J'ah-k - Jack
Chapter 21 I never fall I always jump
Ke'laith was lost in thought as he stalked corridors making sure to meander with little speed back to his ship. Indeed he had to tell his brother the information N'aphui had bid him to pass on but there was no hurry to deliver such worrisome news. The turmoil he felt at being part of something quite so bitter tasting, however small a role, had even managed to put him off his reason for being at market that day. His arms were bare of items besides those he had come with though his stomach was at least filled with dinner and just enough alcohol to blur his melancholy into pleasantness. Who was he kidding, he could barely stand which was the real reason for his slowness. Also he was lost.
"Wher' the fucking fuck 'm I?" Ke'laith paused to lean against a corner with both arms, turning a right angle into an isosceles triangle, and tried not to shame himself with vomiting.
"Hey!" A shrill voice much like an electric current coursing through his spine called to him with some volume. "Hey?" The voice was quieter this time but closer to his person so the sense of being audibly assaulted was the same. "Master?" This time he understood what it was saying and peered under a tensed bicep to get a better look at his not so silent assassin staring up at his dishevelled self. "You're not him." Susan's expression of elation deflated in a sigh of disappointment before balancing out to a friendly smile with added bonus curt wave. "Greetings brother." She tried the little alien talk she was proficient at apart from the swearing of course. "Had a good night?"
"Fuck I'm dru'k."
"I know how you feel." She nodded not having understood a word he rattled but the haunted face of 'Friday night Saturday morning' was apparently universal to both their species. "Do. You. Speak. English?"
"Go, leave m' demon! I'm n't ready t' greet Centanu thisss day."
"Yeah, sure. Look, the thing is I'm kind of lost and hungry and Wanker isn't here so could you point me in the direction of 'Master' before you go and die here? I. Would. Really. Appreciate. It. Just not sexually, don't get me wrong, I'm sure you're a very attractive lobster alien and all the bitches are just oozing off your limbs normally but well, I'm just way to much sexy for you to handle without dinner and a roofie first."
"Paya save m'!" Ke'laith attempted to crawl away whilst standing and using his hands to pull on the wall but was somewhat unsure of which direction was up causing his body to instead droop sideways and get his dreadlocks all in his face shocking him into thinking he had gone blind. "Let me die 'n peace!"
"Okay, that's not helpful. I don't even know what a 'urghfffrpp click click growl Paya' is." Susan moved to the yautja's side endeavouring to push the leaning tower of Pisa back into a pseudo straight position with only partial affect.
"Su'ven?"
"Uh? Oh." She paused her rescue attempt in order to peer around the much to heavy drunk at a sight that made her grimace harder than the prospect of getting puked on. "Rat..."
"Ke'laith?" Rat'ein seemed more surprised than concerned at first, as if he was immediately assuming Ke'laith guilty of harbouring similar thoughts to his own in concern to the alien female, before his jealousy had a moment to subside and ascertain only victims of circumstance in his presence.
"'m glad you're herre brotha" Ke'laith drooped against his comrades helping arms, wide-eyed and trying not to fall captive to the ooman creatures gaze. "I'm seein' ghosssts o' prey past."
"No, brother, you see Su'ven. Wy'strn's ooman. The one he brought back from the ooman world many weeks ago."
"It's h'deous!" The cream coloured pilot shook in a mixture of revulsion and stomach churning drunkenness.
"You are drunk!" Rat'ein growled low, paw gripping the other males waist a little tighter than necessary as he steadied them both to standing with a trained warrior's ease.
"I'm not dru'k enough!"
Rat'ein sighed despondently as he began hefting his load of weighed pilot goods slowly forward one sure foot followed by a wobbly one after the other. Getting this intoxicated in the middle of a corridor was embarrassing for both the yautja and the reputation of their hunting ship combined. What had Ke'laith been thinking? Luckily only Susan and himself were around to see the fracas but Paya's good fortune was not on their side for long.
"-ill you if you stay in my home any longer!" Gor'ah chided a harassed looking Wy'strn as the sibling pair marched around a corner. "You cannot hide like a coward! Think of the example you set for the young ones." She gave her pup, dangling limply in one arm as if he had lost the will to live, an unresponded shake to indicate the target audience.
"I do know sister, you do not need to berate me every step of the way." He was exhausted at hearing the same hen pecking reaching his ear from the last couple of days; all he had wanted was a relaxing break to clear his mind. "Living with a wild thing is simply tiring and-"
"What is this display?" Gor'ah cut in, not really listening to her baby brother's excuses anyway, as her eyes fell upon the sight of two males groping one another as they tried to slink out of sight.
"Hunt brother, hunt sister." Rat'ein began with an apologetic expression only to be disrupted from his explanation of the current events.
Susan had taken a long hard stare behind the drunk and the pervert as clicking, snarls punctuated with the odd alien word she sort of understood filled her ears from the opposite end of the corridor. She had of course recognised Wy'strn immediately, looking as if torn between falling on a sword or using a sword to make heads roll. The alien kidlet, something between a small child and an older toddler, seemed to be in some sort of emotastic self-pity party the human woman could relate to but its mother, father, whatever that thing was, stuck out like a half remembered book laying dusty on a shelf. Who was that? Why was that alien so familiar looking when they all pretty much looked alike?
And then it hit her like a kick to the gut followed by the sting of a sharp blade biting her flesh. The only thing left to do now was scream at the top of her lungs, creating quite the scene; and the once lethargic lobster baby to lift its head in excitement and attempt to claw its way out of its mothers arms in an attempt to give chase after the fleeing prey creature.
"Letgoletgoletgoletgo!" S'eiv chanted as he did everything but bite to get free to no avail.
"That is not for you." His mother gave him another shake to hush his tantrum, eliciting an aggravated wail from the youngster before it went back to drooping with added fermenting.
"I should catch it." Wy'strn groaned as he made to move froward, past the now rambling pilot and the younger hunter frozen in stunned horror. "And YOU," Rat'ein was dimly aware that the emphasis on the 'you' was merely to prevent slurred names from exiting his hunter brother's mouth, "I will speak to you of this later."
"But Wy'strn-"
"I will continue on and await your arrival, blood brother." Gor'ah ended Rat'ein's attempt to spew excuses, much as she did with her sibling earlier.
Wy'strn was quickly out of sight as he took off into a great striding run in hot pursuit of a small ooman female. The hunt would not be a long one, what with Susan still screaming and leading him right to her as well as her lack of much speed. The problem was the bit where he knew the frightened animal would try and bite him again.
"I had nothing to do with this, hunt sister." Rat'ein immediately began defending himself the second his friends sister – and ex mate – began giving him the stink eye of accusation. "I was just walking home when I came across Ke'laith and the ooman and stopped to help. I am innocent I swear it on my honour."
"Ke'laith? How many deviants are there on this vessel?" The female yautja was surprised to say the least but mostly just disappointed; what had happened to this generation of males? "You begin to make me worry for my blood brother."
"That is not my meaning. Fuck." Rat'ein was feeling pressured, frustrated but most of all angry at being taken so far out of context; as if one mistake should not only mar his once spotless standing but now everyone he came into contact with whether it were true or not. "Do not twist my words so."
"And who are you to make such demand of me?" Gor'ah did not much like the insolent males ordering words and showed it in threatening tone and posture that soon made him reluctantly lower his heated gaze. "Remove this... shame, defeated by mere spirits, from so open a place. You may not care for yourself but I do at least for my blood brothers reputation."
"Yes, hunt sister." The young hunter ground out in a low rumble with added taping of his mandibles to indicate his annoyance despite the otherwise submissive appearance he now took as the female passed he and his burden in the corridor.
"Bye." S'eiv waved at the two males now behind his mother as if in a sign of solidarity with fellow victims of the merciless beast still refusing to suckle him.
Yes, she was still screaming her head off. Yes, she was dimly aware of how stupid this looked. No, she did not care as much as the aliens popping their heads out of previously closed doors did. No, the scarf thing she used to keep her voluptuous bosom in check was not managing to contain the jiggle as much as one might hope whilst running and screaming on an alien ship away from something that once skinned you. With that in mind, coupled with the burning sensation running the circuit of alveolus, bronchiole and trachea every time she wheezed between increasingly crackled screaming and panting, Susan's fevered brain took to the next best option when fleeing was too difficult for not the most aerobic of chubby thighs. Why did running make everything hurt so much and chafe? No wonder she never took it up as a hobby like those mineral water drinking skinny bitches in the park that always looked as if a good bowel movement might actually kill them. This was not the time to think about rabbit food eating ladies of the yoga pants club, not when her priorities were trying to remember what came after screaming and running that she had been thinking about before the thudding footfalls of someone chasing behind her startled her back to the first reaction.
Oh right, hiding. Was it still hiding when the thing you are hiding from can see exactly where you are about to hide?
"GET OUT OF MY WAY!" Susan croakly shouted at a startled female yautja before shoving the alien out of her way and climbing into the open ships panelling the engineer had been working on.
"What do you-" Jen'yaya was bewildered by all the screaming, alien shouting and finally being man handled by a sweaty looking ooman creature before her face slamming onto the floor sparked her lady yautja rage into growling clawing fury. "Get out of there you short fat hairy-ah!"
"Leave it!" Wy'strn skidded to a halt, beside the engineer trying to prevent vermin from climbing inside the ship's systems, simultaneously karate chopping one paw between female yautja digits and ooman cankle whilst pushing Jen'yaya away with his opposite palm to the side of her face. "The ooman is mine!"
Finding herself on the floor for a second time, but with a huge towering difference, Jen'yaya was unable to remember how to get furious as all the blood in her body drained out of her extremities towards her heart in order to allow a sense of humiliated fear room to fester unhindered. This place was far worse than she initially feared it would be; having to work her way up from the bottom of the social ladder with hulking hunters everywhere showing off. The part where an unappealing, for a trophy, looking ooman would be the one the males were showing off for was just weird though. She really needed to get out of the way anyway, the scary hunter in front of her currently taking a dirty bare foot to the jaw was starting to snarl as well as growl. Yep, Jen'yaya was just going to squeak some nonsense about diagnostics and retreat backwards into the cockpit where she could lock the door and pretend everything abnormal was just not happening.
"Let go of me!" Susan was both shimmying deeper into her hiding place whilst repeatedly kicking her unfriendly captor, trying to drag her out but finding her sweat against his somewhat reptilian skin a slippery lubricant. "Get off you pervtard!"
"FEMALE!" Wy'strn's anger was growing in volume as well as scratching as he attempted to make up for the lack of friction between their skins with his claws. "I swear by the inevitability of the black warrior, I will tear this ship apart and drag you from where you hide and toss you from the nearest airlock if you do not come out of there!"
"Fuck off!" She finally managed to get fully inside her panic room, now scrunched up tight into a ball and tangled into wiring, where the green and black mottled arm swatting inside the panelling could not reach her any longer.
"So be it!" His words were low, dangerous but most of all filled with a malevolent promise of horrible things to come the shiver in her spine told her she might actually regret.
There was a great deafening roar that reverberated along the metal surrounding the ooman female, causing wiring to vibrate and her teeth to chatter as she slapped her hands over her ears and instinctual tried to make as little sound as possible despite the building tension constricting her vocal chords. Oh he was mad this time, like super beef cake, going to rip out her heart and feed it to her mad. She had to wonder where he was going to put her skull on his wall of death but then again she hardly had any time for thinking now the crazed alien was snarling and punching, the way to thin to save her, wall to get at her. This was exactly the time where a hero or one of those cowboys that actually has a horse needed to step up to the plate and be hunky and rescuing.
"Hunt brother?" An older yautja, going grey in the tendrils though not having managed to complete the look of silver foxing, stood passive two arms length away from the younger male currently destroying public property.
"This is not your business!" Wy'strn paused his denting of high grade space ship walling in order to growl at someone else and switch to using his foot to cave a panel almost entirely out of its hinges.
"Is this not the wall of the ship I live on?" The older hunter tried again calmly.
"I am retrieving my pet." He finally relented to the conversation if only to have a moment to catch his breath.
"Can you not simply pull it out?"
"It kicks and bites."
"Then it does not wish to come out?" The elder came forward to inspect the damage to the wall as well as crouch and peer curiously into the darkness of the opening.
"Do not look at me with such admonishing eyes. My mood is only angry because this fucking thing is forever
trouble." Wy'strn began pacing back and forth like a caged animal, arms doing all manners of articulations as if having some internal monologue his fellow hunter was supposed to guess the meaning of.
"I may be getting old and having senile thoughts but I lost the taste for killing the ooman's decades ago." The older yautja rose from his crouch, transfixing the fidgeting male with a deliberate stare that oddly seemed to pacify the other male into stillness. "One to many good conversations with wobbly footed children." He continued with a distant gleam of forethought before waving off memory and drawing attention to the elephant in the room. "They are a sentient species."
"I know!" Wy'strn boomed with a mixture of irritation and excitement. "It's what makes them so entertaining for the hunt. But it's not as if they are capable of being on our level of understanding."
"Have you tried and tested this theory yet?"
"I'm a hunter and a historian not an educational psychologist." His brow furrowed suddenly suspicious of the older male in his presence. "And if this is some ploy to experiment on my ooman-"
"No, of course not." The silver fox lifted both palms with a flick of his wrists before returning them to a loose folded position against his waist. "I only meant reason may prove a better ally than destroying the ship."
"Perhaps it would... if Su'ven were anything but unreasonable!"
"May I at least try?" He tried his best not to sigh as the younger hunter went back to pacing back and forth before receiving a grunted affirmation. "Su'ven?"
"Fuck off!" Susan was not in the mood for whatever was going on outside her wire nest.
"Su'ven, I am J'ah-k, one of your neighbours on the sky ship." J'ah-k spoke softly, least he spook the creature any further, with a strangely english accent that certainly got the real brit's attention. "Why do you hide in such a place?"
"'coz..." She sniffled, not actually crying any longer but the residual of snot from an earlier silent sob was getting in the way of breathing now, and began a tale of whining woe. "There's this huge monster out there that hurt me, really hurt me and he's in on it, that bastard... I don't know which is worse... that one skins me and the other one makes me look like something out of a Frankenstein movie and then there's this other one that, that just wants to molest me and then... that bastard, locks me in that fucking fucked up shit hole he calls his home and runs off for weeks leaving me there with nothing to do or eat... he's such an asshole, he won't even let me touch his precious books. They're stupid anyway! It's all just naked aliens doing weird shit with spears that looks a hell of a lot like porn to me!" She paused to take a breath as the two yautja exchanged uncomfortable expressions where she could not see. "Speaking of porn... sometimes he sits there polishing this one weird looking skull on the floor between his legs for hours at a time. That is some messed up infatuation he has with a dead thing especially when he starts purring over it and you know he bathes in this shit that stinks worse than a farm yard and then he complains about my 'scent' all the time. I actually bathe properly with water sometimes twice a day but that bastard... once a week at most. He's the one that smells bad!"
"You two have a great many unresolved issues." The older male clicked disapprovingly at the younger before returning to his talk with the ooman in her native language. "I'm sorry I've gotten lost, Su'ven. My mind is not as young as it once was. Though all your complaints sound reasonable," he allowed his tone to shift a manipulative level of grandfatherly, "could you explain to me again why exactly you are hiding in the wall?"
"Because of the monster!"
"That would be my sister." Wy'strn huffed disapprovingly at the name calling of his favourite sibling.
"You let your sister play with your pet?" J'ah-k chided.
"No!" How exactly was he the one in trouble now? "It was long ago, there was a... misunderstanding. Gor'ah, got a little carried away and, er, tried to kill the ooman a bit. I had the damage repaired and it is better than before now. I don't understand why she is making such a fuss over this now."
"Su'ven, from what I understand you have nothing to fear from the monster. Wy'strn says it was only a misunderstanding long ago." The older male continued his mediation of the situation with a meditative ease.
"Long ago? LONG AGO!" Susan gave the dented wall a kick from her side gaining her a rumble of disapproval from her captor. "Is that what that bastard told you? It was only like a month or two ago! It attacked me in my hotel room, dragged me by my hair out of the bathroom, tied me to a post, called me names and got all creepy and sexual with my thighs and a knife!" Her volume and pitch was now so high her voice was turning into a headache inducing squelch of miffed sound the two aliens seemed surprised she could reach and manage to sustain. "Wy'strn I swear you are on crack! I'll tell you what, I'll come out when you kill that thing and put its head on your wall!"
"OOMAN!" Wy'strn bellowed back, incensed and livid at the temerity of such a lowly creature to demand something so heinous of him. "If you think I am going to kill my own sister for you-"
"Where is your hunters patience?" The elder yautja had to physically block the way to the trapped ooman in case blood really was spilled between the bickering pair.
"I left it in my other loincloth." Wy'strn snarled back trying to push past his elder only to be denied access.
"Sister?" Susan's indignation was something to be reckoned with. "SISTER!" She shrieked as she struggled her way head first out of her nest much like a newborn seal being birthed along a shoreline. "Come here I'm going to bite you again and this time I swear I'm going to use the canines you fucking assholic, fuckwading dick faced BASTARD!"
"Let go you-" As much as Wy'strn had thought he wanted his hands around the ooman's throat he soon came to realise he should have left the female where he found it but that was too late now, it had its teeth dug into his thigh as promised. "GRRRRRAAAAWL!"
"Well, your pet is out of the wall. Good luck, Wy'strn." J'ah-k lifted both arms in surrender of the situation as he backed away from the scuffle taking place.
"Do not leave me with it!" Wy'strn pleaded despite the other male already having disappeared around a corner and instead tried his most tested and futile of reactions to this sort of situation. "No! Bad ooman! BAD!"
"Fuck you!" She snapped back at the admonishing, managing to get a good slap in across his face as he tried to pull her away from him by her now tangled hair.
The whole debacle had quickly escalated into the equivalent of a large alien male trying not to kill a small ooman female, yet get some hits in, cat fight with lots of quick paced slapping without claws flying back and forth between them. When she started punching him though, his rage had finally kicked her off her feet and sat on her so she was face down and unable to do much more than flop uselessly like a fish out of water.
"Get the fuck off of me!" She wheezed indignantly still trying to reach him despite the awkwardness of the angle she would need to twist into.
"No!" He loomed over his captive, tresses clacking together where metallic rings met from the motion of lowering his head closer towards her puffy red face in an act of gloating. "Stupid ooman always-Ah!"
He had not expected to find the infinitesimal movement of tilting forward to relieve enough pressure on the small females back for her to bend her arm in such a way it could connect. The experienced warrior certainly had not equally imagined the connection of wrath fuelled flailing could possibly find his one, and expected, body weakness but the hit was certainly a critical effect. There was nothing more for him to do in the situation apart from make a pained yowling sound and collapse on his side with both hands cupping his man junk.
"Why do you always have to be such an asshole to me!" Susan wasted no time getting up to return the favour of looming gloating; though the additional kick she had wanted to give him was halted by the completely pathetic mewling over his sore balls her big scary alien kidnapper was making.
"I am the one on the floor protecting my-"
"Oh fuck you!" She yelled loud enough to make him flinch at the force though even when silenced for a moment and in obvious discomfort that would not stop the impossibly self-righteous hunter from sitting up and opening his mouth to retort. "No! Fuck you!" She cut him off again, punching him in the side of the arm though with such lack of strength behind it it seemed more like a pretence for physical contact. "You have no idea. No idea." Her legs seemed to give out on her as she sunk down onto her knees and palmed her eyes as a bout of sobbing and fluids gushed from her nostrils which made the alien grimace at both sound and sight. "I just want to go home. I even want my stupid telemarketing job back and my boring friends and my ridiculously over priced flat with its delightful view of the local dogging site every first Tuesday and second Thursday of the month." She shook her head in disbelief of the situation and what she was saying, casually wiping her nose every now and then along the back of her hands. "I want to eat beans on toast made with bread I bought for the bargain price of twenty pence on a Sunday morning because it was past its sell by date but still tastes great if you just stick it in the freezer and put it in the toaster to defrost. I want to go back to high street stores full of clothing not in my size and even if it is in my size somehow doesn't fit me anyway because people that don't look like they starve themselves 350 days a year apparently look like circus tents instead of women. I want to go back to being set up on dates by my friends with some guy they know that says he had a really great time then never calls me. I want to have Christmas dinner at my parents house where my mother drinks a little to much sherry and burns the dinner but we all still pretend its fine and eat our way round the burnt bits pretending we actually like each other for a day. I want to go home. It's not half as miserable as it is here with you!" Her crying suddenly hit its crescendo at her revelation, her whole body shaking to accommodate the attempt to expel all the fear and sorrow welling inside her probably long before even visiting Phoenix; and then came the second stage of grief. "I wish I'd never met you! I wish I'd never found that stupid mask! I wish I'd never gone to Phoenix! I wish those guys had raped and killed me in that alley! I HATE YOU AND I HATE IT HERE!"
There it was, back to being angry shouting Susan again. Wy'strn sighed heavily having only half listened to the parts of her ramble he could actually make out and unable to comprehend what the rest of it was along the subject of; something about camping, eating, males and four legged animals. Yes, yes, she wanted to go home, he got that bit but it was not going to happen and there was hardly anything he was going to do about it. Not with the clan elder still alive at any rate.
This was all Rat'ein's fault.
"I am not a dog..." Susan struggled half-heartedly against the muscular arms winding around her and dragging her into the large male's head patting embrace.
"No, you're a Su'ven." Wy'strn yielded to being used as a tissue as recompense for a little peace.