A/N: Here's a quick reminder on the origin of the characters and their story: Sanctuary is the settler camp on the Predators (2010) Game Planet featured in hayj's Only fools… story. It was developed as part of a social experiment by the Predators. The original settlers included Riddick, Carolyn, Royce and Isabelle, Varro – a soldier and his lady love, an innocent and assorted others (which include the Latinos of the Compound, like Ramona Vargas, Dell and Jesse Romero). This story will focus mostly on the children of the first settlers, the Riddicks (Jack, Marcus, Richie B. and Zoey), the Royces (Carolyn Two, Mason and Arianna) and Destiny Varro, who has the honour of being the first child born on Sanctuary.
Now, enjoy!
Big Ramona
Help! Help! Somebody help me, please!
It was a stupid plea. That's the first thing Big Ramona remembered thinking, once the pain in her back dulled down from a roar to a sob no one could hear her make. She'd landed badly, but nothing seemed to be broken and, still, Big Ramona didn't move from her prone position on the bed of the jungle.
Somebody? Anybody?
Vargas girls didn't prance around without packing serious fire, so Big Ramona was all set on the front, at least. It was reassuring to feel the dig of her favourite piece in her side, but Big Ramona knew that, if this was the Big H., the real Hunt they'd been reared to take part in, it wouldn't do to show your hand early on. That's how they learnt. And ultimately, that's how they killed.
But today was not the day Big Ramona folded in. So she lay still, played dead, let the sounds of jungle surround her and listened to the incessant and irritatingly familiar wailing.
You lose it out here, you're in a world of hurt, girl.
"For God's sake, somebody, get me down!"
Of all of the fucked up things that could've happened to her today, Big Ramona hadn't counted on…this. When she'd thought the coast was clear and nothing was coming out to get her, yet, Big Ramona had gotten up and followed the sound. It was a trap, yes, but one she could see. Just like I taught myself to see through all the shit.
Shit like how Vargas kids didn't flock in with the others runts. Because Vargases were different, hell fucking yeah, bigger and better, thank you fucking much, but mostly, mainly, because they were afraid.
Afraid of the craziness of the First Settlers, who'd been here for so long.
Afraid of Riddick's crazy fucked up eyes and unreal skills or of Royce – Willing to Sacrifice's stealthy ass.
So, yeah, Big Ramona was not stupid. Settlers had been here for so long and survived while the Vargases and the Romeros of the Compound dwindled in numbers year after year. Big Ramona noticed things like that. She knew she'd have to step up her game, learn some new tricks, kill some new shit, if she wanted to play pro.
But she'd gotten this far, hadn't she?
"Please, just…help!Helphelphelphelp. HEEEEEELLLLP!"
Big Ramona cringed and aimed at the tangled chute attached to a dangling idiot. She cocked her gun and…
"Hey? Is anybody there?"
Well, fuck.
Big Ramona fired the shot.
The bumbling fool fell hard to the ground.
Just as Big Ramona was gearing up to fire a second, rather more final shot, Destiny Varro nimbly bounced back on her feet, the chute billowing behind her like a white shimmering cape. She looked all blond and beautiful and full of stupid.
"Ramona! Thank God it's you! I thought I'd never get down from there!"
Not never, Ramona thought. With the racket she'd been making, they'd shoot her just to make her quiet. Actually, Ramona herself was awfully tempted to…
Destiny's eyes grew large as she eyed the barrel of Ramona's gun.
"There's something behind me, isn't there?" she asked with a controlled kind of seriousness to her voice that made Big Ramona's finger twitch ever so slightly on the trigger.
"Okay, okay. Just…shoot it!"
But Ramona surprised herself by packing away her gun.
"Neah, princess, trick of the light."
Destiny heaved a relieved sigh.
"Phewww! That was close, right?" She straightened herself out, patting dirt off her slacks and flashing Ramona a blinding smile. "Gee, I'm so glad you found me. I hate walking through the jungle alone."
"There were other chutes around. You saw them up in the sky. Alone isn't a luxury we can afford way down here, princess", Ramona growled while doing a quick ammo check. Her trigger finger was still twitching.
"Exactly!" Destiny grinned her perfect white teeth again. "But only two chutes fell in the vicinity. Like I said", and Destiny magically produced a gleaming blade from out of fucking nowhere which she then proceeded on to tapping against Ramona's pert little nose, "I sure am glad I won't be doing this alone".
Destiny turned around, looked up at the chute-less sky and broken planetoids and started towards the thicker part of the jungle.
"Come on, then! Time to go home."
Big Ramona was bringing up the back, gently toeing the foliage just in case they dropped in something they shouldn't have. The white princess was a couple of paces ahead and Big Ramona had to give it to her: Destiny was tall and fair of hair, hardly inconspicuous against the backdrop of lush greens and multicolored poisonous flowers, but she moved swiftly and silently. And with purpose.
They were hundreds or thousands of miles away from home, Big Ramona was certain, and yet Destiny acted like she knew exactly what she was doing.
"Just so we're clear, princess. You have any idea where you're going?"
Big Ramona was thinking higher ground, making a stand, setting traps, emptying her cartridges, put a fucking hole in the world or die trying.
"We're going wherever the tracks are taking us to."
"Tracks?! What tracks?" Ramona looked frantically around.
Destiny stopped and smiled, pointing at the trees.
"There's scrapped moss on some of them branches. And the vines are broken. Something came through here. Something heavy, but nimble. It stuck to the trees, you see. Normally, I'd do the same, but we're not properly equipped for that. Plus, you're hurt."
Big Ramona bristled.
"I'm fine! And how do I know you know what you're talking about, Pocahontas? Tracks on trees, she says! You sure we wanna be going wherever those monkeys be?"
"No."
"What?!"
Princess was lily fucking white, but Ramona had tried not to hold that against her. A bleached fucking brain on the other hand was a whole different matter entirely.
"Of course I don't want to go where the Preds are. But that's where their ship is going to be. "
"Their ship."
"Yes," Destiny carried on undaunted "we get a ship, we get outta here. Simple."
Big Ramona was above average height, but nowhere near as tall as Destiny. However, when she braced herself and cocked her head just the right way the dividing inches between her and Destiny cowered a bit and miraculously stopped mattering.
"You learn to fly a ship lately and failed to mention it to me? 'Cause I might just be feeling a little hurt if you have."
"It's Pred tech. How hard can it be?"
"Fucking hard, that's how!"
"Hey! Suppose we don't try at all? What then?"
"How about we have them come our way instead of waltzing in on their mothefucking turf? Last time I checked, we didn't get a fucking invite, did we?"
"We dropped from the sky, didn't we?"
Big Ramona was talking to a wall and she strongly felt that it was past time to blast through it.
"Okay, plan B. Say bye-bye, reina."
Big Ramona was fast on the draw. Faster than most settlers, actually. She could've taken the shot from the hip, messily, but efficiently. She didn't get the chance, though. Destiny lounged for her, shouting Duck! and Big Ramona's short but eventful life flashed before her eyes in the form of a blue plasma cannon streak that set the jungle around on fire.
It was neatly done too: a perfect circle of flames and battered old trees lapping up tongues of fire caging in on them, burning up the oxygen and part of Destiny's trousered leg.
They rolled over and looked each other in the eye.
"On three."
"Run."
"Three!"
The most astonishing part was how they both started in the same direction. But between Ramona's back and Destiny's leg they didn't get very far before more plasma shots lit up their way. Feeling like so much herded livestock, Big Ramona pushed Destiny aside and turned towards the heat of the fire.
Looking back sent her straight to hell. The jungle was a fiery mouth coming at her with a mighty appetite. Big Ramona pulled hand grenades out of her pockets and made ready to feed the roaring fire up into an inferno.
"…the trees. Aim for the trees!"
It stung, but in the face of death, a previously unknown face of Ramona's otherwise bitchy personality clawed its way to the front. It was somewhat more charitable.
Big Ramona threw a couple of grenades at Destiny and hollered: "You aim for the trees!"
Bitch was taller any way.
Destiny popped the pins and hurled the grenades at the trees above, aiming for the general direction from which the shots had come from. There was a crack and a pop and the blast blew them both away, but the inhuman screech was worth it, even as they scrambled to their feet and ran till their lungs gave out and darkness covered everything.
She could taste ash on her tongue.
Sweet fucking Jesus she was alive!
Which meant everything hurt and life was an iron fisted bitch pounding away at her head.
Next to her, Destiny was groaning face down in the dirt.
"Des… Des… wake up!"
Destiny gurgled something indecipherable and attempted a move with no luck.
"Get up, we need to move."
The world was a mess around them. The ground was scorched and everything was covered in a greasy blanket of sooth. A charred tree branch, glowing faintly amber in the breeze had them pinned down in the clearing the last of Big Ramona's grenades had remodeled the jungle in before they'd blacked out.
The night was quiet, so much so that Big Ramona had no problems hearing the heavy footsteps easing past the debris and heading their way.
Destiny stirred next to her again.
"You know what? Don't get up."
"Wha'…"
"Shut up. Play dead."
"Ramona…"
"Des, I swear to God, you move an inch…"
An inch was all Destiny got to anyway, because now Ramona could see the Predator clearly by the light of the moon. He was scanning his surroundings, the three dotted ray jumping here and there, but fortunately zoning in on nothing in particular.
The heat of the fire must be hiding our signatures, Ramona thought. Settlers knew some things about how Pred vision worked. Early on, Royce had gotten his hands on a visor and they'd experimented with it. Preds could be tricked by mud and such for a while, but it was the sound of the human beating heart that was harder to disguise. They said Riddick had done it once, slowed his heart rate to a stutter and evaded a hunting party, but Ramona was no Riddick lookalike. Nevertheless, she tried to calm down. Breathing came hard though and she almost choked.
The Predator stalked towards the edge of the clearing, a couple of feet from where, Big Ramona could tell, Destiny was struggling with a sneeze. Between gritted teeth, Ramona swore and tried reaching for a gun. The Pred was scanning around again, but this time he looked more intent. Ramona's hand hit a rock, a twig and a burning piece of something before she identified the butt of the gun.
But it was too late.
Three red dots bloomed on her questing hand and Big Ramona would have never been able to hold a gun right had it not been for Destiny's aborted attempts at holding it in.
"Achoo!"
The Pred cocked his head and hesitated. It was enough.
Destiny leaped to her feet and casually tossed the an unpinned grenade his way.
The alien almost caught it.
"Gesundheit¸ mothefucker!"
And everything went boom.
"It was a rather nice shot."
"Thank you."
"You got him right under the…"
"I know. I was there. I shot the stupid thing."
"Didn't think it would be that gory though."
"It was a close shot."
"It almost came out of his ears. I mean, if he had any."
They hadn't stuck around to find that out.
After the grenade had gotten the creature disoriented and Destiny out of the way, Ramona had sprung up and quite suicidally had trained her favourite Walther piece under its chin and pulled the trigger.
Repeatedly.
In fact, she was still firing empty when she realized it was the alien blood spattered on her face that had tinted everything in an eerie green light and not the glow of the afterlife.
The Pred was dead.
Soon as Destiny had come around, they'd stripped him of his gear and cleared out.
Now, they were camped next to a rivulet, battered, burned and bruised, but most of all hungry.
Destiny was working on figuring out the medicomp they'd pilfered earlier, while Big Ramona had taken the more practical approach and had meticulously ripped her over shirt into strips of bandages she was planning on using as soon as Des realized the futility of her ways.
"Almost got it!"
What she got was a hiss and a pinch and a medicomp that refused to open.
"Shoot!"
"Come on, Des, you can cuss a whole lot better than that. I heard you out there, talking smack to the Pred", Ramona goaded. "Would've made your mother proud."
"Would've made my mother blush."
Ramona laughed soundlessly. Oh, Destiny's mom. Big Ramona had always thought the first child of Sanctuary had an unnatural and highly risky tendency of viewing the world through rose tinted glasses, but she suspected her mom saw the world through a rose pickled brain. How the woman had managed to survive all these years…
"Dad, mostly. Royce. Riddick, when he could be bothered."
"Did I say that out loud?"
Destiny smiled, but it was as ashen as her face.
"You guys have known each other for a long time, right?"
"Oh, yeah. They were taken together, sort of. Then Sanctuary came to be and my dad practically runs the place now. He's very administrative like that. Riddick usually patrols the edge and the Royces are our neighbors."
"Tough."
"Oh, no, Royce is a real…"
Ramona had not paid much attention, intent as she was on dressing Destiny's burnt leg while she was distracted by the Pred gizmo, but she looked up with eyes full of avid curiosity now.
"I mean, yes, Royce is a real pain in the…ass."
"What about his kids? And his wife?"
"… They're okay. I guess."
"Huh."
Big Ramona finished tying the knot on the bandage and got up. Her grin could've shamed a pride of hyenas.
"Well, you're all set. And who knows? There might be hope for you yet, Des."
Ramona winked and turned to gear up.
"Let's go, princess. If we're lucky, this pissing stream might lead to something better stocked."
They left.
What the stream lead to was a pond, a muddy shore and a bunch of rowdy piglets.
Destiny's stomach gave an approving growl. As usual, Ramona was rather more emphatic.
"Halle-fucking-luja!"
"Amen!"
"You scoot and call them over, I shoot them down."
"You can't shoot them!"
"Gut them, then."
"…fine. Here piggy, piggy, piggy!"
"Wait! Shutup!"
"Really?!"
"… . Sorry. I thought I heard something."
Big Ramona did hear something.
She heard Destiny scream.
A/N: The end?
PS: I love you, hayj, please don't kill me.
PPS: Hey, HopeK, welcome on board! I always love to hear from you!