Sapience

by Voice From the Abyss

What is sapience? Is it the capacity to love? The capacity to feel lonely? Xenomorphs are very clever, but we would still consider them mere animals. There is, however, one exception— one Xenomorph with a conscience. Through one-in-a-million circumstances, and a certain Human woman, we'll see what happens when a Runner grows self-aware (Limes \ SubscribeStar link on my profile)

18. Chapter 17: LLIAT

Chapter 17: Loss and Love, Intertwined in All Things

Samantha sighed for the umpteenth time, resting her elbows on the desk and palming her forehead. Before her, strewn across the entire desk, were instruction manuals, protocol and emergency guides, as well as schematics and diagrams, galore. They weren't exactly walls of text (not most of them, anyway), but she kept having to check the glossaries to learn what certain words meant. This shuttle may have been designed with the convenience of non-pilots and laymen in mind, but whoever wrote this stuff must have assumed that the people who would need it would have plenty of time on their hands. She tried opening the laptop (which had been on this desk when she and Anteros arrived, here) to see if it had some sort of tutorial function, but all of its files were blank and it even had her type in a new password.

Free laptop, I guess..., she supposed.

She'd brought a bunch of water bottles from the gym to drink as she worked, three of the empty ones already on the floor behind her swivel chair. Two hours had passed since Anteros had left, and... she was... she thought it was just anxiety from being alone and hoping nothing found her or the ship, but... now that he was gone, she'd gotten a nasty migraine, out of nowhere. Once it subsided, there was a pulsing ache in the sides of her head, just above her ears... more-so in her right ear than her left, for some reason...

The pain, instead of making her annoyed or causing her to lose focus... it just made her feel sad. There was this... nagging sense of loneliness. She knew it was something other than just "missing Anteros", because this feeling only started up forty minutes in, and she'd already been resenting his absence the moment she closed the cargo-bay door. Also... she was fairly certain that the pain, in itself, was abnormal, in some way.

She supposed that that was only natural— prolonged use of telepathy probably would carry some side effects, considering the fact that Human beings simply don't do it. Or not very often, at least? She thought? Ever since Anteros first spoke to her, her preconceived notions of what was scientifically possible were pretty much thrown up in the air. Even more-so than when she'd first received confirmation that Xenomorphs were a real thing.

In any case, she soldiered through the head-ache with a slice of cake and more water. Now that she was actually reading these papers, and getting into it, it was starting to make sense to her, and she was now somewhat fascinated with what she was learning about the ship's systems.

Apparently, in a hatch somewhere near the kitchen, there was a water-dispenser that funneled recycled fluids from throughout the ship into a drinkable medium, so there wasn't much chance of running out of water. The ship also had extendable solar-panel arrays and the ability to use small ion engines for propulsion in the case of a lack of fuel. There was also a freezer, hidden beneath the floor of the kitchen, so... that meant they could stock up even more, in case the regular fridge ran out of space. The ship also had a state-of-the-art fuel-reclamation system that would make its maneuvering thrusters last thrice as long...

This ship is really expensive, even for Weyland-Yutani... what the Hell was Garrow doing here with this boat? It must have been worth more than six-score times his paycheck, minimum!

In any case... the good news was, she was fairly confident that she could learn how this boat worked, and she was saving the actual flight manual for last, after she got through everything else. The cockpit had a flight-simulator system, anyway, so she could practice a little before getting it off the ground...

She smiled to herself. With luck, they'd be home-free this time, over-morrow.

She then frowned, suddenly...

She looked about herself, twisting in her swivel chair, sweeping the captain's quarters with her gaze. There was something... it was...

She felt like she was being watched.

She spun herself around and slowly stood up, scanning the room like it was full of unfriendly faces.

That same ache in her head suddenly... it pulsed repeatedly, rapid-fire, as though... as though her brain were a Geiger-counter and she'd just walked into a nuclear power-plant! It... something was there, but... when she stood there, listening for minutes on-end...

Silence. Stillness. Even the ship's ambient groans and wheezings were, for the moment, quiet. But... she just had the overbearing sense that something was watching her. It was like a weightlessness in her gut— as though she were being chased.

She huffed to herself. She looked to her right and leaned back to peek through the tiny window of the exit-door. Through it, she could see through the identical window of the door to the cockpit, and out of its glass, into the dark hangar. But nothing was there.

She sniffed and rubbed her nose, brow furrowing, intensely. She didn't want to call out and possibly give herself away to a nearby Xenomorph, but she was also very irritated. The goose-bumps running up and down her back were worsening her headache. She sighed and sat back down, cursing as she realized that she'd lost where she was on the paper.

She hoped Anteros would be back, soon...

---

Having done what they came down for, Zazin' and Hul'Mei saw no reason to leave, just yet, and the pair had been wandering the halls of "Guardian's" city-complex for about forty units. They killed whatever Ahgai'Palak they came across, and tossed the skulls into an increasingly large storage-net. They talked, idly, of what it had taken to construct such a gargantuan settlement and how long it had taken to build. They speculated as to the status of the Hunting Ship crew and the Young Bloods on this planet that were concurrently participating in impromptu Chivas.

Then, they came across something strange. He'd happened to have been looking at the holographic telemetry of the Scanning-Beacons with his Sat-Comp, and they both noticed that, some distance away, there was a very large "blank" space that started just under the first layer of the super-structure, and continued downwards, past the effective range of the Beacons. Like an elevator shaft, but a dozen-times as wide. It couldn't have been a computing issue, so the pair had gone to investigate.

What they found was a large hangar bay with a single, moderately-sized space-vessel in it. The fact that whatever door there had been was now reduced to an acid-drenched mess certainly raised a brow. A short search, and they discovered a hidden latch-way in the corner of the massive room that led underneath the hangar and down an impossibly long flight of spiraling stairs.

Not wanting to bother going down there, himself, he climbed down the stair-case a short bit, and chucked a scanning probe into the vast depth. He then stared at his Sat-Comp's hologram to track what the device discovered. After a fall of around seventy-eight jorrens, the device stopped moving. Somewhere at the bottom of this immense dead-drop, there was an Ooman... building? No heat, electrical, or radio energy signatures or sound, whatsoever (none would indicate activity) so... nothing of note was likely down there. He tapped a button on his wrist-gauntlet to make the probe self-destruct.

Why the Oomans would construct something like this at the cost of wasted space confused him. It would be a somewhat decent method of avoiding the detection of an Ahgai'Palak Hive, but if they knew enough to know that, then why was this the only instance of such a design in the surrounding eighty kilometers?

It made him suspicious. The pile of Ooman bones and "jacket" left near the vessel's left-lower "VTOL" engine also made him squint into the dark void at the oddity of it all.

Hult-nah'Mei-jadhi calling to him from above caught his attention, "Zazin'! You read the Ooman language, yes?".

He trudged up the stairway, climbing up the ladder to the opened hatch, and found her standing a few paces away, "yes".

She turned to the side and pointed at the Ooman ship, "what does that say?".

He climbed out of small hole, his shoulder-pauldrons chafing against the sides of it. Once out of the hole, he stepped about and kicked the hatch over the opening, closing it. "You can't use your Bio-Mask to have the text translated to you?", he asked her, crossing his arms.

She shrugged, shook her head, and gestured to her mask, "this is a sub-standard model. I'm fairly certain it can only translate audible speech".

He chuffed, briefly wondered where she got the sense that her mask was "sub-standard" from, and his upper-right mandible tapped the Vision-Mode Cycler on the inside of his Bio-Mask thrice, until it came to the "Ooman spectrum". He looked up at the side of the space-vessel, which the two of them were several jorrens behind and to the left of. Hult-nah'Mei-jadhi stared at him as he looked.

The moment he saw that ominous, contemptible logo, printed on the side of the ship in black and yellow paint... the empty void beneath their feet instantly made sense. His arms uncrossed and he squared himself toward the ship, as though to issue a challenge to it.

"Weilahnd-Yootahnee...", he murmured to himself.

Hul'Mei looked from him, to the ship, and back again, "who is that?".

Zazin' looked at her... and scowled behind his mask, "they are... like a merchant or factory guild, except far grander in scale and influence, well beyond the wisdom of its masters. A privatized conglomerate...".

Her head visibly tilted to the side, "`privatized`?". He could understand her confusion— most Yautja research, development, production, and commerce was dominated by Clan-owned guilds and Elder-sponsored initiatives. Private enterprises almost never advanced beyond being a street-vendor or craftsman, and for most, that was enough. Everything in life came second to honor-through-trophies, anyway— all else was merely a "hobby", beyond needing money to purchase resources.

"Corporations" and mass-commercialization would be a foreign concept to most Yautja. Even now, after having spent blasphemous amounts of time studying Ooman culture for years, he couldn't understand why anyone would submit themselves to an entity such as Weyland-Yutani just for material gain, only to decay in the soul and be sacrificed for the progress of others. Then again... wealth meant everything in Ooman culture. His species regularly committed ritual suicide upon losing an arbitrary amount of "Honor", and routinely endangered itself for the sake of hunting dangerous animals and collecting bones, so... maybe he wasn't one to judge?

He huffed and shook his head, "the Oomans that currently own it only have a de jure claim, and the only way that it can be taken from them is if someone with a heavier coin-purse decides they want it". He didn't actually say the words "de jure" to Hul'Mei, but the Yautja language conveniently had an exact word for, both, it and "de facto". Yautja learned the hard way, the difference between the two.

She seemed to take in the explanation, a hand reaching up to scratch at the scalp between her plait-roots. She glanced at the ship, again, before stepping around to his right side and not-so-subtly leaning onto his shoulder-pauldron, commenting, "you seem to know of them, quite well. How important are they, exactly?". He couldn't tell if the physical contact was an attempt at cynical ingratiation or a genuine gesture, but he supposed he didn't mind, for now.

"I do know them...", he said, looking for signs that the ship was at all inhabited or functional, "they've almost ended my life on a few occasions...".

He could tell that she stared at him after hearing that, because it took her four seconds, or so, to reply, "how did Ooman merchants get the better of an Elite Spear-Master?", her tone only slightly accusatory, to her credit. Not that she was entirely in the wrong for finding it odd.

"`Almost`", he repeated, glancing at her from the corner of his eye, "and those occasions were all before I'd become an Elite".

He elaborated, after a pause, nodding to the vessel, "they have the services of warriors loyal to them via promise of money, and you couldn't get any of the ones in charge to fight you, personally, if you vandalized all of their Trophies and cursed the name of their Clan...", he said, putting it in terms that would cause the least amount of translation errors. She was silent.

"They care little for combat or Honor— if it is less expensive to destroy you with a nuclear weapon than to speak to you face-to-face, they'll fire the weapon, every time. Whatever preserves their wealth, whatever adds to their wealth...", he spoke with a non-negligible amount of spite in his tone.

He didn't look at her, but he could feel her shift and knew that she was being quite intuitive. Anyone with functioning gray-matter could read from him the fact that Weyland-Yutani and him had a very storied, antagonistic past.

He looked at the floor, lost in memory. He heard her say, after a long moment, "you mean to say that these `merchants` know of the Yautja? That they know of you?", her tone quiet and urgent— as though she were asking something taboo. Which she was.

Yautja hunting doctrine and the Honor Code was clear about the hunting of sapient species: never leave behind technology, never make yourself a public spectacle, do nothing to bring the Yautja to the eye of any creature beyond those you slay. Failing to uphold this meant the highest punishment for the one responsible. As had been the case for Thar'n-dha'ul'Dha-viath (1) ... once-known by some Oomans as: "The New Way Devil" (2).

That... had been a truly miserable blunder for the Dark Blade Clan, for which they still felt the blame, even one-hundred-fifty-two Ooman years after it was fixed and the Dishonor repaired. But... as they say: "Dishonor is never erased, it simply gets amended in the Archives".

He answered her query, "they do not know of me, specifically, I think... but they do know of the Yautja, and have known for at least a matter of decades...".

She stepped away from him and stared up at the ship in front of them, almost as though she believed she were staring at an Arbitrator's Bio-Mask-recording. She didn't speak for a long few moments, and Zazin' suspected that she was beginning to realize the gravity of his words. She turned around to face him, body-language suddenly as tense as though she were in battle, "these `merchants` are dangerous, then? Do they have our technology? If they almost killed you, multiple times—".

He cut her off with a hand-wave, "they don't have our technology. None that every other Ooman doesn't", he looked at her in the "eye" (as best as it could be done with both of them wearing masks), and stepped closer, pointing at the ship with a hand. He declared, "they are dangerous because they want our technology, hunt it with the desperation of a starving animal... and because they trifle with Kiande-Admeha".

Without quite thinking, he placed a hand on her upper-arm, continuing, "they capture and breed Ahgai'Palak wherever and whenever they can try it— with routinely poor results, to their own detriment". He looked up, passed her head, and at the logo on the space-vessel, "and they do so at the expense of innocents, without shame. Whenever an Ahgai'Palak Hive springs up on an Ooman world, it is usually at their behest...".

The word "innocent", in the Yautja tongue, came with a wider array of meanings than in Ooman languages. When a Yautja says "innocent", he usually means "unarmed", "uninvolved", or "without a means to fight". Another word for "bystander", in a way. There was no moral connotation, in the Yautja understanding, as the Honor Code was the only true standard of right and wrong. To try and say that someone, anyone, was completely free of blame or past sin would be called "foolish". Instead, the Yautja understanding of "innocence", as determined by the Honor Code, had more to do with whether a person had had a fair chance at fighting back.
And by the Honor Code: attacking an "innocent", who had no way to fight back, or who was given no chance to fight back, was a grievously deep stain on the perpetrator's Honor. Killing many uninvolved "innocents" with an "exterminating-weapon", like setting lose Kiande Admeha on non-combative Oomans, for example, was a crime worthy of Bad Blood status.

And every Yautja on the Hunting Ship above their heads, was taking advantage of that.

If only Weyland-Yutani were a Yautja...

Hult-nah'Mei-jadhi went quiet, and sullen, turning to stare at the ship, like him, murmuring, "so... you believe Weilahnd-Yootahnee caused the infestation on this planet?".

"I would not put it past them", he said, "their blades are eternally too small for their prey... and judging by the immense chasm beneath our feet, I would say it is more than plausible...".

Hul'Mei said nothing for a long time, and he understood why. Hearing all of this perturbed her, deeply, not just because depravity is the same in every culture, but because she'd never heard anything about this or about "Wey-Yu", before now. The fact that this information had gone without her or anyone close to her knowing it, for so long, caused her to question exactly how free information was, among Yautja Clans. Zazin' knew about it only because he'd personally been witness to Weyland-Yutani's shenanigans, before. The only Yautja who certainly knew about it were the Council of Ancients and some of the more venerated Clan Elders. Yak-a'Shen the Spry likely had no clue.

Which was just as well, because if it were known by him and the rest of the Hunting Ship (that Weilahnd-Yootahnee was responsible for this infestation, knew about the Yautja, and were very much a real threat to them), the entire expedition would be postponed and everyone would go home. Yak-a'Shen would be forced to bring the matter to those above him, and for his trouble, he'd be ordered not to divulge it "carelessly", lest his Honor be brought into question.

Whether it was censorship or panic-prevention, Zazin-Vor'mekta didn't care to guess. All he knew was that if every Yautja were privy to this information, it would be cause for mass mobilization and armament, at least, and civil war at worst. The last time that their species seriously debated over what to do about "alien" races, it had caused The Filial Schism, and the Hish-Qu-Ten's exile from the homeworld. And he, for one, wasn't keen on overthrowing the status quo or starting Armageddon by rattling cages in the ears of those with more authority than himself.

The reason he told all of this to Hult-nah'Mei-jadhi, here and now, was the same reason he'd told Vo'grat-Guan, when he'd first met her. A test. Not to determine her character to see if she was worth reproductive investment, but to gauge how others might react to it when it was revealed to them. Mostly just for him to gauge how a large amount of people might act in the event of widespread discovery. He patiently watched for her reaction, now, as the minutes wore on. She fidgeted on the spot, shaking her head, growling to herself. He could practically see the gears churning, and he knew not to interrupt— when a Yautja is given something to think about, you sit and wait for them to be done thinking about it.

Standing right behind her back, as he was, granted him an admittedly pleasant view, anyway, so he couldn't claim to be annoyed at the wait.

Eventually, she glanced at him over her shoulder (probably catching where his eyes were pointed), and absently stared at the ship, seemingly looking for a way aboard. Finally, she spoke, asking the age-old, surprisingly-apt question: "what do we do about it?".

Is that indecision or a willingness to act?, he wondered.

Zazin' huffed to himself, as he thought of how to reply...

He then frowned at himself as he realized that the sight of her rear-end was distracting him. It was an archaic, decade-old, armor-set initially designed for male Youngbloods, so aside from the metal guarding her crotch and the outside of her thighs, there, uh... wasn't much left to the imagination, barring the leather "boxer-shorts" and full-body cloak-netting.

He closed his eyes, considering her question— "what do we do about it?". His little crusades against the company, in the past, were always done alone, and at his own expense. No one would help him, and some would try to stop him, if he'd ever attempted enlisting others against Wey-Yu. After all, "Hunting" was all well and good, but pursuing some petty vendetta against members of a "lower race" violated the Honor Code in a number of ways. And Zazin' couldn't have tried to bring to light Weyland-Yutani's numerous crimes (against their own and Yautja-kind, alike), because the matter would quickly become bogged down with bureaucracy and he'd eventually be told to put the matter to bed with nothing accomplished.

But, if Hul'Mei would have liked to join him...

He stepped up behind her, on her left, and used his left hand to remove his Bio-Mask, and placed his right hand on her opposite shoulder. She looked at him, and he asked her, "what do you want to do about it?".

She seemed to look at the ship, again... and after some time, took off her own Bio-Mask, holding it in her right hand. She was frowning at the floor, mandibles spread outwards in indecision. She looked at him from the corner of her eye, and shrugged, "something? I'm not sure, yet... what do you do about them?", she asked.

He released her shoulder, his hands turning his Bio-Mask over in them, as he looked at the bone-pile under the vessel's rear overhang. Acting as though he were in deep thought.

"Well...", he eventually said, "when I killed the Queen of this Hive, I collected a sample of genetic material to be scanned, because I suspected that Weilahnd-Yootahnee had somehow tampered with the creature's DNA". He shrugged, "the information we get from it won't tell us very much, unfortunately...", he trailed off, deliberately.

She initially nodded to herself in pensiveness, before she did a double-take and looked at him, "hang on, you killed the Queen—?".

Halting her question, and sensing that a change of mood was needed, he gave her backside a pinch as he stepped passed her, eliciting a jolt and bark, causing her to drop her Bio-Mask on the ground. He walked forward, briskly, saying "come. Let us see if this vessel has any occupants— perhaps we can track it to its next location". He discreetly watched her from over his shoulder as he walked away. This was another test.

She had a hand on the "injured" area, and looked at him with shock and a bit of offense. For a moment, he thought he might have overstepped, but her expression abruptly changed into a very determined glare, and she tensed her body to chase him.

Just as he broke into a run, himself, dropping his own Bio-Mask, he could see the smallest of smiles on her face, as she pelted after him...

It was fun, despite having to keep volume to a minimum. Some laughs were had, which... made Zazin' remember his childhood of sparring, playing, and fighting with his blood-brothers...

That is a good memory... I'm pleased to see I have at least some, from back then...

Once the pair had ceased their mock-fighting, and re-equipped their masks, they navigated around to the front of the Ooman vessel and activated their Active-Camouflage. Using claw and foot, they both climbed up the massive vehicle's bulk, and each took a flank of the cockpit's glass window. With their Bio-Masks already set to see the world as an Ooman does, they peered through the window and used their mask's zoom-function to scan the inside of the ship. Within, the pair spotted a single Ooman female sitting at a desk and reading.

At one point, the Ooman had stood up and looked about herself as though she knew they were there, but the pair remained unseen, and the alien woman went back to her task.

"Should we try to see if there are others on the ship?", Hul'Mei asked him, clinging to the vessel's metal "nose" like a climber hanging onto a rock-face.

Zazin' shook his head, "Weilahnd-Yootahnee always lays traps within each trap— if we go inside, it may cause us to be detected. Besides, this woman is wearing their uniform".

"Their what?", she questioned, unfamiliar with the English term.

"Ooman conglomerates often enforce a dress-code to denote membership and service— this female, here, is wearing their `colors`, so to speak, and is thus affiliated", he said, only somewhat proud that his knowledge of the Oomans had a practical application, for once.

"Then, we should place a Tag on this vessel...", she said, slowly.

"Yes. If Weilahnd-Yootahnee had a hand in this planet's infestation, and this vessel had something to do with it, we can follow it to wherever it goes, next".

"To what end?", she asked, looking at him.

Zazin' stared at her, and thought for a moment, not quite knowing how to explain it. He eventually uttered, "if there is one thing I know for certain about these merchants, it's that it is usually best to put a stop to whatever they set out to do...". She nodded, slowly, not quite catching his meaning.

"Weilahnd-Yootahnee flies too close to the suns, and flies with too little caution, for its own good. If they don't destroy themselves in the process, they will likely achieve or obtain something too powerful for their control. And when one gives power to material greed, it does not go to serve virtuous ends. If they gain the means to obtain Yautja technology, they will take it from us as swiftly possible. `You don't give a beast a flamethrower and expect it to negotiate`", he said, directly quoting the words of Nightstorm.

Hult-nah'Mei-jadhi, apparently, had read the Nightstorm Commentaries, because she looked into the window at the Ooman for a moment, before looking to him and giving a firm nod.

She was committed, now, it seemed. They would harass Weyland-Yutani, together.

Ten units, later, they had each placed a Tag device on the tips of the space-vessel's wings, and had left hangar, making their way to where they'd left their single-occupant vehicles. On the way, as they walked, Hul'Mei talked about other reasons she thought would be beneficial by helping him hunt the "merchants". She said, for instance, that she'd never hunted Oomans, before, out of distaste, but could see herself enjoying it, if it served a greater end. Her reasonings were... plausible, even if it sounded, to him, like she was giving herself excuses out of what the Oomans referred to as "cognitive dissonance".

He wondered if she was only going along with his crusade because she wanted to force herself to follow their Pact to the letter...

After a while of talking at him, she ceased doing so for some time. In the silence, Zazin' could see that she was bothered by something. When he asked what she was thinking of, she said that she remembered that she wanted to ask him about something he'd mentioned, earlier, but she couldn't remember what that had been.

A few units, later, she apparently was close to remembering, because she abruptly stopped walking, and held up a hand in front of his chest to stop him. She hurriedly tore off her Bio-Mask, he suspected because she thought it would help jog her memory. He didn't want to be rude, so he took off his, as well. She stared at the ground in front of them as though it had called her a "child-maker", and her mandibles tapped her tusks together, repeatedly, angrily forcing the memory out of her head.

He waited, lowering the storage-net from his shoulder to the ground behind them... apparently, this was really important, for some reason.

With speed that almost scared him, she snapped her fingers and pointed at him— gaze almost looking vicious, "you said that you killed the Queen Serpent?!".

"Yes", he nodded, "a few cycles before we met, yesterday".

She raised a brow at him, "all on your own?!", she asked, incredulously, eyes as wide as Smart-Discs. Her mandibles spread far out to the sides in evident disbelief.

He nodded, "yes", shrugging, almost wanting to chuckle. He sometimes forgot that Elites among the Bright Spears weren't known to have to procure Queen skulls in order to qualify. She perhaps didn't know that he had already killed many Queens... or she was having a hard time imagining how difficult a Queen was to kill, after having killed her first Ahgai'Palak an hour ago.

Her face became one of utter confusion, and "...how?!". She slumped, her arms going limp at her sides, the Bio-Mask in her left hand clanging against her thigh-guard.

"I ran into the Hive between its patrols, got my favorite Bio-Mask broken by a Royal Guard as I killed it, retreated, got this Bio-Mask, demolished one of the Hive's Egg-Chambers to draw out the Queen's Royal Guards, killed four of them, ran into the heart of the Hive, and killed her", he said, with a shrug, as though it all made absolutely perfect sense.

The longer he spoke, the more shocked her expression became, until she looked at him as though he were the Black Warrior, incarnate. "You... killed five Royal Guard Serpents, ran into the heart of the Hive, and killed the Queen?", she asked, voice becoming surprisingly distant.

He held out his arms, and mimicked an Ooman affectation, in response, "you caught me!".

She took a step back, and her tilted to one side, "you...". She seemed to struggle to come up with the words, and she blinked at him repeatedly, mandibles going slack, "you are...". She looked at the storage-net on the floor, filled with the skulls of her kills, searchingly, as though they had the answer to all her questions. She looked at him, again, and seemed to mouth some words, with no sound coming out...

She stared at him for an uncomfortably long period of time, and Zazin' felt the urge to turn to the side— the sensation of imminent danger coming over him. He patiently held her gaze, though.

"You are... so", she began to say. He was about to snap at her and ask what she was driving at... but then her Bio-Mask dropped to the floor, and he noticed that her pupils had dilated to thrice their size. Her head slowly tilted to the other side, as she finished her sentence, "... sexy". Her voice sounded a bit deeper, now, and her hand idly scratched at the leather straps over her breasts, as though suddenly uncomfortable with the covering. She clearly wasn't in control of herself, anymore...

He could smell the first hints of arousal-pheromone wafting in his direction... but what she'dsaid was...

... really funny to him!

Zazin-Vor'mekta broke down, hands on his knees, and laughed uproariously, long and hard. And he kept laughing, even as she came to her senses and got cross with him! He must have alerted every Kiande Admeha within a dohret (3), given his volume...

Praise to pauk-na Paya! Of all the things I've heard women say to flatter me, that's a new one! Oh, dear, Cetanu, this is going to be fun. We're off to a good start, already...

He now found that she was at least a little endearing...

---

Three hours later...

Anteros stopped walking and released the plastic from his hands, lowering his quarry for the fifth time. He hissed to himself, baring his teeth, and crouched low to the floor. His back was aching, again.

He'd traveled to the location of a few former supermarkets in the Commercial District, searching for meat produce by looking for chilled sections and poking holes in the plastic containers to smell them. Finding a store that wasn't empty took an hour, gathering what he needed took two, and the trip back to Samantha, so far, was going to take another hour. He was still working out the quickest route to and from.

Overall, he'd been to two different useful locations, each a kilometer apart, and filled as many bags with as many meat products as he could feasibly carry. Apparently, when the stores had been looted by refugees and survivors, alike, no one bothered taking any of the meat. Likely because no one planned on having the time to cook anything. The evacuation, after all, took less than a day, and most people had had to literally drop what they were doing and leave. If Samantha's memory of the event could be relied on. The survivors stuck in the Hive territory, what with their numbers being small and their means even smaller, wouldn't have much use for meat they couldn't cook. That left a veritable king's ransom of refrigerated food that no one had wanted, and which he needed.

He stood to all fours and stretched out his back with a low groan that came out as a staccato, rumbling hiss.

It must have been the latter case, because carrying his load on two legs was proving taxing. To both sides of him were six of the largest plastic bags he could find, each filled with about ten packs of meat product— what they were or what their labels said, Anteros had no clue, but it was meat, that much was certain. Hooked on his tail, on the other hand, were seven more of the same thing. And hooked around his neck, hanging from it, were two more bags, one on his front and the other on his back.

Twenty-one bags filled with meat, and he had his hands full with getting them to their ship. If there wasn't a joke or a folk song in there, then he didn't know comedy... which would be a real shame, because he rather liked to think of himself as a funny person...

Anteros stood up to his hind legs, stretching to his full height, and felt something in his back "pop", releasing the tension. At the very least, they had no reason to worry about food supply, anymore, and worst-case scenario was him having to repeat this task, tomorrow, and maybe the day after, before they could leave. By his estimation, he could subsist on a cat-sized amount of food every ten days, or so. Something the size of rat every five days. And depending on how many meat products were in the literal thousands of MREs on the ship, he believed it would suffice.

Anteros shook himself out, hissing as he bent down and hooked his fingers into the handles of the many bags at his feet, lifting them up without much strain and trudging onwards. The act of walking upright, in itself, was a bigger hindrance than the weight, but thankfully, he was about halfway through the Apartments and most of the way to the hangar. Now that he knew where to go and what to grab and how best to do it, he believed he could do all of this, again, in about half the time.

He turned a corner at a junction, trudging along, tail held high.

His thoughts, though, were mostly on the state of the Hive-Mind.

He'd been feeling paranoid and anxious ever since he left the hangar, and the feeling had only gotten worse. More than that, he had yet to run into any Hive-Mates. He kept hearing the echoes of inhuman, Xenomorph screams, both audibly, echoing through the labyrinthine hallways, and in his head, distant wailings of despair. But he never saw anything— only heard it. The wails and barks and pain and fear. And anger. He couldn't tell if he was hallucinating, at this point, and in all honesty, he'd relish being attacked by something or someone, right now, just to end the suspense. It was more annoying than frightening, in any regard, and after a while: it just gave him a headache.

Then... as though his request were being granted, he heard something... relatively nearby. Closer than every other distant noise. A Xenomorph's screech and... a gun? Something like a gun...?

He immediately stopped in his tracks and dropped everything on his person, taking the bags off of his neck and putting them on the floor. Stepping over his mound of valuables and turning around, he oriented his head in all directions, scanning and listening. But he saw nothing— no other life-signs. But the sounds continued— echoing through and within the innumerable walls. It was... far enough away that he supposed it made sense that he couldn't see anything, but at the same time, close enough that he didn't feel safe in simply continuing his journey. Another noise came to him...

Another screech... a howl... an explosion... distant, but the echoes reached him through the halls, all the same. He endeavored to keep scanning and waiting until the sounds stopped or until he saw something.

The moment he caught a moving neuro-electric signal, he focused on it. Below and to his right, at the edges of his perception, two figures. One... chasing the other. They were too far away to discern much, but... he could pick out neither of them as "Human". He heard another distant, echoing explosion and saw the fleeing figure tumble and roll as though struck by something.

That... made no sense. A Xenomorph running from a Human? That simply didn't happen...

All at once, his dream from last night flashed through his mind — the Entities fighting with Xenomorphs — and he snarled aloud with instinctual aggression. The Ancestral, having been utterly silent for most of the past day, bucked and scratched at his mind— in fear or rage, he couldn't say...

What if it isn't Human...?

He watched as the two figures faded off into the distance, one still chasing the other... for a while he didn't hear anything. But he felt... there was an increasing mental pressure that he felt. A Hive-Mate was nearby... and they were looking for him. He scanned around himself, again, and detected one figure behind him, some distance away. He focused on it, seeing that it was a Hive-Mate... and it was heading in his direction.

He... didn't know what to do. He couldn't know if Mother had tasked the entire Hive with killing him. He stood still and waited for whatever came.

However, as the Hive-Mate drew closer, and his echolocation began to discern the figure's shape, he felt a familiar presence enter his mental perception...

Lich...

Anteros steeled himself, arched his back and squared his feet. The last thing Mother had told Lich to do was to kill him. He didn't know if the male would carry out the order even after Mother's death, or if it would ask his help, and he wasn't sure he wanted to find out. But in either case, Anteros would not be stopped, and he prepared himself to fight.

As Lich came near, finally making a left turn into the hallway Anteros stood in, the Hive-Mate rose up off of all fours and loped toward the Scout on its hind legs. Anteros felt something... fearful coming from the other male's mind, but it wasn't just the pervasive, background paranoia that Anteros was feeling. Lich was terrified, utterly. And judging by what seemed to be a massive, nasty-looking wound in the Soldier's side, acidic blood still flowing from it and creating a ragged, dirty trail, it likely had probable cause to be. The Soldier approached him, hunched over, a hand clutching at its gaping wound, head twitching this way and that, scanning for something.

For a long, few awkward moments, Lich just paced in a circle, about ten feet away from Anteros, scanning and watching and hissing and panting. Anteros could barely interpret the jumbled messages being thrown from Lich's mind, like items from a runaway vehicle. The more he watched the Soldier, the more he came to realize that he was in no danger. Not yet, at least...

Lich eventually lowered itself to crouch on the floor, hissing loudly, still, head twitching and swiveling on its shoulders, like some crack-addicted gremlin. It's hand idly patted at the gaping hole in its side, already more than half its body was coated in its own blood, and the floor beneath it sizzled.

Anteros pushed a mental link in Lich's direction, getting sick of waiting, "Lich?".

In response, Lich's head snapped in Anteros's direction and it hissed as though it hadn't noticed the Scout.

He pushed, again, "what are you doing here?".

Lich's panting and hissing abruptly stopped, and the Soldier froze. Two seconds passed, and the elder male slowly got back up to stand on its hind legs, and turned to face Anteros, fully. The fear was somewhat abated, but the Soldier was evidently not well. Something in Anteros felt worried, seeing an elder, stronger of his kind, afraid. And wounded.

The wound wasn't spraying liquid in every direction, but instead, a slow and steady outflow of blood trickled out of Lich's side, down its leg, and ate away at the floor. That... usually only happened when there was barely any blood left, in the body...

It looked as though something with a massive set of jaws had bitten a large chunk out of the Soldier's body and hip. Anteros could see, however, that parts of the wound weren't bleeding. Cauterized. Burned.

Lich swayed on its feet, almost stumbling, and finally spoke, "the Hunters are here...".

Anteros seized on that, immediately knowing that the term was distinct from any reference to humanity, "`hunters`? What are `hunters`?".

Lich's legs seemed to fold underneath it, and it collapsed, keeling over onto its side. Anteros lowered himself to a crouch, and crawled slowly forward. He suddenly very much wanted Lich to keep talking— to tell him what else was on Guardian. What he'd just seen, a minute ago, hadn't been Human after all, it seemed.

"What are they, Lich?", he demanded. The Soldier was utterly still, and appeared to be getting weaker by the second. He could see that its heart was struggling to function properly, but nevertheless, the elder male answered, "they are... alien. Strong. Fast. They are death, made physical... they are the Hunters... the Hive will be destroyed— there is no escaping them... you must flee... Anteros... you must find a way to flee...they are... they are...", it said, tone completely hollow and voice losing volume.

"Superior...", its voice petering out on the last syllable... Anteros saw the Soldier's heart stop beating... and he felt genuine pain for Lich...

The Soldier's body curled in on itself, joints popping and cracking, as though to give sound to a soundless, slow death. As he watched the last sparks of light fade from Lich's brain, Anteros felt the compulsion to say something to it. To do something for it. But he didn't know what.

He stayed there, for a while, near the corpse, not knowing how to feel about it. Not knowing what to think. Eventually, seeing that it was on the verge of burning through the floor, he picked up the body and dragged it into a nearby apartment, and laid it on the bed. He didn't know why he did it... and he didn't know why the death meant anything to him. The Hive had meant nothing but pain, for Anteros, and leaving it gave him no grief. But having been told that the Hive would be destroyed, and believing it... he felt an immense sense of loss. For the Hive, for Lich, for Mother— he wasn't sure, anymore. He... supposed that the notion that everything about you and of you would be wiped from the world was a... unique sort of grief. The end of something that big, that you were once a part of... it hurts, even if you don't want it to.

And Lich... well, Lich had been the only Xenomorph in the Hive that had even slightly understood Anteros, as a person, and... Lich had understood a lot more than it—... than he knew. If things had been different, if they'd met at some point before he met Samantha... Lich might have been a friend in an ocean of monotonous uniformity.

Anteros couldn't shake that notion, now! He somehow knew, in the deepest pit of his gut... that he'd just watched the closest thing he might have had to a real brother... die. He might have had a brother... and now he was dead... but, how could he feel loss over something he'd never had in the first place?

Grief is a funny thing. Most times, you know what you're sad about. But others... you don't quite understand what you're mourning for until after it's already gone. Then, you're left with the baggage...

Anteros collected his bags and continued his journey. If what Lich had said was true, then he'd have to get back to Samantha, quickly. They might have to leave Guardian a lot sooner than either of them could manage...

I'm sorry, Lich... I'm sorry that I never found you, sooner. If things had been different— if I'd done a few things differently... we might have been friends. Or at least, I might not have felt so alone...

---

Zazin' watched Hult-nah'Mei-jadhi's work from across the room. He had spent at least thirty units running her through the process of skinning, stripping, and cleaning Ahgai'Palak skulls, and she'd proven a quick learner. Seven skulls, in all, were hers to claim, he'd left his kills on the planet. He already had enough Serpent skulls to fill three land-fills. Any more than that, for its own sake, would be redundant.

He stood in the Ship's Cleaning Room— a large, circular area with enough space in it to hold fifty men. Vapors blanketed the floor and display cabinets in the walls were left open and empty, ready to be filled by an influx of Trophies. He stood leaning against one of the six pillars in the room — tool cabinets — and watched as Hult-nah'Mei-jadhi was just about finishing the last of the skulls, her completed work lined up on the table to her left. She stood in front of a raised platform, holding a skull above a portable tray, and raking a buzzing, vibrator tool across the surface of the bone. Chunks and shavings of Kiande Admeha flesh were piled on the tray, below, and other trays on the table were filled with gray-matter and other organs. A single, large jar was filled to the brim with acidic blood, after having been drained from each Trophy.

Zazin' was dressed in a knee-length black and gold robe— the same one that he'd had cleaned a matter of hours ago. Metallic "sandals" on his feet and what amount to leather "boxer-briefs", allowed the thin, soft robe to be loosely draped around his shoulders. There was a series of magnetic clips that served the purpose of "buttons", but he didn't bother with them. He'd cleaned and hung up his armor and weapons, in his quarters, taking a bath. Having wrestled his four-nok-long "dreadlocks" into being weaved through a series of increasingly small tress-rings, hanging down his back: he was dressed as casually as a Yautja Elite can be.

Hul'Mei, meanwhile, had returned her armor and equipment to the ship's armory, wearing the same blue and orange-colored sashes and assembly of straps, beads, pins, and "bikini" that she'd had on when he first met her— though without his Bio-Mask, she appeared to be clouded in a varying array of oranges, yellows, and crimsons in sharp, detailed infrared. Micro-circuitry being used in various pieces of her clothing to hold different temperatures and maintain some vibrance in a Yautja's natural vision. Her plaits, being barely more than a nok-and-a-half long, went without decoration.

It would sound odd to an Ooman that male Yautja had scalp-tendrils that grew infinitely in length, throughout their lifetime, while that of female Yautja grew down to stop before the shoulders and stayed at that length, forever. It would also seem odd that, because of this, male Yautja would have piercings and jewels branded onto their plaits with every accolade and accomplishment gained, while female Yautja did nothing with theirs, or usually did nothing with them.

He'd been reading reports from the Hunts still-in-progress on the planet, below, from a hologram-projector attached to his wrist, as he waited for her work to be done. She was doing fine, so he felt no need to scrutinize her work. However, that didn't mean he didn't notice that she'd had a troubled look on her face for a while, and that she kept glancing at him every so often. Making odd grunts and sighing unsubtly.

He'd seen this sort of thing, before, a few times. She clearly had something to say or wanted to talk about something, but had some irrational aversion to just coming out and saying it— so she kept trying to instigate an inquiry from him via frustratingly indirect invitations, just so that she wouldn't be the one to have "started it". Even though it was likely something entirely benign. If it were something negative, or she wanted to say something to wound him, this sort of inhibition would be nonexistent. He should know: his blood-sisters were plenty of evidence. Fairly typical, he knew. In older Yautja women, this dynamic would typically reverse itself, such that they were never silent when wanting to make a point of something, but tight-lipped when of the mind to spout insults.

... he sometimes wondered if Ooman women were the same... it wouldn't be the first time he'd perceived uncanny parallels between the two species. As blasphemous as that would sound to the typical Yautja's sensibilities.

As such, he was patiently waiting for her speak up. If she were anything like Vo'grat-Guan, she would eventually realize her folly and work out a way of spitting it out to suit her idiosyncrasies. Or she might do something entirely different. He waited for her to surprise him. The entire point of their Pact was to get to know each other, after all.

Hult-nah'Mei-jadhi finished cleaning the last of her Trophies, and placed it next to the other six on a separate table to her left. One of the skulls had a long, thin hole in the forehead, another was in two pieces, and a third... had the yellow Sigil of Bright Spear (an upside-down "v", with a hollow circle and horizontal, curved line underneath it) branded onto the forehead, and her name and place-of-birth carved onto the jawbone, "Hult-nah'Mei-jadhi, of Luminous Villa, on Colony-World: Devoted Hearth". It was the skull of the Ahgai'Palak she had slain in hand-to-hand combat— what with having stomped its neck and spinal chord into pulp. Not a bad haul for a neophyte. If she didn't already have Inherent Blooding, he'd give her Blooded status, on the spot.

But what did he know? He wasn't a Bright Spear, nor a member of their High Enclave.

Hul'Mei stepped back from the table and stared at her Trophies with a look that was almost sullen, but mostly blank. Mandibles relaxed, mouth closed, eyes slightly lidded. Her head canted from side-to-side, and she seemed to wince, as though she didn't know what to think of her accomplishment. He turned off his wrist-projector and crossed his arms to study her. She pulled one of the sashes over her chest aside with a claw and seemed to look at the scar above her right breast, just under the collar bone. Her lower mandibles flexed and her eyes conveyed something akin to affection at the sight of the blemish, but when she looked at the skulls in front of her, her face turned stony, again.

A Chiva-age lad would have been beaming with shoulders high and confidence higher at the sight of his achievement, and Zazin' had seen more than one lass display a similar level of elation. In all living things, there existed the desire to fight and dominate. To rend and tear and destroy things, just to know it was possible. And he could tell that Hul'Mei had felt that same exhilaration, on the planet below.

But on the issue of her Trophies, she seemed conflicted.

Abruptly, she looked to her left, at him. He tracked her gaze as it darted to and from every inch of his figure— his eyes, then his exposed chest and stomach, then his crotch, then his feet, thighs, crossed arms, his mouth and mandibles, and back to his eyes. She glanced at the Trophies, seeming to imagine what it had taken to bring down the Serpents, and stared at him, again. Her pupils dilated and tusks flexed, for a few moments too long.

He raised a brow at her. Again?

She didn't seem to notice his reaction, and after staring at her prizes for some time, chuffed, turned around, and walked toward the exit.

"Where are you going?", he asked.

"Your room", she replied, not looking at him, tone completely deadpan.

If he were anyone else, he probably would have had her punished in some way for speaking disrespectfully to an Elite, like that, but... he'd never cared that much about etiquette. Not in regard to himself, at least. Besides, his failure to enforce such standards when he'd first met the woman more or less meant that he waived the right to do so, this far into their relationship. But that was no mystery and not worth noting, in itself.

He took note of it because Hul'Mei had never done it, before. After their Pact of The Supplicant's Last Resort, she'd done nothing but stay within the confines of "respectful" behavior. That she didn't bother, now, likely meant that something was bothering her. Probably what she'd been wanting to say to him for the past cycle.

And Zazin' was admittedly curious.

After she left, he placed her Trophies in special lockboxes for safekeeping, tied them together with a spool of filament, and carried them over his shoulder in a storage-net to his quarters, where she said she would be.

Hult-nah'Mei-jadhi sat, cross-legged, on the floor to the left of the bed, staring at a holographic image projected from a device on her wrist that he hadn't noticed, before now. As though her copious amount of bracelets were meant to disguise the thing as a trinket. She glanced up at him as he entered, going back to staring at her wrist-projector. She seemed more sullen, now, and looked as though she had an ultimatum that was proving difficult to cope with.

Dropping her Trophies on the bed, he wordlessly went and sat on the floor, next to her, on her right.

Looking at the hologram, he saw what appeared to be the image of a man on a surgery table, with multiple mechanical-arm-mounted syringes being injected into him. He had the look of someone biting back pain, and there were multiple other Yautja standing around him. Including an Arbitrator, judging by the customary Combi-Stick that the warrior held in their left hand— the Inquisitor "badge-of-office".

Zazin's' mandibles folded inward in distaste. He knew what this picture was of. The man on the table, a Bad Blood, had committed a grievous crime, and in order to atone for it, was sentenced to Genetic Debasing... Exile from the Glory of Yautja Blood.

The punishment was a series of gene-therapy and neuro-chemical medical procedures that were designed to... "augment" the convicted felon. Usually by way of changing the genetic structure of the one in question, and transforming them into a hybrid of themselves... and a non-sapient, typically quadrupedal animal. Earth-based canines sometimes being used as the template, other creatures from other worlds, other times. Either way: the one that underwent the procedure would spend the rest of the rest of their life as an animal. No longer Yautja, no longer a person... less than an Unblooded. They would be henceforth known as a Fractioned-One.

Fractioned-Ones typically retained some of their previous memories and identity... but it was largely overridden by artificial tampering to keep them unwise, clouded-of-mind, and most of all, subservient. They were usually kept around and used by their former Clan as attack-dogs on Hunts, sentries against intruders, or beasts-of-burden.

Genetic Debasing was a sentencing that always left an acrid taste in Zazin's' mouth. Fortunate that it was only ever done to the absolute worst of Bad Blood kind, for whom even a painful, prolonged death was too great a mercy. The logic being that if the criminal wanted so badly to act the part of a savage beast, then they would be forced to walk as one for the rest of their existence. And as disturbing as it was, to Zazin', he felt absolutely no pity for the people who'd been historically subjected to it (4).

Family bloodlines meant everything to the Yautja. Heritage and Ancestry were the pillars of their culture, alongside Honor, and Prowess. And despite how advanced their skill at biological manipulation was, one's genes being altered was a fate that no one but the most depraved and evil deserved. And when a Yautja uses a term as morally-charged as "evil", it means something.

Hence why U'darahje... "PredAliens"... "Abominations"... were considered a more glorious target than even a Queen Ahgai'Palak...

He looked at Hul'Mei with no small amount of confusion. Why she had that image stored on her wrist-projector, or why she was looking at it, now, was a mystery.

He elbowed her arm, gently, speaking softly, "who's the Fractioned-One?". He didn't want to assume anything...

Hul'Mei looked at him with something close to weariness, before holding a button on her wrist-projector to zoom in on the Bad Blood's face. She inhaled, deeply, and sighed, before saying, "that... was a Bright Spear Clan Elder...".

"What were his crimes?", Zazin' asked, paying more attention to Hul'Mei's mannerisms than the picture.

Her lower mandibles stretched outwards, tusks waving about, and her eyes scrunched in a grimace. The fist she held aloft, adorned with the wrist-projector, clenched hard, with whitened knuckles. "All of them...", she said, voice thick with disgust.

She glared at the image, hatred almost palpable enough to taste on the air, before she angrily thumbed a button on the device and turned it off, letting her hand fall to her lap. She stared at the floor, anger turning to moody spite. He waited— sensing she wasn't done talking about it...

"Among the highest of his crimes...", she murmured, "... was Trophy-theft".

When he gave no response, after a few moments, she looked at him as though she were searching for something in his face. Her eyes darted to each of his mandibles, and he kept his expression stoic, but curious. He... legitimately wasn't quite certain how Trophy-theft was important, here, but he sensed that she would tell him. And that the next few minutes would be rather edifying.

She looked forward for a few moments, taking a deep breath, before saying, "he stole Trophies from the cabinets of his brothers, murdered his Hunting partners and took credit for their kills...".

She looked to him again, face grave with seriousness, mandibles tucked close to her mouth, and told him, "he used those Trophies to give himself his status. Rising to the station of Clan Elder without anyone knowing his deception, until after he'd already been given a seat on the Bright Spear Council of Elders...".

A pause...

She looked down, "and used his power to commit his other atrocities...".

Zazin' paid attention. She was clearly very... passionate about this topic, and he could tell that she was using this opportunity to vent. He wasn't certain how cleaning her own Trophies would make her think of this Bad Blood's actions... but he suspected he would find out, with the right questions...

He asked, "and when he was caught?".

Hul'Mei didn't look up, "he was tried and convicted by the Council of Ancients for every crime under the Twin Suns... and sentenced to Exile from the Glory of Yautja Blood...", tone, blank... but with a touch of sorrow.

"Who was he, to you?", he asked. She didn't answer, and barely acknowledged his question, only seeming to deflate at it. He watched her for a while to see if he'd offended her in some way, but he couldn't tell.

Zazin' thought of asking something else to dismiss it, and had shifted to do so, leaning forward... but the moment he did, he saw that her expression was quickly turning darker.

He could see her fists clench in her lap, and she frowned deeply, "the Bad Blood...". She winced, as though saying the words physically hurt, "he...".

He could hear an audible hiss of pain— of frustration come from her maw, and did nothing to provoke her.

She tried again, clearly becoming frustrated with herself, "the Bad Blood...", but still unable to get out the words.

Her mandibles flexed and swiveled in their sockets, as though confusedly cycling between every possible expression. Her mouth ratcheted open and closed, shakily. Her eyes and brow were deeply furrowed— her gaze frozen on a single spot and mired in distraught shame. Her hands came up to her forehead and she hunched over, breathing loudly in an attempt to calm herself. Her plaits, short as they were, tensed and vibrated.

It looked like she was having a nervous fit... but he knew this was an issue of self-loathing. She wanted to say something — something that had been on her mind for years — terribly badly but was too afraid of the possible repercussions of saying it. And she hated that about herself— hated that she had anything to feel ashamed of, at all, and hated that she couldn't say it, even after so long. She felt she could trust him, but didn't know entirely for sure... and she hated that, too.

He understood her pain, perfectly... it was how he felt when he'd first told Vo'grat-Guan of his previous relationship...

So, he did what Vo-Gua had done, for him, back then...

He extended an open palm out in front of Hul'Mei, well within her vision. At the sight of his hand, she froze and stared at it. Her breathing stopped, and her hands lowered from her head. She looked at him, mandibles slackened, with an expression that spoke of great fear and want. He gave her a look of calm, staring her in the eye without the slightest hint of hesitation or suspicion.

I will not judge you, he tried to tell her via eye-contact.

She stared at him, frowning, and looked to his hand.

She blinked at it. Once. Twice. Thrice. And finally put a hand in his. He held firm and tried with every tendon in his body to convey through the contact complete solidarity. He knew how much this was needed, and he knew that this sort of pain could not be resolved through any other method.

The air thickened with tension, for both of them. She squeezed his hand, hard, and he returned it. Hult-nah'Mei-jadhi's face gradually released its torn strain, her posture straightened, and her breathing slowed. She took a deep breath, and sighed. He stood by for her testament, not impatient and not expecting it from her.

"The Bad Blood was my father...", she mumbled.

Her eyes closed. Her grip on his hand tripled in strength, and a long, wheezing breath left her lungs. Still afraid, though unbelievably relieved at having finally allowed disclosure.

She's been keeping all of this a secret for decades...

She waited for some response from him. A tension in her back and legs told him that she expected shouting, or having to flee. When none came, she slowly, cautiously, turned to look at him to gauge his response.

When she found only his head tilted to one side in curiosity, eyes squinted in tactful fascination... she, seeming to move almost robotically, released his hand and slowly draped an arm around his shoulders, her eyes searching his and his posture for any sign of change in attitude as she moved closer to him. The briefest pause to see if he'd stop her from doing so. She turned about, getting up to her knees to face him. When she saw him get up to do the same, she froze in fear, before he held out his arms...

The two embraced, her face hanging over his shoulder. She produced a low, keening whine— the closest thing to "crying" a Yautja could do, as she shook, and Zazin' simply held her, emitting his own rumbling groan to show acceptance and understanding.

"Hugs" weren't very common in Yautja custom. Comfort wasn't often sought out by anyone except in cases of one's impending death or from small children. Despite their propensity for casual polygamy and intense martial training, the Yautja were a people that were only ever "physical" when and if it served a pragmatic purpose. Zazin' didn't know the reason why that was... but he knew it was folly. Vo'grat-Guan had shown him that... and he was surprisingly glad to share it with Hul'Mei.

It seems she may not have to wait until the end of our agreement, he thought to himself. She's shown competence, wisdom beyond her years, and her fair share of pain...

So far... she was scoring a lot of points! He was convinced that the priggish attitude she'd had, yesterday, was a facade or a way of coping with the stress of banishment.

"Why are you not angry?...", she asked, voice painfully small, "I thought... I was always told that if I ever told anyone, I would be cast out and abandoned by them...".

Zazin' saw no point in sugarcoating it, "someone else might have...", he told her, honestly. As to why he wasn't angry, "I don't imagine living with that kind of heritage is a blessing of any sort... and I have my own secrets to keep...".

He hugged her a bit tighter.

"I know what it is like... to feel as though you're on the edge of being a pariah...".

Eventually the pair released each other. She ended the matter with a succinct "thank you...", and they sat there on the floor, facing each other. He gave her a smile, and she returned it. She was no longer tense, or sullen. Content. Relaxed.

He nodded at the boxed Trophies on the bed, just behind her, "I can tell you're less than ecstatic about your prizes". She glanced behind herself, and nodded sheepishly. "Something to do with him?", he asked.

Her tusks and mandibles remained stiff as she answered, eyes down at her fingers as they picked at his sandals, "not... strictly speaking. Though... that does count for a lot of it...".

She looked at him, "you noticed my... attempts at getting your attention, earlier?". While she was cleaning her Trophies.

He nodded, upper mandibles flicking themselves outward in affirmative.

She huffed, and seemed to think of how to put it, "I... I wanted to say to you that I fail to see the value in Trophy-taking... but I didn't know how to say it...". Her eyes darted to his face to see if her words had done any damage, and he kept his expression stoic— a brow raised and lower mandibles pressed down and to the sides, waiting for more.

Apparently gaining some confidence and finding the right words, she straightened up and spoke, "it is... I understand the desire to improve our lot, and advance our species. Ascension through adaptation. And I... accept..." she said this with uncertainty, "that Chivas and keeping the Unblooded from reproduction is the most... efficient way to go about it...".

She winced at him, with something almost resembling sympathy, "but I cannot see why Trophies and a higher skull-count should grant someone power...".

"I mean...", she quickly amended, wanting to make herself most clear, "... why should being a better killer... a better Hunter give someone more influence in politics?", she asked. He couldn't quite discern if she meant it to be a rhetorical question. He looked his right and frowned in thought of it...

She shook her head at her lap, "if it weren't for the fact that having more Trophies translates to having more Honor... my father wouldn't have gotten the power that he did...". She sounded almost bitter.

She looked at him, again, with a serious gaze, "that was the entire reason my mother was able to get me banished. Others on the Council of Elders had been complicit in my father's crimes, and owed their continued position to her silence about it". When he gave no input, she stared at the floor, again, and scratched at her neck in a nervous tick.

Apparently the Bright Spear leadership cared more about keeping their perches than purging Hish-Qu-Ten-philanderers from their Clan... he was surprised, but the more jingoistic side of him took vindication in the news that the Bright Spear Council of Elders were, apparently, Honorless.

Zazin' could somewhat see her point, and he'd sometimes wondered about similar matters of philosophy. In the history of Yautja Prime, the most contentious thing to divide their species (before Nightstorm's cage-rattling, that is) was something akin to this very issue, with some Clans promoting their members based on their prowess at the Hunt, and others instead doing so based on knowledgeableness or by vote. Slowly, the Clans that did the former, over time, consistently outperformed those that opted for the latter, and it had been quite a few centuries since any Clan had not used a meritocracy based on martial prowess.

He understood her position, but he saw a few problems with it. Not that he found fault with her for it— it actually interested him. Even Vo'grat-Guan, given her uniqueness, was entirely supportive of Trophy-procurement and power-through-prowess. As such, she took pains to make certain their pups were being trained well... unlike some people...

"I do not think that it is entirely being a better killer that grants a person power over others...", he posited. She squinted at him, willing to hear it, but concerned that he might say something disheartening. "For one, those with senior age are almost always regarded above their equals in combat", he pointed out, earning a nod of concession from her. A minor "surrender", as she seemed to realize she'd missed something fairly obvious.

"And for another... `having killed many things` isn't the same as `being Honorable`...", he said. Her mandibles flexed about with visible tension— skepticism. He asked her, "if your father hadn't had at least the ability to act more respectable than he actually was, do you think he would have gotten anywhere near as much success as he did?".

She remained doubtful, but in the way her eyes narrowed, he could see that she was second-guessing her memory. She eventually answered, "no... they did say that his skill at deception was only outstripped by his charisma...".

He nodded, gesturing with a hand, "being a skilled warrior is all well and good, but without the right character and favorable traits, one will find ascension much more difficult". He added, "do you imagine that I would have my status as Elite if I'd spent my entire career spiting everyone around me or strong-arming people into doing as I wanted?".

She examined him a moment before shaking her head, no. She was now in deep thought, likely reevaluating her experience.

He finished his point, "it is ultimately strength-of-character and the ability to bring others to your side that makes for real power. Hence why your father's `reign` was cut short. Every moment that he was swindling people and bringing them under his control, he wasn't being true to himself. When one lives a lie, they cede any chance of victory".

She looked at him, side-on, with some last remaining vestige of doubt, before nodding ruefully, "... I concede the point".

"And in any case...", he added, "... for most males, Trophies are just a means to gain reproductive rights. We don't typically pay much mind to attaining political station until after we find ourselves capable of it". He said this dryly, with a very measured amount of reservation in his tone.

Hult-nah'Mei-jadhi blinked at him, and her mandibles twitched, with a perplexed frown, "I thought men needed only to pass a Chiva to gain the right to breed?".

He tilted his head, left-side mandibles twisting outward, "technically, yes. But having one or two Kiande Admeha skulls typically won't net you very much in the way of rutting", he said, a with rueful smile.

She blinked, frowned hard, and looked at the Trophy cases behind her head, then staring at the floor for a moment with suspicion, before asking him, "it won't?". Clearly in utter disbelief, now that she had a benchmark for what it took to kill Ahgai'Palak.

For an instant, he wondered if she was being a hypocrite. She'd sought him out, an Elite, despite herself being a complete neophyte. But then he remembered that she only wanted an Elite mate because of her mother's arbitrary standards... and Hul'Mei, herself seemed rather... sheltered, in his estimation, so he guessed that she also wasn't all that acquainted with the Yautja "mainstream". Devoted Hearth, the planet she was born on, was rather out-of-the-way. It seemed likely to him that the whole fiasco of her getting herself banished occurred maybe a year or two after she'd left her homeworld in adulthood.

He shook his head, "a newly-Blooded male is lucky to be able to compete for a woman's cloaca, much less be propositioned by her...".

She glared at some unknown object, off to the side, in evident confusion. "It's typically those with Titles that get the attention, Elites more-so. Arbitrators usually get the easiest go of things...", he elaborated, helpfully.

After a solid unit of intense thought, her expression turning more and more dark, before she finally asked, "do... are most women Elite...?". She asked it with an apprehensive look on her face, as though afraid of the answer. Afraid she already knew the answer, and feeling dull for having to ask.

He liked Hul'Mei. She wore her emotions on her sleeve much more often than most...

Zazin-Vor'mekta answered, honestly, expression plain and tone even, "three-quarters of them never bother to advance beyond their Inherent Blooding", with a shrug. He could get a sense of what would be her reaction to this, but knew better than to try and coax it out of her...

She stared at him, hard, mandibles twisting in every direction. She looked to the side and croaked out, "that is...", a long pause, "... unfair?..." she said, drawing out the word, her eyes slowly swiveling in his direction as she did. She seemed to say it with enough certainty, but somehow felt that doing so was an admonish-able offense.

Zazin' was careful to take a middle-ground stance, for the time being, "they certainly have high standards" he said, with a shrug. This conversation was certainly proving to be an enlightening one. And because he'd barely said a single thing, one way or the other (beyond neutral statements of fact), he could know that her words weren't a facade.

His mistake with... Her, cursed be Her name... had been spouting his opinions too early and too freely. Allowing Her to tell him everything he'd wanted to hear...

Hult-nah'Mei-jadhi frowned, deeply, and shook her head. She looked almost dismayed with confusion. She looked at him, searchingly, "it can't be that having more Trophies makes one more attractive, is it?".

Zazin'... resisted the urge to laugh, aloud, instead forcefully exhaling to expel the humor. If any other woman had heard Hul'Mei say that, their immediate response would likely be something to the affect of: "tsk— of course it does! Don't be so dull!".

"You seemed to think so, earlier, today...", he pointed out, a hand on his chin. At her confusion, he reminded her, "planet-side, as we were leaving...".

Her mandibles scrunched together in sheepishness at the memory, but she didn't quite catch his meaning. He would have to demonstrate...

He leaned forward, "when you lost your head as you thought of me killing the Queen, at the heart of the infestation. The idea that I, and I alone, without help or guidance, charged into the heart of the Hive with nothing but my armor and weapons. Surrounded on all sides by Ahgai'Palak, at every moment, yet never being touched by them...". He could see her mandibles slacken, and her mouth hinge open, ever-so-slightly...

"The fact that I came away from the ordeal with no injuries, and that no one on the ship but Yak-a'Shen even knew I was gone. That I could have died without anyone knowing it until after the fact...", he said. His use of flowery language and the slight rasp in his tone had the desired effect: her pupils were dilated and her eyes glazed over, not quite looking at him, anymore.

He waited, silently. He had a knack for knowing what she was thinking, he believed. Her mouth hung open, now, eyes repeatedly blinking, and her upper-body seeming to sway, a bit. Now that he'd put the image in her head, her mind was doing all the work. A faint hissing sound could be heard, and her breathing intensified. Zazin' made sure to hold his breath to avoid breathing in the pheromones. On a woman two-hundred years older, this sort of "trance" state would be infinitely harder to accomplish...

... he couldn't deny that the sight of it made his own guts churn in want... but he had a point to make.

Zazin' abruptly leaned in and used his claws to gently prod at that special cluster of nerves on her bare stomach. The result was Hult-nah'Mei-jadhi jolting and recoiling, her arms whipping into something approximate of a guard-position, and a choked, startled bark tearing from her throat. Coming part-way back to her senses, she looked about herself, remembering where and when she was, and stared at him. Her expression turned confused and a bit hurt. She shook her head, vigorously, rubbing at her forehead and eyes.

Knowing she'd be disoriented, for a while, and having a surreal go of things, Zazin' gave her thigh a sharp pinch to bring her further back to lucidity.

She groaned, loudly, seeming to become annoyed with him. "Don't do that...", she mumbled, covering her face, her voice an octave or two deeper and a bit distorted. He couldn't tell if she was referring to the pinch or to his ad hoc "hypnosis" shtick.

"You see how easily that happened?", he asked.

"Yes, what is your point?!", she snapped, lowering her hands and giving him a very peeved look.

He held up a hand to ask patience, "I'm trying to prove to you how much the quantity of Trophies matters. Just humor me, for a minute, or two...".

She huffed, unhappily, looking away, and scratching at the back of her head, which he took as an "okay".

"Do you remember what you were thinking of?", he asked, tone urgent.

She snorted in displeasure, responding, irritated, "yes— but I'm not doing that, again!". A subtle growl hung in her throat— she was not very happy with him, at the moment.

"I don't want you to", he assured her, without quite thinking through his words, "just focus, for a moment, on that feeling. What exactly were you thinking that made your body act up?".

She now looked confused, again, "of you killing the Queen Serpent", she said, impatiently, as though he'd asked if Plasma Casters were dangerous.

He sighed, realizing he'd just lied to her, "not that. Alright— please, Hul'Mei. Can you please go back to that state and remember what you were thinking of?", he pleaded. He leaned in and looked at her from under his brow, concertedly.

She gave him a long, dubious look, frowning. He held her gaze and tried to make it clear that he had no ill-intentions. He understood that it was surreal and frightening for her— it had been, for Vo'grat-Guan, too. If she didn't want to do it, there was nothing to make her do so. Given the context, and his phrasing, this was a favor he was asking for, not an order. In her eyes, he could see that she was genuinely perturbed by the idea, despite having the slightest modicum of curiosity.

Eventually, though, she sighed and closed her eyes, "fine". Still somewhat peeved.

"Thank you. Now...", he said, "what do you see in your mind when you think of my killing the Queen and her five Royal Guards?".

Hul'Mei frowned to herself, seemingly trying to enter the trance while keeping her mind awake. He grabbed her hand and held it, "just relax. I'll bring you out of it the moment we're done, and it will only take a few minutes...".

The woman, her tusks gnashing together in indecision for a moment or two, eventually obeyed, and took a deep breath.

He waited. Listening closely for that tell-tale hissing noise, like a small gas-leak from a pipe. Thirty seconds, later, he heard it. Her face was expressionless, eyes closed and mandibles slack, again. Though loudened, her breathing remained steady and consistent, unlike before. She seemed to reach an ideal middle-ground. He adjusted himself, on the floor scooting a bit closer, and whispered, "Hul'Mei? Do you hear me?".

Her mandibles only twitched in response, but after a moment, she spoke, "yes". Her voice was monotone.

"What do you see when you think of it?", he asked.

She was slow to respond, and her head and neck swayed on her shoulders, "many... images... of you fighting the Queen Ahgai'Palak... running through a pair of Sainja with one end of a spear... surrounded by a horde of them, going untouched... running... fighting... nude?...". She clearly had some lucidity, it seemed, as that last part confused her.

Typical...

He asked her, "what do those images make you feel, when you think of them? What do you want to do when you see them?".

Her head tilted to one side, a very slight frown coming over her features at the more complex question, but she answered. "They... make me feel... warm and... aroused...", her breathing became a tad louder, her voice gaining some more inflection, "when I think of you killing them... fighting them, all at once... it makes me want to... grab you... and... and pull you close...". Her voice was getting more flustered and slightly deeper-pitched with each word.

I'm afraid you're not alone in that..., he thought, digging his claws in the palm of the hand that wasn't holding hers.

He cut off her descriptions with another question, "what words come to mind when you think of me, that way? How would you describe me, in this state?". He was having trouble keeping his own voice from distorting.

She didn't respond for a long time...

He thought she might have lost the trance, but she eventually said, "when I see you in my mind, fighting and... roaring... I think of... strength... skill... reliability... power... virility...", she paused, head twisting downwards, "... sexy...", she finished, her voice taking on a decidedly more wanton tone.

Zazin' resisted the urge to roll his eyes.

"And when you think of me in those terms, it makes your blood quicken?", he asked.

"Yes...", she said, any amount of inhibition seeming to have disappeared. She was becoming more accustomed to the trance, and taking it in stride, as he'd predicted.

As he was about to ask his final question, he leaned forward and readied his claws to poke at her stomach-nerves, again. He paid very close attention to her face, as he spoke, next, "and what if I told you that in the Trophy-Room of my home on Yautja Prime, there are three-hundred-twenty-seven Ahgai'Palak skulls? Six of them being Queens, thirty-two: Royal Guards? All of them under my name?".

Her breathing halted entirely, and she froze, mandibles ratcheting open, wide. Her face contorted itself— first into one of shock, then something akin to pain. A pause... and her entire body shook and quivered, violently, the hand he held closing into a death grip, and a loud, unabashed, rumbling moan erupted from the deepest pits of her throat. A sound that, along with power, retained an immense femininity. It could be felt through the metal floor, her plaits were shaking like the tails of rattlesnakes, and her mandibles were folded so tightly together that he could see luminescent blood drip down her chest.

The scent of her arousal on the air was... almost debilitating...

Almost...

The hand poised in front of her stomach, aimed at that cluster of nerve-endings that was the fear of many a man, stabbed its claws into her skin, hard. Just deep enough to draw a tiny amount of blood... but probably shallow enough that she wouldn't go berserk. The moment they went in, they were pulled out.

Just as well, as Hul'Mei eyes snapped open, and she barked to the ceiling, wide-eyed. Her arms rose to chest-level, her hand releasing his own. As though halted halfway through the motion, she locked up, as the pain was gone as quickly as it came. For a few moments, she stayed like that, stunned.

Zazin' leaned back and breathed, deeply.

She looked down at him, at the droplets of blood on her front and stomach, and at her hands. She looked at everything as though she couldn't quite believe any of it was real.

A beat passed.

She mumbled, voice still deepened by her hormones, not quite looking at him, "I need privacy...".

Zazin' nodded, understandingly, and stood up to leave the room. "Find me in the mess hall when you're done".

---

Half an hour later, after many flagons of water on his part, she eventually did meet him in the mess hall.

Now... Zazin-Vor'mekta, of Sentinel Estate, on Homeworld: Yautja Prime, would be slightly ashamed to admit that, more or less halfway through that entire thing... he'd kind of completely forgotten what exactly the point of it, was. He'd had some idea, in terms of how to go about it, but the context and the actual purpose behind it sort of... got lost in translation. However, with some food and drink in him, as he was very hungry, he remembered. And he was pleased to retroactively figure out that he'd achieved his goal, in the process.

She had called into question the notion that "more Trophies makes for more attraction", and he had pointed out that the mere mention of his recent feats had caused her to go chemical-brained, earlier this day. So, he'd taken her through that state-of-mind, again, and proved his point by outright demonstrating that, yes, the number of Trophies does, in fact, make a male Yautja more or less attractive to women. She'd felt difference, in this case. And he had not lied about the number Ahgai'Palak skulls in his house, thank you very much...

If she ever saw his Trophy Room, personally, her behavior, just now, would look benign and innocent, in comparison...

When Hult-nah'Mei-jadhi finally strolled up to his small, four-person, circular table and pulled up a chair to his left, he found her looking as though nothing had happened, whatsoever. Barring blue and orange pieces of cloth adorning the joints of her mandibles and a small line of triangle-shaped scars on her stomach, where his claws had entered, she seemed... completely normal. She sat next to him and, seeing the large plate of meats and fruit that he'd gathered on the table, before her, snatched a loaf of meat from the pile and took a bite.

She hadn't looked at him since she'd walked in... and she didn't speak.

"Alright?", he asked. She was, as far as he knew, a "virgin", so he didn't know how his off-brand, amateur hypnosis-session sat with her. If there was a problem, or if he'd gone too far, somehow, he wanted to know.

Hul'Mei looked to him, confused, still chewing on a chunk of meat. She glanced to the left and right, before swallowing.

He placed a hand on her bare shoulder, "are you okay?".

She blinked at him, frowning, then "Oh!"ed in realization. "Right... that, uh... that whole thing...", she mumbled. She seemed to go through the process of asking herself if she was okay, making various faces at an invisible object, above her, then looked at him and said, "yes", with a nod.

"You're certain?", he asked, nonchalant, "if it was too much, just tell me".

Hul'Mei looked him, snorted to herself, and assured him, "yes, Zazin', I'm fine. I just, uh...", she looked at the food in her hand, "... needed to relieve some tension, after that".

"And besides-", she said, "I... I think I enjoyed that...". She leaned back in her seat and played with one of her mandibles, staring across the room with a distant look. "... A lot— apart from the stabbing", she mumbled, squinting. He was about to ask something, but she abruptly sat up and addressed him, urgently, "do you actually have three-hundred Ahgai'Palak skulls?", in a tone that sounded as though he'd done something scandalous.

"Yes—", he said, raising a hand, "don't go chemical-brained, again— I'm entirely willing to douse you in water". He pointed at her with a (slightly theatrical) warning gaze, holding up his flagon in his off-hand for emphasis.

She smiled and rolled her eyes, assuring him, "I got it out of my system...". He nodded, taking a drink.

"All over the wash-room wall...", she added, at which, Zazin' made a choking noise, froze... then slowly finished his sip of water and set down his flagon.

He looked at her with slightly feigned irritation, and he could tell that she was on the edge of laughing at him. He pointed at her with his free hand, "you...", and squinted as he realized that he'd told her not to worry about making a mess, but said, anyway, "you're going to cleaning that up...".

She made a show of coyly crossing her arms and pouting at him, the tips of her mandibles touching together at their maximum length, "it was you who made the mess, Zazin-Vor'mekta...". Her tone and gaze took on a hitherto unseen sultry overtone. The only thing that was missing was a mating-thrum: add that, and any Youngblood with a half-functioning brain would be quaking in their boots at the sight of her. If she'd used this on him when they first met, their introduction might have been a lot different...

But probably not, though.

He stared at her, dryly, only having to somewhat fake his humorlessness.

She laughed to herself, suddenly, grinning, and said to him, appeasing, "I did clean it up", reaching over to pat his shoulder. She kept her hand there, for a moment, "in any case... thank you, for that, I suppose. It was...", she thought a moment, "... new", and retracted.

He nodded, accepting it, and bit into a naxa fruit, before asking, "but do you see my point?".

She thought for a moment, before saying, "somewhat...".

"I... can see how more Trophies makes for more attraction...", she said, pointing at him with a finger, "... and I can see why a man would want to have as many Trophies as possible...", she looked at him, as though she wasn't wholly sure of her answer. To him, it sounded like she got it, perfectly.

He nodded, "yes, that's pretty much the gist of it. Why do you say `somewhat`?".

She frowned and looked at her food, "I don't know".

Rather than pressing the issue, he let her think, eating his fill of meat and water. She nibbled on pieces of meat and ate from a potato-esque, red vegetable, still thinking. There was only one other person in the entire, seventy-nok-by-thirty-nok mess hall, a Young Blood cleaning something off the floor with a rag, out of ear-shot. The silence, wherein they ate, was a comfortable one— a relief, as he'd wondered if it might have become stale. He noticed that every so often, Hul'Mei would stare at him for long stretches of time, before avoiding looking at him for equally long periods. He didn't say anything, but took note of it.

Once the food on their table was all eaten, they both turned on their wrist-projectors, reading, watching footage. The hunt on the planet was going well. A few Unblooded had died in the course of their Chiva, but far fewer than expected. A good day for the Dark Blade Clan. Apparently, much to Zazin's' annoyance and resentment, Yak-a'Shen the Spry had been on the planet's surface, this entire time.

He supposed it had all worked out just fine, in the end, but if it had gone any other way, Yak-a'Shen's absence would have been a nightmarish stroke of bad luck. The crew would be returning to the ship, soon, as the Oomans were beginning to catch wind of their presence on the world. Some of the bridge-technicians were detecting other Clan-ships entering the system, and given that they'd gotten what they came to this world for, Yak-a' was ordering for a departure.

Zazin' made mental note to ask that he and Hul'Mei be given clearance for use of a Scout-Ship, to track down that Ooman, Weyland-Yutani vessel...

Eventually, at some point or another, Hul'Mei spoke up and got his attention, "I think...".

He raised a brow, immediately turning off his wrist-projector.

"I think it strikes me as wrong", she said, leaning back in her chair, arms crossed.

"That Trophies are the currency of courtship?", he asked.

"No—", she started to say, "well, that too, somewhat, but...", she rocked her head from side-to-side, "it seems unfair to me that all of the onus is put on males to prove themselves worthy of reproduction...".

She glanced at him to check for disapproval, and finding none, continued, "I think females should have to hunt and collect skulls, as well".

Zazin' crossed his own arms, and leaned on the table, chuffing, "well... not that I disagree, but unfortunately... men don't seek material accomplishment in mates, as far as I've seen", he said. "Women might have to collect Trophies, more often, if Elites like me, and others of high standing, decided to raise our standards, but, uh...", he frowned. "We just... don't seem to be attracted to Hunting prowess, in women", he finished, with a shrug.

She thought for a moment, before asking, "what do men find attractive in women, then?".

That was a complex question.

He intertwined his hands, elbows on the table, and thought of every possible answer. Because there were many, in varying degrees of commonality. For males, there really wasn't quite a single, uniform standard. Well... there might be, depending on who you ask, but that's just it...

It depends on who you ask.

"Well...", he began, "... I'd say that, for most newly-Blooded lads, it's enough that she have a uterus— they have no real standards or self-respect, whatsoever. For many middle-aged males, it's simply a matter of convenience and of being entertained...". He saw her squint at him, given that he was middle-aged, but he ignored it. "Though, as a man grows older, he begins to grow weary of the same, old chase-and-release affair, so he might attempt to court a woman he enjoys the company of, and Bond with her for some matter of years— an attempt at a mutualistic partnership".

Hul'Mei uncrossed her arms and leaned on the table.

Zazin' gestured as he spoke, "so... it's only when the bond is meant to last more than a week that a man thinks of his own preferences. Some look for partners with a certain vocation or skillset for the sake of pragmatism, some are drawn to certain attitudes or behavioral quirks...", he paused, still trying to think of more as he went. "I've heard that Arbitrators often look for women who are capable of traveling with them, and who can help in the arrest of Bad Bloods...", he trailed off.

"I suppose, at the end of the day... men just want a woman who can fit them, and who are pleasant to be around", he said, shrugging.

Hult-nah'Mei-jadhi took in his words and seemed to retract into herself, in... sadness? He couldn't tell, but it seemed as though what she was hearing didn't encourage her. He couldn't see why, though.

Picking up his flagon of water, he quipped, "'course, it also helps if she looks good— let's not make flank-speed into a black hole, here", before drinking.

She snorted and chuckled to herself, however rueful her smile.

"Do I look good, then?", she suddenly asked, sitting up and turning in her seat to face him. A smile on her face, and posing for him— one hand on the nape of her neck, the other on her hip.

He was still chugging his water, but his left eye started looking her over from beyond the brim of his cup. He set the thing down and turned to face her, himself, to make a show of examination. Was she especially good-looking, to him?

He'd never been the most fussy about appearance. After all... She, the baneful witch... had been more or less as beautiful as Yautja got. He was more concerned with the heart and mind— so far, Hul'Mei's were proving admirable, though he knew that could change with time. He'd felt the same about Vo'grat-Guan, at first, and even so, he'd discovered over time that there were some things he didn't quite like about her, however few.

But that was simply how people work. You deal with them, especially those you care for. And you wouldn't wish them to be any different. If they were any different, it wouldn't be them.

Hult-nah'Mei-jadhi, based on her appearance, to his eye, seemed to be... well, perfect. A bit like Vo'grat-Guan, now that he thought of it, though wildly, pleasantly different.

Her figure was like many Yautja women: supple buxomness overlaying firm muscle. The product of years of childhood martial training and plenty of food and sleep— a perfected formula from ages passed, proven to bring out the best of one's genes. In form and in function. The differences between Yautja women, therefore, were mostly in genetics. Which was by design, of course. Hul'Mei, in this case, was slightly more endowed than most, where it counted, and slightly less muscular than most. The small scars adorning her body, since this morning, added a subtle, extra dimension to it. He... well, he really liked the view— what could he say? He wasn't exactly an artist.

Her face, on the other hand, was very unique. Her Hish traits were what set her apart from others. Those traits being: her mandibles, longer and larger than normal— heftier, and with thicker tusks. The lower pair even extended forward from her face by half a nok. There was also the fact that her forehead was longer than other women, more sloped and going back farther. Apart from those features, her eyes being orange when viewed through a Bio-Mask was fairly rare, and in his natural vision, they seemed dashingly round and large. They were actually nowhere near as sunken into the sockets as other Yautja, which he now realized was also a Hish trait.

Yet, unlike a Hish-Qu-Ten, her face didn't have unpleasant layered pits and fleshy protrusions or callous ridging adorning it.

Despite all of this, she still managed to look undeniably feminine. Her facial proportions and structure were suitably angular and thin. Overall... she had an "exotic" flair to her. He couldn't say he disliked it, and he was fairly certain that she'd inherited the best from both sides of her lineage.

There was nothing "wrong" with her, to any degree, so he said what he thought was most true: "you look perfect".

He could tell that she hadn't been expecting the compliment by the way she recoiled at it, but she masked her surprise well, immediately feigning complete shock, hand on her chest in jest, "oh, really? Even though I'm a mixed-blood?", with a devious smile.

He gave a shrug, "you make it look desirable. I wouldn't throw you out of my chambers".

She raised a brow at him, his comment seemingly a bit too on-the-nose.

"Well, alright, I might have thrown you out of my chambers, at a certain point in time, but I definitely wouldn't, now", he declared.

Her grin became a bit too big, "I shall remember that, Zazin'".

---

Anteros had gotten the last of the bags over the gap in the floor, having to jump across into the hangar with four at a time to avoid dropping them. He placed the bags near to the bones and other ominous items of odious omens, and jumped up onto the top of the ship, crawling his way to just about where the captain's quarters were, and he knocked on the metal twice (waiting until after Samantha stopped panicking), and notified her that he was back.

When the cargo-bay door opened and extended, Anteros grabbed the bags and brought them to the door of the airlock, inside. By the time he did, Samantha had already gotten down the ladders and ran to him just as he'd set down everything.

Samantha threw herself at the alien, jumping up and hugging him with the fervor of a starving orphan. He returned the embrace, whole-heartedly, even as her weight and speed knocked him off-balance and put both of them in a heap, on the floor.

Their separation hadn't been fun for either of them, it seemed. With Lich's death and Sam having felt afraid for him for the entire time.

They brought their quarry to the kitchen and stuffed everything into the fridge that they could fit. He brought the items he'd found at the bottom of the pit, below, and explained the situation, and Samantha left said objects next to the duffel bag in the cockpit. She surmised that they would have time to examine them, later on, and he agreed.

Samantha kicked off her boots the moment she entered the captain's quarters, sending both objects sailing across the room's expanse, to hit the doors of the walk-in closet, on the far, right-hand wall. Within short order, her appropriated clothes were yanked off and thrown onto the swivel chair just to her left, until she wore nothing but a blank, tired stare on her face. Trudging toward the bed, she yanked open the red blanket and crawled onto the mattress.

She heard Anteros coming before she saw him, and looked over her shoulder to see him drop from the hole in the ceiling. Getting an excited grin on her face, she quickly crawled to either side of the bed, turning on the lava-lamps on either nightstand. She was just about to ask Anteros to turn off the lights, when they did so, instantly. He'd read her thoughts and always knew what she wanted.

She loved that about him.

All was dark, except for a deep, ocean-blue light on one side of the bed, and a bright, tangerine-orange on the other. The entire room, big as it was, was slathered in blue and orange, split along its middle.

Looking at Anteros from where he stood at the foot of the bed, she could imagine him passing as a piece of impressionist sculpture-work if he stood still for long enough. The left side of his body reflecting and absorbing a cobalt hue, and the right side doing the same with an even deeper amber shade than usual. "The duality of the Xenomorph", or some shit.

She made herself giggle, which felt great after the long day she'd had.

A few awkward moments passed, as Samantha waited for Anteros to come to bed, only for him continue standing there. She was just about to frown at him, when he asked, "where should I sleep, by the way?".

She snorted and frowned at him, "with me", she said, arms held out to either side, as though he'd just asked whether guns were dangerous.

She saw Anteros's head point from her, to the bed in front of him, back to her. He asked, again, "do you mean on the bed, or literally with you?".

"With me...", she said, again, easily.

"You're sure about that?", he asked.

She shrugged her shoulders, "I like to cuddle— can you blame me?".

A moment passed, as he seemed to think to himself, before he obligingly crawled onto bed, with her and laid down, on her right. Next to her, but not with her. She looked at him with a chiding expression, knowing that he knew what she wanted.

Anteros "looked" at her and chuffed, shaking his head, "fine. But I'm the big spoon".

"Of course", she agreed, turning away from him. She felt his chest touching her back, and she pushed herself into his larger frame. Knowing her every whim, his tail curled under the blanket and threw it over top of them.

She relished the new, warm, feeling of safety that came with his arms wrapping around her, one draped over her stomach and chest, the other underneath her neck. Even if he had a few rough edges about him, she still could find the best ways to contort herself; and though he wasn't quite "warm", her own body-heat would be encased and made to surround her by his frame. She had the biggest grin on her face, unable to contain the happy comfort, and constantly moving her legs, rubbing them together. It was a dream.

"That wasn't so hard, was it?", she asked, staring the blue lava lamp, four feet in front of her, as the wax in its bulb began to melt.

"You know I like you, a lot, Samantha, and we've crossed plenty of lines, already, but even this seems a bit much...", he said. His tone was only slightly jesting.

She laughed, "more than me undressing in front of you? And us basically pretend-flirting".

He didn't quite think of it as "flirting"— mostly just compliments, and him trying to be funny. "Yeah. Kind of", he said.

"Anteros...", she said, "it might just be me, and correct me if I'm wrong, but at this point in our friendship, I don't think it's crazy to say that if you were Human, we would be fucking like rabbits". She glanced over her shoulder, seeing an eyeful of teeth just behind her ear. "Or, that at least, we would have tried it, by now". Her tiredness had made her more bold and crass, than usual.

A long pause...

"Is that... would that be normal for Humans to do?", he asked.

She blinked, and thought.
"Well... if you were Human, and if everything leading up to now happened the way it did, then... I think so?", she said, shrugging. "Even if I found you ugly, or you were a woman, I think I would have considered being friends-with-benefits. Maybe. Possibly?".

"Huh", he said, slowly.

"Why do you ask?".

"Wouldn't that be a bit... fast?", he asked. The only metric he'd had for judging Human relationships, as opposed to casual sex, was Nigel's memories about his late wife...

She blinked at him, again, and surprisingly quickly, responded, "no. I don't think so. You're smart, funny, compassionate, sweet. And saving my life and keeping me safe, like you have, would count for a lot...". He could see, in her mind, that this was diverging very slightly out of the realm of hypotheticals.
"`The length of time isn't what matters, it's the quality of the time spent`", she said, directly quoting a piece of Idio-Galvanist philosophy.

"Hm", he mentally grunted, finding it interesting, despite both The Unknown and The Ancestral practically throwing a fit in utter confusion at the topic.

"Hell, maybe not just if you were Human...", she speculated to herself, staring off into space as she thought about it. "Maybe if you were still a Xeno— that is, if you could do it, at all, anyway".

He was fairly certain he would be squinting at her, hearing that.
He asked, almost fearing the answer, "wouldn't that be... really weird? For you, at least?".

Samantha Carman Quinn blinked, thought about the issue for a few, tense moments as she continued staring into space, seemingly genuinely puzzled, herself.
She then shrugged, "I don't know. I've heard of at least few cases like it, but I've never really thought about it".

"... Humans are fucking weirdos", he eventually said, more joking than serious.

She chuckled and happily laid her head onto the pillow, "you're not wrong, but still. Remind me to tell you about Arcturians, sometime".

In that instant, Anteros scanned what she knew of the Arcturians— the androgynous "monkey-elf" species of pre-space-flight aliens that Humanity had more or less adopted as a vassal-state under the Three World Empire.

"Arcturians aren't Xenomorphs", he pointed out, jovially, "and at least Arcturians look vaguely attractive, by Human standards. And don't have deadly weapons poking out of every orifice...".

"It's not always about looks", she remarked, and then joked, "sometimes it's about money! Or power. Or charisma, or prestige, or reputation. And sometimes it's enough to just be really good friends with someone, and to trust them, and love them...".

She glanced back at him, realizing, with a laugh, "I mean— after all, if I were just judging you on your appearance, I would be running away instead of cuddling with you. I did judge you for your appearance, at first... and we both worked past that".

She yawned, closing her eyes, and resting her head on the pillow for the last time.

"I'm sure you'd be a catch in some lifetime, Anty...", she mumbled, happily going to sleep.

---

(1): "Strength-in-Disaster".

(2): "The New Way Devil" is a reference to the videogame, Predator: Concrete Jungle, from 2005. I would recommend looking up a playthrough of it, on YouTube.

(3) Let's assume that a dohret is 10,000 noks, or 1,000 jorrens. 'Bout the same as twenty-and-a-half miles.

(4): You've probably all figured out that "Genetic Debasing" is my way of explaining away the disaster that was The Predator (2018). I theorize, given everything said by Shane Black and various other pieces of evidence, that the big, unkillable bastard in that film (whom I've started referring to as "Mister Upgrade") was a Bad Blood who'd been sentenced to this sort of punishment, but had somehow gotten the better of his captors, and used Yautja technology to enhance himself, instead of becoming a lesser being.

There's evidence to suggest that there's an entire rogue "clan" of Bad Bloods who pulled off something similar, and that said clan was hell-bent on enhancing themselves more and more and more— taking genetic material from various creatures throughout the galaxy, including from Humans. Hence why the "Rogue Predator", in the film, had human DNA in him, and was formerly a part of this "Splicer Clan". This would explain the "Predator Dogs"— Bad Bloods who underwent Genetic Debasing with no recourse and were taken into the Splicer Clan, somehow.

It is somewhat possible that the Splicer Clan might be "sponsored" or backed by the Super Predators, as the Super Predators do seem to be the "ends justify the means" types.

I ALSO choose to theorize that every human character in The Predator had absolutely no fucking CLUE what they were talking about when opining as to the motives and methods of Yautja-kind. They were just making baseless assumptions out of ignorance. And Mister Upgrade was playing things by ear and didn't actually have any real plan at work.

I will also assume that every human character was hunted down, killed, and their stolen Yautja technology (including that "Predator Killer" thing— what the Hell were the writers smoking?) confiscated by Arbitrators and Autarchs, after the film ended...

... I was one of the ones who was optimistic, going into that film, if you can't tell... ]:(