He went this way.

K'Shai tracked the prey, noting faded vague prints in the soil that were made so long before the heat signature was barely there. She saw the others break off into different directions, as the group of four worked to hunt down the Bad Blood they had been charged with finding. He was really trying to make a great escape, the fool, K'Shai thought to her herself as she tracked him.

They had been hunting him down for days. He had fled from Clan to Clan to Clan, disappeared for a while in disputed territory between clans on the Eastern border of the continent, and then made a turn-back and headed through jungles of the N'urem-ja Clan. It was not uncommon, as K'Shai learned, for Clans of Honor to work with each other when it came to hunting Bad Bloods; even utilizing hunters of other clans to track down their own dishonored, if necessary.

When a Bad Blood of one Clan tried to hide out in another Clan's territory, as this one had been trying, it tends to not go over terribly well, and K'Shai found that the four of them were greeted pleasantly and offered help as needed, which as a matter of honor, was turned down by the four of them.

For the moment, nothing was running through her mind except keeping track of this slippery Bad Blood, who had been caught naked and covered in green blood of his victim- an eto female that he had attacked, beaten, and raped before leaving her for dead. It was not only a violation of Honor to assault a female and attempt to take her, but it was especially disgraceful that it was done to an eto. A Blooded hunter should have more common sense than that.

It also did not help that the eto that was attacked was the long-time personal servant of K'ori'di, one of the elder females in the mei'sa; very highly Honored, and very displeased that she had to dispatch her favorite servant into the Realm of the Dishonored over such a disgrace.

This one now, being hunted, unworthy of a name, still showed his training and hunting prowess as he turned those skills into solid evasion

tactics to try to get away from the death squad in pursuit of him. K'Shai slowed her pace, noticing that the tracks she was following had become less faded. He had slowed. He was in the area recently.

She saw handprints on trees, proving that he had been climbing up into the trunks and coming back down. There were criss crossing tracks in the ground for a wide area, almost as far as K'Shai could see. There was a cliff nearby that rose high up above the grove of jungle trees where she stood. It was possible he was on that cliff, waiting to attempt to snipe her. It was possible there were caves in the mountain wall that he could be hunkered down waiting.

She knew she had to be cautious. She caught wind of S'nji'di and at least knew which direction she was coming down from, but she did not know where the others had disappeared off too. They were trying to encircle the target, but that was a difficult task when you did not know exactly where the prey was. A wide circle was best, to try to flush the prey to where you wanted it.

Yet, somehow, K'Shai felt like it was the huntresses, not the prey, that were being flushed to where he wanted them to go. She scanned the tracks, back and forth; hand prints all over trees, some very faded, some not quite so. He had spent time here in this grove. Lots of time. Going up and down and back and forth, repeatedly. Why?

She looked around and stood silent, simply listening. Was there a trap of some kind? A snare rope she was missing? Everything looked so disturbed, from the large fallen leaves on the ground to the ivy crawling up the tree trunks, that it was possible anything could have been done to set a trap. She would like to think her prey was simply not that smart; after all, any Blooded hunter who would do that to an eto female, how smart could he possibly be? But one thing she learned from R'chnt and learned well, was to simply never underestimate your prey.

When you think they have run off, is exactly when they appear. When you think they are dumb, running on instinct alone, or incapable of putting much planning into their attack, is exactly when you find out otherwise. He had spoken of it, taught his hunters to be wary of it, and she had seen it happen. She had experienced it and lived through it. She could hear R'chnt's voice in her head like he was helping her. She could always hear him. Even after all the months she spent hunting and training with the huntresses, it was like R'chnt was always with her.

She let her mind drift only slightly, picturing him in her mind, remembering a conversation she had with him on one of their many hunts. She could see the campfire before them clearly, she could almost smell it, and feel the heat from it and from his body next to her, not sure which was creating more heat.

He talked about hunting intelligent prey. He talked about how challenging it was, and how difficult they were; how for many Yautja such a chance is a once in a lifetime, because it might very well be the last of their lifetime. Some hunters, like R'chnt, make names for themselves by repetitively hunting intelligent prey. Not dying by their hand gives those hunters the surviving intelligence they need to do it again and again until they are finally killed with honor.

Some hunters, he had told her, when they know they are dying, will seek to hunt intelligent prey just for the chance to die quickly with

honor and do their Clan proud.

"I can't imagine it," she had once told him. "Hunting down an intelligent prey."

"Someday you will, K'Shai. When you are ready. Some day, you will hunt down an intelligent prey. You will track it, select it; the best one, the most fearsome one, and there will come a time when you stare down that prey." He said to her, and looked directly at her.

"It will stare at you, weapon in hand; ready to use. It will be ready to kill you and you will be ready to kill it. You will be victorious because you hunt the way I have been training you. You will savor the hot blood that falls from the prey you have conquered and you will take pride in the kill and display your trophy with honor. You will survive; you will thrive. You will bring this honor to yourself and to our Clan, K'Shai."

Today is the day, she thought. This prey will die today, I will hunt him down.

With that, the prey did strike, just as K'Shai had expected. He was out there, hiding in the trees. She had not immediately seen from where, but she heard the rustling of something entirely too large to be bird or snake or other tree-navigating jungle beast. He leapt down with a blade in hand, clearly as certain that he was going to kill the small alien huntress, as she was that she would kill her prey.

As their blades hit together, so fiercely they very nearly made sparks fly, K'Shai could see her prey close enough to see the fire in his eyes, with his faded Blood mark right in between them. Another once-hunter, disgraced and being hunted by the arbiters. Here he was, defending himself, as if not only did he have some right to live, but he actually thought that he was going to kill K'Shai.

She fueled herself with a burning rage as her mind flooded with images and thoughts of R'chnt, S'ruch-de, W'rsa; so many honorable hunters that she had come to know and appreciate, and then there was this disgrace before her, who let his left elbow drop as a result of his clear fatigue from running for so long.

With that lapse of form, K'Shai overpowered the disgrace before her. She slammed her dual-bladed staff into his shoulder and it lodged deeply, right down to the bone, accompanied by a pained howl. The prey dropped to one knee before her and then suddenly rammed his full weight into her, using the blade lodged into his shoulder as a sort of ramming shield. He managed to push K'Shai off balance and she fell, ripping the blade out of prey's shoulder as she did so, and he came toppling clumsily down on top of her.

She howled, and suddenly became aware that three other objects were storming towards her; the other huntresses had honed in onto them and they were barreling onto the scene like angry bulls at a charge.

The prey noticed it too and tried to yank himself forcefully off K'Shai who was swinging her blade towards his neck, aimed to slice it right through even if she was directly under him. She swung the blade, but the sudden movement of the prey trying to clear himself off of K'Shai changed the trajectory of the rounded end of the weapon, and it slammed against the side of his face, cutting deep into his cheek, mandibles, and head ridge.

He howled a sort of pained gurgle as his mouth filled up with blood and he just collapsed down onto his back on the ground before her. K'Shai stood, covered in green glowing blood, and eyed her companions as they slowed. It was over. Their prey was down, severely injured, and not going anywhere as he gripped the side of his head with both hands.

She eyed the trio of huntresses before her widely, before K'Shai let her eyes bounce back to the whimpering mess on the ground before her.

"So, does this pauk-su'jke need to be alive?" She asked, trying hard to hide the cracking of her shaky voice; trying hard to sound firm, certain, and intentional.

"Oh, K'Shai…" L'tdi said with a high pitched laugh.

"They never have to be alive!"

"Hunts are difficult, of course," Mara'di added. "Things happen. Prey dies."

"You…. are…. No… Yautja…" the prey spattered through a bloody mouth.

K'Shai glared down at him and the huntresses, circled around, quieted and watched them.
"Neither are you." K'Shai snapped at him before she slammed the rounded edge of her dual blade down onto his throat, not missing the

mark she had intended the first time.
It wasn't until they moved the body away to return it to the Clan to be ungracefully thrown into a pit to decay, that K'Shai had noticed

something sticking up out of the pile of blood now coagulating on the dirt before her. It was a tooth. A Yautja tooth.
She bent down and picked up the blood-covered ivory spike and looked at it for a moment, then looked around at the body. Sure enough,

her blade had sliced his tooth clean off, including the gum right at the end of the mandible. She wiped the blood off on a leather flap, and slid the tooth into a small pouch on her belt.

"K'Shai, come, we are dining." Mara'di called to her once they were back at the Clan and had deposited their prey into the pit.

"I'll be right there," she said with a prideful smile as she hovered over the trophy prep table before her.

"What are you doing?" The huntress asked, hearing the tools at work that K'Shai was carefully wielding.

Without a word, K'Shai finished her project and raised it up to show her. A fine drill was enough to the job; put a hole through the tooth and string it up on a leathery chain. A wearable trophy of her first bad blood kill. Mara'di simply nodded an acknowledgement before the pair left to join the others at the dining hall.

Amongst the four huntresses were also a slew of females, including Neh'rti, who all wanted to hear the tale of the coward who fled, and tried to fight like he had any dignity left worth protecting. It was a good evening, good tales, and for a brief moment, K'Shai felt like things were going just right; exactly where she needed to be.

She had returned to R'chnt the following day to see him, and exert her pride over the whole situation on him in a most pleasurable way, which he very much enjoyed. By the next night, she was back in the mei'sa supervising her offspring from a distance; as the older two had clearly hit a phase now where they definitely did not want mom around.

S'ruch-de was still young enough to express some amount of happiness over seeing her, but A'ryin'di and El'tude were very much finding themselves as Yautja. It was easy to lose track of time; the Yautja really did not care much for measuring time in the same way as humans did. It was a little shocking to realize how long she had been absent from the mei'sa; how big her offspring had grown; how much more Yaujta they had all become.

While there was no question that A'ryin'di and El'tude were nearing thier readiness for their blooding hunt far faster than any other young Yaujta would, even young S'ruch-de had surprised K'Shai with his massive growth spurt.

"I wish you could see them, R'chnt," she had told him later in the week as K'Shai returned to his home and his bed.

"S'ruch-de is as tall as me now, and he's just so young, it's hard to believe how big he is. And he's doing well. He really is. He seems to

be very Yautja. He has adapted so well to being in the mei'sa it's surprising."

"Well K'Shai, he was much younger when he was brought to the mei'sa to be raised properly as a Yautja. He will no doubt have grown into life their the most easily."

"But it isn't just him. El'tude and A'ryin'di have too." K'Shai rebutted with a surprised tone as she shook her head. "They've adjusted so well, it's like…" She paused.

"Like they are Yautja?" R'chnt purred with an amused sort of tone that really did not match K'Shai's thought process.

"So it seems the only one still not comfortable in the mei'sa, then, is their mother." He added with that soft purr, trying to add a sort of nonchalant tone that really did not work at all.

K'Shai sat up on the edge of the bed, sighed, and stood, pacing around the room as she gathered garments, looked out the window towards the waterfalls far off in the distance, and tried to spend as much time as possible avoiding responding to him at all.

"Well, maybe my place simply is not there."

"But it is out hunting bad bloods?" R'chnt questioned with a tone in his voice of sheer disapproval.

"Maybe it is." K'Shai mumbled. "Maybe I'm good at it."

R'chnt snorted in rebuke. "K'Shai, two hunts does not make you good at hunting bad bloods. These are honorless pauk-de who have turned against all the Yautja ways. They are eto or even worse than that. There are cowards and have no Path, but that does not mean they aren't capable of killing you."

She glared at him. She realized he was speaking from concern for her safety, but she still stood defensively against him.

"Don't you think I'm capable of killing them?" She snapped back at him.

R'chnt deflated a bit and it made her withdraw slightly. He obviously knew he was not going to make any ground with her, since she was going to stand firm on her point.

"It's like you once told me," she said softly as she tiptoed over to him, now sitting upright on the edge of the bed.

"It's invigorating… maybe even a bit empowering. That last prey, he wanted to kill me. He hunted me back right as I was hunting him."

Her fingers fidgeted with the tusk on the neckchain that now hung down between her breasts, her eyes stayed locked on nothingness on the floor off to the side of R'chnt's feet.

"This is something I can do. It's like you said; they have no honor. I can hunt them down, and make what I do matter to the Clan. It's all about the Clan, isn't it?"

R'chnt did not respond. He gazed at her, and gentle placed his palm on her cheek, stood and quietly went about finding his belt and loin cloth.

"K'Shai, you will do what you think you must. If you must do it, at least you are doing it for the honor of the Clan."

He left the room and she took a deep, long, slow sigh. She finished dressing, spent a short while further with him, and then left to rejoin the huntresses, trying to both shake the conversation with R'chnt as well as wondering when the next call would come to hunt down another bad blood.

It seemed like ninety percent of the time was spent doing the exact same things as any other Yautja did when they weren't hunting. They sparred, trained, and soaked in hot pools. The huntresses spent as much time in the nude as any Yautja male, simply relaxing, working out sore spots from intense training, or mending cuts, scrapes, and bruises.

Enjoying the sun, soaking up the heat, and relaxing in a hot pool was comforting and even K'Shai enjoyed the slow pace of it all, but she still yearned for something far more interesting to do as she continued to

think about what R'chnt had said to her.

He was right of course; two hunts is hardly enough to say that anyone is truly good at anything. She thought back to the first two times she had ever even seen a kainde-amedha and she felt her heart drop.

It seemed like so long ago; that first time she had to learn to handle a gun just in the mere hope of defending herself. As she thought about it, she never really got to be any good at killing them at all, and despite all the other hunts that R'chnt had taught her to do, the hard meat still instilled fear into her.

But the Bad Bloods were not hard meat. She was not sure if they were better or worse than the kainde amedha, really. How would one decide that exactly? One would never kill its own for self-pleasure, and the other lacked the honor to remain with the group. Maybe the Bad

Blood were worse.

She did not have to wait very long at all to put her skills to the test once more. A few weeks went by and another Bad Blood surfaced. Shamefully, this one was truly an eto even before he turned bad. Not every eto accepted their place as a failed Yautja unworthy of being one of the honored In fact, as K'Shai would quickly come to learn; it was not exactly uncommon at all for eto to break the simple rules they had to live by.

For the eto, they simply had to exist and obey. Whether they were tasked with preparing food, hauling lumber or mining materials, scrubbing rooms clean, or mopping up the bloody mess left after a Blooded sparring match in the kehrites, or after their assigned overlord had finished gutting his prey for his own pleasure. They were simply to exist. They were not to speak, to act out, and they were definitely never to pick up arms or in any way fight their overlords.

They could fight each other if they chose to, but most of the time, the eto all shared their lowly status together, and rarely ever fought amongst themselves, save sometimes for a juicy scrap of leftovers. The next several bad blood hunts that K'Shai took part on were all of male eto who chose to attempt to rise up against their assigned master.

One had picked up a spear and ran it right through his while he was sleeping. What a very dishonorable thing to do. Then, of course, he ran. He actually took the spear and kept it with him; wether for protection or a sort of prideful trophy, K'Shai did not bother to ask of him before the huntresses and she killed him. Each of the four females impaled him with their own spears, one at a time, to make sure the lesson was well learned before the eto took his last breath.

Before he did that, though, K'Shai made sure he was well aware that she was severing his lower left tusk off. Why not? One more to add to the single trophy chain around her neck. The first one was an accident worthy of keeping As she strung the second tusk onto the leather chain, she smiled softly. She would take her trophies even if they were just eto.

The next hunt was more of the same, and so were the four more after that. In each case, the eto had either attacked, or actually successfully killed their overlord. All but the most recent one had been on the home world, and despite running through jungles tracking and hunting their prey, it was getting a little boring. Still, K'Shai's trophy necklace grew with tusk after tusk. K'Shai made every effort to find the eto first; to make the killing strike first, but even if she had not been the one to kill the target, she still drew blood from him, and ensured that the trophy was worthy enough to take.

The next hunt the females were called to was the first one off-world. K'Shai well knew that the Clan had settlements on some of the moons and other planets around the system. They were filled with non-hunting Blooded and their assigned eto, and for the most part they were either operating mines or maintaining breeding grounds for prey to be hunted. Some planets, she had been told, were even used to bring in prey from all over the galaxy and deposit them there for hunting purposes, though the K'aunte Da'reen Clan did not have such a planet.

"Why not?" She had asked.

L'tdi sort of cringed. "It's not necessarily the best practice. Our Clan adheres to the Path of the Payas. Some other clans…. Younger clans… they do this to avoid having to hunt on unfamiliar grounds as a single one amongst a sea of enemies. But isn't that the point of hunting? To challenge yourself? To hunt with honor and live well enough to breed."

K'Shai nodded. As she thought about it more; it wasn't right. Taking prey from their familiar grounds and home-field advantage just to hunt them on your terms. Seemed kind of like cheating. She had hunted plenty of prey, and did so with R'chnt, on the prey's own world, and she had been on the wrong end of the prey's claws many times, with the scars to prove it.

She felt proud of that. As she stepped off the ship onto the moon world where the next eto had disappeared into vastness of the land, she took a moment to consider the difference between hunting in a proper, prideful way, versus lurking about and cheating; stealing prey, stealing kills, killing someone in the back. The prey they hunted now, had done just that. He had stolen an entire suit of awu'asa, and killed his overlord in the back. Now he was disappeared loose on the planet, and this was a matter for the arbiters.

The hunt was difficult, partly because it was unfamiliar territory. K'Shai had never been to this moon, there was no reason to. It was a moon used to mine ore and harvest a naturally occurring liquid called k'to that ran through the valleys like a sort of purple lava. It was transformed into a fuel source for awu'asa, the plasma casters, and even the very engines of the ships the Yautja used.

Learn something new every day, K'Shai thought as it was explained briefly to her.

The other reason why the hunt was difficult was because the prey was a sort of loose cannon. Unpredictable, with no real training on how to hunt, and no idea how to use the armor he was wearing.

He could be anywhere, doing anything, and he, like all other Bad Bloods, would most definitely attack from anywhere without any form of honor or even true skill. That made him more dangerous than it really sounded, and K'Shai tried not to forget that as she surveyed the land before her.

They had been tracking for days without luck. Their journey brought them to a plateau overlooking a white stone sea of barreness. There was nothing; absolutely nothing, for as far as K'Shai could see. Behind them, the land was not exactly lush in the first place. Most of the terrain she had seen already was grass-less mountains and valleys of k'to rivers.

This place before her lacked anything. It was just rock and dust; no water, no grass, no nothing. With the dual suns of Yaut looming even brighter overhead than she had ever seen even at the highest peaks in the Clan, it drowned out almost all the rock, making everything a sort of blinding white bright scene.

"If he is out here, he has likely died," Mara'di suggested.

"Perhaps," S'nji'di said. "But we must still find him to prove so. Besides, K'Shai needs another tusk to add to that chain."

K'Shai squeezed her lips into a smirk, and Mara'di and L'tdi snorted a chuckle.

"Continue on," S'nji'di commanded and the group was off, each one fanning off in a different direction.

K'Shai stalked through the plains of barrenness, stepping around potholes of all sizes that just had a tiny bit of pooling water in them. It was a remnant of the k'to rivers that likely once flowed through the valley, scorching the ground so much that it melted and hardened against when the rivers were rerouted through the clan establishment.

Upon closer look, she noticed there was life there after all; barely bigger than microscopic creatures flailed in the tiny amount of water around.

She crouched down near a hole about as long as she was tall, and noticed the little organisms floating on the water's surface, making tiny ripples. She scanned around the valley, hoping for a sign of anything. There was nothing. So on she continued.

The suns eventually dipped and darkness set in, and then the suns rose again. The hunt was difficult, because while it was simply known that the eto they sought did not even know how to use the armor he had stolen, he obviously did know how to turn off the tracking beacon. Was he dead somewhere? A hopeless lost cause in the dry land, dead of dehydration or eaten by one of the other miserable animals that desperately hunted for a meal themselves?

Or… K'Shai wondered; was it possible that the eto was smarter than acknowledged? It was easy to discredit the eto. They were uneducated in every way - no hunting skills first and foremost, but also they were not taught to read or write past whatever level they had achieved in the mei'sa before they were cast out. Presuming that the eto were all incapable idiots seemed to be the exact opposite of the number one hunting rule above any other.

Never underestimate your prey.

So, if the eto was smart enough to know to turn off the tracking beacon in the armor he supposedly did not know how to use, what else did he know? Was he smart enough to make the four huntresses chasing him think that he could be anywhere? Was he intelligent enough to play so stupid that he managed to get the huntresses to separate, while he watched them split up and take off after each of them one at a time?

It was possible she supposed, but a quick glance at her heads up display showed that the life readings of K'Shai's teammates were all just fine, and the life readings all around her were completely absent. She continued on, and right when she figured that this hunt was about the literally be the most boring one she had been on yet, S'nji'di jumped on the communication with a mad howl.

"Here! Here!" She roared and that was it.

Within seconds, L'tdi and Mara'di's signals turned and headed towards the call and K'Shai leapt into action, barrelling along the terrain as fast as she could for as long as she could.

It took nearly until mid-sun before K'Shai had gotten to the source of the call, and of course by then, everything was long done. The prey was gone. The other females had gathered and K'Shai halted in shock, eyes wide.

"S'nji'di!" She gasped.

L'tdi and Mara'di growled angrily, pacing, taking it all in themselves. They had, as it turned out, also just arrived.

"We need a new strategy. This is no ordinary eto." Mara'di howled.

K'Shai stayed quiet and just stared.

"We underestimated it. Took him for dead." She finally whispered.

"Well, clearly he is not!" L'tdi snapped.

K'Shai gritted her teeth and looked up again. She could not believe her eyes. She had never quite seen anything like it. She knew full well it was common practice of pretty much any hunter to hang their prey throat down from a high rope, or tree limb.

She had done this many times with R'chnt With food prey they had hunted. For food. It was simply part of the preparation of any prey animal for consumption.

It was also the Yautja way to preserve as much of the food animal for all sorts of purposes. Such prey was skinned so the hide could be properly tanned and turn into garments or bedding or whatever else was necessary.

Small bones were taken for adornments and jewelry and larger bones like the spine and skull and hips were taken aside to be used for anything from making tableware to wall decor. All the meat, all the internal organs; every one of them, had a purpose, use, and was saved for those needs. The animal was used completely. It was an honor to the beast that had been hunted, that all of it served a purpose.

This. This. Was no honor. This was a disgrace; a message; a threat. S'nji'di was there, hung by her heels from the large horizontal limb of the tree above.

Her skin was peeled from her muscles; neon green blood congealed along the remnants of what was left, and under the carcass. The worst insult of it all, perhaps the biggest disgrace, far beyond just the rest entire rest of it all as if the lower than eto prey they sought was delivering a message to the others that he could beat them, was the final message.

S'nji'di's head, the entire skull, had been split clean in half from eye brow ridge to cranial palate on the backside. The message here was clear, and the three remaining huntresses simply lost any need for words.

Their prey left a message saying he could hunt like the rest of the Yautja, he could skin his prey like he was preparing a meal, and most of all - worst of all - the trophy of his kill was unworthy of keeping; better off being destroyed. So there it was; a skinned and broken skull, like a neon-green covered egg, cracked and unwanted, left behind to hang there above a heaping pile of brain matter that had also been sliced straight into.

The anger that flowed between the huntresses was tangible, if not spoken, for their was no need. They had cut down the carcass, and burned it. There was no time to deal with S'nji'di's remains in any other way. Their prey had stolen her armor; the disgrace never seemed to stop with this one. And now that meant he could potentially hijack the ship using her access codes.

While L'tid and Mara'di whole heartedly disagreed that the loose eto could be so intelligent, or so bold, as to try to do such a thing, nonetheless, they changed the access codes to the ship just to be sure.

K'Shai couldn't help but notice how they did it rather discreetly, after considering her words that R'chnt had embedded into her mind -never underestimate your prey. It took throwing out R'chnt's name to get them to do it, but at least the possibility of the ship being hijacked was averted.

This prey would remain grounded on the mining moon and would be hunted with passionate relentlessness until his head was theirs. K'Shai envisioned herself making the killing blow and debated in her mind whether she would strike him down and take his skull as a prideful trophy of the one who took down one of them, or destroy it as a message right back to him that he was not worth it at all.

It was a tough musing, but it kept her quietly occupied as the trio remaining continued to track him. The suns rotated, the triple moons danced into the sky behind them, one close to the horizon and hazy glowing every night, the other two orbiting it like small spotlights. The days passed and still the eto continued to evade the huntresses.

"He ran." Mara'di hypothesized with a spitting grunt.

"Of course he ran. What he did. He knows now that the fate coming to him is even worse than it would have been." L'tdi agreed.

K'Shai looked around the trees all around them, glowing a beautiful green in the moonlight. It had been days; hard to keep track of how many. No, she thought to herself, he hadn't run. He was still out there somewhere, and somewhere close. He was so sure of himself that he was hunting them, and making himself very much difficult to find.

"Who was this eto, once?" K'Shai questioned. "A Blooded that had fallen?"

The others stopped mid-bite and looked at her with a sort of what difference does that matter glare, but after a moment of swallowing silence, L'tdi responded, clearly unwillingly.

"No. Just eto." She said crispily.

K'Shai raised her eyebrows, the look of surprise on her face must have been clearly evident because L'tdi offered more.

"This one we are hunting has never been Blooded. He never made it that far. He was removed from the mei'sa during just his first chiva."

She frowned. K'Shai's mind immediately tried to figure out how any of this had happened. An eto that rebelled up against his keeper and killed him, stole his armor, then managed to kill an accomplished Bad Blood Huntress and steal her armor too. There was far more to this story than it appeared L'tdi either knew at all or was willing to divulge. Naturally, K'Shai pressed again for more information.

"So, after his first chiva, he was sent here? To this moon to work the mines?"

"No, K'Shai." L'tdi responded with a slight hint of annoyance. "He had other masters."

"Who, do you know?" K'Shai prodded again.

"He is no child now, K'Shai," L'tdi snapped. "This eto had been such for many years, under many masters."

"Many Blooded hunters?" K'Shai continued to question, and finally it seemed L'tdi, and Mara'di, who had remained quiet, were recognizing where K'Shai was headed with her very particular questions.

"You think he… what? Learned from his masters?" Mara'di questioned with a dismissive tone.

"A master would never teach an eto." L'tdi added in denial.

"Well, maybe he was not directly taught. Maybe he watched, learned." K'Shai shrugged and raised an eyebrow."

"It matters not. He did not learn very well if he was willing to kill masters and hunters alike and steal armor. Bad blood is bad blood." L'tdi retorted.

K'Shai nodded deeply. "Of course, that is so." She said simply, for it was hard to argue with that point; still the idea was at least embedded in L'tdi and Mara'di's minds that this was no ordinary eto and perhaps that thought might keep them from meeting the same fate as S'nji'di. Perhaps.

By the time the moon was at full rise, whatever fate was awaiting the huntresses or their prey would begin to play out. K'Shai and the others continued on the hunt, and while they still split up to cover more ground, they did remain in a much more tight triangle formation so they could respond to one another more quickly if necessary.

It happened so surprisingly quickly that the females pulled together and became more wary of the prey they sought. K'Shai had not yet been on a single hunt with them that was not drenched in over confidence, absolute surety that they would do their job and hunt down their target without real issue, and perhaps that was not necessarily unjustified.

Most of the prey they had sought were indeed eto that had done terrible things, and were sought out as punishment. The prey had no real training and no experience actually hunting or fighting.

That did not mean they weren't feisty, or would not fight back. K'Shai fidgeted with the teeth on her necklace and thought about each one of those tusks, whether from eto or disgraced Blooded hunter, were all well earned trophies.

Still, there was an easy temptation to underestimate the prey they sought, and K'Shai was quietly glad that now this particular prey would not be taken so lightly.

What he did to S'nji'di ensured that he had made enemies out of the huntresses pursuing him. This was no more a simple matter of dishonor to the Clan; this was personal, and it was war. The huntresses continued on searching throughout the night, the day, the night, and the day.

K'Shai rested when she needed to, and found herself keeping a closer eye on the location and bio readings of the others than she normally would have. She rested briefly, not wanting to keep her eyes closed for too long, but when exhaustion hit, it hit.

"K'Shai, anything?"

The noise in her ear startled her. It was a mechanical buzzing inside her helmet, and while it was fairly quiet normally, it disrupted the silence of the night like an explosion and she jumped to a start at the base of the tree she was sleeping against. How long had she even been asleep? She quickly glanced to the moon and decided it had been a solid two hours. That was potentially not good. Not good at all.

She just sat for a rest for a moment, that was it.

"Uh… no, no L'tdi. Nothing on my end. You?"

"If I did, I would not be asking!" The voice on the other end snapped.

"We need to regroup and search another area. He may have moved on." Mara'di chimed in.

"Yes, let us rejoin at the cliff over the valley."

The vague description was enough; they had passed by it no less than three times each in their constant circling looking for their prey. They acknowledged the message and cleared communication and K'Shai pulled herself together and stood up, then saw it; then saw him.

He was crouched low, behind underbrush, pressed against a tree. He looked like he was just relaxing; watching his would-be hunter and killer sleep. He looked relaxed and cool, and despite having stolen S'nji'di's armor, he had not adorned any of it. He still had one what K'Shai assumed was the stolen armor of the master he had literally stabbed in the back.

K'Shai quieted and stilled, slowly rising to her feet, eyeing him directly, as he made no real attempt to hide himself.

"You are R'chnt's mate." He grumbled quietly, like somehow he had any right to speak to her or mention the name of such an honored Elder.

K'Shai said nothing.

"I am curious to know how you have come to hunt Bad Bloods?"

K'Shai said nothing. She simply extended her dual-bladed staff, letting the partially curved and partially jagged edges pop up from the shaft and lock into place as she raised her chin slightly.

"Do you know that I saw you once? On Earth."

K'Shai held motionless.

"I was… working…. on R'chnt's ship the K'ojol, when you came too close to the landing party, and I saw you. You were crouched down like we couldn't see you. I remember thinking, how foolish these little humans could be. I was more of a hunter than any of them, yet my own people had turned me down."

The prey continued to hold an entire conversation like he had any business doing so, and it made K'Shai angry. Yet she remained quiet and stared at him. He seemed to accept that she was not going to speak to him, so he continued.

"I was made to serve on R'chnt's ship, but he was not the first, nor was he the last In my time, I have served aboard the ships of seven master Elders. Seven, in what would be more than one hundred of your human years. I was removed from the mei'sa when I was very young; not good enough to be a hunter, but good enough to serve some of the best hunters there were."

K'Shai gritted her teeth.
"Including your mate."

She swallowed and tried to keep her weapon from fidgeting in her angered grip. She tried to keep cool, keep her breathing under control; keep her heart from giving away a sign of rage.

"So I, who was bred and born to an honored bloodline, was not enough to have a chance to be blooded, but you. You, this little tiny thing who could so easily be killed in countless ways, while sleeping on a hunt, were worthy enough to mate with one of the most respected Elder Leaders in the Clan, breed, and those half-bloods will someday become Blooded."

K'Shai couldn't help it. She fidgeted her wrist, giving away the tension mounting and her desire to slice this defiant eto into pieces like he did S'nji'di..

"What of those hybrid creations of yours…." He started, striking a nerve in K'Shai that none should dare strike.

She stood up, weapon ready, chin high.

"You do not mention them. They all have more honor than you in every way. You who do shameless disgusting things bring nothing but dishonor to your clan. You can stab a Blooded master in the back. You can smash an arbiter's skull to pieces like it is too unworthy for you. You dare not speak of my offspring. So come then,"K'Shai growled in a low, sharp voice to him.

"Come and show me what you are made of. Why the mei'sa should never have dropped you to eto. Come now and kill me. I'm here. I have not called for help. I have not signaled the others that you are here. You think I am weak, unworthy? Come prove me wrong. Come kill me."

She stood her ground, feeling her blood pumping through her veins like lava. Her heart pounding with both nerves and anticipation. She tightened her grip on her weapon. Now was the time, more than ever before, perhaps, not to forget her training. All those years spent side by side with R'chnt, from her very first spear fishing lessons, to hunting all manner of prey on multiple worlds.

Perhaps this prey, more than any other, who now charged at her, head slightly down, back arched, like a raging bull, would prove to be the truest moment of triumph she had ever had. He may have been an eto, but he had murdered more Yautja than any other she had as of yet heard of. This was, she imagined in the glimpse of a second before her prey got within arm's reach of her, what R'chnt had been talking about when he spoke of hunting prey that could hunt you back.

They met with blades clanging and chinking together so loudly, there very well might have been sparks. There might have been a resounding echo of metal on metal, howl on howl. It very well might have been the most dramatic, most epic, assault of hunter-on-prey there had ever been. But K'Shai did not notice the clanging blades.

She did not hear any echoes, besides the one in between in her own hears from her own voice rising up trying to out match the howl Yautja lungs could produce. No one was around to witness how the two came head to head. She was just there. He was just there. It just all happened so quickly, and before she could even blink her eyes properly there was a bloody battle ensuing.

K'Shai's blade struck off her prey's blade, and ricocheted off with so much momentum, all she could do was follow along and try to get her swing back under control. In the process, her blade scraped down her target's inner bicep, shaving into his skin just enough to draw blood as the first few layers of skin were rasped right off.

As she used her body like a sponge to soak up the momentum and carry it through to her next move, her prey did not miss a single beat at all. His own blade caught her on the back of her shoulder, hooking its tip under her skin and peeling it down as she turned around.

She howled in pain, whirred around, putting her own back into her prey's chest, right against him, as if they were lovers nestling into one another. She dropped her chest down a bit, fielding off another blow from him as he attempted to simply thud on her a bit with his right forearm.

She dived out of the strike, making sure to drag her jagged curved blade side of her spear with her as she went out right under his attempted throttling, and managed to carve a slice into his kneecap, much the way he had just de-skinned her shoulder.

Heaving, K'Shai spun about on her heels, no time to stop. She collided her bladed staff into his weapon and successfully deflected his attack, giving her an opening that she very much wanted. Whether driven by adrenaline, training, anger, sheer will, or not, she did not know, and did not care. The prey's abdomen was there, ripe for slicing, and she did not take a moment to hesitate.

She lunged downward, striking a blow to his abdomen, spilling out blood as she continued down, dropping fully to the ground and rolling quickly under his missed swinging arm, popping up behind him; a move she had done many times in training, and it always seemed to work. She smirked under her helmet as she noticed her target stop for a moment, inspect his injury, realize it wasn't very deep at all; enough to bleed, but not enough to make intestines hang out, and spin around to find his target who was already on the move again.

Her prey growled and followed her motion as she circled around him. As she made her circle, she noticed something about him she had not before. It was an advantage. He favored his right light, putting more weight onto his left leg.

There was quite an old scar on his right outer thigh, which was unshielded by armor, too. The scar was huge, stretching like a web in all directions from a pit-like center on his mid-thigh, a clear indication he was once stabbed through that thigh, had lost muscle, and probably had broken the bone, too.

Now, his left knee was pouring blood and a flap of skin was dangling over the top of his knee bracer. Two bad legs, K'Shai thought quickly, though not quite bad enough to stop him just yet.

She had already planned the next ten steps of her attack before he had moved towards her, and she noticed right away that he tried to step lightly onto his left bloody leg, putting more pressure on his right, which made him just slightly pause and withdraw. She had the opening she needed and she couldn't help but smile as she lunged into him, bringing the smooth edge on the other side of her staff blade down into his right, weak, thigh. Hard.

He howled in agony as she pierced without reluctance, through his old injured right thigh and and while she had him off guard, hurting, and practically buckling onto one, already bleeding knee, she ejected her right wrist blades, released her grip on her staff with one hand, and stabbed into the inner part of his left thigh as she pulled out the blade from his right before jumping around behind him as he completely buckled and dropped to the ground on both knees.

No doubt the pain was intense, and he seemed like he would be down for good in just another blow or two, but this was no time, K'Shai reminded herself, to be overconfident. He was howling in agony and bleeding from multiple injuries, but she was not done with him yet and something told her, good instinct perhaps, that he was not about to give up the fight just yet.

Sure enough, as she tried to approach him now from behind, he took defensive to a whole new level. He reached behind him, practically underneath his own groin as he twisted around still on the ground and grabbed at K'Shai. She was wary and approaching with caution, but as spry as she was, it was not quite enough to avoid him grappling her by the ankle and dragging her down.

She had two options; squirm to get away which would likely result in a broken ankle from the effort, since his grip was nearly unbreakable and her ankle most certainly was, or attack from the ground; a desperate, and perhaps graceless position to be in. She chose the latter and immediately kicked at her attacker's helmet with her free leg, hard enough that it partially dislodged from his face.

K'Shai twisted her torso around, trying to both swing her staff and get up simultaneously. It was far from graceful, and clearly a blotchy enough attack to put her target off balance for a moment, but regardless, it worked.

A sloppy escape, but she was now up, and her attacker was still on the ground. K'Shai wasted no time at all swinging her blade down towards him, hard, fully intent on impaling him through the chest.

He saw the move, and rolled away, but not quickly enough to avoid her blade completely. It swung down, fully knocking his helmet off, along with a small piece of his crown ridge, and partially cutting into a single strand of his blood-filled hair, which started pouring blood as much as if she had sliced into his jugular vein.

"How did you do it?" K'Shai huffed as she watched her target, bleeding, hurting, and scrambling to regain his footing.

She couldn't help but stare at the head wound. Not the one she had caused, not at all. On his right side, his head was as badly scarred as was his right thigh; signs of a harsh life at the hands of either masters or other eto, or maybe even other prey he killed and simply never got caught for, who knew really. But the injury to his head was severe.

It looked like he may have been burned. The skin that was there was mutilated beyond anything even remotely Yautja-ish, and he was missing several hairs along the side and back.

"How did you manage to kill S'nji'di?" K'Shai growled.

"Did you kill her in her sleep? Stab her in the back? Is that just what you do?"

Her target growled without a response, or perhaps that was actually his response.

"You disgust me," K'Shai snarled, raising her weapon once more. "You are no Yautja."

"Neither are you," he said miserably, perhaps trying to strike another nerve, but she was not going to take the bait.

She readied her blade; he took to his feet. She waited until he had gathered himself enough to make another run at her, and he took it; foolishly. K'Shai sidestepped, spinning her body around, and the bladed staff with it. She felt it squish into him as she thrust past him. She felt the jagged side of the blade lodge into bone, and yank her back a little bit as her target lurched down to the ground.

K'Shai rounded on him. This was it. She had him. He was on his knees before her, blade still sticking out of him, most definitely embedded into his ribs, maybe even partially into his spine. He was profusely bleeding, panting, agonizing with every breath and blood was starting to spittle out from his mouth.

One of the many lessons that R'chnt always taught, was that the prey should never be made to suffer. The hunted beast should be allowed to pass as quickly and painlessly as possible, not to endure fright and misery.

This was one of the ways the prey was honored. It was either food or a worthy trophy prey, and either way, it deserved the decency and respect of a quick death, and it was an obligation of the hunter that took it down, to ensure, as a matter of honor that the prey died quickly and smoothly.

"I am more Yautja than you would ever be. And so are my offspring." K'Shai growled in the ear of her downed victim, who was now nearly collapsing onto his hands, while gasping for air, but he seemed rather torn, between supporting his whole body using his arms as well, or keeping his hands over his fatal wound to the abdomen, to hopefully prevent blood and intestines from coming out.

He was suffering, he was agonizing, he was miserable. He was dying slowly, and he was getting the exact opposite of everything she had ever been taught to do. Somehow, she thought, R'chnt would approve. This one deserved it. This one was perhaps the worst of all the prey that K'Shai had hunted. His tusk, the big one off the lower left mandible, would make a lovely centerpiece to her tusk-necklace now.

Just as she took out her blade, wrapped her arms around his head, and sliced into his mandible to cut the tooth free, she noticed L'tidi and Mara'di appear from the woodwork, pausing as they approached and assessed the situation.

"K'Shai! You did not respond to our signal." L'tdi said as she walked over to the pair.

K'Shai rounded in front of the prey, now propping himself up with his hands as he overlooked his own tusk in her hand, with tissue from his gum still oozing blood all over his hunter's hand. She noticed his stare shift down to his missing tusk, following the trail of blood down to the ground, running down the back of his hand that he hovered over.

"No…." he gurlged quietly with great effort, producing a gasping, blood-filled cough. "You are not."

K'Shai smirked and nodded softly in defiance, watching her prey slowly die.

"Are you going to make the final strike?" Mara'di asked with a sense of impatience, perhaps a hint of jealously. He had killed her friend, and of course, all of them wished to be the one to bring him down.

"Oh... " K'Shai said with a lightness to her voice. "I already did."

She turned to her downed prey, watching him die as miserably painfully as any disgrace that would be beaten and tortured on the grand stage in the middle of the clan square.

"Didn't I?"