A/N: I'm updating/posting another story! Three new stories in one night, new record since I began writing on FFdotnet.. Well, this is loosely based around a mixture of Rise, World/Iceborne and the movie, you'll see that reference in this chapter. This is only parrial set-up, as I tend to make usually two-part openings to my stories. Might also incorporate Stories elements because I hobestly love that game. Anyway, on with Monster Hunter Earthborn Part One..

Preface

Legends and Dimensions

Contrary to what the human eye can see, there are many different realities and worlds outside our own. Some are similar, even as close to form as everything being the same other than say your gender being reversed. Others, however, are as different as you could imagine: technologies mostly reminiscent of before firearms were invented and creatures the size of naval ships rampaging across the land.

Legends tell of heroes not born of this world, thrust into lives of adventure foreign to them. The threat? An event known as the Blighted Rampage, where Monsters of all types rampage like berserkers through the land for an unknown purpose and with no clear indication of when a Rampage may occur.

This story is of one such world. One of Hunters and Monsters, and a group of teenagers are about to find themselves in this dangerous world..

Prologue

Stranded and Separated

Mojave Desert, 2021..

The small school bus bumped along the desert road on its way to Las Vegas. The teenagers present on this bus and the several others making up a convoy on the highway were all headed to a convention event planned by their teachers but no one really knew what the convention itself was about. Several teens had headphones over their ears, listening to whatever music they were into while others held their phones in position to take selfies. One teen in particular, eighteen year old Nick Negron, listened to one of the many Japanese songs on his phone as he repeatedly glanced over at his friend and longtime crush Saryna Halliwell in her seat by the front of the bus.

Nick and Saryna had been a complicated pair of friends recently, stemming from what Nick figured was Saryna's new boyfriend Kenji Tanaka. It wasn't that he disliked Kenji, the guy was cool, but Nick also knew Kenji was something of a womanizer, a fact that Saryna hadn't heard of before accepting his date nor believed when her best friend tried to tell her about it. He didn't really blame her, though. Not when Kenji was head of the football team and that in itself gave him unnatural power over the other students.

Hey.. Are you still mad at me? Nick wrote in a text before hitting send, looking anywhere but at her so she didn't see the slight desperation he felt to make him miss Saryna at the least being on speaking terms with him.

It wasn't too long before his phone vibrated in his hand. He looked at the reply text. You tried breaking me and Kenji up with a lie. That's low, especially coming from you.

Nick frowned at that. She had a point, but it wasn't Nick's fault Kenji was a known player even before him and Saryna started dating. Still not as low as when we were eleven. You remember, don't you? The party at the old abandoned Reyes farm, seven minutes in heaven..

He saw Saryna gasp in her seat and start furiously typing on her own phone. No! No, that isn't the same. You told that lie so we wouldn't be degraded by those middle school idiots. Neither of us would be where we are without that lie.

That made him nod in agreement mentally, even when he had a retort. I don't know. We could always have been in a different situation. I didn't have to lie you know.

I know you didn't.. It was really brave of you and I've always appreciated it.

Nick thought that was all she wrote until a second message came up on the screen. I'm sorry if I seem a little snappy. It's not all sugar and rainbows lately.. I'm really not mad with you, more disappointed.

That I can understand. I may not have acted as tactfully as I could have, but I wasn't just going to let you go down the rabbit hole of repercussions.

Yeah.. Maybe you're right. But I haven't seen that side of Kenji, and I won't let anyone, not even my best friend, jeopardize the first romantic connection I've had since that asshat Ryder whether it's true or not.

I realize that, alright? This new distance between us hurts, Sar.. Neither of us should have let something so stupid get between our friendship. We've been through too much together..

Nick almost got caught looking at Saryna as she sighed and turned her body to look at the seemingly oblivious boy several seats away. Soon after, a vibration. I.. Yeah, you're right. Why did it?

Nick wasn't going to lay it out straight, but he couldn't stop himself once he began typing his reply. Because I was jealous and that made me act like a fucked up friend even if I knew I should just let you find out the truth on your own, whatever that truth really is..

Nick hit send then cursed himself under his breath, amazed he had told Saryna something he hadn't planned on telling her unless it came up in person. She's gonna be so pissed now.. He thought as he chanced a look at Saryna to see her looking back at him with an intensity he'd never seen before as he ignored the inevitable vibration from his hand.

~MH:EB~ ~MH:EB~ ~MH:EB~

Several minutes later, Saryna looked between Nick and her phone repetitively, trying to get an answer out of her oldest friend.

What do you mean jealous? Why would you be jealous of Kenji? You've always been more upstanding than him.. He won't even do the cute shit like you used to..

You remember, right? The chivalry you showed? Holding the doors open for me, keeping me as far from the curb as you could..

Nick, please.. You can't tell me something that utterly significant and then ghost the conversation..

From her seat across the aisle, Saryna's best girlfriend Jasmine saw the intensity her friend gave off as she stared at the text message screen. "Ryna, what's up with you all of a sudden? You haven't looked away from your phone for almost ten minutes now." Without answering, Saryna pointed back towards Nick, still acting oblivious but now jamming out to whatever music he was listening to, Jasmine following her gesture. "Oh, the old best friend huh? Girl, hasn't he made you feel bad enough?"

"That's just the thing, Jazz. Nick can't make me feel bad anymore, because I've felt bad about it myself. No, he drops a bombshell on me then won't explain. And I'm waiting!" She half-shouted, hoping Nick could hear her over his headphones.

"Bombshell? What kind of bombshell could Nick drop on you now?" Saryna frustratingly showed the phone to Jasmine, who started giggling.

"What's so damn funny?" Saryna huffed as she took the phone back.

"Girl, you've got it all wrong. Nick's bombshell is a confession, but you're not reading between the words."

Saryna rolled her eyes. "Alright, Kakashi-sensei, then what's hiding underneath the beneath?"

Jasmine shook her head. "Oh, no. You need to figure that out for yourself. Nick's words are for you, he wouldn't like you needing to figure it out by a third party. Especially when you and Nick are the top students in our year."

Saryna sighed as she slumped back in her seat. "Why is my life so frustrating?"

"It's really not. You just have a best friend who obviously cares about you and wants you to be happy, even if he can be a bit too forward about some things. Like with Kenji."

"Please, don't you start. I am happy with Kenji."

"You can lie to yourself all you want, but you know something's been off or missing since you started dating him. Plus, you're the only one who doesn't believe the truth about Kenji the rest of us know is right."

Saryna ignored her friend's words as she stared at the message thread again. What could you possibly be trying to say to me, Nick? She thought as the bus jostled from potholes. "What the hell are those rocks? They're.. Shimmering?" She heard Jasmine say, pointing out the window on Sajryna's side of the bus. Looking out, there was a suspicious row of stones that must have stood at about the height of the bus itself, and each had lines of shimmering blue symbols that seemed to glow stronger and brighter the further along the row the bus traveled.

"There's more on this side. Why are they getting brighter?" Said another student, Tristan Juarez from his seat in front of Jasmine's. Sure enough, there was an identical row of rocks on the opposite side of the bus, and they all seemed to be signaling something.

Nick was looking at the rocks, recognition on his face at the symbols on all of them. "That's.. Lynian..? That doesn't make sense." He said more to himself as he looked towards the front of the bus where he saw something he didn't like. "Hey, anyone else notice the ridiculously huge and threatening storm full of blue lightning ahead of us?"

The bus driver, the art teacher Mrs. Dirge looked forward from her own fascination with the mysterious rocks to see that there was indeed a storm coming fast toward them. The cloud itself engulfed the entire horizon, and the streaks of blue lightning only made it more foreboding. "Everyone, seatbelts on, now!" Dirge said as she stopped the bus, quickly starting a U-turn as she got on the radio between the buses. "Everyone turn around now! That storm is nothing like I've ever seen. We need to get away from it." As their bus turned and began speeding off in the direction they had come from, the other buses turned one by one as the next bus in the convoy of vehicles turned after the first had passed by.

The storm was quickly encroaching upon the vehicles, and the closer it got the brighter the blue-glowing stones became. Nick and the other students all buckled their seatbelts just in case. The students saw from the back door of the bus that the fourth and last bus in their group was lifted from the road and torn apart as the storm engulfed it and kept gaining on the others. He saw Saryna panicking and shoving all her stuff inside her bag (that wasn't already put away) as she secured it on herself, clipping the strap that would otherwise keep the bag attached to her. Following her lead, Nick wrapped his phone in his spare shirts in his bag and strapped it just the same as him and Saryna had used the same kind of backpack for all of high school. Nick got another look at the stones and saw a word in the symbols that he recognized from the same place as he recognized how the writing was arranged. That word, or more accurately words, were New World. "There's no way. How could this be possible?" He said as he looked back at the buses behind theirs, having heard another student scream.

The bus right behind them was being lifted up and shredded by the storm just as the other two had before it. The storm was now almost on their bus, but Mrs. Dirge wasn't giving up. "Hold on!" She said before flooring the gas pedal, the bus trying it's mightiest to escape the storm.

Nick looked at the rocks again as he saw another set of words he could read clearly enough: Portal Activate. His confusion was short-lived as suddenly the bus was engulfed by the storm on all sides as a ring of blue light appeared and allowed the bus to pass through, the tires jostling the chassis over and over as the road suddenly became bumpier than ever. Then the creaks and groans of metal began as the bus started tearing apart, starting with Mrs. Dirge's seat as she was thrust out to the side. From both ends of the bus, students and their belongings (with seats) began being torn from the bus and thrown in every which direction only to disappear from sight moments later. Nick closed his eyes as he saw both Jasmine and Saryna's seats go flying out before feeling a heavy thump to his head as everything else went black..

New World, Cavernous Desert..

Nick regained consciousness and was blinded by the sun. Shielding his eyes so he could adjust, he looked around at his new surroundings. "Well, this isn't the Mojave anymore. Where the hell.. Wait, these trees.." He looked at the sand around him and saw something he didn't want to. "And those tracks are not normal. Could this really be the world of Monsters? The New World..? I have to find shelter. I don't know how long I've been out for, and if anyone else survived this surprise trip then they would have had the same idea." He unbuckled the somehow still-intact seatbelt and stretched as he tried getting his bearings, traveling toward what looked like a promising mountain in the distance.

Elsewhere..

The Handler Chanel adjusted her goggles towards where she and her hunter Zander had seen strange balls of what looked like metal impact the sands near their camp. She could see a figure, a boy almost a man, looking around and detaching himself from the wreckage of some sort of vehicle judging by the seat he was in. "Zander! He's up and about. Looks like he's seeking shelter from the desert, kinda like he's looking for something.. Hold on, he has some kind of device in his hand, and he's holding it up to his ear for some reason.. Oh, maybe it's a form of radio! Maybe he had comrades with him wherever he came from. Probably has to report back to their admiral."

"You said he wasn't dressed like anyone you've ever seen before, right? If he's a Hunter, the kid is outmatched. He doesn't even have a weapon, let alone sturdy armor. The way you described him, he wouldn't even last a day on a hunt."

"So what should we do? I mean, we aren't just going to let him go and get killed, are we?"

"Of course not, Chanel. We'll help him out, see what his deal is and bring him back to Astera if needed. I wasn't feeling much for exploration today, anyway." Zander said, waving his hand nonchalantly.

"You're such a lazy bum. How you managed to solo a Brachydios is beyond me."

"Yeah, yeah. Let's just go get the kid before he winds up in trouble." Nodding, Chanel began following her Hunter charge out into the desert after the boy.

Meanwhile, Exotic Waterscape..

Saryna groaned as she picked her body up from the hot blacks sands of the beach she was laying on, clutching her head as a sting of pain erupted in her skull momentarily. She looked around in confusion. "Where the fuck.. Did that storm take us all the way to Hawaii?" She asked herself as she saw palm trees and other tropical trees growing along the shore but then gasped as she looked up and saw an entire lake suspended in the air above her as if it was normal, fish swimming swiftly inside the gravity-defying water. "No, that's not possible.. Nick? Jasmine? Mrs. Dirge!?" She shouted, trying to find someone else from the school trip gone wrong.

"Saryna?" Came Tristan's voice as he stepped out from the treeline. "Thank god I'm not the only one. Where are we?"

"I have no idea, but I think I may know who does.." You said something couldn't be right when you looked at those stones, Nick.. What do you know? She thought as she continued. "Unfortunately, neither Nick or any of the other big gamers in school wound up with us it seems. How long have you been conscious?"

"An hour, maybe? Went looking around but got scared back by something roaring in the distance. Then I heard you and came over. What else can we do?"

"The only thing you should do when you find yourself stranded somewhere: find shelter. Then look from a vantage point so we can try to determine where we are. That storm couldn't have knocked us all that far.."

Tristan nodded as he helped Saryna to stand. "Bet. I think I may have seen a cave a while away, let's go check it out."

Nodding, Saryna and Tristan began their trek through the treeline. Nick.. Kenji.. Please, both of you be alright..

Aurora Valley..

Kenji opened his eyes to the sensation of a tongue on his face. Seeing the large wolf-like dog above him caused the jock to panic, rolling over to get on his feet as the dog watched him. "You're a big dog. Where'd you find that knife?" He wondered aloud, noticing the weapon strapped to one of the dogs legs.

Reaching out to touch the knife, the dog growled before performing a perfect, almost cat-like backflip while unsheathing the weapon. "Shit! Down, boy!" He half-shouted as the dog stood rooted with a dangerous glare directed at Kenji.

"Figaro, hush. You think this scrawny kid could take a trained Palamute Hunter?" Said another voice as a statuesque man jumped out from a nearby tree, snow falling with him. "Where do you hail from, stranger? Those clothes are unbefitting of a Hunter out in the snow."

Kenji, amazed by the sheer musculature of the man, gave a neutral face. "My name's Kenji Tanaka, captain of the Crystal Springs high school football team. How am I even here? I was just in the Mojave desert on the trip bus."

"Crystal Springs? Where is that located? Are you a solo Hunter from the Old World?"

"Old World? Man, what are you talking about? And why does your dog have a weapon?"

"Figaro is no ordinary dog. He's a proud Palamute Hunter, my partner."

"Palamute? Hunter? Partner? What the hell do you guys hunt with blades that need weapons so big?" Kenji asked as, looking now at the huge sword positioned on the 'Hunter's' back.

The Hunter looked at Kenji like he was crazy. "What do you mean? We hunt the likes of Jyuratodus and Legiana, Rathian and Rathalos. Aren't they just as common in your homeland?"

"Rathalos? That sounds vaguely familiar, but I'm pretty sure none of those animals exist where I'm from. No one walks around with weapons like yours, either. This is how we are pretty much at all times."

"Really? Must be very boring lives, then. Come, Kenji. I, the Hunter Karna shall bring you back to the Academy at Astera. Maybe they can further determine where you came from. Were there any others with you?"

Kenji nodded, thinking. "I don't know where any of the others went. We were hit by some kind of lightning storm. It tore our school buses apart and I only saw the others all flying in different directions as the bus came apart."

Karna hummed. "A storm, you say? There was a storm that rolled through the area a short while ago. In fact, it seems the storm hit every corner of the New World. Your friends may be anywhere, but we can organize a search party when we get to Astera. The General won't leave any helpless citizens to the monsters."

Kenji nodded as he got to his feet, feeling the bitter cold for the first time. "Jeez, it really is freezing!"

"Here, this'll keep you warm. Paolumu fur cloak." Karna said as he tossed a cloak at Kenji, who didn't hesitate to put it on and feel warm almost immediately.

"That's nice. What's a Paolumu?"

"One of many monsters present here in the New World. Basically a bat with an inflatable air sac that makes them float looking for prey. Until they attack, they're actually kind of cute. Now, hold on. Figaro, let's go. Astera, double time." Without warning, Karna pulled Kenji onto the Palamute as the dog began speeding across the landscape towards whatever this Astera was.

New World Research Base, The Next Night..

Saryna stood at the entrance to the Research Base, looking out at the massive, alien land she now found herself in. "Couldn't sleep, either?" Asked Tristan as he walked up next to her, his new robe-like clothing seeming very out of place on the Spanish boy.

"No. Who can sleep when we don't even know where we are? Or where any of our friends are?"

"We shouldn't worry about it too much. The head researcher told us Hunters have been finding a lot of us students all over this New World of theirs. If only they could tell us how we wound up here at all."

"I know I shouldn't worry, but I can't help it.. Not when I don't know if they're safe.."

"They? Oh, right. The little love triangle of school."

Saryna looked over at him. "What are you on about, now?"

"You don't know? You, Kenji and Nick. The Crystal Springs High love triangle of drama."

Saryna frowned. "I know I'm going to regret this, but why are we all called that?"

"The fact you need it explained is the real issue. Put simply, though? You started dating Kenji despite what everyone in school will and has told you. Despite that, Nick still holds on to the hope that you'll see him how he always sees you."

Eyebrow raised in curiosity, Saryna motioned for Tristan to continue. "Go on.."

"You really have absolutely no idea how Nick sees you, do you?" Saryna shook her head in the negative. "Of course not. Nick is oblivious, but to think you're the oblivious one this time. Saryna, Nick sees you as a literal living goddess. You don't want to know how often he will suddenly tangent a conversation into the topic of you. Especially your eyes, my God he's so sappy."

"Nick thinks.. Wait, why hasn't he said anything to me? Ever?"

Tristan laughed until he saw Saryna's serious expression. "Shit, you're serious? Why would Nick tell you how he really feels about you when he knows you'd probably just shoot him down thanks to the illusion of love Kenji has over you? Or better yet, when he's been upset with himself over the whole falling out?"

Saryna really didn't like the conclusion of a picture Tristan was painting. "Tristan, seriously. Just get to the point."

Tristan smirked. "Nope. Whatever is unsaid is Nick's to tell. Anyway, speaking of Nick.. Why did you tell the head researcher he needed to be found ASAP?"

Saryna sighed. "He knows something about this place. On the bus, before the storm blew us all over the place, he was mumbling something about those stones seeming familiar. Honestly, this all seems like a video game."

"Wouldn't that be something? Well, it's good she told us a boy matching his description was taken to Astera already, wherever that is. You know, why haven't we freaked the fuck out about this place yet?"

"I'm not tripping out when the environment is foreign. And I'll wait for Nick's explanation to figure out whether or not I even want to."

"True enough. Well, I'm gonna go get some rest. Gotta try to sleep before we head to Astera ourselves."

Saryna nodded. "Yeah, me too. I think I may have some talking to do with those two boys." She shook her head with a smile, for which boy in question she couldn't be sure. "Night, Tristan."

"Night, Saryna. Don't worry yourself to full insomnia, alright?" Tristan waved to her as he walked back inside the base.