No Regulations
The voracious Xenomorph screeched with a fury that burned like her acidic blood, invoking fear in the minds and nerves of her impending prey, who shudder with the realization of their own inevitable death. But this adversary stood resolutely, intrepid and steadfastly undaunted. Feet planted firmly in the ground, posture stable and headstrong, the Warrior braced himself for whatever combat would ensue.
They faced with fierce eyes, not twenty yards apart. So distant and yet so near, each feeling as if they could taste the other's atmosphere. And perhaps they could, considering their individualistic stenches permeating the air.
The Xenomorph, unquestionably the more feral of the two creatures, hissed with an enflamed ferocity, her intent lethal not only out of rapacity but of sheer hunger. Ropy strands and globules of opaque saliva sprayed from her gritted line of metallic fangs, dripping from her blunt chin and pooling at the feet. The black talons of her four limbs, curved like scythes, scraped the loam of the ground on which she stood during the clenching of bestial fists. Like a bull preparing to charge, she lowered her arched cylindrical cranium and snorted, visible breath billowing from her nostrils despite the torrid climate. The fearsome creature hissed again, and again and again, presenting its aggression in its guttural vocals due to the lack of eyes in its skull.
Meanwhile, her opponent—the gallant Warrior—stood stagnant and stoic, showing its own reserved belligerence in the flaring of its acute ruby eyes. Beneath the protective mask he wore, the Warrior's hideous face squirmed with anticipation of commencing the fight. A battle with no rules or regulations, no audience to witness the victorious nor the defeated, nobody but the two combatants doing the deed for no-one other than themselves.
And the fate of their species.
The fate of this world.
The ignition of the duel was with whomever made the first move. The Warrior's veteran intellect told himself that, out of eagerness and impatience, the Xenomorph would strike first—or make such an attempt. And out of that the Warrior would perform his counterattack, only to succeed in his opponent's unbeknownst failure.
The Warrior's confidence was high, so elevated that his morale was nothing short of arrogant. And despite his species' notoriety for honoring the fight and the victory—or even the defeat—this particular aggressor saw nobody but himself in the end of this one.
Nonetheless, the Warrior did in fact have his doubts of the outcome.
In his lifetime, many of his comrades have triumphed over their opponent only to come out with a severed limb or a slashed eye. It was this, the consequent compensation for a deleterious battle, which his kind honored so much.
The risk in it all, and what it meant to win.
The Xenomorph, on the other hand, had had her own fair share of battles. Most of them were with her own species, though, bickering over a piece of appealing flesh or having a dispute about something commonly regarded as ridiculous. But in the end she has triumphed, and she wasn't about to let this one Warrior eliminate her from his list of rivals.
Besides, she was hungry.
The Warrior's experienced intellect was affirmed as the Xenomorph made her move. She slung her whip of a barbed tail forward, snapping the air and drawing up chunks of dirt on its path of swift withdrawal. For Xenomorphs it was like the spark for the ignition, detonating the mute confrontation into a full-fledge duel.
The Xenomorph took her chance to hit the Warrior first, leaping airborne as she retracted her tail, protracting lean arms and gaping her small but powerful maw.
Without his rather unfair Plasma Caster, a shoulder-mounted cannon which automatically targets enemies for termination, the Warrior is left with nothing but his brute strength, combat tactics, and melee weaponry. So, crouching to a three-point stance and bracing himself for impact, the Warrior glared up at his incoming adversary.
Their clash was tremendous, the Xenomorph's weight bearing down on the Warrior in an instant, knocking him supine and commencing a struggle of tooth-and-claw. The Warrior, rolling pendulously on his back but unable to neither flip nor overturn the Xenomorph, immediately brought up his right forearm to keep a safe distance between his face and the jaws of his opponent. Jaws consistently snapping, saliva rolling down her maw and onto the Warrior's helmeted visage, the Xenomorph was close but not close enough to deliver the finishing blow. And this struggle could last forever, though if it ended imminently it wouldn't be to her favor, seeing how her first strike had already failed—she hadn't gone fast enough, hadn't made a move directly for the Warrior's head in time.
Now she saw only negativity for herself, so she began to withdraw when an idea popped into her merciless mind.
The Warrior, on the bottom of this typical struggle, realized his underestimation in the Xenomorph's ability to fight back. Noticing the lengthy tail lasso itself in preparation for the strangling—if not the kill—the Warrior acted quickly against the Xenomorph's own coup. He drove his left clenched fist square into the Xenomorph's right temple, knocking the creature off himself and causing it to roll aside, shaking its head in reorientation.
Scampering to his feet, the Warrior got in his own three-point stance just as the Xenomorph hopped up to hers. They glared at one another for a couple seconds before acting, the Warrior first this time.
He shot his left arm to his back, where a Ripper Disc was holstered, seizing it with all five clawed fingers. Withdrawing it in another instant, the Warrior—with a powerful flick of his wrist—hurled the circular metallic disc forward. It spun as it sliced through air with a great whirring sound, making a wide arc to the Warrior's right before veering into the Xenomorph. It struck the creature after a swift second's airborne time, walloping it at a lethal angle with astonishing velocity. The rotary Disc's smooth edge easily sliced through the Xenomorph's left shoulder, tearing off a large chunk of her scapula as she attempted an evasion.
Evidently not working, the evasion itself was severely crippled when the creature began flailing in agonal fury from its wound. Simultaneously, the Ripper Disc boomeranged back to the Warrior, who took it in a metallic clap to his left palm, returning it to its astern holster. Meanwhile, acidic blood the color of lime and the substance of slime gushed from the Xenomorph's shoulder wound. The gash was long and wide, spurting incessantly these geysers of blood and remnants of the creature's hide into the air.
Standing at a safe distance as these globules of blood ate through the earth on which the two combatants stood, the Warrior watched with a confident gleam of pre-victory in his eyes.
The Xenomorph, on the other hand, struggled to cope with this injury as she continued to thrash herself about and wriggle in pain. But the blood flow ceased after a moment, now only oozing gradually, leaving her to a critical limp on her left forelimb.
The leer they shared was only a brief interjection of their ensuing battle, the Warrior no longer wishing to further ado his triumph.
He leapt for the Xenomorph, roaring arrogantly and hearing the echo reverberate in the confines of his mask. One leg bent and the other arrowed, one arm crooked and the other protracted, the Warrior ejected two serrated blades from his wristband, making a metallic shing as they jutted forth. The Xenomorph, left with a severe lack of agility, was forced to take on the pouncing Warrior with whatever strength remained in her.
The Warrior came down upon the Xenomorph with all his force, driving the two wrist-blades into the creature's chest. The jaggedly sharp metal easily pierced the creature's rugged hide, puncturing tissue and flesh and drawing masses of blood. The actual force of the Warrior's body-weight came instantly second, tackling the Xenomorph and propelling her backwards. But with the wrist-blades still, for the time being, hooked into the creature's chest, the Xenomorph brought the Warrior with her in a tumbling roll. They decelerated the further they went, seeming how the Warrior fought his hardest to withdraw from the Xenomorph. But he had once more underestimated the feral creature, since its bodily agility was no more didn't mean the efficacy of its nimble limbs were too. Thus entangled in the lanky arms and legs of the Xenomorph, the Warrior already begun to feel the acidity of her blood abrading his wrist-blades and gradually climbing up to his arm.
Their awkward tumbling finally slowed as their roll on a planar terrain struck an ascending hillside, driving the wind out of the Xenomorph just as her tail seized hold of the Warrior's throat. Barbed skin effortlessly sliced through the Warrior's only unprotected portion of his entire body, the tail tightening briefly before the Xenomorph lost her own conscience from the impact which halted their roll.
The Warrior was left coughing for air as he withdrew his right arm, slinging acidic blood into the air and watching as it eroded both wrist-blades, staggering backwards on sore legs before collapsing supine. He struggled against his impending death, hoping that he had at least killed his opponent even in the wake of his own demise.
Still detecting life—although only a faint beacon of it—in the Xenomorph's body heat through his visual infrared, the Warrior resolved to his last resort. He flipped up the panel of his other wristband, trembling fingers jabbing a keypad that would activate a self-destruct detonation…
But he was too far in.
Even the slightest of strength from such an underestimated foe had brought him to his departure from this world—a world he still did not quite comprehend, and now never would—thence forced to face the possibility of his rival living beyond this point.
Of him, losing. He has been defeated.
The remainder of life in him was choked from his lungs, from his gashed jugular, before his clawed fingertips could punch-in the final code.
And there he gazed skyward, his body going stiff then limp, yet another loss in this war.