Note: The Xenomorph featured in this fic is based on the original creature design from 'Alien' in terms of its appearance and behaviour. This fic is also partly inspired by a theory on alien behaviour put forward in the graphic novel 'Labyrinth', which suggested that the aliens' hostile motives are based on 'seeing' fear, meaning that if a person was truly fearless, the alien would not attack...

Disclaimer: I am in no way affiliated with the 'Aliens' franchise - it is the rightful property of 20th Century Fox. And of course, the original Alien design belongs to the wonderful H R Giger. All recognisable concepts are being used for non-profit fanfic purposes only.


Excerpt taken from 'The Girl, the Eagle, and the Octopus':

'Kate had never been that good at finding her way around London, London being her native city and the place where her company and its affiliates were based. Well, the phrase 'her company' was generally an exaggeration - she just worked there. But it was often commented that she 'practically owned the place' – at nineteen years of age she was the youngest member, and yet she alone had faced more dangers, solved more mysteries, and conducted more research than the rest of the organization put together. It was her selfless love and enthusiasm for the strange and unusual, her unexplainable affinity for dangerous lifeforms, and the fact that dangerous lifeforms always seemed to have an affinity for her, that had earnt her a strange sort of respect in the science world, even if it was only in a 'that girl is a nutcase' sort of way.

Rather less respectful was her belief that the aggressive creatures of this world and beyond should be able to do whatever the hell they feel like without having to worry about getting nuked by ignorant patriots. It was her opinion that humankind should get down off its high horse and stop thinking they had the right to destroy a creature just because it had dared to harm a human. After all, at the end of the day, humans were part of the animal kingdom too, and it was supposed to be 'survival of the fittest', not 'survival of the one with the most machine guns'.

Despite this, Kate was certainly not a hippy who paraded around with an 'equal rights for rabbits' billboard on regular occasions. Her research was her only method of persuasion, her tool in helping people to understand, rather than destroy. Because of this, the small London-based team of freelance researchers were the only people that Kate would agree to work with, since they seemed to be just about the only ones who employed the 'look but don't touch' policy. Unfortunately, in the world of competitive scientific research, such places were never particularly famous or valuable. Instead, the organization's investigations and missions were sponsored by larger companies who then bought the researchers' findings for use in their own projects. And it was a good profitable system, more or less. There were times when Kate worried about what sort of 'projects' her research was being used for, but at the end of the day, there was a limit to how ethical a person could be before realising that it wasn't making them any money.'