Stray
The ghost of laughter echoed in the shell of my ears as I drew in a deep breath and filled my lungs with the familiar scent of decay. I lowered my belly to the once pristine floor of the condemned Wey-Yu lab, now covered with a thick layer of dirt and old bones.
Her name had been Isabelle, a charming four-year-old girl with a smile bright enough to light the darkest hearts and an exuberant love of all things fluffy, including me. That's what she used to call me, Fluffy, of all things, but then again that is the power of innocence, isn't it; to see the beauty and the goodness in everything, in everyone, before their perfect cotton candy worlds become jaded by the harsh realities thrust upon them.
I sniffed the delicate remains of Isabelle's favorite nightgown. Time had withered the fabric so badly, that the rainbows and unicorns, even the gown itself, was nothing more than a dirty shriveled husk. Her scent was long gone, but I could still hear her bell-like laughter in these halls.
Keening softly, yearning for my small friend, I dropped my muzzle to my paws and stared at the tiny, half buried, human skull. Dappled sunlight, streamed in through a broken grimy window, highlighting the white petals of a baby flower poking up behind the orbital bone.
Dust curled up and around the skull as I exhaled another whine. She never should've died. Hell, she never should've been here in the first place. But Isabelle's parents headed the Cerberus project for Wey-Yu, and like her parents, she died here on Lv-437 in the Theta II system, along with every other human.
In an effort to combat the ever-growing numbers and terror of the Xenomorphs, scientists at Weyland Yutani, otherwise known as Wey-Yu or The Company, strived to create the perfect soldier. Isn't that how it always starts? Excusing heinous acts for the sake of progress? Playing god, Wey-Yu broke the human genome and learned how to blend human DNA with animals decades ago. And predominantly favored wolf DNA. This, unfortunately, led to many failed experiments and the birth of countless horrors, the majority of which lost their minds or became too powerful to control. And those who could not be controlled were of no use to The Company. They were put to death. But some of us, or at least those of us who could still think for ourselves, fought back, escaped, and killed our captors.
A growl rumbled in my chest. But Isabelle should've never died. She had been my only friend, the only human who cared, and I failed to protect her from the Howlers. Now, I was alone. The last of the Cerulves, my kin, had long ago abandoned the planet after the slaughter of the humans and the annihilation of the laboratory.
With a sigh, I shifted my hips and wrapped my tail around my curled hind legs. Dust particles danced in the narrow beams of light, their fluid, lazy movements lulling me to sleep.
A loud whoomph brought my head up and my eyes to the broken window. A meteorite punched through the atmosphere and streaked across the sky out of sight. The following sound wave shook the ground causing pieces of ceiling already hanging precariously from exposed steel rods to rain down on top of me.
I leaped to my feet and started for the window, intending to escape, but...
Isabelle!
...
When the tremors subsided, I shook myself free of debris. A thick fog of cement dust hung in the air, clogging my nose, and causing me to have a sneezing fit. I rubbed my nose with a paw, but it didn't help.
I backed up a couple of steps and gently sniffed the delicate bones I'd been protecting. No harm had come to them, so I left the laboratory and Isabelle behind.
Outside in the open air, I took a deep inhale and sorted through the various smells. The meteorite left a swath of white smoke in its wake. It was too high up in the atmosphere, and the wind wasn't in my favor for me to detect anything other than a whiff of ozone. But something about its trail was strange. High altitude winds would naturally distort its shape, but it appeared as though the meteorite changed its trajectory.
It's them. It has to be, I thought with an excited grunty-huff. Without a second thought, I took off in the direction of the disappearing trail. Aside from the humans, only one other species has ever visited this planet. The Yautja...
...
The silt deposits barely shifted beneath the weight of my paws. Nestled in the belly of a gorge, surrounded by natural heat vents and protected by sheer walls it was the perfect place for the mechanical mother to deposit the eggs of a Xenomorph queen.
I lowered my belly into the mud, unconcerned with the way it clung uncomfortably to my fur. The machine did not take notice of me as it moved further into the gorge. Its design was simple, resembling a metal crab roughly the size of a small vehicle, but it was built to handle the stress of climbing rocky canyons and take a beating from the elements. Not to mention, survive a fall through the atmosphere. I was never really sure if someone was directing it from elsewhere or if it had been pre-programmed. Either way, its directive was clear, seed the planet so that the hunt could begin.
The mechanical mother stopped, it lowered its substantial girth into the mud. Even before the machine lifted itself up again, I could smell the wet leather stench of the egg it had deposited. The huge black fleshy bulb pulsed with life and the hatchling inside sensed me as well. It seemed to wriggle with excitement, and I snarled, daring the hatchling to crawl out. The egg ceased moving, and I wondered if the facehugger instinctually understood I would not be easy prey or if it simply couldn't escape because it was still in an embryonic state.
Nasty business Xenomorphs, vicious and deadly. They were the Yautjas' prey of choice upon which to train their pups. It was the most fundamental part of rearing young for any predator. A hard lesson to learn but a necessary one. And those who did not learn well would die.
The silence of the mechanical mother brought my head up, and my ears flicked back when I found it had turned and seemed to be watching me. Four black spherical electronic eyes organized in a diamond shape stared at me, and I knew at once that somewhere someone was instructing this machine.
I have witnessed two previous hunts. The Yautja were not aware of my presence the first time around. But by the second hunt, curiosity prevailed, and I purposely sought them out. The memories of the previous hunt flitted around in my head, exciting me. The thought of running and hunting side by side with a new generation of unruly pups overwhelmed me, and I yipped playfully at the machine.
Would he come too?
One of the alphas of the previous hunting party thought of me as honorable prey and attempted to hunt me in the beginning, but after tricking him into playing with me, the alpha lost interest in collecting my skull and allowed me to hunt with the pack.
I stared into the eye of the machine and wondered if the alpha, the one I referred to as RedDeath, was the one watching me right now...
A/N: Hello! Hope everyone enjoyed the first chapter of Dances With Werewolves! I finally brought together my two most favorite things, werewolves, and the Yautja!