Chapter One: A Marvelous Escape Plan

Melody whipped her head back and forth, trying to get the annoying as hell sweat out of her God-damned eyes. It tickled like a bitch and was driving her insane! Furious, the girl tried to rub her face against the post that she was chained to. Her hands writhed in their shackles and strained until they were white with effort as she tried to break free. She struggled and kicked and thrashed and screamed, all to no avail; the chains would not break. Muttering curses in fury, Melody gave up and slumped down resignedly, and felt yet another fucking bead of sweat form between her eyes.

This city was a shit hole. The whole damned place reeked of shit. The oxen shit everywhere they went, the Felynes shit everywhere they went, and hell, she even saw some of the people shit right in the middle of the freaking street! Perhaps the awful smell wasn't from the city as much as from her fellow stinky companions chained up tightly next to her in the tiny ox cart, but she doubted that so much stench could come from so few people. Foreigners, Melody concluded, were all crazy as hell and smelled like shit.

The cart moved further into the city, bouncing the uncomfortably close passengers with every dip in the road, clattering their teeth together and making them all even more ready to get sick, as if the stench alone wasn't enough. The street was poorly paved with large grey stones and clay, and was barely wide enough for two ox carts to pass by side by side. Despite the tiny size of the street, the entire area was bustling with busy people. Locals and children rushed about performing chores and errands, while hunters from around the globe browsed shops curiously in their free time, pausing to observe sparkling jewels and exquisite paintings through windows. Massive oxen pulled most of the small wooden carts, but some of the heavier loads were pulled by Great Jaggi.

It was the middle of the day, and the blazing sun was so intense that even some of the city's inhabitants were twitching and pulling out wedgies uncomfortably. Melody herself felt like she was about to die. They had taken her clothes and weapons and given her some cheap, short, itchy Kelbi pelt dress to wear. Melody hated it with a burning passion. Never in her life had she been forced to wear anything she didn't feel comfortable in, let alone a dress. Every light breeze made her chained hands twitch in a reflex to keep the dress from floating around dangerously.

At least she had something to wear. Many of the slaves chained up to her wore rags or nothing at all. Perhaps she was getting special treatment because of her gender. Almost all the slaves that she saw were male, probably because many of the slaves that were captured were originally just hunters from other countries who had accidentally strayed into Loc Lac.

Loc Lac was both the name of the capital city and the country. Anyone who invaded the border of the country without any proper permission by law was immediately taken as a slave. That was how she had been taken. A Qurupeco had just flown off, and she had been in hot pursuit of it, running as quickly as she could to catch up with the little fucker. She had needed that Peco for a lovely new weapon that she had been planning to make, and it had been putting up a surprisingly good fight. Little did she know that she had accidentally crossed into Loc Lac land, and that a nearby sand ship was on the lookout for potential captives.

And now she was here, chained up to an ox cart and surrounded people who smelled like poo.

As the oxen rounded a corner, they entered a large town square with a platform in the center for selling slaves. Already, a large crowd of curious buyers was beginning to form, lining up and ready to see what was for sale. Other ox carts had already stopped in the middle of the square and were lining up slaves in rows on top of the platform to be auctioned off.

The buying and selling of souls then began. Potential buyers moved along the lines of slaves briskly, prodding their flesh, pinching them everywhere and even smelling their hair. One buyer even licked a slave, and, with a smile of satisfaction, bought him and dragged the unfortunate soul away by a leash. Other buyers inspected the slaves as if they were horses, examining their teeth and eyes. There was one good-looking young boy that two buyers broke out into a brawl over, which escalated until practically everyone was kicking, shoving, and biting their neighbors with animal-like ferocity. It was complete pandemonium. Eventually, the city guards had to step in and quell the screaming crowd, and even then, people glared at each other with anger and distrust.

Melody couldn't understand a single damn word of the weird-ass languages they were speaking, but she could kind of get the idea that it was her turn to stand up on the platform when some of the guards unhitched her and forcibly dragged her kicking and screaming towards it. When they finally forced her to quit fighting and stand still, the buyers came around to have a look at her. She held her breath as they pinched and prodded her like she wasn't even human, and one man who tried to examine her rather pitifully small breasts got a well deserved kick in the groin. The guards beat her for that, but it was worth it.

Luckily for her, she was too scrawny for many people to buy her to use her for physical work (or for food), too ugly to be bought for filthy things, and apparently too dumb to do any errands. Perhaps her bizarre looking long, dark blue hair made them think she belonged to some kind of cult or something. In fact, she really just used an air weed mixture to dye it because she liked the color blue. She let out a long sigh of relief when they started to lead her off the podium.

As she was marched back towards the tiny ox cart to be chained up again at the back of a line of other slaves that hadn't been bought, she looked around her. Most of the guards were busy holding back the seething crowd, and there was only one man marching her and several other slaves back towards the cart. The only thing keeping them from running were the chains that kept their wrists together and some rope connecting them all together.

All this gave her a simply marvelous idea. Mimicking the locals in the most wonderful fashion, she suddenly popped a squat in the middle of the street. Her sudden stop caused all the tied up slaves to halt and look back in confusion. The guard at the front of the line walked backwards and yelled something at her in some weird, short language that she could roughly translate into "What the hell are ya doing ya dumb bitch!" by looking at his ridiculous facial expressions.

Spitting, she yelled back at him, "What the hell does it look like I'm doing? I'm taking a shit!" The guard ran towards her and tried to reach for her arm, and then Melody saw her chance. Whipping her head up lightning fast, she snatched the man's hand out of the air with her teeth, biting down hard enough as to crush bones.

Screaming in pain, the guard ripped his hand away and clutched it in agony, blood dripping down his fingers. In the process, he dropped the spear that he had been holding earlier, and Melody caught it as it fell with the rope between her and the surprised man ahead of her in line. Pressing her foot against the shaft of the spear, she put enough pressure on it to cut the weak rope with a soft snap. Just like that, she was free.

By now, several other guards had noticed her and started yelling, but by then it was too late. Those dumbasses who had examined her up on the platform hadn't looked thoroughly enough. She might have been skinny, but every bit of it was sinewy muscle gained by years of hunting and training. Even now, after hardly moving at all for several days on her way to Loc Lac city, she was still in prim condition.

Dashing through the streets with her hands chained behind her back, Melody rushed through the startled crowds faster than a charging pissed off Barrioth. She expertly wove her way between people and carts, her reflexes honed by years of practice and her filthy bare feet padding silently along the bare pavement. Despite her smooth motion, Melody was anything but relaxed. She cussed and screamed at every obstacle that managed to get in her way, and nearly shit herself for real when one of the people on the street tried to grab her hair, but luckily she was too fast for them and their fingers only managed to grasp air.

As she turned around a corner, she saw several guards running ahead trying to cut her off. Behind her, the crowd was parting for the guards, allowing them to catch up more easily. They were going to sandwich her if she didn't think of something.

Quickly, she dashed down an alleyway, kicking a few tin trashcans over behind her, spilling garbage and angry hissing Felynes all over the entrance. That would buy her a second or two. Her eyes dashed all over the alley, scanning it for any means of escape. Seeing that the alley ended in a cracked, clay brick wall, Melody quickly realized that she had only one option of escape.

Melody ran at the wall of one of the tiny clay huts that made up the alley and jumped at it as quickly as she could. Shoving herself with her foot on the wall, she managed to get high enough to reach the roof of the tiny hovel with her stomach, her hands still chained behind her back. The trembling girl managed to just barely pull herself onto the roof by wriggling on her belly as the guards rushed into the alley, cursing and reaching for her feet.

Not waiting to think, Melody started dashing from rooftop to rooftop with the thatched straw roofs tickling her feet with every step. Before long, several guards managed to get onto the rooftops themselves, and tried following her, only to fall and hurt their metal coated asses as they tried to jump from roof to roof.

Melody couldn't just jump across rooftops all day. Now that she had temporarily lost the guards, she needed to keep it that way and find a good spot to hide for now. Leaping down off the rooftop she had been standing on, Melody landed clumsily into a different alley. For a moment, she was at a loss as to where to hide, but then another trashcan caught her eye. Setting her distain for the terrible smells of this city temporarily aside, she rushed to it and clambered inside, pulling the lid off and placing it back over her with her mouth.

It was damn hot inside the trashcan, and Melody was sweating buckets. It smelled like shit, and her legs were already beginning to cramp too; the pile of garbage on her rear end didn't exactly feel wonderful either.

She was considering simply getting out and finding a new hiding place when she heard the clanking footsteps of armored city guards outside, and sat as still as she could. The footsteps drew closer. They stopped in front of her trash can.

The world, at that moment, seemed to completely stop for Melody right there. Her heartbeat thumped as loud as a base drum, and she was overly conscious of her heavy breathing. She forced herself to relax and to stay quiet. She was safe. She was safe. There was no way they would look in a freaking trash can. She was safe. Why would anyone look in a freaking trash can? She was safe.

Or, she thought she was safe.

Suddenly, she heard a faint yowling sound from below her in the trash can, followed by a hiss. There was a Felyne under her ass! "Shut the hell up, you dumb fucking cat!" she whispered furiously, as quietly as she could.

The Felyne seemed to understand the insult, and, with a loud yowl of rage, it flung its entire two pounds of furry fury at her, clawing and biting her face with the stubbornness of a Ludroth. Screaming and cussing, Melody thrashed all over the trash can, causing it to tip over and spill her, the dumb cat, and the rest of the filthy contents all over the shiny boots of a city guard. As he hoisted her up and ripped the Felyne off of her face, he pulled out a chain and attached it from his belt to the back of her hands.

"Marvelous, just fucking marvelous…" Melody muttered as the scratched up guard led her out of the alley, carrying the writhing Felyne in one hand and ruining any escape plans she might have had with the other, holding her firmly by the chains on her wrists. And thus did inevitable fate seal itself on the poor girl's soul.

Author's Note:

Hey everyone! Wassup? This here's my first fanfiction ever, so I hope I didn't screw up too badly! Yeah, I know, it doesn't really feel like much of a Monster Hunter fanfiction yet, but don't worry! There will be plenty of monster fights in the near future! Please keep your pants on (no, seriously, keep your freaking pants on; I don't need to see that shit)! I hope to update at least once per week, but I'll probably update more than that! Please leave a review! I really love any critique that I can get, so don't be afraid to be mean! Seriously, make me cry! Go!

~Pie