/The following story is intended for a mature audience due to violence, profanity, and graphic inter-species sexual content. I do not own Predator or Aliens and have not profited off this story. All characters are copyright to their rightful owners. However, I did have fun imagining it.../
/A.V.P. — Return of Scar/
- /—/-
The chink of glass echoed. The ambient lighting felt almost like a palpable kiss on her skin. Deep shadows decorated the corners of this nicely lit restaurant but her mind took her elsewhere. Anywhere but here.
Lex stared through bored, heavy eyelids across the table at the handsome chiropractor – who, according to her mother – was "still by all means a doctor!"
'Tall, Dark and Handsome' persistently yacked on about something along the line of his profession - or maybe he wasn't really yacking at all and Lex just perceived it that way. Whatever the reason, she couldn't understand for the life of her why someone her mother approved so much of, a 'decent man like her daddy,' could not break her from her reverie of daydreaming about the comfort of what had been her usual Friday nights.
These nights found her at home wrapped up by a luxurious fire and that was exactly what she was thinking about on this blind date to appease her mother and a concerned friend.
Lex wasn't keen on the idea of a blind date, but she knew her friend's words had a stinging truth to them when she heard, 'Alex, ever since you've come back from Antarctica, you just haven't been the same...'
Despite constantly reassuring her friend she was 'doing fine' she knew her actions to some degree were not excusable. Her friend wanted to take the credit of playing matchmaker and bringing Alexa her fairytale ending.
I don't know why Tom thought this would be a good idea... Lex thought to herself. I would much rather be at home right now by the fire...in front of the TV...with a pizza... and a glass of wine...You would pair your wine with a pizza!
A chortle escaped her.
"Was something funny?" Her date stared back at her with a half-bemused, half-inquisitive smile.
Shit!
Lex must have blurted out something coherent enough to imply she had in fact listened to whatever this man was saying because his shoulders relaxed and he leaned back into his chair. Lex inwardly sighed in relief.
One hour later she was behind the comfort of her own walls where her own shoulders could relax along with her entire demeanor. She set the keys on the table and saw a missed voicemail on her cell: Tom. He probably only wanted to know how everything went. Lex wasn't in the mood to recap her entire evening because she still looking forward to enjoying what evening remained. She had been looking forward to Friday night all week, sans blind date.
Tight dress – off. Dangling earrings – out. Sweat pants – Oh, it's so on! she thought to herself. Lex changed out of her clothes before plopping on the couch and turning on the TV. She thought about starting a fire but then talked herself out of it, half believing exhaustion was her excuse. It had been a long day, and a blanket would suffice perfectly.
'Ever since Antarctica...'
Those words echoed in her mind when feelings of guilt about not calling Tom back finally resurfaced hours later while watching a T.V. show. I know Tom means well...but I just need to unwind... I'll call him back later.
In her resolve, Alexa's mind began to wander as the evening caught up to her and tempted her lids to grow heavy.
'Ever since Antarctica...'
"I don't want to think about it anymore..." the feeble whisper escaped her like a plea.
She hugged the blanket tighter as if the cold was smoke rising up from the floor that would envelope her like a dream. The audio from the television was only perceived as a monotonous blur and the lights caused shadows to dance on the walls. Alexa knew it was always before sleep consumed her that her own mind would wage a war against itself. Forcing herself to remember the things she wanted to bury deep inside most.
She wanted to continue on with her life like normal and not someone tricken with P.T.S.D. She felt herself to be a woman of courage – she knew she possessed the quality of inner strength that so many of her peers admired. Which was why it was so hard to face the mirror and see this year she had been a hollow echo of herself. But it wasn't her resolve for life that had died. She felt just as vigorous as ever trekking through ice-covered mountains and breathing in crisp, cold air. She had taken up a more commercial approach to her career and figured playing tour guide for a short time would allow her mind to decompress and bring clarity. It wasn't as if scarce work and slim finances were bothering her – Weyland Industries had rewarded her with a handsome settlement and a generous stock investment for the enormous calamity she had faced, but at the price of silencing her forever about speaking of her Arctic experience. And she was okay with that.
Lex understood the magnitude of the situation she experienced under the ice and the knowledge the general masses couldn't withhold. The paperwork and government agents alone had done a great job threatening her with ramifications during her de-briefing. She didn't care if a single soul knew about the existence of the E.T.s that shared our solar system but over time she did care that she had no one to talk to about her E.T. experience.
There was no psychiatrist she could go to. No therapist she could talk to. There was just silence.
Never-ending, all-consuming silence that flooded every shadow on every wall when night came and lingered like neither fear nor comfort. The only souls who could begin to fathom what she had gone through were buried miles beneath the surface of the Earth. And the non-human soul who could presumably understand was dead.
Every time she thought about it a pang gripped her heart, and so it was for months Alexa decided she would bury this secret pain deep inside it. But it manifested itself in other unprecedented ways. It came when Lex was having lunch with friends and was reserved. It came when Lex walked too fast for her tour group to keep up. It came when Lex had a date with an attractive chiropractor and she couldn't pay attention. It came in the shower when her tears mingled with the water.
Locked inside her mind she could not tell what was reality and what was illusion. The sound of heavy stones grinding on stone, her heart pounding in fear and excitement, the shadows promising Death or Salvation.
On some nights the blackness won. It wore the face of black ink lacquered across an elongated skull with no eyes but far too many teeth. Teeth within teeth. It's aura to feed was palpable enough for her to feel how badly it wanted her, and it wanted her to know it wanted her. To devour her. There was no doubt in her mind that if just one of those leeches made it to the surface it would spell the annihilation of Mankind. It left her no choice. She had to side with them, the lesser of two evils...the Yautja...as she would later learn.
And they were a whole other breed of intergalactic killers. Their aura was palpable, too, giving off the urge to kill. And their teeth... just like the Serpents, they too had too many teeth. Despite their hideous faces compromising half of tusks and canines, to Lex, seeing a yautja in her dream wasn't an altogether unpleasant sight.
On some nights her Savior won. The lone surviving yautja warrior that fought with ferocity against the serpents. He had shown her mercy. Her kind had mistakenly deviated the God's best weapons from making its way into the hands of the rightful owners, a punishment worthy of death. To kill the Xenomorphs was a given, but the pesky Earth inhabitants who stole their guns were a delightful bonus.
Dead or alive the yautja could easily retrieve their plasma cannons from the humans, and so it was Lex's last resort to return the weapon she carried to the 'Gods,' or face inevitable death from both alien species. The Yautja God could have merely killed her and taken the gun from her lifeless fingers, but he didn't.
Do they always kill? Do they have a sense of honor? Lex wondered.
The moment she slid the gun to him across the ground she closed her eyes and waited for death, halfway cheering herself up over the thought it would be quick. She didn't want to die. She wanted to live. The human had surrendered her only weapon. Where was the sport in killing an unarmed female?
But Lex did more than prove she was worthy to live. She had taken him by surprise when she impaled the bloodthirsty Xeno that sought to dig his beating heart out of his chest. He held a look of disbelief when she ended the life of a comrade out of mercy in much the same way his Code of Honor instructed him. Disbelief - and a mixture of what else he wasn't quite sure, but when she put the bullet in Sebastian's head it sent shivers down his spine.
All 'Oomans' were simple-minded, less evolved, soft mammals...weren't they?
He had never met a human like her before. He'd never fathomed such honor and ferocity to exist inside a Soft Meat, let alone a female. She kept up with him. She was fierce. She was passionate to live and after she made her first kill of the Hard Meat she was thirsty for more of their blood, just like the Yautja. She was healthy and toned, like a Hunter, with an appealing cinnamon-colored hide. He hair reminded him of ocean waves tumbling down her back when she ran. She was so strange and unusual to him, so dichotomous...and best of all—that ass!
Little did she know the well-trained warrior before her was faltering at the thought of sinking his teeth into those round, juicy buttocks on her backside like taking a bite out of a well ripened, juicy peach. But in a split second years of conditioning caught up to him in the form of shame and guilt.
What would his brethren think of him ogling after a Soft Meat? An unrestrained, hormone-driven Young Blood who couldn't keep his wits about him? Or his cock sheathed? As much fun as he was having with his new little compatriot, he never once took his mind off the Queen. The proof was in the dead face-sucking hatchling at his feat. One that his little Amazon overlooked when releasing Sebastian from an agonizing death.
Lex followed every move the creature she considered her superior made. He rounded a corner with his fingers tight on his weapon. She rounded the same corner with her fingers clutching her spear and shield. He had made them for her after her first kill in recognition she could carry her own weight and would not receive death by his hand. In his endeavor he even saw fit to guile a scream from her in good humor when he severed the correct tendon to make the second mouth of the skeletal alien snap forward like a beheaded snake with a mind of its won. With a deep rumble in his chest sounding like a laugh, Lex came to the conclusion the warrior before her was younger than she was by his standards. Sebastian had said these were hunters on a sort of 'right of passage' into adulthood. Could he be a teenager by human standards, then?
Alexa was only dreaming but she could recall every step. Every sound. Every smell. A snap from behind made the warrior scan the darkness with his biomask and she crouched low between him and the wall.
"Above you!" Lex cried.
The leech leapt down from the firmament above and much to her dismay landed closer to her than him. Her heart sank. She only had time to react by throwing up her shield when it's acidic spittle flew at her. The acid hit the shield and not her flesh when she felt her body flung back. The hunter had stepped in front of her with his weapon aimed at the demon's face. Lex felt another tumultuous assault on her personage when she felt herself flung back again, but this time against the alien's chest. One massive arm pinned her body to him with an enormous hand inadvertently clutching her breast. Lex tried not to show any sign whatsoever of being flustered and winced when the reverberation from the gun expulsion left his body and entered her own.
Lex shifted in her sleep. She had recounted these memories over many times before and she knew exactly where they were headed.
The T.V. continued to lull her. The blanket that had once offered comfort now lost its hold during her perturbed shifting and thrashing.
There were many other encounters like this and Lex developed a healthy fear of the dark. She was never more than a stride away from her extraterrestrial fighter and her curiosity of him was only amplified by being in proximity of him. He was magnificent. She guessed his species to be like a reptile but something more akin to the way Homo Sapiens were like a primate. Like humans his species had evolved bipedalism and large craniums, but the thing Alexa Woods was caught up most about was realizing that after years of studying human anatomy his species was much like her own.
Watching him move was both mesmerizing and a trip. His stride was so like a human but the control he had over keeping his muscles so perfectly still was like a reptile. There were biceps, and pecs, and lats, and calves – just like a man. His abdominals, however, were like nothing she'd seen before – an eight-pack! By her standards, he was scantily clad and she could not betray how her eyes roved over his back as he walked and trailed from his strange, long hair to where his spine dipped before his pelvic bone and met his glutes. Every inch of him was rock hard and primal.
God, even his ass looks rock hard...Alexa! Damn it, focus!
As if of its own accord her hand in the waking world slid along her belly in her sleep and slipped under the folds of her sweat pants to nest between her legs.
Back in the pyramid, she saw her breath before her eyes. She hadn't any idea how much longer she could keep her eyes open but the fear of lurking death in the shadows did well to strain her mind into alertness. They had been walking for what felt like hours in a darkness like never-ending night and Lex knew her body was fatigued beyond its limits. The hunter looked back at her and tilted his head ever-so-slightly before disappearing into a small chamber.
Lex followed and saw him leaning against a wall in a squatting position. She wasn't sure what he was doing but sat down next to him with her back leaned against the wall like he had. In a case of monkey-see-monkey-do, the alien, at a lack of communication, bid his human colleague to rest by leading by example. It didn't take long for her body to remind her she was exhausted and slumped against the wall.
Thirty minutes later she jolted back awake. Something was trying to eat her in her dreams. Her eyes betrayed her surprise and fear when she discovered her head had leaned onto the Hunter's shoulder. He didn't move and only emitted a deep rumbling noise with his head glanced askance in her direction. Lex in her bleariness from lack of sleep and delusion could not tell if the sound was coming from his chest or his mask. She only felt it permeate her entire body. The final release into dreamland came when the alien reached over and laid a hand over her eyes, forcing them to close. He would not harm her, he would keep watch. Whatever effect that other-worldly sound had on her body caused a small noise to escape her lips as her eyelashes fluttered shut.
Meanwhile, in the waking world, that exact same moan from the pyramid escaped her lips in her sleep as her fingers found a familiar place between her thighs.
In her dream/memory in the pyramid she awoke several hours later. It was so cold her fingers protested when she bent them. A jaguar fur had been draped over her to her complete and utter shock. Building a fire was out of the question as it would give away their hiding place so the reptilian God must have found something in the ever-changing pyramid. A shudder ran through Lex at the thought that this fur might have once draped a dead body. It was better than nothing and probably kept her alive.
"Thank you."
The creature before her merely regarded her with a puppy-like cocked head at the sound of her words.
"What are you?"
He looked around with his prognathic jaw jutting out. A voice like a robot rang out, "Yeee... whaaaa... thyeeeee...yaaaahhh?"
She shook her head, completely unable to make sense of the polysyllabic sound he had made intermittent with rumbling and clicking.
"Okay...What do I call you?"
He merely regarded her with crossed arms. Lex felt he understood her to some extant but maybe even his advanced technology could not bridge the intergalactic language barrier.
She moved a step closer to him in further attempt to communicate and help him understand. She had no idea why it felt so pertinent for him to grasp her meaning.
"Naaaaame... Do you have a name?"
The question was asked simultaneously with a hand that reached out to touch his mask. She halfway expected him to flinch or at least slap her hand away but instead he stood perfectly still. Lex couldn't take the curiosity any longer and forgot all manners when her fingertips felt the cold mask. What did aliens feel like?
She traced the symbol on the forehead part of his mask in what felt like an out-of-body experience knowing few humans were privy to this touch. "How about I call you... Scar?" It was in reference to the alien mark upon his mask.
"Ssssssss...khaaaaa...?" The letter 'R' was impossible for him to pronounce.
"How about I call you Scar?" The sound of her own voice echoing back caused her to jump. It was creepy to hear her voice come from his mask.
"My name is Lex," her hand rested on her own chest signifying her recognition of her own personage. "Lex."
The game reversed when Lex lost her breath when his hand also rested between her breasts in the same spot her hand had. He probably had no idea of the human boundary he had crossed and was merely returning the curiosity and signifying he understood.
"Lllleeeeeehh'kkssss..."
She gulped and mustered every ounce of strength not to step back and show just how nervous the inhuman sound of his voice made her feel.
It was cut short when the sound of stone etching against stone reached their ears. He flicked his head toward a newly opened door as if to say, 'let's go.'
In the waking world in her spot on the couch, Lex's fingers rubbed in a more mechanical motion between her parted legs. Her brows furrowed together as she knew the pleasure was accompanied with internal pain.
Her dream flashed forward in her mind's eye like hitting fast-forward on a video. During the course of several hours her 'frenemy' had gone so far as to become her accomplice. He watched her back, he slowed his pace, she wasn't entirely sure he wasn't her friend. And personal boundaries...so many of those lines were blurred, too. Lex found herself asking when faced with a life or death situation, did it matter? Her skin had touched his so many times she no longer blushed. A grope when pulling her back from stepping in acid spittle didn't bother her. At one point she even had to slide down his stomach trying to navigate down a dangerous cavern – she had no choice. She would prefer the touch of his bumpy skin to the kiss of death. She had no idea she would be faced with death so soon.
They were outside the pyramid having narrowly escaped death from both the xenomorphs and the explosion the Hunter had set off. Scar's hand was beneath Lex's chin, examining his handiwork on her cheek. He had marked her as one of his tribe–one of his own. It was rare, but it was allowed. She would forever be under his clan's protection and under his protection. Lex didn't flinch once, not at the sting of acid on her cheek or his fingers cupping her chin, with his head tilted inquisitively at her. And then the moment she had finally been waiting for.
What do they look like? She had wondered.
He reached his hands up to his mask and went through the motions of undoing it. Alexa felt her heart pound in her chest.
The snowflakes that fell on her cheeks reminded her that she was in real life and looking at a humanoid alien with two eyes like a man but far too much mouth and way too many teeth for his face to ever offer human comfort. She tried to hide how unnerved she felt for a split second when it looked like teeth layered upon teeth opened up before her and roared. Shocked, she mustered all her strength in order not to take from stepping back. Lex focused on anything but his mouth, so they travelled upward... and she found his eyes to be almost as unnerving.
They were almost human. Almost. The sentient creature staring back at her echoed of the time and space expansion crossed and of his species as an evolutionary whole. His planet separated by billions of miles and his species by thousands of years and he had to go and have green eyes.
Lex felt her fear subside and became entranced. She wasn't aware she was leaning in closer and hadn't dared to take a single breath the entire time.
Meanwhile, outside her dream/memory, her fingertips began to part her most sensitive area. Scar was a movie her dreams liked to play over and over, and though Lex no longer wanted to think about him while awake, there was no denying that the dildo in her drawer had gotten bigger the past year for some "unknown" reason. And then suddenly the pleasure stimuli between her legs was replaced in her mind by another stimuli that contorted her eyebrows. Her motioning fingers stopped.
The Queen in her last defiance had stung him through the heart like a scorpion before Lex felt an inexplicable rage surge from her lungs.
"You bitch!" she screamed as she surged forward while the Queen was distracted and pushed with all her might to fatally disrupt the cantilever pose of the Queen Bitch and send her to her freezing watery grave.
After having come this far Alexa thought they'd make it out alive. She had so many questions she had wanted to ask her new companion. Where were they from? How long had they interacted with humanity? What were they? What knowledge and technology could he share with her that she could in return use to help humanity? She knew their bond was special and she watched it fade away like the light in his eyes.
Crouched by his side she hadn't known what comfort to give the dying warrior. She'd never let the Hunter see her shed tears for his name – she never knew it. It would be the last thing one facing Death with bravery would want, this much she knew. He didn't need her pity, either. He had done what he had come here to do. His mission was completed and he had joined the ranks of the Blooded, just like his forefathers before him. He could die with Honor. The knowledge of the death of the Queen was like a parting kiss from Death. It was more than most Hunter's who fought against a Queen could ask for.
And yet...
The sting through his heart and loss of blood caused him to fade in and out of consciousness, but the pain was only secondary for some reason completely alien to him. He watched the human as she neither fled nor flinched when the tips of his fingers traced the sign of his Clan on her cheek.
His Ooman...
Lex didn't flinch a second time when those same fingertips slid down her cheek to rest on her lips. A hint of the point of his claw grazed the outermost layer of her flesh before he lost consciousness for the last time. It never changed. It always ended like this. She had never felt the sting of the Arctic wind so bad until the moment he––
KSSHSHSHSHSHH!
Alexa's eyes opened wide not of her own accord but out of sheer reaction. The television that had so monotonously put her to sleep now blared static and noise in what was an unfriendly welcome back to reality.
"Damn racoons..." Lex muttered half asleep figuring the pesky woodland creatures had interfered with Man's greatest invention; Direct Satellite T.V.
She stood up and nearly tripped over the blanket that had fallen at her feet and felt even more flummoxed when the hands meant to break her fall instead were trapped inside her sweat pants. In her 3 a.m. glory (none) she managed to muster all the agility she could to fall headfirst onto the other half of the sofa instead of the coffee table. The TV turned off with a flick moments later when she found the remote.
Lex groaned. Whatever was interfering with her television signal could wait until tomorrow morning. Besides, it was freezing outside, anyway.
She trudged down the hallway toward her bed when in the stillness of the night she could make out the sound of her neighbor's old beagle baying a quarter-of-a-mile away.
"That's funny..."
Trixie was an old hound and Lex knew she didn't like to waste her breath on shadows. Had it not been so early in the morning she might have paid more attention to anything other than her quest for her bed.
Her foot carelessly grazed the combi-stick under her bed while climbing in, if only out of habit to check if it was still in its proper place. Even though she had both a pistol in her drawer and a shotgun in the closet, it was the combi-stick that set her mind most at ease for some reason.
She crawled beneath the sheets, hoping the early hour would lend itself to instantly returning her to blissful unconsciousness, but the Witching Hour had other plans.
The paradox of being both exhausted and unable to stop her thoughts from bombarding her before sleep left her frustrated. She was frustrated she relived Scar's death once again. She was frustrated she caught herself with her hands down her pants like a teenage boy. She was frustrated it had been so long since she last had sex and she was frustrated when sex was right in front of her in the form of an attractive chiropractor, like this evening, her mother's dreams of grandchildren would be put on hold because he was too "boring."
'Ever since Antarctica...'
I just wanna sleep! She silently pleaded, before, finally, her mind passed out from sheer thought exhaustion.
One hour passed and the sound of a hand pounding on the door from outside awoke her.
The mountain expeditioner sat up and rubbed her sleepy eyes while muttering halfway in disbelief and sarcasm; "Why is life so cruel...?" Clearly the Universe was conspiring against her sleep.
She donned a robe and slippers and before she could open the door a male voice rang out: "Lex? Lex, are you home?"
Lex opened the door and was greeted with her neighbors who clearly trekked the quarter-mile to knock on her door. Flashlights in hand and Trixie at heel, she stared into the concerned faces of Paul and his eldest son, Travis.
"Hey, guys. What's going on?"
"Sorry to bother you at this hour, Alexa, but we saw...lights...above your house..."
Lex's brow furrowed.
Paul and Travis looked at each other. The glance they exchanged suggested it was more than just 'lights.'
"Why don't you boys come on in? It's cold out."
Lex sat her new visitors down in the living room, Trixie included, and brought them some coffee to warm up. Paul explained that he saw unusual lights blinking for an hour above her house that he attributed to neither plane nor helicopter. Travis testified he saw the same thing as his father and both believed they witnessed a non-manmade aircraft. Paul explained that when his attempts to contact her cell went unanswered both he and Travis felt the need to check on her.
During the entire conversation Lex said not a word but felt pure agitation constrain her brow and she simultaneously wiggled her foot back and worth where she sat, unable to sit still. She couldn't take it anymore.
"If you'll excuse me for a moment. I'll be right back..."
Lex tried by outward appearances to keep calm but felt her heart pounding in her chest the moment she reached the hallway. Halfway suspecting her guests figured she excused herself over something mundane like a bathroom break during their riveting tale she immediately dropped to the floor beside her bed and threw up the bed skirt.
It was still there. The combi-stick was untouched.
A small sigh of relief escaped her and she eventually rejoined her neighbors in the living room.
Over the next hour, Paul and Travis, who had grown up in the area, along with Paul's wife and two daughters, had recounted tales of U.F.O.s the locals had seen and the bizarre state some of the cattle had been found mutilated in.
Had Alexa been a person whose life had been ordinary she may have been interested in the tales her neighbors were recounting, but she was suddenly gripped by the fear they could be in danger and her neighbors needed to go home. They were just too sweet to be caught up in any of the tragedies that befell Lex and she didn't want that on her conscience.
Alexa made a great display of yawning and tried to appear unconcerned that things like U.F.O.s above her house weren't silly hoping perhaps her neighbors might lump her into the percentile of people who 'didn't believe in such things as aliens.' Paul took the liberty to excuse himself and his son, but not before good-naturedly offering to help Alexa repair her television in the morning and that his family was only a phone call away should she need anything.
Fifteen minutes after they left Lex was in the kitchen. Her agitation felt uncontrollable. She had just turned the coffee machine off and loaded the mugs into the dishwasher when the lights flickered on and off.
Alexa stood still.
Then the electricity went off a last time not to return. She was enveloped in darkness.
"What the fuck..."
Her heart began to pound audibly in her ears and a knot formed in her stomach. In that moment of stillness Lex tried to center herself and use her extra keen sensory to detect anything off-kilter. Anything she could. She had learned this technique from a certain Hunter in the pyramid and watched him rely on his gut instinct many times. She knew she could do the same.
The air was still. Not a sound was heard. But she felt it. She sensed it.
A shift. A disturbance. A glitch.
It was enough to cause her to panic. She grabbed a flashlight from the drawer and ran down the hallway to her bedroom to grab the pistol. Gun in hand she dropped to the floor and reached under the bed for the combi-stick.
The light from the flashlight illuminated the floor under her bed.
It was gone.
- /––To be continued—/-
