Exitus acta probat

She was driving fast, dangerously fast she knew. She looked at her hands, finally noticing the blood that stained them and her clothes, and with great effort slowed her speed down. She couldn't afford to get pulled over, she'd have no way to answer awkward questions. It would only be a matter of time before bearded prey's body was discovered, and then there'd be lots of people wanting to ask lots of awkward questions. No sense giving them someone to ask them of, not yet.

She was still in that curious detached emotional state. Her mind was still thinking tactically ... she reviewed how the incident in the mall parking lot would affect her plans for the night. For a brief moment she considered aborting the rest of the day's planning, but rejected the idea almost as soon as she thought it.

"A hunter adapts to changes, it doesn't run from them." She remembered the lesson around that aphorism well. Then she was hit with a realization that jerked her out of her detached state.

"My god, what am I saying?" Her vision blurred, and she pulled over to one side of the road and stopped before she lost control of the car, and not too soon. She started to shake, uncontrollably, as the last 24 hours finally hit her, hard.

"What have I become?"

She knew the answer to that question, and hated herself for it. It was inevitable that it would happen, she just hadn't expected it to be like this. The ease with which she had switched from normal, happy-go-lucky human being, out shopping with her friend, into a cold hearted merciless hunter, that had killed a human being without a shred of remorse. Before then, her hunting had always been planned, she'd had the time to make the transition gradually. It seemed like it took her an effort of will to make the shift in her mind.

But this time it had been easy, so easy. She hadn't thought about it, hadn't needed to prepare for it – in an instant, she had become a hunter.

No, that wasn't it. In an instant, she had allowed the hunter to come out. She had no choice but to accept that the change had already occurred in her mind, that she saw things as a hunter first, with a thin veneer of civilization, of humanity overlaid. She had just discovered how easy it was for that veneer to be stripped away to reveal the beast waiting underneath to be unleashed. Worse, she had enjoyed it. The feelings as she took bearded prey down, her pride, the need to scream her victory.

She knew this was going to happen. She had been warned it would happen, and of the consequences. Yet she had accepted the risk, because she needed the other advantages it would bring. She had thought that she was strong enough to resist her descent into the depths, but she now understood that there had been no chance of her succeeding. She had only herself to blame for the end result. The question as to whether or not she could live with it didn't need to be answered, not yet. She still had too much to do, and no way of knowing how long she had left to accomplish it.

She calmed her breathing, and willed her limbs to stop trembling. Eventually, they obeyed, but her thoughts took longer to quiet into acceptance. In the meantime, she sat there behind the wheel, an almost inaudible sob escaping every few minutes as she mourned her lost belief in her own humanity. She knew that she had crossed the point of no return, that the clock that had been hanging over her head for all these years was now, finally, ticking, and she was determined to make the most of it while she still could.

She started the car and eased back into traffic. She deliberately dampened her emotions, it wasn't time yet to face them head on.

She would still hunt tonight, kainde amedha, hunters, or anything else be damned.


"Why are we still here, Kylie?"

The cameraman was looking decidedly bored. They'd been sitting around in the news van waiting to see if there would be another attack on the local crime rings, when the call had been overheard on the scanner about a murder here at the mall. When the dispatcher reported the body had been mutilated, they'd raced over here as fast as they could, only to discover the mutilations seemed to have been that the guy simply got himself carved up with a knife. He'd managed to sneak a look at the body before some officious cop had moved him back the other side of the tape, but the tell-tale severing of the spinal cord wasn't there.

The blond reporter was crouched down, tapping the end of her pen against her front teeth slowly as she looked around the area. He was right, it didn't follow the hallmarks of the attacks she'd been covering. The poor sod being spooned into a bag by the coroner's office grunts seemed like just another punk who had gotten on the wrong side of someone with a blade, but something nagged at her, and she was unwilling to casually give up on this as a lost cause just yet.

"He had a gun but he didn't get to use it." she murmured, half to herself. The cameraman snorted.

"So he got hit from behind, or there was more than one and they got the drop on him. Either way, this ain't our boys, Kylie." She sighed, taking one last look around the area, before standing and headed back towards the van, cameraman in tow.

"I don't know. Something doesn't ring right." she remarked as they climbed in and the cameraman started the engine. As he put the van into gear and started maneuvering around the emergency vehicles and gawkers that surrounded the scene, he continued the conversation.

"Well look, maybe it's a copycat or something."

"If they were a copycat they'd have cut the necks, we've been reporting on that every time." she replied, exasperated. He shook his head, waiting for the lights to change before swinging out into traffic and heading back downtown. Once he was sure they weren't going to get sideswiped by some lunatic driver on the long straightaway, he grinned.

"That guy got cut through his shoulders, beside his head. Maybe it was a dumb copycat who doesn't know where their spine is?" That got a laugh.

"THAT I can believe, around here. But no, something tells me this was our mysterious vigilante." He looked across at her.

"You think it's is a vigilante group doing the killings?"

"Sure, why not? The only ones dying are hoods. Even the one back there was, I recognized the name the cops gave us." she answered, flipping through her notepad.

"So if it's a vigilante group, why aren't they taking the credit for it, giving warnings to the rest of the mobsters or something?"

"How the hell should I know? Maybe they did, they just did it direct or something." She was getting annoyed with his interrogation, and it was showing in her voice. They were silent for a few more minutes as the traffic got heavy, he needed to concentrate a little more on his driving, but once they were clear again he cleared his throat.

"So what do we do now?" he asked her diplomatically. She sighed, looking out of the passenger side window at the buildings going past them.

"We wait until the next round of murders."

"You sound sure there'll be more."

"Oh, yeah. There'll be more."


It could sense their presence easily. Inside its mind, it took in all the information its heightened senses provided, and narrowed down the location. It shifted closer to them, matte black body invisible in the shadows as it made its way silently underneath the support beams high in the roof, the only sound to mark its passing the soft rasp of hard skin on the rusted steel. Slowly, carefully, it reached a point almost directly above them, and regarded them.

They had decided to duck into the disused warehouse, figuring its remoteness would be perfect. Laughter and giggles echoed off the walls as they made their way into a room sectioned off from the main floor, a sign hanging by one corner above the door read "Receiving", but was soon replaced with the grunts and moans of humans in rut. The lack of roof to the office was no help, at various times both of them had looked up directly towards the darkness but seen nothing.

A low hiss escaped its throat, hidden tones and meanings inaudible to the senses of most living creatures underlaid and overlaid, but the frequency was capable of traveling long distances, passed on through vibrations in the surrounding structures and the air itself. It heard/felt/sensed the response of its peers through the sensory organs crammed into the elongated length of its gloss-black head, and settled itself to await their arrival.

If there had been any observers nearby, they would have been impressed. Because of the long hair hanging down, hiding his face, it was impossible to see the expression on the man's face, but the reaction of the small blond girl underneath every few minutes was both vociferous and energetic, enough that if the warehouse hadn't been set back from the main road it would have been possible someone would have come to investigate the screams of ecstasy she was producing. Those same observers would have considered it all a wonderful send off.

The only observers that were present had little interest in the mating rituals of other species however, and even less interest in how much either of the humans were enjoying theirs. The silent watcher was joined by two others, and on an unheard signal, the three of them dropped to the warehouse floor below, landing inside the office and surrounding the two humans.

The girl gasped, and the man realized they were not alone. Moving fast, he rolled onto his feet, a rusted iron pipe from the floor in his hand, but paused in shock as he came face to face with one of the black aliens. Paralyzed without understanding, he stood there as the snout of the alien came close to his face, rubbery lips peeling back slowly to reveal silvered teeth and drooling a viscous slime onto the floor. The look on his face changed to one of surprise as the alien's mouth opened, and a smaller mouth shot out, crushing through his skull just above his browline, penetrating through into the brain within with ease. As the smaller mouth retracted back into the alien's mouth, dragging slime coated grey matter and blood with it, he fell to the ground, dead.

The girl's screams rang through the warehouse again, but ended sharply.


The softly pulsing heat-glow of the walls was calm and comforting, a welcome respite from the cold air outside the ship. The chamber was sparse, by human standards, but for the hunters it was well appointed. Walls that would appear dull red and bare to human eyes were awash with paintings and designs to heat sensitive eyes, a beauty as alien as the hunters themselves. In one corner, a cube emitted varying waves of warmth into the air, creating a relaxing meditative haze, to their vision.

One entire wall though would have caught even a human's attention. The protective shield, decorated itself with harshly angular heat symbols, was currently raised, revealing an anthropologist's wildest dream. Mounted on brackets to the wall, a collection of skulls and other artifacts stood mute testimony to the skills of the chamber's occupant, but imagination would fail trying to visualize the original appearance of the most of the creatures represented in death. Each trophy had been taken in that particular rite of the hunt that was the challenge for a hunter. Each was a reminder of the battles a hunter had fought, and the honors it had both given and received.

It was sitting on a large grey slab, slowly drawing a stone across the edge of a long wavy blade. The noise was somehow soothing, rhythmic, and its eyes were half closed, lost in its own thoughts, when there came a noise from the doorway. It looked up to the hunter framed there, waiting respectfully for permission to approach, and after a moment gave a sigh, placed the stone and blade to one side, and gestured to the waiting warrior to enter.

"You have news?" the Elder asked the hunter.

It had been debating whether to give the hunter another chance, after its blatant breach of etiquette the night before during the Hunting Council, but the Elder was unwilling to reduce the number of effective fighters available. This hunt had already gone glaringly wrong, the kainde amedha making it inside the city and three hunters falling to alien hands, it hadn't survived so many hunts and been given command of this ship and the hunters aboard for their trial by making rash decisions.

"I was unable to find the hard meat nest, Elder," the hunter answered, "however while returning to the ship I encountered the human female again."

The Elder looked at the hunter questioningly. It knew what the Elder was asking, and hastily offered reassurances.

"I did not hunt her, and she was unaware of my presence, Elder. She was hunting a human." The Elder looked surprised.

"Did her hunt end well?" The hunter nodded.

"She hunted two, Elder, but allowed one to escape. The remaining prey did not seem much of a challenge. She did not take the head as a trophy, only removing teeth."

"As she did with the kainde amedha we saw her hunt. A curious custom." The Elder regarded the hunter for a moment, then continued. "Return to the hunt for the kainde amedha nest."

The hunter inclined its head in acknowledgment before leaving the Elder to its thoughts. It waited for a few minutes, then summoned one of the older, more tested hunters into its chamber. While it waited, it took up the stone resumed sharpening the blade. In only a short time, the summoned hunter arrived, and once granted permission to enter it waited patiently in front of the Elder for instructions.

"You are to hunt for the nest of the human female. Find it and report back to me."


She was glad there hadn't been anyone walking the halls or using the elevator this early in the evening, it made it easier to reach her apartment. She quickly stripped out of her blood-stained clothes, removing the arsenal of blades concealed within and placing them in the sink as usual, and ran the bath full of hot water. After dumping her clothes in the trash, she scrubbed at her hands to clear off some of the blood encrusted there, avoiding looking in the mirror set into the bathroom cabinet door.

Once the tub had filled, she lowered herself into the steaming water, and submerged her head, braided hair floating like a dark halo around her face as small bubbles of air escaped from her nose to pop on the surface. As she came back up, she rubbed at the braids, watching the water stain from the blood again. She had become proficient at removing blood from herself, and made quick work of cleaning off bearded prey's fluids. In short order she was toweling herself dry.

Only then did she risk a quick peek in the mirror, swiping her hand across the surface to clear the condensation mist away. As she washed and dried each of the weapons she had removed, she kept looking into her eyes in her reflection, trying to detect something there.

"I still look human, I guess." she thought to herself wryly. Her self loathing had faded to a background ache as she had come home. She was trying hard not to let it affect her, but now that she had come to finally understand the change to her thinking, all the little clues that she had been ignoring were glaringly obvious to her. She could feel the difference in how she viewed things, understood that she was an outsider to the world now, a hunter. The word sprang unbidden to her mind, as she had been taught it – Yautja. She tried to put the thoughts out of her mind, they wouldn't be of any use to her, as she went into the bedroom to find a fresh set of clothes.

As she opened the secret closet to select her weapons, her eyes fell on the mask inside, a shiver running through her. She knelt down and picked it up gently, feeling the rough texture with her fingertips. It was designed to cover her face, eyeshields giving the mask a faintly oriental look, the raised area that would sit over her mouth ridged vertically in a way that reminded her of fangs. She turned it around to look inside, to see some type of electronics surrounding the inside of the eyeshields, and a built in respirator unit, like a cut down version of the oxygen masks you'd find in a hospital. The outer edge of the mask was lined with some sort of foam beading, and she knew that if the two small ports on the side of the mask were connected with the rest of a hunter's amour, that foam would form a seal, making the mask very hard to remove until the pressure was released.

The rest of a hunter's armor ... Hesitantly, she opened the bottom drawer in the closet, revealing more objects of that gun-grey material. Each one of them had been a symbol of each step in her journey, a "reward" of sorts. Each one of them formed part of the armor of a hunter. She had yet to wear any of it, clinging on to the last shreds of her humanity itself through denial. The moment she wore the full armor of a hunter, there would be no escaping her destiny. That would be the final symbol of her loss.

Instead, she selected a new set of weapons, and once more secreted them about herself in the specially adjusted clothing she wore. She debated with herself over some of them, the situation had changed with the arrival of the hunters and kainde amedha. Her feelings around wearing the armor didn't extend to using the weapons, so she added a hunter's spear and an odd pistol looking device to the tools for her hunt, before closing the drawer, then the closet itself.

She looked around, as she always did before leaving to hunt, as if to try to remember it all, or to say farewell. She was never quite sure which one was the reason, but she did it every time anyway. Once she had completed her pre-hunting 'ritual', she quietly left the apartment, her mind now fully on the upcoming hunt. There was a building she'd heard about that needed to be investigated.


The blond girl woke up surrounded by something cold and hard, and quickly found she could hardly move. Frantically, as her eyes adjusted to the dim light, she looked around trying to see what was holding her in place, but all she could see was some sort of hard resin or fiberglass material. As her vision became sharper, she could see more of the room she was trapped inside, but all she could see was walls coated with more of the stuff that held her tight.

She struggled against her bonds, and was heartened when part of it gave way with a sharp crack! Pulling against it, pushing against the wall behind her, wrenching at it, wriggling every way she could think of, she finally was able to loosen the resinous bondage holding one of her arms to the wall, and with a cry of success she started to pull away at the slab across her chest and stomach.

She was stunned when she felt a sharp pain in her chest, but put it out of her mind as pulling a muscle from her exertions, and continued to free herself. When the pain re-occurred, sharper this time, she gasped, and pressed her hand up against her sternum, taking in deep breaths.

"Please God, no, don't give me a damned heart attack on top of all of this ..." She tried to scream, but she had no air to do so, and another crack! sounded, dull and hollow in her ears. She tried to draw breath, but as she opened her mouth, her chest opened up like the petals of a gory flower, spraying blood over the floor in front of her. She looked down, as her life ebbed away, but all she saw was a pale dead-fish colored thing protruding from the ruins of her body.

"Eww, gross ..." was all she could think of before the light went out behind her eyes. She slumped, bending at her still-trapped waist, blond hair falling down in a cascade curtain to conceal her face. The alien screeched in announcement to the world of it's birth, before pulling its way free from the cooling body, scuttling off into the shadows.


She watched from across the street, noting the comings and goings, making a mental note of the faces she saw. Those lucky enough to not be inside when she made her move she would remember for later reference. Many times, she'd found places to hunt because she'd recognized someone she had seen at a prior location, and followed them to the places that had been set up to replace the ones she's hunted in.

Something 'felt' wrong with the whole thing, it was quiet, much too quiet. She'd found out this place was a small distribution center, but even small there should have been more traffic in and out of the building. She tried to discount her disquiet, trying to put it down to the aftermath of her earlier self-realization, but it was bugging her. She decided to ignore it completely, and made her way across the street during a lull in the traffic, walking casually so as to not attract notice. She was in the front door before anyone realized it, and facing the two goons that were on guard there. One of them moved a gun to cover her, while the other stood and approached her, leering.

She allowed a dagger to drop from her sleeve, catching it in the palm of her hand and keeping it shielded by her body. She smiled sweetly up at the guard approaching her, and he came to a halt, definitely inside her personal space.

"So babe, what can we do for you? You lost?" She groaned inwardly at the lame line, but asked her question anyway, wanting to verify she had the right place.

"Actually, no. I was told that I should come here if I was interested in purchasing enough stuff to handle a party." The guard's face fell, as he realized that this was going to be business.

"Sorry lady, you came to the wrong place." She made as if to interrupt him, but he raised his hand and continued. "The main place ain't here, everything got moved today because of all the killings." She blinked inwardly.

"Where's it been moved to?" she asked, innocently. The guard's eyes narrowed and he shifted on his feet a little.

"Oopsies" she said, tossing the dagger underhand at the seated guard, who toppled over as the blade entered his forehead. The other one stared at her, finally understanding, as she placed a new blade against his throat. She smiled, showing teeth, and gently pushed down on his shoulder until he was kneeling.

"Now, about this new 'main place' ..."


"Elder!" One of the hunters came running into the Elder's chamber, but what it held in its hands made its haste understandable. Eight pale legs bracketed a flattened ribbed body, a long prehensile tail dangling down lifelessly at the back. At the sight of the creature, the Elder shot up from the stone slab it had been resting on, and in two long strides was beside the hunter, eyes wide. The Elder looked at the creature to confirm that it was what was feared, then harshly demanded answers from the hunter.

"Where did you find this?"

"A deserted building near the site of the battle last night, Elder. There was a pyode amedha body there also." the hunter replied, trying to remain calm and give the detailed report it knew the Elder would require, regardless of how what it held in its hands right then made it feel. A first stage hard meat lifeform, born of an egg, whose sole purpose in life was to implant the embryo of adult kainde amedha in unwilling hosts, the perverse and fatal form of the alien's lifecycle.

"Had it been implanted?" The urgency of the question was obvious. The Elder was cursing itself inwardly for its complacency.

"No Elder, it looks like it was killed by kainde amedha." Before the Elder could show its happiness at this news, the hunter continued on hurriedly. "It was a male, though."

The Elder cocked its head at the hunter curiously. "There is some significance to that?", it asked.

"Yes Elder, he was unclothed. There was clothing present, but some of it was not his, it had a different scent present, I believe that of a female."

"Did you find the body of a female?" The hunter shook it's head negatively, as other hunters entered the chamber, drawn by the excitement.

The Elder growled, this was getting worse by the moment. "Then it's likely the female was implanted with a kainde amedha young, then removed to the nest for safe keeping until its birth. Have any more of the first stage lifeforms been discovered?"

"No Elder. But Elder, I thought that we still had several more days before one of the hard meat would begin to become a Queen?" The hunter was confused, and a note of concern was creeping into its voice. It had never seen the Elder so agitated before.

"Under normal circumstances that would be the case, however it seems that like everything else with this hunt, nothing is going according to expectations." the Elder snapped. "Worse yet, if there are eggs present it means that it has matured." The Elder paused and took a deep breath, trying to keep its temper in check. There was no point taking it out on this hunter, figuring out what had gone wrong would come later, if any of them survived.

Thinking quickly, the Elder made a decision, and began passing orders to the hunters.

"Recall the hunters, they are to re-equip themselves with a full array of weapons, including plasma weaponry." One of the newly arrived hunters, the one the Elder had sent to find the nest of the strange human female, spoke up.

"Even the unblooded, Elder?"

"Yes. This isn't the time for half measures. This is beyond the trial now." The Elder noticed the eyes of the impatient hunter, one of the unblooded, light up at the chance to be let loose with advanced weaponry. It made a mental note to make sure that one was never left alone, there would be no telling what damage it would cause given its lack of discipline. After a moment, the Elder looked to the hunter that had just spoken.

"Did you locate the human female's nest?" The hunter looked surprised at the question, but answered quickly.

"No Elder, but I did locate the female herself. She is hunting pyode amedha in a building near the area of interest." The Elder nodded, surprised in spite of itself that the human would be hunting again so soon. It wondered what created such a sense of urgency, but then decided that it should just ask her.

"Indeed? Find her. When her hunt is completed, make contact with her, and inform her that I wish to speak with her."

The hunters collectively gasped in amazement, and the hunter it had addressed looked around, as if unsure that it had heard correctly.

"Elder?"

"She has shown that she understands honor to some degree, and this situation involves her species very directly. If she is as she appears, a hunter, then it would be dishonorable not to inform her of what is going on, or to deny her the chance to hunt the kainde amedha." The Elder explained patiently, knowing that they had the right to know why it was considering this huge breach of the rules. It knew that it needed to maintain their trust, and going so far beyond the standards of conduct for hunters would lead to challenges against its leadership. It needed them to remain focused, and it needed them to retain their trust in its ability.

But it dared not verbalize it's thoughts.

"And if the hard meat have a Queen that is producing eggs, we are likely to need every hunter we can find, even if one is pyode amedha."