[Frank, Feb. 20, 2017, 02:32PM]

Cry Thunder by Dragonforce was still playing, and despite the chaos unfolding before me, my ears were tuning in to the song and its lyrics. Could be the adrenaline, who knows.

Death by our hand

For the higher command

Indigo was staring the monster down. Char and Xavier are shouting at him, telling him to move his ass.

As the darkness surrounds us and the cries as they fall

Everything felt like they were moving in slow-motion, and my eyes were focused on my brother attempting to cheat death.

Fire burning steel

And the tyrants will kneel

Hearts burning stronger with the power of the sword

I snap back to reality as I see a blue-ish crackling aura of electricity begin to envelop around the monster. Char and Xavier were already rushing towards Indigo, somehow avoiding slipping on the ice in the process.

Set sail for the glory

Pray for the master of war

I watch in horror as my cousins rush to their potential deaths trying to save my brother. A part of me wanted to run in there with them, but I was frozen in place, my body and brain shutting down as usual.

Sunlight will fall by the wastelands

Endless rise with the heroes before

I was forced to close my eyes when a piercing bright light explodes around my brother and my cousins. Was it part of the monster’s attack? Is that how they die? was the best I could come up with as I wait for the light to fade away.

Cry thunder!

As I open my eyes, directly in front of the Khezu was a woman in beautifully jade-ish battle armor, like a steel dress made from the scales of a dragon. She was holding a large shield up, protecting the two other armored individuals behind her.

Sword in his hand

The one that stood where Xavier was wore a shiny golden scaled armor with a horned helmet, like a crusader with large and sharp scales covering his shoulders. On his hands looked like obsidian claws placed on an azure half circular handle.

In between the two, where my brother was, wore black armor, covered with dark brown patches of leather, a yellow-ish cape, and bronze helmet with spiked “ears” on its sides. He ironically had a big drum-on-a-stick looking object on his back, with a huge red smiley face design.

Titans of justice

Fearless we stand

Despite all the armor, I could see how befuddled they were, clearly wondering what was going on. Possibilities are already running through my head regarding what just happened. The knight princess and caped knight jump back, their greaves unaffected by the ice, while the golden one rushes at the Khezu and starts slashing at its legs.

Cry thunder!

The caped knight whips out his drum, looking like a long mace with how he wields it. He swings with the momentum in his entire upper body, and lands a few satisfying WHAMs directly on the monster’s face. To my surprise, he jumps back after a few swings and whips his weapon backwards. Visible soundwaves emanate from the smiley as the sound of drums start playing.

Strong in command

The sound of his drums fill me with a sense of comfort and power, and I could tell that it has strengthened the other two armored individuals as well. With the way they were moving together, and how they were fighting, I had no doubts who those knights were.

Blessed by the union

Freedom of man

[Indigo, Feb. 20, 2017, 02:33PM]

Felt like I had a sun blow up right in front of me, or rather from inside me. The strong flash of light brought a surge of heat that was, for lack of a better word, comforting. There was a subtle voice alongside the one I usually hear in my head, as if two people were now in charge of one body. And yet, despite the voice feeling someone else entirely, I knew that it was mine.

My entire body felt…different. Whatever I was wearing felt right to me, and yet I knew that it wasn’t the body nor the outfit I had just a few seconds ago. Out of instinct, I look at my hands and see them covered with gauntlets, a familiar design that I usually only see from afar and in 3rd person.

Dirge-named after the kind of songs that were meant for laments and funerals, the idea being that everytime I played a hunting horn recital I was playing music for a monster's future death. Somehow, my hunter and I have become one.

Was I merely borrowing his body and his armor? Was I merely riding in his subconscious as he moves around in my reality? Or is it possible, that somehow, Dirge is Indigo, and Indigo is Dirge?

So many more questions, but I mute them all as I let my instinct take over and swing my Hunting Horn at the monster in front of me.

The blow connected with a satisfying thud, accompanied by that cymbal-like sound when you hit a monster's face with an impact weapon. The Khezu flinched and took a step back. At the corner of my eye I saw what looked like my note staff, with a single blue note adorning it.

When I concentrate, I could see a HUD similar to what I see in-game, and yet I knew that they were all in my head. I can barely understand what was going on, but I knew what I had to do, and somehow I knew how to do it; like ‘muscle memory’.

“What the fuck?!” Two voices spoke next to me, almost in unison. Char and Xavier, although their voices being seemingly fused with someone else’s. I assumed it was their hunters’ voices combined with their own. Felt like listening to someone speak with an altered reverb, or two different people speaking in full synchronization.

Huh, synchronization, that’s not a bad term for what’s happening to us.

My mind snaps back to reality, as Saber(Xavier) rushes past me and starts hacking away at the Khezu with his fan-claw-shaped dual blades. Despite his  initial confusion, he moves naturally with a flow of strikes as if he had been doing it all his life.

Relena(Char’s) has calmed down as well and is right at the monster’s face, slashing away and presumably charging up his(her?) charge blade’s phial gauge. With every strike I see her blade absorb energy from the monster in a visibly yellow siphoned light, her shield shifts with power as she injects the blade into it and charge it up.

“Saber, focus on its legs and try to topple it,” I absentmindedly command, remembering our usual in-game strategies, “Relena, try to break its body and charge up your phials. I’ll try to KO it on the head with my HH, otherwise we’ll use your impact phials.”

I look back at my sister and see her watching us with a mixture of awe and horror.

“Frank! See if you can turn up the volume further on the music!” I shout at her as I slam my Hunting Horn down on the monster’s head, us hunters occasionally jumping back and dodging the Khezu’s spinning attack. “Let’s see if we can overload this thing’s senses while we beat the shit out of it.”

Shock and awe, basic combat strategy. Psychologically overwhelm and confuse your opponent to keep it from properly counterattacking whatever you throw at it. Nothing I can do to overwhelm its main sense of smell, but we’ll have to make do.

“Be careful,” I warn the other two hunters as we continue our barrage of attacks, “We’ve got it surrounded and cornered, it could try to---”

As soon as the words came out of my mouth, the Khezu rises up on its blubbery hind legs, stretching its neck upwards and shrieks loud enough to drown out the music and cause the three of us to cover our ears in pain. The shriek ended quickly, and as I had feared, the monster bends down, plants its tail on the floor, and the next thing I felt was a surge of electricity and getting flung backwards.

Skidding face-up on the ice, All three of us were sent flying by the attack, but Saber had recovered earlier by using his dual blades to stab the icy floor and regain his balance quickly.

“Alright, let’s see how demon mode feels like IRL,” Saber growls as he sprints towards the enemy while enveloped in a crimson-hued aura. He moves faster, attacking the enemy relentlessly as he waves his blades in all kinds of flowing attacks. “DAMN THIS FEELS GOOD!”

Relena and I got back up on our feet and continued our initial assault plan. She cuts through the enemy’s thick skin with her sword while mixing things up with shield bash attacks, all while charging up and getting ready for a big blow using her weapons’ combined form.

Despite the Hunting Horn seeming weightless in my hands, I could still feel the weight of each swing and the way it drags my body with it. I slam the weapon sideways and downwards for as much as I can, slowly but with power in each strike. I’ve built up multiple notes, but I can’t risk playing anything until I’ve stunned or tired out this monster.

After a continuous assault from all three hunters, the Khezu’s legs finally buckle and falls on its side, at the same time a satisfying attack from my Hunting Horn bashes its head in and we could visibly see it get knocked out into a stunned state.

“Now Relena, Mjolnir Strike this bitch,” I shout as I jump back. Char liked to call one of the Charge Blade’s powerful attack as a Mjolnir Strike. It makes sense, I thought, as I watch Relena transform her Sword and Shield looking weapons into a huge battleaxe, and a powerful surge of energy envelops the “head” of the weapon. She brings the axe down on the Khezu’s face, her attack erupting with a powerful but concentrated explosion.

To our disappointment, the Khezu was still alive, although its face and body were clearly broken. Saber climbed the enemy’s back before it got its footing back, Relena had transformed her weapon back to Sword and Shield mode, and I am ready to play some music.

“Final stretch, let’s do this,” I tell my cousins as I swing my hunting horn at the Khezu’s face, allowing the momentum to move my hunting horn upwards and combo it into a downward slam. As soon as the slam connects, a quick kick to the weapons hilt puts it into Recital mode, playing the musical notes I previously generated.

The music fills more than our ears, as I could feel my body getting energized and stronger from hearing my Hunting Horn’s taiko drum beats. I saw that the other two hunters were empowered as well, with different colored auras enveloping them.

Imbued with additional buffs, Saber mows down the Khezu from its back, slashing and stabbing like he has no limit on stamina. With the help of additional attacks from me and Relena, the Khezu finally falls dead with a final fading shriek.

With a sigh of relief, we exit the battlefield, not bothering to try and carve the monster.

“Guys, we should go,” Frank says, looking cautiously at the dead monster, “I don’t think we want to be here when the authorities show up.”

“Yeah,” I agreed, considering the potential consequences of being found as the people who turned into videogame characters to fight monsters from the same videogame, “We can barely understand what’s going on, I can’t have the hassle of dealing with police or any government officials right now.”

[Frank, Feb. 20, 2017, 03:30PM]

Indigo, Char, and Xavier sat down exhausted on a bench outside the mall. A bunch of people had already begun swarming back in, mostly being rescue or media personnel. We managed to sneak out without catching the attention of the evacuated crowd. The three hunters had disappeared almost as soon as they finished the fight, with my brother and cousins feeling like they had just been through a rigorous workout.

“You don’t really feel tired until your body starts resting, you know?” Char mentioned while chugging down an energy drink we bought from a nearby convenience store. “Something tells me if we prolonged that fight any longer we’d be too tired to keep our hunter forms up.”

“That means ‘synchronizing’ with our hunters takes a toll on our bodies, even more so the longer we stay in hunter form,” Indigo theorized, rubbing his chin with his index finger and thumb like some kind of detective. “Best we can do is assume that we’ll be able to stay in hunter form longer with practice, as well as improving our own stamina.”

Xavier leaned back and closed his eyes, as if trying to nap, before saying, “Guess we’ll have to start working out then, no biggie.”

“That’s great and all,” I speak up, “But we’ve got more pressing questions to answer and it bothers me that all you guys can think of is how to ‘synchronize’ with your hunters.”

“Look, we’re not geniuses nor are we anywhere near capable of figuring out what just happened,” Indigo grinned despite looking fatigued, “So let’s keep things simple. The Khezu, a monster from a specific video game franchise, pops out of nowhere. The three of us gained the ability to sync with our hunters and fight back. A quick visit to facebook or twitter shows that this is happening in a global scale.”

We all agreed as we had previously checked our social media to make sure this wasn’t an isolated incident. Both monsters and hunters have been popping up around the world.

Indigo continued, “We probably won’t know how any of this started anytime soon, so the next best thing is to figure out how to deal with it.”

“If monsters are showing up and wreaking havoc,” Xavier replied, “And we and a bunch of other people can turn into hunters…sounds like there’s a very obvious thing we can be doing.”

“So you guys want to, what, hunt monsters?” Char asks, looking slightly worried, “Like make this a constant thing?”

“We’ve done it in-game plenty of times,” Indigo answers, “The monsters and hunters were somehow brought to real life, so let’s bring the most integral part of the game to real life too.”

We all look at our eldest, waiting for what strategy he will propose next.

“We make this a profession,” He says, brimming with an ironic mixture of confidence and anxiety, “We make our own hunting guild. Take on quests, accept missions, hunt wild monsters for money. We might not be the best hunters out there, but goddamn if we ain’t pretty good at it after what I just experienced a while ago.”

“Not to mention not everyone can turn into hunters,” I contribute, realizing that Indigo must have thought about this as soon as he defeated the Khezu, “It’s a scarce and rare ability, making you three already irreplaceable.”

“You had me at money,” Char grins.

The four of us continue discussing what to do next, about how we would proceed into making our own guild. I knew enough web development, so I could essentially make a blog or webpage that’ll make it easier to advertise our services. I can’t really hunt, so the best way for me to help was to manage potential quests and help the other three secure hunting jobs and requests.

“Like a Guildmarm,” Xavier noted, which I assume was like a secretary of sorts.

We all stood up after nearly an hour of brainstorming, oddly cheerful despite the near death situation we found ourselves in and the potential new world order that could happen. Indigo opened his phone to book us a ride home,before loudly groaning and rolling his eyes.

“Ughhh, why am I even surprised…,” He grumbles before showing us a bunch of facebook pages.

They were all for different guilds around the world.

“…of course I wasn’t the only one who thought of that.”