Chapter 16: Beholden to Our Blood
At some point, Anteros registered the fact that Samantha smelled different, this morning. He smelled it at some point as he opened his lips to take a breath, what with his chin resting on the cusp of her waist. Beforehand, she'd smelled... the same as every other human he'd ever encountered— thick with sweat, grime, and skin-oils. Pungent. Too much dirt and not enough meat. Now, though, presumably because of her shower, all of that "dirt" was gone, and in its place was... her. Just... pure Samantha smell. The smell of the flesh on her muscles and the blood in her veins.
Almost immediately, he was fascinated with it, and he couldn't stop himself from raising up a bit and pressing his teeth into her stomach to take in more of the scent. Surprisingly, this act registered as entirely normal, in Samantha's head, though that might have been because she was dozing off in lazy bliss. Anteros's mouth hovered above her skin and repeatedly pressed down, his breathing and sniffing becoming more audible as he attempted to get a solid grasp of what he was tasting. He raised up some more and supported himself on his arms.
At this point, the sound of his sniffing caught her ears, and she looked down at him, her words exiting her mouth in a fit of impulse at the admittedly familiar situation, "wassup?". Her voice was neutral and carried a juvenile inflection, as though she were talking to a small child. Almost instantly, it dawned on both of them that this was a repeat of many, many, many identical occasions that had been played out between her and Charlie; of the dog going ballistic over some odd scent, and her rhetorically humoring the investigation. Nothing came of the epiphany, seeing as though Samantha rejected and shut down that line of thought before it could go anywhere, and Anteros was too focused on that... really weird smell— what the Hellis that?!
To answer her question, he said, "you smell... differEnT...". He was surprised at his own voice distorting. Like... an abrupt slowing and acceleration. He was just so consumed with the scent— is that... iron? Is that her blood, or her muscles? Woodfire... grass...
She didn't seem to notice his warbled tone, "well, yeah, I'd hope so— I took a shower", she quipped easily, smiling down at him and patting his shoulder.
"Do you actually smell the difFeRence, yourself?", he asked, immediately, "because, to me, it's rEaLlY WeIrd. Is this body wash?".
"Shampoo, yeah", she answered. Apparently, there'd been no body wash anywhere in the bathroom, so she'd simply built up suds in her hair and then spread that across the rest of herself.
Anteros found that the smell he picked up on would be slightly different depending on what part of her he examined. Which he supposed made sense. Nearer to her navel, the scents were more... plantlike? No— not plantlike. Pseudo-plantlike? Like acorns and wood. Her obliques were more metallic-ish and coppery— could that be due to the kidneys being underneath? Tilting his head to the right gave him the scent of something acrid, which he supposed made sense, since her crotch was in that direction— staying away from that. But the more he smelled, the more scents he tasted...
He continued raking his incisors back and forth over her midriff, taking in the surprisingly diverse collection of smells. Pheromones... ointments... cleaning products...
What could he say? Scent becomes really interesting when you're able to tell what someone ate for dinner, three nights ago, just by being too near to them when they talk...
Eventually, his scanning stopped being so fruitful, so he ventured "upward" and away from her abdomen, reaching over Samantha with a hand to plant it on the bed, so he could shift to the left. As his face neared her sternum, he found the smells up here were just as varied as those on her stomach. Before he could derive any new findings, she happened to look down at him again and, seeing his face between the steep valley of her front, snorted to herself, smirking. "Careful", she joked, as though to discourage a child from touching something dangerous.
Anteros made a show of "looking" at her, "glancing" to each of the relevant articles currently beneath his chin, before "looking" at her again, and chuffing, blowing air in her face. "Rather... disadvantageous position, innit?", he said, matter-of-factly. She chuckled at him.
"A little, yeah", she sighed, "but I don't mind".
Like clockwork, her hands had already traveled to his face and set about continuing to "pet" him, though now, with his face so close, Samantha suddenly felt an immense fascination with it. Anteros could tell that she was entering "biologist mode", again, and allowed the examination, simply keeping still. Her face went blank in her focus, and she meticulously studied the shape and structure of his skull, lightly tracing her fingers across his head. She realized that, in her mind's eye, she'd always sort of thought of Anteros as looking exactly like a Warrior, except bronze, and she was now utterly dazzled at the fact that that couldn't be further from the truth.
Comparing what she was looking at with what she'd always thought of Anteros being, she was delightfully fascinated to see immensely stark differences. In a Warrior or Drone Xenomorph, there was a clear and distinct separation between the "face / mouth", and the domed surface of the skull— the smooth carapace on top was always cut off from the wrinkly flesh around the mouth by oddly cable-esque "lines". What she'd always thought of as the "skull-cap" was clearly and definitively separate from the rest of the head in both color and texture.
In Anteros's case, however, this was different. While his mouth was closed, there was no visible "end" to the skull-cap or "beginning" of his face— only one, smooth, seamless surface going from the chin to the back of the head. His neck area was of that same "wrinkled" persuasion, except where it met the smooth skull-cap was a very subtle change, almost imperceptible. It was like looking at an elongated biker helmet with no visor— no eyes, mouth, or nose, and whatnot...
Samantha unconsciously brought Anteros's face closer to hers, which Anteros also allowed, seeing as it allowed him to catch scents from her hair and face.
Meat... blood... bone. Saliva. Sugar... is that... is that lavender? Where is that coming from?, his thoughts continued, unbothered.
Compared to a Warrior, she realized that Anteros's skull was a fair bit narrower and more streamlined. The shine on his carapace made him look like his head was encased in metal. The sides of his head, where his ears and cheeks would be, were of the softer, skin-like substance (including the thin bands of muscle that formed the cage at the sides of his mouth), but it was difficult to determine where the "armor" began and ended. Anteros had said that he'd been "spawned" from a non-human, quadrupedal organism— a "Scout". Did all Scouts look like him, or did it change depending on the animal?
Either way, she was in the process of trying to fully conceptualize the fact that this... creature in her hands was Anteros, and that he was this creature. She began to painstakingly imagine what it would be like to be him— trying to visualize that the thing between her hands was the head of a real and live animal, and that said animal was her best friend. This is Anteros, she kept thinking, this is him.
What with the two of them being practically nose-to-nose, Anteros eventually gave in to the compulsion to open his lips to try to take in more of the smell— it was uncanny, to him, that there were still more scents to sample. When he did, Samantha flinched unsubtly, but didn't move and instead focused all of her attention on his now extremely visible teeth. Almost immediately, her finger-tips were lightly tapping and poking at them.
What she found fascinating about his teeth wasn't the fact that they were teeth (big shock), but was how they differed from the teeth of a typical Warrior or Drone. In the case of any other Xenomorph, the teeth were usually fairly dainty. Thin, translucent, conical, sharp, and almost crystalline, with what seemed to be a passing imitation of a human's dental configuration. Not made to stand up to any real punishment, and clearly only for shearing the flesh off of an immobile target— not a weapon, whatsoever. Anteros's teeth, however, were the opposite.
All of his teeth were clearly a lot sturdier and thicker. The tips of his incisors were a dull silver in coloration and, despite appearing identical to that of a human, were clearly very sharp— like the business-end of a wood-axe. His canines were far more pronounced than others, and resembled those of a crocodile... if a crocodile's tooth were sharpened to a needle-point and colored matte bronze— almost like wrought-iron, in texture. His molars (which seemed to be absent from other Xenomorphs) as she peered between the gaps in his cheek, were almost like blunted, square pegs, each with sharpened corners.
These teeth, unlike other Xenos, were clearly made to crush, grab, and tear— she could easily imagine him being able to mash a person's hand into paste and tear it off. It reminded her of a bear.
Anteros, meanwhile, continued to be occupied with her scent. There was something familiar about it— something The Ancestral was picking up on. But what? He couldn't smell much other than just her.
Meat... bone... enamel? Blood. Grassy dirt. Hair... keratin? Blood... meat and blood...
She was in the process of figuring out whether Anteros had an underbite or overbite when, at quite the shock to both of them, a small drop of drool fell from the tip of his upper canine and landed on her throat. Instantly, Anteros, yanked his head out of her grasp and shuffled away to the edge of the bed. She heard a faint hissing noise, and might have gone investigated, but she was distracted by the... coldness of the liquid on her neck. She had to suppress the tiniest urge to gag.
What was that?, she thought.
She compulsively sat up, grabbed a pillow, and wiped the fluid off of herself. She blinked into space, still confused, before the sound of hissing to her right caught her ear again. She looked over at Anteros who was in the process of mashing the front of his head into the bed's blanket like a dog that had found a mole-hill. Clearly trying to dry his face and teeth of saliva. In her head, she heard a small voice, almost too quiet, say, "sorry". It barely sounded like Anteros' voice— it usually resounded solidly within her mind, but this... it barely even registered as a sound, and echoed pitifully.
There was clearly something wrong— and Anteros didn't like whatever it was. So, she resolved to find out what it was.
She got up onto her knees and scooted closer to him, waiting. She didn't quite think of what she was planning to do, and only had the vaguest conception of how to go about it, but she waited, regardless. Watched him and waited for the "best moment", whatever she apparently thought that meant...
Anteros, for his part, was fully aware of his faculties... but was decidedly concerned. One might say "distressed". He'd been feeling... something like a hunger— like a craving, but he hadn't realized what exactly it was until images of... feeding and... killing came to his mind... no doubt triggered by his jaw's extreme proximity to Samantha's throat. At the moment, he was just trying to stem the flow of saliva and figure out what to feel about it. Eventually, he noticed the vague intentions flashing in Sam's mind, and froze on the spot, face pushed into the soft, slightly-damp fabric below him.
He... couldn't decide what to do. He felt a small grumble of indecision shake out of his sternum. Evidently, though, Samantha picked up on this, and asked, "Anteros? What's wrong?".
"Uh. Well. It, uh... I am... struggling with... something", he eventually ground out.
"With what?"
"Well, it, uh— it's hardly the only thing wrong with me, but...", he paused, "I guess you deserve to know about it, if nothing else".
He began, "well... I'm a Xenomorph...and Xenomorphs kill things— kill Humans... a lot...", he said.
"And... accordingly, I experience an... immense, overpowering urge to kill Humans whenever I see them", he said, in voice troubled by more angst than she could entirely conceptualize. Though, at the moment, she was just taking care to listen. This wasn't news to her.
"I thought", he clarified, "that I'd already ovErcoMe that, in your case, but, evidently... I jUst... coUldn'T stoP mYsElF from thiNkIng of...". His tone warbled much more noticeably, now, enough for Samantha to frown sympathetically at him, his head and neck twitching ever so minutely.
He... really was trying to keep it together, right now, but... thinking about it reminded him of that urge. The... ache in his teeth, his pharyngeal jaw feeling choked up... a slow, malignant heat pulsing in the back of his head— as though there were a massive bonfire not three feet behind him. The Ancestral, despite its silence for the past two days was... hungry for something. Hungry to kill. And not just because of Samantha's presence. The sensation of what may have been his equivalent of a cold sweat seized his shoulders and spine— it was paranoid, too. Something was definitely wrong in the Hive-Mind.
He managed to finish his sentence without further interruption, his voice adopting a rushed, neurotic tilt, "I... don't know why it's come back, all of a sudden— I'm sorry. I don't know why this is happening. I don't know— I don't know why. I'm sorry".
He realized he was actually hyperventilating. The drool hadn't stopped flowing— soaking the fabric beneath him. He could tell that she was quite acutely taking note of his words and mentally working overtime to analyze the situation and keep from getting scared.
You are a fuckin' saint, my dear..., He couldn't fathom the amount of patience she had. Even now, as he was making himself blatantly untrustworthy, she was going out of her way to give him the benefit of the doubt. Not without reason, of course— he would have come to the same conclusion, in her position: that there was some outlying factor and that this "relapse" of his was the exception to the rule. As he'd said: it hadn't been an issue for five months, until now. And... until he'd met her.
"What does it feel like, exactly?", she asked.
"It... it feels. Like an itch in my bones. Like hunger. I— I need to bite something!".
A beat passed. Something in her mind, deep in the underground of her memory, clicked. Fact met fact, synapse fired to synapse, but it was less conscious even than an instinct, so Samantha didn't process it. It was pure intuition, and so it was lost on him...
"... bite me, then", she said.
The Unknown bucked and The Ancestral seethed. The idea was ludicrous, and he was immediately panicked at the notion.
"BitE you? What?! No— no, that could hUrT you!", he protested.
She sighed through her nose, frowning at him. She pointed out, "well, biting the mattress clearly isn't helping, either".
He realized then that yes, indeed, he was actually biting into the mattress. He hadn't even noticed it, and another rumble of uncertainty vibrated through him, and he felt guilty for not being in control.
"I'm sorry! I don't know why this is happening! It just— this, I— cAn'T... It just KeEPs coming OuT!", he said panicking. He went quiet, shoulders hunched.
"Anteros", she said, getting no reply. "Anty! C'mon, just... try biting my arm, or something. I think it'll help".
She had no real clue what she expected to happen, and so Anteros had no clue what she was expecting either. But... her sheer confidence in the idea almost made it seem less crazy. It was as though some bizarre intuition were telling her it would work— but her failure to actually think through it made it much more difficult for him to trust that intuition...
But he didn't have any other ideas. The itching in his teeth wasn't going away.
Anteros forced himself to open his jaws and sit up straight.
He pivoted, and rose to a crouch as he turned to face her, clear fluid still dripping off of his chin.
Samantha opened her arms, entirely resolute. "I trust you. It'll be fine. Just be gentle, yeah?", she said, with a chuckle.
I... suppose... I suppose that if she trusts me, then I have to trust her, in turn..., he thought slowly crawling nearer to her. I hope this works.
"Just... just hold still", he asked. His hands gently grasped her upper arms, back legs slowly ratcheting himself upward. His head, and his jaws tensed open by an inch.
Meat. Blood. Food. Feed. Tear.
He paused for a brief moment in hesitation.
Fast and without a sound, Anteros's jaws opened to their fullest as he leaned forward, then closed around Samantha's shoulder.
A beat passed.
And the tension popped like an anticlimactic balloon, as they both realized that nothing was happening.
The two of them held absolutely still. His lower teeth sat just under her collar-bone, and his upper teeth sat at around the middle of her shoulder-blade. The thin straps of muscle that framed either side of his mouth squashed to the back of his jaw, and she blinked down him, nonplussed.
She was... less scared than she might have thought she'd be. It wasn't even painful— he clearly wasn't biting very hard. She felt his canines poking into her flesh, but apart from that, it was like giant claw-clip pinching her. She knew full well that any amount of force on Anteros's end would be very ugly, but... to her own surprise, she didn't need to remind herself to trust him. She just... did. Partly because she had the sense that this was all according to plan.
It wasn't a mystery to her that by coping with this, she was helping Anteros cope, himself.
Anteros, for his part... was nowhere near as jubilant. He found that the longer he held this position... the urges slowly but surely subsided. Though... not in a good way. Now that he was in the perfect position to crush her collar-bone and draw blood... well, it was difficult to explain. But the itch in his jaw and mind faded.
It was as if his body suddenly realized: "oh, wait, this isn't food. I shouldn't try to eat this". Or... something like that? He didn't even understand his own compulsions, at this point. They were still there— he still had the urge to attack something and tear into it, it just... now that Samantha was in his maw, suddenly his instinctual "enthusiasm" dropped like a rock in marmalade. Even his salivation halted with an abruptness that bordered on uncanny...
He supposed that meant he was well and truly desensitized to her... but his HuNgEr was no closer to being satiated.
At the very least, we now know that I can muzzle myself by stuffing one of her arms in my mouth, or something..., he reasoned. But... now this seems pointless. And... now I just feel... shame...
Anteros's jaws snapped open and released their hold, and he succinctly retracted from her, backing up and letting go of her shoulders. He sat on his haunches not far from where he'd started, and hunched in on himself.
She looked at him, a subtle smile on her face. She'd been right.
"Better?", she asked.
"How... how did you know that would work?", he asked.
She blinked and thought about it. Oddly enough, it wasn't figuring out how she knew it that was difficult, but putting it into words that was the hard part. Which bewildered him.
She eventually shrugged. "Well... I've worked in all kinds of animal shelters and vet-clinics. And a lot of the dogs and cats had weird dental conditions that we could alleviate the symptoms of by giving them soft chew-toys. I... guess I figured you were going through something like teething?", she explained. "Maybe by biting something that you don't register as food, it would help you reset and realign your mind-body connection?".
He was fairly certain that he would have been staring gormlessly at her, by this point.
"And... what if you were wrong?".
She shrugged, again, "I mean... I'm not worried about you actually hurting me, so... I'd have probably just tried to come up with something else". She gave him a smile.
Maybe you trust me too much..., he thought, gravely.
Samantha felt a chill, then, as Anteros began crouch-walking around her, and to the other side of the bed. She looked down and found that her front and back had some of his saliva running down it. The drool droplets were cool in the air, and her skin prickled along the lines of moisture. She blinked and shivered, trying to think of what to do about it.
After examining a bit of it on her finger, she found it was a lot like hand-sanitizer, only scentless and completely clear. Whether the stuff actually had anti-bacterial properties was beyond her ability to speculate, but she remembered that Anteros's Hive-Resin hadn't caused an infection on her open-wound, yesterday, so his drool probably wasn't any worse, by comparison.
She eventually decided to suck it up and rub the liquid off her chest and stomach, laying on her back and shimmying to dry the stuff from there.
When she was done and sat up to look at Anteros, again, she found him curled into a ball and laying on his side, facing away from her and toward the wall to the right of the bed.
Before anything else came to mind, his voice did. "I'm sorry...", he said, "I don't want to hurt you...".
She frowned, heavily— it was that same, small voice, again. It didn't sound like him! It sounded wrong. Immediately, she rebutted, "you didn't hurt me. And I don't think you would have".
"I could have, though...".
"But you didn't. And it helped, didn't it?".
"Kind of... but this shouldn't be happening, at all. I shouldn't need to... use you as a chew-toy just to cope with my own problems...".
"Well", she said, thinking to herself. "I shouldn't need to be reminded that getting rest when I need it isn't me being weak. And that trying to do everything, all at once, doesn't make me strong", she said, "but you helped remind me, last night. And I'll help you however I can, in return".
He didn't respond, immediately.
"Everyone feels like a hypocrite, sometimes, Anty", she said, "I know I've fallen off the wagon more than once. Nobody's perfect".
"I can't afford to be a hypocrite, Samantha. Bad things happen when I'm not perfect, all the time, every day...".
Samantha sighed at him, blinked... and crawled forward. She reached across and leaned over him, laying down, and resting her chin on his shoulder. His head lifted and chuffed in her general direction. She absentmindedly stared into his jaws, stroking the back-half of his dome with her left hand, letting her right overlay one of his own.
She looked at him, after a while, and said "I'll help you, alright?".
He didn't answer, only allowed his chin to rest on the fabric.
"I promise".
He didn't answer for a while.
She was seriously contemplating what it was like for him— to want to kill things. To have killed people, and to be scared of your own mind. Not trusting yourself. She knew that he'd always felt guilty, but knowing was different than having experienced it. And now he felt ashamed about getting those impulses around her. She couldn't imagine how exhausting that was.
She knew they both understood that it wasn't his fault, and that it couldn't truly be avoided, but Samantha knew it could be eased. He'd gotten to this point under his own efforts, and if everything he'd told her was true: that was already an accomplishment, in itself.
Samantha knew she would help him.
She looked him in his nonexistent eyes and added, "you've gotten through worse things, Anty. You've gotten used to me. You held yourself together, just now. I think you're more in-control than you give yourself credit for".
"Not enough in Gorm's case, apparently", he said. His voice had gotten back a bit of its usual tenor, despite his jaded tone.
Samantha blinked at him. Coincidentally, he happened to have allowed his jaws to slacken and hang open, as he'd relaxed. When her gaze caught that detail, her first impulse was something that even Anteros couldn't have predicted.
Her right hand lifted off of his, and slotted itself into his open mouth, fingers-first.
He immediately froze up, causing his teeth to close around the intrusion. For an instant, he thought he'd bitten her but... instead he found that her palm was gently held in his jaws with no harm, whatsoever.
She smiled
"I trust you, Anteros. You've done more for me in three days than anyone else in the galaxy has, since I was a teenager. So, trust me to know that you're worth helping through this stuff. Whenever you need help".
Her hand extricated itself from his maw, with a light tug, and returned to his. She grasped one of his clawed digits, squeezing it. He didn't move for a long, few moments. But then his hand sprang to life and curled itself around hers.
She grinned.
"Thank you".
"Anytime... shall we get to work?".
The first order of business was a shower and getting new clothes. Her old stuff was... pretty much defunct, at this point, and she suddenly heavily detested putting any of it back on, again. The tank-top was fine, but she'd been wearing the other stuff, day-in-day-out, for five months, and quite frankly, she'd reacquired hygienic standards after showering, last night. So, while she put the tank-top in a laundry machine and had Anteros dispose of her old jeans, she checked the wardrobes to see if she'd missed anything the first time, around.
A quick search showed her that her options were essentially limited to three pairs of white dress-shirts and black dress-pants, which were all marginally oversized given that they were all fitted for men. Not that she cared, much— more comfortable, that way and probably for the best, considering her build. There were also standard-issue Weyland-Yutani, gunmetal-gray overcoats with the company logo on the breast, but that wasn't really her speed and there would be no need. Unless the heating systems failed. Apparently, this shuttle was meant to carry people expecting to look their best, which meant that mister Garrow must have been working directly for some of the Wey-Yu higher-ups. If so... why had he been on his lonesome?
Evidently, there must have been at least one woman on this shuttle's manifest, because the wardrobe luckily contained ten sets of Wey-Yu-brand women's underwear— all gray with yellow decals and a curiously-placed logo right on where the crotch would be. Whichever woman it was, in question, must have had similar measurements to her own, because a brief test showed that most of it fit perfectly. Strangely, Wey-Yu had never produced any kind of bra that wasn't a high-impact sports-bra. Which... didn't make much sense, given that Weyland-Yutani employees were desk-jockeys first and foremost... but she supposed that the company's pragmatism extended to everything.
She found herself briefly wondering if the person behind that decision had been male or female...
In any case, she had her change of clothes and she had a towel from the pool-area, so a quick six-minute shower later, and she was heading to meet Anteros in the kitchen-area. When she walked in, he was nowhere to be found. But, she was getting good at spotting the holes in ceilings and walls that he navigated through— the meter-by-meter-sized, dark square in the kitchen's ceiling immediately stuck out to her. Standing under it and staring upwards granted her the sight of Anteros's face surrounded by shadow, sticking out of the darkness. He chuffed at her.
She watched him crawl out of the hole and stalk his way across the ceiling down to the floor. She suddenly squinted and frowned at him— how the Helldo Xenomorphs stick to walls?! Why had she never thought of that, before?! It's not like their hands and feet are especially sticky! And she couldn't see any claw-marks in the metal...
Questions for later, she judged.
"You look nice", he tossed out, matter-of-factly, padding his way to the marble countertop island and hopping up onto it.
She walked around said countertop and looked in the fridge to re-check what was inside. It occurred to her that she wasn't sure how Xenomorph senses parsed clothing.
"Not that I don't appreciate it, but do you actually see any difference?", she asked, curious.
He didn't answer for a solid three seconds, before bluntly stating, "the pants accentuate your backside, nicely", as though he were pointing out the shape of a cloud.
She snorted to herself and pursed her lips, crouching down to peek into the lower fridge-shelves; "and how would you be a judge of that?", she poked, opening a few drawers. She wasn't expecting an actual answer.
"One of my hobbies was to follow around squads of wayward marines and listen to their thoughts. If there'd happened to be a woman in the group: anxiety and boredom would make for... active imaginations...", he said. She remembered him talking about this sort of thing, yesterday. She paused to look over her shoulder at him— finding him leaning over the edge of the island, above her. He concluded, "so... you could say that I was thoroughly educated in what exactly makes for a nice arse", he quipped, blithely.
Samantha simply shook her head and chuckled to herself— it was a funny image. Nevermind hearing it from a Xenomorph. It briefly occurred to her that those very marines he was talking about were probably dead, for some reason or another, but she didn't want to spoil her own mood by focusing on it.
With a quick once-over, checking the various expiration dates on each food-packing, it seemed to be the case that she could essentially have anything in the fridge. But she really wasn't in any mood to cook, not with the workload ahead of her. So, she decided she might as familiarize herself with how the MREs worked.
The kitchen they stood in was essentially cut in half between something that looked like the kitchen in a very wealthy mansion, and the other half of the room being dominated by a rather eye-sore-worthy, back-to-back set of large, ceiling-high closets. They formed somewhat of a maze within the space, in question. In each, as she'd discovered, yesterday, were shelves completely stocked with Meals Ready to Eat— the kind that the military would send on long voyages. She estimated about... hang on— she didn't know for certain that all of the closets had the same amount in them.
She checked, and they did, so... twenty-four MREs per shelf, six shelves in each closet, sixteen closets, in all... two-thousand-three-hundred-four MREs...
Of course, each closet also had space for various, small spice racks, so that number was probably closer to two-thousand, but... she had seriously underestimated the amount of food that was in here!
Assuming that each MRE had food for one meal, she could eat three square meals a day, every day, and they'd still have enough to last just over two years! How many people were supposed to have been on this ship?! How long was the voyage going to be?! There was only Garrow, as far as she knew— why in the diagonal, Norwegian fuck would they supply him with seven times the necessary amount of food?! How much money were they willing to spend on one man?! How important was his task— who planned this shit?!
Well damn, she thought, we're pretty much set for as long as we need...
Though... she then remembered that there was also Anteros...
She looked at him and winced to herself. Assuming Xenomorphs ate raw meat, only... depending on how much he needed and how often, she couldn't imagine their supply lasting very long. And there was no telling how many meat-products were in any of the MREs— they usually randomized the assortment for the sake of perceived quality for wayward, homesick soldiers. She knew all of this because such meals were extremely common on vessels that didn't require cryo-pods.
"We'll figure it out, later", Anteros said, "for now, get some food in you. It won't matter how much food we have if this ship turns out to be unable to fly".
She exhaled through her nose, and plucked an MRE off of the shelf of the closet she had open, "right. What do you eat, by the way?", she asked.
"I've only ever had meat from recently-killed Humans", he said, honestly and with a hint of sheepishness, "though, I've seen my Hive-mates devour week-old corpses, and they seemed to be fine". It was here, at the thought of food, that Anteros suddenly realized that... he was actually fairly hungry!
That... may have been part of the reason for his morning episode. That and whatever the Hell was wrong with the Hive-Mind probably would undercut his self-control, now that he could analyze the circumstance, properly...
Samantha walked around the countertop and pulled a stool out from underneath the marble slate's overhang. She sat, back to the wall of cupboards and appliances, and set about opening the package, "have you ever tried non-Human meat?".
He paused to think, "I ate a few rats. And a cat, at one point", he confessed.
"Did they work for you?".
"Well, they filled my stomach, so... yeah, I guess".
Samantha glanced at him, seeing that he was strewn across the countertop's length, facing the fridge, with his chin hanging off the edge a foot away from her, "we'll have to do some tests, then. Otherwise, it'll be a really short trip".
As she continued to remove bag after bag from the packaging, tearing them open and following each instruction, Anteros pulled himself forward and allowed his front half to slide off of the countertop and drop to the floor. His back end followed as he crouched in front of the refrigerator and hooked a finger into the door-handle. He pulled it open and recalled what Samantha had seen when looking in here. He matched the shape with the image and snatched a plastic container of sirloin steak.
Rising from the floor and pushing the fridge closed, he dropped the steak onto the countertop and leaned over it. His lips opened to try and take in a scent, but all he smelled was paper and plastic. He cut open the film with a claw and extricated the meat from the wrapping. It was wet, cold, and slimy, but it definitely smelled of meat. Perhaps day-old meat, but meat.
Samantha had realized that she didn't have a plate, and had got up to get one from a cupboard, when she saw what he was doing and paused to see if there was an issue.
Anteros oriented his head from the slab of flesh on the marble to Samantha and asked, "is there a way to make this warm without cooking it?".
She nodded, grabbed two plates from the cupboard, set one on the countertop and held out the other to him. Hearing her thoughts, he wordlessly deposited the steak onto it, whereupon she put it into the microwave and set it to three minutes on reheat. Five minutes later, the two of them were just about done with their meals. Anteros, not wanting to spoil her appetite, had eaten on the floor. With it having been heated up... it was essentially as though he'd eaten a rat, except hairless, nowhere near as stringy, boneless, and without blood or organs.
Her meal had consisted of a surprisingly large assortment of lunch-items, including an oatmeal cookie, Italian breadsticks with jalapeno cheese-spread, and cherry cobbler, with coffee and creamer. This, as far as he was hearing, was the best, warmest meal she'd had in five months, and she'd wolfed it down in half the time than was typical. Anteros enjoyed experiencing those tastes by proxy.
He walked around the counter and behind Samantha, rising to two legs to lean over the sink. She looked behind her when she heard the tap running and found him holding a large bowl under the water. She felt a bit bad for not having given him water, earlier, but was glad that he knew how to do it himself. She went back to languidly sipping her coffee.
When Anteros had filled his bowl, he walked around to one end of the countertop and carefully clambered onto it, putting down the bowl. Leaning over, with his Piston-Jaw submerged in the liquid, he slowly siphoned it up. It tasted... well, he'd only ever drank rainwater, before, so... not much of a difference— though, this tap-water was pleasantly warm.
Once Samantha had finished her coffee, she sort of just sat and watched him drink. The relative silence, aside from a low, background hum of the ship's power-systems, made the air seem... eerie. As Samantha was left to her own thoughts with no point-of-focus... she suddenly began to giggle. Then chuckling. Then snorting and slapping the countertop with a palm, then chuckling, again. Eventually, she was overtaken by a mad fit of maniacal cackling and wheezing, teary-eyed and struggling to breathe, occasionally stopping to cover her eyes and chortle.
"I'm sorry!", she managed to say to him between belts of laughter, "it's just... this— this entire fucking situation... it's just so absurd!".
Anteros... could kind of get what was so funny to her, but to him, it was only worth a mild chuckle. A Xenomorph, one of the most dangerous creatures in the galaxy, sitting on a kitchen countertop and drinking from a water bowl like an overgrown bobcat, alongside a Human woman, on a suspiciously-well-stocked space vessel, and on their way to getting it prepared for flight. If that wasn't worth a campfire story or six, he didn't know what was.
Samantha, though, was laughing her head off like she'd just heard the funniest joke of her life. In her head, he could see brief flashes of her being in a similar state while at comedy clubs and watching comedic skits... but the only other time he'd seen a fit of this sort, personally, was in the Egg Chambers...
And there'd been more than one psychologist, present who knew that hysterical laughing fits were often a coping mechanism for traumatic, stressful circumstances. Or repressed, emotional pain.
Given the state she was in, he couldn't quite discern if this was positive, or not. She was smiling ear-to-ear and was red in the face, working up a genuine sweat, which differed from the hollow grins and pain-suffused gazes of the Hive's victims... so, he guessed that this was probably benign? He found it really... strange and kind of unnerving.
Eventually, her fit died down and she rested her head on the cold marble, panting and sighing. Whatever the source, it must have been... exerting, for her.
"Y'alright, love?", he asked, only slightly sarcastic concern, "thought you might pass out, there". He got up and stepped over his bowl, nudging her right hand with his "nose".
Her hand reached up to pat his head, and she giggled to herself, coughing at how torn her throat felt, "I'm fine, Anteros. I guess I just... never thought that escaping this shit-hole would be this easy...". She raised her head to look at him, "this... pleasant...". She sat up to let her left hand join her right, stroking his jaw, and touching her forehead to his.
"To be fair, I never thought achieving absolution would be... anything like this fiasco, either", he said.
She snorted, "`absolution`?".
"Too grand a word?".
"I haven't done much for you, Anteros", she said. He could see, in her head, a looping clip of a pure-white angel knighting a molten-skinned, demon with a sword of golden light. Apparently, a scene from an old movie that she'd loved as a teenager. The more she thought of it, the more she wanted to scoff and shake her head at herself. Though, Anteros could tell that she found the idea of being the "redeeming angel" flattering. But she thought of the concept as purely the kind of thing you'd see in a shlock-y romance with cheesy dialogue. It came across as childish, to her.
Anteros wasn't so sure. He felt that the idea was more or less spot-on, though... maybe that was just him.
"Maybe... but, for what it's worth, you're the best friend I've ever had, too, so, uh... good luck trying to get rid of me", he said, stepping forward and letting his head hang over her right shoulder. She hugged him around the neck and rested her head on his shoulder with a laugh, "like I'd ever try to keep you away...".
A few minutes, later, the pair were standing in the cargo bay, just about on the ramp out of the ship. The lights in the hangar had turned off due to lack of movement, so ahead of them, all she saw was ten feet of dark, metal flooring, a prevalent, inky blackness, and the distant orange lights of the hallway they'd arrived here, through. At the very least, nothing was in this room.
Samantha had determined that they didn't have nearly enough meat-products to sustain Anteros for more than a month, at most, so it was determined that he would have to leave and search for more in whatever abandoned grocery stores he could find. She would stay in the ship and set about reading those instruction manuals and getting the ship space-worthy.
She knelt next to him with a hand stroking his back, "how long do you think you'll be?".
"I have a few ideas of where to look, but I don't know how much food I'll be able to carry. Depending on how damaged the superstructure is on the way to and from... maybe four hours, at the least?", he explained. He still hadn't notified her of the current state of the Hivemind— that something was going on and that it had every Xenomorph on the planet scared shitless. He didn't know enough to say whether that was a good or bad thing— either way, as long as no Xenomorph entered this hangar, they wouldn't detect Samantha's bioelectrics. He couldn't see any electric signals beneath them, so... the area under this hangar bay must have been hollow or made of rock, or something...
That's... actually very weird— he'd only ever seen that when on the absolute lowest levels of the superstructure. This hangar bay was on the "roof" and it's entire ceiling was an openable door to the sky. His perception let him see electric signals at a fair distance, yet... there wasn't even the slightest blip of electrics under this hangar, only generators just beneath the floor, likely powering the floodlights in this room.
The fuck is that about? Why didn't I notice that, before?
Samantha bit her lip and frowned, "well... we don't have much choice...".
"No".
She looked at him, "come back safe, yeah?".
"Of course", he answered.
She kissed him on the side of the head and patted his shoulder, standing up. Anteros stalked his way down the ramp and toward the orange-lit hallway. The moment he stepped out from under the overhang of the massive, circular engine on the back of the shuttle, the floodlights on the hangar's walls snapped on.
"I should probably find a way to open up the ceiling, too, right?", Samantha yelled from the cargo bay. Anteros paused as he was about to jump the gap where the door used to be— now only a deep, acid-stained pit, going down a few meters. With what was going on in the Hivemind... him leaving was already a massive risk— if the Colonial Marines saw the hangar open, it would mean more trouble. They had satellites and dropships scanning the super-structure 24/7.
"No. Just focus on making the ship work, for now. Opening the hangar won't matter if the thing can't fly", he said. "And close the cargo-bay, too. You'll know when to open it".
"Alright!", she called, looking around for a switch or lever that would close the cargo bay, secretly glad to have an excuse to do so.
Anteros hopped to the other side of hole and was about to pass through the inactive security-checkpoint, when he picked up on something. He turned around and leaned over the pit.
Beneath this hallway was a mess of machinery and metallic support beams— not unusual. But his acid had burned it's way underneath the floor of the hangar.
It was nothing but a hole.
A dark hole through which his echolocation picked up on... something.
His curiosity drove him to investigate. He launched an acid-ball at the hole in question to widen it, and when it was wide enough for him to fit through, he slowly clambered down into the pit, avoiding corroded pipes and beams, crawling up to the dark lacuna. Peeking his head through the hole resulted in him being greeted by floodlights.
Underneath the hangar-bay, was a massive, mind-bogglingly huge pit that matched the hangar's prodigious dimensions, only increasing the depth, downward. To the point that he couldn't see the bottom, even with his echolocation. The floodlights that turned on at his appearance were large, industrial things that hung from the hangar-bay's flooring and pointed downwards.
Those generators under the floor must have been for more than just the lights in the hangar...
On the far, far, far left of the immense dead-drop, he could see an extremely large, wrought-iron spiral staircase, many meters away. If he had to guess, there must be some sort of the secret hatch or doorway that led from the hangar to these stairs. He couldn't see the bottom of the pit, but if there were stairs going down there, then something was probably at the bottom. He racked his brain, trying to think of why someone would build something like this. The air smelled... stale. No one had been in this place for a long time.
Anteros crept through the hole and placed a hand on the vertical surface of the pit. He didn't know why he was being cautious about it, but this pit was wide and long enough that he didn't have a hope of jumping to any of the other walls. If he fell, it might not be pretty. As such, he carefully crawled downwards, into the well-lit but cold abyss.
Five minutes.
Ten minutes. It was getting colder.
Fifteen. He could no longer see any electric signals from outside this... tube. Only the faint light of the floodlights, far above, let him know he hadn't somehow gone literally blind.
Twenty.
Approaching thirty minutes, he considered simply leaving and getting back to the matter of food-acquirement, but then he saw something at the very edge of his echolocation. He crawled all the way down to the bottom of the pit... and was surprised to find that the bottom was made of stone. But that wasn't the only shock.
Ten meters ahead, in the middle of the pit's bottom stood what looked to be a small building. Like a little warehouse. No windows, completely rectangular, with a large warehouse-door at its front. No lights. No sound.
But there was a bioelectric signal. A very faint one— and it felt to be inside the "house"...
Xenomorphs usually preferred dark places... but the openness of this abyssal pit perturbed him immensely, so he wasted no time in charging up to the door at full speed and ramming into it with his shoulder. It was made of flimsy sheet metal and easily caved in. Tearing his way inside, and finding more lights turning on to greet him... he found... something truly strange.
It was just one, large empty space with furniture haphazardly arranged throughout it. A couch, a TV, numerous beds, a tennis-court net, what seemed like a massive radiator, a fridge, and bathtub. Everything a person could need to survive down here— even what seemed to be an air humidifier to negate the staleness. The only thing was, everything in the building was... overturned, tossed over or just plain messy— as though someone had thrown a tantrum of some sort. Everything was pushed to the edges of the room and nearer to the walls, the middle of the floor being largely barren save for a large Persian rug.
It didn't take him long to see why.
On said rug was the corpse of a Human woman. She was... more "intact" than Garrow, upstairs, but clearly in the beginning stages of decomposition. Thicker build, dressed in the same attire as Garrow (dress pants, shirt, and lab coat), and laying on her back, limbs splayed in every direction. Near her right hand was a revolver of some sort, and as he approached the body, he could see that the rug under her head was mired in crystallized blood, a hole in both sides of her skull... and a similar one in the metal wall far off to his right. Chunks and membranes from the insides of her head were scattered across the floor to her left...
Next to her body, neatly arranged by her feet was a large... old book, a leather wallet, an earpiece device identical to the one on Garrow's corpse, and a laptop with its charger coiled atop it. Which meant that she'd already been sitting down with the items arranged that way when she shot herself...
The air down here was cold enough for liquids to freeze, so Anteros wasn't too surprised to see ice on her eyelashes and cheeks— frozen tears. The cold must have been giving the bacteria hard time, given how... intact everything was. It saddened him.
Anteros didn't know who this person was or why she'd shot herself, but the items near her were clearly meant for anyone that found her body. Maybe a last message of some sort...
He had been about to approach her unmoving corpse, when he felt another pulse of bioelectrics. Above him...
A mental presence brushed against his mind, and already suspecting who and what it was, Anteros tactfully ignored it. It was a subtle, dormant thing, reaching out and feeling around for any other presence...
He went back out of the warehouse, turned, and jumped, clambering up onto the roof.
There, sitting at the far end of the roof, folded in on itself... was a Xenomorph. A Worker, by the look of it. Male. It sat, arms curled in, legs folded, and tail coiled around itself. In as deep a sleep as any Xenomorph was capable of, so still and static that ice-crystals had formed hanging from the tips of its dorsal-tubes. A sheen of frost coated its exoskeleton...
There you are, Anteros thought. The one born, trapped in this place. Garrow's Son. Probably one of the oldest of Mother's children, on the whole planet. You must have found your way down here and gone to sleep when you couldn't find a way out, on your own. Walls too thick to try to smash through, pit too deep to dig through the rock. No acid to burn your way out with, other than with fatal self-harm...
You've slept through quite a lot, old man.
Slowly, Anteros approached, doing mental calculations with each meter closer he came to it. He stayed as silent as he could, doing his best to keep his psychic profile as quiet as he could.
Now that he was down here, the chances of this Worker eventually waking up and picking up his scent-trail was very high. It had detected his mental footprint, already, and even if Anteros left as surreptitiously as possible, the chances of it crawling up from the pit and back to the hangar were unacceptably high. It would almost certainly be hostile to Samantha, and more than likely hostile toward him, too...
There was only one thing to do.
As Anteros came within a tail's length of the Worker, he could feel its heartbeat beginning to pulse faster and faster, to a wakeful rate. Neuroelectrics flickered and sparked anew in its mind. A sound like a release of steam, and then a rasping breath emerged from it, as its tail broke from the statue-esque stillness in was held in.
Its arms flexed and unfurled with a string of dull cracks. Its head lifted upward, lips and jaws snapping open with a snapping of ice...
It only then managed to register his presence in front of it... before his tail speared forth and drove through its torso. Spine, severed.
It made no sound as he retracted his tail. It teetered backward... and fell off of the roof.
Anteros turned and made his way back inside the building, as it fell to the stone ground with a thud. He felt... more than a little sorry for it. Born alone, with little guidance, and no chance of rejoining its mother. Forced to sleep for months on-end, waiting for the possibility of its brethren one day finding it... only to be cut down the moment it thinks its luck has changed...
Sorry, mate. Even if I hadn't found you, you'd probably have been left down here for years...
Anteros returned to the site of the Human woman's apparent suicide, eager to do what he needed and leave this place.
Gingerly, he set about removing the lab coat from her body, setting the revolver away from her, and closing her eyes. He placed her hands over her stomach and pushed her feet together, as he'd seen Marines do with their fallen brethren. Taking the lab coat, he wrapped the other items in it as a makeshift bag and tied it to make it secure. Whatever was on her name-tag or laptop, Samantha would be able to read it.
He stuck his tail through one of the lab coat's sleeves to carry it, coiling the limb around the package thrice over.
Anteros crouched over the woman's body and brushed some hair strands out of her face, pushing her mouth closed.
Rest in peace, miss.
He made better time climbing up the pit than climbing down. Finding that the cargo bay of the ship was sealed closed, Anteros laid the package off to the side of where the ramp would extend, next to the cracked bones of Garrow he'd previously removed. He didn't know if taking these people's belongings was the best thing to do, but he couldn't read any of it, anyway, so he'd allow Samantha to be the judge of that.
After that, he set off sprinting into Guardian's hallways, making his way to where he thought there might have be food...
With nothing else to think of... the current state of the Hivemind bore down on him, intensely. It was like he was running through a mausoleum, with hundreds of anguished voices screaming distantly in fear and anger. This place felt different, now, and his paranoia increased to levels he'd never experienced, before.
Something was definitely wrong.
Hult-nah'Mei-jadhi, despite her lack of experience, fared fairly well.
She'd confessed that she had never taken a Chiva, before, so Zazin' had her supplied with a standard set of armor and weapons, and they flew down in a pair of single-occupant vessels to the planet's surface. He would serve as witness to her Chiva and judge her performance, though given that she was well-past adolescent age, and her clan likely had differing standards as to what qualifies as a success, this would be purely a Recreation Hunt. To be examined, later, by the proper authorities for validity. More or less similar to a "publicity stunt", from an Ooman perspective.
Upon landing on the Infinite Roof, the pair forged their way into the superstructure and set about finding Ahgai'Palak to kill. He had chosen a location a fair ways off from the Hive's center, and near to a small lake— close enough to the Hive's core to find Ahgai'Palak, but far enough away that being overwhelmed by the number of them was unlikely; yet also far enough away from the edge of the territory to evade any of the Ooman military...
It didn't take very long. An hour of jogging through deserted hallways and soon enough, they were accosted by... about eight Sain'ja, charging toward them from down a hall.
Not wanting to get her killed by putting the mark on too far a target, Zazin' charged and fired his Plasma Caster at the front of the pod, killing three and crippling one (though, it attempted to crawl with its sole, functioning arm), leaving four for Hul'Mei to deal with. A decent challenge.
"Go on", he'd said, "these four are yours".
She met this with a look of surprise, but commendably, kept her senses and stepped forward, some meters ahead.
She opted to fire her Plasma Caster, as well, killing one of the four able-bodied Serpents, burning a hole through its torso.
One Third-Rate Kill, Skull-Spared, 0.75, he thought, making sure his Bio-Mask captured the entire event.
As the Kiande Admeha approached, building speed, two of them jumped onto either wall— likely to allow all of them to run at their own pace without getting in each other's way. Hul'Mei surprised him by grabbing a dagger from her boot and chucking it at the Ahgai'Palak still running on the ground. The dagger, despite not being aerodynamic in the least, slammed hilt-deep into the forehead of the Serpent and caused it to slump on the floor, falling behind its brethren and twitching in death throes.
One Second-Rate Kill, Skull-Scarred, 1.65. Impressive ability with throwing combat-daggers. Potential with shuriken?
She was proving wise to have used the dagger as a throwing weapon, given that she still had one Smart Disc to use. As such, she grabbed it from her thigh-strap and threw it at the Serpent on the left-hand wall. Her aim was a bit off, she probably hadn't used a Disc-weapon in some time, and the Disc was sent in a curving arc, tilted to one side; as such, it struck the side of the Ahgai'Palak's head and cleaved through to the other side, through its torso, embedding itself in the plaster wall. The body fell to the ground in a rolling heap, the front half of its head coming free from its body.
One Second-Rate Kill, Skull-Damaged, 2.15, technical success. Decent tactical sensibilities and talent for improvising. Could choose to stop, after this point.
The last able-bodied Sain'ja was mere meters away from them, and leaped to the ground, charging forward, upright, with its arms held to either side, hissing like a storm. Hul'Mei stepped forward to meet the Serpent's advance. The Scimitar blade on her forearm extended to its full length, and she readied it seemingly to strike at the beast. This was the real test, they both knew. He stepped to the right, leaning up against the wall, to get a better angle.
The Sain'ja Kiande Admeha, that Hult-nah'Mei-jadhi was to engage with, was a fully developed specimen, the toughest and strongest it would get in life— as tall as him and some plait-widths shorter than her. It would match Zazin's' strength with some effort, and would probably be given trouble by Hul'Mei in an arm-wrestle. Whether she could match its speed or ferocity remained to be seen. He stepped forward a few paces, ready to intervene, should it grow too dangerous.
The Serpent ran at the Yautja woman, swinging its claws at her, rapid-fire. Clearly intimidated, she stepped away from the swinging swathes of blades, backing up as fast as the creature advanced, claws swinging barely inches from her chest.
Knock it on its heels— keep it from seizing the initiative...
Whether out of impulse or because she knew it'd be useless, her Scimitar retracted, though she may not have noticed. She simply kept backing up, likely not knowing what to do. Yautja and Serpent were starting to near his spot, so he took a chance, and barked, at the top of his lungs, "ATTACK!", slamming a fist into the wall next to him.
The shout, as planned, triggered a response in the woman from the traumatic younger years of martial drilling, and she immediately snapped into executing a push-kick, her right leg lashing out and slamming her boot-sole into the creature's gut. It was knocked backwards, though one of the Serpent's strikes landed a light blow, claws slicing into her collar-bone area, drawing blood. The pain or the muscle memory must have given her more courage, because as she saw that the creature's assault was halted for a brief time, she kicked at it again with her left leg, though a bit more clumsily, her left heel bashing into the Serpent's mouth and smashing its front teeth.
"Clumsily", because her leg then ended up atop its shoulder, having glanced off of its face.
If it won't kill it, immediately, or at least disable it, don't bother attacking...
The Serpent, slouched from the weight a Yautja female's leg all but crushing its shoulder, screeched in rage and swung its arms at her, despite the obstruction. Multiple moderate wounds were opened on her leg and stomach, more being made every second, as she floundered, leg being held above her hips, trying to keep her balance. She was losing control of the situation, but it could still be salvaged—
"Act!", he shouted, "seize the initiative!".
Whatever it was about the word "initiative", it seemingly caused her to snap out of her panic. A shrill roar tore from her throat, and she forced her leg downward, dragging the Ahgai'Palak with it— showcasing immense power and balance on her part.
The next thing he knew, the woman stood on the creature's back, its tail-blade twisted and pulled taught between her wrists— she stomped on the back of its neck, repeatedly, producing loud, echoing cracks, on each blow. It took at least a minute before she stopped, even long after the beast was already dead.
There was frenzied-ness to her breathing and body-language, as she eventually came down from whatever fury had overtaken her.
First-Rate Kill, Skull-Spared, 3.40. Somewhat haphazard, but respectable method. May not have been possible for younger woman, adult muscle-mass may negate validity to a degree. Impressive, given her lack of experience.
Hul'Mei stepped off of the Sain'ja, panting. She walked towards him, holding out a hand, "Health-Shard, please?", she asked, sounding tired.
The neon-green, glowing blood seeped from numerous wounds in her chest, stomach, and legs, painting her body in a wet, verdant glow. The multiple leather straps that crisscrossed over her breasts and held her shoulder pauldrons in place had gone without damage, to his slight dismay. He plucked the requested item from his belt and handed it to her— a slim, black tube of metallic persuasion. She snapped it half, revealing shards of long, glowing blue crystal where the two halves broke. She hesitated at the sight of what she had to use, but with a nod from him, she cleared her throat and steeled herself.
Taking a long breath, she slammed both medicinal knives into her inner and outer thigh, releasing a full-bellied roar from the depths of her throat, in pain.
The wounds all over her body glowed slightly brighter for a moment, before the flow of blood ceased, each laceration stitching itself closed. Leaving a series of not-overly discolored scars, and her skin still drenched in luminescent liquid. She panted a bit more loudly, but gave herself a once-over, and stretched her limbs, apparently feeling okay.
"Was that good?", she asked, abruptly, between breaths. She was likely coming down from her adrenaline high.
Zazin' was non-plussed, shaking his head, "what?".
She gestured to the corpses strewn through the hallway to their left, "did I do it properly? Is... is that how that should have gone?".
He blinked at her. "Yes", he said, with a chuckle.
She shook her head and seemed to look at the floor, "I thought I had to... kill them a certain way, or something, or...", she leaned down, hands on her knees, apparently experiencing more windedness, "I dunno...".
Zazin-Vor'mekta stepped to the left a bit and tapped her Bio-Mask. When she showed that she was looking at him, he touched the side of his fist to her right upper-arm and clasped it, "you did well", he insisted, with a nod.
She straightened up a bit, and grabbed his gauntleted wrist with her right hand— gratitude. "So, I'm Blooded, now, am I?", she asked.
"By Dark Blade standards, at least, though your Bright Spears might have something to say about it".
She seemed to freeze for a moment. "Huh...".
"Problem?".
"I thought it would be harder?", she said, shaking her head in uncertainty.
Now... if you asked him why that statement just utterly tickled him pink, he couldn't tell you, but it made him laugh harder that it probably should have.