Alien vs Predator : The Next Generation
Full Summary : It's been three years since Nyoko Noguchi and
Annika have set foot on Hunter's Planet, three years since they left the
Predator Pack they had trained with. Time has put a rift between Nyoko
and her parents, especially her father, Ned Sanchez. But now, faced with
the knowledge that Machiko and a Predator Pack have gone missing while
doing a routine reconnaissance patrol, she and her friends are embarking
on an adventure that no one was prepared for. Putting up with her father
will be one ordeal, but she never could have imagined the chaos that would
come from her and her new friends joining up with her old Pack.
Chapter 1 : Nyoko Noguchi
Heavy rain sliced down from dark clouds, soaking the small armoured form that silently made it's way through the thick jungle. The air was laden with moisture, the atmosphere hot and sticky, making every breath a fight against the overwhelming pressure, lungs straining to pull in oxygen despite the aid of a breathing mask. A trickle of water seeped under the hot facemask, and the human woman cursed softly at the sensation, fighting the urge to rip off the mask and simply continue without the enhanced vision it's sensors supplied.
Her boots gave her precious little purchase on the rain slick ground, the mud and moss that made up most of the jungle floor forcing her to constantly check her footing. A crack of thunder split the calmness of the steady rhythm of rain drops hitting the leaves and ferns around her, and the accompanying flash of bright white lightning threatened to render her blind for a moment before she shook her head and forced herself to focus.
It was near. She could practically smell it. She could definitely sense it. Her senses had been honed over the past few months of gruelling training, and while a part of her resented having to take part in this, another part of her, a more primal part, revelled in it.
Another flash of lightning gave her a glimpse of her target, and she frowned under the mask, feeling her sweat and rain slicked hair plaster itself a bit more against her scalp as she edged to the right a little, just enough for a clean shot. Her soaked gloves gripped the plasma rifle tightly as she took aim, daring to whistle sharply to get her target's attention.
Water flowed over black chitin as the large form rose and hissed, metallic silver teeth catching the dim light and reflecting it as the fangs parted, revealing another, smaller, yet more powerful set of jaws within. It's hiss grew in both volume and vehemence and she smirked under the mask as she saw it crouch slightly before it threw itself into the air, heading right at her.
It's head exploded in mid-flight, and she calmly stepped aside as it's body fell to the ground and ploughed through the mire until it rested at her feet, it's acidic blood making the ground bubble a little.
All the hard training, all the pain and bruises and striving.... and this was it? Her dark eyes were shadowed as she reached up and pulled off her mask, clipping it onto her belt. She stared down at the xenomorph as it's headless body shuddered once before lying still again, then rose her face to the clouds, letting the rain cool her face.
An excited yell from her left made her look over towards another human, and she felt a smile spread over her lips as she returned her best friend's wave, her enthusiasm fading as a large form walked over to her. Once, she would have felt cowed, dwarfed as she was by the three meter tall behemoth, now though, after three long months of training under his Leadership, she felt quiet respect for him, and maybe a little fear. After all, she'd had yet to meet a human who wasn't a little wary of the yautja, the universes' perfect Predator.
The Leader, Ash'eld'uir crouched and ripped one of the fingers off of the drone xenomorph's body, acid blood trickling from the broken digit as he straightened again and stared down at her, his expression unreadable, hidden as it was by his own mask.
She watched, in morbid fascination perhaps, as he used one of his own sharp talons to slice open the palm of his left hand, letting his blood drip onto the bleeding xenomorph finger before he gestured for her to step forward. She knew what he was going to do, and knew that his own blood, yautja blood, dulled the acidic properties of the drone's blood enough that it wouldn't eat through her skull and kill her.
Steeling her nerves, she stepped closer and closed her eyes, clenching her jaw tightly when she felt the skin on her forehead, right between her eyes, burn away in a white hot wave of pain. Holding back a curse, she opened her eyes and looked at Ash'eld'uir, seeing him nod at her in approval before he turned and walked over to the others that were also out to prove themselves.
Frowning hurt, but she did it anyway, raising her hand to brush gloved fingers across the jagged scar she now had, her Blooded Mark that showed her to be worthy in the eyes of the yautja. Rain mixed with the blood that was trickling down the side of her nose, and she sighed as she closed her eyes and rose her face to the heavens again, letting the rain wash her clean.....
Is this....all there is?
"Nyoko! Nyoko, wake up!"
The sensation of being shaken roughly dragged her out of her dreams, and she grumbled out an incoherent curse before she grabbed the nearest pillow and clobbered whoever had dared to wake her with it. "Tol' ya, call'me Chaos!"
Annika rubbed at her head where the pillow-turned weapon had smacked her, then rolled her eyes. "Yeah, yeah. Whatever. Get up O' Queen of Non-Morning People. It's like, past noon."
Groaning, Nyoko - or Chaos as she preferred to be called these days - rolled onto her back and blinked up at the ceiling of the old warehouse that she, her best friend Annika and three others regularly hung out at. Sunlight streamed through an open window nearby, and she squinted at the light for a moment before sighing and sitting up, looking over at the other woman nearby.
It had been five years since the two of them had been Blooded by Ash'eld'uir, and three since they had been sent here by their parents, to an offworld city. Now, at twenty-one years of age, neither of them were the same, nor would they ever be anything else than what they were now, and upon that realization, her gaze travelled to the jagged scar between Annika's eyes, suddenly very aware of the twin marking on her own forehead.
"What?" Seeing her best friend staring at her, Annika leaned forward and blinked at her, her dyed chin-length pink hair whispering against her skin as she returned the stare. "What??"
"Nothin'," Chaos muttered, shaking herself out of her reverie as she rose from the tangled blankets of her bed, taking a moment to tug her shorts and sportsbra back into place before stretching and heading for the bathroom. "Anything interesting happen while I was sleeping?"
"Pssh. Yeah, right. I wish!"
"Right. Stupid me." Shaking her head, Chaos padded barefoot into the small bathroom and kicked the door shut behind her. A sigh left her as she braced herself against the small sink and stared at her reflection in the mirror, her dark gaze travelling over her naturally tanned skin before rising to the stark white scar she wore. Some days, she hated her mother for being who she was, because in a way, that had forced her to become someone that she didn't really want to be.
Twenty-one years ago, her mother had been a key element in overthrowing Livermore Evantson's plan to create and alter xenomorph drones by integrating cybernetics and genetic enhancements to turn them into warriors. His own personal warriors. At the time, be it fate or sheer luck, the yautja had been using that same planet to train, Hunt and hold Blooding rituals. And thus, by some twist of fate, Machiko Noguchi, thought a traitor by the Predator clans for betraying them by choosing to side with humanity during a Hunt years earlier, managed to convince the fifty Packs to help put a stop of Evanston's plans.
In the end, after Evanston's death by the blades of a Predator, Machiko had found herself appointed as the owner of the late Evanston's planet, conveniently referred to as 'Hunter's Planet'. It was the only world that was free of the 'Company's' rules and regulations. A free world where people could thrive. There was only one little setback. The xenomorphs.
They had fairly infested the planet during the short time where all attentions had been turned to helping wipe out Evanston's potential threat. The solution, while perhaps a little risky, was rather simple. Since the yautja had been using that very planet to stage various Hunts decades before humans had settled on it, Machiko and various Pack Leaders had drawn up a sketchy truce. The Predators could continue their business, so long as they agreed not to put the settlers on their lists of 'things to kill'.
At the same time, Machiko had found herself pregnant, the result of a torrid affair with Ned Sanchez, a marine turned mercenary that had been hired by Evanston, and who had later defected in order to help Machiko overthrow the insane millionaire.
The memories brought a frown to Nyoko's face, and she stared at herself a moment longer before twisting the sink's taps, waiting until the water had turned clear before cupping her hands under the stream. It was cold, frigid even, but she welcomed the sensation as she splashed herself in the face, the cool liquid forcing her to wake up a little more.
Droplets of water clung to her shoulder-length midnight black hair, and she couldn't help but roll her eyes at her current hair-style. Hair of death strikes again. Geez, it looks like a rat made a nest in my hair. She raked her blue-painted nails through the short locks once, sighing in irritation when she had to fight to free her hand from a tangle. Her earrings reflected the light, playing colours over the mirror as she yanked her fingers free. Seven studded earrings adorned her right ear, and five were on her left and she grinned at the thought that the sight would probably send her father into hysterics.
Chuckling darkly, she clicked the ball of her tongue piercing against her teeth and wiped her hands on a towel, winking at her reflection before grabbing Annika's hair brush and turning to saunter out into the small hallway again, deciding to follow the sound of loud harsh music to the open space of the warehouse. This place of theirs was more of their home than anything else, especially since they had dropped out of college a few months back. Ever since they had discovered the building a year ago she and Annika had gone to great lengths to scrounge up furniture and whatnot, even going as far as to install a homemade security system.
At the farthest corner of the spacious room sat Annika, perched on a rickety chair as she typed at her computer. Calling her a 'computer-wizard' would be putting it lightly. Not only could she write up programs and encryption codes that were fairly impossible to crack, but Chaos had yet to see an online security system that her friend couldn't hack through. In her friend's hands, a computer was a formidable weapon. If need be, she was certain that Annika could hack and take over every computer within satellite broadcasting range if she really wanted to.
The music was blaring from the computer's speakers at the moment, and Chaos belatedly wondered how her friend hadn't gone deaf yet as she walked over to her, savagely yanking the brush through her hair as she did so. "So, what's up?"
"Besides you?" Bright green eyes sparkled from behind bright pink bangs as Annika swivelled her chair around to look at her best friend, her overlarge silver hoop earrings swaying slightly. "Not much. Tara called, she's gonna be late. Something about needing a new set of wheels for her skateboard."
"Why the hell doesn't she just buy herself a new board already? Hell, why doesn't she just make one? She can bulid a computer from scratch and hotwire a speeder in three seconds but she can't make a skateboard?"
"Eh," Annika shrugged. "Who knows? Anyway, she said she and Ray will be over later."
Chaos sighed and attacked a particularly tangled knot. Tara and Ray were the only friends she and Annika had managed to be blessed with when they had come to this planet, sent here by their parents in the hopes that human contact would soften them a little. According to their parents, they had been spending so much time with the yautja, training and so forth, that they felt that she and Annika had lost their 'human' edge. Thus they had been sent here, tossed into a human society that they barely knew anymore and left to fend for themselves.
Last she had heard, her parents, Machiko and Ned, had broken up, the rift that had formed when she had been sent here under her father's wishes seemingly widening until they had both agreed that it might be better for them to be apart. Not that she cared anymore.
"Yo, wake up, Chaos! You're zoning out again!" Worried, Annika reached out and shook her friend's arm, staring up at her. "You okay?"
"Mm. Just thinking."
"Good or bad?"
"A bit of both, I suppose. Any word from Rakur'a? He promised he'd send us a message today." Rakur'a was one of the Predators that they had trained with when striving for their Blooding Mark. Oddly enough, they and the yautja had become very good friends, so much so that they constantly traded messages back and forth, despite the distance between them. She thanked her lucky stars that prolonged relations with humans had forced most of the yautja travelling to Hunter's Planet to learn English. True, she knew enough of their language to carry on a decent conversation, but it was a killer on the throat.
Annika, meanwhile, leaned back in her chair and laced her fingers behind her head, propping a foot up on the edge of the desk as she did so. "No message yet. You know him though, he's probably out hunting down some mean lookin' thing. Y'know, I seriously think that all of the yautja males are born with severe testosterone poisoning."
Chaos snickered. "You're not the only one who's come to that conclusion."
"Didn't think so." She returned her friend's grin, then blinked when the computer beeped softly. "Hm? What's this now?" Lowering her arms, she straightened again and typed in a few commands. "Weyhey, looks like someone's just hacked into the city spaceport!"
"Annika, why are you keeping tabs on the spaceport systems?"
"Hey, I'm a hacker. These systems are like my territory. And if anyone's gonna crash 'em, it's gonna be me!"
"That's a twisted way of looking at it."
"Yes, well. I'm a twisted person," she smiled, her gaze never leaving the screen as she continued to type. "Comes from living with you."
"Oh, har har har. Veeeery funny."
"I thought so. Ooo! Whoever this is, he's a smart little bugger! Lookie here, he's trying to track me. Haha! Eat virus, peon! Taste the wrath of, Panic, foolish mortal!"
Nyoko rolled her eyes at the triumphant cry as her friend waged cyber-war on the hapless person and turned to head back to her small room to get dressed. "You're nuts. Absolutely nuts."
"Maybe," came the giggling reply. "But I'm cute! Oh! Hey, don't go far, I just got a subspace uplink. S'got Rakur'a's pass code."
"M'just gonna get changed. I'll be back in a sec."
"Kay." Smiling cheerfully - thrashing trespassing cyber-punks always put her in a good mood - Annika broke the link between her computer and the spaceports', then turned her attention to the message that was slowly downloading onto the screen. Like all the messages she received from their yautja friend, it had already been translated into English, something she was extremely grateful for. While computers were her life, she didn't want to have to try her hand at linguistics. Especially not with the yautja language.
Footsteps drew her gaze over to her friend, and she rolled her eyes in exasperation. Black jeans and a blood red top. Again. Over the years Nyoko, or Chaos as she now called herself, had turned into something of a goth. A dangerous one, mind you, considering how she had four black belts in various martial arts and a tendency to clobber anyone who looked at her sideways. Only a few people were allowed to see her real self, and Annika always counted herself lucky that she was one of those few. After all, Nyoko had been the one who had helped her train for her Blooding Rite, without her help, she would have never made it.
"So?" Chaos asked, unknowingly jolting her friend out of her thoughts. "What's he say?"
"Uhh...." She turned back to the screen and frowned. "Nothing much. He's just come back from the Detri system and he's got himself another trophy skull.... he says Ash'eld'uir wants to know if we're keeping up our training.... Ah. Here we go. Looks like your mum and my dad joined a scouting mission to go investigate some weird goings on in the Qyitoni system. Seems that they've been reading some freaky subspace signals from one of the planets there. They're all interested because that system's never been explored and it was thought to be uninhabited."
"Really? Huh. Does he say anything else about it?"
"Not much. Only that they left three days ago and that he wishes he'd been on Hunter's Planet at the time they asked for yautja volunteers for the mission. Most of the Preds think that since it's unexplored that there's mighty good hunting to be done in that system."
"Figures. Ask him if he can find out any more about it."
"Mm. He wants to know when we'll be coming back."
"Well, telling him to take that up with my father would be a bad suggestion," Chaos muttered sourly, shaking her head. "And since this city's got some major paranoia about aliens and a lot of firepower to back it up, we can't even risk asking him to come get us."
Annika nodded. "It sucketh much. What do you want me to tell him?"
"The truth."
"That we don't know and that we hate it here?"
"Bingo."
"Kay." Her fingers flew over the keypad as she typed out their reply. "Anything else?"
A smile slowly spread over Chaos' lips. "Yeah. Tell him that when we get back he'd better bring us hiking or hunting or something, else I'll kick his ass. Again."
She giggled and added that to the message. "Oh yeah, that'll get a nice response. You just love rubbing the reminder that you beat him that time in a one-on-one fight, don't you?"
"Yup!"
A noise from the front of the warehouse drew their attentions then, as did the joyful yell that echoed loudly: "Yaiya! The third of the Insane is here! Chaos, Panic! Where are my counterparts? Disorder is here!"
"Tara's here," Annika snickered, grinning at the sound of their nicknames. It had started as an inside joke, referring to themselves as 'Chaos, Panic and Disorder', but since they had started hanging out together all the time, it had become more and more of a trademark.
"Do tell." Nyoko's right eyebrow quirked slightly as their red-haired friend skateboarded into the room, her khaki capri pants contrasting with the red shirt she wore. "Hey, you. How's it goin?"
Blue eyes met the other woman's dark gaze. "Fantastic! Look!" She kicked her board into her hands and displayed the new wheels on it's underneath. "Custom made! Don't these go great with the cosmos painting on the underside?"
"Do they ever! Lucky you. Hope you got a good deal, not many people like these things anymore. They're twentieth century."
"Don't care! It manoeuvres like a dream now! No stupid rollerblades for me!"
"Hey!" Feigning annoyance, Annika turned in her chair and shook a finger at Tara. "No dissing of the 'blades! Besides, Chaos and I can out race you any day!"
Giggling, Tara threw herself down onto a chair and set her board next to her. "Yeah, yeah. You just keep believing that. So? What's up? We doin' anything today?"
"Dunno. We're just finishing up a reply to Rakur'a."
Tara looked over at the raven haired woman. "That's one of your Pred friends, right? Geez, you know, I'd love to meet one of them sometime! Be the first person from this stupid community to actually get off this rock and get a life! Y'know, meet new people, blow something up, that sort of thing."
"Believe me, when Annika and I find a way off this hellhole, we'll bring you with us."
"Sweet!"
"And the message is away!" Annika cried cheerfully as she sent the reply to Rakur'a off into the waves of subspace. "He should get it almost immediately. You wanna wait for an answer or go cavorting around the city?"
"Cavorting!" Tara yelled, grinning sheepishly when Chaos glared at her.
"Cavorting's fine. I could do with some lunch too, actually. We can try that place down near the Main Shopping Complex."
"We have a plan!" Tara's enthusiasm was infectious it seemed, because Annika felt her spirits boost up to levels that she could normally only reach with a large amount of sugary treats. Mirroring the red-heads grin, she hopped off her chair and raced to get her rollerblades and Chaos' as well. "We gonna swing by Ray's place and pick him up?"
"Might as well," Chaos nodded as she shucked out of her black boots and leaned against a chair while putting on her rollerblades. "He'd never forgive us if we went somewhere where there's food and didn't bring him along."
Tara rolled her eyes dramatically and hopped in place, her board clutched to her chest. "Can we go now?! Huh?!"
"Geez, calm down a little, will you?" Annika groused as she finished strapping her 'blades in place. "Let us at least get our 'blades on before you start whining."
"I do not whine."
"You do," Chaos grinned as she calmly glided in circles around Tara, loving the speed and fluidity that her rollerblades provided her. "Loudly."
"Oh shaddup."
"Articulate as always, I see." Snickering, Annika took a moment to insure that all her security programs were running, then pushed away from the desk and skated towards the door, deciding to leave the computer on in case Rakur'a sent another message. "Let us skate!"
"Yahoo!" Tara took a running start, then threw her board on the ground and landed on it, her momentum sending her speeding out the side door of the warehouse, the only entrance that the group used. "Eat my dust, suckers!" Cackling, she skidded down a railing, and hit the ground perfectly, laughing when she saw Chaos and Panic struggling to catch up to her.
Unfortunately, none of them had seen the message that had popped up
on Annika's computer, the bright red letters of 'Urgent' flashing it's
beckons to an empty warehouse.
TBC