The Huntress
Lex had always been one to push herself harder than anyone around her, which was no doubt why she was renowned as one of the greatest survival experts the world had ever seen, but she soon learned that there were dangers from far beyond her world. Surviving for months on end in a rain forest was nothing compared to being hunted by black serpent like creatures through a pyramid like structure; it wasn't nearly as thrilling. Killing one of those things, even if it was in a moment of sheer panic, had awoken another desire in Lex that far surpassed surviving in the wilds of some long hidden and isolated place on earth. The thrill of the hunt was a new and exciting thing for Lex to experience and boy did she experience it. Where before she would go out to see how long she could survive, only killing creatures for the need to sustain herself, Lex now found new joy in the act of hunting itself.
Those massive hunters, especially the one that saved her life, inspired Lex to both hunt strong creatures and to take trophies from their corpses. Although, just like those hunters, Lex used primitive weapons to take down whatever she wished to hunt. The Combi-Stick had proven to be Lex's favorite weapon when it came to dealing with large animals that tended to fight back at close range, otherwise she would stick to a bow and arrow that she had hand crafted not long after taking up this new lifestyle. So gone was the simple environmental technician that only wanted to climb mountains and see the world; in her place was a woman who had taken up the hunt of strong creatures.
A six years after the pyramid incident, Lex found herself living deep within the Amazon rainforest, using only her skills to survive. Lex had killed just about one of everything that resided in her forest, using the edible creatures for food and taking their skulls as trophies, and had gained her fair share of scars along the way. There was one point when a panther, both very large and very mean, had managed to escape one of her traps and rake it's extremely sharp claws against her back. The panther had it's skull taken as a consequence and Lex learned to never underestimate a cornered animal ever again; not to mention gained a new set of scars. However, animals weren't the only creature that Lex learned to hunt, not after living in one of the most dangerous parts of the world for just over half a year. Slavers, mercenaries, drug lords, military, and just about anything that came into Lex's small corner of the world was fair game in her eyes. Maybe the pyramid events warped her mind, maybe it just took meating a real hunter to draw out this savage side, or maybe it was just her way of honoring Scar while ridding the world of some trash.
It didn't matter much in the end, because she was the hunter and everything else was her prey, or at least that's what Lex thought. Lex currently found herself climbing through thick trees, not hiding from a predator below, but hunting a group of mercenaries hired to kill whatever was living in the forest. She had already killed one of them, although the others didn't realize he was gone until he stopped checking in, and his severed head was waiting for her back at her camp.
"I'm telling you man, this place doesn't feel right," one of them commented, his accent was thick and english cleary wasn't his first language.
"Don't be such a pussy; we just have to find the animal killing the locals and put it down. Basically, if it bleeds then we can kill it," another one said, unaware that he was about to step into one of Lex's traps until it was too late.
The man's scream, as he fell down into a pit filled with sharp wood spikes, was lex's signal to release the arrow aimed at the other mercenary, effectively silencing two men and still giving herself enough time to get away. Lex watched, from her new position in another tree, as the remaining mercenaries swarmed to their friends location and only found dead bodies. Another arrow was notched in Lex's bow, her aim was dead set on a mercenary's heart as to kill him instantly and make his body drop into a thick area of foliage, but before she could release the bowstring there was a bright flash of light. The last thing Lex heard was the sound of men screaming and a deafening roar of victory that sounded all to familiar.
Lex began regaining consciousness from the sound of heavy wind blowing past her ears and a slow steady beeping noise coming from somewhere on her body. It was only when she opened her eyes that Lex realized she was actually falling from an extremely high altitude, seeing as when she managed to flip around she saw only clouds below. Panic began to set in, no creature wanted to die falling out of the sky, and the moment she passed through the thick clouds she realized just how close the ground was. It was only at the last possible moment, when the fall wouldn't kill her, that the parachute on her back seemed to spring to life and the huntress crashed through the jungle canopy below.
"Shit!" Lex screamed just moments before colliding with the hard and unforgiving ground; the air being knocked out of her before everything went black once more.
Lex's dreams were filled with nightmares of oily black serpents and the horrors she faced in that godforsaken temple, how she gunned down one of the people she was charged with looking after.
"Lex, please, don't leave me! Lex!" Lex shot up from her nightmare, unknowingly reaching for the Combi-Stick that had been strapped along the back of her waist, which she hadn't had on her before that blinding white light.
Both sides of the Combi-Stick spring to life with just a simple flick of a barely seen switch, extending it from a simple two and a half foot long metal rod into a deadly spear about as long as she was tall. Lex found no other creature around her, especially those damn serpents, and allowed her sense to slowly come back to her.
The first thing she noted was the fact that she actually had her Combi-Stick with her, along with a new metallic looking bow and a quiver that stored no less than twenty five arrows that looked to be made of the same material. The second was that there was a familiar looking device now attached to her left wrist and an even more familiar mask clipped to her left thigh. Lex could have sworn that it was Scar's mask, the hunter she thought died nearly a year ago, it even had the same marking on it. Lex slowly unclipped the mask and examined every little detail of its dull gray surface, noting that it was actually smaller than Scar's mask and the marking on the forehead didn't look like it had been burned in by acid blood. Having nothing to lose, Lex slipped the mask over her face, noting how it seemed to stay in place despite not having any clips or straps, and was further surprised when the information being presented to her was in english.
Yet, just seconds later, the peacefully quiet forest was suddenly disturbed by the sound of machine gun fire. Lex didn't even hesitate to get her bow in hand and start running towards the sound of the shooting, absentmindedly noticing that the device on her wrist activated and her entire body seemed to become invisible. By the time Lex reached the general area of the gunfire, she found three men being held at gunpoint by a woman with a sniper rifle. They clearly didn't hear her approach, not to mention couldn't see her, and it was for this reason Lex decided to stay hidden from them.
"You want to lower the weapon?" the gruff, and clearly American, man asked, trying to sound as not threatening as he could.
His only response came in the form of the woman slowly shaking her head while making sure to keep her weapon trained on the random yet heavily armed group. Lex, on the other hand, silently drew one of her new arrows from its quiver, noting how sharp the tip looked and how smooth the material was, and placed it on her bow. If this boiled down into a fight, Lex would be damned if she wasn't prepared to get involved.
"I've never seen this jungle," the mystery woman began, "And I've seen most."
"Y-You think it's Asia, maybe Africa?" the man with the minigun, of all things, was apparently Russian.
"Too hot for this time of year; Amazon maybe," the woman waited a few minutes, observing their reactions very carefully, "I saw more parachutes."
"Which way?" the American asked, slightly adjusting his grip on his weapon.
"Why?"
"So I can figure out who threw me out of a fucking plane," Lex smiled ever so slightly at the man's irritation, for he clearly didn't enjoy the trip back down to the ground.
Lex followed the group for quite a ways, even noting the Japanese man that had seemingly appeared out of thin air just moments after the others started walking, and absentmindedly wondered if this was how Scar felt back in Antarctica. Sure this wasn't some fucked up pyramid designed to test a new hunters ability to fight black skinned creatures that had acid for blood, but it was rather trilling. Lex even noted how this strangle cloaking field seemed to make her movements even more silent than they already were, further allowing her to understand how Scar's race was able to move around so silently even with their massive size. In the end, Lex watched from the branch of a tree as a prison inmate, if the bright orange jumpsuit was anything to go by, fought a dark skinned man that sounded like he was from somewhere in Africa.
The two grown men were going at it like mad dogs, not even noticing when four other people literally walked up on them, and seemed hell bent on killing each other. It was only when the inmate managed to get on top of the other man, with a stick ready to pound the man's head in, that the fight actually paused.
"You with him?!" the inmate half asked and half shouted, his voice showing clear signs of exhaustion from the fight.
"No," the sniper woman stated flatly, but the inmates distracted state gave his opponent time to punch him in the ribs before throwing him to the side.
Both men struggled to get back to their feet, clearly noticing how out gunned they were, but the inmate didn't want to appear intimidated and just had to open his mouth.
"Then why don't you mind your own fucking business?"
"We have bigger problems."
By this point, Lex knew for a fact that none of these people knew who or what dropped them out of the sky and into the middle of a jungle. She had half a mind to simply leave them on their own and let their clashing personalities eventually rip them apart. Hell, that was a tactic she had used on a band of mercenaries that came into her own corner of the jungle one year, hired by a local warlord to find out who had been killing his men and why. Yet it was the reminder of the mask on her face and device on her arm that compelled Lex to stay with this group, if only to find out who or what had given them to her in the first place. Then, if it came down to it, Lex felt confident in her ability to pick them off if she had to.
"Maybe we should get that guy hanging in the tree?"
'Great, another person to add to this group,' Lex thought as she silently climbed down from her hiding spot and continued to follow the slowly building group of strangers.
If the prison inmate annoyed Lex, then the man screaming like an idiot while hanging from a tree would send the dark skinned woman over the edge in only a matter of seconds. Out of all the people she was following, at least half of them knew how to survive in the wilds enough to know how not to attract any possible threats. As it stands, Lex was poised in another tree with her bow trained on the man's heart. He was loud, annoying, and more than likely giving away their position to whoever dropped them here in the first place. What little morals she had left told Lex to let the man live, but the predatory instinct she had developed over the last few months told her to end him.
BANG!
The sound of a gun being fired, followed by the hanging man falling into the small body of water below him, shook Lex out of her thoughts and nearly made her release the arrow right at the American man who had shot. No, she was being impatient and being kidnapped had only worsened her mood, Lex needed to calm down and plan out this hunt. Her target, whatever bastard put her here in the first place. So that's what she did, in the roundabout kind of way. Lex got far enough away from the group to where she could scout, but also stay close enough as to keep an eye on them. There was something wrong with this place, she could feel it in her bones, the very air around her seem to make her blood vibrate with anticipation. She finally found something worthy to hunt and what a hunt it would be.
There was a sudden movement to Lex's left, only noticeable thanks to the mask she wore detecting a slight electronic sound and relaying it to her HUD. There was another hunter in these woods, and Lex didn't like to share. Lex ever so gently pulled her combi-stick from its clip on her waist, ready to extend it at any moment, before a slight shift in an open space allerted her to another person using the same type of camouflage. She was on the person in a matter of seconds, her vizor changing vision modes to detect the barest amount of heat coming off her prey, and extended her weapon at just the right moment to empale the person right though their neck.
Fresh red blood splattered Lex's mask and upper chest, her spear having nearly torn a hole clean through the person's throat, while the prey's camouflage dissipated just seconds later. The prey clearly had on a similar mask to Lex, although it seemed to be either modified personally or damaged over time, but what really caught her attention was the gun like weapon resting in his right hand.
"Not a hunter," Lex whispered, purposely keeping her voice as low as possible just in case there was anyone else in the area, as she ripped her weapon from dead flesh.
A man like this, one who couldn't have defended himself from such a brazzen move, didn't deserve to wear the mask of a hunter; so Lex poised her spear one more time and drove it cleanly through the eyeholes of the mask. His gun however, even if it wasn't very honorable when it came to hunting, may still come in handy in a tight situation. So, with another weapon strapped across the base of her back, Lex left the dead man were he lay and moved to intercept the group she had been tracking.
It appears that in her time scouting, Lex had unknowingly allowed the group to get farther than she had first expected them to. Making up the distance between them was really the problem, the problem was that she now had a much clearer idea of what kind of opponents they were all up against. It was no questions that she had a Predator mask along with the man she just killed, the only question was where these Predators like the one she faced in the temple or where they completely different? If it was the former then she could do something about that, but if it was the latter then they might have a fight on their hands.
When Lex eventually did catch up with the group, her cloak now firmly set back in place and her movements is silent as ever, she found then standing around some kind of monolith coming out of the ground at an odd angle. The monolith itself was covered in very strange markings the likes of which Lex had only ever seen in one place, although they seem slightly different than the ones from the pyramid. Then she noticed the familiar sight of trophies piled up at the base of the monolith, which only further cemented her belief in what they were facing.
"Who would do this?" the only other woman of the group asked, looking slightly disgusted at the side of so many skulls and other trophies of similar nature.
"Whoever they are, they collect trophies. In my culture, the warrior with the most trophies commands most respect," this time it was the black man who spoke, to which Lex noticed how he seemed to scan the tree line again as if looking for something.
"Yeah, whatever," the inmates scoffed, his clear dismissal of a hunting tradition nearly made Lex put an arrow right through his throat.
"It's a test," the Russian began, "To see how we do under pressure."
These people were going to die, this was conclusion Lex had come to, they simply had no idea what kind of monsters they were facing. They might've been the monsters back on earth, but they didn't know the first thing about how these creatures operated. They didn't know that they had cloaking devices, energy-based weapons that could rip through the best of humanities best armor, and thousands upon thousands of years of hunting experience and tradition. So while this group of humans were running around trying to figure out what happened to them, the hunters were no doubt watching their every move and studying the best way to take them all out. Lex knew that she could survive, at least for far longer than this group could, but that would mean she would be outnumbered. Perhaps it was time for this lone Predator to join the pack.
"It's not a test," Lex's voice echoed to the entire area, putting everyone in the group on edge, while the huntress herself silently crept up behind the group and positioned herself behind the one that claimed to be a doctor, "It's a hunt."
Lex allowed her cloak to disengage just as she brought up a knife and put it to the doctors throat, using him as a human shield against the rest of the group. You could tell that they were all shaken by the sudden appearance of some strange feminine looking creature that now held a nasty looking knives to the throat of the only doctor they had.
"What the hell are you?" The American man with the shotgun asked, silently debating on whether or not he should take out the doctor along with the woman.
Lex slowly reached up with her unarmed hand and cautiously lifted the mask from her face, the very predatory grin on her face at the rather surprised looks, "I'm the one who knows what's hunting us."
"And what's that?" The Mexican asked.
"Creatures not from our world, creatures whose entire culture is built around hunting other creatures. Their massive in size, have energy-based weapons, can cloak themselves to be nearly invisible to the naked eye, and they only brought us here for one of two reasons. One: this is a trial for the younger ones of their race, a rite of passage if you will into adulthood. Two: these are the adult ones and they've brought us here simply to make trophies out of our skulls," Lex explained, being extra careful to keep the doctor between herself and the guns now aimed at her.
"You expect us to believe crap like that, that aliens have abducted us just to take our heads trophies?" the inmate was really starting to get on Lex's nerves, but killing him wouldn't gain their trust.
"It doesn't matter if you believe me or not, that's the facts."
"Then why don't you let go of our good friend there and we could talk about this like civilized people," the American suggested, yet the barrel of the shotgun didn't waver in the slightest.
"Because I know the look of a fellow hunter of man."
You could cut the tension between them with a butter knife, that's how thick it was, but it was nowhere was bad as the staring contest going on between Lex and Mr. Shotgun. This was a battle of wills between two predators, two beings that have hunted their own kind for sport, and whom ever won would be the alpha between them. The American lowered his weapon first, surprising just about everyone there.
"If you're telling the truth, and that's a big if, then we're gonna need all they help we can get," it was a lie on his part, he was playing along to get the doctor out of the line of fire.
"Keep heading in the direction you were going, you'll really believe me then," Lex's grin grew even more as she slipped her mask back on and vanished from sight once more, "Better get moving, they've no doubt picked up your scent by now."
'I'll let those idiots see the truth for themselves, but for now I need to hunt down some food before I starve,' Lex thought as she took off back into the jungle, leaving no trace that she had been there in the first place, and began looking for the tracks of any native animal big enough to hunt.
Lex eventually did come across what appeared to be a set of tracks, only this creature seemed to have ten claw like fingers on each hand while the back set of prints looked more the horse hooves. Judging by the indent the creature left in the soil, which was surprisingly dry given how much vegetation was in the area, it probably weighed somewhere around one hundred to one hundred and twenty pounds. Any creature that weighs that much and has claws like that isn't one to be taken lightly, although Lex couldn't deny the primitive thrill of hunting something completely new.
The huntress managed to track her prey all the way to an open grassland with a riven running right through the middle of it. The creature she was hunting was indeed large, looking like some bastardized mix between a leopard and a crocodile. Small patches of fur lined the majority of its body but turned to scales around the legs and head. Powerful legs, no doubt built for running after its own prey, would be a problem if it decided to run. There was also the fact that she didn't know any vilat points on the creature, so she would have to either pin it down or cripple it with one devastating attack.
Almost as if responding to her desire for more information, the biomask seemed to suddenly scan the physical appearance of the creature before bringing up no less than six different vital points that could kill the creature almost instantly, or at least incapacitate it. With this new found information, Lex drew her bow and readied an arrow, slowly stalking closer to the creature as she did so. Lex took a deep breath, drew back her bow string, and took aim at a small area just between where the creature's head meets the neck. The bow string was released and the creature feel half a second later, Lex's first animal kill on an alien planet.
Now came the fun part of dragging her kill to a preferred location to both set up camp and cook herself some meat. That location turned out to be the entrance to a cave system, to which Lex made sure to check for any other signs of life. It wasn't perfect, but it would do for the moment. Now the only problem left to be solved was finding the big bad hunters before they find her, and that wasn't going to be easy. Still, Lex had learned long ago to take breaks whenever they willingly presented themselves.
Half an hour later and a fire was lit, Lex had removed her biomask, and a leg of the killed creature was being roasted over the flame. Lex herself had moved to sit in the shade of her temporary home and was closely examining the wrist device and strange looking weapon she had taken from the pretender. The weapon itself was about as close to a human gun as you could get when it came the alien technology, although it fired quick bolts of plasma instead of bullets. The wrist device, on the other hand, seemed to have the self destruct function locked away and only the cloaking device seemed to be active.
Then there was the fact that wearing the armor somehow managed to enhance her already impressive physical capabilities. They fishnet worn beneath the armor also seemed to regulate her body temperature from the outside, being able to be adjusted depending on what circumstances Lex found herself in.
"Just what are you guys getting at?" Lex asked herself as she examined every minute detail of the wrist device, "Why give me this armor and yet leave those other poor bastards hanging?"
The sound of gunfire in the distance made Lex shoot to her feet in an instant, grabbing her gear as she did so, and shoot off into the jungle while activating her cloaking device. It didn't take Lex long to find the source of the gunfire, but she was surprised to find strange hound like creatures attacking instead of the hunters she was expecting. Still, never one to turn down a kill, Lex exploded into the clearing with her combi-stick already extended and ready to draw blood.
The doctor was the closest one in danger, having tripped on the uneven forest ground and allowed himself to become vulnerable to the hound that had decided to chance after him. It was only seconds before it could pounce that Lex shoved her spear right through the creature's neck, killing it almost instantly. The huntress didn't waste time checking on the doctor, if he lived or died was up to him now, because her next target was two of the hounds going after Mr. Shotgun and the Japanese man wearing a suit. They didn't last long however as Lex extended the wrist blades on both her gauntlets and viciously stabbed one from the side before swiftly turning to decapitate the other as it lunged at her!
Warm blood now coated Lex's hand's, chest, and the biomask she was becoming more accustomed to wearing. Her adrenaline levels were through the roof and all she could think of was taking these creature's skulls as trophies to add to her collection! It was only the sound of a high pitched whistle that broke Lex from her bloodlust, which ironically also called back the strange hounds that had attacked the group.
"So, let's say we believe you now," was the first thing Mr. Shotgun said, having a newfound appreciation for the type of threat Lex posed to anyone that wasn't on her side.
Lex smirked under her mask, "I thought you would."
As the group slowly pulled itself back together, considering they were all running around like chickens with their heads cut off just a few moments ago, you could tell the majority of them were more than a little nervous about Lex showing up again. Well Mr. Shotgun seemed a little more at ease around her, not to mention the good doctor owed her his life, but the rest didn't even hide the fact that their weapons were casually rested in the huntress' general direction.
"Oh great, now the crazy bitch is back," the convict groaned as Lex, once again, removed her biomask and breathed in the fresh air.
"This crazy bitch didn't turn out to be so insane when you saw the planets in the sky, now did she?" the amount of sarcasm Lex laced her words with should have been illegal.
"Not to get off topic or anything, but what the fuck just happened?!" the doctor was, by far, the least composed one of the group and his constant screaming and shouting was giving away their position.
"Like I told you, we're being hunted, and our hunters just released their dogs on us. Although this doesn't seem like the hunters I saw in the past, there's no honor in flushing out your prey when you can hunt it down yourself," Lex whispered the last bit to herself, trying to make sense of what little she knew about the hunters and what she was experiencing now.
"Ok, here's a better question, how do we survive?" Ms. Sniper Rifle asked, adjusting her grip on the weapon ever so slightly.
"It's simple really, we kill them before they kill us. That's the way all hunts go."
"Alright, before we go any further, everyone do a shell count, we've got to conserve ammunition," Mr. Shotgun ordered, instantly going to one knee and ejecting the large clip from his shotgun.
"I'd do as he says, these guys don't go down easy and you're gonna need every bullet you've got," Lex commented, which finally got the others to actually reload their weapons.
"How do you know so much about these creatures?" the large black man asked, clicking a new magazine into his machine gun.
"I guess you could call me an honorary member of one of their clans. You see this scar," Lex gently traced the symbol that Scar had burned onto her face so many years ago, "One of their hunters gave it to me after I killed a serpent creature they hunted as a rite of passage. It marks me as one of them, as far as I can tell, and I'm also guessing that it keeps me safe from being hunted by others of their kind."
"So these big bastards hunt snakes?" the convict asked, a bit of condescension in his tone that sent a shot of irritation through Lex's body.
"Imagine a seven foot tall creature, straight out of your worst nightmare, with claws and a tail sharp enough to rend solid stone, able to scale just about any surface, has acid for blood, and reproduces by laying eggs inside a living body which then hatch by bursting through your chest. Not to mention the queen of the species that's about twenty feet tall and has more piss and vinegar in her than a whole army of pissed off convicts, like yourself. That's what they hunt you fleshy waist of human life," Lex ended in a growl, unconsciously moving towards the target of her ire while placing the tip of her spear right up against his throat.
"W-Well, when you put it like that," looks like the saying about all bark and no bite was true for dogs and humans.
"Wait, what happened to the cartel guy?" asked the doctor, who was apparently the first to notice their missing member.
"HELP ME!" a voice cried through the area and second later they were off, Lex slipping back on her mask as they ran.
Eventually they came upon the mexican man sitting in the middle of a clearing, only the clearing was covered in thick foulage that was no doubt hiding many nasty traps for any poor soul foolish enough to stumble into them. Lex knew, practically right away, that this whole situation was nothing more than another trap, one set up by their hunters to observe their prey. It was the american who acted first, proving himself smarter than the others by throwing a heavy rock into the mass of plants. The bladed traps it suddenly set off made nearly all of them jump, which only proved Lex's theory that they still weren't ready for what they were facing.
"We need to save him," the sniper stated, trying to spot a clear path were there weren't any traps, only to stop when she felt Lex's hand on her shoulder.
"He's already dead," was all Lex said on the matter as she switched out her combi-stick for her bow.
It didn't matter if the man was still breathing or not, he had allowed himself to be captured and used as bait. The hunters would come back for their trophy when they got the chance, which means they needed to be very far away by that point.
"Help me," the dead man groaned again.
"He's still alive, we can't just leave him," the sniper argued.
"Wound one man. Make him suffer. Make him bleed. Make him call out for help and set a trap, then kill all those who come. I know because I have done this," the black man said, his tone tained with fear as he scanned the tree line, knowing full well the danger they were in just by standing where they were.
"We can't leave him, he's one of us," the sniper continued to argue, which made Lex think this wasn't just about saving one man for her.
This problem needed to be dealt with before the hunters finally get tired of this standing around and just kill them. Faster than most could react, Lex fired an arrow from her bow right into the wounded man's back, piercing his heart and killing him almost instantly. The others jumped at her sudden action, none of them expecting her to actually put him out of his misery.
"These hunters will use everything against us, including our own morality. Make no mistake, in this jungle, it truly is kill or be killed," Lex calmly walked away after that, remembering all too well the man she killed all those years ago back in that god forsaken pyramid.
The next thirty minutes were filled with nothing but silence, with Lex calmly leading them through the dense jungle. The plan she had come up with now was simple; track the hunter's dogs back to their camp and try and ambush them with overwhelming numbers. The plan itself was more than likely to fail, but Lex needed to know just what kind of hunters they were dealing with. Using human bait, releasing hounds; those were two glaring traits that didn't seem to fit with the hunters she'd met before. Maybe it was just because they had been young hunters, that they weren't allowed to use such things on their trials, but that just didn't feel right to Lex.
"You know these creatures so well, how do we kill them?" Mr. Shotgun asked, making his way up to Lex's side while still scanning the forest ahead of them for any sign of movement.
"They want us to run, that's how they like to hunt," Lex stopped walking to examine the forest floor for any more tracks, "This is their jungle, their game, and their rules. If we keep running then they will just pick us all off one by one."
"What's the alternative?" asked the sniper, having overheard part of their conversation.
"The dog tracks keep going that way," Lex pointed in front of them, "We go after them. If we're lucky then we can catch them flat footed, maybe take one of them out by surprise."
"Will that even work?" the russian spoke up for the first time in a while, his accent thick yet easy to understand.
"If we're extremely lucky and don't alert them to our presence, which is why I'm gonna scout ahead. They shouldn't even know I'm coming," Lex said, cloaking and walking away before any of them could protest.
"Am I the only one just a little worried this bitch is just leading us to our deaths?" the convict asked his fellow group members.
"No," Mr. Shotgun grunted, adjusting the grip on his weapon, before continuing in the direction the tracks went.
The group continued to follow the animal tracks for about another half hour, being forced to move slow so as to not alert their apparent hunters; if they weren't already being tracked. They eventually stumbled upon the hunter's camp themselves, having neither seen nor heard Lex since she vanished into the jungle under the guise of scouting ahead. Mr. Shotgun wasn't completely convinced Lex was actually on their side, even if she says she's against the hunters, and it's for that reason alone he kept his finger firmly right next to his weapon's trigger.
"See anything," Mr. Shotgun asked the female sniper, who had been doing her best to scan the camp ahead with her scope.
"No, but that doesn't mean something's not there," she whispered back, not taking her eyes off the camp.
"We'll move in slow, keep our eyes peeled for any threats, and bug out if we're attacked," it wasn't the best plan, not by a long shot, but it's all they could do with the gear they had on.
So, like lambs being led to the slaughter, the group slowly began making their way into the hunter's camp, straining their eyes and ears for anything that may be out of place. The deeper they got into the camp, the more they began to see just what these monsters were capable of. Corpses, some human and others not, hung from tanning racks and dead trees all over the camp, leaving behind the stench of rotting flesh and wet mud. Each member of the group was visibly shaken by the gruesome sight before them, although it was the inmate that chose to voice what they were all thinking.
"Looks like we're not the only things being hunted."
Still they walked in deeper, unaware of the three hunters observing them just a few yards away. Yet it was also those three hunters that were unaware of the huntress observing them, her bow drawn and an arrow aimed at one of them.
Lex found this place long before her fellow humans had and, thanks to the bio mask she had been gifted with, managed to spot the three hunters before they could spot her. So she hid and observed, wanting to know everything she could about these hunters as to learn how to kill them later on. It's too bad some of that group had to die first. This would also prove to be the best chance at taking one of them out with the least amount of risk of exposing herself.
The group stopped moving down below, something truly out of their minds hanging before them. It was, what they thought, one of the hunters that had been tracking them, although this one was bound up like all the other pieces of meat that littered the camp. It was massive in size, no doubt standing at least eight feet tall, had muscles on top of muscles, a large protruding forehead, a face only a mother could love, and several dreadlock like protrusions extending from its head. It was this strange creature that distracted the group just enough for Mr. Shotgun to slip away unnoticed, although Lex made sure to keep track of him.
A mighty roar suddenly tore its way through the camp when the Russian decided it would be a good idea to walk up to the chained hunter and tap it with the barrel of his minigun. Needless to say, the hunter was not pleased in the slightest and his violent reaction made just about everyone shit their pants. Lex wasn't going to lie, she found it particularly amusing when the inmate suddenly lost his cool and started freaking out. Although that amusement didn't last long for said annoying inmate was suddenly impaled by no less than three cloaked spears, spears that extended and nearly ripped him in half doing so. Then Mr. Shotgun came out from his hiding spot and began unloading in the general direction of the other hunters.
"RUN!" he shouted before unloading more rounds, pausing for brief moments to see if he could spot anything.
Three flashes of light, from the bio masks of the other hunters, was the only sign Mr. Shotgun needed to know he'd been right about them having the same strange cloaking device that Lex did. Neither he nor the Russian wasted any time unloading their weapons upon where the hunters had been standing, just barely noticing their distorted forms nimbly evade their line of fire. Lex, on the other hand, was a more patient hunter
A savage grin formed on Lex's face as she released her bow string and watched the cloaked arrow fly through the air like it was shot from the god Apollo himself. Glowing neon green blood splattered the ground and a guttural roar, far deeper than the chained hunter's, cried out through the chaos. Lex'd managed to hit the creature right where its spine should be, assuming the humanoid shape of these hunters was anything similar to humans, and watched in joy as it fell to the ground like a puppet with cut strings. All it took was another arrow to put it down for good; Lex decided it best to move on and come back for her trophy.
The huntress was gone before the hunters even realized what had happened.
Lex eventually made her way back to her little camp, which now had a slightly burned but still edible animal burning over a barley lit fire. It was fortunate no other predators smelled the easy meal and claimed it for themselves, or there simply were no other predators left alive in the area. Still, this gave Lex a chance to actually eat, since the other humans had ran off in the opposite direction and those hunters were no doubt tracking them. Now the only real question was if she should go and free that chained up hunter, after she claimed her trophy from her early kill of course.
Once more the bio mask seemed to come alive of its own volition and project a glowing red screen right in lax's face. The image displayed before her was of a familiar looking hunter, the very one that marked her as a warrior of his clan; Scar. The image of scar then slid to one side of the screen and an image of the captured hunter appeared. It clearly wasn't scar, but the flashing red word underlining both pictures gave Lex pause.
"Brothers, shit," Lex growled, sounding a lot closer to one of her fellow warriors than many humans ever could.
"Why did you guys send me here, your whole group could have wiped these big bastards out? What's the point?" Lex wanted to scream at the holographic screen, but all it did was fade away back into the bio mask resting next to her.
It didn't matter at this point, Lex owed Scar her life and she could repay that debt by rescuing his brother from whatever was going on. So she did the one thing she could do at the moment, rest and prepare for the hunt. The sun was beginning to finally go down when Lex's eyes snapped open and she collected her gear once more.
On Lex's trek back to the camp she spotted several fresh kills surprisingly close to her cave. The Russian was the first one she found, or what was left of him anyway, for his entire torso looked like it bore the brunt of a massive explosion. It was also noted that one of the other hunters lay dead just a few yards away, it's tusk decorated mask having been completely destroyed, meaning he had killed the hunter by sacrificing himself. There was some honor in sacrificing yourself for your group and the kill, despite it being with explosives, was still a good kill. Lex placed the hunter's mask on the Russian's chest as a sign of respect.
The next two Lex found were the African man and the Japanese one, both of whom had been skinned before being strung up off a tree branch. Lex didn't even pause when walking past their corpses, they died as prey not predator. Then she came upon the doctor, who was somehow still alive and crawling through the mud.
"H-Help me," he managed to beg, reaching out to Lex for help.
"No."
I've had this chapter sitting around ever since Predators came out so many years ago, let me know what you guys think. Maybe I'll make up a second chapter if enough people enjoy it.
