Chapter One:
Akan'de. A cliche warrior, with pride and honor, and would do anything to keep those two things intact. His eyes a deep golden color, and skin a dark burgundy with white stripes following certain patterns all over his body, in the same colors as a lionfish. His hair was the most midnight black, and talons were almost always shined as their natural color, white.
He stood at the entrance to his ship, glaring down at the end of his spear. "Pauking thing," he growled, pulling the sharp knife from the hard meat's chest, it hissing and flailing, flicking its tail from side to side trying to find something there... something real. It rolled to its side, and then it's stomach, hissing and crawling away. "Cause me trouble, I'll cause you trouble..."
"Akan'de!" a different Yautja called, making him turn, gold eyes glowing gently; a dark gray Yautja stood tall, angry, breathing heavily, "The clan ship isn't here."
"... They left us?" he asked.
"No, they went to go find some new species to slaughter - of course they left us," the gray one hissed, "They left us here like bad bloods! Pauk!" he kicked the ground with furiocity, snow flying in every which direction.
"Don't get angry with me, Nihkou'te!" Akan'de shouted, "...You just can't keep a level head, can you?" he asked, tilting his head slightly.
"How can you, Akan'de? We were left here! This back-water planet with no sustinance and no way to survive! They betrayed us!"
"They did not betray us!... C'jit, Nihkou'te," he turned, looking down at his prey. "We can look for a Ooman civilization. There ought to be one around here somehwere."
Nihkou'te looked down at the hard meat. "... So you killed one? A hard meat?"
"Yes," the lion fish-colored Yautja knelt down, pulling out his knife and started to cut off the head; "This is my second one." He motioned to the marking on his mask, a T-shaped marking, and then went back to work.
"Ah," the other said quietly, "I..."
"Didn't get one. I noticed," he said, looking up one more time, "You're lucky you're not dead, Nihkou'te. Yunise'ta killed five of them, you know, and then got killed." One hand firmly planted on his knee, and the other on the butt of his knife, inbedded in the beast's neck, he looked threatening. "You still have one more chance. There's seven of them."
A thick chest rose, angry again, "There's no use. We've been-"
"Shut up," Akan'de growled sternly, standing up and turning, knife pointed at the other with puke-green blood dripping down to the hilt, sizzling and hissing. "We have not been abandoned. You will not insult our clan. Stop or leave, Nihkou'te."
He withered, and ceased his behavior.
Akan'de huffed, "Paya, you're a handful... The only probable reason that the clan ship hasn't appeared for us - or shown up - is because there's still one hard meat down there, that you need to kill."
Nihkou'te refused to open his mouth and click his way into his grave, where he surely would have ended up if he woud have said the things he had wanted to.
With another quick turn, he knelt down and chopped off the rest of his prize's head, making sure that the brain came with the rest of it when he pulled the now-empty skull off. He picked it up and displayed it to his comrade, it being placed on his hand like a puppet. His laugh was rumbling through his chest, as he shook his head; "The other one was bigger. But I didn't know. This will have to do."
"You're very humble," Nihkou'te murmured.
Akan'de snorted, coming out as a humored growl, "If you think I'm humble, you should really look up the meaning of humble, bhe'ru." He raised his prize and looked at it from the underside, scritinzing every last detail. "We should get headed out soon, to look for that Ooman civilization..."
Nihkou'te was surprised at the affectionate term he was called by his comrade, "Bhe'ru?"
Akan'de looked over at him, eyes glimmering with some kind of content for a moment before turning into the same hard gaze, "Yes. Now let us go, Nihkou'te."
Peter and Luke had left, saying they had forgotten something back at the camp. Jess was to be left there with her boyfriend. Though they had set up an ice house with a heater and a few chairs, the only other thing that was keeping them from freezing on the ice was two thick blankets, both of which Trent was using, and the walls. Jesse was prone to cold most of the time; she had grown up in a colder place – not as cold as Antarctica, but still quite cold.
Trent couldn't stop swearing; his mouth kept rambiling on and on about pointless things. She stopped paying attention, but was looking his way, out of the door, trying to look focused on something – she hoped he thought it was him.
But something shined from outside, looking as if it were something metal stabbed into the ground. Her eyes twitched to a curious look, which Trent caught relentless of her silence. He stopped talking and watched as she got up and left the ice house. "Wait -what the fuck? You're going to die out there! It's fuckin' freezing!"
Jesse didn't say another word. The hat she wore was knit and tight on her skull; she was wearing three pairs of pants relentless of what Luke and Peter said: To wear four.
"Jesse, what are you looking for?"
The winds hadn't picked up yet, so she didn't pull up her hood. Instead, she knelt down, trying to find the shiny thing that looked like it had been stuck in the hard ice-snow. Crawling a little farther, she found it. It was a knife, with a bone-looking hilt. She sat down on her knees, grabbing the hilt of the knife and pulled it out of the ice. Trent was obviously as into the find as she was.
"What did you find?" he asked.
The pattern on the knife was intricate; Jesse had never seen anything like it before. She held it in her gloved hands, the large weapon, about the size of her forearm; it was light, like aluminum, but from looking at the ice, it cut like diamond. Smooth as silk. She suspected it would cut through diamond. She set the knife on the ground carefully, and took off her hat and gloves, pulling back her hair and putting it up in a messy ponytail.
"Hello? What ya' find there, Jess?" asked Trent from the ice house.
"The same thing that I've been 'finding' for the past twenty, plus, minutes, Trent. Please, stop asking," she put her gloves back on and picked up the knife before she looked back to see his seemingly-always frustrated face becoming contorted with some kind of disappointment.
"I came all the way from Florida to fuckin' Antartica with you to search for treasure, and all you have is the same fucking thing," he growled.
Another fight. Wonderful.
"I told you, you didn't have to come with!" she stood up and waved the blade around, the hilt in her hand; "But you refused to listen to me! This is what we came for, Trent. This." She shook it once, twice, and something snapped. Her eyes flickered to her hand, and she saw that the blade had switched from its normal knife-like state to something that reminded her of a Japanese shuriken, round and pointed in all directions. A blade had come out the other side of the hilt, and she was glad she was holding the correct way The intricate patterns were not only on the main blade she had seen before, but now on the rest of the blade.
"Whoa," the man leaned forward in his chair, looking at the blade, "Did you break it? Bring it here!"
"Oh, Jesus, I hope not..." she ignored the next part of his sentence, to turn around again, sit down and cross her legs indian-style.
"Bitch, I said bring it here," Trent growled. When he got no reply, he stood up, "Jesse, bring it the fuck here, I want to see it!"
"No, Trent!" she turned her head in his direction, glaring just as he was glaring at her; "Fuck, just sit down, you don't know how to do anything, do you?"
He growled, no words coming from his mouth as he came out of the ice house and raised his hand, only to bring it hard against her face, gaining a sharp snap and a little cry coming from her. "Bitch! I know more than you do!" he hit her again, this time making her fall.
"T-Trent!" she gasped, spitting a little blood onto the icy floor of Antartica; one of her teeth had been knocked loose, though not completely out.
"You don't have the fuckin' right to say my name anymore!" he kicked the knife out of her hand, it sliding against the ice, and then proceeded to stomp on her diaphram, making her cough and sputter. "You whore!"
Jesse lay on the ground, feeling more lifeless than ever; this wasn't the first time he had hit her, kicked her, called her names, but he had never called her a whore before. Whore. Such a dirty word. How sick. The word made her feel dead.
"You hear me, Jesse!" his voice was loud and clear, "Whore! A fucking whore!" he knelt down, "Why don't you do some fucking good?"
Jesse pushed herself up to her elbows, shaking; she knew what he was going to do. She flopped onto her stomach and tried crawling away, scared and unknowingly slithering closer to something bigger. Something a lot scarier than a rapist or an abusive boyfriend.
Trent grabbed her ankles and pulled her back, her nose hitting the ice and making it start to bleed; she could feel his dirty hands gripping her waist and holding her there, tearing off her snow pants and then her jeans, her long johns and then the cold ice hitting her bear thighs, and knees. "N-no," she sobbed, "No!"
And as fast as it started, it was over. Her head swiveled slowly, eyes looked at him to find that the weapon she had just found had imbedded itself in his chest, where he was clawing at to get the weapon out. She noted that some bright green liquid was in all of the crevaces of the pattern. She didn't stop to investigate; instead, she struggled to pull up her pants and snow pants, and kicked herself away from him. She lifted herself up from the ice and ran in the opposite direction, watching over her shoulder as he looked up worriedly, pleading with her silently, as if she were to run back and save him.
She turned her head back to in front of her, and ran into something thick, solid. Her nose had cracked against something metal, making it ache even more, and probably become broken. Jess couldn't feel it anymore, so she knew that that was a bad sign. She fell back against the ice, and decided she didn't want to open her eyes. She had fallen unconcious.
"How sick," Nihkou'te growled, "They may be a different species, but how dare they defile their women in such a disgusting manner," he picked up the dead body of the male ooman and dumped him into a pile of garbage that the oomans had made. The garbage looked like wrappers of snacks of some sort. "They are garbage," he mused to himself, snorting.
"Nn," Akan'de nodded slowly. His eyes looked over the woman; her nose didn't look straight at all, and he didn't think that would be the best for her health. They had already wiped off most of the blood with cloth from the male's body. His clawed hands reached down, running his fingertips over her skin, down her cheek and across her jaw, only to come back up and take a firm hold on her nose. He pulled it up, and pushed it so it would be straight again. She groaned and squirmed in her coma-like state, obviously in pain.
"Is the child-bearer healthy now?" the other Yautja asked, looking over, the weapon that killed the male in his hand.
"... Not healthy. She will be okay for now," Akan'de said, standing up, "We could get to to lead us back to a civilization." He looked up, tube-like hair falling over his shoulders.
Nihkou'te looked her over, "She's..."
"I know, bhe'ru. I say we take the sled and we carry her along until she wakes up," he pointed vaugely to the large black sled with high sides that was inside the small building they had set up on the ice.
"She would be far too much of a hassle if she tried to run from us," Nihkou'te growled.
"If she tries to run, we let her run. We could also use the sled to carry my trophy and any meat that we happen to come across," Akan'de looked down at her, watching her begin to shake. "She's becoming cold," he murmured, "She will die if we don't do something. That's just as bad as killing her, Nihkou'te."
The Yautja growled, then turned swiftly, taking the sled out of the ice house and throwing it down; "Just put her in. We'll head west for the rest of the night, but if she dies, Akan'de, it's on you."
Akan'de nodded, and slipped his hands under her knees and back, lifting her up. He pushed himself up and then put her inside the sled, only to head back inside the ice house to look for more heat. He found two blankets, a chair and some food, along with a heater that was attatched to the ice house. The heater wouldn't do, but the blankets would help. He grabbed them and put them in the sled, tucking them in around her. He put his trophy in with her, right next to her head, so it would block some of the wind.
Nihkou'te dug through the snacks, and stored some of them in the sled. Akan'de looked suspiciously at them, not daring to pick them in case his bhe'ru would be protective of them. "They smell like sugars," he said, picking up the rope and starting to pull the female ooman, his trophy and the the little food they had, along, following Nihkou'te.
"They are sugars," he turned his head, his mask tilted up enough to show his mandlbiles holding the food close to his mouth, eating it. It had some grainy, granola-like substance packed together with more sugars, and had chunks of other sweet substances. "Want to try some?"
"No," Akan'de said sharply.
He turned again, now done with the bar, and put his mask back on, "S'yuit-de."
Jesse awoke to find her arms bound and nose aching. She was warm, though that was nice, but it didn't smell that great. Something was making her nose burn with a rotten-smell, and another that smelled like what her father's garage used to smell like when he brought home some some type of game, usually deer. She didn't open her eyes, though. She didn't want to wake up to find herself mutilated, and the warmth was actually her blood staining some type of covering. Maybe she was already dead, or on the verge of it.
She let out a shuddering breath, which turned into a cough. The smell had become even stronger, and now stung her lungs and throat. She tried to sit up, wanting to cover her mouth with something. She moved her hands, rubbing her fingers against each other and her palms. It was warm and wet, almost a little sticky.
"B-blood," she whispered.
She started to thrash, still not daring to open her eyes. She screamed and kicked, feet hitting something hard, and body being pinned down by some heavy thing; probably dead. Probably Trent. Jess didn't know. Jess didn't want to know.
Jesse kicked up, and her foot broke loose from the iron hold of the weight, and kicked something solid and metal. "No!" she cried, angrily, eyes shut tightly.
"No!" she heard the echo of her voice, and then deeper; "No!"
Another kick and she heard something crack and growling from the being.
She heard loud clicking and words that she didn't understand, and the weight was off of her, being thrown somewhere on the ground, and she was being lifted up like a child, thumbs right under her armpits, pulling her into some comforting hold where arms were wrapped around her, one arm under her rear as her legs straddled a large waist. It was cold, which meant they were still on the tundra of Antartica, or at least somewhere cold. Someone, or something, since she really had no idea what she was quite up against (literally), came up behind her, and something rumbled through her... Like a purr. It was... comforting, though it reminded her of a cat. She was alergic to cats. She didn't understand why the beings were purring to her, but it was making her calm down. Maybe that was their goal. So she didn't kick and scream and give them a headache - though Jess was a headache in herself. She groaned softly to comply to the being's tactfulness. Something weaved into her hair, and rubbed at her scalp, which felt sticky from the blood. Her ponytail was still in, but was removed swiftly to have another something weave into the back of her head of hair, rubbing her aching head. The thing in front of her started to purr deeply as well.
Her core started to relax, the sweet vocal vibrations ringing within her, meeting in the middle and then spreading like a heatwave through her body. When she tried to open her eyes, she couldn't, muscles not working, like her body was asleep, but her mind wasn't "shut off" like the rest of her.
She became limp, and the pressure from both sides of her disappated, purring continuing. She was placed back in that warm place, though this time the heat came from beside her, and, what felt like a blanket, came down to keep her warm again. The purring stopped, and she heard, barely, "Hulij-bpe lou-dte kalei."
Having no idea what it meant, she just breathed slowly, trying not to puke from the smell, just trying to enjoy the warmth and the feeling of peace that eminated from her core, given to her by the strange purring noise.
With a light jerk, the thing she was set in started to move again. She was glad whover - or whatecer - was helping her was doing just that. If she had been left out there, she would have died.
"Thank you," she murmured unconciously. "Thank you so much."
"Thank you so much," she heard, that same voice she had used. "Thank you. Thank you so much."
"Thank you," deeper, gruffer. "Thank you so much."
She didn't know why she was thanking them, whatever they were. There were two of them, she was sure of. She was starting to regain feeling in her body, Her nose started to ache again, and her body was tingling from the vibrations. She shook her head, and tried to open her eyes, but they wouldn't budge just yet. Maybe they had frozen shut.
... Too many maybes for her liking. She liked answers.
She moved her hands up to her face, trying hard not to get any blood in her eyes as she warmed them up; they were frozen. She opened her eyes to see the insides of her hands; they light peered through spaces between her fingers, and bounced off her red face to illuminate the cavern she made for herself. It was red. It was blood. Jess moved her hands away from her eyes and looked at the heat source; being used to game from her father's garage, the caribou with a hole in it's head didn't bother her. Instead, it was the strange-looking skull that was on top of it. She jumped back and screamed, seeing the elongated head with no eyes and strange, dull-looking teeth staring a back at her. The thing she was in - the sled that had been in her and Trent's ice house - tipped over on her side, and blood came pouring out of it along with her. Steam came up from the hot blood hitting the cold ice.
"C'jit!" one of the beings yelled, drawing her attention to them. Jess' eyes widened even more. The one that had yelled was dark gray, and was moving towards her swiftly. The other one looked like a lion-fish - or at least had the coloring of one - and held the rope to the sled with . Their hair was dark and tube-like, like dreadlocks, and had small bones or ordiments of the same coloring or gold, bronze or copper in them. Their armor wasn't the most beautiful, but it looked strong. It was a chest-plate with large shoulders, wrist bands and a mask, along with an armored looking loin cloth. They had weapons on their waist and back, and she was surprised she didn't feel them when they had picked her up. The rest of their bodies were practically bare, which that is where she saw the markings on their bodies; the only thing covering them was a fishnet-esque material. She could tell, though, that they both were obviously male. Startled, not knowing what to do as the monster neared her, she screamed even louder than before.
Both of them froze, chests expanding and them letting out a long, hard purr, obviously trying to calm her down.
"What the fuck!"
"No!" the grey one voiced, loud and commanding, making her freeze. "No, no, no!"
"Thank you. Thank you so much." The other one said quietly in her voice. For some reason, she felt like she had had her voice stolen.
"Just shut up!" she snapped, angry now. She didn't like this. Jess didn't know what to do; she didn't even know what their faces looked like from behind those damned masks. They didn't say anything after that, but the gray one neared her even more, taking another heavy step.
Her dark grey eyes were flicking from one to the other; "No!" she cried, as the grey one got close enough to touch her. She pushed herself back and back and back, kicking the ice again and again, trying to get away. A taloned hand reached out and grabbed her jacket pulling her back toward the sled. The one carrying her wasn't purring. He was yelling in his strange language at the other one, apparently angry. He lifted her up by her collar, shoving Jess into the other's chest, yelling some more, threateningly as he just closed in and yelled a little bit louder.
The other one just kept purring, ignoring what the other was saying - whatever he was saying. The vibrations from his chest made her nose ache, and she cried out faintly, reaching up and holding her nose in her hands.
She was scared. Not knowing what these things were, not knowing what they were saying. They didn't seem like they were trying to help her, this time, putting her in a bin where there food was, and whatever the fuck that skull was. Jess just hoped she would get out of this male's hold soon, so the yelling monster would stop.
With a dry sob, arms turned her around like a child wanting to be coddled; her head was forcibly pushed into his neck, purring sound being caught there and vibrations shaking her head. She felt as if her head was going to explode from the pure peace surrounding it. Her coddler stopped purring for only a moment to say something in an angrily hushed tone, like a mother would say to an angry drunkard father to try to get him to stop yelling to get the baby to stop crying. Though, this baby was getting a rush.
Her body started to heat up, breathing becoming fast; her nether-regions started to pulsate lightly, but not become wet. She questioned her sanity, having seen these monsters, being held so close to their scaly chests and she was getting hot. Maybe it was the fear that turned her on, or the thought of their size or exotic genitals...
This was that rush that she was looking for, that Trent couldn't give her.
"Oh, god."
As the two began to bicker, the purring becoming short bursts of hard vibrations between illegible words, that's when the first drop slid from her lower lips and her mouth began to water, head in a daze.
When the two stopped bickering, she knew she was in for something; be it good or bad.