gunlances seem neat. Too bad they're so hard to get."
After a few minutes of walking, Lyra suddenly appeared again. "Here." She said, handing Zach one of the gunlances.
"Oh, ya bought it?" Zach replied "That's nice of ya, thanks a lot."
"Oh, so that was possible."
"...Oi."
"What?"
"Ya didn't steal this, did you?"
"...Perhaps."
"It doesn't matter whether it was stolen, nya." Shoot added "It's the thought that counts."
"Well no it matters cause that's a crime my dude." Zach replied.
Just then, several people they'd seen before ran towards them. "There's the gunlance that was stolen! After them!"
Zach looked at Lyra in silence, at which point she announced.
"It appears we've been discovered," she then put a hand on Zach's shoulder "Boss."
Zach processed this for a few seconds more, before taking off running, figuring there wasn't really any correct way of dealing with this anymore. Lyra and Shoot quickly followed.
As they continued to walk, they noticed an arm wrestling competition going on.
Those participating yelled an invitation to join and while most of the group was able to ignore this, Riko and Anthony felt too deprived of screentime to refuse.
Surprisingly, they were able to rise to the top fairly quickly, making it clear that their ridiculous amounts of training two weeks ago had paid off.
As they had finally reached the top, Alexandra approached.
"Oh, it's you two." She began "I was kinda caught up with hunting, but I still managed to make it. Do you know where everyone else is?"
"They already left. But still, more importantly, wanna join this arm wrestling competition."
"Sure."
"Just as planned." Riko thought.
"I'm pretty confident in my strength." He continued to internally monologue "If I can defeat you here, then that officially makes me the strongest in this group. You've had everything until now, three entire chapters dedicated pretty much solely to you, that was Anthony's intro as well you know. You even took up half of my chapter during the timeskip. But now, when I become the strongest and wisest of this group, this will all be over. My time in the spotlight finally approaches!"
The arm wrestling match began.
Riko lost instantly.
Both he and Alexandra were fairly surprised.
Anthony laughed nervously "Well, that didn't last long! Guess, I'm up next."
He also got an internal monologue "Well, looks like Riko's out. Still, I'll avenge you, and claim this spot of relevance for my own! Seriously, my own backstory was a background detail in someone else's focus chapter. It's super serious, you know, but it's just a joke to you people. If I can win this, then next chapter's gonna be focused on me!"
Anthony lost even faster than instantly.
As he lay defeated on the ground, a figure mysteriously appeared on the buildings above.
"It looks like you've been crushed into the ground, mere insects! I suppose I'll step in to show you how it's really done!"
"Sasuke Uchiha!" Anthony yelled.
"The guy who was thrown into the group at the last minute!" Alexandra yelled.
"Chuuni dude who I forgot about pretty much instantly!" Riko yelled.
"My name's Edward, damnit!" He yelled, before going to jump off before getting scared and slowly but safely climbing down.
"Now it's my turn to participate! Fear my power!" He yelled.
As he placed his arm on the barrel he also began to internally monologue. "Sorry, but for the sake of my ambition I'm going to have to even the odds a little. The moment this match begins, Revel shall shoot a fireball towards your head. I doubt it'll kill, but in accordance with rule eight hundred and ninety seven of the arm wrestling guidelines sixth edition, a participant will be disqualified if they are set on fire during a match. Once I have won this match, even though it's by rules, it shall still be my victory, so finally, after not even getting a focus chapter for my introduction, the readers shall understand that I have an actual personality!"
The match began and Ed looked over as Revel attempted to snipe from the same rooftop from before. The fireball approached Alexandra's head, with every second he felt his victory was more and more guaranteed. The fireball finally connected and did nothing, no one even noticed there had been one.
Ed had less than a second to feel confusion before Alexandra slammed his arm into the barrel so hard it broke, leaving a crater in the ground and Ed lying sideways in it.
"Ah. Sorry." Alexandra said in deadpan, unsure how she did that.
He attempted to maintain relevancy by muttering something like "Not bad." but was already unable to move.
Alexandra was then declared "Arm Wrestling God" and many more challengers approached to attempt to take that title, making her unable to find the rest of the group.
A lone martial artist walked the streets, looking for worthy opponents to challenge.
He looked around, before seeing the group drinking. He noticed a strong fighting aura being emitted by some of the party.
He walked up to them. "You lot. I challenge you to a duel."
Four of them decided to participate, while the other trio just sat there. "Aren't you also going to join?" He asked, to which Vert replied "Why should I?"
He had no way to come back to this, suffering defeat in this battle.
The group that had been gathered consisted of Ben, Natasha, Natalie and Callum.
"Then, let the first challenger step forth!"
Ben stepped forward.
"I see. I shall meet your challenge. Remember this, my name is-!"
Ben punched him in the face before he could finish his speech.
"Wait, I'm not-"
Ben continued punching, until he suddenly missed and dropped to the floor.
The nameless martial artist then moved to kick him, but Ben somehow rolled the exact opposite way he was expecting.
The fight continued on for a little while longer before he worked out what was going on. "I see now… the reason why I can't predict any of these attacks is because he can't predict them either!" He was up against the drunken fist style, somehow.
As the fight continued onwards, the martial artist thought he was about to get the upper hand, when suddenly he was attacked from the side by a punch from Natasha, also using the drunken fist.
The martial artist was then infinitely comboed by the two of them, in perfect unison for some reason.
Suddenly, Natasha stopped and turned to Ben. "Both of us use switching weapons. So we should find out which is stronger."
Ben nodded and replied "There can only be one."
They then began to fight, while the nameless martial artist turned to the remaining two.
He got up, dusted himself off and stepped forwards.
"Next challenger!" He looked to Natalie "My name is-!"
"I don't really want to fight, sorry."
The nameless martial artist couldn't respond to this, so he turned to Callum.
"Last challenger!" He figured this was the last chance he would have to announce his name! "My na-"
He then paused, in fear of a great presence he noticed.
It lunged towards him, causing him to be launched into a wall.
In this moment he understood. The fighting spirit he noticed before had not come from any of the hunters, but the lingering presence of this all powerful Great Jaggi.
The martial artist admitted defeat and bowed down to his new overlord.
Meanwhile the fight between Natasha and Ben lead to a double knockout, so Natalie couldn't really do anything other than stay here and wait for them to recover.
As the group continued onwards, they finally found the place where hunting was being advertised.
Terrence looked over briefly, and noticed the name "Aron Gandor." He sort of wanted to leave, which Joseph noticed.
"Do ya wanna go learn about yer dad?" He quickly asked.
"Well yeah, even though I know he's a legendary hunter I really don't know that much about what he's done. It might give me an idea where he is now. But there's barely anyone left in the group."
"It's good, it's good. We already lost this many along the way, what's one more?"
With that Terrence disappeared, and there were two more left.
They finally managed to exit Dundorma, after getting both Nargy and Vrai to join them.
"Oh, now that I think about it." Vert began "I've never actually seen fireworks before."
"Seriously?" Joseph asked in reply "We had two chapters dedicated to em since ya got introduced, y'know?"
"It's not like I was there for that. They weren't around where I was staying anyways."
"Well, should be interestin' to see yer first reaction, then."
"What's even so good about them, anyways?"
"An excellent question. Too bad I dunno."
"Seriously?"
"Well, they look cool I guess. Anything else needed?"
They reached something that looked sorta like the spot and decided to stop there, with Joseph now lying on Nargy's back while Vert sat on the grass, because blades are uncomfortable to rest on.
Finally it began, ending a few minutes later after some awkward silence from the group.
"So, what'd you think? Pretty great, huh?"
"Kinda… okay?"
"No."
"But that's what I thought."
"Yeah but like… say something nicer, ta fit the mood."
"Why would I do that? It's pointless."
"Look, the year only changes once a year, try ta get with it! People lie about everything all the time, there's nothing wrong with making a nice scene for once."
Joseph then turned to Nargy "This was yer first time seeing them too, right? What'd ya think, huh?"
Nargy didn't like loud noises much, so he just had his ears covered the entire time.
"Well that's fair, I guess. Ya still got no taste though, yer wrong."
He looked at Vrai, who was just as deadpan as Vert about this. "All of ya, fools."
They continued in silence for a little while longer, until Joseph realised something.
"Oh yeah, we're halfway through this century now, aren't we?"
"I guess so? That's not really something I've ever thought about."
"Well, what's more important here is that this the perfect time for things to start changing, since we're at the halfway point."
"Like?"
"...Yes."
"Still though." Joseph continued in his thoughts "It's been like… twenty years since then, huh? It might be a good idea to start going after it… but still, if I'd wanted to do that, I'd have done it already. All pursuing it last time did was take things away from me… So, what I have to do now is just stay here. Here is the best place I can possibly be."
So, the second half of the century began, with seven members of the gang lying on the floor defeated, one counting money, another being worshipped, two more on standby, one learning more about his goal and two sitting outside Dundorma.
Whether it would be a time period of great change or just like everything else was yet to be decided, as the stage was finally set.
TO BE CONTINUED
And that brings a close to 1349, which went on slightly longer than I had expected it to. I realised after posting the last chapter I needed to change the year over, so this works since the series is now working in somewhat desynced real time, maybe it'll catch up one day.
I don't have much to say, but I should probably provide the warning that just because I implied there would be some importance coming up that things will shift instantly, I want to still have some fun first.
See you in two weeks again, I guess.