“Be careful you idiot!” 

    “It’s fine! I’m great at keeping my feet! Catlike, I tell you!” 

    “Not when you’re lugging around a giant hammer!”

    “You can’t see it through the helmet, but I’m sticking my tongue out at you.” 

    Hammer Hunter smirked as Bow Hunter threw his hands up in the air and followed along from the side; the pair were deep in a cave in the Elder’s Recess, doing some exploration to help out the Fleet in it’s research of the strange place filled with life energy. There was a path along the side that was a bit wider and didn’t risk falling into the glowing blue water below them, but where was the fun in that? So Hammer Hunter was instead hopping between small rocky platforms in the middle of the pool, seeing if she could make it across without slipping.

    She wasn’t lying when she said she was good at keeping her footing, and made it most of the way across the pool without a slip. Unfortunately for her, the world didn’t just build itself for convenient paths, and just because there was one didn’t mean it was stable. Especially not when the last platform had a precariously thin base. When she jumped across to the last platform, it began to wobble. “Woooah!” she shouted, trying to keep a balance. 

    “Damnit, Hammer Hunter!” Bow Hunter groaned, “I told you it wasn’t safe!”

    “Oh come on, it’s just water!” Hammer Hunter laughed, “What, you think I can’t swim or something?”

    “Not in armor that heavy!” 

    Oh, right, that made sense. “It’s fine, I’ll just-” As Hammer Hunter prepared to leap to safety, the platform’s base finally snapped under the weight of a fairly large woman, her heavy Radobaan armor, and her similarly hefty hammer. The flat part she’d been standing on slid off into the water before she could take a step, and brought her down with it. 

    As Hammer Hunter crashed down into the pool she took a deep breath. Water flooded into her helmet and between the plates of her armor, further pulling her down. Being a Hunter, she did have some better endurance in most respects than a normal person; she could hold her breath for a long time. Which gave her ample time to feel how strange this life-filled water was, the way it felt across her body and across the armor. If she’d been a bit sharper than her primary weapon, Hammer Hunter might have noted she shouldn’t have been able to feel anything on the armor as opposed to her body. 

    She’d been holding her breath for nearly a full minute when she felt something tug on her arm. She was pulled upright with some difficulty. ”What were you doing just lying there?” Bow Hunter asked, “I thought this was going to be a tough rescue but it’s not even a foot deep! Were you going to try and surprise me or something?”

    Hammer Hunter blinked and shook her head. “Uh… no, I guess I must have bumped something when I landed. Was a bit shocked.” she said after a bit. Her head felt all scrambled, it was hard to think.

    Bow Hunter sighed and offered her a hand up, which she took. “Well, crisis averted - let’s get a move on, shall we?” he said as he pulled her to her feet. “I could smell something rotten from the other end of the pool… I think I have an idea where this cave ends up.”

    The Rotten Vale had earned it’s name from the moment the Fleet set foot in it. It was a dizzying maze of rotting carcasses and bones in the top levels, poisonous effluvium in the mid levels, and a mixture thereof in the bottom. And it was also filled with monsters fit for such an awful place, from the Great Girros up to the rolling Radobaan from which Hammer Hunter had obtained her most recent set of armor.  The cave had ended up being a passage from the Elder’s Recess back to the Rotten Vale. 

    Hammer Hunter and Bow Hunter had met up with their handler at the nearest base camp, and decided to go on a hunt while they were there; a Radobaan had rolled across their path and seemed like a decent fight. They’d killed plenty before, so it wasn’t hard; Hammer Hunter smashed it’s armor off with ease and then Bow Hunter followed up with shots into it’s exposed, tar-like hide. It was a bit strange on Hammer Hunter’s end though; she rolled around like a drugged up Konchu. She was agile enough to pull it off and it was useful for dodging, but it got a little excessive when she rolled instead of ran after it when the thing fell back to it’s nest. 

    Eventually, it went down, going from seizing to snoring as Bow Hunter put a few tranq shots into it while it was stuck in a shock trap. “That was a nice workout! I’ll call up Gruff Handler and get the carts out to bring this back to Astera. Meet me back in the barracks?”

    Hammer Hunter looked at the Radobaan for a while, frowning. Something felt… weird. She scratched at her armor, as if she’d be able to get to an itch through the bony plates. The armor seemed to have taken a beating for all the rolling; it’d been covered in the tar that seemed to be everywhere in the upper parts of the Vale, and it was rather sticky now. “Hm? Sure. But I’m going to stick around here for a bit if you don’t mind.”

    “What for?” Bow Hunter asked, “It’s not like there’s much new for us here; we’ve been through here a bunch of times.”

    “I don’t know. Kinda just feel like it, you know?” Hammer Hunter said with a shrug. 

    “I mean, I think you probably need to get back before you end up sick or something, after that fall in the water…” 

    “I said I’m fine, didn’t I?” Hammer Hunter shot back, “I’ll go back when I feel like it.” 

    Bow Hunter finally relented. “Whatever you say. Stay safe while you’re out exploring at least.”

    Hammer Hunter waved him off, and start trekking back up-hill to the bone pit where the Radobaan usually got it’s armor from. She sat down on a particularly large bone, and took some time to just think about… whatever it was, that was bothering her. She felt incredibly strange, since that fall. She just didn’t know why. 

    It might have been that she could feel her armor in a rather abnormal way, or maybe it was the fact she had started to be able to see as clearly as if she wasn’t wearing anything. It might be that she didn’t actually feel the weight of the armor anymore; it was like moving her own body now. Too much so actually. 

    It had been like she had no control over it as she fought. When she rolled it felt like she didn’t have a say over it. Of course, that was nonsense; she was obviously been in control of her body. But she didn’t mean to roll so much, and yet she had anyway. But at the same time, it had felt incredibly right, especially when she did it in the bone piles. She tugged at her helmet, planning to take it off and get some more direct air (if you could call the ambient miasma of the Rotten Vale ‘air’, that is). Maybe it would help her think.

    At least, that was the plan. The helmet was stuck. It actually kind of hurt to pull at. The tar that had gotten over her seemed to have stuck the helmet in place. She internally rolled her eyes; of course it had, no way she could have something like luck. She’d have to wash off when she got back to the base. She sighed loudly and stood, bones crunching beneath her, and stepped forward.

    And tripped into a roll, a few bones getting stuck on her. She stood up, brushing off the bones and laughing a little at her clumsiness. She usually wasn’t so... well, clumsy. She would just not mention that to the Bow Hunter. He’d make enough fun of her for all that rolling she’d done earlier and was now doing again - wait, what? 

    She came to a stop, standing again and shaking off more bones. She’d started rolling again without meaning to. It was getting to be strange. She took a few steps, looking down at her feet to make sure she didn’t trip again. But the moment she relaxed and tried to keep moving she was rolling for a third time. This time, though, she didn’t stop - she found she couldn’t, it was like her armor was pulling her along whether she wanted to or not, rolling around on the bones without stopping. 

    The bones started to stick to the black tar-stuff of her armor, her rolls gaining a crunch to them as she started to develop a second set of armor. The gaps in the armor had begun to fill in and merge together, but strangely there was only a gain in flexibility rather than a decrease. Hammer Hunter tried to think about it, but that was becoming harder and harder as she grew dizzier from all the rolling and hitting her head on rocks. Maybe Ra-Hammer Hunter should have just stopped moving altogether, but she couldn’t really bring herself to stop. It felt natural. It shouldn’t have, but it did. She started to think less and less and less as she rolled her humanity away.  

    It had been some time since the Radobaan was taken down, and the recovery team had hitched it up to the sled that they’d use to bring it back to the hunter’s home base, Astera, for research. Of course, the various hunters of the fleets had taken many down, but cataloguing the variation that could occur in species was still a valuable task. This specimen was one of the larger ones just by sight, and they always had some interesting differences to your standard Radobaan…

    Observant Engineer, the one leading the recovery team, was the first to notice something was off. There was a crunching sound from up the slope, rapidly approaching. His hand found it’s way to his shortsword. If it was just a Girros or something they’d be fine, but if it was a Large Monster then the recovery operation would have to be scrubbed; usually there was some time between the end of a quest and new monsters muscling in on the old’s territory, but not always. 

    The crunching got closer and closer, and Observant Engineer’s grip tightened on the hilt of the sword. 

    The crunching came from a rolling… something, it turned out, coming down the slope from the bone pit. It looked like a Radobaan mid-roll, almost, but at the size of a human. No Small variants of the Radobaan had before been recorded, so this might actually be of some significance if they were the first to see - 

    It came out of the roll, revealing a Hunter in what looked nearly like Radobaan armor. It seemed to be Hammer Hunter - Bow Hunter had mentioned she’d stayed behind for a bit for whatever reason. Her armor was weird though - it was covered in bones from top to bottom, and particularly spikey ones at that, stuck to the armor in a way not dissimilar from how the Radobaan’s tar-like body caught the bones as it rolled along. There were particularly large bony plates around the chest and at the joints, that had stuck out of the ball like spikes when she was rolling around. The shoulder spikes were particularly impressive, as were the tusk-like bones that had gotten stuck to her helmet. 

    Observant Engineer started to relax… although, something seemed off to him. “Hammer Hunter! Here to hitch a ride?” he called to the hunter.

    Hammer Hunter didn’t respond. It was hard to see anything under the helmet but he was fairly sure she was just… staring. Something else was weird - she didn’t seem to have her, well, hammer. And her gauntlets seemed to end in bony claws. 

    “...Hammer Hunter? You alright there?” Observant Engineer asked, “Run into something out there, maybe?”

    There was no reply as he stepped towards her. Instead, she stepped forward and fell. For a half second the man thought she’d tripped but she went into a roll and started to, well, roll towards him at high speed. The bony spikes that had attached to her armor tore through the ground as she approached, and she didn’t seem to plan to stop for him - he leapt out of the way just an instant before she would have rolled over him. 

    Scrambling to his feet with his weapon drawn, he turned to see Hammer Hunter was targeting the Radobaan. She rolled across the ropes tying it down, snapping them and setting the monster free. It had woken in the commotion, and took the opportunity to stand and roar. As the Recovery team scattered to avoid it’s fury, Hammer Hunter stopped her roll. The Radobaan was answered by a guttural roar of challenge from the significantly smaller combatant. It leaned down, as if baffled by what it was seeing…

    And Hammer Hunter headbutted it. Boney tusks crashing against the still broken armor of the large monster, it should have had about as much impact as a rowboat being swept against a cliff face - after all, Hammer Hunter was several times smaller and weaker than the giant monster, and usually was supposed to smack it around with a weapon instead of her head. It should have been no contest at all. Instead, the monster was sent reeling backwards with a cry of pain. Hammer Hunter took a step forward and roared again, and the Radobaan fled, rolling away into the Vale. 

    Before Observant Engineer could say anything, the boney-armored hunter started rolling back the way she’d come. “...This is going to look very strange in my report…” he said after a while, as his team returned to their shattered cart.

    The larger monster rolling away in defeat, Radobaan roared in triumph. She felt a deep satisfaction as she scared it off, the satisfaction of knowing she had claimed it’s former territory for her own. It would either go away to recuperate and come to challenge her again, or else search for unoccupied territory to take - either way, it was of no concern to Radobaan; if it challenged her it would be defeated once more, and she would not allow it to leave if that was required. 

    Turning away from the retreating figure, she looked back at the fleshy things that had been holding the other monster. They were staring at her. There was a twinge of some feeling in the back of her mind - something about these small not-monsters. But she sniffed in the air and caught a whiff of nearby food, and quashed the curiosity. All that mattered was maintaining her territory and sustenance, and there was no room in her simple mind for such things as concern or curiosity. Radobaan fell into another roll, full speed ahead towards the smell of food, leaving the tiny not-monsters as her mind turned to the important things.