//------------------------------//
// Chapter 3: Making friends, sorta 
// Story: What it means to be a Hunter 
// by Holiday Agnaktor 
//------------------------------//

When Pure Heart and Blue arrived at the Great Hall, they went up a big marble staircase which led to the rest of the castle. Blue led Heart through the maze of long hallways and stairs eventually arriving at one of the many conference rooms. There was a brass sign on the wall next to the door which read "C.3.14: Hunter Room 3". Anypony finding this place without somepony to guide them would be a miracle.

Blue knocked on the door three times, said "Good luck, kiddo," and trotted away, leaving Heart standing in front of the door. A muffled female voice came through the door, saying "Come in!".

Heart hesitated for a second before opening the door and stepping inside, not wanting to let the owner of the voice wait. He entered a large room filled with comfortable looking sofas and armchairs. He was greeted by a warmly smiling white female earth pony with bright red manes and tail.

"Hiya!" she said happily, "Congratulations on beating the snot out of a monster! I wasn't there to see it, but I'm sure you did a fine job."

Her enthusiasm surprised Heart. Blue had been informal towards him, but that was just him being an experienced hunter and also just him being weird. His ranking allowed him to be a little eccentric. This mare, however, didn't have an excuse to be this sloppy. She even mimed bucking an imaginary monster in the face! She could afford to be a little bit more composed than that.

Before he could get more annoyed at the mare's behaviour, his annoyance well hidden behind a poker face, of course, she continued.

"You're probably tired from all that monster-butt-kicking, so you can have a free cool drink on the house! Yay you! And then you can relax anywhere you want until all the arena fights are done. Don't worry, it shouldn't take long."

Heart wanted to make a comment on her attitude but thought better of it. Surely she had a good excuse to be like that, perhaps it was to make newcomers feel at home before the proper training started.

He levitated a 'cool drink' (he had no idea what kind of drink it really was) from one of the trays that were placed on a few coffee tables, and found a nice and secluded corner of the room to sit in. He leant his greatsword against the wall next to him and sat down in a fancy-looking brown armchair.

Now that he was comfortable he had a chance to look around properly, without getting jumped on by over-enthusiastic mares. The room seemed to be a conference room that had been remodelled to be more comfortable and less formal. Instead of a big central table surrounded by chairs, the room was filled with luxurious armchairs and sofas, with coffee tables between them. There were only a few other chairs that were occupied by other ponies. All of them were also wearing armour. All the armour sets were variations on "leather-reinforced-with-iron/steel", and each pony had a weapon lying next to them on the floor. Only five other ponies passed the arena fight so far, which made sense since Pure Heart had come really early. He hadn't wanted to risk not getting a chance to prove his worth.

He snapped back from his thoughts when somepony knocked on the door again. The white and red mare rushed over to the door and bid the newcomer welcome. An orange juice coloured pegasus mare with royal blue manes and tail walked in casually. She was wearing all leather armour, which was new. Most ponies had some steel mixed in there as well, to protect
She had a bowgun on her back, which Heart easily recognised; It was one of the more advanced models from the SunLight series. He had trained with one of those as part of his extensive weapon training back at home. His father had always insisted that everypony in his household knew how to use every weapon that was present in the mansion. And there were a lot of weapons.
Her mane and tail were long and spiky, almost to the point where you could call them simply unkempt. There was a fine line between having a creative manestyle and just not caring for your mane, and this pony was walking that line. Heart wasn't exactly sure at which side of the line she was. Her attitude wasn't too refined either. She greeted everypony with a cheerful "Yo!" and a hoof raised in greeting. From what Heart knew from his family, anything less formal than "hello" would get stomped on by their superiors. She would find that one out the hard way.

After getting her short introduction, she too took a cool drink from one of the trays, looked around for a second or two, and then trotted over to Heart with her drink balanced expertly on her extended wing. When she got to the corner seats where Heart sat, she put her glass and bowgun on the table and dived onto the sofa next to Heart's armchair.

"Yo," she said.

Heart replied with a stiff hello, which didn't seem to bother the pegasus at all. She only smiled and started getting comfortable on the sofa by lying on her back, taking up all the available space on the sofa.

After a few seconds of silence, she opened her mouth again. "So, what weapon did you use to whap the monster?"

"A greatswo- wait, 'whap'?"

"Yes, 'whap'. Combination of whack and slap," she replied with a grin, tilting her head to the side so she could see Heart, "but yeah, greatsword, huh? That's cool. Usually only earth ponies use those. Too bulky for the poor unicorns to handle."

"Well, not for me," answered Heart, who was a bit taken aback by this mare's attitude, "I can levitate heavy objects. It's related to my cutiemark, actually. I got it when I protected a filly who was getting bullied by levitating the bullies and launching them into a nearby pond."

"Protection of others through magical bodybuilding? Niiiice."

"That's not...well... you're not entirely wrong, but there's more to it than that."

The pegasus grinned. "Sooo... what's your name? Mine is Swift. It means that I'm fast, if you didn't know."

"My name is Pure Heart. I'm from the Heart family," Heart replied a bit stiffer than he meant to.

"Well, Heart, nice to meet ya!" Swift said with a smile, "Hey, you wanna team up? The Ponyville Sweetheart, that white and red mare over there, told me that we're going to get some training tomorrow and that we're supposed to be in duos for it! Isn't that cool?"

Heart nodded. "Yes, that is pretty cool, I guess. My guess is that they're going to teach us teamwork first since that is a big part of being a soldier."

Swift shot upright at those words. "Oh, nononono, we're much more than just soldiers! We're hunters, man! We don't spend most of our time training or patrolling or doing other boring stuff like that, we actually go out and hunt monsters! Kill big animals! Whack giant beasties! Slam-dunk the ever-living daylight out of-"

"Yes, yes, I think I get your point. But, to answer your first question, yes, I guess we can team up. You don't seem to be so bad."

At first Swift had appeared too casual and maybe even just plain rude, but upon closer inspection, she meant well. She was just probably going to learn that greeting high-ranked military people with "yo" was bound to end wrong.

"Yay! Already made a new friend!" Swift said, whilst jumping into the air and doing a backflip, which attracted some curious looks from the other five in the room. She didn't acknowledge them, and just sat back down, this time in a more upright position.

She picked up her glass of 'cool drink' and looked at Heart. "Hey, cheers to friendship!"

Heart shrugged and lifted his glass as well. "We're not exactly friends yet, but maybe that will change sometime. Cheers, I guess."

They clanked their glasses together and they both took a sip. The 'cool drink' turned out to be lemonade which was magically cooled down. Heart could feel how even one sip of the drink cooled him down from the inside, making it feel as if instead of it being summer, it was actually cool spring.

After putting his glass back down, Heart looked back at Swift. "So, you use the bowgun, huh?"

Swift put her glass back on the table as well and picked up her bowgun. "Yup. I've been shooting things ever since I was a little filly. My parents told me that I wouldn't be able to make a living out of this, yet here I am, getting one of the highest paid jobs in the country. Take that, parents!"

Heart looked curiously at Swift's bowgun. "I'm curious, how do you use a gun like this against a monster this big? I didn't think that these guns were that powerful."

Swift nodded. "Yeah, the regular version of this gun would not be able to do any damage to the monster's scales, but this isn't the regular version. This one uses overcharged magic gems, instead of the regular variety to power it. Packs quite a punch. This baby can pierce even the toughest materials."

"So these 'overcharged' bowguns are specially made for slaying monsters?"

"Yup. They aren't available to the public, and neither is the information on how to make these. If the magic gems aren't used in the right way, they could blow up in the user's face. They aren't exactly the most stable," Swift grinned, "but that's what makes these fun!"

Heart's hooves, which had been moving to pick up the bowgun, stopped in their tracks. Heart looked at Swift with a concerned expression. "Exactly how unstable are these gems?"

Swift sat in silence for a few seconds, before she suddenly flew up from where she was sitting and delivered a flip-kick right onto the bowgun's power-gem, causing Heart to have a mini heart attack. Thankfully, nothing happened, other than Heart taking cover behind a nearby sofa.

After a few seconds of silence Heart's head peeked around the corner, seeing a very smug looking Swift trying (and failing) to hold back her laughter.

"PffffffAAAHAHAHAH YOU SHOULD'VE SEEN YOUR FAAA-HAA-HAAACE!"

Unable to contain her laughter, Swift fell over on her sofa, rolling around, drawing a few curious looks from the other hunters.

Unlike Swift, Pure Heart wasn't that amused. He gave her a soft bop on the head to show how cross he was with her. Before he could add a verbal bop to the head as well, a voice, which Heart recognised as the white and red mare which had welcomed him, rang out through the room.

"Attention everypony! I just received the message that the remaining queue of ponies for the tryouts is composed entirely of wimps, so we'll be cutting it off for today! Yay to all of you for not being wimps!" the mare clapped her hooves excitedly for a moment before continuing, "So! You can call me the Canterlot Sweetheart, or just Sweetheart for short, and here's some good news for you all: you're all hunters now! Woohoo! I'll hand each one of you your guildcard after we're done here."

The Canterlot Sweetheart walked from her place at the door towards one of the coffee tables at the centre. She motioned for everypony to come closer and pointed at the map that was on the table.

"As you all can see, this is a map of Equestria. We're here," she pointed at Canterlot, "and for your first training, you all are headed...here," she pointed at a place on the map not far from Canterlot, pretty close to Ponyville, "also known as the Everfree Forest. Pro hunters sometimes call it by the affectionate name 'Stupid-Death-Forest'."

"Wait, hold on," said one of the hunters, a green stallion with brown manes, "we're going on a field-trip to the Everfree as our first training? Isn't that a bit...overkill?"

"Nope!" the Canterlot Sweetheart replied with a cheerful smile, "No better way to learn than to just go out and have your life depend on it, my dad always used to say. Anyway, your complaints don't really matter, so I'll end this meeting here. We'll meet up tomorrow morning at 6 in the Great Hall. Your guildcards are on the table at the door, just look through the basket to see which one is yours."

And with that, every hunter present made their way towards the exit, forming a group around the table, rummaging through the cards to find which one was theirs. Everypony had their doubts about going to the Everfree, it was pretty infamous for all the monsters that live there after all, but they didn't really have a choice. Plus, if it really was that deadly, they wouldn't be sent there on their first training, right? 

Swift and Heart swiftly (hah) found their cards and made their way onto the hallway. 

They walked back towards the Great Hall, looking at their new guildcards while they walked.

"Say," began Pure Heart slowly, "wasn't the Sweetheart just a little bit too excited about sending new hunters to a dangerous forest?"

Swift, who was flying slowly next to Heart, shrugged. "Yeah, but they're probably watching us all the time in the forest, so that they can laugh at us while we struggle. It's probably a 'hey-look-you're-a-rookie' thing."

The two walked (and flew) the rest of the way to the hall in silence, thinking about how tomorrow was going to go.





In the Great Hall, Blue was waiting for Heart to come back from the hunter introduction. He was sitting on the ground, slouched against one of the giant tree-pots, when Heart and Swift came down the stairs leading to the rest of the castle. Blue quickly got up and trotted towards the two.

"Hey, ho, how was the hunter introduction?" he cheerfully asked Heart.

"Well... it wasn't really an introduction, but we did get told that we need to go to the Everfree Forest tomorrow as our first training," Heart said, not looking too happy about it.

"Yeah," added Swift, "the instructors are probably just going to laugh at us floundering about in the wild."

Blue nodded with a chuckle. "Yep, that sounds about right. Oh, and who's this friend of yours?"

"I'm Swift," Swift answered before Heart could say anything, "I can fly fast sometimes."

"Well, nice to meet you, Swift. I'm the Blue Hunter, also called Blue sometimes."

Blue looked at Swift expectantly, waiting for her to be amazed. She wasn't.

"Oh, well, nice to meet you too, Blue," Swift said with a smile.

Blue looked a bit disappointed, but not too much. Ponies not falling over from awe at the mention of his name was a daily occurrence.

Blue brought the subject back to the trip to the Everfree. "But, y'know about that trip to the Everfree? You don't have to worry about that. If you guys encounter any monsters, they won't be any bigger than the Great Maccao, and even if they are, you're going to have multiple hunters attacking the same monster which makes everything so much easier. So don't worry, everything will be completely fine."

Heart and Swift were a bit reassured by Blue but were still not entirely sure about this whole idea. Some theory lessons before heading out into the wild would've been nice.

The three chatted a bit more about trivial subjects (like the weather, what they had for lunch, stuff like that, mostly subjects that Blue and Swift brought up,) before Blue finally had to go.

"Hey, it's been fun chatting with you both, but I need to go to a hunter meeting. They need a volunteer to take down an Ivory Lagiacrus, so they organise a meeting with all the high-up hunters. It's pointless, really. They only need to say the words 'urgent quest' at a slightly-louder-than-normal volume, and everypony will line up to take the quest faster than you can say 'pointless meeting'. Well, anyway, I'll be off now. Have fun on your trip to the Everfree!"

Heart and Swift both said goodbye to Blue, and then went on their ways themselves. They had to go home some time.

They walked together through Canterlot for some time before finally splitting up and going their separate ways. They had planned to meet up tomorrow again before heading off to the castle together. There was no reason to go alone, after all.

Pure Heart trotted the rest of the way home at a faster pace. It was always good to get a little exercise in. Slowly the houses around him became less tall and more expensive looking, eventually becoming mansions. After a bit more trotting he'd arrived at his family's mansion. It was a huge mansion, not so much a mansion as a fort. the building looked as if the owner told the builders to "make a mansion, but make it a fort," because it had the shape of a mansion, but the materials and decorations looked like it belonged in a medieval castle. The walls were made of black stone, there were arrow-slits in the walls instead of windows, the roof had large steel spikes on it to prevent aerial attackers from swooping in, and there was even a complete ballista mounted on the roof as well.

It was a mansion made for war.

And it also doubled as the home of the Heart family.

Pure Heart walked through the front gate and knocked on the door. He was let in by the family butler, Sharp Wit.

Sharp Wit was a middle-aged unicorn stallion, with grey fur and long flowing white manes. He served the family in many ways, he helped clean the house, helped serving food, and even helping in training by being a sparring partner. Sharp Wit didn't look that fit, but he was frighteningly quick with a dagger.

"Hello, young sir," he welcomed Pure Heart with, "may I enquire as to how the tryouts have gone?"

Pure Heart entered the mansion with a respectful nod towards Sharp Wit. "Hello, yes, it went very well. I have been accepted as a hunter, and I will be participating in my first training tomorrow morning." He had immediately fallen back to formal Equine, as was expected in the Heart household. They were warriors, but not barbarians.

"Ah, very good. Master has requested that you see him as soon as possible. Master has been very anxious as to whether you had satisfactorily passed the hunters tests. Master is in his study. It would be best if you see master as soon as possible."

"I see. I'll go see him now," Pure Heart responded with a nod.

He wasted no time and immediately began making his way through the maze that was their house/stronghold towards his father's study, which was located in the middle of the mansion.

The interior of the mansion was made in the same style as the exterior; practical, but still stylish in a way. But mostly practical. Actually not really stylish at all, unless you thought that 'medieval castle' was in this season. The walls and ceiling were made of the same black stone as the outside, and the floor was made of sturdy wood. Magically charged crystals hung from the ceiling, emitting light. These could also double as energy sources in case they had to defend themselves. There were a few portraits on the walls, most of them depicting members of the Heart family in battle against various threats. The battle against the yaks, the battle against King Sombra's slave army, and some paintings even depicted the first Hearts fighting against the Pegasi before the founding of Equestria.

When Pure Heart arrived at his father's study, he knocked on the large wooden door.

"Enter," a deep voice came from the other side.

Pure Heart complied and went inside.

He had entered a large study room. There was an old and expensive looking desk at the back, with very little on it. This was the desk of a stallion who only had it so that he had a desk to sit behind when he had visitors. The owner wasn't somepony who used writing tools often. He liked using actions more than words.

Other than the desk, there was very little in the room. There were a few armour stands, and a variety of weapons hung on the walls. There was also a beat-up looking training dummy standing slightly off-centre in the room, which was currently being assaulted by the owner of this 'study'. He was a middle-aged white unicorn with long scarlet manes tied in a bun. He was currently practising a simple sword swing, using his hooves instead of magic. His name was Iron Heart, and he was Pure Heart's father.

"Welcome home, son," Iron Heart began, pausing his swings, "I hope you bear good news?"

Pure Heart did a small bow with his head. "Yes, father. I have passed the hunter entrance exam successfully. Tomorrow we will go to our first training in the Everfree forest."

"I see. Well done. You may leave now."

Iron Heart went back to swinging his sword, not paying any attention to Pure Heart anymore. Pure Heart left the room without looking back.

This interaction would have seemed cold to pretty much anypony else, but Pure Heart was used to it. It was how communication with his family had been ever since he had been born. Talking to his father was an honour, not a right.

After that, he went to his room, asking one of the servants to deliver his dinner to his room first.

His room was nothing special. Just a room with a large fancy bed, a closet, and a window. That was all he needed. He ate his dinner (a carrot salad and a healthy serving of cucumber slices) in silence, and went to bed.

He thought about all the things that had happened today, enjoying the experiences again in his memories. It had been...nice, almost, how casual everything had been. In his family there was no room for idle chatter. You wouldn't chat about what you had for lunch on the battlefield, would you? Though it was more than likely that the training he was going to have was going to leave no room for chitchat. Being casual had been fun while it lasted.

And with that thought, Pure Heart fell asleep.