A posse ad esse non valet consequentia
The guard must have had some life left in him, the body gave a small jerk as she drove the blade into the back of his neck to sever his spinal cord, her own take on the ritual. Withdrawing the narrow knife, she let the body drop on the floor out of sight, to rest next to its compatriot, the thrown dagger already removed from that one's forehead.
She moved over to the door to the street, and closed it, and a moment's searching came up with the steel bar that would drop across from one side of the frame to the other to bar it closed. Once she was sure it was secured, she withdrew the multi tool from its place inside her clothing, and flicked the pliers out of one end, bending to her grisly task of removing the incisor teeth of both guards. She dropped them into the cloth pouch for her trophies.
"A new 'main place' huh? And by the sounds of it, a bunker." She grinned inwardly. "It's about time these mopes came up with a real challenge." The thought of it as a 'challenge' didn't bother her as much as it once would have, she was allowing the hunter she had become to show itself almost unrestrained now. She could see that she had thought this way on hunts for a while now, she just had refused to accept it.
The guard had been quite eager to tell her all about how the main distribution was being handled by the new building, and to give her the location. He'd thought that it would save his life. He had been wrong. She would check it out and pay a visit soon, but there was still this building to clear out first. She checked her weapons once more, but a vague sense of unease still nagged at the back of her head.
She paused, trying to allow her new awareness of her self analyze the feelings, trying to identify the cause, but came up blank. One of 'those feelings' was bubbling up in the pit of her stomach again. After a few minutes she gave up trying to figure it out, she would just have to rely on her instincts, and take it as it came. She withdrew the retracted spear from a pocket within her clothes, took a deep breath, and walked through the doorway deeper into the building.
There wasn't much difference between the condition of the rooms here than there had been in the other places she'd hunted, things always seemed to follow a set pattern. Although she didn't know his name, she was looking at the product of Ito's practical mind, streamlining the shared operations of the group. In effect, he'd created a MacDonald's of organized crime, thanks in part to their total domination of local law enforcement. Once they controlled the police, they were able to consolidate their operations into central locations, representatives of all three groups being able to practice their trade with overall security provided by Wen's people.
That just made it easier for her.
The same risks elsewhere to such an arrangement - the vulnerability of having everything in one place - may have been removed when it came to the issue of the cops, but they hadn't factored in someone like her, and these places were her prime hunting grounds.
-
The scanner was quiet, the only calls coming over it were the usual mundane day-to-day business of cops. He figured that the cops were using a different frequency to talk about the attacks, something the tactical teams used probably, but the equipment they had wouldn't be any use trying to listen in on those, they were almost invariably encrypted channels. He looked across at the sleeping form in the passenger seat as he drove around aimlessly, hoping to spot something unusual the old fashioned way.
He still didn't understand why she felt the murder at the mall was connected to the murders they'd been covering, but that might be why she was the reporter and he's just the cameraman. He shrugged, and concentrated on driving. This wasn't exactly the best neighborhood to be hanging around in with a couple of hundred thousand dollars worth of electronics in the back.
-
The first door she came to was usually the 'fence', the buyer of stolen properties, in these places. She opened the door easily to a room stacked high with boxes and goods. The fence himself looked to be about forty years old, with those nervous, shifty eyes that all in his chosen 'profession' acquired early on in their careers. He looked at her, and his eyes widened, before he darted for a box sitting on top of a white plastic chair. She waited, standing easily in the doorway, until he reached the box and pulled out a large framed silver revolver. He brought it up to point, and she moved, sidestepping then pivoting as she ducked down low, one hand reaching inside her jacket.
The room was filled with the deafening crash of the gun firing. As his panicked shot went over her head and to one side, she completed the turn, her arm now outstretched as it flung an object towards him. Looking like a couple of spikes welded together to form an 'X' shaped cross, it cleaved through the air before embedding itself in his chest, two of the points entering flesh and coming to a halt lodged in his sternum. With a whoof of exhaled air, the fence went down onto his butt, the gun held limply in his hand as he stared stupidly at the steel protruding out in front of him. He tried feebly to raise the gun once more as she approached, but she reached over and gently took it out of his hand.
"Why do little people always seem to have big guns?", she asked rhetorically, looking at the gun with disdain before opening the cylinder and dumping the remaining rounds and single expended cartridge on the ground between the fence's knees. He looked up at her with fearful eyes, and for a moment her resolve faltered, as it always did when hunting those who weren't the 'muscle' end of the business. In his own mind, she knew, he hadn't hurt anyone, hadn't wronged anyone. She knew different, and thought of those people whose property had been stolen, their being attacked, perhaps even killed for the trinkets filling the room. She reached for his hair with one hand, dragging his head backwards, before the other drove a blade up under his chin and into his brain. His body lurched once, spasmodically, then was still.
She added his incisor teeth to her pouch, and severed his spinal cord as she had done to countless others in her hunts, then wrenched the throwing cross from his chest. She cleaned the blades on his clothes, then moved on. By the time she reached the door, she thought no more about him. The other prey would be on the alert now from the sound of the gunshot.
"Good. More of a challenge."
-
The hunter was waiting patiently outside for the human to finish her hunt. It wasn't sure why the Elder wanted to speak with it, but it admitted to itself that the Elder's logic about the pyode amedha needing to know of the hard meat threat made sense. It heard the humans inside firing their weapons, but it was sure that this female would comport her hunt well.
-
She ducked back behind the wall with a grin as a hail of automatic gunfire was launched at her. She had reached the room that was usually used as the drug room. The only access the 'users' had to the stuff inside was a small window set in one wall on the outside of the building that led inside here, an arrangement that was generally considered to be secure. Anyone trying to get at the drugs would need to come through the building itself to actually get into this room, and they had relied on the guards at the front door, and one more at the door to this room, to deal with anyone that tried that route.
It was just their bad luck that all of the guards were dead, the one outside this door having been hit by untold rounds fired by the three people inside the drug room when she'd used him as a shield while she shoved the door open.
-
He was about ready to shake her awake and suggest they call it a night, when he had to slam the brakes on to avoid hitting two teenagers that were sprinting across the road, terror evident on their faces. The sudden stop woke her up, but while she blearily rubbed the sleep from her eyes with a half annoyed "What ...?", he made shushing noises. The teens had been running away from the side of a building, and as he looked across, he spotted the half window mounted there. His experience told him what the building was used for, but he didn't have to be a hotshot cameraman to recognize the sounds coming from within the building.
He reached behind the reporter's seat for his camera, all the time watching the building across the street, checking to see if any of the wild bursts of gunfire he could hear was likely to head their way through the window. Finally coming alert, the reporter's eyes widened as she too heard the gunfire.
"You think ...?" she asked, trembling.
"Dunno, but it's a good bet. Let me guess, you ain't going to stay ... ?" He didn't bother finishing the question, she was already half way out the passenger side door and trying to look over the hood of the van towards the building. He sighed, shaking his head, and made his way over the seats until he left the van on her side. After a minute of making sure the shooters weren't aiming through the window, they ran across the road, appearing comical as they ducked low, before pressing up against the wall near the window. The reporter made as if to get around the cameraman to peek through the window, but he hauled her back with a grin. He held the camera up in one hand, waggling it softly.
"Kylie? Which do you think would be less annoying if it got shot – this, or you?" She snorted, but drew back as he removed the small LCD monitor from the back of the camera and handed it to her.
"If you ask the network, they'd prefer me to the camera get it." He laughed quietly as he powered up the camera, and looked down at the screen she was holding as he lifted the camera up so the lens would point into the room. Both of them gasped at the same moment as the image came into focus.
-
The three men were definitely good at wasting ammo, she could see. She wasn't sure if they were trying their own version of suppressive fire, or trying to damage the wall enough to shoot through it but missing drastically, but several hundred rounds had come through the doorway to crater the corridor wall as she crouched down easily.
Suddenly and without warning though, the bullets stopped coming through the doorway, although the gunfire continued. After a minute, silence fell, and she risked slowly looking around the doorframe to see why.
Two of the men were slumped up against one wall, blood trickling from their faces, but the ammunition belts slung across their chests rose and fell, they were still breathing. The third however was certainly not, one look at the ruined remains of his head (she assumed he'd been male, it was hard to tell) was enough to certify the body was just that, a body.
The cause was unknown though. Looking further around the door frame, she could see no signs of what had attacked the three men, but with a start she realized the only ones that could have done this.
"Yautja! Dammit! This is my hunt!" she called out, standing and entering the drug room. She glared around, daring the concealed hunter to reveal itself, common sense flying out the window in the red haze of her anger. To have interfered in her hunt was a breach of the protocols that had been drummed into her so painfully so long ago, and she was incensed. She might be just a human, but dammit, these were her hunting grounds!
Silence was her only reply, and she looked around more warily, wondering if this was ... then she heard it, from above. A low, sussurating hiss that would not have come from a hunter. She knew only one other lifeform that made that noise.
Quickly she darted behind the remains of the door, and crouched down. She knew there was little chance of her evading detection from the one, two kainde amedha that appeared from the ceiling, a hole there coming to her notice finally. She mentally kicked herself for not having seen it in her angry entrance to the room. She hoped that the unconscious criminals on the floor would be sufficient distraction for her until she chose the right moment.
-
"Tell me you're getting this!" she breathed in his ear, breathlessly watching the scene unfolding on the monitor she held in quivering hands.
"Oh, I'm gettin' it, girl. I ain't believin' it, but I'm getting' it!"
-
She didn't think of trying to escape, her only thoughts were on the aliens in front of her, while once more she tried to understand why they were here in the first place. From everything she had learned, kainde amedha were the ultimate trial of a new hunter to be able to ascend into manhood ... thinghood ... lobsterhood ... alienhood ... whatever. But she had understood the trial to be done in a controlled environment, to limit the damage should the hunters fail. She knew that each hunter had a powerful bomb strapped to their arm, that they were supposed to use rather than let themselves be killed or captured - she'd rushed into the fight the night before more to put the spear through the bomb on the last hunter's arm than to fight the aliens, to stop it exploding and causing untold damage.
No, that wasn't the reason. Not really. She could tell that she didn't really believe it herself. She wanted to face the aliens. She wasn't the same as she had been that first disastrous time she'd tried to hunt them, when she would have died with a hard meat tail impaled through her stomach if she had been alone. She was older, wiser, stronger, and faster. She had entered the battle and spiked the bomb because she wanted to hunt them.
And here were two more.
This wasn't the best place for a fight with hard meat. The hunters had died because they allowed themselves to be caught in close confines. Her only chance of fighting kainde amedha was to use her speed and agility, there was no way she could survive a stand-up fight with them, and she knew it – that was how she'd ended up spiked on a kainde amedha tail. The question was, would the room be big enough to allow her to use those strengths? She was evaluating the room and her chances, planning the best way to engage the aliens, when she noticed something that brought her up short.
They were both carrying something.
"Oh shit! Huggers?" She knew those things too well. Her mind went into panicked overdrive, primal fear bubbling up through her subconscious to trigger her into reflexive action, making her draw the odd looking pistol from her clothes. The two kainde amedha holding the long tailed facehuggers spun around at the sound of her voice, and she pulled the trigger rapidly, aiming not at the aliens but their deadly cargoes. With each pull, a silvered arrow tip shot out of the barrel of the pistol, but in her haste the first few missed, striking one of the hard meat in the arm instead. With a screech, it dropped the creature it had been carrying, and she quickly changed her aim point to hit the facehugger before it could right itself, knowing the speed they were capable of launching themselves at their victims with. She was surprised when it moved slowly, almost lethargically, on the ground, but her next two arrow points slammed into its body, throwing it backwards in a spray of acidic gore.
She didn't have time to question why it had been slow, she knew she had been standing still for too long already. She tracked on the second hard meat and its burden, releasing the last four arrow tips in the pistol at them, and was rewarded by seeing the body of the other facehugger spray apart into a mist at the impact.
She dropped the pistol and was bringing the spear up to extend it when the kainde amedha she had hit crashed into her, knocking her backwards to the ground. Her head hit the concrete floor hard, and for a moment she could see nothing but flashes behind her eyes, laying there stunned. When her senses returned, she was face to face with the kainde amedha! It stood above her, screeching a hiss, and she cried out in pain as it whipped the serrated ridges of its tail down and across her body, shredding her clothes and skin.. She brought the spear around just as the alien bent over her, mouth opening so it could finish her off with its internal mouth, and pressed against the grip to extend it. The tip shot through the alien's mouth before coming out at the back of its head, but the alien's weight kept it sliding down the shaft. With black-green acidic blood beginning to flow down towards her hand holding the spear, she had to choose quickly, and she let go, pushing it away to one side as she rolled over and away in the opposite direction.
Before she could get back on her feet, blazing pain shot through the calf of one leg, the remaining kainde amedha had gripped it in the meatiest part with it's talons, sharp claws puncturing through the skin and muscle to grate against the bone itself. She let out an ear piercing scream of agony as the alien pulled her closer, in desperation pulling one of the long blades out from it's hiding place along her thigh and hacking into the alien's wrist. The kainde amedha reared back, letting go of her leg, and she threw the remains of the rapidly melting blade after it as she scrabbled backwards, trying to avoid spatters of the alien blood spraying around wildly as it shook with its own pain and anger.
-
The hunter stiffened suddenly, the sensors in its helmet bringing it a sound it hadn't expected. The cries of kainde amedha in battle. Inside the building!
-
It dropped down on all fours, favoring the wrist she had cut into, and started stalking towards her, its tail raised high above it like some mutated scorpion. She watched the tip of the tail through a red haze of burning pain, her head throbbing and the back of her neck damp, her leg screaming at her where the kainde amedha claws had punctured it, and her body was stinging as sweat-salt began to mix with the blood welling up from her wounds there. Despite the pain, she reached her other hand down the other long blade she carried, and as it cleared its concealment she reversed it against her forearm.
The kainde amedha had not evolved on this world. Their senses were acute, yes, nearly impossible to hide from, but those sense were optimized for a different world, a different environment. When it came to visual senses, they were limited, and it couldn't 'see' the blade when she had it in that position, one of the tricks she had learned. The alien would only see her arm moving, not the blade underneath it. It worked pretty well against pyode amedha as well, but in their case she had decided it was simply a case of most humans weren't particularly observant.
The only problem? She only had one long blade left, and neither it nor any of her other remaining weapons were acid resistant. She'd only get one chance to use it, and there weren't that many ways to kill kainde amedha in one go. Worst, all of those ways would need her to be perilously close to its teeth, claws, and tail, not to mention the risks of being close to hard meat after cutting it, the blood itself. She hadn't expected to lose the spear, counting on it and her speed if she'd ended up facing kainde amedha tonight. Her words to the hunter the night before rang hollow in her mind, "Overconfidence is dangerous." No shit, Sherlock!
She was getting close to the wall behind her, still trying to crawl backwards but only one leg was responding. That and trying to keep her blade concealed made it slow going, but the hard meat didn't seem in any rush, it knew she had nowhere to go. She slipped, almost falling over onto her side and biting off a scream as the wounds in her body tore open a little more. She looked down and found a thick plastic bag of white powder under her good hand, that had thrown her off balance. Hoping to distract the alien, she picked the bag up and threw it, but the kainde amedha sensed the onrushing object and swatted at it with one claw, ripping open the bag and coating itself with the fine dust inside.
"Great, I hope you get high, you son of a bitch." she muttered, backing up more, but then stopped and stared at the alien. It too had come to a standstill, and slowly it raised itself up on it's hind legs, body swaying gently and its head shaking from side to side.
"You have got to be kidding me!" She thought, stunned. "Those things can get high?" She looked around quickly. She knew she was losing a lot of blood, and wouldn't have much longer to act. The thought of trying to escape didn't even cross her mind, her entire being was focused on figuring out a way to take the alien down. She was trying to lever herself up when the decision was taken from her.
A blur of displaced air, and the head of the kainde amedha suddenly jumped up, separated from its body at the neck.
She blinked, trying to understand what had happened, but the blood loss was finally gaining on her. She slumped back down to the ground, her vision blurring into darkness, as she saw a shimmer in front of her coalesce, slowly revealing the form of a hunter, and after a moment she smiled.
"It's about time you showed up."
-
It regarded her unconscious body for a moment, head cocked to one side in thought. After a moment's deliberation, it reached behind its back and unclipped a curved metallic container, a near twin of the medical kit she had used to treat her wounds the night before. Placing it on the ground beside her, it depressed a panel on the kit, opening it up to display the brutally effective medical equipment of Yautja. It flexed its right wrist, and the twin blades mounted to its forearm came out with a click
Working quickly, yet gently, it parted the remnants of the clothes covering her chest with the tip of the blades, and looked at the blood seeping from the wound on her chest, soft clicking coming from behind its mask. It reached into the medical kit, removing a vial of the same blue liquid she had used, un-stoppering it, and pouring a large amount of the fluid into her wounds. It repeated the process on the wound on her leg, and even in her current state, she moaned, her back arching as testament to the pain of the treatment.
The hunter knew that it had to work quickly to stem the bleeding, pouring more of the fluid in until the vial was almost empty, as it withdrew a small flattened cube from the top of the kit, and placed it on her sternum. Once satisfied all the bleeding had stopped, it pressed down on the cube, which started sending electrical pulses through her body, interrupting and taking over her heartbeat, slowing it and her respiration down. The device would hold her stable for a while, and the hunter it could hear charging through the building to reach this place could handle things from here.
With a final look at the unconscious girl, the hunter stood, closing the medical kit and leaving it on the floor, and once more that breathy female voice was heard - "Not yet". It turned and ran towards the window in the wall to outside, cloaking once more as it did so, before smashing through with ease, sending fragments of brick, plaster, metal flying, and bowling the reporter and cameraman over. Without pausing, it extended and skewered its spear into the camera as it was falling from the cameraman's shoulder, an electric blue arc brightening the evening sky in a surge of energy that ruined the recording, and vanished into the evening air.
