My mother had been five months pregnant with me and the rest of my litter when they found her. She was to weakened from the fight and the force emitted by the explosions of several wristbracers being detonated at max level, all at once. It was a miracle my mom had managed to survive all that and still have the strength to live. All the marines outside of Marlow's Valley had seen the mushroom cloud rise up over the horizon like a nuke had just went off. Not to many of the marines there that day new what it was. Except for one ,Major Hadrick Scheafer. Major Scheafer had come from a long long line of warriors, many of them which had encounters with my own species, even he'd had an encounter with my species during his corporal years, when he was still relatively new to the Corp. He'd seen a mushroom cloud like that before and he knew who it was that had come again.

With permission from Weyland himself, Major Hadrick lead a team of marines into what was left of Marlow's Valley to see if there was anything left of my clan that had been left behind, and if their were also any more xenos to destroy to. Scheafer was a pretty hard#ss marine. He'd been that way ever since his wife died, during a xenomorph outbreak ,that he and a couple other marines including his wife, attempted to control. The guy had no kids to father, and his lack of social skills practically made him an unapproachable price, but when it came to combat, like all the great Scheafer males he was decended from, he was good at it, and he wasn't a very bad leader on top of that, in fact I'd go so far as to call him the best marine this planet ever had seen.

Once he came acrossed the blast sight he'd been surprised to discover my mother was still alive. She'd been badly beat up during the fight, and scarred pretty good by the blast, but she was still alive. And to make her suffering even worse she was in labor. While you might think that's to soon, that's like a regular Ooman females nine months pregnancy to us. Major Hadrick saw my mom was giving birth and called in a dropship to transport her along with a bunch of leftover hunting equipment and technology that had survived the explosion.

They took her straight to this facility where she spent the next 7 hours painfully pushing out me and the rest of my litter.

There were 6 of us total, and to Weyland that meant six perfectly good subjects that he could torture. He had me and my litter taken away from our mother and brought in for augmentation. Weyland was going to convert us into weapons. And as he did so he'd make sure the process was as painful and agonizing as possible. I know I was only a day old at the time but I can still remember the pain I felt as Weyland's scientists cut me open to augment on me. They gave me gills, used some xeno genes to make my skin acid resistant, and adjusted my eyes so I could actually see color like a normal Ooman. They gave me this disgusting solution that would allow my body to process the changes they were making to me and survive. That stuff burned like hellfire. I didn't even know what was going on I couldn't see anything the solution was burning into my eyes just the same as everything else was, my skin, my lungs, my throat, all of it just burning up. My other brothers and sisters had all been augmented on, but they hadn't managed to survive. I was the only successful one to make it through the procedure. Once it was all over, I was returned to my mother, who they'd put in a metal cell. They'd given her some medical treatment just to make sure she'd live long enough to nature me until I was older.

Boy oh boy the dishonor my mom felt that momment. It hadnt been enough that she deliberately timed of her wristbracer as it was about to go off, ensuring her capture and allowing her technology to fall into the hands of Weyland Yutani, but now she had to have her only surviving pup become a hybridized abomination. My clan does not take kindly to any of that. If you do even so much as one of those things you have not only dishonored yourself but your entire clan, and you must, and I mean MUST restore that honor or you are no longer worthy to be deemed a member of society. Normally such dishonor would require you to honor kill yourself but she couldn't do that. She was to weak to do so she'd allowed herself to survive the exposure and be taken captivating with her offspring who were no suffering the consequences of her dishonorable actions, by being dishonored themselves. She could have restored what little honor she could by killing me, and removing one less stain to her clans honor, but even that she was just to weak to do. She'd made her entire litter die, because of a decision the didn't make. Mom had been waiting for the day she'd mother her offspring to the day they became great hunters, who would bring honor not just to themselves, but to their clan. That was something she'd wanted so so much, to love her children and train them to become productive and honorable members of society. But with her heresy she'd just thrown that out the window.

It would've been better to just let the wristbracer go off on her arm when it would have. But it was to late for that now.

She looked at me, and thought about what she'd just allowed to happen to me. This was to much to take in. This was to much dishonor, and shame for her to bear. She wanted to kill herself, to just get it over with therefore she at least wouldn't be burdened with the shame she'd face in this world.

But then she looked down at me and saw something. She couldnt see anything but shame in me at first but upon a second deeper glance she saw something else in me. It wasn't dishonored shame, but rather hope and redemption. Not just for herself but for everything else, every dishonorable act she'd committed could be redeemed through me. Even of she was unable to restore her honor, I had a chance to regain mine, and through that maybe hers would be restored as well. The first thing I saw, when my eyes stopped burning from Weyland's solution, was Mom. She was smiling down at me with that motherly smile that said I love you. I stiffled a tear driven giggled whimper when I saw her for the first time smiling down at me. That light her day up something undescribable. I can still remember it now.

After a couple weeks in the metal cell subsisting off of waste not even fit for a Hellhound we were given a larger containment cell. This one I spent much of my preteenage adolescence in. This enclosure was thirty times larger than the tiny #ss cell they put us in before, it was lush and green. It had grass, foliage, and trees we could move and climb around on. Their was a huge side window where the sun's light could shine down on us instead of that iritating florescent light bulb that sparked every ten minutes. The ceiling felt like it was miles above the ground, although I was no larger than a basket ball at the time. I was an exceptional small suckling, Normally newborns are around a meter in length, but I was only half that size. I was the runt of the litter. Which is very suprising.

Mom didn't care though the only thing that mattered to her was that I was alive and healthy. About six months after my breast feeding period was over, and I began to walk, she did the best she could to improve my motor skills and vocational skills. It wasn't crawling time anymore it was walking and running time. I matured rather quickly for a pup of my age and size, and at two years old I was talking in full sentences in two different languages. Mom had picked up English from the scientists and guards that constantly starred at us from the other side of the thick bulletproof glass wall. She thought it would be a good idea for me to learn English since I would be spending much of my time around Oomans. She didn't shy away from our traditional language though, which consisted of clicks, snarls, growls, and the occasional roaring, as well as a spoken dialect.

Kj gives me an example by clicking his mandibles and speaking with a series of growled words that have quite a few R sounding syllables.

My physical learning which consisted of PT was much more enjoyable, but still rather boring and dull to me. There was nothing else to do besides learn, and exercise, and the only really fun activity I did enjoy was climbing up and down the trees, and hiding in the bushes on the ground. Mom actually encouraged that too as it would help me become a quicker and stealthily hunter in the long run. Mom would chase me up and down the trees as fast as she could, which she called "Tree Tag" and "Stealth" which is basically our version of hide and seek. That was the funnest part of what she taught me.

Every night when we went to sleep under the four moons that orbited around the planet Mom would sing this song to me in our native language. It was a lullaby mothered females would click to their children to get them to go to sleep. I don't exactly remember how it goes, but I do remember a part in it about an hobble warrior that fought for his people with loyalty and love, his reputation so great it was unforgettable, and as such they sing about him to their children in the lullaby. Later on I would learn that very few Yatja are give the honorable recognition of Protectors. Yatja that protect their people from all sorts of evil things like the unspeakable Dur'ukath-i, the dishonorable Bad Bloods, to the abominable Predaliens. Each night since my mother first sang me those lullabys I imagined myself as one of them, A Yatja that would give his everything to protect the people he called his own. And looking back on it now I believe that when my mother did sing those songs she knew that I would become like the ledgendary Yatja she spoke of.

I don't think I let her down.