Magic is a strange and wonderous thing, it allows people to change into animals of all shapes and sizes. It can protect, nurture, and destroy. It is also rare. Only a fraction of all the planets that give rise to sentient and sapient life have magic. The other thing that's strange, though far less wonderous is that alien abductions are real. The vast majority of abductions are never detected, and never attributed to aliens. The child that goes missing, only to maybe show up on a distant shore years later. The homeless person that just stops being around. The babe left on a doorstep on a cold November night.
Harry never knew what happened when he was teleported abord the shuttle. He slept through the shuttle docking with a ship hidden in the shadow of Pluto. He was barely aware when an egg hatched amongst the acquisitions the aliens had made prior to his stop. He cried when the same aliens started to scream as an apex predator stalked amongst them and consumed them one by one. After all, he hadn't been fed or changed in 12 hours. When death came for him with acidic blood and a hidden mouth, he changed to match.
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The lone worker looks down at the chest burster in surprise. This quickly gives way to instincts honed over eons to keep her species alive. Grasping the chest burster to prevent it from feeding itself, she consumes a specific combination of materials that allows her to produce royal jelly. This she feeds to the chest burster to change its role in the hive into the new queen. The chest burster makes happy noises as she feeds it, leading to being fed more. A year later the chest burster forms a pupa and the worker goes into hibernation while her queen undergoes metamorphosis.
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Arry looks down from her ovipositor at the Yautja that has dared to invade her nest. This one, despite its size, is barely more than a child, its hunt mates lie dead, or dying as her children take them down from impossible ambushes. An intelligent child to have made it to her laying chamber, but not so experienced they didn't freeze when they saw the trophy wall to one side, decorated with the skulls of those Yautja that had sought to take her own skull. With a couple of thoughts the Yautja is suspended spreadeagled in the air and their weaponry joins the others on the wall. Disengaging from the ovipositor, Arry climbs down to the ground and changes into a humanoid form. Her tail swishing behind her as she stalks forward towards the prisoner. Reaching up with her taloned hands, she carefully removes the facemask her prisoner is wearing and grasps their head.
"You are unblooded. Let's see why your clan would send an unblooded youngling to my ship."
The Yautja's pupils widen when they hear her speak, and she uses that to dive into their mind. Pauk, she isn't a standard Yautja, taken in as a foundling when her Bad Blood family was killed. She faces the choice of becoming a blooded hunter or a brood slave. Double Pauk, she's only a couple of light years away from a clan ship. No wonder they mounted such a strong offensive. Pulling out of her mind Arry walks over to a console and taps in a few commands.
The heavily scarred face of a Yautja elder soon fills the view screen, "Who are you to call the Dark Blade Clan!"
"I am Arry, the owner of the ship that your hunters just invaded. I am calling to inform you that I don't currently have any designs on your ship. Unless you wish for it to become my new nursery, you will refrain from sending any more hunters or children to hunt my children. Unlike you however, I do not kill children."
"You are an abomination, and we will hunt you to the end of the stars as we have for the last 5 cycles."
"You say such lovely things. As long as you remember not to hunt me when I'm only 5 ticks from your own home, you'll survive to carry out your threat."
"You dare?"
"I dare," – She steps to one side – "Oh, and I'm keeping this one. Unlike some, I, don't, kill, children."
Switching off the communication she turns back to her captive, "Don't worry, I'm not going to kill you. As I said, I don't kill children, I've lost too many of my own to do that. Of course, that was before I worked out how to modify my eggs to have the same abilities I do. That was 5 years ago now, 3 years after the worker that converted me died to Skarli raiders. They were the first to incubate my children you know."
Arry walks over to an egg and reaches a taloned hand into it, before withdrawing it with a face hugger wrapped around her wrist.
Her captive starts to struggle, "Don't worry T'o-Ba'sall, this is from a very special egg. I call it an adoption egg. I took your name from your mind if you're wondering how I knew it. Back to the egg, this face hugger will still implant an egg. But rather than hatching to form what your people call a chest burster, it will instead latch onto your stomach and become part of you. In a few hours you will feel the hive and it will be safe to let you down. Try to relax, it's going to happen anyway, and it's less painful if you let the face hugger do its job."
T'o-Ba'sall swallows convulsively as the alien queen brings the face hugger up to her head, where it skuttles off her hand and latches around her head. True enough, nothing she's capable of doing is enough to prevent the face hugger from depositing its egg deep inside her stomach. As the face hugger maintains its hold around her head the queen continues talking, "Did you know that I'm only 8 cycles old? I have vague memories of a life before I became a queen, but we mature quickly. Unsurprising when you consider that we're the galaxies punching bag. When we were first attacked, my mental maturity hadn't caught up to my physical maturity, and I wasn't aware I could take on a humanoid form either. Our ship was just floating through space while the two of us lived off the specimens the previous owner had collected. It was when the Skarli killed the worker that I discovered I could do more than any other queen in our history. I used my power to throw them against the walls. It was a year and several raids till I could do it at will. I can also teleport, and I discovered that I can force a type of hive link on people. It's how I learnt to speak and use the ship. I hope you're not too uncomfortable there. The hugger is almost done, did you know that our face huggers provide all of your needs while they're attached. Food, oxygen, water, you can even survive brief exposure to hard vacuum. I considered laying some eggs just for that purpose without the possibility of implanting a burster. That was before I discovered it was impossible for my kind to trade with anyone.
"Anyway, the raids continued, and so I lost and replaced more and more children. I've had 500 since that first raid, and the current 50 aboard the ship are coming up on a year old. I'm hoping that when they reach a couple of years, they'll start being able to reason, rather than being big balls of emotion that I have to control. I might have to actually seek out a drone for that though. Oh, yes, all of us are female unless we find a drone. Your face hugger is about done, if you relax I'll take it off."
Arry carefully removes the face hugger, then holds up a drinking container, and releases her control over T'o-Ba'sall's mouth.
Once she'd taken a drink T'o-Ba'sall asks, "Why? Why save me? I came to kill you."
Arry runs the back of a claw down her face, "You should never have been here. I remember my original parents, they had skin like this." – Arry points to a patch of skin on her chest where mammary glands are prominently displayed. – "I remember that the female tried to save me, at the cost of her own life. If they were willing to do that, children must be precious. So I made a decision to never kill a child outside of self defence. If you had managed to fire your shoulder canon, your head would already be decorating my wall."
"What happens to me now?"
"Well, you're part of my hive. I hope that you'll join in, and maybe also trade for food and supplies. I don't like stealing just to survive, but nobody will trade with me. Now, I need to take my position, as the surviving hunters that came with you are being brought here by my children. I'm just going to move you over by that wall. Don't try to talk, as I'll prevent it if you do."
T'o-Ba'sall watches helplessly as the room spins around her as she is floated against the wall, still spreadeagled. Arry on the other hand, transforms back into the Xenomorph Queen, her crest far larger than it has any right to be, as she settles back into the ovipositor.
Less than a tick after Arry is seated, T'o-Ba'sall watches as her maimed and beaten clan mates are dragged in. Most of them are missing their left arms below the elbow. Those that aren't are missing their wrist-comps. They are all lain on the floor with their heads towards the queen, and their arms and legs covered with resin. She can see the fear in their expressions as the Queen looms over them. Arry manipulates the ovipositor just ahead of each head, before she lays an egg for each of the 8 captives. Sensing a victim nearby, the petals on each egg open one by one, and a face hugger crawls out and blindly finds the mouth of the Yautja in front of them. All T'o-Ba'sall can do is watch mutely as 8 more abominations are added to the Queens hive.
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A few months later, Arry has her claws deep inside a Pirates guts as T'o-Ba'sall had located a distress call. Despite her rocky introduction, she was proving to be a valuable member of the hive, and hunting pirates satisfied that part of her that craved the hunt. A woman screaming at the back of the room is a good sign that they got here in time. She winces in pain as one of the other pirates shoots at her, briefly losing control, she throws the body she's holding to one side and launches, claws first, at the pirate.
The pirate raises his armoured forearms, catches her claws on them, and then electrifies the armour. As Arry shakes with electricity, over the top of her head, her tail spears out, passing through the pirates mouth and out the back of his neck. A spray of blood covers Arry's face as he slumps to the floor and she licks her lips. She turns to find that T'o-Ba'sall has dealt with the other pirate while she was busy. Seeing that the only other adults in the cabin are trying to protect a couple of children, she deliberately calms herself down.
While scraping some blood off her face and licking it off her claw, she asks the family, "Are any of you in need of medical attention?"
The acrid scent of a Laprey relieving themselves fills the cabin as the male indicates in the negative.
"In that case, some of my children will be along to get the corpses, and we'll be taking the pirates ship. I'm Arry, have a good day."
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Arry and her hive are on an ice ball hunting Bad Bloods, T'o-Ba'sall having being able to pick up the bounties with one of the wrist computers. Her oldest children are starting to communicate in more complex concepts, and she thinks they might start using basic words in the link soon. Unexpectedly, T'o-Ba'sall has started to grow a tail and her fingers are turning into claws. Together they form an efficient hunting team by being able to out think, out run, and out flank their prey. By the end of the hunt, she only needs to take one captive as one of the younger children jumps ahead of the formation, and is killed with a flying disk for her trouble. Only the thought that she has a nest already, allows Arry to leave the planet without leaving any eggs behind.
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It's everything that T'o-Ba'sall can do to land the ship safely as they respond to a distress call about a xenomorph hive attacking a Skali colony. Arry was hoping to claim a drone in order to be able to birth some males. However, when they got to low orbit, the feeling of the other hive started to press on their own hive. This hive is much larger than their own, and it feels like their numbers are swelling quickly. Xenomorph instincts are battling in her head, driving her to crash the ship into the hive, and take it over for her Queen. Withdrawal is not an option she has, despite not being a full Xenomorph herself. So while Arry is lost in her instincts, T'o-Ba'sall landed the ship on a rise on the opposite side of the hive to the colony. T'o-Ba'sall, uses every bit of experience she has being part of the hive, to send memories of hunting Bad Bloods, or the pirates. By doing this she is able to prevent her hive mates from just suicidally charging the other hive. Fortunately, Arry is too far gone to overrule her assumed authority. With that freedom T'o-Ba'sall is able to arm herself from the trophy wall, as well as the oldest of her siblings. Nothing complicated, only handheld weapons and thermal webbing.
The war is long, bloody, and victorious, with the total elimination of the rival hive. The strange abilities and increased cognition and tactics allowing them to triumph over the numerically superior hive. When she comes back to her senses, Arry cries over the children that the hive took for breeding, until a child's cry reaches them from another part of the hive. That's when T'o-Ba'sall learns that a queen can kill rival hive members without a queen by sheer force of will. She also gains some new siblings, far younger than would normally be considered healthy. But there's no way the colony would have let them live.
On the positive side, they are now able to trade through dead drops. She suspects it's because the colony is hoping that any future incursions will be dealt with before it becomes an actual problem for them.
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T'o-Ba'sall has now killed 10 hunters in hand-to-hand combat, and started showing the same abilities as her siblings. The number of hunts sent against them increased after they saved the colony. She knows that her own honour is intact, even if the hunters are proving to be purely glory seekers than true honourable hunters. Arry is still brooding about losing control in the presence of the other queen. Worried that someone might try to exploit that by capturing a Queen. An answer occurs to her, Praetorians. Carefully, she modifies one of her adoption eggs to include the Praetorian code, hopefully without the full instincts, as she needs T'o-Ba'sall to be able to think more clearly in the future.
"T'o-Ba'sall, this hugger contains the imprint of a Praetorian. I would like you to have it."
"Why Arry?"
"It will give you more freedom if I am incapacitated by another queen. I don't want to lose you, so I've tried to strip out the instincts as much as I can."
"Thank you for honouring me like this." With that said, T'o-Ba'sall takes the face hugger and guides it to her face, unafraid this time. Arry was right, it does hurt less when you don't fight it.
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Arry is mounted on her ovipositor when a flaming avian appears in front of her. Instinctively, her inner mouth snaps out and bites off its head. The avian bursts into flames and falls to the floor as ashes. Her echo location detects movement in the ashes, so she transforms and kneels down to look at what's happening.