Monster Hunter: Stars of Hope

Chapter Four: Determination

Shocked, bewildered, and terrified; all of these were words that painted a quite accurate picture of the torrent of emotions now running through Nia's mind in response to a single reality she was now facing after leaping for that rope, which she had consistently failed to get a grip of in the past: She didn't fall this time. Somehow, she hadn't collided face-first with the dirt below and could even see that she was suspended several feet above it; a circumstance that Nia could not help but yell out at rather in unintelligible panic and confusion. She had spent so long believing that she could never do what she was doing now that it was genuinely hard for it to register with her, little more than the quite frankly scared thought of "How am I doing this!?" rushing through her head, the phrase repeating with great rapidity.

It wasn't long before Nia realized that her arms were wrapped quite tightly around the rope, straining to hold it close to herself. Swiftly, her gaze zipped upwards, desperate to work out what her hands had done to find purchase at last, only for her eyes to widen further when she saw exactly how she had done it; She had not simply grabbed onto the rope, but had somehow exerted enough force at the right moment to actually dig her fingers straight into it, weaving in between the fibers. That wasn't normal, and it certainly wasn't comfortable in the slightest, but none of that mattered; What mattered was that it was working.

Something finally worked.

"Well, I'll be!", a voice shouted from in front of her. Nia swiftly lowered her gaze towards the source of these words, and saw that Taro was looking straight at her, seemingly almost as shocked as she was. In the course of just a few seconds, she had actually managed to forget that the man was even there on the other platform on account of the -at least to her- rather alarming development literally on her hands. "WHAT DO I DO!?", she screamed, becoming increasingly desperate to not be dangling there anymore, to which Taro replied, "Repeatedly shift your weight away from me and then towards me! BUILD MOMENTUM! Then, when you're ready to move, try to pull your fingers free from the rope just before you'd start to swing away from me!". He was quite clearly very excited, one could even say 'pumped up', but Nia cared far too much about getting down from the rope to really notice this.

Uneasily, Nia began to swing back and forth, starting out slowly, though soon steadily picking up speed. She could feel her grip on the fibers of the rope begin to slip with each swing, but knew that if she tried to tighten it, she'd likely fail to make the leap at the right moment. This would require precise timing and movements to pull off right, but she was far too panicked to be able to implement such necessities thoughtfully. She had to rely on whatever had gotten her here in the first place to not end up hitting the dirt or, perhaps worst, the edge of the platform in front of her. After a few moments, she had built up quite a lot of momentum, and was now on as big of a swing forward as she could make. It was time. With a rapid, panicked plea in her head of "Please, please, please let this work!", she closed her eyes tightly, not wanting to see what was about to happen, let out another scream, and loosened her fingers from the rope, letting her arms flail in the air.

Before she was rightly prepared for it to happen, Nia felt herself land, and was able to roll onto her knees and hands with her eyes still shut. In such a state she remained for a moment, breathing heavily, finally on solid ground, though dreading what she might see when she opened her yes. Her hands hurt too much from the impact and the rope burns to tell if she had landed on dirt or wooden planks, and every second not knowing made her more and more scared to open her eyes and see it. Though, it was not long before she heard the footsteps of someone, likely Taro, approaching her, and something that almost sounded like creaking. The sound ceased when it neared her.

Now was the moment of truth; She couldn't hold off any longer.

Nia forced her eyes open, and gasped quietly just as soon as she saw it: wooden planks directly below her. She whipped her gaze back behind her in disbelief, and saw that she had cleared the edge of the platform by a solid three or four feet, a distance that most of the other rookies couldn't ever manage. "Impressive!", a voice declared, to which she turned her head back and up to see Taro standing in front of her and reaching his hand out to help her up, "Your form needs a bit of work, but honestly that's good enough for me to let you move on". Nia was only just able to muster enough effort to grab onto his hand and pull herself up through the utter astonishment that was washing over her. She simply couldn't work out how she had just pulled off any of what she just did. Was it luck? Did she finally tap into some amount of the skill she long held that she should have inherited from her parents?