Mal the Part-Time Hunter
"There's just no fucking end to 'em!" Marie yelled over the intercom as another explosion went off in the closed off steet. "Louis, what the fuck was that?!"
"Must you swear so much?" Louis yelled at her as he jumped on the massive tree beside her, using his celestial gun to shoot down another bog hound that was trying to climb up to get them. "It's quite unladylike."
"Bite me!"
"Charming. That random explosion's not really our problem right now. Tony, how's things looking on your end?"
Tony, their party tank, was busy ripping open a bog hound with his bare hands when he responded, "Things are looking kind of fucked right now! Who even picked this job?"
Marie turned to glare at Louis who suddenly found the clouds rather interesting.
"Enough, you three!" Cynthia, the party leader, admonished coolly through their intercom, the whimpers of a bog hound she'd probably made rot from the inside-out being heard by the party. "This is more than what the job listing posted. A pack of bog hounds? This is a whole army! Send word to the guild, Marie."
"On it!" the younger woman said as she lit up her visor, typing rapidly against the blue screen that popped up in front of her.
"MORE INCOMING!" Tony yelled as the floors of the swamp-like street began to shake.
"How the hell is this a D-ranked mission?!" Marie yelled as she brought out her bow, pulling back the string and using her Blessing to form three lightning arrows as a larger pack of bog hounds emerged from the thick vines of the street.
It was supposed to be a simple mission. Clear up the pack of bog hounds that had spawned near what used to be called Honey Island Swamp before it had taken over the nearby highway and streets. They were to do so before those amphibious beasts populated and moved towards the protected areas with civilians.
It was meant to be a simple D-ranked mission most hunters could've cleared. Bog hounds were at most, a level 3 threat when it was just one small pack. As long as one caught them when they spawned, it was easy.
So why were they dealing with what looked like six packs in one? What happened? They reproduced fast but not to that degree.
"Gods help us," Louis mumbled as he blew a strand of blonde hair out of his face and cocked his gun up.
"I think they've tried that. Didn't go so well," Marie retorted, clearly on edge.
Then she rose her head and looked around their vicinity, her blessing from a spirit of the forest making her blue eyes glow as she scoped the area looking for something.
"What is it now?" Louis asked in exasperation.
"Hey." She licked her lips as her eyebrows furrowed. "There's five of us."
"Marie! Now's not the time to be staring the obvious!" Tony said through gritted teeth as he moved to hide up on a tree as well, watching as the hounds began surrounding the four hunters. It was like a sea of moving swamp sludge below them.
"Listen to me for a fucking second!" She yelled as she shot her arrows, the three bolts splitting into several points and taking down a few of the monsters below. "Where the fuck is the part-timer?"
That seemed to get the other three's attention.
Cynthia put a hand to the intercom on her wrist and spoke, "Mal? Mal come in. Mal?!"
There was a crackle on the other side, all of them standing still in fear. Losing a party member, especially one not associated with their guild, was going to bite them in the ass. That was if they even made it out of there.
"FUCK!" Marie yelled as she frantically shot arrow after arrow into the sea of bog hounds.
Then all their visors binged and their movements stopped.
Mal sent a message.
[MAL: Chill with the shooting for a second. You almost took out my leg.]
Marie blinked at her screen. Then again. Then she sighed heavily and fell on her knees on the thick branch.
"You fucking—Where the hell are you?!" she yelled into the intercom on her wrist.
"Here."
She almost punched the weird part timer in the neck but he easily dodged, looking at her fist with that annoying dead-fish stare of his.
"Mal!" Tony yelled with pure relief and a smile on his face from the tree across from them.
"Thank goodness," Cynthia sighed with a hand to her chest, standing on the tree beside Tony. "Where were you?!"
Mal didn't respond at first. He opened up his ancient looking visor and a static blue screen popped up, looking like one of those vintage video games people found in wrecks from the great cataclysm.
There were three cartoon-like bombs on the screen and a timer below them that read :58 seconds.
"We should leave." He immediately vanished, his blessing letting him become invisible.
"WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU MEAN?!" Marie yelled as she tried to grab him but he was already gone, making her have to rebalance herself before falling down the ten-foot high tree.
"Marie!"
She turned to glare at Louis but the man's words stopped her.
"Do you hear ticking?"
She paused and focused all her senses to her ears. He was right. There was a ticking sound.
The explosion from before…That fucking nutcase.
"RETREAT!" Cynthia yelled and they began to jump from tree to tree.
They had barely made it out of the swamp-like street when explosion after explosion reverberated through out the area.
Marie felt her feet lift off a branch but immediately caught herself by using her hook to stay above ground. She swung through the branches and caught Cynthia as the older woman was falling, Tony catching their sniper, Louis.
Marie pulled both her and Cynthia back up the tree, carefully placing the other woman down as they both turned to face where the explosion had come from. She actively ignored the ringing in her ears as she watched the contained fires engulf that section of the street.
Mal had even thought of how the fire would have spread, using a containment dome to not only trap the hounds but the flames as well.
"Told y'all to run."
All four of them looked up to see the part timer casually floating above them on a relic of a hoverboard, check resting on the palm of his hand as he stared at his handiwork in boredom.
Cynthia blinked up at the young man in shock before turning to ask Marie, "Where the hell did you find him?"
Marie didn't really have an answer for her because she had only just put up the request for a fifth member for their party.
She had no information about the man other than he was a low C ranked hunter, a part-timer and he had the overly common blessing of a Naiad nymph.
She looked up at the stranger again, watching as he yawned before pulling out a cigarette and lighting it.
Where the fuck did you pop out from?
Gifts
-- Gift
received Weekly Power Status
-- Power
Ranking 
-- Power
stone