After their terrifying run-in with the bane of all hunters itself, the Deviljho, the four conscious and one unconscious ponies continued their trek back to the three stallions' home base, a little town that they called Dracoville, during the night. Twilight had heard of such a place before; a village on the edge of the Badlands that worshiped some sort of dragon god. At the same time, she heard they cared for tamable monsters, such as Congalala, Yian Kut-Ku, Jaggi, Aptonoth, and even Rathian. Needless to say, the lavender Unicorn was very excited to visit the town.

"I can't wait until we get there!" Twilight gushed as she bounced around the two conscious stallions "Think of all the research I can complete in a closed and safe environment!"

"Weeeee! I'm excited too!" Pinkie Pie bounced around with her Unicorn friend "I get to have fun with all the cute animals!"

"It's like traveling with two schoolfillies who just had their first kiss..." sighed Rage Quit as he limped along the pathway.

"Now, now, Rage" Dark Thunder chuckled "Anypony who's a research-o-holic like our little purple friend here would go crazy for a place like this. Think of it; the tame monsters, their lifestyle and what they eat can all be seen up-close. It's an egghead's dream..."

"Hey!" the purple maned mare stopped jumping, making Pinkie Pie bump into her, causing her to tumble down and break into a laughing fit "I'm not an egghead! Who are you, my friend Rainbow Dash?"

"You know Rainbow Dash, the Dual Wind?" the light blue Pegasus asked "She's infamous for her Dual Air Spin, able to cut through a monster's hide in a single cut!"

"I'm guessing you're a fan?" Twilight asked him.

"Here's an example... He has several plush dolls of her, along with a pillow in the shape of her, multiple pictures of her on his bedroom's walls, and a multicoloured wig."

"D-Dark!" blushed Rage "You said you'd never say that to anypony!"

"Ah, yes, but I never Pinkie Promised" the ash grey Unicorn smiled devilishly, gaining Pinkie's attention.

"You didn't Pinkie Promise?!" she got up close to him with a cartoonishly elongated neck "That's one of the fastest ways to lose your friends! YOU WILL PAY WITH YOUR LIFE!!!"

"No, no, no, NO, NO, NOOOOOO!!!!!!" the stallion yelled out before getting tackled by the very angry party mare. Twilight took the sleeping body of Butter Hero with her magic before she and Rage Quit did nothing but watch the two fight it out. They soon began to laugh a bit at how silly the purpose of the fight was.

"So, do you actually have plush dolls of Rainbow Dash?" the lavender mare giggled a bit.

"Y-Yeah..." the light blue stallion blushed a bit in embarrassment "I have a lot of the stuff is in storage now. Ever since Unity got pregnant and had all those mood-swings, she thought I'd leave her for Rainbow, so I had to hide all my stuff away."

"Remind me never to have kids, okay?" Twilight asked him with a smile.

"I'll be sure to..." Rage laughed as he watched the two other ponies fought it out in a cloud of smoke and dust.

XXXXXX

At long last, Dracoville was only metres away from the team. The town was not so large as it had only seven wood plank houses and a stone town hall. However, what it lacked in housing it made up for in fields. As far as the eye could see, there were green groves filled with tamed monsters, including some Great Jaggies, a very young Basarios, and, surprisingly, a sleeping Rathian. Twilight immediately ran towards the field with a look of excitement plastered upon her muzzle.

"Look at them all!" she gushed "So many research possibilities!"

"Slow down there, Twilight" Dark, who had a few scratches over his body, spoke "We still have to get Butter over to the infirmary."

"I understand" she nodded "Family comes before research... no matter how tempting the latter may be..."

XXXXXX

They had gotten the young yellow Pegasus over to the rather small hospital and laid him on one of the beds in the recovery room. After waiting for a while, a female doctor with a white coat and a green mane with a nurse's cap on emerged from the room and sighed at the four patiently awaiting ponies. They all perked up and looked to her position to hear what news she had to offer.

"The patient suffers from severe burns on his back legs" she explained "He also suffers from minor burns all over his body, but those are curable. What I'm truly concerned about is his back legs though..."

"They're just severe burns, right?" Dark asked hesitantly "They're curable, right? Right?!"

"Mr. Thunder, please calm yourself!" the doctor shushed him, calming him down "Yes, his leg burns are treatable, but that's not what worries me. What worries me is how badly his legs have cracked. Aside from the burns, the tissue has large bite marks in it. Something extremely powerful bit into him and completely crushed his both tibia and fibula on each of his legs, making them untreatable."

"No..." Twilight gasped.

"I'm not very good at anatomy, doctor" the ash grey Unicorn said "Can you tell me what the hell that means for my little brother?"

"Dark Thunder," the doctor sighed "this means Butter Hero will never be able to walk on his hind legs again..."

Nopony in the room said anything. They were all either saddened or shocked by this news. Even Pinkie Pie stayed silent. After a while, Dark let out a deep breath as if to get all of his anger and sadness out of his body before he lightly pushed past the doctor and entered his younger brother's room. As he closed the door behind him, the doctor turned back to the other ponies.

"I think it would be best if you left them be for the time being" she suggested "It would be the nicest, and wisest thing to do."

The remaining three ponies nodded and walked/limped away out of the hospital.

XXXXXX

Dark Thunder entered his brother's room to see that he was already awake and sitting up, playing with a ball. He showed a mixture of both sadness and boredom on his face as he bounced the rubbery ball back and forth between the wall and his hoof. Eventually, he threw it too softly and the ball didn't reach him to allow him to bounce it back. He sighed and laid back onto his bed. This was when he noticed his brother and sighed again.

"If you keep sighing, we'll have to call you Mr. Sigh" he tried to joke with his younger brother, trying to lighten up the mood "How're you feeling?"

"Take a guess..." Butter said sadly.

"...I warned you, didn't I?" Dark asked, to which the young yellow stallion nodded "And now you know. I guess some lessons really are learned the hard way..."

"But now I'll never be able to become a hunter" Butter Hero sighed once again "Look at me; I have two broken legs and the doctor says I'll never be able to walk!" he began to cry "I'll never be a great Monster Hunter like you, or dad, or grandad..."

"Maybe..." the ash grey Pegasus said with a sad smile "...maybe you were never meant to."

"...what do you mean?" the younger brother sniffed.

"Just look at your cutie mark..." Dark opened up his bed sheets to show not only his horribly burned and bitten legs, but also his cutie mark, which was a cooking bowl with a wooden spoon and some butter in it "Kind of a big difference between cooking and monster hunting, wouldn't you say?"

"B-But... the line of hunters..."

"Butter, just because you deviate from a long line doesn't mean you can't live your life" the elder brother patted his brother on the back "I'll be honest, when I heard you'd be a cook and not a Monster Hunter, I was sad that you wouldn't be fighting alongside me. So, I smuggled you into training and you became a hunter regardless. But when I saw why fate chose you to be a cook on the battlefield, I was beginning to think maybe fate was right."

"Don't remind me..." Butter scoffed with a small smile, showing Dark that he was cheering up a bit.

"The point is, the reason you were failing and why your legs are now broken was because you just weren't cut out for fighting monsters" the ash grey stallion said before patting his little bro on the back again "But something tells me you'll be a great chef. Your dishes taste amazing! Imagine what power-ups you could give to hunters before they went out on a hunt! You could make a nation-wide business and become famous!"

"All for the cost of my legs..." the yellow Pegasus let out the truth of the matter. Dark sighed before giving his brother a kind smile.

"Lemme tell you something..." he said "Not everything is sunshine and rainbows out there. Life will beat you to your knees if you let it, and nothing will ever hit harder than life. But it's not about how hard you're hit; it's about how hard you can GET hit, and keep moving forward."

"What are you trying to say?" Butter asked.

"What I mean is, well," the ash grey stallion took a deep breath in and out "Just because you have a problem with your legs now doesn't mean that it'll stop you. In fact, I think this injury will push you forward to greater heights."

"You really think so?"

"Bro, I know so."

Butter began to tear up again. Only this time, it was of happiness. He reached over the best he could and gave his older brother a hug. Dark Thunder wasted no time in hugging back.

"I-I-I'm s-so s-s-sorry..." the young Pegasus cried.

"There, there..." the elder stallion hushed his little brother in his front hooves.

XXXXXX

Night had fallen over the village, and Twilight, now with her armour off, was in the guild's guest room sitting at a desk next to a window, looking at her crescent-shaped Gore Magala scale that she made into a necklace. With her room's lamp and the reading glasses so graciously provided to her by the guild, she looked at the scale's textures. She ran a hoof over it and felt the hardness and roughness of it. As rough as the top was, the bottom was extremely soft, meaning it could shed off at any time whilst still on the dark dragon.

As she continued to study the scale, she heard knocking at her door, which startled her a bit. Nonetheless, she took off her glasses, put them and the scale down and went to answer the door. Behind it was a familiar light blue Pegasus.

"Hey" Rage Quit greeted "Any luck in finding anything out about the scale?"

"...no" Twilight sighed "The scale looks like any other scale, besides its unique shape and softer underside."

"Well, there's two things right there!" he laughed a bit "Why not work off of those things, and maybe you'll find something. Then again, it's not exactly the easiest thing to do to learn about a monster with just one scale..."

"I'm not getting more, if that's what you're saying" the lavender mare shook her head with a chuckled.

"Wha- No!" the brown maned stallion was taken aback "Alright, lemme say this then: maybe the scale has more in it than just looking pretty. Maybe it has something you can't see without tampering around with it."

"You think so?" the purple maned Unicorn asked.

"Eh, who knows" Rage Quit smiled before walking away "I'm just a guy who hunts monsters. See ya!"

Twilight closed the door and looked back at the scale resting on her table. She let out a sigh as she thought what she could do with a seemingly useless object. Somehow, someway, she had to discover the scale's secrets so she could eventually defeat the Gore Magala and bring peace not only to Ponyville, but to the entire land of Equestria. She walked over, turned off her light and was about to go to bed when something caught her eye. In the window shone down the moon, and in the light of the lunar object in the sky, the scale lit up and became near transparent. This raised the lavender mare's curiosity by a thousand fold.

"Interesting..." Twilight analysed as she watched the scale glow "But what does moonlight have to do with the-"

She never even finished her sentence before the scale suddenly and violently exploded, destroying the desk and anything on it. She screamed in shock, waking the entire village and a few of the nearby monsters in the fields up. Pinkie suddenly burst in her room holding her heavy bowgun and looked around frantically.

"WHO'S HERE?! I swear if it's another monkey again... darn those primates..."

"P-Pinkie!" Twilight looked at her friend and sighed in relief "Thank god you're here..."

"Who was it, Twilight?!" she asked in a concerning tone "Was it pirates? Aliens? Monsters?!"

"Pinkie, it wasn't anything, I'm fine..." the lavender mare began laughing a bit before looking at the now wrecked scale "But I think I figured out the Gore Magala's weakness..."

XXXXXX

The next day, Twilight, still with her armour off, had spent most of it running and frolicking in the monster fields for her study. From the elders, she learned a lot about each and ever monster they had to show, including the Rathian and a powerful Tigrex. She even found out it was possible for different species of monsters to breed with each other, creating an entirely new species. After a while, Twilight decided to ask a question that had been on her mind for quite a while.

"Elder..." the Unicorn got the attention of an old and scrawny, dull red Earth Pony mare showing her around the place.

"Yes dear?" the elder turned to the lavender mare with a smile.

"Have you ever heard of a monster known as the Gore Magala?"

"Gore Magala, Gore Magala..." the old mare pondered for a second "I can't say that I have, dear." Twilight let out a sigh of disappointment "However, that last name you said... Magala, was it? That I have heard of."

"You heard... wait, what?" Twilight was confused as to how the elder knew of the last name, but not the first.

"You must've heard by now that we worship a monster here as our god, correct?" the old Earth Pony asked, to which Twilight nodded "Well, it is known as the Shagaru Magala, and since the dawn of time it has brought this village prosperity and peace. However, in a much darker time, it was known to ponies as the lord of all, the king of beasts and the bringer of ruin. It was a creature to be feared, but one day a legendary hero came and slayed the creature and giving the world each a piece of its hide. We worship that old hide now in the centre of the village."

"Interesting..." the lavender mare wondered "So there was another species of Gore Magala called the Shagaru Magala? Was it more powerful than what I'm dealing with now?"

Before the elder could answer, an alarm was sounded, scaring many of the monsters away. The elder simply sighed and began walking back to the guild.

"Wait, what does that siren mean?"

"The Changelings got in... again..." the elder rolled her eyes in annoyance "They're more of a pest now than an actual threat. They're probably taking something back to their camp for their hunter slaves."

"Do you think I should go after them?" Twilight asked.

"If you so wish..." the old mare spoke "Not much of a bother to do so, but what do I know about you foals these days?"

Twilight knew that whatever the Changelings stole, they would use it for something dastardly. She saw the evil glint in Chrysalis's eyes when she stared at them. She was planning something big. The question was, what was it?

Author's Notes:

And there you have it! This chapter was more about character study than actual battles. But I promise you that more battles will be in the next chapter! Sorry that it's short, but at least it's sweet.

Butter is out of commission, but he's finally learned his lesson and found where he was supposed to be. Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you...

CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT!!!

Write down in the comments what monsters you want to have seen in the story!

Be sure to Like, Comment, Favourite and Follow me, and until then, happy hunting!

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