Little Hunter
It wasn't very hard.
Nanku would think the local bad bloods would look up more. Some humans could fly, and they did act as enforcers.
Her quarry didn't look up once.
Not that he'd see her if he did, but still. Maybe she'd been elsewhere for too long. Her faint memories of Brockton Bay's criminals was an ever-present discomfort. A 'knowing' of proximity instilled in her from her earliest years. She lived in a place she knew wasn't entirely safe. Where bad things could happen at any time.
Except now, she thought, she was the danger.
So maybe she was just overthinking it.
The man did occasionally look back. Subtly. He used windows or mirrored surfaces. If he weren't being stalked from the rooftops, it might have worked.
Then he got on the bus.
Nanku had completely forgotten about the bus, despite passing the large vehicles multiple times.
She tracked the transport with Dusk while Dawn helped ferry her across the streets. She was the bigger of the twins, though her growth stunted after Nanku began regulating her food more closely. Her power had been unable to control their mother, and she didn't want to risk it.
The clan was tense enough about her use of hunting hounds as it was. It wasn't how most Yautja did things. She got away with it because of her power and for no other reason.
Best not to push Uncle Rhark.
Pe'tde's brother never liked her. Nanku thought the old hunter simply resented her presence and the idea that such a 'little hunter' could ever be a replacement for his dead nephews.
No matter. The twins were enough as they were. Dawn helped Nanku cross the gaps, and Dusk kept the bus in sight.
When her prey slipped off, she directed him to follow. The man proceeded toward a bar just outside of Nanku's range until she caught up. She settled onto another rooftop and brought the twins to her sides. They'd been flying for hours and needed the rest to cool down.
Dusk and Dawn nestled against her sides, and Nanku rested while she watched through her power.
The man entered the bar and went right to the keeper. Within a half hour, he was inebriated. Nanku's stomach turned slightly. It was his fault he got drunk. Nothing in the code protected him from his own foolishness.
She still found it soured the thrill. There wasn't likely to be much challenge in killing a drunk idiot, but she needed what he had on him more than she needed any glory.
Assuming he didn't spend all his money on beer.
She'd come out of the downtown area and around to the city's southern side. It was nicer, as she remembered it. Cleaner streets and people in more expensive cars and clothes. There was a great deal of business even so late at night. Most of the surrounding structures were either office buildings or shops. The latter were closed, but some of the former remained open.
Her mother used to work late nights. Grading papers or preparing lessons.
Nanku watched a woman in a small, dimly lit office for a time before she noticed another room in the building.
Perhaps Brockton Bay hadn't changed as much as it seemed.
There were men in the room discussing something. They had bags of money and another bag full of packages. Most carried guns on them. More bad bloods, just like before. Another building to her back. Someone was exchanging a package at a loading dock for money. To her right in an apartment, a woman took a roll of bills and let another into her room.
Crime hadn't vanished at all. Bad bloods simply did their crimes inside and out of sight rather than in the open on marked streets.
And Nanku knew predators. They only went to ground because some other predator forced them to.
All the more reason to get information quickly.
Knowing the ground mattered, but the predators were equally important. A predator that forced others to adapt, especially so… That might be worth a detour.
Her prey left the bar with stumbling steps.
She could be practical.
Leaping the street with Dawn to throw her the rest of the distance, Nanku circled around the edge of the building. The offices on the floor were all dark. There was no one to see or hear her pass.
Two stories below on the street, the man started toward the bus station again. Two others joined him. A complication but not one she bothered to worry about. One or three made little difference when they were all so drunk. It might give her more of the resources she sought.
The primary prey picked up his pace as the vehicle pulled up, and people began boarding. He hurried, his steps uneven and rushed. He didn't watch where he was going.
Another man crossed his path, and they collided.
Zooming her mask in and filtering for acoustics wasn't necessary. The two men started shouting.
"Hey, watch where you're going!"
"You watch where you're going! You—You—"
The second man's shoulders slumped. "Bro, are you drun—" He stopped himself as the other two moved to flank him, both big and broad-shouldered men with shaved heads. "Whoa! Hey, I—I'm sorry. I don't want any trouble—"
The first—her prey—looked back toward the bar. Nanku tilted her head and did the same. Some of the patrons were outside, watching.
Odd. Why did that—
Her prey threw a sudden punch, striking the second man in the jaw and throwing him to the ground. He stumbled after his hand and nearly fell over himself, but he caught his balance on the wall and stayed upright.
"Damn dirty nig—"
He didn't finish the sentence as he wiped his mouth and looked at the other two men. They backed up a bit, their shoulders relaxing.
A display of some sort? Were the people in the bar also bad bloods? The words he used rang a bell in her mind. Stirred up a very distant memory.
On the ground, the second man scrambled to his feet. He didn't fight and simply hurried off while his attacker sighed. The other two men started to follow, but he stopped them with a laugh and something about 'being late.' Nanku watched closely as he continued toward the bus without looking back. Instead, he looked to a mirrored surface near the bus stop and watched the reflection.
Tension stayed in his shoulders until the other two men followed.
Perhaps her quarry was more interesting than she'd thought.
Nanku rose as the bus pulled away, absent her prey. He stood at the corner for a moment. He checked the time and the bus schedule, then turned and started down the street with his companions. Running ahead of them, Nanku used the twins to find a place to wait.
She spotted it quickly. A small inlet in an alley. Dark and out of sight.
Leaping over the edge of the room, she dropped and caught the fire escape with one hand. The entire construction rattled and drew eyes, but her cloak's shimmer was obscured by the dark.
Releasing her grip, she dropped to the ground and ran around the corner. One hand programmed her computer. The other flexed as she approached the alley's edge and past the inlet. The man was still on the street to her left, approaching another bus stop.
Nanku stepped right up to the edge and searched the street. There was only a small window, but enough.
Her heart began to race, and her stomach twisted.
She'd hunted many times, but she'd never—It didn't matter.
Life was life. None was any more particularly special than another. She'd killed Dusk and Dawn's mother. What honor did she do that kill if she balked at killing a human, let alone a bad blood who assaulted men for the color of their skin?
And humans thought themselves evolved.
The Yautja stopped caring about the color of anyone's epidermis eons ago.
As the man approached, Nanku readied herself and activated the sequence she'd coded. His steps had cleaned up. Still a little shaky but smoother than before. Was he acting? Very curious. Her prey was more intelligent than she'd given him credit for.
A targeted sound shot out and directly intercepted her prey.
"Dirty nig."
The man stiffened and turned. He looked right past her, the cloak flawless while she held perfectly still in the dark.
"Who's there," he said far more clearly than before.
"What?" His companion's brother looked in the direction he did. "What is—"
She pressed the button again.
"Dirty nig."
The man's response was wary but guarded. He took a cautious step and looked into the dark. The other two came closer. Only one seemed to catch the sound. The other merely followed.
One step was all Nanku needed.
She stepped forward and pushed the man into the alley and out of sight. The other two exclaimed, and Nanku drew her small swarm forward. They buzzed loudly through the alley, flying past and colliding with their bodies. Nanku built a wall, a haze of insects that obscured the struggle in the alley inlet to the outside world.
One of the big men started to turn as he was enveloped in bugs, but Dawn dropped from above. Her mandibles opened, and she bit into his throat. Talons scrapped over asphalt as she dragged him to the ground and pulled his body into the dark.
"What the fuck was—"
The second man was silenced as Nanku punched the back of his knee.
He fell forward as Dusk lunged from a shadow. His aim had never been as good as his sister's. He missed the throat, biting down on the man's collar. The man started to raise a fist to punch in a panic, but a mechanical click echoed in his ears. He looked back the wrong way, even if he could see her.
Nanku stabbed the pointed rod down cleanly through his spine. With a twist, the baton expanded into a full spear, piercing her target's guts and leaving him limp from the waist down. Dusk dragged him back into the dark.
Two dead.
Nanku turned on her true prey.
He stumbled in the dark, hand reaching for the weapon in his coat. Good.
At the sound of buzzing, he turned and pointed the weapon. The mass of bugs dispersed, and his eyes widened. Nanku slammed her fist into his wrist. While the gun clattered at their feet she pushed him again. Grabbing his collar, Nanku drove him deeper into the dark inlet.
He started to call out, but her other hand struck his jaw and her knee his thigh.
The man winced and gasped. He was dazed. His hand flailed trying to aim a weapon he no longer held.
By the time he noticed, a 'schleck' filled the air, and Nanku dropped her cloak. It was the honorable thing to do.
His blue eyes met the six lenses of her mask.
Nanku drove her wristblades through his jaw and up into his skull. She held for a moment, letting him die looking his killer in the eye.
Bile filled her mouth as blood ran down her arm.
His expression turned fearful. Desperate. Not in the way of someone facing death or defying it, but something colder and empty. A base animalistic reaction she… She found it hard to describe.
But it turned her stomach regardless.
He gave up. In the moment—with his life on the line and nothing before or behind him—the man simply gave up.
"That's all you have in you?" she asked, disappointed.
The words were her variation of Yautja. She couldn't make all the right noises. Nothing the dying man would understand in the time she had to say it.
As the light left his eyes, Nanku drew back. She flung her arm out, splattering blood against the ground from her limb.
The struggle had drawn some attention. Nothing anyone could see, she was sure, but the sounds were noticed. Nanku spent a moment surveying the nearby buildings and windows. A few people looked out. Others listened.
No one moved to do anything.
Nanku dragged her kill back to where Dusk and Dawn had the other two.
They ate greedily. Nanku paused a moment, pondering the sensations and flavors that came to her from the twins. It wasn't what she expected. Though thinking of it, she wasn't sure what she expected.
How would it feel to hunt a human?
In the end… It was just disappointing. No excuse to let anything go to waste. Using her bugs to check, Nanku found no one running or curiously approaching. The kills were clean.
Nanku dropped the corpse on the ground and left the twins to the task of feeding themselves. She screened their senses from hers for the moment. Raw meat wasn't her flavor.
Meanwhile, she crouched to search her kill's pockets. Only a few bills.
She remembered how to count human numbers quickly.
100. 100. 20. 20. 10. 5. 1. 1.
Three hundred fifty-seven. Enough for any basic need she had, for now. The other two men had more, though Nanku had to hurry and save the bills from Dusk and Dawn's messy eating habits. She found another few hundred dollars for a total of seven-hundred forty-seven dollars.
She'd find a use for it.
Turning one of the corpses onto his side as Dawn gnawed his arm down to the bone, Nanku looked closer at the tattoo on the man's shoulder. A cross with bent arms, like a pinwheel.
She remembered that.
Nazis.
Right. Nazis were a thing. A bad thing, given that she felt an instant revulsion even after a decade away.
She stood and slipped the money into a pouch on her belt. The men had seven phones between them. Half consisted of useless code she couldn't read. Numbers and dates. Nothing she could decipher nor had any use for at the moment. She tossed those into a dumpster and focused on the other four.
Phones had changed a lot while she'd been away.
They were flatter and more expensive looking. The entire front face was a big computer screen that responded to her fingers. Once she wiped the blood off.
They had passwords now. Nanku didn't bother trying. Each wanted six or eight digit codes to open, and she had no way to know which. That was unfortunate. The library was still an option. It had public computers unless something had changed. She could slip in at night, and if passwords stopped her, she could go during the day too.
She just had to get creative.
The last phone looked different. It was round with a top screen and a bottom that folded. Like a compact mirror.
And it didn't ask for a passcode.
Going over to her original prey, Nanku crouched and pressed his thumb to the screen.
The phone unlocked, and Nanku found a familiar—if differently arranged—display waiting. Most of the icons were unknown to her. It took a few tries to find the one she wanted.
She opened up a screen with a text box at the top and the image of a globe to the side. Tapping the box produced a keypad on the bottom screen.
Dusk and Dawn continued chewing. Loudly. The twins had always been messy eaters.
She didn't feel anything.
She'd killed another human, and it was… Just another kill. A disappointing kill, but just another. Another the twins were being very loud about.
Nanku rose and scaled the building back onto the roof.
The concrete was nothing like a nice tree with shielding leaves, but it was high. She preferred heights. Dusk and Dawn somewhat followed, dragging the bodies up the wall with their claws to scale the stone. Once on the rooftop, however, they stayed away as they ate.
Perching at another corner, Nanku stared at the phone for nearly half an hour, trying to remember how to spell.