Chapter 3: Secrets Revealed
Before he could draw back his blade, Isabella demonstrated why she was still alive. Though she never liked showing off in front of others, she determined that her situation demanded it. She focused on calling her true soul and, in an instant, an anthropomorphic jaguar stood before the hunter. She rammed her blade up through his chest and chin, ending with her hand buried in his chest and the tip of her falcata sticking out of the top of his head. His dieing look of surprise said it all. She then ripped her sword out, splitting his head and chest wide open in a spray of iridescent green gore. His body started to fall over, but it was kept on its feet by the blade impaled in the tree. She cut off his arm just above where the blade's housing was mounted, letting the body fall the rest of the way to the ground. She resheathed the falcata and tried to pull the blade that was pinning her to the tree out of it. However, she found that the hunter had been so strong that even her enhanced strength could not pull it out. "Great." She applied all of her strength and snapped the blade out of its housing, thus opening the way for her to push herself forward off the blade.
She fell to the ground, as she did not have enough time to either brace herself against or bleed away her forward momentum. She shaved away the cauterization the hunter's plasma had caused on the stump of her leg, crawled over to the hunter's corpse, and began to feast on his flesh. It tasted like shit, but it would do. She forced herself to ignore the taste, and, before she knew it, she had already ripped away and gulped down most of the hunter's heavy musculature. Feeling rather full, she crawled back over to the tree and sat against it to sleep off her meal.
She awoke about four hours later with her leg almost completely restored; now missing only the foot. A few minutes later, even that problem was rectified, and she set about finding the others. Their scent, though faint, was still strong enough to follow, and she did so.
In just under an hour, she caught up with the group, but she stayed out of sight. After all, her kind wasn't entirely accepted in the world. However, she would have to reveal herself very soon. She saw that one of the hunters was stalking the group. "Hell. If I'm going to reveal what I am, I might as well do it with style," she whispered to herself. She climbed into the nearest tree and began leaping from tree to tree until she was close enough to the hunter, who had begun firing on the humans. They dove to cover and began spraying inaccurate fire in return. They were so inaccurate that the hunter did not even have to move to dodge; a couple of rounds even clipped the branch Isabella was standing on. She drew her falcata and pounced on the hunter, driving her blade into his right shoulder as she landed and hung on for dear life.
As he roared in pain, the humans stopped firing and peered over their pieces of cover to observe the fight. As the hunter spun around, trying to dislodge Isabella, Royce caught sight of her and asked, "What the Hell is that?"
She drew out her blade and stabbed the hunter again with a growling grunt. Grigori was the first to notice all the details and make the connection. Wait. Female. That denim jacket. That forward-curved sword. There is only one girl that we know with that ensemble. But, he kept his thoughts to himself and was content to watch her fight.
She then ripped her blade out through the hunter's back and dropped off to slash her blade through his hamstrings. As he fell to his knees, she flipped the blade and delivered a backhand slash across his back. He growled in defiance, but she knew that he was done. She walked around to stand in front of him and stared holes through his mask; she wanted him to remember what had taken him down. She saw the plasma cannon begin charging up, so she punched the cannon, causing it to fire wide to the right. Before it could fire again, she grabbed it and tore it off of his shoulder before throwing it over her shoulder, never to be used again. She raised her arm and swung the falcata through his neck as he extended his arm blade and ran her through. With a gurgling growl, his head slowly tilted backward and then fell completely off of what remained of his neck, which spurted blood in sympathy.
She breathed heavily, out of breath from both the effort of killing the hunter and its last blow, which knocked the wind out of her. She ripped out the arm blade and collapsed as it nicked her spinal cord. She heard the charging handle of a weapon being cocked and looked up; only to find herself looking directly down the barrel of Royce's AA-12.
"Listen. I don't know what the fuck you are, but you had better give me a damn good reason not to blow your brains out, right now."
She was about to speak when Grigori walked up and pushed the weapon's barrel to the side. He knelt down and said, "Isabella."
She smiled. "Well, well, well. You managed to see through my jaguar form. I might as well stop all of my lies. First and foremost, my name is not Isabella. It's Xena. Second, my dad did not die studying Mayan ruins. He actually died defending his family, me and my mom, from the serpents. The hunters had an arrangement with my people. They would provide us with the technology and know-how to build a civilization, and we would, once every century, provide them with their 'ultimate hunt:' the serpents. The last batch got out of control and began a plague that would have wiped out all life in the region if it were not contained. My father, a werejaguar like me, died as he tore one of the serpents in half. It turned out that they had acidic blood. As it was standing over him, his body melted entirely as he was bathed in acid. The hunters were forced to activate their failsafe: an explosive device that completely destroyed my city."
"So, the hunters have been coming to Earth for a long time?"
"Far longer than I have been alive. They have been coming more often in modern times."
"Guatemala, 1987," Isabella interjected.
"Yes. As well as a few other times. Three others off the top of my head: Los Angeles, 1997; one of them interfered in a drug war between two cartels and the local PD, while a government team tried to capture it. There was one survivor, Lieutenant Michael R. Harrigan, LAPD. Bouvetoya Island, Antarctica, October 2004. Another of the serpent hunts occurred. A satellite owned by Charles Bishop Weyland, billionaire owner of Weyland Industries, discovered a pyramid under the ice. Again, there was only one survivor, their guide, Alexa Woods. Later that month, the hunters' ship crashed outside of a small town in Gunnison County, Colorado, releasing several captive serpents. Not many details came out of that event, other than that Yutani, Weyland's oftentimes business partner, destroyed the town with a nuke, covering it up as a meltdown of the local power plant. There were four survivors, but they were made to disappear shortly afterward. Oh, and, from the LA '97 event, the government official in charge of the capture team gave it the name 'Predator.'"
"Jesus, where'd you get that information?"
"Remember when I said that my father's friend made my falcata for me? Well, he was actually my personal friend, and he had a few dozen of his friends embedded high up in the government. High enough to have access to information that others would prefer not to have even known about, much less have known in their entirety. Yutani was able to keep the information on the Gunnison Incident covered up, except for the military involvement, which went to the government."
"And your friend's friends saw fit to impart this knowledge to you?"
"Well, I was actually called in repeatedly to help them interpret the incident reports. However…"
"Let me guess. You never encountered 'Predators' like these before?"
"Not even close. The ones I'm used to seeing are…"
"Yeah. We know what they look like."
"Well then. I guess that I've imparted all the knowledge I can. What can you tell me about these new hunters?"
"Well, they have sensors that extend beyond any spectrum of light, specifically a sonic sensor. They can fire the blades that are mounted on their arms…"
"The older hunters could do that when they went on serpent hunts."
Royce ignored her interruption. "They are far stronger than the smaller ones. They set traps similar to a hunter's bear trap back home. They come down in threes with their own ship that waits near their camp…"
"Then let's go get it."
"They can trigger a self-destruct device on that ship."
