Homo sum humani a mi nihil alienum puto

They stood looking at the charred wreckage that had once been a building. Both men were bundled up well against the cold, although the entourage of bodyguards each had brought, standing a respectful distance away, didn't have the same luxury. Both groups eyed each other warily, suspicion evident on their faces. They might be vaguely considered to have a common interest, but they weren't allies by any means.

"Did your sources have anything else on the cause of the fire?" Ito asked. Wen shook his head, huddling his head down into his scarf.

"No, they both claimed to have left when the 'monster' they saw came through the wall." Ito looked at him impassively.

"Both of them stuck with the story of a monster?" Wen nodded. "Curious. I wouldn't imagine they would maintain a lie given your rather direct methods of questioning."

"Both of them were addicts, they had come to get a fix. Both men said the 'monster' wore armor. Perhaps in their drugged state they misperceived someone wearing tactical armor?" Ito nodded slowly, this would be a perfectly plausible explanation. Addicts in need of more drugs were unreliable sources at the best of times. He started across the road, taking Wen by surprise, and he had to hurry to regain his place walking beside the slim japanese. The bodyguards of both men straightened up and joined the two, forming a ring around them both.

As they reached the sidewalk beside where a window had once been in a wall now collapsed, Ito turned slightly.

"They said the creature came out here, at the hatch?" Wen nodded once more. He was cold, and hadn't had much sleep after questioning the two teenagers, but when Ito had asked for a private meeting here, he had grudgingly agreed. He wondered why Issoti hadn't been invited, but was sure the reasons would become clear in time. He glanced around, watching his men to make sure they were alert, as Ito kicked at a melted pile of black plastic, partially covered in debris from the building.

"It would seem that your sources were being truthful when they said a TV crew was here. This was once, I believe, a camera."

"Then perhaps we should invite Miss McCullough to meet with us for a conversation?" Wen grinned, but Ito shook his head.

"Her disappearance might cause others to take up where she left off, it would be inconvenient at the moment. She may however be willing to cooperate with us if your sources were accurate that this creature attempted to kill her." Wen thought about the idea for a few minutes, while Ito stepped onto the pile of charred rubble, wandering seemingly aimlessly through the remains.

"You keep saying 'creature', do you know something I don't?" Ito didn't reply for some minutes, searching through the ash and other debris with his feet. Occasionally he bent down, brushing away the dust, to lift up a flattened plate of metal, but it would only be the melted remains of shell casings, fused together in the heat. Wen began to get irritated by the silence.

"Why are we here anyhow?" Ito smiled to himself. Wen was so easy to manipulate. It would only be a short step to controlling him. He stopped as he noticed something in the rubble, and as he bent down to examine it closer, he finally responded.

"Have you considered how these attacks make us all vulnerable?" Wen snorted in disgust.

"I sorta noticed. What's your point, Ito?"

"Since the attackers leave no witnesses, who is to say who is behind this?" Wen looked nervously around, making sure his bodyguards were close. "Perhaps wise men, forward thinking men, would see this as an opportunity to further themselves."

"Quit being so cryptic. What are you on about?" Ito reached into the ash and picked out a few objects, then stood to face Wen, a cruel smile on his face.

"Three organizations is too unwieldy a setup, don't you think?"

"You thinking of retiring?" Wen retorted. "You only just got the job to begin with." Ito laughed, but there was little mirth in his voice.

"No, but perhaps it's time for our Italian friend to do so, for ... health reasons? He is too random, too undisciplined. This is a business, but he will never treat it as such. We are at war and he can only think of hitting out randomly. No, we must be organized and disciplined if we are to win this war." Ito stepped back onto the sidewalk, not stopping but heading across the road back to their cars. Once more Wen had to play catch-up, as Ito continued speaking.

"No-one can say who the enemy is. While the enemy may attack us ..." Wen grinned as he finally started to see where Ito was going with all of this.

"We can hit him, blame it on whoever's attacking us, and because they're hitting us at the same time it'll sound true." Ito nodded as they reached his car.

"We should discuss this further later. I look forwards to hearing your thoughts on it. In the meantime, contact Miss McCullough. Tell her that we wish to speak with her about the murders, and last night." Wen grinned and shook Ito's hand, before moving off to his own car. Ito watched him leave, gently fingering the objects he had recovered from the wrecked building. He looked down briefly at the small silver metallic points, tracing sensitive fingertips over the pitted surface.

"A short step to achieve control. And ultimately, a far shorter one to replacement."

-


-

"You're crazy, babydoll! You're learning how to do all this stuff so some alien can come along and kill you?" Marisa was shaking her head incredulously, seriously questioning her friend's sanity right now. Her friend laughed.

"That's not quite how it works, but pretty much, yes."

"Then the answer is simple! If this alien is waiting until you're good enough, just don't get better!" She shook her head sadly.

"You think I don't know that hon? But I can't do that."

"Why not?" She took a swig of the almost cold coffee, looking embarrassed.

"It just wouldn't be right." Marisa looked at her in disbelief.

"Oh come on! You're trying to be a better hunter so this alien will come kill you. That's suicidal."

"It's not certain that it will win, hon. The whole point is it's waiting until I'm a worthy challenge for it, waiting until I have a chance of winning."

"And what happens if you win?"

"I don't know."

"Partay on dudes!" They both started and looked towards the doorway at the looped recording. As the figure turned its cloak off and became visible, she stood, one hand on Marisa's shoulder telling her to stay sat on the bed. Once upright, she crossed her hands across her chest gingerly, and inclined her head. Marisa watched as this new alien stalked towards her friend, unsure of what was going on. The hunter stopped close to her friend, and glanced across to the still open closet. It looked at the mask and armor on display, before turning back, and almost hesitantly, it placed one claw on her friend's shoulder, then withdrew it, clicking something in the alien language. Her friend looked up and allowed her hands to drop by her sides again.

"Welcome, Elder." The Elder nodded its head, then looked at Marisa, cocking its head. It trilled a question, and the hunter behind it answered with a long growling reply. The Elder turned it's attention back to the still standing human female, the loop asking the question for it.

"Who's this then?" Her friend straightened up.

"The human is my friend, Elder", she replied simply, assuming that the hunter had already explained the situation from before. The Elder was silent for a moment, then the loop started again.

"If that's the way you want it, sure." She started to breathe a little easier. The Elder had been a big question mark, it would be within its rights by protocol to kill both of them, Marisa for knowing about Yautja, and her for allowing Marisa to find out to begin with. For the moment, Marisa was safe. She just hoped her friend wouldn't do or say anything to change that. Her heart started beating faster as the Elder reached up and disconnected its mask from the armor, and lifted it away from its face.

How would Marisa handle seeing a Yautja for the first time?

As the mask lifted clear, Marisa gasped audibly. She had thought the masks represented what the hunters looked like underneath, but she realized that they were nothing like the face she now saw. Close set sunken eyes looked intently at her, cold and calculating, this hunter's skin darker than that of the one that had brought her friend home. Its mouth was small, lined with sharp-looking teeth, with four single-toothed mandibles surrounding it.

Marisa winced as the mandibles spread wide and this Elder alien roared at her, but she stood her ground, trusting her friend would help if she was in danger. The Elder seemed satisfied that she had flinched, at least, and turned back to speak with the other hunter. Marisa noticed belatedly the strange dreadlock looking braids on the alien's head, and looked to her friend's braided hair. She wondered how many other traits of the aliens her friend had adopted.

She watched Marisa flinch, but was proud for her friend as she handled a Yautja challenge roar without freaking out. The first time she'd been on the receiving end of one of those roars she'd wet herself. Admittedly, she'd been ten years old at the time, but still. While the Elder questioned the hunter that had brought her home, she sat on the edge of the bed next to Marisa again, took one of her hands in both of hers, and squeezed it gently.

"Welcome to my world, hon." Marisa looked at her, a slightly glazed look in her eyes.

"How the hell did you manage to get mixed up with all of this, babydoll?" She sighed, casting her mind back to that day, when her life changed for ever.

"I saw it, when I was a kid. It was hunting, I saw it kill someone. I don't know why, but I picked up a rock and threw it at its head." Marisa giggled despite herself.

"Babydoll? That sounds so you." She smiled, and continued.

"It came over and I thought it was going to kill me too, so I picked up another rock and threw it, and another. Then it was right on top of me, and it picked me up by my neck. I kept kicking, and kicking, but it was just standing there looking at me.

"It put me down again and turned around, and I screamed at it that I was going to kill it. It turned back and those wrist blades they all have were at my throat before I knew it. But I knew the thing was laughing at me. So I told it again, I was going to kill it. It looked at me, and took its mask off, and roared at me, but I told it again I was still going to kill it."

"It dropped me back down, put its mask on, and disappeared. Then I heard a voice say 'I'll be back'. I thought that was the last of it." She took a deep breath.

"It showed up six months later. Remember the fields down by the railroad tracks?" Marisa nodded. "I was down there chopping weeds down with a stick, and it showed up. It came out of nowhere, took hold of my arm, and guided it, making it do different moves with the stick against the weeds. That was the start of my training, although I didn't know it at the time." She looked up and noticed the Elder and the other hunter were watching her, listening intently.

"That's how it went. Every six months or so it would show up from nowhere, and teach me things. It got me to start training while it wasn't there too. I started doing gymnastics, eating properly, started doing cross-country running." Marisa blinked.

"I remember that, you got so serious and started doing all that keep fit stuff." She nodded.

"It told me what I needed to do to be able to kill it. I learned that it was stronger, faster. That it was well equipped. It was pushing me all the time to try and learn how I could fight it. When I was older, every time it came I would try what I'd learned, but it never worked, and I learned to hate two words - not yet. That's what it always would say, not yet. Later, it taught me how to stalk, hide, hunt. And it was teaching me their ethics, their codes." She looked at her empty coffee cup, and Marisa grinned, taking it from her hands. She watched Marisa walk casually past the two hunters to fetch the coffee, and once more was proud of her friend for how well she was handling all of this.

As Marisa was refilling the coffee cups, the Elder walked to the closet, and lifted the mask out. It held it out to her, and the loop played again.

"Who taught you that?" She looked up at the Elder, and traced the symbol on the mask once more. The Elder's eyes widened and its mandibles flared in recognition, but it said nothing, just nodding. It walked back over to the hunter, leaving the mask in her hands, as Marisa returned.

"I didn't know if they'd drink any of this, so I didn't bring any for them", she said, handing a cup over. She laughed, blowing gently to cool the coffee down a little. Marisa gently prodded her friend, avoiding her injuries. "Keep talking babydoll." She smiled, her friend could be very single minded at times. She tried to decide what else her friend should know about. She looked at the mask, and held it up slightly.

"This was the first piece of the armor I earned, from the first time I watched it clean a trophy without throwing up. Every few visits, when I'd passed some sort of milestone or test, it would give me another piece. It's all been designed to fit me, normal Yautja armor won't." The Elder played a loop, pointing at the medical kit as it did so.

"Designed to fit me." It was her own voice, she'd just said that. She looked at the medical kit, then to the Elder.

"The medical kit was designed for me too? To work on humans?" The Elder nodded. She looked at the kit for a moment before giving a little shrug, then she continued with her story.

"Sometimes it gave me weapons as well, when it figured I could use them. But I also started a collection of my own." She pointed to the arsenal affixed to the wall and door of the hidden closet. "Ah crap!" she exclaimed, suddenly. Marisa looked at her with concern. "I lost my spear and dart gun last night!"

"Huh?"

"Last night, when I got into the fight with those two kainde amedha. I used the dart gun to take out the face huggers, and the spear to kill one of the adults, but I couldn't get the spear out of the corpse before the other adult got hold of me. It'll be ruined by now." The Elder was speaking rapidly with the hunter as it heard this, and after a few minutes said something that sounded like a command. The hunter nodded, before cloaking and leaving the bedroom, but she didn't say anything. Marisa noticed as well, but kept silent, she was still unsure of how to act around these aliens. Her friend had called the one still here "Elder", she figured it was something high ranking, and she didn't want to piss it off. Something her friend said aroused her curiosity.

"Face huggers?"

"The first stage of kainde amedha. The queen lays eggs containing these things, their sole purpose in life is to find a host, and latch onto their face. They implant a kainde amedha embryo in the host, then fall off and die."

"What happens then?"

"The embryo grows inside the host, then when it's big enough it eats its way through, killing them. A day, two days later, it'll have grown to its full size, an adult kainde amedha." Marisa shuddered at the thought, but her friend was looking thoughtful.

"The only way that face huggers could be around is if there's a queen somewhere laying the eggs they hatch from." She looked to the Elder.

"Elder, is there a queen in the city? I thought they were only used in the hunting grounds." The Elder thought for a minute, trying to find the right loop recordings.

"Yes." "I haven't got a clue." "That shouldn't be there." She nodded as she pieced together the compound loop. Obviously, the presence of a queen wasn't planned for by the hunters. She had a sudden thought.

"Elder, the face huggers I killed were acting strangely. They're usually fast, but these ones were sluggish, like they were asleep. They were being carried by the hard meat." The Elder's eyes widened, and it trilled a question before remembering this pyode amedha didn't understand it.

"You sure this." "Whatcha see?"

"Yes Elder." She thought for a moment. "There's something else, Elder. One of the kainde amedha was exposed to a narcotic drug of this world, and it seemed to be affected by it in the same way humans are. I didn't know kainde amedha were susceptible to such a thing." The Elder nodded as it digested this new information. It knew that kainde amedha were resilient, there shouldn't be anything on this world that would cause such a reaction. Then a thought occurred to it.

"Narcotic drug of this world." Her voice again. "What's that?" She blinked, trying to remember.

"It could have been any of several drugs, Elder. It would have been a substance that affects the chemicals in a human being to induce different states emotionally or physically." The Elder nodded again, and fell silent whilst it processed this. The silence dragged on, until Marisa spoke up again.

"So how many of these candy things have you killed?"

"I don't know, until the past few days I've only hunted them half a dozen times. Almost ended up dead the first time." Marisa gasped.

"What?"

"They're called hard meat for good reason, enough that a Yautja isn't considered a hunter until it's done the kainde amedha trial. They're fast and strong, but they're very single minded. Some of them are intelligent, kind of, but most of them, the drones, are pretty dumb."

"A queen on the other hand ... those are the worst ones. I've never seen one, but I learned about them. Three times as big, ten times as vicious, a hundred times more dangerous. Yautja can only hunt them in teams, and they always lose hunters in the fight." She grinned ferally.

"That's my 'woman problem'." Marisa laughed, as her friend continued, half to herself.

"The only way I can take them on is if I use my speed, keep moving, confuse them. First time I hunted them, I wasn't fast enough, one of them stuck its tail in my stomach." Marisa winced in sympathy, she could tell from the look on her friend's face as she recounted the story that it had been a bad time.

"What happened?", she asked softly

"The hunter that's trained me killed it, then used the medical kit to save my life." She said it so matter-of-factly that Marisa was taken aback.

"And they almost killed you again last night?"

"Yes."

"Good!" Marisa declared with some venom in her voice.

"Huh?" She asked, not understanding.

"If you still can't win against those things, the alien isn't going to think you're good enough yet." She shook her head at her friend's logic.

"I can win against them hon. The night before last, I killed three of them, and I got one of the two that attacked me last night." Marisa's face fell, there went another good thought. The Elder's attention was focused on her friend again, she noticed, before she realized something.

"Did you take trophies from them too?", she asked, curious.

"I wasn't in any shape to collect any from the ones last night, but the ones before, I took my trophy from one of them."

"Where on earth do you store an alien skull?" She grinned.

"I don't. I figured out that would be a problem a long time ago, so instead of heads, I take teeth instead." Marisa laughed, amused at her friend's ingenuity and repulsed slightly by the way she was talking about such a grisly subject.

"Can I see?" She blinked, suddenly realizing this was dangerous ground.

"Dammit. She's going to see ..." She sighed deeply. It was inevitable it would come out eventually. Her only hope was that whatever Marisa's reaction was, it didn't alarm the Elder into considering her a threat and deciding to kill her. She kicked herself for not realizing the risk, but swore to herself that if the Elder went for Marisa, she'd fight for her as best she could. She'd gotten her friend into this, if it got her friend killed she could never live with herself.

"If you like." Marisa wondered at her friend's hesitation, and the look on her face was almost scared. She wondered what these alien teeth looked like, that her friend would be so concerned about showing them to her. For a second she considered taking back her request to see the trophies, but decided not to. She wanted to prove to her friend that she would accept her no matter what, and would still be her friend even with these revelations about a secret life she never realized her friend lived.

The two of them stood, and moved back to the hidden closet. She crouched down, feeling more limber than earlier. She guessed the blue paste was doing its job, she was almost at the stage where she could ignore where she'd been so badly gored the night before. Slowly, bracing herself inwardly for the reaction she dreaded from Marisa, she opened the top drawer, before opening the compartment where her trophies from the other night had been placed.

Marisa saw them, four silvery cube like objects in what looked like a box of whitish pebbles. She bent down to look closer at the alien teeth, when she started, and she took a second look at the pebbles. She let out a gasp, and looked at her friend.

"Babydoll? Are those what I think they are?", she asked, quietly.

Her friend just looked at her, and Marisa's heart plummeted seeing the pain and fear of rejection behind her friend's eyes. Emotions conflicted within her, her loyalty and love for her friend against the realization she hunted human beings. She could sense the Elder move to stand behind them and look down into the drawer, and could hear its chittering and clicking, she supposed of admiration of her friend's trophies. Marisa had a sudden thought.

"The news said there was a murder at the mall yesterday, after we were there. I was going to ask you if you'd seen it." She braced herself, not wanting to ask, but knowing she had to. "That was you, wasn't it?" Her friend could only nod, and Marisa could see tears begin to well up in her eyes.

"There were two of them, they wanted to attack and rape me. I let one go.", her friend said, almost a whisper. Marisa didn't know what to think, asking the questions almost mechanically, in inexorable order.

"And the other one?" The tears were beginning to drop onto her friend cheeks now.

"I killed him."

"For a trophy?"

"No." She paused for a second. "He wasn't worth taking them from.", she whispered reflectively.

"So why did you kill him?"

"He would have killed me. I could see it in his eyes, they were going to have their fun then leave me in a ditch somewhere, dead."

"So it was self defense then."

"I wish it was, hon, I truly do. But it wasn't. All I saw in them was prey." Marisa thought for a minute. She could feel the presence of the Elder behind them, towering over her, but all she thought of was the look on her friend's face. With a flash of insight, she considered everything that her friend had told her about these hunters and their ethics.

"Have you ever killed anyone that didn't have a weapon?" Her friend snorted.

"No, that isn't an honorable kill. They consider humans to be prey, but they only hunt the prey that is armed, a challenge."

Marisa smiled softly, and gently reached up one hand to wipe her friend's tears away.

"It's you, isn't it? The one that's been attacking all the organized crime places. You've been hunting the bad guys down?" Her friend looked at her, surprised. Once more she had to re-evaluate her friend's perception. She could only nod. Marisa took a deep breath then, and made a decision that would change both of their lives for eternity.

"Then every night I'll say a prayer for you to have good hunting, babydoll." Her friend looked at her for a quiet second, then burst into tears.

As her friend dropped to her knees, Marisa joined her on the floor and wrapped her arms around her friend, and rocked her softly.

-

The Elder watched the two humans curiously. It didn't understand the fear-stink scent that the human hunter had been giving off so strongly as she showed her friend her trophies. Weren't they taken honorably, something to be admired? Its opinion of this second pyode amedha went up a little as it watched her comfort and reassure the human hunter, and it realized why she had been afraid. The second human hadn't known she hunted humans as well as hard meat, she had expected her friend to reject her because she hunted their own kind. It snorted to itself, it had already determined that this second human would act as a true friend would. Its reaction to everything the human hunter had said so far had been acceptance, even if not always understanding.

As the two humans embraced, the Elder looked away, not wishing to embarrass the human hunter by witnessing its moment of weakness. The trophies it had collected, whilst not exactly the sort prized by Yautja, it believed to be honorably gained, and proof that this human was indeed honored prey. It regretted that it had already been claimed by another to hunt, it was sure that she would be a challenge worthy of an Elder's skills, and to be honest, it was getting jaded with the ease of its hunts in recent years. It hadn't considered the idea of training prey to be such a challenge, and admired the thinking of the Elder that had chosen this one. It was a method it would have to consider employing at some point itself. It was sure that the wait as the prey gained in skills would be more than worth it for the hunt at the end.

As it considered this, its gaze fell on the mask, still resting on the bed where the human hunter had left it. Idly it picked the mask up, to see how it had been crafted to work for a human. It flipped the mask over, and examined the electronics inside. Its eyes widened as it noticed something that was most certainly not part of a Yautja mask. In fact, it didn't even look like it was of Yautja manufacture, like the cube that had preserved the human's life, and some of the other items inside the medical kit. It turned back to the two humans, and stepped forwards to stand next to the human hunter. It waited for the human to acknowledge it's presence, raising her tear streaked face to the Elder. It ignored the look that the other human gave it, instead thrusting the mask towards the human hunter.

She looked up at the Elder, not understanding why it was handing her the mask. She felt Marisa's grip tighten, and was comforted by her presence, and she took the mask from the Elder. It gestured to her to place it against her face, and hesitantly she did so, then stiffened as she felt the Elder press it against her face firmly. The electronics in the mask came alive, and her vision shifted, heat patterns in the room coming into focus to give her a strangely colored view of the world. She blinked, cycling the vision mode until it came to the visible light spectrum, a mode that had been built into this mask just for her.

She heard the Elder clicking beside her, and was about to remind it that she couldn't understand the Yautja language, when she noticed text scrolling across the bottom of her vision.

"Do you understand?", she read. She gasped. The mask was translating?

"Yes Elder", she replied, a tremor running through her. She heard the Elder give the Yautja equivalent of a laugh, but the scrolling text didn't appear. Obviously that wasn't something that could be translated. She reached up and pressed against the mask, allowing the Elder to remove its claw, and looked up at it. It shook its head.

"That is not a Yautja device." She nodded, noticing that the hunter that had brought her home was entering the bedroom. It didn't know she could understand it as it spoke to the Elder.

"I found pieces, Elder, but nothing was salvageable. One piece did show evidence of heavy damage from kainde amedha blood."

Marisa watched, silently, still trying to come to grips with the idea that her best friend, her friend for most of their lives, had killed people. She remembered as well that her friend had stopped the hunter from killing her, had argued for her life, and she realized that if it had come down to it, her friend would have fought the hunter. She listened as her friend had answered the noises this Elder had made, speaking the Yautja language, and figured that somehow the mask must be translating. It was obvious this was news to her friend as well. She turned slightly as the hunter from before came back, at least she assumed it was the same one, but all she could do was listen to the clicks, grunts, growls, and purring sounds they made.

"A pity." She looked at the hunter, then Marisa, then back to the Elder.

"Elder, does it mean my spear?" The hunter stepped backwards. How did the human ... The Elder laughed.

"It appears that the human's armor has been enhanced with additional tools, including a translator of some description."

"There is no such device, Elder."

"Not Yautja, no. Obviously the human's equipment contains technology of other species than our own." The hunter nodded slowly.

"A pity that it does not include the ability to speak properly, Elder", the hunter remarked sarcastically. The Elder nodded, then looked down to consider the human. After a few minutes, it reached a decision.

"Equip yourself." She looked up at the Elder in surprise.

"I don't understand, Elder."

"There is a kainde amedha queen at large, and it is producing eggs. Given enough time, it will begin an infestation within the city that humans are ill equipped to deal with. You are at least capable of hunting kainde amedha, I require you to hunt. Equip yourself." The Elder was blunt. It had wasted enough time trying to determine how to communicate the situation to this human. The translator made its life much easier now.

Marisa looked at her friend, she'd started trembling. She couldn't understand the Elder's words, but whatever it had said it had upset her friend.

Her heart was thumping in her chest. She knew what the Elder meant – it wanted her to don her armor and hunt hard meat. Part of her was ecstatic, a Yautja Elder had invited ... no, commanded her to participate in a kainde amedha hunt. But at what cost? She had never worn the armor completely, she wasn't even certain it was complete. Not to mention she was missing her best weapons against the hard meat. What would the other Yautja think? She wasn't ready for this, she was just pyode amedha, a human. Prey. What right did she have to hunt alongside Yautja?

The Elder grew impatient, almost as if it had read her mind and heard her doubts.

"You wish to be worthy prey for your teacher. Now is your time to prove that worth. That you are pyode amedha is not your fault, we are born as we are born. But you have been trained as Yautja, you have taken trophies. You have hunted kainde amedha before. If you were Yautja you would be blooded and honored amongst us. You aren't, but as long as you insist on acting like it, as Elder I require you to hunt. Comply, or I will challenge you for dishonoring the one who has taught you."

She stood, removing the mask from her face, and growled at the Elder. Marisa fell backwards in shock, whatever had been said had made her friend angry and she saw something in her face. Cold. Dangerous. For a moment, despite their friendship, she was afraid of her friend. She saw the Elder gesturing the the drawer containing the armor, and in that moment she finally understood what scared her friend, what was scaring her the most. The Elder growled back at her friend, dangerously low, the hunter standing at the doorway impassively. Tentatively, she cleared her throat, and tried to ignore the roar the Elder spat at her.

"Babydoll? You remember I said you can never lose your humanity?" Her friend could only nod, glaring still at the Elder. "The one who trained you doesn't believe you can either." That got her attention.

"You haven't even met it."

"I don't need to babydoll. Why did it train you? What does it want?" Her friend cocked her head to one side, uncannily mimicking the Yautja gesture.

"It wants a challenging hunt."

"No babydoll. It wants to hunt a human that's challenging. If you could lose your humanity, you wouldn't be that challenge." Her friend blinked, trying to sort through her friend's tortuous logic. She stood there, with her mouth open as she tried to come up with a counter, but she couldn't. The Elder stood waiting. It disagreed with the human's logic, but it wasn't inclined to argue, if it would help get this foolish human over a trivial matter of semantics. After a minute, her friend sighed, before straightening up. She crossed her hands across her chest, and bowed her head.

"Yes Elder."

-


-

The King's stinking son fired me, and thank you so much for bringing up such a painful subject. While you're at it, why don't you give me a nice paper cut and pour lemon juice on it? We're closed!

They were in the apartment living room, Marisa on the couch, the two aliens standing at one end. She'd turned the TV to a movie channel, and she could hear them speaking to each other as they tried to understand the images and sounds coming out of the box. All three of them heard the bedroom door open at the same time, and turned.

For a moment she stood there in the doorway awkwardly, then took a deep breath, threw her shoulders back, and walked into the room, still limping slightly from the injury to her leg, but with her head high. Segmented shoulder and upper arm plates of gray metal armour gave her a hunched look, like football pads, connecting to a chestplate that covered down to the bottom of her sternum and curved around her sides to connect to her backpiece. The bare skin of her stomach was exposed, although covered in a black mesh bodysuit, and still showed the blue tint of the alien paste, but the sore redness around it was almost gone.

Around her waist, more of the gray metal studded a black belt from the hide of some unknown alien species, but the only thing hanging from it was her black cloth trophy pouch. The belt cinched in, holding tight more of the material that wrapped around her waist, and down between her legs. Her thighs and calves were shielded by more armor, the knees and ankles protected by padding of the same alien hide, ending with boots of black hide and gray metal. Long white bone hilts protruded from long sheaths on the outside of each calf, and on the front of her right thigh was mounted a black rectangular block, a twin to the computers mounted on the left wrist of the hunter and Elder.

On both of her forearms, twin serrated blades glinted evilly in the light, quiescent in their housing, but she clenched her fists, and the deadly signature tools of a Yautja sprang forwards. She twisted her wrists, and the blades on both arms pivoted on unseen articulation, reversing themselves to rest underneath her forearms, and she grinned, showing teeth. A flick of her wrists again, and the blades returned to the front, then she retracted them back to their homes.

Marisa smiled, and walked around one end of the couch to stand before her friend. She passed the mask she held in her hands over, then impulsively kissed her friend on the nose.

"Next time we do a barbecue, you are so going to be the one cutting the meat, babydoll." Her friend smiled.

"It's a deal. Just promise me that there won't be any hard meat on the menu, hon." Marisa laughed, stepping back as her friend raised the mask to her face and connected it to her armor. As the world switched colors, she could read the words of the hunter and the Elder.

"... amedha have the same desire to show off when they get their new armor?"

"It seems young bloods are universal. Well human, if you're ready, we have kainde amedha to hunt." She nodded, cocooned within her armor, and activated her cloak as the other two hunters activated their own. With a glance to Marisa, she followed them out onto the balcony, and into the night.

Hunting.

Have fun storming the castle!
Think it'll work?
It'll take a miracle.