AUTHOR'S NOTE: Dear God, whoever let me play a Pokemon game needs to be shot. Not that I'm going to be writing fanfic for it, but the quest for a Milotic has kept me… occupied. .

See additional author's notes at the end.

xXx

Escthta faced the two remaining drones, ignoring the sting in his mouth from the acidic vapors that rose up off the one that had crumpled to the ground. Their long slick heads swiveled between him and the human uncertainly. Their indecision made him nervous; when they weren't acting, it was because they were observing for the queen. He had no idea how mature or widespread the hive was; their orbital surveillance had been faulty at best. Humans and their activities had a way of destroying the small telltale signs of a hive. They drove ruminants past the normal zone of inhibition, the ring of lifelessness around a hive, and built their settlements close to them without any sort of reconnaissance. Escthta half-felt that any species that would put their females and children in the direct path of a hive's collection routes deserved what they got.

The drones were still deliberating when Escthta joined them in battle. The queen would feel the cessation of their lives and she would know her hive was under attack. One drone she could lose, had lost with humans many times before. But three drones lost in the space of minutes could only mean they were being slaughtered by human troops or Hunted. The drones were confused by the sudden attack. Their normally well-coordinated attacks were clumsy; he dodged their clawed hands and knife-like tails easily. He didn't have a spear ready and his shoulder cannon was unattached on the floor; the hive had been close, but he hadn't expected them to actually be collecting the human he had found the night before. There was too much about this situation that was unexpected, from the drones, to the open doors, to the aliens' behavior. It didn't sit well with him, their lazy attack patterns and sleepy response times.

One drone hissed at him and made a close strike with its tail. Escthta moved aside easily, and caught the tail. He jerked it towards him quickly, and the drone stumbled toward him, off balance. He caught it and gripped the slick head. The jaws opened and the second mouth prepared to extend. A shudder crept through him at the sight of it. In his unBlooded days, he had seen many other yautja turned into bright green smears on rocks by the Alien's oral piston. They had taken the thing's reach for granted, but Escthta had learned his lesson from their deaths. He moved to the side for the first attempt. Anyone who listened could hear the release of pressure in preparation for the strike. Their acid blood was kept under high pressure for this purpose, the deadly tongue-strike that killed most enemies.

A high-pitched squeal pierced his ears; the other drone had been burned by a shoulder-cannon. Impatient, Escthta neatly broke the drone's neck and quickly slit the pressure tubes on either side of its head. A broken neck was not the surest indication of death in a drone, it was the loss of blood. Avoiding the initial caustic spray was crucial; that was what killed most. After the alien's body was depressurized, it could neither attack nor communicate with the queen. The scientists still had not worked out how the drones used the blood to receive messages from the queen, but they had assured the Council for years that they were "very close" to figuring out the kainde amedha's communications system.

The acid spray was deflected by the slant of his blades. As the alien bled out, its jaws worked slowly. Immobilization was usually not the goal of a Hunter, but Escthta knew it nonetheless; it was a valuable skill that allowed a Hunter to avoid being impaled while he was preparing to field-dress a Hard Meat carcass. He stood and turned to find Cthinde and Bagthak standing at the threshold of the underground compound.

"Good thing one of us came prepared," Bagthak smirked. His shoulder cannon moved from active to passive position along his back. Cthinde was examining the garage bay doors.

"Those are usually closed," said Escthta. They had been wide open when they'd arrived, and Escthta had gone first without pausing to arm himself. It had saved the life of the young human, no doubt, but it had also put him in debt to Bagthak.

Cthinde looked around; Escthta could see from the faint red glint behind the mask's visor that he had the thermal implants running. Thermal vision was one of the ways that Hunters used their technology to better see their prey, but it was useless against kainde amedha, who emitted no body heat. For them, an electrical signal mask was better; it detected the small discharges of energy when drones communicated with the Queen, and made their masses of arms and legs visible against the less-active hive matrix.

Escthta himself didn't hold with thermal implants. Yautja already possessed brains and strength superior to that of any human he'd encountered, as his trophy wall proved. The thermal implants were for Hunters who were not gifted enough in using their natural sight to detect and hunt prey. He did have to concede its usefulness in a mission such as this one, however; his natural light-based vision had lost the human.

"Where is it?" Escthta was anxious to find it again; the attack would have left it confused and afraid, dangerous emotions for humans. They generally couldn't handle fear or confusion. Cthinde lifted his head from the workings of the garage door to sweep the garage area with his eyes.

"It's behind that transport." He nodded towards the skiff and then went back to looking at the workings of the garage door. Escthta covered the distance in a few strides, and then turned back to Cthinde. "What's so interesting about that door?"

"It's got acid burns and claw marks all over it." The terse answer left the threat unspoken; the Hard Meat had attempted to enter through the surface hatch, which meant the hive was close enough to send out surface scouts. The queen, having felt three of her children die on a scouting mission, would know that there were lifeforms here. It didn't matter to her if they were a threat or a source of warm bodies. The queen would send more drones, many more, and it was important that they be gone when the queen's reinforcements arrived.

xXx

Anise lay still, half underneath and half-behind the skiff. The large alien with the thick locks of hair had neatly dispatched one bug, and the other had been burned by some sort of energy blast. She could smell the acrid smoke off the charred corpse, though it lay several meters away from her. It stung her nose and mouth, and her eyes watered with the effort not to make a noise. There were three large humanoids now; one with the laser, the first one, and another one that was inspecting her garage door. They were making clicks and growling noises, strange barks and chitters. It froze her blood to realize that they were communicating; surely those noises weren't speech?

Her muscles had gone weak and wobbly with her stillness; what had once been the power and speed of survival was now just a soft mass of overexcited muscle, and she didn't feel that she could respond quickly enough to fight them, to get away, to do anything. She caught her breath as one large pair of feet was heading towards her. She felt the raw horror begin to rise up in her throat at them, the bizarre sandals they wore, their clawed toes, and the dewclaws on the sides of their feet. The feet stopped and half-turned, and she heard the clicking again, closer now. There was a reply, and then the humanoid approached the skiff. She closed her eyes briefly, fighting down a whimper, and when she opened them, the humanoid towered over her.

She screamed and pushed herself back and away from it. The thing was enormous, nearly nine feet. The head seemed overlarge for the body, with a high crown. It was included in the face-mask's protection. The mask itself was a severe stylization of a face, with dark lenses for eyes, and sharp cheekbones that came together at the bottom in a snout. The snout was an array of vertical fins, and she felt sick at what the counterpart under the mask could be. The body was enormous, with stocky limbs that were thick with muscles; this was a creature made for power, not speed, and when it reached for her, she screamed again.

"Get the fuck away from me!"

She scrambled backwards again, looking frantically for an escape, but the other two creatures had already begun moving into the corridor that led to the residential and mechanical wings. Oh, God, Jake. She lurched to her feet, running after them, hearing the creature behind her utter a startled noise. She entered the doorway, only to collide with a wall of muscle. The two other humanoids filled the space, and the one she'd run into gave her a sharp shove, sending her sprawling to the floor. There was nothing but panic left in her brain now; Jake was unprotected, Harvey was dead, and the bugs and the creatures that killed them were invading her home.

xXx

Cthinde watched the small human sobbing on the floor with a mixture of annoyance and pity. He turned to Escthta. "Are you sure this is the one you want?"

Bagthak grunted. "It doesn't have any kind of sense at all." He jerked his head back toward the deeper tunnels. "The Hard Meat are already back there. Going back there unarmed is like inviting death." Cthinde looked to Escthta, who had joined them in watching the small human.

"Maybe it has young." Escthta stepped closer to the human, but stepped back at her sharp cry. They weren't going to get anywhere with this. He looked at the two shorter yautja. "Humans live in family units and feel strong attachments to relatives. If there are relatives back there, it will try to get back to them."

Cthinde clicked softly, asking the question on all their minds out loud. "So we should… do what, exactly?"

Bagthak rumbled, "Any relatives must be dead or hosting by now." It was a matter-of-fact assessment from one who had seen impregnation many times.
Escthta shrugged uneasily. The human's small ugly face was distorted and damp with secretions from its eyes and nose. "You and I know that, but maybe it doesn't."

Bagthak snorted. "And I suppose we can just talk to it and tell it everything?"

xXx

Anise was numb with fear. The three humanoids towered over her, impossibly tall. She herself was over five and a half feet, a tall woman, but these things were enormous. The tallest one, which had approached her first, was half a head taller than the other two. All three were dressed in scant clothing, but heavy armor; they had netting over their trunk and legs. The two shorter ones had metal loincloths and heavy shoulder and chest armor. The one on the end was the shortest, but carried a heavy pack on its back with what looked like a gun. This must be what killed the other bug, that flash of light that had ended in a screech.

Reason was breaking down her whimpering fear into curiosity, though she remained extremely wary. If they'd intended to kill her, they would have done so by now, and every moment she delayed, Jake remained in danger. Their conversation, in the small clicks and chatters that she was slowly getting used to, stopped. Three large heads turned and looked at her.

"What do you want from me?" The question was small and shaky, and would have been more effectively asked if she was not still on the floor.

The tallest hunkered down and peered closely at her. He offered his hand, palm up. Anise uncertainly extended her own hand in a mimic of his gesture, but withdrew it at his excited cry. He conversed for a moment with the other two and then his hand was offered again. She looked at the outstretched hand, enormous and clawed. After a few moments hesitation, she took it gingerly, surprised at the warmth of it. The humanoid stood, drawing her up roughly and setting her on her feet.

xXx

"Okay, so we can communicate. Tell it that there's going to be a lot of death here if we don't get moving." Bagthak was anxiously eyeing the darkened corridor, searching its shadows for Hard Meat. The human's presence was unnatural, and his normal eloquence evaporated under pressure. Escthta turned to the small human. There was no way to tell it that he was going to take it far away from here. He pointed at the kainde amedha that lay on the floor and held up three fingers. The human was still. He unfolded his fingers many times and pointed at the corpses again. The human looked at the black bodies and then back at him. It said something in its strange language, and then pointed at the corpses again. There will be more of those things? He understood its intent, and nodded slowly. The human then pointed at the corridors and babbled anxiously, trying to push between the Hunters barring its way. Escthta frowned and at last realized that his earlier guess was correct. "There are relatives back there."

Bagthak cursed under his breath. "Fuck that." He began walking toward the hatch.

Cthinde watched the human quietly and then shrugged. "This is your human. You help it."

Escthta hid his disappointment, although he had known this would be their response. He walked back and collected his shoulder cannon, securing it on his shoulder. He would have to be careful about his firing; in the enclosed spaces, any wrong shots could cause a cave-in or make acid blood splash the wrong way. He tested the tracking, moving his head and keeping track of the laser-guided sight in his vision.

The human's eyes were lit up by his laser sighting as he moved the cannon around, and it squinted and looked away. The cannon moved into inactivity along his back, and he walked forward, standing in front of her. So this was what Thtarok needed? A childbearer? He ran his eyes over her, unimpressed. She had no claws, no muscle structure, and couldn't possibly be misconstrued as menacing. Compared to his females— to Da-kvar'di— she was a small, soft package of flesh and bone, too curvy to be appealing, too small to be threatening. He remained still for several moments; if this was how the human warriors he fought were created, how did they grow to be such fighters? With such soft and gentle looking females, how did they develop any sort of taste for combat?

He moved toward the dimly lit corridor that led back into its den; regardless of his personal feelings on this human, it needed to come with him. If that required his company into the depths of the compound to reassure her that all her kin were dead, so be it. She called out after him and caught up, moving alongside him. He preprogrammed the codes for calling down a retrieval pod from the ship to one button on his cuff computer; there was no telling what kind of trouble they would be in when they left.

xXx

Anise stopped at the junction and looked toward the hydroponics room. She could barely make out a small form in the darkness down the corridor, which she knew could only be Lucas. Or what was left of him. She felt her gorge rising at the thought of his death, his pain. She put a hand against the wall, trying to draw on the coolness of the stone to settle her stomach. It was slick with water, and she wiped the moisture off, spreading it over her forehead. There was no time. She turned herself to the residential wing and began moving through the corridors. The lights still worked, painting the walls their usual sallow brown, but the illumination gave her no comfort.

Jake's room was still intact, and as she rushed in, she forgot about her silent shadow, and hugged her brother tight. She looked at him, trying to make sure he was okay. His breathing was a little quick; if he was excited too long, he would have to be intubated to make sure the breathing passageway remained open.

"Thank God, Jake. Oh, thank God." She brushed his damp hair away from his temples, watching him. The beeping of the heart monitor increased; the large humanoid had entered the room. Jake's eyes blinked rapidly, but Anise smiled uneasily at the creature.

"It's… it's not okay, exactly. I don't know what he is. But I think he's here to help."

She turned back. "There are bugs here, Jake. We've got to get you out of here."

Jake blinked twice.

"Don't be difficult, Jake. You can't say no." Anise leaned behind the chair to begin making him ready to move, and her hand brushed something coiled and bent. She pushed Jake forward to see it with more light, and a shrill gasp escaped her lips. It looked like an experiment gone wrong, a dead pair of hands that escaped from their sallow-fleshed owner. The digits were curved inward over a small orifice and a long segmented tail lay motionless around it.

The humanoid roared and shoved her out of the way, grabbing for the thing. The tail uncoiled, and the digits creaked in a menace of movement. It flung the hideous thing away, out of the room, and shot it with the shoulder cannon in midair. It hit the ground in a spray of acid and fire. Anise cowered on the floor, whimpering at the alien thing, at its proximity to her brother, at the cannon blast. She pulled herself up using Jake's chair, and looked closely at him, her eyes blurred with tears. His breathing was shallower than ever, and she suppressed her own panic long enough to kiss his forehead.

"Jake, we're going to get you out of here." A triangle of lasers on Jake's chest made her words catch in her throat.

She turned her head slowly and her face twisted in silent agony as she saw the cannon leveled on her. The humanoid was quiet, though its hands clenched and unclenched. The laser sights were steady, bright red on Jake's white hospital gown, and Anise put herself in the path.

"Please, don't kill him!"

It was a plea the alien would not understand, but it was all she could do. Small, unarmed and many times weaker than the alien, there was nothing more she could do but beg for Jake's life to be spared.

The alien clicked softly at her, and the noise reminded her of a cat's purr, out of place in its current employment. It thumbed back at the carcass that was dissolving the hall outside the room and then nodded to Jake. Anise, with her head against Jake's chest, heard his heartbeat; it was rapid and light, like a rabbit's. There was another noise, a shifting and gurgling which Anise couldn't place. She pulled back and looked to Jake's face, a new realization of horror creeping into her brain. "Jake?"

Jake blinked once.

xXx

The female was similar to the debilitated male in the chair; the scanners in his mask approximated them as first kin. A quick change of vision modes showed that the male's bones were large and well-formed. He was an invalid, but was not born that way. With the two side-by-side, he could see the differences in the pelvis for child-bearing. Another change to electric scanning confirmed what the dying facehugger had already told him; the male was hosting, and had been for at least a few hours. The Hard Meat fetus had already grown to close to full size in the abdominal cavity. Eruption was imminent. Escthta stepped forward and tugged on the female, who cried out and remained laid across the chair. Her eyes were seeping again and she blubbered her nonsense language. He couldn't get a clear shot to end the human's life honorably.

There was pain inside the man in the chair, but Escthta did not sense physical pain. In fact, the human male felt almost relieved. Escthta looked at him, meeting his eyes through the lenses of his mask, and feeling the desperation behind them. There was an uneasy moment, and Escthta felt revulsion, fear, anger, sorrow in waves, but they were temporary. Escthta stood immobile, awash in the human male's emotions. He could not Speak yet, but surely he could listen. He stilled himself, letting the forces of the man's brain tug at his consciousness. Emotions are not bound by language or race, and innermost thoughts are not played out in words, but in feelings and images. This man, on the threshold of death, was not coy or ashamed of his last thoughts.

There is not much time. I can feel it here in my chest. I don't know what you are, but you are here, and you are the only one left. In the name of anything you hold dear, take care of her.

Escthta stepped forward and put his hand on the human's shoulder. The female looked up, face enflamed and red. Escthta regarded her silently. To kill him without her permission was insulting, but to allow him to suffer eruption was unethical. He debated for a moment, but the writhing of the alien fetus directly underneath her head forced him to action. He encircled the female's waist with one arm, hauling her up and moving her out of the way. He chucked her out of the room and walked quietly back to the male. With a silent prayer to Paya, he clicked softly in reassurance, and felt the faint life sigh in gratitude. With one hand, he pressed the male's eyes closed, and with the other hand, he exposed the human's pale chest, where he could see the alien fetus beginning to bulge out.

A quick cannon burst left a gaping cavity in the man's chest. The smell of gore and burning flesh filled the room, but Escthta was reassured the man's death was quick; he had felt the consciousness wink out with the flash of his shoulder cannon. He reached into the still-warm flesh and withdrew the heavily compromised alien fetus, which was working its jaws weakly. He tossed it to the floor and ground it underfoot, feeling the bones crack under his weight. Then he heard the heart-rending scream of the female, saw her sink on the floor halfway into the room. She screamed again as he moved near her, her sobs cutting off her breathing. Escthta felt a pang of guilt at his actions, but there was nothing more he could do. The male had been given the best death possible, under the circumstances. Escthta grabbed the screaming female by the arm and half-pulled, half-dragged her out of the room and down the hall.

xXx

There were no words. When the humanoid let her go, she collapsed onto the floor against the wall, curling her legs up to her chest. She screamed until spittle ran down her chin, blood pounded red and painful in her temples, and the world was a grey blur of rock. Until her air was gone, she wailed, and then her lungs, in spite of her fervent wish that they not do so, would take in more air, and she would still be alive where Jake was not, and the sounds she made were those of her soul trying to turn itself inside out.

In the silences between her cries, she could hear the grunts of her brother's killer. He was fighting. . Her voice was exhausted; the raw pain of her throat quieted her some, and her eyes were unseeing, staring dully at the stone floor. A scrape of claws against metal armor and a protracted howl of effort forced her to lift her head from the floor. The big alien was backed up against the wall, fending off the smaller black alien, avoiding the snaps of teeth and the honed claws. Watching the alien and the bug, she was unsettled by the seething hiss of the bug and the gnashing of its teeth. Lucas had seen those things last as his body's hydrogen bonds were undone, as the acid blood took its toll on his flesh. She could see now that the humanoid was at an unfortunate angle; the bug had put him on his knees in defense, and the chance he would survive became increasingly smaller.

Though the larger alien had done that to her brother in his room—she couldn't bring herself to think the word 'killed'—she too had felt the fear of that long head swiveling towards her. Those silvery teeth, and the second mouth between them sent shivers down her spine. And on some level, although she wasn't aware of the biological realities, she knew that the thing her brother's killer had crushed underfoot and the thing he was fighting were undoubtedly related. Anger strangled her apathy; these were the things that had crept silently into her home, that had sentenced Jake to death. She pushed herself up off the ground, grabbing a piece of lumber from along the wall. She swung the plank at the alien, relishing its squeal as she hit it in the midsection and knocked it off its feet. Her ersatz protector got to his feet as the bug did, but this time, his cannon was primed; it fired a blue-white bolt that impacted the bug in the chest and splattered the walls behind it with acid. The drone sank down on the floor, smoke curling off its body, and Anise coughed at the acidic vapors thick in the air. The humanoid picked her up around her waist and moved quickly through the smoke, setting her down once they were clear.

Anise kept her feet uneasily and watched the massive back and shoulders of the humanoid continue down the hall and turn left at the junction. She followed after him quickly, still carrying her plank and liking the splintery feel of it in her hand as they got closer to the exit. She desperately wanted to haul off and drive the wood into his back, between his ribs and feel his flesh give, but she couldn't bring herself to do it. Her companion was armed, and though she was still too close to Jake's death to properly assess her situation, she knew that violence wasn't a way to solve anything, especially anything dealing with an alien that had a cannon which fried bugs. Her fingers and muscled itched to do something, though, anything. Her chest physically ached with her loss, and her brow was permanently creased as she concentrated on not falling to pieces.

What would happen when they reached the surface? Why was he defending her from bugs? Why did he kill her brother? Would he leave her here to the bugs? Her logic rebelled against that; if he was going to do that, why go to the trouble of defending her in the first place? She was gnawed at by the uncertainty and didn't even think to look where she was walking. Suddenly, the cool breeze of the open hatch hit her face, and it smelled like rain.

Outside, a small craft had set down on the near side of the clearing, but it was so close to the edge of the prairie; there was an occasional thunk as a razorgrass hull was blown into it. The rain was gentle, and the moisture buds of the grasses were only just beginning to peek out of their houses. A silvery cable attached to the roof of the craft lay slack, and the other end went up and up, forever into the blameless grey clouds. It was a transport like she'd never seen before; was it some sort of giant fishing rod, and they'd be 'reeled in' to the mothership? She realized that she'd attached herself to the humanoid in her thinking; they would, she'd thought.

It was absurd, farcical and utterly ludicrous to think of going with the alien. And yet, as he opened the hatch on the ovoid craft, she looked back into her home, knowing the blood and the destruction there, knowing that all there was inside it was misery and loneliness. She thought of her brother, waistless and blank-eyed—oh how much those eyes had told her since he'd stopped speaking!—and she felt her throat close. There was nothing here for her.

She turned back and looked at the alien, which was standing near the ovoid and looking fidgety. What would await her with him? What evil lurked behind his altruistic exterior? Would she be enslaved? Tortured? Probed? A number of scenes choreographed themselves in her head, but they all compared themselves to the grisly scene in Jake's room and the parade of fake mourners and the Weyland-Yutani military types who would want to know what had happened. If there was nothing here for her but mourning and ostracism, then there was nothing here. She amended an ancient axiom in her head; "Better the devil you don't know than the one you do; at least the one you don't know will screw you over a different way." The mud under her feet was soft as she walked to his side. He chattered softly at her and climbed in first. There was space for one passenger, a tall, quilted section of silver fabric. He hooked himself into it, fastening straps, and it was then that she noticed the second harness attached to his. She climbed up uncertainly, and he began fastening the harness around her, though its size was such that it was barely any use.

The sound of clattering razorgrass made him jerk his head up. He hissed softly and slammed his large fist against a button on the wall, flicking several switches next to it. The hatch lifted up, closing the ovoid off. Anise was horrified at the sight of the bugs pouring into the clearing from the grass-lined edge. A steady sound of pressurization, and the black drones in the clearing were running toward them. The hatch sealed and Anise felt the craft move and jerk; the aliens had rammed it. A screech of claws sounded all around them, and the humanoid keyed in something on a keypad made with strange numbers. The craft lurched and the claw noise faded. Anise felt her blood move into her legs, and she grew dizzy, her head nodding about. She sagged in the harness, barely conscious of the ink-dappled arms that wrapped around her and held her head steady, to keep the gravitational forces from breaking her neck.

xXx

AUTHOR'S NOTE: The device they are traveling in is a bastardization of a skyhook. It does work similar to a float on a fishing reel. If you must know the mechanics of it, I'll be happy to outline it in an email. Otherwise, this is one of those things that you'll have to take my word for.

This chapter was difficult to write for several reasons; one was my personal experience with death in my family. The other was the obvious ramifications of losing your entire family in one day. I did my best to make her ordeal just that, an ordeal, without trivializing her grief, and by extension, my own.

The heartiest of thanks to my beta for this chapter, Drakonlily. Go read her Final Fantasy VII fics if you haven't already. She's a doll.