Nemo me impune lacessit
She entered the room cautiously, straining everything she had to make sure the coast was clear. She slowly made her way around obstacles, the scene in front of her eyes an eerie subdued dark red to black, picking up no heat signatures or thermal blooms. It had obviously been some time since this place was occupied, many hours at least. She completed her sweep, but found no signs of life anywhere.
She sighed with relief, disconnecting her mask from the armor she wore and lifting it away until the pressure released and the mask came free in her hands. She blinked several times then reached across to the dimmer switch on the wall and brought it up low, waiting for her eyes to adjust back to normal before bringing the lights up to full, then falling backwards onto the bed in exhaustion.
"She finally went home!", she thought to herself in relieved exasperation. She spent the next few minutes staring at the ceiling and trying to relax her tired and very aching body, idly noticing that a few more of the luminescent stars and planets she'd stuck up there years ago had begun to peel away. With a groan, she rolled over and sat up, and began to remove her armor, each movement reminding her she'd quite resoundingly had the crap beaten out of her for most of the night.
She pushed the armor plates to one side once it was all removed, and stumbled her way into the shower, running it very hot and full blast to try and get some benefit from the massaging shower head as seen on TV.
Yeah right.
By the time she was finished, she was pruned, pinker than a lobster, and still sore all over, but at least she felt clean. Wrapping herself in a towel, she walked back into the bedroom, using a small hand towel to rub the moisture from her braids, and sat down heavily on the bed again. She looked at her armor with distaste. She wanted nothing more than to curl up in bed and sleep, she had more sore places than she could count, both from her armor chafing her and the impacts she'd taken, and was exhausted from her efforts. Both the Second and Blade had tested her to her limits and beyond.
But sleep would have to wait. she had specific instructions to carry out first. She looked to the small container she had brought back with her, then with a resigned sigh, headed to the kitchen to grab one of the dinner knifes from the drawer.
Once she was back on the bed, she opened the container and her eyes started to water at the fumes the contents gave off. She closed it up quickly, making sure she opened all the windows to the apartment before she tried to open it again. It still stunk like weeks-old roadkill skunk, but the fresh air kept most of it flowing, thankfully. She took one of the shoulder pieces of her armor, and began spreading some of the silvery goop the container held inside into the gouges the kainde amedha claws had made in the metal, before smoothing it off level with the rest of the surface.
Proper upkeep of her armor was her responsibility, she'd been told pointedly - then handed the equipment to meet it. Thankfully, that didn't extend to trying to make any sense out of the alien technology, and she'd sat patiently in one of the breaks they took during night comparing different unarmed combat moves with the weaponsmaster, while the Second busied himself behind her replacing the elements of her cloak that had been destroyed.
She was surprised at how many segments of her armor the hard meat had scored deep furrows into. Without the armor, she'd never have survived the fight, that was obvious – this amount of damage on bare skin would have left her dead in moments. The goop was a subtle contrast to the undamaged portions of the alien metal, slightly shinier and smoother. It had been explained that it was the same compound used to fashion the armor to begin with, and would match the color and strength once it had cured, by the time she went to hunt again the next night. Once she had coated and filled all of the damage, she happily replaced the lid on the container, then stood and moved to the closet.
She opened the closet door, hardly even noticing as the security device on the back wall scanned her eye to verify it was her, and stared at the array of weapons, lost in thought. She crouched down and opened the top drawer, looking at the container full of teeth, then back up at the wall, thinking about it. Her first full trophy, a kainde amedha skull, hanging now in a Yautja's trophy vault, instead of here. In her closet. On the wall. Surrounded by the tools of a hunter.
Where it belonged.
As Blade had shown her how to use the enzyme spray to clean the skull, eating away at the dead tissue, she had been unable to stop from stroking it gently as it had emerged from under the gloss black skin concealing the bone. She was still trying to process all her feelings about the night, and her understanding of this alien and frightening race, and part of her quailed from her own thoughts and emotions. Marisa had said that she couldn't lose her humanity, but at this point she wasn't sure – everything she had feared, everything that was intrinsically part of what the armor implied, seemed to be on the verge of coming true.
For a brief moment in the darkness of night, she had not been pyode amedha. She had been Yautja to her core. She had screamed her victory over the hard meat, and her subconscious had taken her trophy and placed it safely out of harm's way.
She reached back onto the bed and took her mask, her eyes drawn to the italicized and stylized TT mark the Elder had scribed there in alien acid. The mark of a blooded Yautja, a hunter. She had earned a privilege that as far as she knew no human had ever attained in the past. Even though this was temporary, an expedient so that the Elder would have use of another hunter against the kainde amedha queen, she felt her heart trying to burst at the seams with pride at having been considered worthy of participating.
Her mind was whirling with the implications for the future the mark held, the burdens it placed on her. It bound her, for the moment, to the hunting party about that ship, to the Elder. She had no choice but to honor the mark, to behave, live, act, think, as the Yautja did. They would be relying on her skills, judged sufficient by their peers, to help in the coming days.
As she replaced the armor carefully in the bottom drawer of the closet, taking care not to disturb the already hardening goop, she tried to look on it as putting away that part of her that scared her, the hunter she was becoming, had already become. When she closed the door, she tried to visualize the hunter within her was now behind the door as well, that she was a "normal" human being once more. As she climbed wearily into bed, pulling the covers tight around and curling tightly into a ball, she hoped she had succeeded.
Sleep came hard for her.
-
-
She almost tore its head off in her rage. She caught herself just in time, and began flailing impotently in the air, the short arms close to her sides clenching and grasping while the longer arms from her shoulders pounded her fists into the floor and walls, dust raining down from creaking concrete that was never designed for such an onslaught.
They have killed my children!
Almost half of them had fallen in the night to the attacks of these creatures that intruded on the hive's nests. She was beginning to question the wisdom of spreading the hive out so soon, when they were so weak, but she had no choice. Most of her children born to the hosts they found near the hive were weak, and some died without explanation after birth, yet some few children, born of hosts found from further afield, thrived. If the hive was to survive, if she was to breed and rule, they needed more of these hosts from further out.
But those creatures! They attacked her children, attacked the eggs. She had heard the screams of pain and anger from those she had set to explore, to find new hosts, as they were set upon and killed. She had felt their death throes, as if they had been her own. She had screamed into the darkness, slamming the ridge of bone that fanned out from behind her head into the ceiling of the chamber they had selected to be hers. And they had died.
My children!
Burning inside her now, stronger than the need to grow the hive, was the desire for vengeance. They had slaughtered her offspring, and they would pay, pay dearly for that crime. They would make excellent hosts, they would atone for their deeds by replacing those they had taken from her.
She looked down on the drone in front of her, laying where the force of her tantrum had thrown it in fear for its existence. She sent it soothing emotions, calming it, until it stopped trembling, before she gave it the instruction to pass to the hive.
Find them.
She would have her vengeance on them all.
-
-
The last rays of daylight shining through the open window, flashing across her face as the breeze stirred the curtains, woke her. It took her a moment to remember where she was, and what time it was, but when her brain made the connection between the three states – awake, in bed, late, she sighed. She felt like rolling over, curling up with the covers over her head, and telling the world to go away, she was taking the night off, but she knew that the Second and Blade would be arriving shortly for another night's hunting, and more training.
Briefly she wondered about the two Yautja. Throughout the night as they had bruised and battered her about, they had seemed genuinely to want to teach her. Their compliments had been grudging, but she took an inner sense of pride for those few compliments, knowing that she had earned them. But she didn't understand why they had done it. It was the same with the night the Elder had required her to take him and the Second to the places she hunted, the night they had given her a full array of equipment – what she felt at the beginning was her being tested ended with her feeling she was being taught, too.
Part of her rationalized it away as simply being that she would be hunting with them, they had a vested interest in her being as good as possible, their lives might depend on it. Another part of her rationalized it away as being a mark of respect for her having been successful in hunting kainde amedha. Whatever the reason, she couldn't understand why she was being treated, if not as Yautja, but at the least far beyond how Yautja normally treated pyode amedha. In some ways, not even her trainer had acted like this towards her.
"Young blood" they called her. Acknowledgment, certainly. Acceptance? She wasn't sure. Her trainer had only ever called her 'human', and she'd been content with that. She intended to kill him, or die in the attempt, although as the years had gone on she'd almost forgotten why, so wrapped up in learning she'd become, so much of the Yautja codes she'd learned of and started to believe in. Some of them had never made sense to her, not on a visceral level, until the past twenty-four hours. Until she'd screamed exultantly. Until she'd taken a trophy.
Was this the reason he kept saying she wasn't ready? Had she been blocking herself from understanding because of her own fears? She startled herself with the sudden realization that she wasn't sure she wanted to kill him any more.
She wanted to hunt him.
She shook her head and swung herself out of bed. Now wasn't the time to start having deep and meaningful discussions with herself about the meaning of life. That needed at least two cups of coffee.
-
In the end, it took six cups of coffee, another shower, and two slices of pizza of dubious heritage for her to even begin to feel like facing the world again tonight. She changed into gym clothes, noting with distaste that she was going to have to head down to the laundry room soon if she wanted any clean clothes to wear, and began trying to loosen up, working out some of the aches and pains. She was in the middle of bending over at the waist, grasping the back of her legs and pulling, when she heard a key in the door, before it opened and Marisa walked in, carrying a bag of groceries.
"Marisa, what are you doing?" she asked, straightening up.
"I figured you didn't have a chance to get any shopping done today, babydoll." Marisa forestalled the objection she knew her friend was going to make. "I know, it's dangerous for me to be here, I promise to be gone before they show up, OK?" She just shook her head and walked over to hug her friend, trying not to squash the contents of the bag.
"Thank you hon. I don't even remember what's in the fridge, and I don't think I've had anything decent to eat in a few days." Marisa smiled at her, and headed off to the kitchen to put the groceries away. As she was opening and closing closets, trying to determine where everything was supposed to go, she looked over as her friend started toweling the sweat off .
"How did it go last night?", she called out, easily. Her friend came over to the kitchen and sat at the countertop on a high stool, dropping the towel into the brimming laundry basket in the bathroom on the way. She looked off into space before she finally answered.
"You mean other than the fact I got banged up again?" They grinned at each other. Marisa nodded as she came around the counter to sit next to her friend, noticing the new blue line across her friend's side. She pointed at it and giggled.
"At this rate, you're going to end up looking like a Smurf, babydoll." She looked at Marisa, not comprehending for a moment, then down at where she was pointing to, and she cracked up, visions of a Yautja Smurf running through her head. After a few minutes she caught her breath again, and thumped Marisa on the shoulder playfully.
"You are bad, you know that?" Marisa beamed brightly.
"Thank you! So, what happened?"
"We got ambushed, pretty much. It got kind of frantic for a while, but we made it through." She wasn't ready to try to explain the aftermath to Marisa, not yet. She was still trying to sort through it herself. "The Elder had me spend time with the Second and Blade doing more training." She grinned ruefully. "I ended up getting beat up more by them than in the fight." Marisa just stared.
"I didn't understand a word of that, babydoll. Who's Blade?" She laughed softly.
"Remember the hunter that came with the Second to pick me up last night?" Marisa nodded. "That's Blade. I can't actually pronounce his name, and the translator didn't come up with anything, so I chose that name for him to make it easier."
"Why Bla ... wait a minute ... 'him'? I thought you said they don't have sex!" She laughed.
"No, I said I don't know if they have genders, or if they can mate with humans. I didn't know myself until last night!" She grinned mischievously. "I'm pretty sure they can have sex though." Marisa eyed her friend suspiciously. "Where else would the little predlets come from?" It was Marisa's turn to thump her friend's shoulder.
"Soooooo, how did the subject come up, hmm?" She grinned.
"Pretty much the same way, the second was telling me about Blade being the ship's weaponsmaster and the best unarmed combat hunter there is, and he called him 'him'. I reacted the same way you did, just without thinking the same things." Marisa blinked innocently, a 'who, me?' look on her face. "After the hunt last night, they've started opening up to me a lot more." She nodded, then got a serious look on her face.
"Babydoll? Did you really have to kill them all?" She blinked and looked at Marisa. "It wasn't their fault they were there, they can't help the way they live. They were junkies, it's not like they have a choice." She couldn't believe she was hearing this.
"Marisa, they're stone cold killers, given the chance they'd take over the entire city and turn it into one huge graveyard." She shook her head.
"That's not true, babydoll. I'm not saying you were wrong or anything, I know you, you wouldn't have done it without a good reason. I just don't understand what the reason is." Marisa reached a hand out and touched her friend gently on the shoulder, but she twisted away angrily.
"They're kainde amedha, Marisa. Hard meat. That's all the reason anyone needs! They kill anything alive to be hosts for their ... what?" Marisa was shaking her head slowly.
"I don't mean the candy things, babydoll. I'm talking about the hookers and those teenagers." She looked at Marisa in shock.
"Huh?"
"The mob place you hit last night." She shook her head.
"Hon, I haven't hunted a mob place for three nights, the Elder's drafted me on the hunt for the kainde amedha nest and their queen. I haven't had time to hit mob places."
"Tell her what you were doing last night.", the Second's voice came from the balcony doorway. Both of them turned quickly, to see the Second and Blade turn off their cloaks, but they hesitated at the doorway. She looked at them and cocked her head to one side. "May we enter?" Blade asked. She blinked in surprise, before nodding, and they stepped inside, the Second closing the door behind them. Marisa looked at them then to her friend.
"The Second told me to tell you I was with them last night. After the battle with the kainde amedha, we met up with the rest of the Yautja and the Elder from the ship." She looked to the Second quickly, who nodded his head, understanding her request. "The Elder blooded me, marked me as a hunter, at least until the hard meat are gone, and then they were with me training for the rest of the night." Marisa nodded slowly, tears forming in her eyes. "Where do you get this idea I killed innocents, hon? What hookers?"
"It was all over the news today babydoll, a mob house got hit last night, and everyone inside was killed, seventeen people. Whoever did it killed a bunch of teenagers that the cops figure were there trying to sell stolen stuff and buy drugs, and the prostitutes and customers too." She looked at her friend. "The reporters were all saying that they were killed the same way you do, babydoll, the knife in the back of the neck?" She blinked and sat back heavily, catching the countertop for support.
"Another hunter?", Blade asked. She thought for a minute then shook her head.
"What are the chances of there being another one out there that's trained by Yautja, that picks the same way of taking trophies I did?" She looked at Marisa. "Did the news reports say anything about teeth being taken?" She shook her head negatively, and her friend breathed a sigh of relief. "That might mean it's just a copycat, but it still doesn't make sense, why kill the hookers and the kids?", she asked. Marisa could only look on helplessly and shrugged.
"When I heard about their necks being cut open, I thought it was you. I'm sorry babydoll." She reached over and took Marisa's hands in her own.
"There's nothing to be sorry for hon. If someone's copying what I've been doing, then how could you have known?" She turned and looked to the Second and Blade, her voice turning to steel. "I want to have words with whoever did this, so I can explain to them the difference between prey and innocents." Marisa looked at her friend, a chill traveling down her spine.
"What will that accomplish, babydoll." Her friend turned back to her.
"Because then they'll understand when I hunt them down and mount their skulls on my wall."
-
-
"Ahh, Miss McCullough, I am glad you could join me." She shook off the hand of the balding man and glared at him. He smiled tolerantly, holding up a small cassette recorder and pressing the 'play' button. Her face went chalk white as she heard her own voice coming out of the speaker.
"... We can get the proof, all we have to do is find the bitch in black! Once we have her, those monsters will do what we tell them to ..."
Ito clicked off the tape recorder, as she started to tremble violently. He gestured to the balding man, who brought a chair around and gently pressed down on the reporter's shoulders until she sat. He took up a station just behind and beside her, but she hardly noticed. She stared at the tape recorder in horror, then up at Ito, who moved to sit on the edge of the table just in front of her.
"It pains me to think that you may have been holding back information, Miss McCullough, a great deal. Whilst I am sure that it was merely an oversight on your part, my associate disagrees." Ito nodded at the man, and she instinctively looked up, feeling the looming presence behind her, as Ito continued, as if musing. "I must admit, I am having a hard time persuading him that he should let you live. You see, we tend to see such things as a betrayal of our trust, and I am sure that someone with your extensive experience reporting on our little ... community ... is aware of what that means." She looked at Ito again, a low moan starting to build in her throat. He let her panic for a minute.
"Please, don't be alarmed, Miss McCullough. I believe that if you were to reveal the information that you omitted to reveal when we spoke last, that would go a long way towards atoning for your oversight." She cursed herself, trying to control her fear. They wouldn't dare kill her would they? The soft tone he used scared her more than the guy stood behind her could. She could hear the silky smooth menace behind the voice, and realized too late just how far in over her head she had become. Her pride demanded one last opportunity to ruin her entire day, however.
"And if I tell you, how do I know you'll let me go?" Ito's smile tightened, and his voice turned to ice.
"You know that we will allow you to leave because unlike you we keep our promises, Miss McCullough." She nodded hurriedly.
"I'll tell you everything then." All at once, Ito's smile and demeanor changed once more to the urbane oriental businessman.
"Then let us begin with this 'bitch in black', shall we?"
She spent several hours, going over everything she knew, or thought she knew. She told them the full story of the attack and what they had seen on the camera's monitor, and of her plans to capture the woman in black. Once Ito had drained her on that subject, he took advantage of her terror and asked her about several other subjects to do with her reporting. Once he was satisfied, he stood up, and reached across the table to draw something towards the edge closest to her.
"Thank you Miss McCullough, the information you have provided will be of use to us." She was eying the table and the trembling started again.
"Wait, I thought you said you'd let me go? That if I told you everything I knew I'd make up for my mistake!" Ito chuckled, echoed by the man stood behind her as she was lifted to her feet and pushed gently towards the table.
"Yes Miss McCullough, I did, and as I said, we keep our word. However, I said it would only go so far towards atoning for your error. Luckily for you, we have a custom that allows you to finish paying for it." She looked down at the table in horror as he lifted a white linen cloth away, uncovering the tray he had repositioned to reveal the short straight dagger lying atop a small square of cotton, and the muslin strips beside it.
Ito smiled.
"Welcome to the family, Miss McCullough."
