Alessa had been running through the forest at fast as she could, maneuvering over massive roots and past bushes as quickly and cleanly as she could. Her athleticism was top notch, and unmatched by anyone else in her village. She needed to be. As fast as she was moving, the beasts that were after her were known to be faster, and would not be merciful should she be caught in their maws.
Dogging her had been a pair of large quadrupedal beasts, armed with powerful, muscular limbs and claws to strip flesh from bone with a single swipe. Their maws had been a beak, lined with teeth, all powered by bone shattering jaws supported by a short, stout neck on a long body with an impressive tail that served to balance their bodies as they gave chase to their prey. They possessed powerful smell and hearing with adequate vision to help stay on target, an apex predator for sure.
Alessa initially found them feasting upon a carcass in the densely packed forest, but they weren't too far off from the village. Thus, they posed a great danger to everyone living within. There were enough problems for them to deal with, and they didn't need the shear-claws to be stalking and predating upon them as well. So, after some planning and coordination with her sister, Alessa grabbed their attention by shouting at them wildly, practically taunting them.
Alessa's saving grace had been her knowledge of the woods and her ability to maneuver through them without tripping over herself or the various natural obstacles she'd run upon. She knew how to lead them to the exact spot she wanted them to be in. At the same time, she was taking advantage of how much smaller and nimbler she was compared to beasts three times her size.
Eventually she arrived exactly where she wanted and spun around quickly to face her quarry head on. The shear-claws had no intention of wasting anytime making a slow approach and were rushing in to pounce upon Alessa, but she had the exact same mentality. After all, she had been fighting these beasts for the better part of 3 years, and she was only eighteen.
Having spun about, Alessa had brushed back her small, black coat to draw out a firearm she held in both hands. The pistol she held was made completely of black steel and had a very box-like frame from which she held the grip. The barrel itself freely floated within the metal shroud that practically concealed the three inches that extended from the main body of the weapon.
With cold, raptor like violet eyes, Alessa quickly took aim and fired off six rapid shots at the beasts. With the gunfire echoing throughout the forest, Alessa watched as all of her shots had been accurate as her glare, hitting both beasts in the shoulders and legs on the outside of their bodies, but hadn't stopped them entirely. Instead, Alessa had meant to stumble them, and thanks to the adequate firepower within her precision pistol, "Lefty," she accomplished just that. With the opposing force of the bullet meeting the oncoming charge of the shear-claws, the beasts ended up recoiling away from the source of the pain, and right into eachother.
Alessa was quick to leap out the way of the incoming mass of muscle, claws and teeth as it tumbled towards her. Just as she did, she reached to the opposite side of her waist from where she'd drawn Lefty, and pulled out "Righty." In comparison to Lefty, Righty was a much heftier handgun, if it could even be called that. With a much more massive barrel of the same length, but instead of being a boxy form like Lefty, Righty was a revolver with six cylinders of larger bullets.
Despite the obvious heft and difference between the two guns, Alessa held both handguns in one hand as she aimed Righty towards the pair of beasts that were now scrambling back onto their feet. With a much more deafening blast, Righty was fired directly at them. The bullet fired made short work of one of the shear-claws, devastating its skull, boring a hole straight through one of its eyes, leaving behind a gaping wound as it crumpled to the ground. The other shear-claw didn't even bat an eye at its fallen hunting partner as it starts to charge directly at Alessa.
Alessa smugly grinned at the shear-claw as she didn't bother to aim either gun at it. As it barely got a few feet forward, A powerful figure with long, dirty blonde hair kept tied in a knot at the end, came crashing down atop of the beast's skull, plowing it into the earth with a sickening crunch. Rebecca had been waiting up in the canopy as Alessa took out one of the beasts, on request from her as she wanted to slay one before Rebecca stepped in. Rebecca had watched over her little sister, waiting patiently, albeit slightly anxious as Alessa wanted nothing more than to kill a beast on her own. Once the first shear-claw was killed, that was her cue to drop down and finish off the second.
In contrast to her little sister's smaller frame, agility and firearm preference, Rebecca was more hands on with her equipment. A pair of sturdy, dense and durable mass of leather wrappings with metal studs inlaid into them provided Rebecca powerful bludgeoning tools to batter, concuss and crush bones of various beasts within the forest. But the improvised gauntlets, perfected as they were, only served to take advantage of Rebecca's incomparable strength. Such had been enough to crush the shear-claw's very skull when she brought her fist down like a comet.
Having been lowered closer to the ground, Rebecca slowly rose to a standing height of just over six feet. She wasn't just towering over her little sister, she was easily twice her size in mass alone, of which had been comprised of muscle. Since Alessa preferred to keep her distance, Rebecca took it upon herself to act as the ultimate protector and vanguard. Such an imposing physique would terrify most men, but her gentle facial features along with her dull, golden iris's helped dissuade most that she wasn't a savage barbarian.
Much of the sisters identifying features had contrasted so heavily, those who never knew them would be hard pressed to believe both are blood related. Alessa's, cold, raptor like gaze and jet black hair, thin leather vest underneath a black short coat and dirt encrusted boots combined with her significantly shorter height made her a look like a shifty little rogue in comparison to Rebecca and her towering physique, her fur lined heavy leather harness, overlapping the chain mail underneath with slightly worn cargo trousers that pursed into a pair of beaten, but reliable greaves and sabatons. Along with her mighty gauntlets, Rebecca appeared like a wild born woman that has been entangled in a never ending battle with nature itself, and boasts some scars to prove it.
Rebecca quickly walked over to Alessa, manipulating her sister about, inspecting her person up and down, even picking her up to ensure no portion was overlooked.
"Hey, calm down already, will ya?!" Alessa protested, albeit playfully. "I'm fine, I swear it! Not a scratch on me!"
"Says you," Rebecca says as she unhands Alessa with a young motherly voice. "You know how nervous I get when you start doing things on your own!"
"Relax, sis, geeze, it's as if you forget we're the best in this line of work..."
Rebecca lifts up her chain mail-leather vestments, revealing her abdomen that bore scars of previous hunts. Not so much from things going awry, but simple occupational hazard. Seeing the display causes Alessa to look away irritably.
"No one is invincible out here, Alessa, I thought you would remember that," Rebecca said, scolding Alessa's boastfulness.
"I know... I get it. But I was being careful. You saw me, right?" Alessa pleads.
Rebecca relents and sighs, covering her abdomen as she gives a smile to Alessa who takes it in as her approval to celebrate as they started trudging on back from their forest patrol. For as long as they could remember, they had been together growing up in their village of Bonts. They'd been left there by someone their adoptive mother could only describe as a passing traveler who happened upon them in the midst of a storm. Rebecca, having been four years older than Alessa, had been carrying her baby sister at the time, who was only two. Under the care of their adoptive mother and even the entire village as a whole, they pair grew up strong and healthy, but they hadn't been blind to the constant strife the village faced. The forest that surrounded their village was chock full of dangerous predators that would sooner make any unwary resident an easy meal. Every other week, someone ended up dying or seriously injured.
Why the village had been in the forest was due to cruel circumstance and the orders of the Courcen Empire. After all, Bonts was a village of outcasts. They couldn't leave, nor could they settle elsewhere, but for what it was worth, Bonts was at least a home the Empire largely ignored.
The sisters, as they started maturing, wanted to help as much as they could. Rebecca had been the first to be allowed to help the village guards and eventually hunters keep the beasts at bay. It was then she earned her stripes and first set of injuries that made her well known for her endurance and sheer strength. As for Alessa, a traveling merchant possessing materials and weapons introduced her to the firearm. Alessa discovered then she had quite the affinity for firearms. Through the begging to her adoptive mother, she acquired both Lefty and Righty from the merchant along with all the tools and materials to maintain them and transform them into the lethal weapons they are now. She even learned how to engineer her own third gun of which she reserved for special cases. It only took a year and more begging for Alessa to join her sister in protecting Bonts, and since then, the level of safety for Bonts had been so great, the village were finally able to maintain farms with cattle and crops, no longer relying on trade of beast parts for food. But with their success came a price. The Empire was quick to learn of Bonts' development and began taking a portion of their produce as tribute for "protective services rendered."
Needless to say, both sisters didn't take kindly to how the empire treated Bonts, but under orders from the village chief, they kept quiet on the matters.
So it was no surprise that upon arriving back to the village, did Alessa's mood sour over when she saw imperial soldiers along with a representative of the emperor making their way out of the village. For them to have paid a visit to the village meant nothing good.
They needed to see the their mother, who just happened to be the village chief.