The Tiny Terror
"I'm sorry! I'm sorry! I'm sorr-"
The Yautja roared and threw his spear at me. I yelped and dropped to the floor as it sailed over my head and heard the thump as it embedding into the wall. "I said I was sorry," I shrieked.
From above me came another angry roar. Given his new... um... compact size, it shouldn't have sounded so damn scary but the fury laced into it could've fillet skin clean off the muscle.
He stomped his feet, and the shards of glass littering the desk above my head rattled. But unexpectedly after a moment, the room fell quiet, and I thought maybe he'd calmed. Taking a deep breath, I slowly got to my knees, placed my hands on the edge of the desk and cautiously peeked over it. And to my shock, the Yautja was gone.
The sudden plink, plink, plink of rain droned in my ears, competing for volume with the wild thumping of my heart. I glanced around the room from my half covered position but saw no sign of him. The lab was in shambles, the main window overlooking the valley below the cliff face had shattered into a zillion pieces that crunched under foot. Phosphorescent blood streaked the floor mingling with the rain water coming in through the broken window, and dotted the desk, indicating the Yautja had been injured sometime before attacking me, because I sure as heck didn't inflict any damage on him- er, well, not physically anyway.
Why on earth did he attack me in the first place?
I frowned, I knew very little about the Yautja, but I was fairly certain they didn't make a habit of attacking unarmed, underwhelmingly strong women with their backs turned. Or did they? Ah heck, what did I know? My knowledge on the Predators went about as deep as a damp napkin. But something about this whole situation felt terribly wrong.
The second attack came from behind. While I frantically attempted to piece together the craziness of the last five minutes, the Yautja was preying upon my confusion and waiting until I fully came out from under the desk.
"Ell-osde!"
There was a high pitch buzzy whine, and then a burning pain lanced my side. Yelping, I went down on my knees and reflexively touched my side. It hurt, and my fingers came away bloody.
He... he shot me?!
The Yautja snarled, "ooman!"
I flinched and crawled on hands and knees through the glass, under the desk, and out the other side. "I get that you're mad-" I frantically started to reason.
He roared and heavy thwap resounded in the room as he leaped across the desk. I rolled onto my back, eyes widening as they met the black pits in his mask. The Yautja snarled and crouched, twin-serrated blades slid from a bracer on his forearm. I swallowed, the blades were only the length of my pinky finger, but I was pretty sure he was determined to skin me alive for what I'd done.
"-but if you kill me-"
I threw my arms up. He landed square on my chest, knocking the breath out of me. Grabbing a fistful of my hair, he yanked hard and pulled my head forward until I felt the tips of those nasty blades prick my throat.
"-I won't be able to reverse it!"
He snarled in my face, so close his dreads dragged across my chin. The menace he radiated made it hard to breathe. Or it could be the fact that he was standing on my chest. For only being a foot tall, the Yautja was surprisingly heavy.
"Na setg'ja te ik'da?!
"I don't know what you're saying- wah!"
He yanked again, the blades dangerously close to piercing my skin. The cannon mounted on his shoulder rig whined to life.
He is not a full-sized Yuatja! For the love of Pluto, he could fit in a handbag! You can do this! Just push him off and-
"Na setg'ja te ik'da?!"
"Stop yelling at me!" Okay, just because I shrank him down to toy size didn't make him any less terrifying. My heart pounded, and I was too scared to move.
The Tiny Terror leaned closer, a deep reptilian sounding growl reverberating in his chest. The visors in his mask flashed red, and the inky blackness receded until I found myself staring into a pair of enraged poison green eyes... for all of two seconds, then we both heard a shriek, and I turned my head just in time to see Toki. His jaws wide and hissing furiously, he body slams the Tiny Terror, knocking him off of me.
The two went sprawling through glass and rain water. Toki's muscular tail whipped, readjusting and finding his balance a fraction of a second faster than the Yautja. Hissing, the small raptor stood tall, the thick purple scales covering his fifteen-inch frame raised like the fur of an angry cat, revealing bright yellow leathery skin beneath. With incredible speed, Toki charged the Yautja and sprang, claws extended. The Yautja snarled and braced for the attack with the duel blades raised.
"Toki!"
I've never seen a Yautja fight, well to be perfectly honest, I've never encountered a Yautja, but nevertheless, I knew Toki was in trouble. My little raptor might be a few inches taller, but the Yautja ritualistically hunted Xenomorphs for crying out loud!
Xenomorphs... I shivered at the memory. Toki's enraged squeak brought me out of my head, and I barely managed to scramble up and jump out of the way as the two went rolling. Snarls, shrieks, and the clatter of armor and flesh smacking the floor hastened my plight to do... something- anything! What was I supposed to do?!
"S-stop it!"
But my voice was too small. The two ignored me, continuing to fight and careen around the room at top speed. From my vantage point, it almost looked comical, like a kids' action figures come to life, but there really was nothing funny about this situation.
Toki jumped up onto the seat of the rolly chair beside the desk, only to shriek and leap away as the Yautja bounded after him. The Yautja gave chase with a snarl; the force of his jump propelled the chair into my legs. Startled, I yelped, lost my footing and fell on my butt. With an angry squeal, Toki hopped over my sprawled legs quickly followed by the Yautja.
Hissing, I brushed some loose pieces of glass from my palms and got up. I had to stop the Tiny Terror before he and Toki destroyed my home. If they broke something vital, like say a critical environmental system of the habitat, I would be so screwed.
But what can I do?
A Yautja, even a pint-sized one, scared the living daylights out of me. I wasn't a fighter or particularly brave, but if I didn't do something then-
Toki squealed, and I watched in horror as his little body went flying into the wall. The Yautja leaped onto a discarded sample box, threw out his arms and roared. My heart lurched in my throat, and some part of my hindbrain woke up and screamed: "He's gonna kill, Toki!".
Without thinking, and without fully comprehending what I was doing or if it would even work, I shouted "freeze!"
And to my utter disbelief, he did. Literally. The Yautja was frozen mid-leap, his wrist blades raised and poised to strike. Toki got to his feet and shook himself, the scales along his spine flattening. He stepped close to the Yautja and sniffed the six inches of space between him and the floor, then Toki cocked his head and looked at me with a questioning chitter. When I didn't move, Toki faced me fully and shrieked. I flinched, the sound jarring me from the shocked stupor. I had only seconds before the effects wore off, maybe less. The forces of nature on this planet were a mystery and very fickle. What worked one way would not always work the same way the next time.
I scrambled over to the L-shaped desk -it was actually, two desks pushed together- and grabbed the high polished crystal terrarium sitting behind the holo screen and upended it, emptying the contents onto the floor.
Toki was poking the suspended Yautja with his narrow snout. The Tiny Terror growled, and Toki jumped back with a hiss. His scales flared to attention, rustling together rapidly to make an unmistakable warning rattle. Furious, the little raptor jumped up and snapped the air right in front of the disabled Yautja's face just as I caught him. On the Yautja's current size-scale, that had to be the equivalent of getting his face snapped at by a crocodile.
"Toki," I said, feeling frustrated, frazzled, and flummoxed. He wiggled in the crook of my arm, squeaking up a storm. The little raptor didn't weigh very much, only a few pounds, but I didn't want him to accidentally tag me with those sharp toe claws. So I set the squirming animal on the opposite side of me, and away from the Yautja.
Toki chuffed and stared up at me.
"Don't give me that look," I scolded.
He snorted and tried to walk around my bent knees, his head bobbing slightly.
"Stop it," I hissed, pushing him aside.
He squeaked and chittered at me, craning his long neck to try and see our unexpected intruder. The Yautja growled, and his burning eyes glared up at me. He couldn't move, yet, but he could still follow me with those frightening eyes. Rapidly, his chest rose and fell, and I exhaled in relief that I hadn't inhibited his ability to breathe.
Is it normal for a Yautja to be breathing so hard? I frowned. It seemed unusual, but with no real prior knowledge, I could only speculate. Glass scratched the floor as I shuffled closer. Water soaked into my pant legs. In some detached part of my mind, I felt the rain hitting my face, but I could not take my eyes off of the Yautja. I studied him for a second, awed by this creature. In all my years of studying natural predators, I've never- What is that? I squinted, scooting closer. There was a foreign filmy substance spattered on the edge of the mask, right at the curve of his jaw. I only noticed the minuscule splotch because it was an odd luminance pink. Is that what I think it- His arm twitched, and with a yelp, I slammed the terrarium over him. The bottom of the crystal smacked the top of his head, and I froze as he fell in a heap onto the floor. The growling stopped, and he didn't move.
"Crapadoodle, I killed him!" Frantic, my hands hovered over the terrarium, unsure what to do. The thought of accidentally killing him, even if he hadn't shown the same concern for me seven minutes ago, twisted my stomach into knots. But then, what if I opened it and he attacked me?
"Toki," I looked to my little friend for help. "What do I do? What do I do?!"
Toki cocked his head at the unmoving Yautja and then turned and slowly stalked towards the terrarium.
"No!" I slapped a hand on top of the crystal. "You can't eat him!"
He squeaked in protest.
"Because I said so!"
Toki tilted his head up at me, chittering in agitation.
"He wasn't trying to eat me, Toki, he-"
The Yautja suddenly snarled and slammed against the crystal barrier.
I squealed in surprise and threw my arms over the terrarium.
Not dead. Definitely, not dead!
"Ell-osde c'jit, pyode amedha!" He threw himself at the walls of the terrarium again and again. Rocking it back and forth, even with me leaning on it. "Tarei hsan! S'yuit-de pauk!"
"S-stop it!" I cried. I didn't want him to hurt himself. More importantly, I was afraid he'd break out and hurt me. I'd heard the stories. The Yautja lived for the hunt. And while I always wanted to study them, I would've never had the nerve to get this close. Not that they would willingly let anyone near them, anyway. If you ever found yourself face to face with a Yautja, it meant you were already dead, and your brain just hadn't caught up yet. Or at least that's what I summarized from all my collected data or lack thereof.
The Yautja roared and slammed the side of my makeshift trap again. My eyes squeezed shut, and I held on as if my life depended on it because it probably did. I heard the buzzy whine of his shoulder cannon and jerked my head up, staring down at him with wide pleading eyes. "No don't do that! This crystal comes from the moons of Eyra! It's impervious even to Xenomorph blood!"
He snarled at me, and I smacked the top of the terrarium. "It will ricochet!"
He cocked his head, most likely in confusion.
"Ricochet," I repeated, wondering if he'd comprehended the meaning.
The Yautja's gaze slowly slid over the crystal then snapped back to me when I started to fidget nervously.
"Y-you're not gonna discharge your weapon in there right?"
For a tense few seconds, his cold gaze held mine as if he were debating the odds.
"I don't want you to hurt yourself," I added hastily.
Those frigid green orbs narrowed behind the mask, his head tilting up and to the side, and I couldn't help but think I'd surprised him. Which, would imply that he'd understood me.
Is that even possible?
I'd heard rumors of Yautja speaking broken English, but I assumed that's all they were. Rumors. Marines had a tendency to spin highly elaborate yarns.
Whether he'd grasped what I'd said or not, the Yautja's cannon folded down into his shoulder rig, and I sighed in relief. But the relief was short-lived. He immediately started barking at me again and slammed his shoulder so hard into the crystal that my grip slipped. The rim of the terrarium came up and off the floor-
"Quit it!"
-I threw my weight on top of the trap. Snarling, he rammed it again.
"I said I was sorry!" I sat my butt on the terrarium and leaned over until I was facing him again. My long hair, sweeping the floor as I spoke. "Now would you please calm-"
"Na setg'ja te ik'da?!"
I groaned, feeling dizzy from the blood rushing to my head. Or maybe it was because, tiny or not, I had a livid Yautja attempting to bore holes in my skull with his eyes. "I'm sorry, but I don't understand you. And if you don't stop yelling, you're going to run out of oxygen."
He glanced down at himself then back at me with a growl and thumped his chest with a fist.
"Na setg'ja te ik'da?" his voice was several octaves lower and calmer than before. And yet, he sounded far scarier when he wasn't yelling at me and slashing at me with his wrist blades.
I swallowed hard, it was obvious what he wanted to know, but I had no answer. Because I had no idea how I'd done it or how to reverse it. The rules of nature on this planet were nothing like Earth's, or at least not Earth as we know it now. In a sense, this planet was chaos theory, personified. Not the perfect explanative, but my only other working theory was based on the old fables my father used to tell me about the Black Forest of Germany and the Faery Realm. Neither of which I could accept. But strangely enough, over time I've learned how to interact with the unseen forces, however, I sure as heck had no control over them. The last time I froze something in place, it literally crystallized into a solid block of ice. But I never thought it would be possible to shrink something. Much less a biological something!
Explaining the situation would only help if he understood me, but even then, I'm not sure I could explain it well enough. Even after living on this mysterious planet for what counted as an Earth decade, I barely grasped the complexity of this world myself.
But even if I could reverse it... I stared at the Yautja but was mindful not to meet his eyes. Everything had happened so fast earlier, that I only had an impression of his true size. Eight and a half, maybe nine feet tall, weighing somewhere around 250 kilos most of which was pure muscle from what I could observe.
"Wow," I breathed, sliding off the terrarium. I winced at the pain in my side but couldn't be bothered with it as I laid my belly on the cool, wet floor to get a better look. "You're beautiful."
The Yautja's body tensed, something I registered in the back of my mind but barely noticed. Everything about him was engineered to make him a hunter, a predator. With a unique greyscale marbling to his skin, he could easily blend into many surroundings and disappear entirely in the dark. Angry storm clouds had this coloring, and there was a distinct almost black panther patterning of spots running on the outside of his arms and legs, becoming clustered at his shoulders and down his spine. In the dim light, the spots appeared black, but I was pretty sure they were a deep midnight blue.
Fascinated by this prime specimen of natural selection, I forgot about caution. I forgot to be afraid and scooted closer, resting my chin on my forearms.
My eyes flicked to the mask covering his face, and I wondered what was beneath it. Wondered if he'd take it off-
He's bleeding.
"You're hurt!"
I'd seen the blood on the desk earlier but had forgotten about it. Abrasions streaked the left side of his body, the flesh singed and smeared with the phosphorescent bright blood. The wound patterns were familiar; I'd suffered the same injuries when my ship crash landed here.
"Stay there, I'll-" Worried, I jumped up only to immediately crumpled back to the floor as my left leg went dead. "Ow," I moaned and lifted my pant leg and the dark burgundy EM6 skin suit beneath. "For Pluto's sake... Not again!" I slapped the milky white synthetic flesh of the prosthetic. The membrane acted as skin, keeping all the fluids and so forth in, and protecting the internal mechanisms from the outside environment. The model was outdated by at least three decades and has twice as many glitches. Somedays neither of my legs wanted to work, which wasn't really a problem when the biggest threat to me on this planet has been Toki. Or at least he was up until a Yautja crashed through my window.
"Toki," I glanced at my little friend. With a chitter, he hopped up on my knee and stared up at me expectantly. Toki has two sets of sunfire eyes. Each pair is clustered close together, set high on the head and slightly vertical to his snout like a lizard's, and separated by a V-shaped crest sloping midway down his elongated skull. He cocked his head, and the crescent shaped pupils retracted in the light as they focused on me. "Fetch."
His head made several sharp bird-like jerks as he looked around the room and when he found what he was looking for he hopped down with another excited chitter and scampered off.
"Is it bad," I asked, giving the Yautja my attention again. I found him staring at me in the most peculiar way but figured he simply didn't understand what I was saying.
I pointed to the wound on his forearm, "Is it bad?"
He glanced at his arm then up at me, his eyes narrowing as if he didn't know what to make of me.
Unnerved by his intense scrutiny, I ducked my gaze and turned my attention to the stingy pain in my side. There was a palm-sized singed hole in the fabric of my shirt, above the hip. Sticky with blood and partially soaked in rainwater, I hissed as I peeled it off my skin and lifted the corner for a better look. He'd shot me all right, but luckily it only grazed me. The EM6 skin suit beneath my clothes had absorbed the worst of the heat and the impact, but it still left a pretty severe flesh wound. Like the Yautja, his weapon was significantly smaller. Which meant the weapons power, velocity, and impact were also considerably reduced. So I wasn't so much lucky, as the physics had swung in my favor.
Toki's claws clicked and scratched the ground, the little raptor snorted and growled around a mouthful of the thick leather strap that I'd tied to a walking staff. For only being a few pounds himself, it always surprised me how strong this little animal was. The staff, itself wasn't all that heavy, but it was substantially bigger than him.
"Thanks, Toki," I patted his head, and he preened at being praised.
"Okay," I dragged myself off the floor with the aid of the staff. I pointed at the Yautja, "You stay there." His head tilted up sharply at the directive. The words probably meant nothing to him, but it was obvious he at least comprehended the tone. He chuffed at me. Toki hissed and jabbed the barrier with his snout. "Toki," I warned. "Don't eat him."
I hobbled away, in search of a med kit, my left leg stiff and utterly useless. See here's the problem when I get lost inside my head. I got so wrapped up in studying the Yautja, that I'd forgotten what he was. I'd forgotten to give the predator the respect he is owed. And I forgot to stack something heavy on top of the terrarium. Because even though it was incredibly durable, it was also extremely light.
The clap of the crystal hitting the metal floor shot a painful wave of gooseflesh up my spine and into my scalp. I froze. My heart pounded so hard I could taste it in my throat. Toki shrieked.
No matter how small, you never turn your back on a predator...
A/N: Hi, everyone! Hope you enjoyed the first installment of Not Your Average Fairytale. Yes, the circumstances surrounding this story are highly bizarre, but that's the fun and beauty of FanFiction. ;) Future updates and news on this story and others (Including: Can I Keep Him) can be found on my profile page. Please forgive the grammatical errors for it is my weakness, but I am working on it. Oh, and before I forget... Mwahahahaha- cliff hanger! ;D
*Special shout out to my friend Luna Silvereyes! Thanks for pushing me to continue doing what I love to do!
Yautja Translations:
"Ell-sode": You
"Na setg'ja te ik'da": (All of the words in this sentence are not canon. I couldn't find the words I needed so I used pieces of the Yautja dialect.) Trans: "What evil is this?!"
"Tarei hsan! S'yuit-de pauk!" Trans: Unworthy! Cowardly fuck!"
"Ell-osde c'jit, pyode amedha!" Trans: "Damn you, soft meat!"