The first time the cart brings one of them back is a surprise, but not a worrying one. “Got you, huh?” the Handler asks Fray as she helps him to his feet. Proxy comes tearing ass in after the cart, looking singed. Dirt and bits of leaf litter smear his face and hair, the typical Ancient Forest look, but he’s beat to shit in a way he rarely is. “Geez! This rathalos is no joke!”
“Boxed me into a corner,” Fray signs with a vague annoyance, and allows himself to be herded into their tent to reconsider his gear. He emerges with a sword bristling with purple crystals, and beside him has loaded down Proxy with a bongo bigger than her entire body. She looks ecstatic.
“Be careful!” the Handler calls after them.
The next time the cart comes rolling in, it’s got Alex anxiously bounding along ahead of it. He’s in and out of the tent before Marco even sits up all the way, a live vigorwasp under one arm and a mug of the Handler’s coffee in his other paw. The Handler looks them both over before checking the position of the sun. Less than ten minutes since Fray swapped his weapon and left. “The rath?” she asks Alex.
Alex’s ears prick and he blinks. He looks Marco up and down as the hunter groans and gets to his feet. “Yeah,” he says eventually, shoving the wasp into Marco’s arms. “Big one. Tough.”
“Hmm. You’ve been using flash pods, right?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Focusing on the wings?”
“Yyyep.”
“Okay, well, you’ve only got one more cart left,” she tells him with a knit brow. “The union’s been really careful about the carters’ safety, since that incident with the paolumu. They’re not letting anyone get away with pity carts—if you go back in after three no one is going to come after you.”
“We know,” signs Marco, suddenly bugless and sticky with green nectar. “We’ve almost got it.”
“The hell you do,” comes Proxy’s voice. Everyone jumps. She wriggles her way out from under a tarp on the cart, bushing her tail at one of the union felynes as he hisses at her; carts are intended for hunters only, heavy enough with their massive weapons. “You haven’t broken anything on it yet.”
“Did you leave Fray alone out there?” the Handler says, bewildered.
“Of course not,” says Proxy, and plucks the coffee from Alex’s hand. “I left him with a rathalos and a big angry bazelgeuse that was chewing on its head.”
It’s one thing for one of the Commission’s silent, infamous tag-team to cart. It’s another for both of them to cart. When the squeak of wooden wheels reaches the Handler’s ears a third time, not fifteen minutes later, she claps her logbook shut and starts putting things away. Three is the limit set both by the Guild and the cart union, and even the best hunter can’t keep their strength up after being thrown into a tree too many times.
The cart arrives, pulled not just by sour-faced union felynes, but with Proxy and Alex helping. The Handler gawks at this for a moment, until she realizes the straw-cushioned bed contains not one hunter but two. “Both of you?” she cries, bewildered, as the Palicoes help their respective partners back up. “What on earth—what happened? Is that from the bazelgeuse?”
That, being the angrily glowing red embers stuck to both Fray and Marco’s armor. The two of them look part dazed, part tremendously pissed off, which would be funny if they weren’t beaten half to death. “Yeah,” Fray signs sloppily, giving Proxy a habitual scratch behind one ear as he steadies himself. She’s practically replaced one of his legs for support. The greaves are shattered. “We’re close. A restock and we should—”
“Oh, no you don’t,” the Handler says. “That was your last go! Guild regulations! We can come back and try again later.”
“It might not be here later,” Marco signs, and it’s amazing how she can almost hear the whine in his motions. “It’s limping! We can—”
“Nuh-uh! Not on my watch. You two would get yourselves killed, honestly! It’s just a rathalos, right, guys?”
The Commission’s Sapphire Stars shift awkwardly, looking everywhere except the Handler.
The Handler’s expression fades to pursed lips and narrowed eyes. “It’s just a rathalos hunt. Right, boys?” she repeats flatly, snapping her massive logbook open with an audible crack. Fray flinches; Marco bites his lip. She runs her finger down the tight, neat lines of ink. “Posted by … hm, an anonymous Fiver. Just last night. Pretty scant on details and a lackluster reward. And here I thought you two were just being nice.”
“We are nice,” Marco interjects. Proxy groans. “We are! I mean. Me and Alex and Fray. You aren’t.”
“Go kiss a khezu,” says Proxy, which does nothing to disprove his point.
During this, the Handler has flipped to the back of her logbook, where half a dozen copies of ecology reports are stuffed. She picks through them page by page until she stops on a narrow, mostly untouched pamphlet. It crackles as it opens. It’s remarkable how much the illustrations she finds there matches the damage on the hunters’ armor, and the red “embers” flaking off their hair.
“The dragonblight should wear off soon,” the Handler says, trying to keep the irateness from her tone. “I don’t imagine your armor is going to hold up much longer, though. It’s corrosive. Weird that you’ve gotten it, though, huh?” and with this she looks up at the quartet, all of them trying their best to affect innocence. “I don’t have anything down about rathalos that inflict dragonblight.”
There’s a beat of silence, only interrupted by the unending background chatter of the jungle. Then, as if on cue, the distant, distinct bellow of—
“A deviljho?!” the Handler says, nearly dropping her logbook as she throws her hands in the air. “Seriously?! I don’t care how talented you guys are, you’re nowhere near ready for that kind of fight!”
“We got it limping,” Marco points out, but he has the decency to look sheepish about it. Fray is doing that thing where he acts like he’s not in the conversation, like that will save him. “It was running away. I bet it went somewhere to sleep, we could still trap it.”
“We could still trap it,” Fray adds, suddenly part of the conversation again. “I always have tranquilizers.”
“I’m not hearing this,” the Handler says, pressing her fingers to her temples. “Do you guys know how much trouble we could all get into for faking a quest? The Guild doesn’t mess around with poaching! I don’t know about you, Marco, but Fray should at least know better!”
Marco hesitates, glancing at a Fray who abruptly looks very uncomfortable. He brushes dragonblight ember from his belt. “We were still going to get the rathalos,” he signs, as Proxy answers Marco’s unasked question: “They fuckin’ kill you for poaching back home.”
Alex yowls. “What?!”
“They don’t always kill you,” Fray adds, looking askance. “Sometimes you’re just exiled.”
As one, Marco and Alex look to the Handler for confirmation; she nods grimly. Both consider this for a moment; both immediately turn on Fray. “You get his hair,” says Alex, “I’ll get his kneecaps.”
(Proxy looks ecstatic.)