2: Arrival At Yii-Do

"Why us?" Yumi asked quizzically. Irvine and Miyuki stayed silent, an air of speechlessness descending. "There are plenty of better-trained hunters in the inner regions and cities; Tsutoko, Kojo, even other, bigger places in Tarin have hunters that will work for less, and are better than us. What, do the backwater people not matter? If they die, or worse, get MDV, it doesn't matter as much?" Yumi sneered aggressively. She was the most level-headed and uptight member of Dante's circle of friends, their leader of sorts.

"Yumi..." April sighed, the way a mother does when their child ignores warnings about touching hot food.

"Please, Miss...?" Irvine began politely.

"Yumi. Yumi Kimimoto."

"Right. Miss Kimimoto.." Irvine started again. "We did not pick you and your friends because you are "backwater". Strictly speaking, we haven't actually picked you...yet."

"What do you mean, "yet"?" Teiko asked, folding his arms and furrowing his brow as if to concentrate.

"What I mean is that we have already asked for the assistance of other hunters, from Kojo, Jonton in Tsukoto and even in inner Tarin, along with many other places. We test test them to see both their individual aptitudes and their ability to work as a team. You are the last on our list; the others are potential candidates. So far, the small band on hunters from Jonton has excelled the most. Should you fail, they will undertake this mission," Irvine explained.

"Are you sure it's wise to tell so many people about a mission of such importance? What if one of them is an Tenkai operative? I'm sure Shikimaru'll be flattered to hear about the attempt on his life," Ichiro said with a hint of haughty derision.

"It doesn't matter; they're smart enough to know that we'll find the bastards and slit their throats if they so much as utter a syllable to do with this op," the Barioth-clad hunter, Miyuki, retorted bluntly. Her voice was deep for a woman's but still easily identifiable as feminine, and sounded blunt and matter-of-fact.

"...Precisely," Irvine said, reinforcing Miyuki's point but hesitating to do so, as if taken aback by her blunt threat upon the hunters' lives.

"...What do you mean by "test"?" Dante enquired, raising an eyebrow.

"You will be taken to the Guild military bastion in Yii, in the Kojo region. The bastion has a training arena. A plethora of monsters from across the land await there, from which we shall select in order to test your abilities. You should be aware that the monsters you will face will not be matched based on Hunter Rank; they will be chosen with the purpose to challenge you in mind. The only thing you can be sure of...is that none of them will be Mad," Irvine murmured forebodingly. Even though the hunters couldn't see him, they felt his eyes scanning them intently.

"Well then what the heck're we waiting for?" Ash asked with impatient anticipation (she was the youngest of the friends at the tender age of thirteen, and was the most easily psyched of the group). "Let's go already!"

The friends took a moment to confer amongst themselves, before Yumi emerged from the scrum, a look of formality on her face.

"Alright; we'll do it."

The ten good friends were really excited now, adrenaline surging through their veins like a wildfire. They had never been on an airship before. They had read about them in picture books as children and seen them docked in the inner regions of the country on the rare journeys they had embarked upon to inner Altus, but never before had they actually been on one. It felt incredible, and for a citizen of an outlying region like Tarin, it was a dream come true.

As Dante and Alexis stood at the starboard side of the craft, holding hands, Dante breathed a sigh of satisfaction, closing his eyes for a brief moment to listen to the whistles of the wind, the gentle creaking of the wooden planks and the squawking of small birds in perfect harmony with the prideful roars of Rathians returning to their nests, most likely with an unlucky Jaggi or Baggi clenched between their jaws.

"I've dreamed of this since I was a kid," Dante sighed, opening his sapphire eyes to watch a small flock of Qurupeco fly by sounding their mating calls, their bulbous vermillion vocal sacs bulging as they cawed.

"Well, good for you," Alexis said, smiling, her head resting gently on Dante's shoulder.

Following this, Teiko and Ash came to stand beside them, Teiko sighing quietly.

"Something wrong?" Alexis asked him.

"No, it's nothing," he said. "It's just...I've always wanted to ride one o' these."

"Me too," Ashe agreed, lifting her arms to her sides and closing her eyes to take in the breeze.

"Mind you don't fall off!" Teiko joked. The other laughed, including Ash.

"Hey, look! A Rathalos!" Teiko exclaimed, pointing ahead as a huge, red Flying Wyvern emerged from the wispy clouds screeching with pride as it flew past the airship, scattering the Qurupeco flock with its intimidating approach. Dante, Alexis, Teiko and Ash all watched with wonder at the King of the Skies until it swooped down below the clouds and out of sight.

Their awestruck thoughts were swiftly interrupted by the heavy stomping of Irvine's Rukodiora leggings on the wooden deck.

"We are approaching the military bastion. Be ready," he said, then turned on his heel and retreated into the depths of the ship.

"I guess we can just relax up here then. Glad we kept all our stuff on us. By the way, where are Eiji, Ichiro, Aaron and the girls?" Ash questioned.

"Uh...I guess they must be below deck. 'Cause they sure ain't up here," Teiko said.

"Hey, Yumi," Dante said, acknowledging the Jhen-armoured hunter as she strolled above deck to meet with him and the others.

"Are all you guys prepared?" Yumi asked seriously. "Make sure you are; 'Blos knows what we'll face down there," she warned, gripping the handle of her switch axe tightly. Shortly after Yumi's wise words, Eiji, Ichiro, April, Ruby and Aaron can scurrying onto the deck to stand with them.

"We're nearly there! We're about to descend! You'll hear the warning drum in a second," Aaron said excitedly.

And, as he'd said, the deep, strong and climactic sound of a large drum reverberated from below deck, and, sure enough, the airship descended, the clouds grew thinner, and as they cloud layer disappeared completely, a large island off the coast of Yii, Kojo, was a small island, covered from north to south in industrial structure. The group turned away from the starboard rail as Miyuki strutted past them.

"Welcome to Yii-Do," Miyuki huffed dismissively, "Your new home for quite some time, assuming you pass par."

The hunters turned back to gaze upon Yii-Do, conjuring up mental images of what fearsome creatures they might have to face.

After the airship had landed, Dante, Alexis, Aaron and the others had been led through many areas of Yii-Do. They had to walk quickly, so there had been very little time to sightsee, but the bits that had been seen were almost foreign to them: Tarin wasn't as rich as other regions like Kojo or Chi'Huen, and so the advanced technology afforded to Guild outposts like this was slightly out of their reach. They weren't bothered by this though: they didn't have it simply because the Guild has no major military activity there, and Kojo (as well as other places) did.. This wasn't the kind of equipment you could just buy, it was expensive and resource-consuming to make, and as such it was only used on important places like Military Bastions in order to help them become self-sustaining and not rely on outsources from the capital all the time.

They were led down a long, straight stone hallway, lit by torches all the way along, beams of white light seeping in through the gaps in the barred window of the large, wide door that now stood before them.

"Be very careful when you venture into the arena, hunters. It is separated from the mainland, and these drawbridges are the only way to...and from the arena. You can't escape from your fight once you cross, whatever monster it may be. Is that understood?" Irvine warned them carefully.

"Right," Dante answered for his friends.

"Very well," Irvine said. He grabbed a level to his right and slowly pulled tit down. Dante and friends watched as the door before them slowly fell away from the top, forming a bridge to a large, circular arena that awaited ahead, large chains clinking loudly as it did so.

Dante, Alexis, Aaron, Ruby, April, Eiji, Ichiro, Yumi, Teiko and Ash all strode forward, across the draw bridge and into the arena; Dante, Ash and Alexis with their swords and shields, Ruby and Aaron with their greatswords, Eiji and Ichiro with their dual swords, Teiko with his longsword and Yumi with her switch axe. Almost as soon as their feet stepped off of the wood and onto the dusty, desert-like ground, the drawbridge-and, therefore, their only means of escape- was pulled back the way it had come, the heavy chains on each side clinking as the wooden slab was peeled back from its position between the main building and the watery drop below and back to its upright position, blocking the passage way the hunters had just come from.

Even the surroundings of the arena were luscious to the eye. the rest of the structure within which the arean was situated circled it in an amphitheatre-ish way, the clay-coloured stonework cut to look like rows of seats that went all the way around, although they had clearly not been used in some time, as clumps of moss, brush, dandelions and other greenery were dotted all over the brick, giving it a look of an old desert temple. Gentle streams of water seeped out from between the brittle bars (some of which had been eroded away partially) of rusty, derelict drainage pipes; not nearly enough to make the level of water that awaited far below the gorge-like drop that awaited over the edge rise to any credible degree, but enough to make it look somewhat scenic. The general gargantuan size of the whole area took the hunters' breath away as well.

"This...is the Yii-Do Training Arena," Irvine's voice echoed from over a relay of large horns that had been placed at key points around the amphitheatre-esque surroundings in order to amplify the sound. The group figured that he must have the original horn somewhere within the main building. "Here, you will be put to the test against a plethora of captured monsters from our reserves. If you can pass this test, you will be allowed to move on to the second test."

There was a short pause, and then another drawbridge was lowered to the northeast of where they had entered, and two scorpion-like monsters scuttled across it an into the arena, hissing and rattling their tails like snakes as they did so. One had brown skin and coated in purple crystals while the other had navy blue skin an icy white crystals. Both had four round, beady red eyes. They slowly moved in around the ten hunters, snapping their pincers and waving their tails in anticipation, circling the hunters antagonistically.

"These two Carapaceons are known an Akura Vashimu and Akura Jebia. Trained for use in the arena, they will be your first challenge. When the drawbridge closes, you may begin," Irvine's voice sounded from the mike system again.

A few seconds later, the drawbridge closed and the first test of a hunter's mettle began.