Author's Note: And any reason I had to continue writing this story have ended, so I will continue my once a week publishing until I run out of chapters. This is the first of Five, Read, Review, Favorite and Enjoy.
Chapter 18: The Hunters and Hunted
"Bang!" An ecto beam was loosed from the tip of Manny's finger gun and blasted off a chunk of one of the buildings that he enemies were shooting from. "Bang! Bang! Bang!" Followed quickly thereafter by three more shots demolishing the roofs of more buildings. Having figured out that Manny out classed them at range three of the Yautja had moved in closer and were now at a suitable distance to begin close quarters combat. "Well now yeah making things interesting!" The three Yautja charged, surgically implanted claws and arm blades drawn and began slashing at Manny. Manny's response was to tank all of the hits with his body getting the often serrated blades lodged inside of his flesh in the process. Naturally the Yautja tried to pull the blades out, and when they failed a look of 'oh crud' could be seen in their eyes as they saw the smile on Manny's face. "Let's go for a spin!"
Manny went from Zero to Two Hundred in an instant and stopped just as fast, ten miles above the surface of the planet. Then with the same force that Manny used to take off through the air he began spinning around at an enormous, alarming rate. The three Yautja came to understand what it's like to be put into a centrifuge as their blades slowly parted from Manny's body, before that it they were sent flying through the air. Dani watched as the three alien hunters were splattered across the ground, walking up to one she plucked the arm computer from his broken body, a little damaged but nothing that couldn't be fixed with some TLC.
"Fix-It I got something for you." Dani didn't know if the little Techno-goblin could hear her but it seemed quite receptive to when she put the damaged arm computer on her own limb, assimilating the device and upgrading it with superior Galvan technology while Dani's energies entered, bonded with it and repaired it. "Now than, where to next?" The Yautja's ship was located some distance away, if what she knew about the alien hunters were true then that meant it was full of DNA samples from fearsome monsters, sadly though this device didn't make mention of where their ship is actually located at. "Lovely." Dani turned invisible as she spotted a Yautja limp out of the ruins of the city, he snapped a small rod in half and jammed the crystal like pointy ends into himself. After he stopped screaming his body had been patched up and he walked away now that he was healed up. "That'll work."
Contrary to Daniela's expectations, the place that the Alien arrived at after several minuets of walking was what looked like a heavily fortified bunker, same make as the city so it wasn't his ship.
"Little Knife was it?" It was a Tharpod, a vaguely turtle like alien, from what Dani's information had told her it was rather unusual for Yautja to work with Non Yautja. This one in particular was extremely old, a fact accentuated by the crude glasses it was wearing and mobility chair he was sitting on. "I saw earlier, your seniors were wiped out by the creature that arrived here on Ephemeris." The video footage of Manny turning the Yautja into paste played, 'Little Knife' was not amused. "Would you like me to send the footage to your people? Either they will send more Hunters to hunt this fellow or Warriors to eliminate them as a threat."
"'send the footage'" The Tharpod's distorted voice echoed out of Little Knife's mask.
"Done, in the mean time I'll activate the locator beacons so that you can find your comrades remains." With that the Tharpod tapped a few keys on a keyboard and brought up a radar like screen. "Oh good one of them seems to have landed right on top of us." Little Knife spun around claws in his left arm drawn and aimed directly at Dani's invisible head.
"Now I know what you want to do." Dani turned visible with a finger gun pressed underneath her chin and fired the ecto beam directly into her head. Much like the bodies of the Yautja Manny had splattered Daniela's brains went all over the back wall of the facility. Confused Little Knife simply moved to cut Dani's arm free of the computer but to his surprise saw her fallen form getting back up, the splattered brain matter turning to smoke before rejoining her body and remaking her head. Little Knife jumped back and readied his own plasma caster to do what he hoped would be more lasting damage against Daniela. "And what exactly do you think that will do?" Asking that Daniela turned her attention to the Tharpod. "I didn't know that Yautja had reactions to other Races aside from parting their heads and most of their spines from their bodies."
"Not true they're also known for flaying their foes alive and hanging them where their comrades can find them. But yes these are unique circumstances." The Tharpod stated steepling his fingers. "My race makes for poor prey, but excellent engineers who were in the midst of a bit of a problem." The Tharpod gestured to the huge space ship sized UFO that was parked nearby. "One that's typically two hundred feet long. There have been others though usually what they lack in size they make up for in powers and psychotic tendencies. The Yautja while excellent hunters are oft poor engineers with only a crude understanding of their technology. Our partnership has been... mutually beneficial thus far."
"Where did that thing come from anyway?" Daniela asked looking up at the screen depicting Ephemeris.
"One of our people built it, under the influence of those." Daniela looked around the laboratory: critters like the ones she saw aboard the Ephemeris. Some looked like birds, others oversize squirrels, a few were really big slugs.
"Birds made you people build that thing?" The Halfa's skepticism was clear.
"They call themselves Loki." The Tharpod turned around in his chair and opened a diagram. "Disembodied energy beings who in order to survive outside of their home world must take on host bodies." Then the turtle man gestured to the cages where the creatures inside were projecting sympathetic eyes. "Small ones, though they attempted to manipulate us into building technology for them that could let them take on stronger forms for their own. Mostly we keep them around to do what they did before: they telepathically dump ideas into our heads, and we decide which ones we utilize. In exchange they are allowed to take on some host bodies, though they still attempt to subvert our control."
"I take it their attempts have failed then." Daniela stated noticing a distinct lack of giant monsters on the Loki's part. "Not for a lack of trying." The Tharpod stated pointing in the air with his finger. "Even if there was no one to stop them, the project had a massive and fundamental flaw to it."
"A sapient mind cannot handle the pure savagery of such creatures, nor can their savage brain process a fully sapient mind resulting in rampant brain damage to the subject." Daniela stated legitimately impressing the Tharpod Scientist while the Yautja just looked confused by her talk. "I've run into a similar problem." Daniela explained as she floated over to the Tharpod's console. "To help solve that problem, I require the use of a creature with the ability to heal damaged brain tissues, but it can wait." Daniela pulled over the screen that showed Manny still going after the Yautja in the city. "That is my brother, and he is every bit as difficult as I am to kill. What do you think the implications are going to be if you people keep going after him?" The Tharpod and the Young Blood looked at each other apparently having come to the same conclusions.
"Yoo Hoo! Where are you!?" Manny shouted floating over the Tharpod city, without much luck. He did however Spot Dani who was glaring up at him with a severely displeased expression on her face. "Oh come on!" Manny landed in front of Dani. "I didn't even do anything this time!" Still looking severely unamused Daniela looked around her at the destroyed buildings, dead Yautja, and rising columns of smoke.
"Luckily, thanks to me, we can stop wasting our time on these ones." Manny didn't seem to think it was so lucky, he was having so much fun too. "I convinced them of the futility of their situation, but before we go we should consider acquiring more powerful weapons and creatures for this thing." Daniela stated holding up the pocket watch like device. "Fantastic, I'll do the fun stuff and you can do the boring stuff!" Saying that Manny zoomed off into the air, as Daniela noted he failed to differentiate Fun and Boring.
Meanwhile the Young Blood and the Tharpod scientist were reviewing the considerable amount of data that he was able to gather on the individual who visited them.
"Interdimensional energy hmm? Not unlike the Nethers. Luckily we have a sample of their genetic code." Daniela probably should be more careful in front of whom she blows her head off. "Calibrating energy signature, uploading modification to Plasma caster and... done." The Tharpod leaned back to show his associate his handiwork. "It should be more effective against them, though until we can figure out a way of keeping them from regenerating I'd advise against attacking them." The young blood took his modified weapons and headed out, before the main force got here he would scout out the enemy, thoroughly.
Manny had found a 'Gadgetron' vendor and was now perusing it's contents, among them he found something that made him smile. As someone with the ability to manipulate sound the concept of a musical weapon appealed to him. Course it's so rare to find this concept put into practice. Case in point, the RYNO V, a combination Missile launcher and Gatling gun that fires off missiles in turn with with a piece known as 1812 Overture. What was that? He had no idea but the thought of a missile launcher that could be programmed to unload it's explosions in tune with music made him happy. The issue here though was in trying to buy the damned thing, because from what he can tell it doesn't exist until he gives the vending machine it's payment and it makes it, 1 000 000 bolts. 1 000 000 of anything would demand time and effort to collect no matter how you looked at it, and he didn't even know what that was to get some.
"Alright then, back to the town."
Daniela was stocking up on supplies, even though she and her brother are immortal things get inconvenient for them if they don't eat, stressing the limits of their entropy, not to mention that their immortality only regenerates and not provide energy for day to day activities. However the local currency confounded her, a highly advance scientific civilization and their currency was literal scrap metal. That was not a jab at hard currency, rather what she saw the people exchanging hard fought supplies for mere nuts, gears, springs and of course bolts, that last one seemed to be the catch all term. Daniela didn't have enough interest in the subject to find out why only that she needed to get her hands on some.
"Well now that's promising." Dani stated looking at a poster with a picture of a bolt at the bottom followed by a seven digit string of alien symbols. "That's interesting." Dani looked at the contents of the poster and winced when she saw what it actually involved doing. "Great. I have to go get the idiot now."
Point of interest Manny came to her, in one of his rarely thought out acts of planning ahead he brought along something that they could feasibly sell at the market place, sadly though the giant fire breathing worm he had hoisted above his head was still alive.
"Manny!" Daniela flew above the area, scanned the worm with the Nemetrix, before confronting her brother. "Chuck that thing away I got a way you can make some real scrap!" Daniela shouted tapping her finger on her arm impatiently.
Daniela led Manny to a massive gladiator arena, it seems that ever since the Loki had been dethroned as top dogs Magnus had rapidly become a haven for criminals, mercenaries and corrupt governments, drawn in by the massive amount of unpleasant creatures each worth a huge amount of bolts, and later on people who were lured in by the hunters. Of course the Yautja had first dibs on the planet, not that they seemed to mind the extra traffic, all the influx of dangerous people served their purposes as hunters quite nicely, Magnus had become the closest thing to a colony world that they have known for a long time. The Tharpods didn't mind either, all the traffic was doing wonders for their economy, even after they figured out how to stop Ephemeris they didn't bother for the constant boons it brought to their planet. A place where Manny gets to pound the living crap out of people and for once Dani wouldn't yell at him for it? Manny couldn't sign the holoscreen fast enough.