Well, two chapters in less than a week, go me! Just a few things that should be mentioned, there is a part of this that explains the nature of Predators and why they do what they do. There isn't an excessive amount but the information that i have written about is widely acknowledged by mostpredator fans / fanatics such as myself to be accurate, re, their belief in 'honour'. Also, words in italics are thoughts. Enjoy. R+R please.
Chapter nine
A New Ally
The still form of Rikku lies on the floor where she landed after the explosion. There is no evidence of the alien creatures or the Predators, and a fine plume of smoke slowly emanates from the exit where she had come from. Her forehead has a cut on it and her back has several lacerations from when she turned away from the explosion.
Her chest rises and falls very slightly from light, shallow breaths. Her finger twitches, another twitch, then she inhales sharply and coughs several times. Slowly she opens her eyes, dazed and confused. She winces at the pain running all over her body and slowly tries to get up, but in her weakness her effort fails and she flops back to the floor.
Weakly she rolls herself onto her back and looks up at the ceiling and remains motionless, thinking about how to resolve her situation. She taps the side pouch on her belt with her right hand and her eyes light up slightly. Unclipping the bag, she removes a small clear gourd containing a fluorescent blue liquid and gives a weak smile.
"This is why we wear our own kit and no one else's" she murmurs. She opens up the small bottle and slowly drinks its contents. Her wounds suddenly start glowing sky blue and slowly, the skin on her head and back closes up, leaving only dried blood stains where the wound used to be. Feeling somewhat revitalized Rikku sits up.
"My last potion, huh, chance favours the prepared mind" Slowly her situation dawns on her and she looks around herself nervously, having remembered the situation she had been in earlier. She spots her pulse rifle and gets up and jogs to it, as she does so, a wave of lightheadedness hits her and she stumbles.
"Guess I needed a little more potion than that" she thinks as she steadies herself.
Reaching the pulse rifle she picks it up and points it in all directions looking for anything that isn't human. The years of fighting fiends had taught her to have a sharp eye and she saw that there is nothing here to challenge her. The aliens have retreated since the marines left, how they had missed her she didn't fully understand.
"Maybe they thought I was dead." She muses.
She doesn't stay around for long though and starts towards the exit, she gasps as she spies the corpse of the unfortunate Maddox; most of his face has now been completely eaten away by the acidic blood. She looks away, saddened and horrified.
"Oh god, I hope Yunie and the others are alright." She hopes to herself.
Realizing that if she stays here then there is no way she is going to be found by the others, but there was a great chance of her being found by the other creatures, both species, she steps up the pace to the opening of the large passage.
"Okay Rikku, it's only a few hundred metres to the hospital, you can make it on foot if you run. Better hope those invisible things aren't out there waiting."
Rikku reaches the opening and looks around, pulse rifle held out in front of her. She edges out, looking around her all the time.
The translucent form, standing a fair distance above Rikku, looks down on her glowing form through its thermal vision. The creature zooms in on the dark blue coloured pulse rifle then zooms out again. The Predator suddenly jumps down to the floor landing behind a startled Rikku. She spins around to see the translucent shape of the predator and swings her rifle to align it with the creature, but the predator knocks it away from her with its right arm, and follows through with a punch from its left arm to her stomach. Rikku sees the blow coming, giving her just enough time to ready herself for the impact, which sends her flying. She hits the muddy ground with a thud, a good 5 metres away from the predator. She clutches her stomach and winces at the pain, had she not been ready for the blow, she would have been severely winded.
She looks back at her assailant who is now making some strange beeping noises. Electrical sparks suddenly start flashing over the creature's body and it uncloaks. She stares at it, the mask it wears, the long, thick, black dreadlocks and the incredibly muscular body. It stood more than a metre taller than her and she is over one and a half meters tall. Compared to this hulk she was a midget.
In her mind Rikku's years of fighting experience told her that something like this was not going to be very agile, fought correctly, this thing could be beaten. She knew she could probably out maneuver it and strike a killing blow. She gets up off the floor and unclips her two daggers. The predator curls its right hand into a fist, and out of it's right arm band shoot its wrist blades with a metallic 'zing' and advances on her, Rikku readies herself.
Then when it is only a couple of steps away from her it abruptly stops and just stands there. Rikku looks at it suspiciously, and then she hears it, the horribly familiar hissing noise she had heard in the control center, coming from behind her. She spins around to find herself staring into the face of an alien that had snuck up behind her. She freezes, having never seen anything quite as terrifying as this.
The animal curls back its lips and opens its mouth to reveal its dreaded second set of jaws and levels itself with Rikku's forehead. Rikku snaps out of her fear and side steps just as the jaws shoot out, missing her by inches. The alien turns to her to try again. Instinctively and without thought she puts all her strength into one of her blades and goes right for the alien's comparatively thin neck. The sharp blade goes clean through it and the creature's head falls off. Rikku reacts quickly to the acid blood that shoots out of the dying creature's neck and makes a big backwards jump, a splatter of acid hits the ground missing her feet by inches. Eventually the alien's body stops writhing around and lays still. Looking at her dagger, which now has a splash of acid on it, Rikku realizes that her blades are not being disintegrated, the blades are as sharp as they ever were, the acid hisses away as it neutralizes in the open air, producing a small amount of unpleasant smelling smoke.
"Oooh acid resistant, score one for Rikku!"
The heavy footsteps behind her suddenly snap her back to reality and to the other matter at hand. The Predator is now standing right over her and looking down at her. Rikku reflexively tries to slash at it with her right blade, but it catches her arm with it own hand, she tries to slash at it with her left arm but it catches that as well, it then squeezes her wrists with tremendous power, forcing her to drop the daggers in pain. It kicks them away from her. Rikku looks up at the predator and stops fighting, her energy depleted as if sapped away by the hunter. The Predator releases her arms and then grabs tightly onto her right shoulder with its huge left hand, preventing her from getting away. It begins to raise its right arm, wrist blades extended. Rikku closes her eyes; a small tear falls down her cheek.
"Yunie I'm sorry."
The sound of the metallic zing of the blades makes Rikku jump, when nothing happens, she slowly opens her eyes and sees that the predator has sheathed its wrist blades and has its arm relaxed at its side. The predator releases her shoulder, turns away from her and takes a few steps back, stops, and turns around to face her. It stands there for a moment, staring at her, and then reaches for one of two black tubes coming out of the side of its mask, which are in turn connected to a device on its shoulder. With a hiss of air it removes the pipe, and then it takes off the second tube with another hiss. Slowly it places both hands on its mask and carefully pulls it off.
Rikku's jaw drops and stares in amazement at the Predator who looks to be a battle hardened warrior; its skin is scarred from numerous battles it has undertaken without the aid of its mask. It has a regular pattern of small bumps running over the middle of its head, and the skin is more browned, almost tanned, compared to the rest of its body. It returns Rikku's stare through sickly yellow eyes, clicks its mandibles and sniffs a few times through its flat nose.
"You are one, ugly mother fucker." Whispers Rikku.
The Predator clicks a few more times and then roars, its mandibles flay outwards making Rikku flinch.
She looks at it with a mixture of interest and nervousness; having no idea why it hasn't killed her. The predator looks at the body of the decapitated alien, looks at the creatures head, and then looks at Rikku. He reaches down to something attached to his ankle, as he pulls off the object Rikku realizes it is some sort of knife, with an unusual design. He holds out the sheathed knife to Rikku, who raises an eyebrow.
"What the heck is going on… is he offering me this as a present?" Hesitantly she reaches out and takes the blade from the predator. She removes the foot long dagger and her eyes light up. The weapon, sharpened on one side and serrated on the other, is split down the middle, creating two sharp tips.
"This thing weighs virtually nothing, I wonder what it's made of?" the young Al Bhed ponders.
As she studies the vicious weapon, the predator walks over to her twin daggers, picks them up and gives them to her.
"Uh, thanks… I think." She clips her newly acquired dagger to her belt and takes her usual weapons from the hunter's hands. The predator in turn picks up his mask, places it back on itself and reattaches the two pipes.
"What in Spira are you? Do you even understand what I'm saying?"
He turns his head back to Rikku; he understood her and her questions.
Unbeknownst to Rikku, he is an old Predator, the elder and leader of his clan. He has participated in more than a thousand hunts through many, many decades, fought and defeated thousands of creatures all over the galaxy, some of whom even spoke the same or a similar language to what Rikku speaks. He has seen members of his clan fight and win, gain trophies, and rise in status. He has also witnessed deaths of other members, he was there when one of his own was cut down by Vasquez's Smartgun, and just a few moments ago he witnessed the killing of two more of his clan and the hands of the alien horde, where his fourth brother in arms is, he does not know.
There had come a point in his life, shortly after reaching the status of Elder Predator, when he had decided to do more than just kill worthy prey. He wanted to expand his knowledge, learn more about their ways, their language and even some of their technology. He had put his hunting days on hiatus and studied, though he is not the first Predator to have made such a decision, indeed it is quite common among the elders of his species to go on these 'quests of knowledge' they way they saw it, you can only go on so many hunts before boredom begins to set in. Naturally his motives for understanding other creatures was not just for personal knowledge, he felt that learning how to speak another's language would give his hunting prowess an edge, as he could listen to the conversations of his prey and know what they were going to do to try to stop him and the rest of his hunting brothers, for that was what being a predator was all about- retaining honour by being the best.
He looks back at Rikku, considering whether to answer her question, most predators, including himself would not humor other creatures by telling them who or what they are, but Rikku is now different in his eyes; she killed a Xenomorph in hand to hand combat with impressive skill and ease, her fighting prowess was worthy of the Predators themselves, and one such as her is worth preserving. The gift of his knife, is a symbol of his solidarity towards her, and will serve as an indication to other predators that she has earned the right to life.
But sparing a worthy fighter is one thing, telling them about themselves is another. As he knew all too well, it may be relatively easy to learn to understand the human's language, but when you have no tongue, and mandibles instead of lips, pronouncing their words coherently is a challenge.
He takes a deep throaty breath then speaks slowly and carefully.
"We, are, Yautja." He has a deep, throaty sounding voice, and very menacing.
Rikku's eyes widened slightly, having not anticipated the creature to be able to even understand her, much less reply to her.
"I wonder if they're from another part of Spira that has not yet been discovered." She cogitates.
"Are you from Spira; Are you like, some sort of highly intelligent fiend?" she asks.
The predator looks back at her and a deep, twisted laugh erupts from his mask.
"I take it that's a no then?" she mutters.
The predator shakes his head and points up towards the sky.
Rikku looks up, and then realizes what the Yautja is telling her. She looks stunned; the implications of what the Yautja is pointing out to her were almost too difficult to come to terms with.
"You…You're from space? Holy…!"
He nods.
"Oh my god, you're an alien? Whoa, this is way too weird. What are you doing here on Spira, killing innocent people?"
The predator says nothing, and instead pats the various human skulls attached to its belt.
Rikku looks disgusted "You collect people's heads?"
The Predator nods.
She curls her lips "That's twisted! You go from planet to planet looking for armed individuals and you kill them and remove their heads and spines or you skin them? That's awful! Why?"
The Predator says nothing.
"Fine be that way, I don't want to know why. But I do want to know why you've decided not to kill me. I hope you haven't like, developed a sudden crush on me or something, because no offence, but you're not exactly my species."
The predator guffaws at the thought, shaking his head, he points at the carcass of the Alien.
"… Because I killed that thing? You're letting me live because I killed that thing?"
He nods in reply.
"Weird." She murmurs.
"Okay, he has spared you because you have killed that thing, and accepted the offering of the knife… Okay I'm not going to be killed by him, that's good, I guess. Ok Rikku time to think, you need to get to the hospital, that's where everyone else should be, you hope. But those freaky creatures could be anywhere and I can't go that distance alone. Oh man, I'm going to need to ask this 'Yautja' or whatever the heck he said he was, for help. Oh boy this is gonna feel strange."
She turns to the Predator "Um, I need to meet up with my friends… Can you come with me, uh, please? Don't worry I'll make sure they don't try to shoot you… just so long as you don't try to shoot them alright?"
She points to him and herself and then to the hospital as she speaks. The Predator looks over to the hospital for a few moments, looks back into the entrance where the aliens had taken up residence and then nods.
"Well I think we had better get…"
Her words are cut off by the predator as he points over towards one of the residential buildings. She watches, dumbfounded, as the Dropship flies towards the complex, and then begins to fly erratically. She puts her hands to her mouth as the aircraft falls below the level of the buildings and disappears. A huge explosion then erupts and a fireball roars up from the side of one of the buildings.
Without a word she and the predator jog in the direction of the explosion, a good 500 meters away from where they are.
