Fiat iustitia et pereat mundus

It was a cold night, but she hardly noticed it, her armor's sensors adjusting the heating elements built into the net-like undergarment she wore to keep her comfortable. She was trying to keep up with the two Yautja, but they still needed to stop every few miles for her to catch up. She had thought she was fit, but by comparison to alien physique, she was reminded she was still pyode amedha.

After a while, the trio stopped, and she crouched down on the parapet of the building whilst the Elder gave instructions to the hunter.

"Return to the ship and collect those items she is still missing from the stores. Meet us at the nest the hosts were found in." The hunter nodded once, then began examining her armor, she guessed to determine what things she needed. It looked to the Elder.

"Should I bring her a -------- as well Elder?" She blinked, it seemed the translator wasn't 100. The Elder nodded to the hunter, who looked at her curiously before shaking its head. She watched through her mask as the cloaked hunter bounded off into the distance, until the Elder caught her attention.

"The equipment will be only while you hunt with us, human." She acknowledged it, inclining her head.

"Good. I earned what I have. It makes it worth more to me." It trilled a laugh, then motioned for her to descend to ground level with it. They'd tried to make most of the trip on the rooftops, but the gaps between buildings had sometimes been just too great for her to jump. They had been moving purposefully towards the border between the business and industrial districts.

She cringed as they reached the sidewalk and a car went barreling past. The Elder laughed again.

"When there is light on you, move slowly, or stay still. The cloak has time to adjust the field so that the --------- isn't as visible." She nodded, but she was still nervous. Here she was, decked out in Yautja armor, a Yautja Elder beside her, jogging down a city sidewalk. The incongruity of the situation played with nerves already on edge.

She didn't reply, but instead concentrated on keeping up with the Elder and trying to get used to seeing the world in the different vision modes the mask gave her. She'd practiced with the mask many times, but her fears regarding wearing the entire armor had meant she hadn't experienced its abilities when used as part of the armor as a whole. The cool fresh air the mask blew across her face and into her lungs was a comfortable feeling, and went a long way to countering the stench of the city the enhancements the mask gave to her sense of smell brought to her.

As they jogged along easily, it kept asking her questions, reminding her every now and again that she only need whisper and it would hear it. Its decision to include this pyode amedha in the hunt was based on practicality – even thought she was prey, she had hunted kainde amedha, something three of its available hunters had not yet done. It would be unwise to ignore a possible resource in hunting a queen, regardless of its species, but equally unwise not to determine the level of training this human had received.

She was breathing steadily, the Elder had set a pace she could match without drastic difficulty, but her mind was in turmoil. The Elder was interrogating her thoroughly, testing her knowledge of the hunt far harsher than it had ever been tested before. She burned with shame at how many questions she hadn't been able to answer, or gave an answer she thought sounded so lame. The Elder that had trained her had infuriated her with the constant 'not yet', but being under the microscope of this Elder, she was beginning to think it might have a good point. If this Elder was testing her fitness to be worthy, she was sure she was coming up short.

During a break in the questioning, she asked a question of her own.

"Where are we going Elder?" The Elder looked at her, and for a moment she wondered if she was supposed to ask such a question. After a minute, the reply scrolled across the bottom of her vision.

"I wish your opinions. The kainde amedha are anomalous, and we do not know why. We will examine the hosts, perhaps you will be able to see something that we are unable to recognize as being important." She nodded, the reasoning made perfect sense, then shuddered when it came to her that it was taking her to see the bodies of humans that had died in hard meat childbirth. Despite the blood she had shed herself over the years, the thought of what she would see was disturbing.

The closer they came to the line that separated the business and industrial areas, she finally realized that they were entering the area she had always considered 'her' hunting grounds. She looked around curiously, wondering why the hosts would be found around here, when she spotted movement in the darkened doorway of a building. She switched vision modes, and outlined in green she saw two shapes bending over a third, their fists pounding it as it raised its arms in a futile attempt to protect itself. She was unaware of the primal growl that rose unbidden in her throat, but as she made to step across the road towards the doorway, the Elder's hand was on her arm.

"We do not have time to be diverted with hunting, young blood." She was tempted to ignore the implicit rebuke in the Elder's caution, but understood. With a visible effort, she let go of the anger that had been building up in her, and looked across to the doorway. The human on the ground was putting up no defense now, but the hail of fists, joined by kicks, continued to rain down on it. She switched vision modes, amplifying the light so she could get a close look at the faces of the two assailants, and she filed them away for later, before turning and nodding to the Elder. They turned away and started running once more, but her mask's sensors made sure that she could hear the sounds of bones breaking behind them even after they were beyond being able to see.

-


-

"This is not right!" It had hoped to have reached the storeroom and be gone again by now, but it had been intercepted by one of the unblooded on the way out.

"She is pyode amedha, the only part she should be playing in a hunt is as prey!" It sighed to itself.

Under normal circumstances, it might have agreed with the impulsive unblooded hunter – inviting a pyode amedha to participate in a hunt would be unthinkable. But these weren't normal circumstances. The kainde amedha trial was out of hand, three hunters were dead, a kainde amedha queen was on the loose ... and this human was not a normal human, not if an Elder had decided that she might provide it with a challenge.

"I am sure that the Elder will allow you to make a challenge against the decision", it retorted mildly, "but I have my doubts that you will succeed."

That wasn't even taking into account that she had been trained. It didn't recognize the mark the human had sketched out on her mask, but as they had waited for the human to equip herself, the Elder had let slip that the human had shown it the mark also, and that it had recognized it. Although it didn't say whose mark it was, it had obviously been one of the reasons for the Elder's decision.

It watched the unblooded hunter warily as the other hunters on the ship gathered around, attracted by the sound of the argument. It knew that the other experienced hunters would abide by the Elder's decision, especially when they understood the reasoning behind it, but the remaining unblooded and the young bloods were not yet used to the idea that hunts sometimes required improvisation.

"Are you still angered by this human female's words?"

The hunter cocked its head to one side for a moment, before answering forcefully.

"Yes! Even if she hunts, she is still only pyode amedha, our prey. She may be able to hunt kainde amedha, or other humans, but they are not Yautja. What would she know of honor, or the hunt, as we do?" The hunter nodded in agreement.

"Your words are true, she is still prey, and yet she obviously does know of honor, and the hunt. There is always the chance she learned of these things in hunting Yautja." The impulsive unblooded looked at the hunter aghast, mandibles spread wide. A clicking purr filled the chamber as the more experienced hunters laughed at the its reaction. "Why not? She has been trained by an Elder to hunt, to provide it with a worthy challenge. Perhaps she has already practiced against Yautja. You do not believe a human can defeat a Yautja, despite knowing that hunting expeditions to this world have failed to return in the past?"

"One failed to return. And the only other incident a Yautja fell to a human, the human used the hunter's own weapons. It was luck, and luck alone! Luck does not make a hunter."

The hunter let out a roar, reached out and backhanded the impulsive Yautja, throwing it across the chamber.

"Why were you ever considered ready to take the trial? Luck may not make a hunter, but it is a dead hunter that ignores it." The hunter snorted at the fallen unblooded, lying sprawled with one hand raised to the splash of green blood from the cut where the hunter's hand had hit its face.

"Worse is a hunter who questions the decisions of their Elder during a hunt. Especially one who is not even blooded." It turned its back on the furious hunter and stalked out of the ship.

-


-

She crouched down, wishing there was a way to disable the mask's amplifying the smells around her. The stench of decay was cloying, filling her nose until her eyes watered. She wasn't too certain how she felt about the amplified vision modes, as she forced herself to examine the ruins of what had once been a human being that lay before her in the darkness either.

The hole in its chest was obvious, the signature of a kainde amedha being born. Trails and puddles of viscous slime surrounded and coated this, and the many other bodies in the room, and she knew the scene was repeated throughout the building. Tentatively, she rolled the body over slightly, she wasn't sure what she was looking for, but she'd seen enough episodes of CSI: on TV to know that she should look in the most unlikely of places. She noted the number of used needles underneath the corpse, and rocked back to sit on her heels, her head cocked to one side as she considered.

She switched vision modes, and the scene in front of her changed. A large quantity of metal objects came sharply into focus, strewn around the room buried under caked layers of dust, grime, and kainde amedha slime.

"The hosts came here after implantation?" The Elder nodded, standing in the doorway watching the human as she stood and stepped towards another body. They had both turned off the cloaking devices once they'd been sure the building was empty, of life at least, conserving power.

"We tracked their transport to nearby, and discovered them here after the kainde amedha had emerged." She bent down and gingerly pulled a used syringe from the muck, holding it up so the Elder could see.

"Do you recall if there were objects like these where they were implanted?" The Elder shook its head negatively. They hadn't been looking for such things, they were looking for hosts.

She crouched down again and looked over the room, then sighed.

"Great. We're dealing with alien crack babies?" The Elder looked at her, not understanding.

"The hosts. They were addicts, you can see the marks on their arms, and this looks like it's a crack house, a place for addicts to get and use drugs." She stood and started pacing, talking half to herself as she worked things out in her head. "If the hosts came here after implantation, it would have been to obtain drugs. The kainde amedha take on characteristics of the hosts they emerge from, my guess is that somehow they were affected by those drugs."

As she was speaking, the warrior that had been sent back to the ship entered and deactivated its cloak, a net sack over its shoulder. It placed the sack down beside the Elder then stood patiently, listening as she continued.

"It would explain a lot of things. The face huggers, the first stage things?" The Elder nodded. "The two I saw were being carried, and they were slow. And the kainde amedha that got covered in whatever was in that bag stopped and looked like it was stoned ... erm ... a euphoric state." She paused.

"The kainde amedha that I saw that first night, that killed the three hunters. I was just returning from watching a place I was going to hunt later this week. And the ones last night were at another one." The hunter spoke up.

"Perhaps there is a connection?" She nodded, walking over to where the Elder and hunter stood, and the three of them crouched in a circle.

"Maybe the kainde amedha inherited the host's addiction to the drugs, or at least are attracted to the places the drugs are." The Elder considered this, eying her curiously.

"And these places are all ones where you hunt?" She looked up quickly before nodding. They were quiet for a moment before the Elder spoke again, quietly.

"The human female said you hunt 'bad guys'?" She looked at the Elder, remembering that it had been there to see her fear and Marisa's acceptance of her friend's acts.

"Yes Elder. It's a human phrase, she meant members of criminal organizations who prey on the weak, helpless, defenseless." The two Yautja growled angrily, the hunter slamming a fist into the ground.

"Humans permit this?" it asked, outrage obvious in it's tone as the words appeared. She sighed.

"They do. It's at the stage where the criminals are given more rights than their victims." The hunter snorted in disgust.

"And humans wonder why we consider them a prey species!" The Elder raised its hand, and the hunter fell respectfully silent.

"Why did you choose human bad bloods to hunt?" She cocked her head to the Elder curiously, not understanding the term. It saw her confusion and explained.

"It is the Yautja name for those who act without honor, disgrace themselves. They are outcast, despised. Hunted." She nodded soberly.

"Sounds about right. I chose them because they are dishonorable. They chose to live lives of violence, causing pain, harming innocents. That made them fair game, the way prey carrying a weapon makes it fair game for Yautja." The two hunters nodded, agreeing with the logic. The Elder reached into the sack the hunter had brought, and began laying out the contents in the center of the circle they had made. Once the sack was empty, the Elder gestured to the items it had withdrawn.

"Take what you need. Remember, you only have it until the hunt is completed." She nodded and immediately picked up the retracted shaft of a spear. Making sure she wasn't going to hit either of the hunters, she squeezed the center of the shaft to extend it, and noted subtle differences between this spear and the one she had been using. Instead of being cylindrical, the extended shaft had three grooves running down it, into the center section. She looked to the Elder curiously, but it was the hunter who explained.

"The equipment I selected for you was chosen for hunting kainde amedha. Those grooves will allow the blood to flow down the shaft, and make it less likely to reach your hands." She nodded.

"That was how I lost my own, I had to let go else the blood would have reached me."

"Twist the center in both hands." the hunter instructed her. She did so, and was startled when part of the raised section of each groove on either end, from the center section outwards, about eight inches in length, clicked out to protrude at an angle. The hunter let out a short bark of laughter at her reaction, and she smiled as she twisted the center again so the six spikes rested back against the main shaft, then squeezed it so it would retract down. As she clipped the spear shaft to the side of her thigh, she wondered briefly at how well the Yautja seemed to be handling her.

As strange as it was for her to be crouching in the middle of a room full of corpses outfitting herself with alien hardware, it had to be just as strange if not more for two aliens to be handing something they usually considered to be nothing more than prey the means to defend itself. As she was moving the items on the ground around, she caught sight of two objects that made her heart stop for a second. She looked to the Elder, but it just stared back at her, without comment.

With trembling hands she lifted the first up, turning it over in her hands. They were trembling so hard she almost dropped it, and with a nervous laugh the hunter gently took it from her, then stood to move around behind her. She felt pressure on her shoulder, then the click as the hunter latched it into place. Her view through the mask suddenly flashed and an entire new set of symbols came up in front of her eyes. She moved her eyes right, and could feel the soft whine vibration as the servos moved, and as she looked at the knob on the rotted door to the room, three angled red lines moved across her sight, flashing as they formed a perfect triangle superimposed on top of the knob in her view.

She blinked, and looked upwards to the correct icon on her display, and as the targeting bars vanished she could feel the weight on her shoulder shift backwards and onto the backpiece of her armour. The hunter moved back and crouched down, as she stared at the Elder. It had just allowed her to mount high energy plasma weaponry on her armor! More, it hadn't moved as she'd tested the tracking and target lock system on the door. She'd tried the plasma weapon out before, earlier in her training, to get used to the feel of it and how to use it, but that had been an underpowered training unit, she'd been told. The status display inside her mask told her that this was most certainly a fully functional, fully charged, fully devastating one.

Not trusting herself to say anything just yet, she slowly reached down and picked up the second object that had caused her reaction. It was a twin to the ones both the hunters wore attached to their left forearms, their computers. She thought back to the other night, when she had speared the fallen hunter's arm, shorting out the computer to disable the self-destruct charge each Yautja computer contained.

"Oh shit. This is really serious now", she thought to herself. She looked down to her right thigh at the raised square panel mounted on the front of her leg amour, and depressed the hidden catch there. The protective shield flipped open, revealing a display similar to the one on the front of the computer she held. She pressed the catch again, and the display came loose, revealing a recessed spot. She gingerly placed the Yautja computer panel inside, then pressed the display plate over top of it. As it clicked into place, the display lit up, it had been designed by her trainer to allow her to control the Yautja version, sitting on top and translating the messages and commands.

Just her trainer hadn't given her one with a bomb inside it capable of leveling ten city blocks.

She didn't know what to say. With just those two items alone, the Elder had honored her, and shown a level of trust in a pyode amedha she didn't think possible. She knew that if she said anything about being unworthy, that would be considered an insult, a criticism – if it considered her unworthy, it wouldn't have let her have the equipment to begin with. She felt light headed, ten feet tall and yet insignificantly small, and her doubts from earlier tried to sneak into her consciousness again. But this time they were tinged with fear. The Elder had decided to trust her. What if she let it down?

Again as if reading her mind, the Elder reached out one claw and placed it on her shoulder, and after a glance at the Elder, the hunter raised a claw and placed it on her other shoulder. The Elder waited a moment, trying to find the right words.

"I know who is training you." She gasped, but it continued on, paying her no heed. "I should have realized it when I saw the device that was used to preserve your life, but it wasn't until you showed me the mark that I knew. We share the same trainer, young blood, and I know that you would not have been given your amour had you not earned it." She nodded slowly as it went on. "Should you win when the time comes you are ready to be hunted, I hope that I will have the opportunity to hunt you myself." The hunter gave a growl of agreement, and she laughed.

"When that time comes, Elder, I swear to provide you with worthy prey." Both Yautja let out howls of laughter, before removing their claws. She looked over the rest of the equipment on the floor, many of the small items remaining were unknown to her. The hunter noticed her hesitancy.

"You have not trained with any of these things?" She shook her head, and pointed several star shaped objects.

"Those I have created an human analog of, but mine don't return after being thrown." She blushed under her mask. "I sort of have a problem with the return part. I ... erm ... kind of kept ducking instead of trying to catch them." Both Yautja stared at her, the hunter's body shaking as it tried to hold back laughter. The Elder looked at the hunter, then back to her, picking up four of the items under discussion and handing them to her.

"I suggest you learn how to catch quickly then, for in this hunt, there will be Yautja behind you." She stared at the Elder for a moment, but as it began to growl quietly behind its mask she quickly took them from its claw and allowed the clips on her amour to take hold, securing them.

"Yes, Elder" she offered, meekly.

"I could get used to this", the elder muttered. Both she and the hunter looked at it in surprise. "A young blood that does what it's told and doesn't argue." They laughed.

She looked at the rest of the equipment, but none of it seemed needful. Eventually, the Elder started placing the remainder back into the sack, before closing it off and handing it back to the hunter. The three stood, and she looked around the room at the dead one last time, then turned to see the Elder already moving out of the room, but the hunter still standing close by, watching her.

"Why do you have two sets of blades?"

"Before I earned the wrist blades, I used two long blades, and developed techniques that concentrate on those, that I use most. The Elder who is teaching me decided that I should keep with the style I was most comfortable with, and so designed these blades, adding extra capabilities so they could be used as the blades I hand carry are." It nodded, and they both started through the doorway after the Elder.

"What's a young blood anyway?" The hunter let out a trill of laughter.

"A young blood is a Yautja who has been blooded, but has a limited amount of experience yet." The hunter looked at her as they walked down the hallway. "The Elder is trying to find a way to refer to you that recognizes you are more than a usual pyode amedha, at least as long as this hunt continues. It's difficult to come to terms with the fact that you hunt, and have hunted kainde amedha. That alone is causing problems with the unblooded." It stopped for a second, and she turned to it.

"You realize that you will always be considered prey, even if honored prey? What that means?"

"Yes. That was explained a long time ago. What you're really asking me is, do I understand that once this hunt is over, you're likely to come hunt me, and the answer is yes, I do." It nodded.

"Did you mean it when you said you swore to be worthy prey?", it asked almost hesitantly. She looked at it, then nodded.

"The real question could be, are Yautja worthy to hunt me?" It stared at her, then shook its head. It activated its cloak, and she followed suit, both forms fading into the darkness.

"Young bloods!" it muttered darkly, striding past her.