Fic Prompts: Free Day Thursday
I've been having a lot of fun playing Monster Hunter Stories, so I'm basing today's prompt on what I've experienced so far in the game.
Gentor liked to think that he could handle just about any situation with calm and rationality. After all, a Hunter didn't get to be his age by panicking, or being hasty all the time. (Of course, swinging too far in the opposite direction wasn't helpful either, and there were a few of his guild members who could stand to learn that lesson.) Still, when one of the Scriveners brought in a little girl from some nowhere village, talking about monsters like they were as friendly as Lynians, it unnerved him a little.
And then someone reported a child leading a blasted Yian Kut-Ku up to the very doors of the guild hall!
Gentor found a bright-eyed boy, probably eleven or twelve at a guess, wearing similar armor to some of his Hunters. Was he a recruit? Or had this child somehow captured a monster and brought it with him in hopes of convincing the guild to take him in? He didn't seem even a little worried about the fact that he hadn't muzzled the thing. Or that the most peculiar Felyne kit he'd ever seen in his life was sitting on the Yian Kut-Ku's back on a -- what the deviljho, was that a saddle?!
"Do your parents know where you are?" slipped out before he had a chance to think through his words.
The two children frowned and glanced at each other. Gentor would have interpreted this as a "no" if they hadn't looked so confused.
"Hey, come to think of it, buddy, I've never met your pawrents," the Felyne boy muttered in an aside to his friend.
The human boy shrugged expressively. "I'm not sure I have, either," he said.
Gentor could feel a muscle in his face starting to twitch. Were they orphans? Runaways? And just who, in the name of all that was good, had taught them to parade around recklessly with monsters?!
"We traveled here allll the way from the Whistill Forest!" the cat boasted.
"Alone?" Gentor asked bluntly.
"No," the boy giggled, "Of course not! We had our monsties!"
Right. His "monsties". And apparently no adult supervision. Gentor wasn't buying it. But then the guild master intervened and that was that. But the more the kid stuck around, running through city at odd hours carrying monster eggs on a worryingly regular basis, the more he began to wonder.
If this reckless child thought it was perfectly normal to play with juvenile monsters and raid full-grown monsters' nests while they were still there, what on earth were the adults in his village like?!
