A.N. Thanks for reading.

Chapter Six: Changes

"I wish I had a mirror."

Ash looked up from the spitted squid that rested over the low fire he had built by the water's edge. It was his first catch without Myscha's help—he had long since used the translator to learn the Nali's name—and he was nervous about it being snatched away by birds or one of the Manta that inhabited the cave behind their little hut. The smells the cooking squid was emitting were a bit fishy, but Ash was hungry enough not to complain. "What?"

849 stood in the shallows of the riverbank, naked to the waist, the torso and sleeves of her one-pieced prisoner's uniform floating on the water's surface behind her like gray fins. Her spine and ribs were still clearly visible through her skin, but she was slowly putting on weight and gaining health. Her cheeks had filled out and her eyes had regained their brilliance. She smiled easily and laughed often, and Ash had to admit, she was a far cry from the dangerous prisoner that her identification profile had labeled her to be. She seemed like an entirely different person from the furious woman who had accused him of her demise. But still….

"I never thought that you cared much for your looks," Ash said absently, rotating the stick that the squid was impaled on. 849 turned towards the prison guard, scooping up a handful of water and rubbing it over her shoulders. Her skin sparkled in the early morning sunlight. She regarded him with a pout. "My hair's growing out; I've forgotten what it looks like."

Ash stuck his lower lip out. The squid had been blackened on one side. "It's brown."

"No shit, Sherlock," 849 huffed. "Now stop fucking around with that squid. I think it's done by now. It doesn't take long for those to cook through."

Ash pulled one off one the squid's tentacles and pinched it between his fingers. "It feels kind of…tough," he admitted. 849 crossed her arms and waited with a small smile as Ash tentatively put the squid into his mouth. After a few chews he made a face.

"It's staying in one piece," he said. "I can't chew it."

"Dumbass," 849 turned her back to him, massaging the back of her neck. The sunshine beating down on the wet fuzz of her head gave her a dark halo. She heard Ash sigh in frustration as he picked the impaled squid off of the spit.

"I'm going to go see if Myscha knows how to make this taste better," he muttered under his breath. 849 watched him leave out of the corner of her eye. The poor guy was hopeless at cooking. Even she was able to prepare a dish or two of the native food on her own.

"He's going to throw it out and catch a new one for you," 849 called over her shoulder. "You know that, don't you?" Ash didn't answer. 849 snapped her fingers and held her hand out. "Give it here. Let me see how it is."

Ash looked at her mistrustfully. "You're not going to eat the whole thing, are you?"

The prisoner rolled her eyes. "Ah, no. I'm not going to eat your rubber fish; now will you give it to me?"

Ash handed her the dead animal and watched as she turned it over and over in her hands. She lifted it to her face and took a few tentative sniffs before sticking her lower lip out.

"Yeah," she said, holding the squid out to Ash. "Totally not going to eat it." Without warning she pivoted on her heel in the water and lobbed both the stick and the squid out towards the middle of the river. It soared through the air like a white wingless bird before it was caught by the waves with a barely audible splash. She turned back to the prison guard, who stood looking there with an expression on his face that looked as if he was trying suppress a shout and hold in tears at the same time.

"You cooked it too long," 849 said matter-of-factly, brushing her palms together. "Catch another one and try again." With a flashing smile, she turned back to watch the water rush by—

—only to feel herself being seized by the waist and shoulder and hauled above Ash's head. She cried out in surprise and tried to hit him to get him to put her down, but his head was out of her reach. She dimly heard him laughing over the rushing water.

"Ash! Put me down! This isn't funny!"

He had carried her out until he was waist-deep in the river; at her frantic request to get him to put her down, he joyfully gathered his strength and pitched her body into the deep water, making sure to submerge her head in a position so that the water had a better chance of running into her nose. He danced away from her as soon as he had completed the task; none too soon, because she righted herself and was snorting water out from her sinuses. "What was that for?" she demanded when she finished coughing.

"You threw my breakfast away!"

"And I'm going to throw a rock at you when I can find one!" 849 shot back, although she was laughing. "I wasn't going to let you eat that piece of garbage!"

Ash still wasn't fully out of the water. He folded his arms across his chest and scowled at her. "Well, it wasn't yours to throw away. You could have told me politely like a normal human being that the food wasn't fit to eat. But no, instead you had to be a bitch."

"What were you going to do? Give it a funeral?" 849 suddenly leapt forwards and caught Ash by the lower leg. With a mighty yank, she succeeded in toppling the man onto his back in the shallows. She triumphantly splashed up to his side and put her foot on his stomach. "And besides, is that any way to treat a lady?"

Ash burst out into laughter. "I would treat you like a lady if you acted like one, 849. And what kind of lady walks around in public with her tits hanging out, eh?"

849 put her hands on her hips. "You and Myscha don't count as 'public', and besides, since when did you ever complain about being flashed? You haven't gotten laid since we left Earth."

"Are you offering to change that little detail?"

849 opened her mouth to protest, but thought better of it and instead shrugged herself back into her jumpsuit. "I'm going back into the cabin to tell Myscha that he has to feed you again," she said, pulling the zipper up towards her neck. As she sloshed out of the water, she was stopped by Ash's voice.

"I do think you're pretty, you know."

She turned her head. Ash was sitting up in the shallows, his hands on his knees, with a brilliant smile on his dark face. She had to duck her head to hide her smile.

"And I think you're a dickweed who can't cook."

Myscha was sleeping when 849 entered the cabin. Very quietly so as not to disturb him, she doffed her entire jumpsuit and threw it over the fireplace mantle to dry. She stood there naked, then, looking down at her Nali companion, a skinny lump under a straw mat; one of his legs and two of his arms were sticking out comically from his coverings. She pulled a low chair over from the table and sat in front of the fireplace, putting her knees on her chin, quietly studying the Nali with a pensive look on her face. I wonder why he's so trusting of us. Especially me, after what I did to him on that first day. Has he encountered humans before?

—Or are we the only—

There was the sound of shuffling outside; her reverie was interrupted. She turned halfway around in her seat, only to be surprised by the door bursting open and Ash stumbling into the room.

"Where's the fire?" she demanded. "Look, you woke Myscha up, poor thing." She put a reassuring hand on the Nali's shoulder; he had jerked into a sitting position, his yellow eyes wide with fear. "Don't worry, Ash is just being a dumbass."

"Where's my Enforcer?" Ash panted. Without bothering to wait for an answer he rushed towards the ladder that led to the attic. "849,do you know how to shoot?—of course you do, what am I saying? Come up here and help me look for them. Myscha put them somewhere—"

"…Ash?" 849 stood up and walked warily towards the ladder. "What's going on?"

The prison guard poked his head down from the darkness of the attic. "Would you get dressed?" he hissed at her. He tossed a handful of ammunition clips at her; she ducked out of the way as they bounced off the ladder rungs.

"Watch it—you almost hit me with those!"

"Get out of the way and get some fucking clothes on, then!" Ash swung down into the room, carrying an Enforcer in each hand. Something round bulged out of his coat pocket.

"Is that a grenade?" 849 asked incredulously. "Where did you--?"

Ash thrust an Enforcer into her limp fingers. "No time to explain. There's a Brute scouting around out there, and if he finds us in this cabin then we're fucked. We're going to have to kill him."

"A what?"

"Would you get dressed, please—or do I have to do it for you?" Ash hissed, cutting a furious glance in her direction as he loaded a clip into his Enforcer. 849 hurriedly stepped back into her flight suit. It was still uncomfortably damp, but she didn't dare complain. Her pulse fluttered, panicked, in her throat. As soon as she was ready, Ash tossed a clip in her direction.

"We have a pretty good chance of beating this thing if we stay hidden," Ash said as 849 loaded the Enforcer with trembling hands. "Their eyesight is terrible."

849 swallowed heavily. Her face had blanched.

Ash looked at her for a moment, then reached out and chucked her underneath her chin. "Hey," he said solemnly. "Nothing's going to happen, okay? This is just a minor thing. No sweat."

He opened the door cautiously, and without looking back, motioned for 849 to follow him out the door. She looked at Myscha, who hadn't moved from his cot and was looking at them expectantly. "Stay here," she whispered.

Once she closed the door behind her, she felt a sickening sense of déjà vu. Part of her wanted to listen for the steady beat of a Manta's wings—

"Psst! Here!"

Ash was crouching by the cliff wall, his gray suit blending in with the slate behind him. She hurried over, keeping her eyes glued to the empty field off to her right. There was only one place the Brute could've come from. During one of her tentative explorations of her new home she had wandered to the opposite end of their swath of land and had discovered a ledge, about nine feet high, upon which a broad wooden plank was propped. She had screwed up the courage to climb up the board, and, peering over the lip of the ledge, saw that there was an entryway to some sort of facility built into the side of the mountain. A sign above the open threshold glowed angry and foreign; it was from that entrance that Ash's unconscious body had been found. It was only a matter of time, Myscha had told them, before Ash's assailants would track him here.

"There's only one," Ash said quietly, edging forwards. "But he's got two handheld rocket launchers, so whatever you do, don't get spotted."

There. Almost exactly where they had been bathing not ten minutes before; she could still see the small fire that Ash had built to cook his ridiculous squid. The "Brute" was standing near the bank; it was looking over both of its hulking shoulders, back in the direction from where it came. From time to time it shuffled its foot in the mud. It looked to be seven feet tall, at least, but the breadth of its shoulders and chest gave it a much more intimidating figure. The rocket launchers in its massive hands were almost laughably small, but 849 didn't want to write them off as being 'harmless'. Its skin was a chalky brown, rough-looking, and other than a pair of leather shoulderpads, it lacked any sort of armor.

"Okay," Ash said. "I guess we should hit it before it gets any closer to the hut. Are you ready?"

849's hands were trembling so badly that she could barely keep a grip on the slippery metal of her Enforcer. Ash clenched his jaw. "Are you going to make me do all the work?" he snapped impatiently. "I mean, were you this nervous when you killed the New Earth Prime Minister?"

849 locked eyes with the prison guard. Her lips worked, as if she wanted to say something, but instead she made a strangled noise and swung her arm around so that the barrel of her gun pointed directly at the Brute. Ash made a desperate move to stop her, but her finger pulled back on the trigger and a bullet cut its way through the crisp air, right past the Brute, and disappeared into the river.

"You idiot!" Ash grabbed 849's arm and gave it a savage twist. "You didn't aim! And now it knows—"

There was a low snarl from the creature on the riverbank. It had turned slowly, and was now facing them with its arms raised. Ash barely had time to mutter, "Oh, fuck," before the Brute had taken aim and fired.

"Go. Move!" The guard shoved 849 to the side and backpedaled out of the way as the arm-length rocket smashed into the canyon wall and detonated, sending red-hot shards of flak scattering in all directions. One of them ricocheted off of the ground by 849's foot and struck the back of her hand. She gritted her teeth, clutching her arm as the brand of pain made its way up into her elbow.

Ash was strafing left, firing steadily at the Brute, whose roars were becoming deafening. She could see that Ash's bullets were hitting their marks; the alien's face streamed with red rivulets of blood. Deciding that she didn't want to leave the prison guard to fend for himself, she raised her arm once more, bracing her elbow with her wounded hand. Thanks to Ash's movement, the Brute wasn't likely to notice her immediately. She was bound to hit it at least once.

She fired. Once, twice, three times; the Enforcer bucked strangely in her hand; she had fallen out of practice. Odd, because it had only been a month since she had last fired it.

Thankfully, the bullets hit their mark. Not so thankfully that the Brute hadn't forgotten where she was, and as soon as she had finished shooting, he lifted his arm and fired a neat round of three rockets straight for her. She yelped and turned tail, hearing Ash shouting at her but not distinguishing his words. The first rocket flew off to her left and detonated into the ground, spraying her with clods of dirt. The second shrieked over her head; the blast it created as it detonated into the canyon wall knocked her to the ground, scalding her with a wave of blistering heat. Stunned, she could only stare blankly in front of her as the Brute began stomping towards her.

Move, move! She tried to coax herself into a standing position, but her quivering arms wouldn't support her weight. The ground vibrated slightly as the creature drew closer; she heard a metallic snap as he reloaded his rocket launcher. She squeezed her eyes shut and saw, in blurry black and white, the swooping Manta diving towards her, its scales catching the light of the sun and dazzling her eyes—I'm going to die I'm going to die I'm going to die—

"849! Cover your head!"

Ash's command cut through her hazy mind, and she curled instinctively into a ball and tucked her chin to her chest. There was a dull thump and then a huge explosion behind her; she was suddenly splattered with something wet and warm and slimy. She opened her eyes and saw that her arm was dripping with red liquid. Blood?

Tentatively she sat up, wincing as she saw the chunk of metal that was embedded into the back of her hand. She turned her head over her shoulder and was met with the sight of the Brute, flat on its stomach, lying not two feet away from her with a huge gaping hole in its back where its spine should have been. Bits of its flesh and muscle clung to 849's flight suit, staining it red. Ash must've thrown the grenade.

Ash limped towards her; he had a nasty gash on his upper thigh. He was panting heavily, but when he saw her he tossed his Enforcer down and somehow found the breath to start shouting at her.

"God damn it, you stupid, stupid woman! This would have gone well if you hadn't have been so God damn reckless! Why the fuck did you fire at him without aiming?"

She glared back, and, finding that she couldn't trust herself to stand because of her trembling legs, aimed her Enforcer at him. "Don't say another fucking word," she snapped, "or I'll blow your fucking brain out. How DARE you bring my crime into this? Do you think I meant for this to happen? Do you think I wanted to end up on this fucking rock, stuck here in the middle of nowhere, with YOU? I had a home—I had a family—and I'll be damned if you think I wanted to be taken away from them. I wasn't sorry when I killed that rich bastard and I won't be sorry if I end up killing you, too."

"Well that's just great," Ash threw his hands up in the air. "You know, I actually thought that maybe you'd have grown a fucking conscience during all that time you spent on the Vortex Rikers. It wasn't a fucking joy ride, you know. You're just sorry that you got put there in the first place. Hell, you'd probably be happy to have been placed in the Tournament instead of getting this sentence. You apparently seem to LIKE killing people!"

849 clenched her teeth and tried to pull the trigger; Ash saw the muscle in her arm move and leapt forwards, kicking 849's raised arm and sending the Enforcer spinning into the air. "I just saved your sorry ass and that's how you're going to thank me?" he said shortly. "I should have let the bastard have at you."

"You threw a fucking grenade when he was right next to me! For all I know, you wanted me to die along with it!"

The two Terrans held each other's gaze; the air around them crackled with intensity. Then Ash made a disgusted sound and turned around, stalking towards the cabin. "Fuck it all."

849 watched him leave. Only when he slammed the cabin door behind him did she stagger to her feet and make her uncertain way towards the riverbank. She splashed into the shallows, and suddenly collapsed to her hands and knees. The water around her turned light pink.

Drops of water splashed up into her face and eyes, but she didn't blink. Her mind had shut down. Her ears were dulled to the extraneous sounds around her; she was trying desperately to listen for that Manta; it's hiding, it'll come out and kill you if you aren't careful—!

She remained on all fours in the river until the sun dropped down behind the canyon wall and the sky darkened to a rich purple; it was then when Myscha came outside and carried her back into the cabin. They put her on a cot in front of the fire; Ash tried to call her back to consciousness as Myscha worked on getting the shrapnel out of her hand. It took all night to bring her back to reality and convince her that she was no longer fighting the flying creature.

By the next morning, the Brute carcass had been consumed by the predatory birds that nested in the Vortex Rikers, high above them.

The Dark Arena

Norianna, curled on her side and facing the wall, fought to keep the rations she had just eaten from coming back out of her mouth. She seriously doubted that what they fed the prisoners here actually counted as 'food', but it was better than entertaining thoughts of eating bits off of the dead Terran that still hadn't been removed from her cell. Since Happy had been taken away three days ago, the cell block had been eerily quiet.

Speak of the devil. Someone was coming.

Her body stiffened involuntarily as the door shrieked on its hinges as it opened. There was a heavy thud behind her, and the door closed—again. God damn it.

She was afraid to turn around, at first. Part of her wanted to believe that it was another body, another dead stranger to keep her company in the festering cell, but she knew better. The thing that had hit the concrete floor was a person she knew. She couldn't lie to herself. She would turn around, and either be greeted by the mangled corpse of her cellmate, or Happy would just be unconscious.

She sat up and took a deep breath through her nostrils. Happy it was, and she didn't look very alive, but she wasn't gutted. Her body was still intact, save for—

"What the hell?"

Happy's left arm, the one that was missing a hand, had been given a prosthetic extension, but it certainly didn't look like the Skaarj did it out of compassion. As far as Norianna could tell, the Skaarj had cut her arm between her elbow and her wrist, severing straight through, and then had inserted a metal pole into the fresh wound. Branching off from this pole was a system of wires and thin iron spokes that culminated at a ball-and-socket wrist joint, which led to a crude imitation of a metal hand with one finger and one thumb. Perhaps they had soldered the metal to the bone, she couldn't tell; all she knew was that the skin around the metal pole had turned yellow-green and was oozing blood, and it must have hurt like hell.

"Happy?"

The girl didn't move. Norianna bit her bottom lip and reached out, shaking Happy's shoulder; her cellmate's head lolled to the side. Tentatively, holding her breath, Norianna moved her hand so that her slim fingers rested against Happy's throat, checking for a pulse. She fully expected her to be dead.

"Oh?" Norianna leaned forward. "So you are alive."

Happy's eyes had opened. She seemed disoriented at first, but when she saw Norianna, seemed to come back to reality. She blinked a few times and sat up straighter.

"Welcome back to the world of the living," Norianna said cheerfully. "You had me worried there for a moment."

Happy dropped her chin to her chest. Norianna sat back and her heels and rested her hand on Happy's head. "I was thinking that you had gotten a free ticket outta here," she said. "I would've been very lonely without somebody to pick on. Our dead friend isn't very receptive to my jokes."

Happy's shoulders had started to shake. Norianna paused and brushed Happy's hair away from her face, trying to get a look at her expression. "Hey, chickie? What's wrong?"



Happy lifted her head. Her brown eyes were bloodshot and filled to the brim with tears, which had begun to course down her face, leaving clean streaks in the grime that covered her skin. Her chin had crumpled, and she was struggling to contain sobs. Norianna smiled sympathetically.

"Oh, dear. I upset you with my corny sense of humor. Cheer up, yeah?"

Happy's breath caught on a sob, and in a second the floodgates burst open. She dissolved into hysterics, falling forwards into Norianna's lap, her hand clutching at Norianna's flight suit as her prosthetic 'arm' scraped the ground. Norianna, at a loss, placed her hands on Happy's heaving shoulders. It was the first time that she had ever seen the girl cry. She didn't know how to deal with it.

"Shhhh, shhhhh—be strong. Come on, buck up. It's not as bad as it seems."

Happy wailed something into Norianna's thighs. The older girl gently placed her hands on either side of Happy's head and gently lifted her into an upright position. "I can't understand you when you're talking into my crotch, dear," she said, grinning slightly.

Happy's face was a reddened mess. She lifted her good arm to wipe her nose. "I was af-afraid," she hiccupped. "I was afraid that I was go-going to die. They took me in there—" her voice was becoming more strained as she fought against the lump in her throat—"and they c-cut my arm off, just like that, right in front of my eyes, and then it was gone—and the pain, Norianna. Why would they do this to me?" She put her hand over her mouth, but it barely muffled her renewed cries of grief. "I didn't want—I didn't want—"

Norianna paused for a moment, and then drew Happy against her, putting her chin on top of the girl's head. "You've held it in long enough, Happy. I want you to cry, now. Don't be afraid of making noise. I won't let them hurt you again."

She couldn't bring herself to believe in her own words, and although Happy didn't say anything, Norianna knew that she didn't, either. But somehow, for now, it was all right. For now, Happy could empty her conscience of all of the grief and pain she had bottled up inside. She had to do it now, while they were both alive.