(Setting: Moga Village)

"Hey, Ikaraaaa! Wake up, it's quest time!"

Ikara rolled over in her bed, grabbing a fist-full of the tattered sheets draped over her body and, heaving a great yawn, throwing the sheets back. She couldn't deny, the Guild Sweetheart's voice wasn't the most desirable thing to hear upon first waking up. It couldn't be helped, though. She sat up in bed, stretching her arms wide and rolling her neck to soften the crick that had built up from her sleep before peering from the little alcove she called her room into the seascape beyond. She had overslept, judging by the way the sun bared down into her sleepy eyes. As she slid from her bed to find her armor and begin the day, she heard tiny footsteps scuttle across moist planks in the village square.

"Minion!" came the accompanied warning cry as the little Shakalaka burst into her room. "Minion! Lady want to give quest-quest to deliver tasty eggs!" Ikara was digging out the parts for her Rathalos armor from inside her storage chest until she stopped to absorb Cha-Cha's comment.

"Eggs?" she asked, watching the boy nod in response. "What kind?"

"Cha-Cha not sure," he mused, "but if we wait too long, then won't have cha-chance to take any."

"Fine," the hunter responded with a breathy sigh, letting her Rathalos armor drop into the chest before she began shifting again to find her trusty Loc Lac set. Her Shakalaka companion trotted to the wall of masks hanging in her room, browsing a bit before uttering a panicked whimper.

"Where Cha-Cha's pot mask!?" he cried, brushing back the other masks in hopes that perhaps he had just misplaced it. As he began searching the room, Ikara had shrugged into her Loc Lac armor, carrying her boots to her bed so she could tie them on. She wracked her brain as to the whereabouts of the missing mask as she buckled the straps.

"Oh!" she exclaimed suddenly as she was finishing up her boots. "I think Kayamba put it on last night. Go find him while I pick up our quest."

The young Shakalaka scrambled from the room, brandishing his staff in a menacing fashion, and left Ikara alone in her room once again. She tapped the heel of one of her boots against the planks below, shifting her sore feet inside them before standing from her bed and exiting her room. She tried to dodge the sight of Cha Cha catching up to his pot-headed companion - giving him a nice whack to the side of the head with his staff - and instead made her way to the quest counter. The Guild Sweetheart greeted her with a warm smile.

"Good morning, sleepyhead!" she chirped, reaching beneath the counter and pulling a slip of parchment to show the hunter. "This just came in for you. Should be simple enough, since all it is is a few herbivore eggs."

"Are you serious?" Ikara responded incredulously, dragging the paper across the counter toward her so she could read its instructions.

"Uh-huh!" the Sweetheart giggled, pointing at the fine print of the sheet and leaning across the counter casually. "Junior was talking about how the Chief was feeling a bit under the weather, and nothing helps a sick body feel better than a couple of eggs! I'm sure he'll be better in no time after that!" As she talked, Ikara chewed the inside of her lip in thought. She had received no interesting quests for the last week or so. Everything seemed to be about fishing for other people's food, cleaning up some excess vermin on the island, and delivering 'shrooms. There hadn't been any sightings of large monsters at all! She needed an excuse to practice using her new favorite weapon, but that would probably have to wait.

"You got it," she finally responded, concealing an irritated sigh and stuffing the paper into her kilt as she made her way back into her room to find a weapon to use. The space next to her item box contained weapon stands, though she tried not to let that space become to cluttered. She had a few pairs of dual blades hanging against the wall, probably in need of a bit of cleaning, and the long sword that the Argosy captain had given her a while back, but what she was looking for now was her new switch axe. Glinting a sharp red in the late morning sun, Ikara shifted the axe from behind the other two and wiped her hand down its hilt before slinging it over her shoulder and securing it against her back, folded neatly and ready. The smith called it Vermilingua, and he had a taste for exquisite weapon names, so she kept it that way.

Ikara shifted the folded axe against her back as she exited her room a second time, wetting her lips and pressing her fingers against them to whistle sharply in the direction of the two squabbling Shakalaka across the dock. They flinched at the sound and looked in her direction before following behind her as she made her way toward Moga Woods.

(Deserted Island/Moga Woods)

"Kayamba never understand how your cooking so bad," Ikara's blue-masked companion muttered before sinking his teeth into the remnants of a way-past well done steak, earning him a pebble thrown at him. Ikara was breaking her little fire pit down, scattering the twigs and sizzling rocks a bit to make nothing look too conspicuous, but she made sure not to let anything touch the two large eggs she had sitting against a tree.

"I'm getting better at cooking, though," she retorted halfheartedly, reaching into the small bag she kept at her hip and pulling out a thick handful of bright purple mushrooms. She clamped her nose shut with her free hand and guided the shrooms toward the opposite side of the tree, where a small stack of black, crispy steaks lay still steaming, and dropped them onto the pile. "Only three this time. Still, I can't take any chances with attracting starving creatures that'll eat something even as foul as those. That's why I brought my toadstools. The smell and taste should ward them off if they try to eat it."

"Maybe next time you not roast meat-meat right beside village," Cha-Cha piped in as he preened lightly at the feathers on his staff with his fingers. "Minion still have to put eggs in box before we skedaddle-laka."

"Psh, everyone's a critic," Ikara murmured to herself, having removed her mushroom hand glove before she picked the two eggs up and held them expertly. "You guys want to come with me to the delivery chest, or do you want to go back to the village? We're pretty much done here."

"You go ahead," Cha-Cha responded almost immediately, turning his gaze away afterward, as if distracted. "Cha-Cha find something shiny over there and want to go back and get it."

"Yam-ba!" Kayamba exclaimed irately, hopping to his feet suddenly and dashing in the direction his Shakalaka companion had been looking. "That not yours, Kayamba told you about that thing minutes ago! Nobody else can have it!" As Cha-Cha chased after the other boy, Ikara rolled her eyes silently, shifting her eggs in her arms and making her way to the site camp. With her armor on to help her feel as light as a feather, the trip from village entrance to delivery box was easy. Not only that, but the Aptonoth she was inevitably to come across on her way didn't even seem to mind her taking their eggs, almost as though they couldn't tell them from another sort of egg. Then again, Ikara herself was barely able to tell. She just knew that they sometimes felt softer than, say, a wyvern egg.

The delivery chest came into view as Ikara crossed the little man-made bridge separating the island from the the site camp, and she smiled. She never particularly enjoyed egg quests, but it always felt good to complete any sort of quest, egg or not. She crouched gently, setting each egg into the box with careful fingers, before standing once again and shutting the lid on the chest.

"Quest completed," she muttered to herself in satisfaction, turning on her heels and making her way back to the village entrance. As she crossed the bridge however, she saw the two Shakalaka making their way toward her as fast as their little legs would carry them. She was about to call out teasingly to them about how much they must have missed her already, until she caught just a glimpse of the pure terror beneath their masks.

"What happened..?" she asked once they were within earshot. They caught up to her soon, dropping their staffs and gasping for breath. "Weren't you guys about to go find that shiny thing you saw?"

"Kay...Kayamba find this," the blue-masked boy wheezed, holding up his hand to show the hunter a glittering gem. Ikara plucked it from his hands, holding it up to the sun to examine its faintly red hue. "We find this and look at it, and then...suddenly, big roar! We turn, and see big monster-!"

"Big Deviljho find us," Cha-Cha took over as Kayamba's voice collapsed into panting beneath his mask. "He see us and we run-run! Would have...come here if he didn't smell minion's burnt beast-feast. How we gonna...get back to village with big Deviljho in the way!?"