There are now three one-shots on my profile, which are all tied to this story, in varying ways.

One of them is about Zazin-Vor'mekta's first encounter with Weyland-Yutani; the second is about my head-canon of Yautja religion; the third is about the history of the Dark Blade Clan and my headcanon for Yautja world-building. None are actually "required reading" but they do matter.


Chapter 22: Crucibles of All Stripes

Six hours later...

Samantha Carman Quinn had just about finished running a systems-check on the Wey-Yu shuttle, and had performed said systems-check at least four times. This included, but wasn't limited to: checking the fuel-level of the main and auxiliary engines, checking that the readouts of said fuel-levels were actually accurate, checking that all of the gauges and buttons in the cockpit were still usable and hadn't become inert, checking that the hydrogen-canisters of the maneuvering-thrusters were at least three-quarters full, checking that the ION engines could still draw from the ship's power supply, checking that the landing gears weren't jammed, checking that the VTOL-thrusters could still rotate well enough, checking that the external camera-feeds still worked and could pan in all directions, and checking that the Alcubierre Drive was in working order.

Luckily, because of the external camera-feeds being operational, she was able to do most of it from inside the cockpit. However, in order to actually check that the fuel-level estimates were accurate, she would need to go to the outside of the shuttle and use a ladder to open up the actual fuel-intake. And when she looked for such a ladder (said to be built into the side of the vessel's aft, just behind the wing) she found none. As to why there was no ladder where the manual said there should be one was anybody's guess— she assumed it was because of some undocumented alterations or because this shuttle happened to be of some arbitrarily different "model". Or the manual itself was slightly outdated. Given that the fuel-intake valve was situated on the very top of the vessel, she would need Anteros to haul her up there so she could have a look...

In the meantime, she'd been looking around the hangar for a way to open the roof to the outside, and for a while she found nothing. She'd never bothered to see how hangars like this worked, nor even thought of it, in the short time she'd lived on Guardian. She walked the circumference of the inside of the hangar and only really found that hatch that Anteros said he'd investigated, yesterday. She also found the bags of meat that Anteros had apparently dropped off in the time he'd been gone— which briefly made her wonder how long ago he'd done so, and how long he'd be gone, still...
She brought the load up to the kitchen with a few trips and stored it where it needed to go while she thought of where else to search.

After quickly having a look around the luggage-scanning system just outside the hangar's exit and finding nothing of note, she went back into the shuttle and rummaged around the items she'd left in the cockpit— the duffel bag full of papers, the PDA, and Garrow's wallet and earpiece; and the balled-up labcoat that Anteros had found way down in the pit, right next to it.

There was nothing new to be found in the duffel bag, so she searched through Garrow's wallet. Debit and credit cards, social-security card, and about fifteen credits of change with two fifty-cred bills.
Samantha, unraveling the labcoat, found all the items Anteros had described, and was surprised to find that the old book he'd mentioned was actually a Bible— Old and New Testament in one. She was initially confused that Anteros wouldn't have noticed that, but then remembered that he couldn't see any detail on a flat surface... and probably knew nothing about religion, anyway. She put the book, the new laptop (plus its charger), and the second earpiece in the duffel bag with the rest of Garrow's stuff, and finally searched through the woman's wallet— finding three things. The same amount of money. A social-security card, confirming that the woman was named "Miranda Garrow", and that these two researchers had been married. And most importantly: a small, car-key sized remote control with... only two, blank buttons on it...

She immediately had a massive grin on her face, as she recognized what this was. Universal remotes were particularly popular on Guardian-625, and were often used to open particularly important things. Like the roofs of hangar-bays owned by rich people. Rushing down the shuttle's ladder, running through the ready-room, and sprinting off the cargo-bay ramp and out into the hangar, she backed into the corner of the room and stared upwards and tried both buttons on the remote in her hands. A deep, intensely loud, metallic groaning noise shuddered throughout the superstructure — as loud as five jet-engines put together — as a thin line split the roof at the hangar's middle, revealing the glimpse of an orange sky. Almost instantly, she hurriedly mashed the opposite button to make the roof close back up, realizing that that amount of noise would attract a lot of attention.
A giddy feeling approximating equal-parts hope and excitement bubbled in her chest, as Samantha laughed to herself. That was one problem taken of... and one obstacle to their freedom removed...

It was as she was trudging back up the shuttle's cargo-bay ramp that she wondered where Anteros was. And as she'd been about to flip the switch to close the cargo-bay's ramp... she heard a welcome sound, in the form of Anteros's voice. A mild call of her name.

She spun about on her heel to see him at the hangar's entrance with a smile on her face... only to frown... and feel a deep, sickening dread at the sight before her.

It was Anteros, and he did have the final load of meat with him... but something was very clearly wrong...

At first, she didn't understand what she was looking at, but as she came nearer, she saw odd discolorations all across his body. Splotches of what she then understood to be Hive-Resin... and an ominous fluid leaking from them. When it clicked in her mind that they were injuries, a scream tore from her throat—


Six hours ago...

Today was quickly becoming... a very complicated one, for Anteros.

Perhaps a short rundown was in order?

Let's see… to start the day off, Anteros had completely overreacted to Samantha having a nightmare and her little bout of PTSD, and he'd thrown a hissy-fit, which, the longer he thought on it, the more he felt embarrassed about. Nothing like working yourself a melodramatic panic-attack and wishing for your own death to start off the day, right? He hadn't felt quite that suicidal in a while, not since he first began hearing people's thoughts. Anteros wondered if he didn't have his own demons to fight, like Sam does. He probably shouldn't be surprised, at any rate— his entire life required about four separate layers of irony to even comprehend, in the first place.

Next, he was forced to quickly get over his revived self-hatred in order to deal with those Marines. He'd found himself coming to a shaky middle-ground with the Ancestral, and finding a way to fight without succumbing to its rage. Using it to push himself further, but not allowing it to take the steering wheel. Looking back on it, and having had a few hours to self-reflect, Anteros was… actually kind of proud of that whole fiasco. It gave him hope that he could, indeed, find ways to overcome his baser urges amid stressful circumstances. It let him think that a life with Samantha could be possible without the both of them having to live like paranoid hermits.

After that, though, came an experience that brought that very hope into question. He lost the plot and followed the Ancestral's call without even realizing it. Finding no choice other than to try and get it over with and nip it in the bud, Anteros went along with it. If he could so easily be pulled into the sway of instinct like that, even after everything he'd been through: how sure could he be that he was truly in control, up to now? Or that he could ever be?

All in all... today had been... a lot. And it was about to be a lot more.

Anteros's quadrupedal, gracile form zoomed forth down the wide, metal halls of The Industrial District— cheetah-like and lighter-than-air... followed not-so-far behind by the thundering, freight-train charge of the Praetorian. Anteros's stride covered many meters each bound, practically flying across the metal floor, fast enough that one needed slow motion to track the movement of his legs— reduced to a blurred haze upon which he flew. The Praetorian, meanwhile, rampaged forward in a sprinting gallop— slower, but more forceful. Each bound shook the walls as the pursuer passed, the metal beneath its feet denting inward on every footfall and being rent upward with every push-off.
Anteros, despite his speed, wasn't particularly putting on much gas— this was an intense jog, for him, at most, and he'd been at it for thirty minutes, by this point; leading his pursuer on a chase going in widening circles around the Egg-Chamber they'd started in. At this point, half the "route" cut through the Commercial District, as well as the Industrial. The Ranger Praetorian, whom had been chasing him all the while, had largely kept pace about eight meters behind, more or less completely silent, aside from the faint panting that Anteros could just about detect.

The reason Anteros wasn't just sprinting and trying to escape, outright? Even if he outran his "big sister" (which he probably could do), she'd inevitably be able to detect him at a distance far longer than he could reliably avoid, and the effort required to lose her, completely, would leave him drained enough that she could likely catch up and kill him, anyway. Praetorian lungs and hearts were... massive— massive enough that they could be heard by him from as much as thirty feet away, at rest, where that of any smaller Hive-Mate could only be heard within ten feet. Praetorians, additionally, had far more powerful senses than lower castes— typical Rangers: even more-so. He could only surmise that his pursuer was a beast far more adept at detecting and pursuing a target than any other Xenomorph.
Lucky him.

The only way he was going to elude the Ranger was by tiring her out. Hence why his pace had been relatively mild, and hence why he'd been taking the least-direct escape-route possible. The only problem was he'd underestimated the Spitter's wisdom. She was, apparently, wary of becoming winded, and had thus periodically slowed down every five minutes, letting him gain some distance before continuing the sprint, again. At this rate, they'd reach the very edge of the XHT before she got tired enough for him to make an escape, and by that point, Anteros couldn't be sure that he wouldn't be winded, either...

As it was... his first plan-of-action was currently failing... so... his only remaining option was to stand and fight. One cannot "subdue" a Xenomorph on even footing— it's a death-blow, or nothing, when push comes to shove, if you expect to walk away from the encounter. And Praetorians were even more so. He did not do this lightly, or under the impression that it would be easy. But he knew that he couldn't afford to doubt himself each step of the way, either, nor overthink it or try to pull something that he wasn't certain would work. Danger might kill you, but doubt will kill you faster. He wasn't entirely certain where he was getting all of these aphorisms and words of wisdom from, or why he felt they were true, but in any case...

...He chose to wing it. Which was probably a bad idea.

First, though, he needed to get his bearings and catch his breath. And it just so happened that about forty feet ahead, the hall bent at a right turn, and on the wall near to the outside corner was a floor-level vent— its dark interior completely open, with no sign of the typical, metal covering that would be expected. Naturally, Anteros threw himself straight into the thing, following its path and crawling up wards— up and vaguely southward. As he climbed through the tunnel, he heard a frustrated roar shudder through the thin sheet-metal around him, and kept vague attention on where his pursuer moved next— unable to crawl through that tight a space, and forced to attempt to keep pace and potentially cut him off wherever he ended up.
Vent-systems, on much of Guardian, varied from District to District. In the Industrial District, the vents were loosely pockmarked across floors based on relative distance, and all of said vents would lead to, and end at, one of four central air-filtration-and-pumping stations. Essentially being immense arrays of giant fans and wind-tunnels designed to prevent the air throughout the District from becoming stagnant. Likely to prevent carbon monoxide or other contaminants from building to dangerous concentrations in any one spot. Anteros had visited each of said gargantuan air-conditioners, and had found that two of the four were non-functional by the time he'd grown to adulthood. Given that he heard no wind and felt no breeze in this particular vent, he surmised that the air-pump station it led to was one of the dormant ones.

As he crawled, he heard continued rumblings and screeches every so often, and would occasionally detect the hint of the Ranger Praetorian's signature at the edge of his radar. It was following him, despite this vent consistently leading him up through multiple floors and across almost a kilometer of horizontal distance. After thirty minutes of crawling and occasionally breaking and removing fans, Anteros finally found himself at the dormant wind-tunnel he'd been expecting to end up at— finally having to smash open a wire-mesh blocking his path.

He crawled out into a large, open space in the shape of a hollow cylinder— a giant, vertical tube, upon which he clung to the inside-wall of, at about the halfway point. Below him: an empty drop hundreds of meters down to a distant floor, and above him: hundreds of meters of air, leading up to the ceiling. The ceiling in question, he knew, being a giant, industrial fan with thick, metal blades, fifteen meters in diameter. The inside-walls of this air-filtration station were radially pockmarked with vents leading to all manner of places in every direction.
As Anteros turned about and crawled upwards, toward the fan, the sound of an echoing call resounded throughout the air-vent-system. Most likely the Spitter Praetorian, as it was a noise he recognized, instantly: a call-to-arms to summon nearby Hive-Mates. He wasn't sure where the Praetorian thought said Hive-Mates would supposedly come from, given that all of them had more or less followed the Lurker Praetorian in their exodus, but he didn't have time to think on it and doubled his speed toward the fan, above.

Reaching the top of the tube, he crawled between the blades of the inactive fan (big enough to be the propeller of a cruise ship) and emerged out onto the surface of the Infinite Roof. He took his bearings, hopped up onto the mini-van sized metal box that likely served as the fan's motor, and scanned for wherever the Praetorian might come from. She could likely see him from further away than he could see her, but one does not simply sneak up on a Xenomorph. Not even another Xenomorph.
He took stock of his surroundings. The roof of the Industrial District was more heavily-adorned with various ornaments— air-conditioner units, solar-panels, five-meter tall smokestacks made of bronze, and even satellite-dishes of varying size all about, in every direction, all the way to the horizon. Or, at least as far as Anteros could detect, which... wasn't very far, in all honesty. Open-air spaces aren't the best for echolocation— fewer objects to bounce sound off of, though his electroreception was far less hindered by walls and obstacles, up here.

As he waited and watched, a sense of dread built into a heavy stone, weighing him down at the pit of his gut. Thinking of the Praetorian, in itself, was enough to bring on a sense of vertigo, much less the idea of having to square-up with it. It was... unlike any sensation he'd felt before— he'd been acquainted with something similar on the few occasions he'd encountered a Praetorian, before, but it had never been this type of fear. More than fear, it... it made his limbs feel like they were turned into lead and... a really strange sort of tightening in his crotch, for some reason? An area of his body that he hadn't felt... anything in, in his entire life! Now, though... it was a swirling singularity of vertigo was forming right down in that spot...
It was... disturbing...

The fuck...?

He supposed it made sense that Xenomorphs would be instilled with an intrinsic fear of Praetorians, as, as far he'd ever known: Praetorians were the lieutenants of the Queen. That he was also, however, feeling weakened and... weirdly submissive didn't seem normal. Was it because this particular Praetorian was female? Were his instincts demanding he submit to a new Queen? He'd heard some mention of a "Freud" from Samantha a matter of days ago, but he wasn't certain it was applicable, here. That deep, unsettling imbalance, though, seemed mildly evocative of it... and for some strange reason, something about it was... sexual! Which was... utterly baffling to him!
He shook his head and bared his teeth, raising a fist and putting a dent in the metallic-frame he stood upon.

Snap out of it! This is no time for weakness, he tried to tell himself. As he thought even more about what he would have to do, though— of fighting the Ranger Praetorian, head-on... that vertigo in his crotch deepened even further, and the Ancestral exuded a sense of pure fear that he'd never seen from it, before. A kind of fear that gave him the urge to hunch over— to... to roll over onto his back and... cry?
A crooning, hollowed-out hiss whined from out of his throat, inadvertently, and he intrinsically knew it to be a display of submission. He wasn't at all certain what the Ancestral thought it was doing, but he was fairly adamant that no amount of brown-nosing or begging for mercy would work, in this situation. He knew for a fact that the Ranger was dead-set on killing him... although, he supposed that this just meant the Ancestral believed he had no chance other than to beg.

He reared up and slammed his own face into the metal beneath him, repeating the act four more times — "BANG" "BANG" "BANG" "BANG" — trying to snap himself out of whatever this weakening influence was. He cast out all thoughts of the Praetorian, specifically, and simply focused on trying to psyche himself up.

I can do this. I can do this. I can do this. I have no choice but to do this. If I don't do this, everything will have been pointless. If I don't do this, I may as well have never met Samantha. If I don't do this, Samantha will probably die, waiting for me. If I don't do this, I'll never know how or why I have a connection to her. If I don't do this I'll never see her, again... I'll never see her again... I'll never see her again... I'll never see her again... I'll never see her again... I have to be able to see her, again. I have to be able to go back to her. I have to do this— I will do this! I will do this! I will kill it! I will kill it! I will kill the Praetorian! I will. Kill! This! Bitch!

A loud crack, followed by a metallic screeching ripped him from his own mind and, as he turned left to see where it came from, he saw the immense fist of the Ranger sprouting out from under the roof, twenty meters to the west of the wind-tunnel. It retracted back down, and the hole in which it retreated was ripped open, even wider, sheets of metal crumpling and folding aside, as the Praetorian clawed its way out onto the roof, immediately screaming in pure fury, drool weeping from its maw.

... I am so incredibly screwed.

He hopped down from the box and stalked to his left, away from the Praetorian's general direction, as the Ranger stood to its full height and snarled at him. He was given pause as it abruptly threw back its head and roared— the same kind of summoning-call as it had a few minutes ago. Anteros was confused at this, until he heard a distant response to it... coming from the wind-tunnel. Fifteen seconds later, a group of Hive-Mates came crawling up the air-filtration station, the same way he'd come from, and they came out onto the roof.

Five Workers, three Spitters, and one Warrior. Nine. All female, and all bereft of their dorsal-tubes, crusted-over and weeping stumps in their place. Probably stragglers who'd been defeated by other females around this area. Which briefly made Anteros speculate that females who were defeated in this Culling simply stayed put wherever they happened to be, while the victorious ones made their way toward the center of the Hive, facing more challengers along the way. These new arrivals who responded to the call of the Spitter Praetorian were all injured in various ways— some without hands or feet, some without tails.

He turned to face them and backed away as they all emerged onto the roof. They rushed toward him, initially, only to abruptly stop in their tracks when the Praetorian barked at them from the background. They started fanning out to either side, evidently to surround him...

Well, this... this is just plain brilliant, isn't it?, he thought to himself. As he'd already concluded that running away wouldn't work, Anteros kept stalking slowly away from the Praetorian, staying alert for any move on the part of the mooks.

It was only once the underlings had surrounded him, completely, staying just about ten meters away from him in a circle, that Anteros stopped. He scanned around himself, turning about on the spot, and he spread his feet and hands apart, ready to move. His tail raised up, high, held stiffly in an arc above his back, ready to lash out, and he bared his teeth at them, rumbling quietly.

I can deal with them... I've dealt with worse.

He waited for an attack, but became alarmed as none came. He turned and noticed that the Ranger Praetorian had barely moved from where it had emerged beneath the roof, and in fact, was very slowly walked toward them, on two legs. Calm. Unhurried.
That's not right...
The Hive-Mates around him were snarling at him, teeth bared, tails lashing, but they did not make any move to engage. Hunched over, all walking clockwise in a circle, with him at the center. This was unusual, and Anteros wasn't certain what to do... until the Ancestral surged up and out of its mental cage, and pushed him to surrender. To roll over and signal submission.
This confused him even more— the Ranger Praetorian had no reason, whatsoever, to let him live just because he begged, and in fact, she and every other Hive-Mate had every incentive to kill him on-sight. He was a rogue-element— a defective product in the factory-line. And given that the Ranger called him a "traitor" not more than an hour ago, he could only surmise that the Hive having learned an amount of English was also a reason they wanted him dead. Language: a behavioral mutation that Anteros had forced upon the Queen and upon the entire Hive— an unwanted, mental infection that he had afflicted the family with. Or, at least, that was how it seemed, to him...
So... why were they not simply attacking him? Why give him any leniency, or allow him to try to submit? The only possibility that came to mind was that, perhaps, the Praetorian saw him as a significant threat, and simply wanted to dispatch him, safely— apparently by tricking him into thinking he could surrender and reconcile. The Ranger, after all, was still keeping its distance, and still had its fangs on display. Whatever the case was...
That's not going to happen.

He growled as loudly as he could manage while keeping himself composed, snarling at the Drone who happened to be missing the latter half of its tail— "stumpy" he mentally labeled it. He turned about on the spot, raising up onto his hind legs and bringing both fists down onto the metal floor, and screeched, turning about on the spot and snapping his jaws together, repeatedly. A Spitter to his right made to charge him, but an aggressive bark from the Praetorian drove the underling back into line with a hiss. Anteros rumbled deeply, realizing how to ruin the Praetorian's plan, and decided to amp up the theatrics.
He roared as loud as his lungs could accommodate, drowning out the snarls of his assailants, and quieting them. He repeatedly lunged at them in mock-charges, stopping short and biting at the air, snarling. His tail struck deep gouges and cuts into metal beneath him as he whipped its blade about him in wide swings, throwing sparks each time it scored the steel. Occasionally, they would raise up unto their hind legs or go to meet his challenges, but the Praetorian would shout them back into line. As the charade continued, Anteros kept upping the ante, deliberately swinging his tail in their direction and getting very nearly within range for them to attack him— usually only to hiss in their faces and back away. He even spat acid at them, which did nothing but annoy them, further.

They were getting increasingly agitated, and more and more often, were commanded to stay put. Anteros knew for certain, now, that goading his assailants into attacking him outright would definitely be a wrench thrown into the Praetorian's plan, whatever it happened to be. It was starting to lash its tail in barely-contained irritation, which Anteros took as a good sign. So he kept going, for minutes on-end, and kept going, and kept going, until something gave.
And give, it did.

When he spat a ball of acid at the face of a Worker for the umpteenth time, it proved to be the last straw, as it lunged toward him in two bounds, despite the bark of the Spitter. It raised up and snarlingly swung its arm to slash at him... only for his tail's weapon to slam home into its forehead— sinking two-thirds of itself into his Hive-Mate's gray-matter, blood spraying from the giant gash in its forehead. It instantly fell-limp, as Anteros ripped free his tail the moment it dropped to the ground.

One...

This proved too large a provocation for the rest of the Xenomorphs to remain obedient, as Anteros found himself being charged from all sides. He evaded them through the gap once filled by the Worker he'd just killed and bounded away from the mob about six meters, before turning and standing to his hind legs.
His face was almost instantly introduced to the claws of the one Warrior the moment he turned, and he leaned back to avoid it, only barely able duck and weave the next swing from its other arm. In rising up, he swung his own arm, fingers clenched into a fist, and tore off the Soldier's jawbone with the strongest right-hook he could muster, growling with the effort of it.

The extremity hung by a thread of muscle-chord and erratically swung and spun as the Hive-Mate shook its head and uncaringly thrust its left-hand talon at him, again. Anteros was still mere inches from its side after his punch, and so had to clumsily catch its wrist with his left hand, only to then haphazardly twist himself sideways as the Soldier's tail thrust around its front, toward his stomach.
The blade barely missed him, and Anteros took the opportunity to launch his own tail around his right side and bury itself in his opponent's soft, unprotected lower-back. It attempted to snarl at him in fury, but produced more of a squealing wheeze, as Anteros held its left hand at bay with his own.

Just as the Soldier's tail had retracted behind it, ready to strike again, and just as it swung its right arm, and just as Anteros caught it with his right hand, he sensed that a Worker — one who's left hand was missing — was coming near, to his right, with its tail raised to attack.
So, he turned, stepped, and heaved with all of his strength on the Soldier's wrists, successfully throwing his Hive-Mate in the direction of his new attacker. The Soldier tumbled to the floor, Anteros's tail snatching itself free from its back, as the Drone that had been ready to attack him was distracted by the flight of its comrade just long enough that Anteros was entirely ready to evade the thrust of its tail— simply side-stepping, grabbing at the blade and its "hilt", and yanking, hard. The Worker, caught off-guard, was wrenched off its feet, and screeched as it found itself spun about— brought to its knees and dragged backwards, over the prone Soldier's back. By the time it spun back around and stood up, Anteros had stepped within reach and had swung his claws just in time for his right-talon to embed itself in the side of the Drone's neck.

Only, Anteros had underestimated the durability of said neck (expecting to be able to simply rip out his opponent's jugular), and had somewhat missed— his claws winding up between the esophagus and spinal cord. As he struggled to wrench his fingers from out of the Worker's neck, the Worker in questions flailed both of its arms at his face, releasing a series of strangled cough-sounds. He did his best to block these attacks with only his left arm, but received some small cuts on the left side of his dome— at least one of them sinking in to the bone.
The sharp, stinging pain from this drove him to scream, and with a surge of strength, he slammed his left palm into the Worker's sternum and yanked back his right hand as hard he could. A massive chunk of the Hive-Mate's neck came with it, but Anteros barely had time to fling the gnarled flesh from his finger-tips before another Worker and a Ranger come running up to him. The Drone he'd just defeated fell backwards, clawing at its own bleeding jugular, writhing on the floor, as the Soldier behind it just then stood up.

Two...

Anteros, realizing he was being overwhelmed, dropped to all-fours and scuttled backwards to gain some distance. He did so by about ten meters, before stopping short of bumping into a fridge-sized satellite-dish, behind him. The Ranger outpaced its companion and rushed toward him on all-fours. As it came into range, Anteros shifted sideways and swung his tail up and then downwards toward its head. The Ranger, though, stopped and hopped to its right, his tail slapping harmlessly into the metal.

By the time he brought it back to him, the Drone at the Ranger's side came running forward— missing its entire right-forearm. Before it could attack him, he scuttled to his left and moved behind the aforementioned satellite-dish, putting it between him and his attacker. He crawled backwards another few meters, as the arm-less Drone jumped atop the dish and threw itself toward him in a dive, its intact arm outstretched.
As the Ranger who'd evaded his tail also galloped around the dish to pursue him, Anteros stood and raised both arms, bringing his fists down onto the armless Drone's head and back, slamming it into the floor. The instant its face was smashed into the metal, however, its tail whipped into movement and shot toward him. The small barb at its tip managed to catch him in the shoulder, just above his collar-bone, sinking in deep.

He snarled at the pain, and tore the weapon from his shoulder, but before he could finish the Hive-Mate at his feet, the Ranger came crawling up around his left side and arched its back, swinging up its tail in a wide arc. The axe-like blade came rushing down toward his head, and Anteros (momentarily panicking) yanked on the tail of the Drone, dragging it to his left and put it in the way of the Ranger's axe-blade.

Time seemed to slow, as the Ranger's tail struck the Worker's at about a foot's length up from the barb, was halted for the briefest of moments... before slicing through it and carrying on at half its prior speed. The axe-blade then chopped into Anteros's right-forearm, some inches down from his elbow, stopping just short of the bone, then bouncing off and continuing its path downward to slap into the metal at Anteros's feet. The shock of pain pulsing through his entire arm caused him to drop the amputated barb of Drone's tail, and as his heart began to pound within his head, he quickly raised his left foot and stomped on the Ranger's tail-blade when it struck the ground, pinning it to the floor.

This proved to be a mistake, as the Ranger simply yanked back its tail from under his foot, unbalancing him, and the Worker still on the ground took that moment to jump up to its feet and tackle his waist.

The next thing he knew, he was on the ground, pinned on his side as the Worker straddled his legs and raised its fist to smash him. Anteros, trying to regain control of the situation, stuck out his right elbow to meet the Drone's hand as it swung down. A sickening crackle signaled a broken wrist, as its hand crumpled against his elbow with all of the force behind the attack, but at the same time: yet more pain roared throughout his arm, and into his chest— the deep gash, exacerbated.
Losing himself in a burst of rage, he twisted himself onto his own back beneath his attacker and slashed at its head with his left hand, slicing deep gouges into its face and dome. He punched at its head with vicious hooks — right, left, and right again — breaking practically all of its fangs and tearing off a chunk of the outer-carapace on its forehead.

Managing to gain back some control, Anteros tucked in both legs and kicked the Hive-Mate in the gut with both, sending it flying up and away, slamming into the satellite-dish it had jumped from, before.

Anteros would have jumped up and taken advantage of this, but he had to frantically roll to his right to avoid the second swing of the Ranger's axe-blade, as it came down at his head. He barely had time to register the Ranger's tail then getting stuck in the metal, as he had to turn to face the Soldier that had come 'round the satellite-dish in the time that he'd been occupied. It unleashed a flurry of claw-swipes as it came into range to deliver them, and Anteros had had enough of being on the back foot.
He caught each the Soldier's wrists as they swung at his head, and as the Soldier's tail swung upward and over its shoulder to thrust at his face, he leaned to one side, allowing it to fly past his left shoulder. He then swung his own tail upward, over his right shoulder and thrust it at his opponent's face.

Its jawbone having completely fallen off between now and his last engagement with it: his blade flew just under its top row of teeth, and impaled the very back of its throat, severing the spinal cord on its way through the back of the Soldier's neck. The moment its arms went lax, he let go and raised a leg to kick at its stomach, pushing away its corpse, and ripped his tail out of its throat. It slumped to the ground with an unceremonious, metallic thump, and Anteros turned back around...

Three...

By now, the Drone that he'd kicked into the satellite-dish was ready for more, the Ranger that had twice swung its tail at him joining it as both loped toward him. They spread out to the left and right as they came within two meters... and he chose to act before either could begin their offense. He twisted himself to the left and thrust his tail toward the Drone on his right.
With most of the outer-carapace on the front face of its dome gone, the front-facing electro-receptors it once had were no longer there, and the only warning it received of his attack was a brief whistle of air... as his blade struck it between two ribs of its chest-armor, and punched through, impaling one of its lungs. It shrieked hollowly, and stopped a moment, before Anteros tore his tail out of it, drawing a deluge of blood and viscera out with it— shards of chitin joining the spray. It fell forward and face-planted onto the roof's metal, quickly beginning to sink beneath, as its own acidic blood dug for it a grave.

Four...

The Ranger to Anteros's left had noticed its companion being mortally-wounded and smartly backed away at the last minute. Spitters were always a bit more clever than other castes, and prior speculation as to why came to his mind (that being: the need to accurately estimate distance and parabolas, in firing acid-projectiles), before he rushed forward. In two, long bounds he closed the distance and swung his right arm up and over in a wide arc "superman" punch— knuckles slamming home into the top of the Ranger's shield-shaped dome. He didn't wait for the Ranger to cease being dazed, and threw a left hook— bashing into the side of its head.

The Ranger was sent spinning to its left, reeling from the blow, and as it spun about, lashed out with its tail in a horizontal slash. Though he leaned back in time to avoid it, the axe-blade still landed a shallow cut across his chest-armor, the tiniest amount of blood spilling out of it.
The Ranger hissed, loudly, stepping backwards away from him. His last punch had apparently struck and tore open the acid-filled globule on the side of its head, causing an unceasing torrent of acid to flow from the ragged hole, down the side of its neck and front. Non-fatal, but undoubtedly excruciating. It dropped to all fours and crawled away like a goblin, tail raised up above its back in threat.

Anteros took this reprieve to scan around, and found that he had been surrounded, again. Three Rangers and two Drones now remained, and they had once more fanned out to put him in the middle of a circle. It was only then, now that the pounding of his heart had calmed, that he realized the Praetorian had roared at them the moment he'd killed that last Worker.

He turned about himself to relocate the Praetorian in question, and froze the moment he found it, perched atop the satellite-dish not four meters from him, like a gargoyle. The moment he turned to face it, its lips peeled open and it rumbled long and loud.

Slowly, deliberately, it leaned down and crawled off of its perch (which it was honestly much larger than, anyway) and came to stand before him, at its full height. As Anteros stepped backward, the circle of underlings standing at an eight-meter distance moved with him, allowing no escape from the encirclement.

All at once, that vertigo from before the battle's start came rushing back to him, and it took every inch of his resolve not to shrink, cower, and whine before the Praetorian. He felt hollow, now... and felt intimidated. Not just scared— intimidated. He'd only ever felt something close to this when in the presence of Mother, and it became a far larger likelihood that his sudden bout of weakness was, indeed, a result of this Praetorian being female, and a prospective Queen...

As he now stood before the Spitter, taller than him by a third, and probably thrice as heavy... a sickening sense of inferiority crept into his gut. He felt small. He felt judged. And as the beast snarled at him— the air itself seeming to vibrate with its superiority... his limbs felt as though they were weighed down by cannonballs.

Inadvertently, his legs started to buckle— he shrank under the Praetorian's presence and lowered himself into a crouch, no longer entirely in control of himself. The urge to... submit was building to a fever-pitch, now...

The young Queen stepped closer, at seeing his new posture, and he felt himself begin to shake on the spot as it leaned down— jaws barely a foot about his head. The sound of its breathing, and the... scent that came with it, as hot vapor washed over his back very nearly made him give in. He knew what it wanted— he knew that it wanted to hear the sound of his surrender. It sat at the back of his throat, clawing at his vocal cords, and the desire to speak it was immense.

He could no longer think. He didn't think. All he felt were urges— it was as though he was a Newborn, again. No words came to mind, no concepts or abstracts. Nothing but pure desire. The desire to surrender— to cling to the vague promise of safety and of mercy. The fact that he'd just defeated four of his own Hive-Mates would have made him impressive in the eyes of royalty, he knew— on some level, he knew that this whole charade was a test. Images of him receiving the anointing of a Queen — of the Spitter, looming over him — emerged from his deepest psyche. Echoes of sensation— the thought of engaging in coitus, and serving the new Queen as mate and guard filled his chest with a floaty, simmering glee. That weakening vertigo in his crotch became a deep itch, and an odd euphoria sprouted in the very back of his head. So overpowering were these urges, in fact, that all thoughts of his past hatreds and regrets were soundly stifled...

But no sound emerged from his throat.

As the seconds dragged into minutes, and he continued to produce no noise, the Praetorian crouching over him started to become impatient. Its upper-lip twitched, and its teeth gnashed. He continued to simply shake on the ground, it eventually rumbled— low, deep, and resonating. A frequency reserved purely for when mating was required.
The sound, seeming to penetrate to the very core of his guts, caused him to almost release the sound that begged to tear from his maw. The tiniest squeak squeezed from out of his Piston-Jaw... but no more than that.

A beat passed. And another. And another. The Praetorian waited for another ten seconds, before producing that same mating-call one more time.

Anteros, however, simply remained silent and shook. The noise felt as though it shook his entire body, but he did not give in. He desperately vied for control of himself, desperately trying to think. Why he hadn't already given in was a mystery to him, but he did not.

Then, as he heard the Spitter take in a deep breath, ready to rumble a third enticement... a breakthrough came. One, single thought broke through the suffocating cloud instinct. One, solitary image— one idea sprouted from the core of his memory. And as it did, everything else in his mind was shattered and blown away in its wake.

Samantha.

His body stopped shaking. A growl rumbled from within his chest. And before the Praetorian could so much as react... his tail whipped up over his back, and toward her face.

His blade was off by inches, cutting a massive gash on the right side of the Spitter's face and jaw, rather than straight through the skull— liquid blossoming from the wound. It screeched, reeled, and stood up in surprise, but Anteros wasn't done. The instant it stepped away from him, Anteros sprang to his feet, jumped up, and threw the fattest, strongest uppercut he could muster, putting his entire body into the attack. His knuckles connected with the underside of the Praetorian's chin, and her head whipped up and backwards by the force of it. And as he did so, one phrase sprung into his brain and subsequently blasted itself into the Hive-Mind.

"FUCK! OFF!".

Anteros landed on his feet, shakily, teeth bared, snarling, shaking his right hand. His entire arm that he'd punched her with felt numb, and his knuckles were bleeding... but he'd be lying if he said that that hadn't felt good. The cloud of instinctual influence from earlier was completely gone, and Anteros probably would have been laughing, if he had the diaphragm for it.

The Praetorian, still reeling in surprise, stepped backwards and shook its head. For a moment, it did nothing, but the sound of a few clicks drew the attention of all to the ground at the Spitter's feet.

Five teeth, and a shard of bone and chitin.

The Spitter's chin-bone was, evidently, cracked, as it now was missing a portion of its lower-lip, and some of the teeth on its lower-jaw.

The Praetorian snarled and roared at him, tail lashing about in wide arcs, as the Hive-Mates surrounding them bayed for blood in unison with her. When the Drone who's tail had been missing ("stumpy") leapt toward him from his left, however, the entire front of its head and both of its hands became bisected, and it fell to the floor like a sack of potatoes— her axe-blade on the end of her tail having swung down upon it like a guillotine.

She screamed at the remaining underlings, and they backed away in fear. That a Praetorian could feel something approaching pride, or that it could have an ego to bruise, probably shouldn't have surprised Anteros as much as it did.

You want me all to yourself, do you? Well, come on then!, he thought. He was feeling... exhilarated! Lighter on his feet and clearer of mind than before! The thumping of his own heart returned in full to his mind, and a burn began to swell at the back of his skull. The Ancestral, finally getting the message that no surrender would be possible, opened the floodgates of fury within, and let the adrenaline flow, freely; this was about survival, now— "me or them". And as self-sacrificing as the average Xenomorph was, the Ancestral knew the value of self-preservation.
Anteros would have to ponder the implications of such a thing, later, though... for he had a monster to slay!

The Praetorian began to move— stepping sideways, slowly, deliberately. He mirrored the act, walking the opposite direction, to his left. As she walked, her feet put dents in the roof's steel with the force of each stomp, her snarling progressed into a constant hissing with each breath, and her tail swished and swayed behind her in an odd, figure-eight pattern— each flick of the blade at its end producing sharp whistles. Anteros, for his part, stayed silent, stepped calmly, and dragged his tail on the ground, behind him. What precisely she was trying to do wasn't quite clear to Anteros— sizing him up? Intimidating him? There wasn't much room to jockey for positioning or any favorable ground. Nevertheless, he stayed focused, and didn't dare to turn away.
He wasn't sure how much time passed before the Spitter finally made a move. But when it did, he was ready for it...

Completely out of the blue, and faster than anything he'd seen before, the Praetorian abruptly threw itself forward, arms held high, and in two steps it loomed over him. Both of its fists came thundering down onto his head, and Anteros instinctively dove to his left, throwing himself out of the way.
Had he been a third of second slower, he would have been caught, and where he'd once been: she'd smashed in the steel-plating with a painfully loud "clang".
By the time Anteros got back up onto all-fours, he didn't have time to turn around to face her, as her tail's axe-blade was already swinging down to intercept him. He jumped up, throwing himself a short distance away from his opponent, and twisted mid-air to face her.

By the time his hands and feet touched the ground, she'd already stood up and was stomping in his direction. She raised a hand and swung it down at him, as though to scythe wheat with her talons, and Anteros hopped backwards and turned side-on from her to avoid them— the air above his head whistling at the speed her claws cut through it. So far, he was reliably (though, with difficulty) evading everything she threw at him...

What Anteros didn't then expect was for her to lunge forward and kick him. Xenomorphs weren't known for using their legs to do much more than jump. But that's precisely what she did.

As though she were punting a stationary football, her leg came rushing at his face. He tried to turn away from it at the last instant, but her shin slammed into the side of his head, and her foot caught him in the ribs.
The force of it dazed him— a painful numbness shot throughout his skull as all sensation temporarily left his world. The next thing Anteros detected, a few milliseconds later, was the sensation sailing through the air, rolling lengthwise as he flew, and then hitting the ground. He tumbled across the metal a few meters and wound up crushing a section of solar-panels where he finally stopped.
He immediately got to his feet, worked through a rush of vertigo, and reoriented, finding himself having been launched a ways out of the circle of Hive-Mates. The Praetorian was already charging toward him on all-fours, and Anteros had a but a second before she closed the distance.

Anteros gathered the strength in his legs and jumped straight upwards the instant before she was upon him— up he flew, thirty feet over her head with a muted "whoosh". He flipped over at the apex of his jump and twisted to right himself, expecting to land behind the beast... only to find her striding toward where he would land, ready to intercept. By the time his feet touched down, she was lunging at him with a raised fist, ready to bash his head in. Anteros, however, by sheer impulse and luck, had thrust his tail over his back and swung it in a downward arc toward the Spitter's head.

His tail-blade bounced harmlessly off of her heavily-armored crest (predictably), but the strike made the beast hesitate just long enough that he was able to throw himself to his right before she could properly begin her swing.

As he stood to two legs and his tail retracted, the Spitter turned to face him, swinging her left-arm wide— attempting to backhand him in the face. She was too close for any acrobatics, so he ducked beneath the swing — the air above his head being audibly carved out of the path of her fist — and found himself with no maneuvering-room when he straightened back up, as her right-arm then followed-up with a sloppy-looking cross.
He raised both arms in front of his face to block, and found himself thrown backwards off of his feet, sent on a short flight and landing on his back, sliding across the roof.

As he flipped over and got back up, his arms shook. A pulsing numbness ached throughout his forearms and radiated into both of his shoulders. The force of her punch reminded him of what precisely he was dealing with... and Anteros snarled to himself. Partly in anger, and partly in fear. And he knew why.
He wasn't trying hard enough.
Even with the Ancestral now pulling its weight, he was still afraid. He was still holding back— holding back from actually trying to go on the offensive. Holding back from getting in any strikes. Letting the Praetorian control the engagement— letting her dictate the terms of the fight. He had to take the initiative and take control. He could only dodge and weave so many times before she landed a decent blow, and Anteros was under no illusions about how fragile he was. One clean hit from her, and he was probably dead.
That he would probably have to land at least a few good attacks on her before he could get the upper-hand, whereas she only needed to get in one to win the fight, was not lost on him...

After his last tumble, the Spitter did not immediately re-engage. It, instead, slowly stomped to its left, content to stay a few meters away. Her teeth were only partially bared, hands flexing open and closed, tail waving in that same circular pattern— apparently satisfied with itself. It occurred to him that he could probably just turn and run, but with four pursuers who could see him from much further away than he could see them, he wouldn't get very far. The Spitter seemed to know this, and had no issue drawing this out. A testament to its autonomy, able to stifle its own urges for the sake of a more desired goal.

Anteros bared his teeth, snarled, and slammed a fist through the floor— knuckles punching a hole through the metal. Ripping free his arm, uncaring of the growing ache in his injuries, Anteros surged up onto two legs and strode forward.

The Spitter, abruptly halting her power-walk and facing forward, began to stomp toward him, in turn... and Anteros felt himself deafen and focus as the world appeared to slow, each step closer to the beast forcing his heart to assault his rib-cage with its pulsing. A numb, echoing roar sang within his head, as his sense of hearing swiftly shut down, and all he could hear was the pounding of his own heart.
As he came within a tail's length of the Praetorian, he raised both fists and attempted a ready-stance in vague mimicry of a boxer, and his mind shut out almost all sensation as the two of them came closest; he felt himself enter a dreamlike focus, and from that point onward, he seemed to move with a speed and fluidity he seldom knew— a state he'd only ever reached while the Ancestral took control. The world, at once, moved slower than dripping wax, yet faster than a diving hawk, with every action perceived and carried out from a place of detached oneness. All that happened next came and went, both, faster than Anteros could register, yet slower than he'd expected...

The Praetorian lunged at him, twisting her upper-body and swinging her left arm, talons outstretched. Her talons shot toward his head, and Anteros was subconsciously surprised at how easily he was able to duck and weave under it, as it tore at the air above him— a piercing whistle-sound ringing as her claws flew. The moment Anteros was clear of her attack, he sprang up, jumping and tucking a knee to his chest, and threw a right cross at her face.
His knuckles smacked against the very same gash on the side of her face he'd scored earlier— with how hugely his senses were enhanced, he could feel and perceive a spray of blood squirting from the wound as his fist slammed into it.

If the blow hurt, he couldn't tell, as the Ranger Praetorian barely flinched, and by the time his feet touched the ground again, she was already turning to her left and swinging her outstretched arm to backhand him. Anteros could see the tendons near her elbow stretching, as her forearm and knuckles rushed at him— he turned and leaned hard to the left, away from her, dropping to a crouch and crawling away, barely dodging the attack, with her arm grazing the side of his dome.

He stood back up and would have turned to face the beast, only to once again find himself having to dodge— her right arm swung down at his head the moment her backhand failed to connect. He leaned left, again, allowing her claws to miss the right side of his head by inches, and he lunged forward as it passed him, coming around to her right. He unthinkingly lashed out as he passed—
The claws of his right hand slashed into the flesh on the Spitter's right thigh— digging into what amounted to the beast's quadricep. His claws didn't sink in very far, though, and the cuts he scored were rather shallow. As he retracted his hand, he turned on his heel to face the Spitter, and thought he heard her snarl... when the beast's tail came whipping toward him from his left as she shuffled to her left, away from him.
He was close enough to the Spitter that the tail had to double over itself to strike him with its axe-blade, and so was slower than usual in striking— he gathered strength in his legs and launched himself forward, just barely avoiding the blade's swing.

Having more or less thrown himself at the Ranger Praetorian with his maneuver, he found himself latching onto her shoulders and back with his hands, digging in his claws. She twisted and lurched and screeched — panicking, not expecting to be grappled by one so much smaller than her — and Anteros found himself being wrenched around by her sheer bulk, hanging onto the small holes he'd carved into the chitin of her shoulder-ridges. His legs scrambled for purchase, clawed toes managing to gouge small cuts in the relatively-lightly-armored flesh of the beast's lower-back.
In a small moment of lucidity, Anteros concentrated, hoisted himself up above the beast with his grip upon her shoulders, braced his right foot upon the Praetorian's shoulder-blade while rearing back his left... and kicked. Hard.

The result (he assumed) was him punching a stab-wound a decent few inches into her "kidney-area" with the blunted claws on his foot— toes practically buried within the Spitter's flesh. How he'd managed to coordinate kicking his leg and stiffening the joints of his digitigrade ankle and digits in just the right way to do this without also shattering his knee or dislocating his toes would go on to confuse him for many years to come; in any regard, the sound of a furious roar tearing out of the Ranger's throat soundly drowned out any contemplation, in the moment.
The beast's hand shot up over her shoulder, toward his face, and with his elevated position and his foot dug into her back, Anteros found himself being snatched by middle of his skull and thrown— the world spinning and wind rushing past him as he was sent on a short flight.

Far from letting himself hit the ground and tumble for the umpteenth time, he righted himself mid-air and landed on his feet— stumbling from his own momentum, and winding up facing away from the Ranger. As he turned around, he was met with the Spitter barreling toward him on all-fours, metal ground shuddering at her passage, head-crest facing forward, like the business-end of a battering-ram. Anteros dropped and slunk down, crouching low to the floor. As he prepared to evade the charge, an idea came to mind...
Quadriceps don't work. Target the back of the knee.

The Praetorian barreled forward, and just as she came within a tail's length of him, she surged unto her hind legs, rearing up like a big-horn sheep, then unleashed upon him a colossal downward headbutt that may well have outright crushed him... had he not waited until the last possible instant and threw himself to the side, his tail lashing out at the beast as he scuttled away. The Spitter, having smashed a kiddie-pool-sized dent into the metal floor, could not quite re-chamber herself to guard against his tail, as his blade managed to slash a groove down her armored back while her headcrest was still pressed to the ground. It didn't penetrate, and probably didn't even hurt, but it sure as Hell pissed her off.

She surged up to two legs, once more, turning toward him and snarling. Anteros rose to his own feet, in turn, heartbeats before the Spitter lunged forward and swung a wild haymaker down unto his head. Any human being would have had their head removed from their shoulders, and their head, itself, reduced to a spray of wet chunks, but Anteros ducked the beast's fist as it cleaved forth, inches above his head. He stepped forward to within the Praetorian's guard, almost crouching, and thrust forth both arms at the Ranger's (relatively) unarmored abdomen, putting all of his weight into the strike. The claws of his hands sank deep into the Spitter's gut, and Anteros tried his best to grab a decent hold and tear his arms backward, trying to disembowel his opponent.

He knew it wouldn't work (as only small shreds of leathery flesh and blood splattered against his front), but it wasn't the goal in itself. The Spitter, feeling pain in one of the few places it knew itself to be vulnerable (while leaning forward and unbalanced, no less), hissed in shock and, as Anteros had hoped, stepped backwards with her left leg and threw her upper-half backward in an attempt to protect her stomach, flailing a bit as she simultaneously slapped at him with her left hand.

Now that the beast was leaning backward while so splay-legged and unable to leverage quite as much of her strength, Anteros felt something approaching satisfaction, as he found himself able to relatively-easily catch the Ranger's wrist with his right hand just as her talons came rushing at the side of his head; and with her right leg so conveniently extended in front of him (practically outstretched at his side), he reached around and slashed and tore at the back of the beast's knee with his left hand.
He managed to rip at the tendons, there, twice (drawing blood and squelching noises) before he had to disengage— the beast's free arm moved to retaliate with a massive fist swinging down directly onto the top of his head. Anteros had to quickly let go the creature's left hand and dive to his left, throwing himself into a haphazard roll across the ground.

Pushing off of the ground with his hands and springing back up to his hind legs, Anteros continued shuffling backward as he scanned the fruits of his effort, only stopping once he'd cleared a good ten meters.

The Praetorian stood where she was thirty feet away, standing side-on. She made to turn and face him, but her right leg almost buckled as she appeared to have an acute muscle-spasm. The Spitter's constant output of snarls and rumbling ceased for more than a few moments, as the beast seemed to take note of her injury. She lifted her wounded leg and extended it forward a few times, testing the flexion. Giving her leg a final stomp as acid streamed down her shin and foot, the Praetorian swiftly resumed its growling, and bore her teeth at him.
Effective, but not enough..., Anteros thought. Need to do it again— make certain the muscle-fibers are completely severed. He was actually surprised that his claws were able to do as much damage as they had. It was like trying to saw a small log with a machete.

Rather than immediately retaking the offensive, Anteros was mildly surprised to see the Spitter apparently second-guessing her chances in this fight. She remained in a side-on posture, hunching over for the first time since he'd seen her. Evidently, he'd done enough damage to warrant caution. She lowered herself to a slouched guard-stance, very much echoing the goblin-like mannerisms of the Spitter she'd begun life as; the beast lurched forward, toward him, slowly and scavenger-like, keeping herself side-on from him and bringing her tail to bare. It hovered high above her head, ready to bisect him, the axe-bladed weapon reflecting the light of the afternoon sun.

In any other circumstance, Anteros would have cut his losses and ran, at this development— were the situation any different, he would have chosen to retreat at this precise moment. That the Ranger Praetorian was now choosing to change its tactics and act more defensively was a massive cause for concern, as he'd never fought a Xenomorph fighting in a defensive manner, before, and had never even seen a Xenomorph fight in such a manner. But... the circumstance being what it was, Anteros couldn't run away until this fight was done. And in any case, he had committed himself to not overthinking— to simply act, and act decisively, because any amount of doubt or hesitation would kill him as assuredly as making a mistake would. He lowered himself to the ground...

And he sprinted toward the Praetorian at full-speed, like a panther beginning its ambush, bounding forth with grace twice the worth of any cat. In the space of two seconds, he was within range to leap at the creature. The beast's tail and axe-blade fell, in turn, swinging down at him, aimed perfectly to intercept his path— the Ranger had been ready.
Anteros, however, darted to one side in the blink of an eye— all of his momentum halted in an instant, as he turned and sprung, allowing the axe-blade to punch a gash through the metal he'd been about to trod upon.

Having as good an opening as he was liable to get, Anteros darted forward, close enough to get punched, and jumped up. The Ranger, predictably, reacted by trying to backhand him. He ducked a weaved under her arm, and launched a left-hand haymaker at the Praetorian's face. His knuckles bounced from off of her forehead — he put little weight into the strike — and when the beast swung its other arm in an upward arc, talons readied, he quickly stepped in and to the side, leaning out of the way, and lunging down to reach for the Ranger's leg, once more.

Just as his claws ripped a tear into the back of its knee, again, however, he felt the beast's hand slam roughly onto the top of his head, and as he felt her talons grab tight hold... the feeling of the air in his lungs rushing from out of his mouth halted any thought of escaping her grasp, as an immense pain sundered through his midsection. He would have went stumbling backwards, as his knees swiftly gave out from under him... as the Praetorian's other knee had slammed into his gut.

He had never known such agony, before... at least... excluding the emergence of The Unknown. It felt as though his guts had collectively shriveled and retracted into his ribs— a numbing, pulsing ache quickly forcing him to gasp weakly for air. At times like this, he was dismayed to not have dorsal-tubes to breathe through...

The next thing Anteros knew, he was hoisted upwards, and a tight pressure forcing both of his arms to his sides. The Ranger had him by both elbows and around the waist with her hands, holding him aloft just high enough for him to "look" her in the eye. As air slowly filled his lungs, once more, he found himself feeling an unpleasant, stinging twinge in his arms, as the crushing grip of the Spitter did his bones no favors, and drew a sharp pain from the wound on his right elbow.

She held him at arm's-length, before bringing his face closer to hers. Initially, he was confused, but as the beast's drooling maw peeled open, revealing her twitching Piston-Jaw, readying to end him... Anteros's mind went blank.
So blank that even his own heartbeat faded from his mind, as all of his focus became centered on the fangs of the Piston-Jaw mere inches from his face. So blank that no words came to mind, and instead, only a single image— that of Samantha, smiling at him, as the deepening dread of never seeing her again sank in. So blank, in fact... that his tail moved of its own accord, and not even he saw it coming when his fifth limb whipped about, swung down, and coiled itself around the Praetorian's injured knee— wrapping around it, once-over, from outside-to-inside, at the exact point where his claws had already drawn blood.

If he'd had the facial-muscles for it... he would have smiled as the Ranger uttered a small grunt, just before his tail ripped itself back like the ripcord on a lawnmower— his tail-blade subsequently carving out the flesh, down to bone, the entirety of the back and sides of the knee-joint.

A spray of liquid issued out, predictably, and the Ranger screeched in shock— Anteros immediately kicked and thrashed with all of his might, his toe-claws slicing multiple times into the beast's chest and stomach, and as the Praetorian buckled and dropped to its crippled knee (allowing his own legs to touch the ground, again), its grip loosened, and Anteros managed to flex his arms out of its grip.

He hopped away from the beast as it scrambled and roared— it struggled to get up onto its good leg, acid streaming down its shin and foot as its knee refused to support its weight. Anteros casually stepped away from it, whipping his tail off to one side to flick off the acid and flesh coating his blade, as the Ranger wobbled up and shakily stood upon its good leg— the other hanging limply from raised thigh. The Praetorian bore its teeth, snarled and hissed at him, as it repeatedly lowered its crippled leg to the floor and tried to stand on it, only to have it fold under its weight.

Anteros simply waited and backpedaled a few more meters, as his opponent fell forward and dropped to its hands. It roared at him louder than it needed to, as though to demand he refrain from mocking its predicament, tail whipping around in the air above it, clearly set on continuing the fight on all-fours. Or... threes.
With its injured leg being dragged behind it, and with little practice on three legs, Anteros wasn't surprised to see the creature trip over itself and face-plant as it tried to charge him. It scrambled up and, seemingly snarling in irritation at itself, started walking, slowly, to its left. Tail held high and malice leaking from every pore, even as it dragged its limp ankle behind it.

Anteros... found himself feeling something approaching pity, seeing such a powerful vanguard of the Hive handicapped to the point of having to actually take its time and slow down— something he'd never seen any Xenomorph do. Even the Warrior he'd broken the ankle of, back when he first met Lich, bounced back relatively quickly...
But Anteros knew better than to underestimate his foe, crippled as it was. He turned on the spot to keep facing the Ranger. It stalked around him in a circle, painting a streak of bubbling fluid on the metal behind it, as it crept along mere meters away. He met its hisses and snarls with silence, and as the preamble continued... a psychic tingle alerted him to a communiqué...

That... was when the thudding of feet upon metal came drumming toward him from behind, and Anteros reacted, instantly spinning about on his heel and throwing out his arm, backhanded, at head-height.

The backs of his knuckles bashed into something, followed by the sound of a shriek, and Anteros soon found himself confronted with one of the Spitters that he'd been fighting, reeling from his strike. It likely would have retaliated if his other fist didn't then slam into its mouth, teeth sent flying. Not flinching, the Spitter clawed at his face with its right hand, only to have him intercept its arm with his elbow and grab its wrist, while in the same instant, ramming the claws of his other hand deep into the Xenomorph's jugular, a gurgling spray coating his arm and chest.
Just as he clenched his fist within the Spitter's neck and ripped out a chunk of what appeared to be a windpipe, one of the other Spitters (the one that had sliced him across the chest, earlier) came sprinting around and lunged at him from his left, both talons raised high. At the same time, the Ranger he'd just given a back-alley tracheotomy to was swinging its other arm at his face.

Anteros twisted at the waist, stepping to the side; he yanked his left-arm, hard, dragging his victim by its wrist, off-balance, partially into the path of the newcomer, while blocking its left-arm with his right.

The other Spitter, finding itself about to collide into its partner, seemed to halt its attack at the last moment— arms going lax just in time to avoid striking its ally, only to wind up in an awkward bear-hug with its colleague.

Anteros lifted his leg and push-kicked the throat-less Spitter in the chest as hard as he could, sending both of them into a scrambling, furious heap on the ground, gurgling and hissing together all the while. Just as the throat-less one found its footing, again, it also found a two-foot blade of organic-metal flying at its face.
His tail-blade, frustratingly, didn't puncture the Spitter's narrow, smooth forehead, but as it was glancing off of the frontal chitin-armor, it found itself channeled toward the acid-sack on the side of the Spitter's head— piercing and bursting the organ, and punching through. The Spitter gurgled and foamed with all the volume it could muster and, apparently disoriented or concussed by the force of his weapon, could only hiss as his tail was yanked from its head. As it was pulled forward by the torque and stumbled toward him, Anteros wound up his arm and threw the strongest right-hook he could muster.

His fist, incidentally, slammed home right in the deflated sack that he'd just stabbed... and he almost felt sick when a deep "crack" noise soon followed, and felt his entire fist punch through the Spitter's brain...

The force of his punch sent the Xenomorph's newly-paralyzed body soundly to the floor, off to Anteros's left, and conveniently also pulled free its caved-in skull from his hand, now dripping with blood.

Just as he dispatched the throat-less one, Anteros sensed movement behind him, and ducked just in time to avoid the tail-blade of the last remaining Drone flying over his head. He lunged forward, throwing an uppercut at the Drone's chin— it leaned to the left, dodging his fist, only to shriek as he dug his claws into the side of its head.
Behind him, the second Spitter had gotten up and swung its tail down toward his back— his own tail zipped upwards and met its blade with his own, while Anteros wrenched down the Drone's head and drove his Piston-Jaw into the top of its head. He let go of its skull and shoved its limp corpse away from him, immediately turning around and swinging his fist at head-height, only to strike the air, as the Spitter ducked and swiped its claws at his stomach.

He stepped back and leaned away from its claws, whipping his tail in a wide arc, behind him, as the other remaining Ranger came running up behind him— forced to halt itself in its tracks, taking a slash across its head-crest. The Spitter in front of him, meanwhile, continued swinging its talons at him, forcing him to backpedal and dodge. The Ranger's assault left little openings, such was its speed, and Anteros snarled to himself as the Spitter behind him surged forth.

He ducked, spun, and shuffled away as the Spitter swung at his head, from behind, and Anteros's tail zipped around and plunged into the same Spitter's lower-back, while the other Ranger found itself thrown off its feet as Anteros rammed his shoulder into its chest. As it was mid-fall, though, its tail snaked up and struck him across the chest a second time, scoring another shallow cut almost parallel to the first. He took barely any note of the injury, as after knocking it down, he spun around and swung his arm, up then down, and bashed the Spitter he'd backstabbed over the head with a hammerfist while his tail-blade was still embedded in its kidney, a dull crunch-noise being heard as a visible crack it its dome sprouted.
The first Spitter scrambled up and dashed at him from behind, Anteros turned around and hopped away to his right, pirouetting as he went, and yanking hard on his tail— freeing it from its back and sending the Spitter he'd head-bonked stumbling and spinning into the path of the other.

The still-fully-conscious Ranger shrieked in apparent fury and shoved its addled companion out of its way, roughly, sending it to the ground, as the first turned and rushed at him, mouth frothing. It raised up both arms and made to slash at him with its talons. Anteros lowered himself to a crouch and crawled backwards, whipping forth his tail toward the Spitter's gut.
It twisted at the waist and allowed his tail fly past it, lunging at him. It didn't anticipate his tail then retracting and hooking around its ankle. Anteros jumped up to meet the Spitter's assault just as his tail ripped at its leg. It didn't quite lose its footing, but it was unbalanced just long enough for Anteros to land a thunderous right-cross on its jaw.

Its head whipped to its right, as a sharp crack filled the air, its jaw thoroughly dislocated. It unflinchingly swung its left hand at his face, however, and Anteros was forced to lean back, hard, his balance almost failing. The Spitter's right hand was already rushing at his head by the time he regained his footing, and Anteros had ducked and weave under it, the top of his dome grazing the Spitter's elbow.
As he shuffled to his left, he threw the heavy right-hook into the Ranger's gut, drawing a dull thump and a hissing wheeze from it, and as he straightened back up, he was already winding up a left-hook aimed at its face. It, however, saw this coming, and leaned back to avoid it— losing its footing and falling onto its back, as it seemed to overestimate how far it needed to back up.

Anteros calmly stepped backwards while the Spitter scrambled back to its feet. It hissed, gurgling through its horrifically off-set jaw, and stepped slowly toward him, visibly inhaling and huffing. He, himself, was mildly winded at this point.
He had to say: this Spitter was relatively impressive. Other than the Praetorian, it had been the biggest obstacle to him, so far. If it had become a Praetorian, Anteros suspected it would have been quite horrifying to have to deal with. As it was, however, it was still in his way...

Anteros stepped forward, twisting and launching his tail at the creature. It made to duck and crawl under his blade, but found itself out-of-position when his tail stopped halfway and Anteros retracted it and thrust it again, down at the Spitter's prone, crouched form.

It screeched and squirmed, legs kicking furiously as it scrambled away from him with a deep puncture in its lower-back. It surprised him by abruptly turning and sprinting away, past the other remaining Spitter (who'd only just stood back up) and off in the direction where Anteros assumed the Lurker Praetorian had directed. It sprinted, fast, apparently frightened for its life... which Anteros took to mean it was moderately independent-minded and a modicum more intelligent than most.

Huh. Neat, he thought.

Anteros then turned about himself and scanned, only to find no sign of the Ranger Praetorian. None. He was somewhat surprised that the beast chose self-preservation over trying to kill him, but at this point, he was too tired to look for it or ponder why it made the decision he did. Looking around, all he found were the sizzling holes from the corpses he'd just made... and the last remaining Spitter he'd apparently hit hard enough to put in a fugue-state. It wobbled on its feet and made pathetic-sounding pants, blood leaking precipitously from its head-wound. Anteros wasted little time in impaling the sorry thing through its torso, as he found it mildly uncomfortable to watch one of his own kind struggle and suffer with an apparently-debilitating brain-injury.

Trudging away from its corpse... Anteros collapsed to his knees and sucked in the longest breath of air he'd ever sucked in, in recent memory. He panted and hissed to himself, as he took stock of his wounds.

Four, deep puncture-wounds on the right side of his head, from the claws of one of the assailants, still leaking acid down his neck. Two shallow cuts across the breadth of his chest and sternum, bleeding only lightly. A deep gouge on his right-forearm, just under his elbow, bleeding profusely. A mild puncture wound just above his right collar-bone, also bleeding profusely. The knuckles on both of his hands were cut up and scarred to shit, dripping with blood. Add all of that to the previous, still-healing bullet-wounds from his scrap with the Marines in the supermarket — which were a graze on the left side of his jaw, a bullet-hole on the inside of his right thigh, a shallow cut on his right-forearm, and a bullet-hole in his left bicep — and Anteros was... the most injured he'd ever been in his life.

But he was still alive, had lost none of his limbs or fitness, and... he still had a job to do...

He spent the next ten minutes carefully regurgitating Hive-Resin and coating it onto each of his wounds— scraping off the old Resin from the older injuries and replacing it with new coatings. He had to stay relatively still while each coating dried and set, then had to flex each body-part he tended to to make sure the coating wouldn't tear or rip with movement. Once he'd done so, he doubled the coating on each injury.

Chuffing to himself and snarling, Anteros got to his feet and ran— in the direction he was most certain the supermarket was. There was still the second load of bags he had to pick up, nearby... and then he had to bring it to the hangar...

Fucking Hell, this was a long day...


The Present...

"Ant'ros!", Samantha screamed, immediately running toward him, jumping off the end of the cargo-bay ramp.

As she was running, though, a voice boomed within her mind— not with volume, but force, the words: "Don't touch me!" shook through her brain. Her legs went stiff as her vision blurred so suddenly, and she tumbled to the floor, quickly righting herself and getting back up, shaking her head.
His voice spoke to her, again, "my wounds kept reopening on the way here and I don't know how safe it is to be near me", his tone curt but calm. She took milder steps toward him, hands fidgeting, and expression dour.

"It's been a Hell of a time keeping the bags intact...", he remarked, taking care to slowly remove the bags from his frame and putting them on the ground.

Samantha heart pounded in her throat, and she swallowed against the sudden dryness in her sinuses. She couldn't decide which splotch of gray on his body to focus her vision on, and she blurted, "what the fuck happened to you, Anty?!".

"An extremely long day...", he said, unfurling the plastic bag from around his neck, and lowering it to the floor, "I'll tell you everything, but first, take the bags to the kitchen. I need to patch up my injuries, again".

"But... but you... you're...", she mumbled, mind racing, before she huffed to herself and urgently scooped up all of the bags of meat and jogged into the shuttle. Anteros slunk off to the side and set about putting more Hive-Resin on his injuries, well-aware that Samantha was less-than-pleased with him.

She ran into the ship and dropped the fourteen bags at the bottom of the latter, spending the next ten minutes carrying three at a time up to the second floor and into the kitchen. By the time she was done, she'd seen Anteros climb up the ladder, himself, up to the captain's quarters. She went up there, herself, when it was finished and found him in the shower, apparently checking his wounds in the relative safety of neutralizing water.

Anteros knew how to operate the shower based on Samantha's memory of it from some nights ago. He removed the Hive-Resin from himself as carefully as he could. He was fairly certain that the volume of water would soundly cancel out the acidity of his blood, as the amount of blood leaking from him was minuscule at this point, and the shower poured out at least a few gallons every second. Most of his wounds had healed by this point, except for those on his arms and thigh. They'd torn open and weren't quite weeping blood, but were leaking at least a bit.

He allowed the water to sweep away his bleeding, and when the bleeding stopped, he stepped out of the water-spray to apply new Hive-Resin to his forearm, knuckles, and thigh. The cuts on his chest had sealed, and Anteros simply filled in the two troughs in his exoskeleton with Resin like one would filled a crack in the pavement with rubber. The puncture in his collar-bone and the small holes on the side of his head had also healed, surprisingly quickly. He put new Resin on the hole at the collar-bone, and carefully turned off the water.

He stood in the shower for a few minutes and did some stretches just to make sure the Resin wouldn't break open, again.

After being satisfied, he stepped out into the bathroom and grabbed the nearest hand-towel, drying himself off. As he walked out to the bedroom, he found a naked Samantha with a towel from the laundry-room leaning against the wall, waiting to take her own shower. Given the sweat she'd worked up. She had a stoic, but certainly-not-enthused look on her face, and her mind was a cloud of discontent, so he didn't bother saying anything. As Anteros slinked away and hopped onto the bed, she went in and washed herself.

As she showered, he could hear her mind stewing over the day's recent developments, building in frustration, not least of all, with him. Ten minutes later, out came a still-damp Samantha, throwing her used towel over her shoulder into the bathroom, and trudged toward him. She stopped at the foot of the bed, crossed her arms, cocked a hip, and said—

"I'm sorry".

"I'm sorry".

She blinked at him, and Anteros laid down, chin resting on the foot of the bed.

"I fucked up. Did something I shouldn't. And I have some bad news", he said, plainly. Samantha blinked at him, again, and brushed back her hair. She sighed, sat on the foot of the bed next to him, and reflexively started stroking his head. The four, teardrop-shaped spots of discoloration on his dome, rougher in texture than the rest of it, made her frown. She said, "just... tell me what happened". He paid close attention to her mind, looking for any sign of darker emotions, or disappointment— if she could forgive him for being gone for hours and almost getting killed, well... Anteros would be glad.

Anteros inhaled and exhaled loudly, reminding her of a tired dog, making her almost smile. She appeared to be holding off on any knee-jerk reaction until she heard what he had to say.

"Well...", he started, "where to fuckin' start...".

"I went to the same place to get meat, as I had yesterday. It was going fine... until a drop-ship of Colonial Marines showed up". Samantha's heart-rate kicked up at that, and her mind immediately imagined the horrific idea of Anteros having to kill more people, though you wouldn't have known it if you couldn't see her heart beating or hear her mind's activity. She kept a stoic face.. "They were setting up a forward-operating base— sentry-guns, combat-androids, everything", he said.

"You got out of there, right?", she asked, somewhat dreading the answer.
"Couldn't. They arrived just before I could get the last set of bags out, and by the look of what they were doing, they planned to set up shop for a while".
"How'd you get out, then?", she asked.
"Well... I had to disable their sentry-guns, scrap the androids, and, uh... shall we say, persuade the marines to... stay on the bench?", he confessed.

She frowned at him, very wisely realizing that if he'd actually killed anyone, he wouldn't be approaching the subject so casually, and asked him, "what did you do, Anteros?", in a chiding tone. It... filled him with an amount of pride that she knew him so well— or, at least, knew the personality he projected, so well.
"Well, uh... I kind of had to beat a few of them up".
"How badly?".
"Not very! Just... enough that they eventually sat in a corner and stopped trying to kill me. They shot at me a few times", he said.
"Is that what all these scars are from?", she asked.

"Uh... no. After I got two sets of bags from the supermarket, and dropped the first batch here, I went to go get the second", he explained.
"Where did you leave the second batch?".
"Relatively nearby to the supermarket— not close enough to be dangerous. Far enough away that I could grab it and go without issue", he said, "it was as I was on my way back there to get it that—".

He suddenly stopped, his own mood darkening, and lifted his head. He chuffed to himself, taking a dour tone, "shit, I forgot the important part— I overheard the Marines talking about their mission. According to their Sergeant, the Corps is making a push for The Warehouse".

Samantha did a double-take at that, recoiling from taking a closer look at one of his hands, and she scowled at him. She blinked a few times as she processed the revelation. "The Warehouse?! Really?", she said, incredulous. "Why are they trying to take it back, now, of all times?".

Anteros realized he still hadn't told her about the Hive having culled itself, and chuffed again.

"Oh, right, well you know how the Queen died a few days ago?".
"
Yeah?".
"Yeah, so... apparently, because she died, all of the Hive's females have started killing and maiming each other in order to fight to be the new Queen", he said, nonchalantly.
She blinked at him, frowned, and started to suspect she was getting a headache, "wh-... how... why?".

"Fighting for dominance, I'd guess. In any case, because the Hive is in disarray, the Colonial Marine Corps has decided that now is the ideal time for an offensive-push. Specifically, for The Warehouse", he said.
Samantha squinted at him, held a hand to her forehead, and closed her eyes, trying to conceptualize all of the new information. She eventually pinched the bridge of her nose, and sighed, asking, "why The Warehouse, though? S'not like there's some big super-weapon in there that'll magically destroy the Hive".

"Yeah... about that...", he mentally mumbled. Samantha looked sharply at him, knowing that what he said next would not be pleasant.
"According to that same Sergeant, the UACMC plans to drop nuclear weapons on the Hive once The Warehouse has been taken and its ordinance retrieved".
She stared at him. Her expression remained static, but her eyes widened to the size of dinner-plates when she heard the word "nuclear". She blinked, once. Twice. Then gaped, and slapped a hand to her head, shaking it.

"You're kidding...", she mumbled, "you have to be kidding— they can't just nuke three cities after getting their expensive toys back, that's... they can't...". She thought on the kind of payload it would take to sufficiently destroy a Xenomorph Hive, kilometers in diameter. How the superstructure of the city would buckle and collapse under the weight of such force. She started to hyperventilate, as she imagined the whole world shattering apart in a white flash, at any given moment— she was under the impression that the Corps might drop the hammer soon.

Anteros curtailed this before she started to panic, "it won't be happening for another few days. They're still only starting to begin the push toward The Warehouse, and it'll take at least a few days to exfiltrate all of the stuff, in there, before they think about pressing the big, red button".

She looked at him, seemed to calculate the plausible amount of time they'd have before doomsday, and finally sighed, again. She scratched her head, and went over the "numbers", how long it would take for the Marines to reach The Warehouse, how long to secure it, how long to begin extraction of the ordinance. "Okay...", she said, considerably relieved, "well... at least the Hive will be dead, once we're home-free...". She said this to herself, more than anything, as a means of finding a silver-lining in the utter devastation of three major, metropolitan population-centers. A shame he had to then burst her bubble...

"Yeah... 'bout that...", he whispered into her mind, wishing he could cringe, outwardly, to match how he felt. He had to settle for covering his head with a hand.
Samantha gave him an alarmed side-eye, before rolling her eyes, and face-palming again, "oh, you've got to be joking— what now?".

"I... sort of... kind of... accidentally... warned the Hive about it...", he dragged out, turning his head away from her.

"... what?".

"The Hive knows about the nukes, and is already evacuating", he elaborated, quickly. "I don't know where they're all going, or if they'll escape the blast-radius, but... yeah...".
Samantha gaped at him, incredulous, "wh—what... how did... how did you... what?!".

"On my way to get the second load of bags, after dropping off the first, I sort of... accidentally wound up in the heart of the Hive...", he began to explain.

She frowned at him, more exasperated than angry, "Anty. How... in the Kentucky fried-fuck... did you accidentally wind up there?! On your way to the complete opposite of that?!". She waved her hands around and almost laughed at the absurdity of it, "I mean— I'm not trying to be mean, here, but that's just... fucking how?!".

Anteros made a small, whine-noise, and rolled over onto his side, sighing into her head, "look, I—... I'm not going to pretend it makes any sense, but please... trust me when I say that I didn't mean to. Something came over me, and I wound up all the way over there, like I was sleepwalking, okay?".

"Something came over you?", she asked, only somewhat skeptical, raising a brow at him.

"Yes. It was like I'd forgotten what I was doing, and my body went on autopilot", he said, tiredly.

She huffed through her nose, and swept her hair back, asking, "well... do you at least know what caused it?".

"I have a theory", he said. "Well. More than a theory. TheAncestral pretty much confirmed it, every step of the way. With all the female Xenomorphs fighting for dominance, a few had become Praetorians, and with the culling having almost come to a close... a new Queen was about to rise and, well... a part of me was called to serve her".

"Female Xenomorphs can become Praetorians?", she asked.

"Apparently", he answered, "anyway. When I found myself in there, I didn't have much choice but to go in and find out what the fuss was about. I found hundreds of female corpses on the way there, and we wound up in one of the Hive's former Egg-Chambers. In there, there were two female Praetorians fighting to become Queen. I tried to leave, I couldn't, one thing led to another, and long story short: I accidentally let slip into the Hive-Mind about the nukes, and how everything would be annihilated in a matter of days".

"And... that's how the Hive knows to evacuate, now?", she guessed.
"Yeah. Next thing I know: the entire Hive is filing out of the area. One of the Praetorians went with the rest of the horde... and the other stayed behind to deal with me".
"Deal with you?", Samantha said, confused at that detail, "why? Didn't you just do all of them a favor?".
"I can only assume that Mother's previous directive to kill me still stood. And I kind of outed myself as a deviant, in the process...", he supposed.

"Uh-huh... and... I assume you got these scars from the Praetorian?", she said, leaning in and staring at the Hive-Resin covering his elbow. Her mind seemed to mildly cloud over. She was seemingly avoiding thinking of precisely what it might have been like, for him, to fight such a creature, and was choosing to think of the event, in abstract.

"Not quite. She chased me for a mile or two before I stopped, and she called for reinforcements. Six Hive-Mates. They did most of this damage. I killed most of them, fought the Praetorian... then she... fucked off, and ran away", he said.

"Huh", she said, still examining his arm. Her mind stalled, as she unconsciously thought of a way to address the topic without having to deal with the fact that he'd almost died. She didn't know she was avoiding it, but he could see it. She eventually defaulted to humor.
"Well, aren't you the badass, then? Six all at once?", she teased, wryly. She wasn't quite taking the situation quite as seriously as Anteros felt was appropriate, but... he supposed it was touching that she was simply happy he was safe.

"I'm sure I'll be able to feel proud of it, at some point", he remarked.

"My big, strong protector, eh? With all your cool battle-scars?", she teased, smirking, shoving his shoulder. "Not scared of some stupid Praetorian, hm? Showed her what for".

"Oh, I was fucking terrified, darling. Didn't stop me from punching her in the face".

She snorted, and sighed to herself, rubbing her temples. She thought on all he'd told her, skimming over the details in her mind, and coming to conclusion that... not much had actually changed. She slapped her thigh and put a hand on her knee, "well, shit. Gonna have to get this shuttle off-world real quick, then".

"About that. How are we looking?", he asked, sitting up onto his haunches.

Samantha stood up and walked to the cockpit, bringing back the duffel-bag and dropping it on the bed next to him.

"Well, I finished most of the maintenance and pre-flight checklist—", she jolted, "oh, shit! I forgot to ask you to—".

"I already checked the fuel valve, up top, while you were handling the bags. The tank is at least eighty-five percent full", he said. She blinked at him, "oh. Thanks".

She sifted through the bag, pulling out both wallets that belonged to the Garrows, "well, with that done, I can begin using the flight-sim to learn how to operate this thing and get us out of here. In other news...".

She held up the two items in one hand and pulled out the universal remote with the other, "I can open up the hangar-bay, now. It makes a lot of noise, so we should only do it once we're ready to leave. Also... the man and woman who were on this shuttle were apparently husband and wife".

Samantha dropped the wallets and remote into the bag and put her hands on her hips, "they were both Weyland-Yutani researchers, and I can only assume what they were doing here is on this PDA or on the laptops. Or the papers... either way, it's... kind of crazy to see Wey-Yu staff, here. Especially given the giant hole you found, under the hangar, and all the expensive equipment. I can only assume that Wey-Yu built all of this set-up well in-advance of the Infestation...", she said tentatively.

"Is this... is this something Weyland-Yutani would do? Or that... people would expect them to do?", he asked.

She scratched her cheek, "well... not really. They're mostly a synthetics and transportation business, especially after Lassalle Bionational split off from them. They've been trying to dig out more and more of the military-applications sector. I...", she frowned and bit her lip, "they have a shady reputation. Lots of rumors and conspiracy theories— colonies going missing, people disappearing, malfunctioning androids. They have an apparent habit of being connected to a bunch of malefic, mysterious, red-room nonsense. Allegedly, there was some sort of scuffle between one of their private mercenary companies and the Colonial Marines, on Acheron, which is allegedly now secretly snaking its way through the legal-system".

"A nuclear explosion occurred... a terraforming-colony was destroyed... lot of people died. Weyland-Yutani tried to blame the nuke on the Proggies— the Union of Progressive Peoples, in an official press-conference, but they had zero evidence, and practically nobody really believed them. That alleged court-case is apparently really big and hush-hush. Probably won't have any results for another decade, given the company's budget for lawsuits", she explained, at length. She shrugged, "before today, I wouldn't have given it much mind, but... given that incident on Acheron, there might be more to all of this".

"What makes you say that?".

"Acheron — LV-426 — was allegedly where Xenomorphs were first discovered", she said, uncertainly, "a bunch of whistleblowers from Wey-Yu, as well as from the Colonial Marines, came out and started kicking up a shitstorm about it— that's actually where a lot of the myths and legends about Xenomorphs come from...".

"... so, you think Weyland-Yutani might have known about the Infestation, on Guardian, before it was going to happen?", he suggested.

She shrugged, again, "I don't know. But it's really convenient that they had two senior researchers here, in a really expensive shuttle, with years-worth of food stored, and a bunker at the bottom of a pit, which happens to be insulated from detection by Xenomorphs. And given what you said about the hangar— how Mister Garrow apparently got Hived, way at the beginning of the Infestation, and then ran here...", she bit her knuckle, and frowned deeply. Anteros could tell she was only now putting all of these details together, and Anteros himself was beginning to suspect she was correct.

Samantha picked up the duffel-bag and dropped it in the cockpit, shaking her head as she returned, "well, anyway, I should focus on learning the flight-sim controls and get used to flying before we worry about any of that", she said, wanting to avoid the topic.

"Agreed", he assented. The tension of the previous subject-matter filtered out of the room's air, and as Anteros thought on it, himself, he supposed it was all-too-convenient that Weyland-Yutani had set up all of this complex machinery, and the pit, weeks in-advance of the Infestation. The contracting costs, alone, for buying out all the property below this hangar, and then paying to have it all dug out, just to mine what must have been at least a few dozen tons of limestone... very convenient, indeed. The only thing that escaped him about it was "why?". If Wey-Yu had known the Infestation was going to happen, and set up all of this, beforehand... what would be the purpose? He couldn't begin to speculate, and neither could Samantha, apparently.

"Once we get airborne and go somewhere safe, it would be best to dump the shuttle on some random backwater and hope it doesn't get traced back to us. We're... technically stealing company-property, here. So... yeah", she said, nodding to herself.

That line of thought, however, led her to ponder what ways Wey-Yu might have of tracking down their shuttle. And that question prompted her to think of what sorts of monitoring devices might be on-board...
Her head snapped upwards, abruptly, and she covered herself with her hands, "oh, shit, they probably put hidden cameras and microphones, everywhere!".

Anteros tilted his head, "... would they?".

She looked at him like he was crazy, "on a shuttle this expensive? Hell yes!". She crouched and made to creep towards the closet to the left of the bed, and Anteros remarked, "if there were any functioning bugs on this ship, I probably would have seen them, by now. I can take a closer look around, if you want".

She looked at him, "could you, please?", crouched against the wall and covering herself.

Anteros hopped down off the bed, and set about stalking around the room in circles, first on all-fours, then on two legs. He waved his head to and fro, scanning for the smallest electric signals. At first, he found nothing. But he eventually detected a small spark in the midst of the bookshelf— a small bauble, stuck behind one of the larger books. Given that it was stuck behind a solid object, he assumed it was just a microphone, and crushed it between two fingers. He then scanned the bed, and found a similar signal behind the headboard— another microphone, also crushing it.

He scanned around the bathroom, as well, but found nothing. Coming back out, he back to the foot of the bed, stood to two legs, and dropped the shards and fragments of the microphones on the floor, saying to her, "only two microphones. No cameras, as far as I can tell".

"You're sure?".

"Yes. In this room, at least. I'll check the rest of the shuttle, later".

Samantha sighed and got back up, scratching her head, "good. Though, it's... really creepy that some random, Wey-Yu pencil-pusher may have heard all of our conversations".

"Well... even if they were listening in, they'd only have heard your speech", he pointed a claw to his head, "telepathy. Completely silent".

She raised a brow at him, "oh, right. With any luck, the most they'll get out of it is that I'm a crazy woman, talking to myself. And hopefully nothing else, least of all footage of me in the nude to blackmail me with", she walked around him, sort of wandering nearer to the couch. She turned to him and gestured to herself, "'cause, uh... this is for privileged eyes, only", before looking at his face, and squinting, "so to speak".

"Uh... yeah", he said, initially going to remark on whether he was truly what she considered "privileged" company... but then he got an idea.

His encounter with the female Praetorian, when it tried to force submission from him, was the first time he'd experienced anything approaching sexual desire (barring that which he'd experienced by-proxy from Humans). He had to wonder if, perhaps, being so close to giving in, back there, might have... awakened something in him that was dormant, before. It was unlike anything he'd ever felt, in his life, and thinking of it— the deep vertigo in his gut, and that itch where a Human bladder might be... it unsettled him.
Drawing it to mind, now that he'd suppressed it, before, brought forth an echo of that sensation, and made him somewhat uncomfortable. Maybe he'd been affected more deeply than he'd thought? He did feel kind of odd, ever since the fight. Though, that might just be tiredness.
But, Anteros never claimed not to be impulsive. Especially when he was curious— and, evidently, his curiosity was a sure-fire way to make him try something stupid, at even the inopportune of times. Since he could get away with it, though, and since the opportunity was in front of him, he chose to do a small test, to see if something had changed about his libido, or lack thereof.

Plus, it would lighten the mood.

Anteros raised a hand, digits splayed, as though to reach for a doorknob, and asked, "hey, Sam— could I touch one of your breasts, for a second?".

She'd just started to walk off toward the cockpit, and when he asked the question, she almost tripped over herself. She looked at him for a long moment, squinting, making sure she'd heard him, correctly.

Then she raised an eyebrow at him and made an expression approximating a half-smirk. Almost instantly, it was apparent that the request, itself, was no issue to her, and instead: her reaction was curiosity. She pretended to think on it for two seconds, blinked, then shrugged and said, "sure", arching her back a few degrees and putting her hands on her hips, stepping toward him. Indeed, it seemed that she was primarily curious as to why he'd ask such a thing, and wanted to find out where he was going with this. Not even the tiniest hint of discomfort or reluctance sprouted in her mind, and it became apparent to Anteros that she probably would have granted the request in all manner of varied contexts. This... was odd, to him.

You are way too comfortable around me, he thought, glad to have her trust, regardless.

Anteros, suddenly very uncomfortable, took a single step forward, and reached out. His hand hovered to her breast and palmed it— the size such that it more or less filled his palm. Samantha studied his face, very closely, with an expression that might appear coy or calculating. A beat passed, and when nothing happened, Anteros experimentally pushed it up and around in a circle, squeezing once. It was... a lot softer than he was expecting— he'd always thought of them as being a lot firmer than that. After another ten seconds of this, he pulled his hand back with little fanfare.

He brought his own hand up to his face as though to examine it, and said, in all of his eloquent verbosity, "huh…".

Samantha, for her part, had felt little more than slight tingle and a tiny shiver up and down her back, but not much else. The ghost of the beginnings of a blush had started creeping up her neck due to his own awkwardness, more than anything. She snorted and crossed her arms at his remark, her smirk growing, and said, "what do you mean `huh`?".

Anteros made a show of tilting his head and raising his other hand to scratch his jaw, saying, "I… expected more?".

She laughed, "what do you mean, `more`?".

"I dunno", he shrugged, "I thought there would be more to it, what with all the fuss I've heard about them".

This was a half-lie. The primary goal being to see if that pseudo-sexual vertigo from his encounter with the Praetorian might have changed anything about his physiology. He supposed, now, that expecting his body to react that way to a Human was a bit foolish, but it was worth a shot. And, in any case: he had always wondered what the human obsession with mammary-glands was.

She smiled at him and shook her head. "Well, there isn't any more than that, really. They're just fat-deposits with nerve-endings and ducts. It felt kind of nice, so... thanks for that, I guess, but... that's it. Hope you got what you paid for", she joked.

"Right".

A beat passed, and the pair of them stood there.

She suppressed a growing desire to burst out laughing, and raised her eyebrows at him, expecting some sort of explanation. His behavior seemed humorously baffling to her. "Any... particular reason you wanted to do that, buddy?", she asked.

He supposed he might as well explain it, if only to avoid a misunderstanding.

"Well, uh... the female Praetorian did something to me. When she had me cornered, at one point— being in such close proximity, it... well, it caused me to... feel things that I never had, before. To be clear, she... well, she basically tried to conscript me as a suitor, for all intents and purposes. It awakened... something in me, or it felt like it did. I've been feeling odd, ever since, so... I figured I would try to test it?", he rambled, at length, feeling more and more awkward the longer he talked.

Already, the biologist side of her brain was two steps ahead of him, and she squinted in thought.

She blinked. "So... you think you had some sort of sexual awakening, because another Xenomorph initiated some sort of mating-ritual with you, or tried to... and you wanted to test that hypothesis by~... copping a feel from me?". She smirked.

Well... it did sound stupid when she put it that way.

"Uh. Yes?", he admitted, slouching and turning to one side, suddenly wishing this conversation had ended twenty seconds earlier. She must have gotten the sense that he was embarrassed—

She chuckled. "I mean, don't get me wrong— I don't mind. Go ahead and get a feel for anything you want— frankly, you've earned that much, at least", she said, waving a hand in a blasé fashion. "But your methodology is... more than a little questionable. What made you think anything would come from that?".

"Well", he said, lowering himself to a crouch and turning even further to one side, "nothing about my life in past few days has made much sense. I've kind of been throwing shit at the wall and seeing what sticks, this whole time. Sorry".

Her tone became sympathetic, and she felt a tinge guilty for having mocked him—
"Hey, it's fine. Like I said, I don't mind it. Whatever you're curious about, I'm willing to help with", she said. She stepped forward, leaning over him and putting a hand on his shoulder.

"I still feel like an idiot for asking", he said.

"Well, don't. I can't blame you— not with how chaotic your mental-state has been. This is far from the first time that a friend has gotten handsy with me, anyway. Only in your case, I know there's no baggage, so... it's fine. Really".

"Thanks, Sam", he said, raising his head and chuffing at her, "I appreciate your patience".

"No problem, Anty. At this point, there's very little you could do to put me off, so... don't hesitate just to talk to me about this stuff. I don't know how much I can help, but I'm here for you".

"I know. It's more than enough", he said, meaning it.

"Are you still dealing with any weird feelings? Is it painful, or...?", she probed. She leaned down toward him even more, and it was getting to be an awkward posture to hold, so Anteros stood and padded around her, raising back up to his hind legs.

"It's... mostly just weird to think about, at this point", he said. "It was... it was like vertigo. Almost like... being inebriated, I think? I'm not sure how to describe it".

She crossed an arm under her breasts and bit the knuckle of her finger, in thought— information about estrus cycles and maturation processes throughout the animal kingdom fluttered through her mind. She hummed to herself.
"Hm. Exposure to certain behavioral displays or foreign pheromones can trigger a hormonal cascade. Maybe even epigenetic activation?", she mumbled to herself, and to him. "Did it seem like the courtship-ritual was... cut short, somehow?", she asked.

"I cut it short. Manually", he said.

The gears of her mind spun anew.

"Huh", she said, "maybe... maybe your body was in the process of gearing up for sexual-maturation, but now that you halted it, you're still experiencing hormonal aftershocks". She brushed the hair out of her face, "in that case, you just feeling a bit weird for a few hours is probably the least that could have happened in the way of consequences...". She tilted her head, "you said it felt like you were drunk?".

"And like vertigo, yeah", he said, "wasn't sure how that compares to the way Humans feel aroused".

"Not for me, anyway", she said, shrugging, "it's not like touching a boob does that to you, either. Unless someone is really exaggerating. Or trying to flatter somebody".
As though to demonstrate her point, she looked down at her own pair, in all their mundane glory, and shrugged her shoulders high before dropping them, watching her mounds bounce in response.

Anteros, was nonplussed, however, to see her repeat this act a few more times, watching her own globes jostle, apparently somewhat captivated with her own chest. She was about to reach up and play with them manually, even, before she realized what she was doing and shook her head at herself, face-palming.

"Well, evidently, there is something more to those things, if even you're fascinated by them", Anteros joked.

She rolled her eyes, "alright— they're... fun to play with, okay? If you had tits, you'd play with them, too!", she claimed, confidently, pointing at him.

"Right", he said, "sure thing".

She turned and sighed, wiping her hair out of her face, and strolled over to the bookshelf, "well, anyway... I'm not tired enough to go to sleep, just yet. Let me see if there's a decent book, here".

"Okay", he said, his joking tone gone. He chose not to bring up that she had been planning to try the cockpit's flight-simulator. "I'm going to get a drink. And I'll check for any more devices around the shuttle, while I'm at it".

Samantha hummed in assent, fingering through the books on the lowest shelf.

As Anteros crawled down the ladder, head-first... he couldn't help but feel something was missing. Obviously, he'd neglected to inform her about the "Hunters" who killed Lich, but he wasn't certain he should tell her about that. Really, though, what they'd not addressed was him almost dying, today— something Samantha, herself, was choosing not to think about. And which he'd just helped to distract her from. Even now, he could feel a tinge of angst, fermenting at the core of her mind. He, himself, didn't know how to feel about it... and he realized that he kind of needed some sort of reaction from her, about it, in order to gauge how he should feel about his own mortality, because... well... that was the closest he'd ever been to oblivion...

... he supposed they'd get to it, later.


Aboard the Hunting Ship, mess-hall, 17•42 Passive...

Hult-nah'Mei-jadhi sauntered back over to the table, carrying a second platter of fruits and breaded meat. She placed it on the wooden-table, leaning over the platter a bit further than she needed to and lingering longer than was necessary (very unsubtly giving him a lidded stare as she did so— the ghost of smiling gracing her mouth), before stepping to the left and sitting down on her stool, across from him.

He gave her a dry look, shaking his head at her, which only made her shrug innocently. She'd been taking various opportunities to give him an eyeful, ever since their sparring match, just a few cycles ago. Stretching her back and pushing out her chest very slowly in front of him; walking ahead of him on their way to certain places and swaying her hips with blatant flair, for example— which he found funny, given that her derriere needed no additional "showmanship" with which to improve its "presentation". But he certainly didn't complain.
She had changed out of the training-clothes and took up her original outfit, though she had left the sashes and scarfs in his quarters, only wearing the "bikini" and her jewelry.

He had noticed the same sorts of behavior in Vo'grat-Guan when they'd first hit it off, so many years ago, and whenever mating-season came around... and in The Baneful Witch. He supposed it was typical, and leaned forward on his stool to eat, tugging at the collar of his robe, before reaching over and snatching up a root-vegetable.

The pair began to eat in companionable silence, their appetite voracious after their day's sparring. The mess-hall was largely empty, as the standard time for dinner had been two cycles ago, and they were free to speak, openly.

As they ate, Zazin-Vor'mekta made a point of asking questions about her, such as: what creatures she grew up Hunting, who her instructor was, why she chose to learn circuitry.

Apparently, on Devoted Hearth (the colony-world on which she grew up), there existed many genera of creatures that sounded like a hybrid of Earthen weasels and turtles— she first Hunted small, hand-sized burrowers called "tirvi", for the fun of it. As training began in earnest, she was made to Hunt scavenging, omnivorous beasts the length of an adult's leg (so, about as large as her, at the time), called "drezos", which had a tendency to roll into balls and present sharp spikes to aggressors— cornering one and striking swiftly and accurately with a spear did the trick.
After that came larger, long-limbed herbivores with singular horns sprouting from the backs of their heads, called "brafoss", that could spring into a full-sprint on an instant's notice and outrun even a Yautja athlete, and so it was a test of her tracking and stalking skills; she wound up getting to within two strides of one of the creatures in tall-grass and jumping on it, wrestling it to the ground and slicing open its throat— miraculously avoiding taking its horn through her gut, even as it thrashed and bucked its head. This, combined with how she'd killed her last Ahgai'Palak, made him think she was an apt grappler.
Her "final exam" Hunt, going into her mid-teens, was to claim the spinal-cord and teeth of a large, nocturnal predator, about the size of one of earth's "donkeys", called a "goarfenn". It had small, weak jaws, but massive, serrated fangs and extremely powerful fore and hind-limbs, each with six digits and large claws; using its dark colors to ambush prey at dead of night, wrestle it, and then deliver a "coup-de-graçe" with its knife-teeth into a prey-item's neck and vertebrae; that, combined with tough, layered scales that protected it while fighting intruders into its territory, made it roughly on-par with a Quatza'rij, on Yautja Prime.

A formidable animal, and suitable quarry for a young-adult, but nowhere near a Kiande Admeha. Zazin' found himself sort of disappointed that the Bright Spear Clan's standards weren't quite as low as he'd suspected, though in any case, the description of the creature reminded him of one of ancient-Earth's "saber-toothed" tigers...

Hul'Mei told the story while nibbling on a naxa-fruit, almost casually, describing how she set out at dusk, looking for a cave that a goarfenn might have made its home in; how she stalked her way into the cave's depths, relying on her Bio-Mask's night-vision to see, and came upon a large, male specimen just as it was on the verge of waking. She wasted no time in sneaking up close and driving her spear deep into the creature's ribs.
Her aim had been off, and she impaled its shoulder, instead, but in a lucky panic, she managed to rip her spear free and make another stab— this time: sinking the weapon into its ribs, piercing one of the lungs. As the beast screamed and lashed out in fear and fury, she described somewhat ruefully how she leapt away from it and floundered, unable to retrieve her weapon as it was still embedded in the beast's side. Zazin' remarked that he probably would have done the same thing, at that age, and Hul'Mei shrugged off the assurance.

The goarfenn pounced upon her and Hul'Mei, "by complete virtue of luck and miracle" (according to her), managed to pull off a stunning reversal— jumping and rolling, allowing it to pass under her, and then setting herself upon its back. She, "somehow", managed to put the thing into a headlock, repeatedly stabbing it just behind the ear with her Wrist-Blade, as it bucked and shrieked. By the time it passed out from blood-loss, the entire back of its head was a bloody pulp... and she summarily carved out its spine and plucked out the four, serrated fangs it used for finishing-blows. This Hunt was, according to her, "the closest [she'd] ever felt to Paya".

"I brought home its spine and teeth, and learned my first bit of blacksmithing by making its fangs into daggers", she said, wistfully turning over the naxa-fruit's core in her hand, "they were the only thing I brought with me when I was exiled from my Clan".

Zazin' blinked, knowing that she had no possessions on this Hunting Ship that he'd seen, asked, "where did you leave them?".

"Oh!", she said, "I handed them to Vo'grat-Guan for safekeeping while I was on this expedition". She waved dropped the core of her naxa-fruit on the platter, and shrugged with a genuine smile, "when she told me where to find the Hunting Ship to get on-board the expedition, she offered to hold onto my things. She's very kind!".

Zazin' squinted at that, before his eyes widened to twice their size, as he realized Vo-Gua's scheme— you kept her most precious belongings with you as leverage in case this newest attempt to find me a mate went sour!, he thought. You clever, clever bitch. You put a lot more planning into this, this time around...

She asked him why he was smiling, and he lied, saying it was nothing.

They continued to speak, and as Zazin' asked about who had been her training and drill-instructor through childhood, she admitted to having had many. Which... he found odd. Odd because, in most Yautja Clans, the training of one's pups was on a contract-and-client-basis, meaning that trainers had ever incentive to keep serving a particular family or group of families for as long as possible, and the conventional wisdom for how to properly train a youngling stipulated that consistency was key; changing which person or institute trained your children, even as scarcely as once every two years, was seen as a bad thing. So to hear that she had had many trainers throughout childhood was... strange.

She went through a short list of the trainers that she remembered the names of, how they'd faired with each other, and such. She didn't seem particularly attached to any of them, which was surreal to hear from Zazin's' perspective, as the trainer who'd served him and his siblings was like another uncle to him— Yeyin-Ibara'ah The Gracious (1), or "Iba", as he was most-often called.

He moved on from the topic, taking up a breaded and spiced drumstick from the thigh of some random creature, and pressed on, trying to think of something to ask her about.
He remembered how she designed her Bio-Mask, how she specialized in circuitry, and asked her how she came to learn that, and why. And the answer she gave interested him.

Apparently, she enjoyed working with circuits because, in her words, it allowed her the satisfaction of possessing expertise in something that seemed utterly otherworldly to a layman. She found enjoyment in the simplicity of creating simple circuits, over and over, and combining them to make something altogether far more complex— all the while finding it easy, where to anyone else, it seemed like magic. Which he found funny. Her love for programming stemmed from the enjoyment of figuring out errors in one's own code, and the satisfaction of making everything function precisely as desired after however many hours of tweaking and adjustment.

As she talked about attending an academy to learn what she knew of her trade for most of her adult-life, he abruptly asked how her relationship with her family was... and instantaneously, he knew that he'd touched a nerve. The moment the question passed his mandibles, her entire aura switched from jovial and carefree to... severe. And a tad frightened?

She looked to one side and slouched, considerably, suddenly looking like a beaten hound, nervous about getting its food stolen, as she continued taking small bites of another naxa-fruit.

Zazin' squinted at her, curiously, before clarifying, "I realize that your relationship with your mother and father are brazenly sub-par, but you're surely close with your siblings, no?".

"How's your relationship with your family?", she abruptly asked, looking back toward him— snapped, really, but more desperate-sounding than angry. She had a hard look in her eye and a furrow to her brow that gave away how uncomfortable she was. He was reminded, yet again, how open she was with her emotions... and decided to play along.

Zazin-Vor'mekta pretended to think for a moment, before calmly saying, "not the best. My mother and father, aunts and uncles did as they had to, and I certainly can't say they made many mistakes or did poorly for us. But I'm not very close to either of them— they were... reserved. My blood-brothers were good to me, and I like to talk to keep in touch with them, but my blood-sisters are... well, they can get Infested and die like prey, for all I care. Put succinctly". He nonchalantly took up the flagon on the edge of his side of the table and took a long draught of it, keeping eye-contact with Hul'Mei as her frown deepened.

He swallowed, set down the flagon with a loud thud, and asked, "how about you?", in a completely natural tone that spoke nothing of the power-move he'd apparently just made.

Hult-nah'Mei-jadhi, to her credit, recognized his blatant demolishing of her attempted-deflection and frowned at him— upper-mandibles ratcheting outward in a sneer. She now had little excuse but to address the topic, and she sighed, quietly, hanging her head and appearing to gather herself.
Had she not responded quite so well, he may have backpedaled on it, but moments later, she straightened up and asked...

"Do you remember how I was banished from my Clan?".

Zazin' was about to answer in the affirmative, before he frowned at himself and realized he'd somewhat... forgotten.

"Uh...", he said, "vaguely", pressing his upper-mandibles together and spreading out his lower-pair in a cringe— one that specifically denoted sheepishness. Hul'Mei seemed to be about to respond, before stopped herself, and frowned like he had, saying, "I... don't remember how much of the story I've already told you, actually...". Then, it was her turn to cringe, ruefully, in the same way.

They looked at one another for a beat... before they both broke into chuckles, realizing they'd both lost the plot. A lot had been said, and much had happened in so short a period of time that their conversations, together, had already blurred in their minds.

"How did we forget any of this— it's only been barely three days!", Zazin' laughed to himself, shaking and holding his head, while Hul'Mei held both hands to her face, hiding a dumb grin.

"Alright...", he said, leaning forward and tapping a claw to the wooden table, "let's see... I remember how your father was a Bad Blood... and that your mother was somehow connected to his crimes... and... you crossed her, somehow?".

Hul'Mei regathered herself, and sighed, smiling sadly, then explained with practiced ease: "yes, partly. My father was a Bad Blood, and the Bright Spear Council of Elders were partially complicit in his crimes. A long while after he was caught and punished, I discovered that my mother had been cavorting with a Hish-Qu-Ten Bad Blood for years, and I went to the Council of Elders to report this. This made it public that my grandfather was a Hish-Qu-Ten, and that the Hish Bad Blood my mother fancied was my grandfather's nephew. Everyone in the Clan with something against our family took their pound of flesh when that happened, and my mother, having known of the Council's involvement with my father, blackmailed them into putting all of the blame on me, and having me banished".

It was now all coming back to him, "ah", he said, "and your mother made a comment about you not being allowed to return unless you had pups, sired by an Elite. You also mentioned that before all of this, she constantly pestered you about giving her grandchildren". She nodded.

"And you came to me... why, again?", he asked.

"Because my mother is a neurotic jingoist who hates your Clan with a passion. And so, if I must one day return to her and give her what she wants most, in this world, I want to do so knowing that I can one day tell her they're Dark Blade pups and ruin it for her", she said, rather coldly, "that, and... my adoptive-niece is in my mother's care for as long as I am banished, and... I don't trust my mother not to do something horrible to her, while I'm gone, just to spite me...".

Zazin' nodded to himself, looking at the ceiling as he went over all of the details in his head and reaffirmed them. It was... a very convoluted story. He had little cause to doubt her, though there were still small, little details about it that bothered him. If her mother had been having affairs with this "Hish Bad Blood" for years, how did it remain hidden so long, and why did Hul'Mei only report it very recently?
He blinked and shook his head, deciding to move on—

"Why would such a big Bright Spear advocate like your mother break with your Clan's beliefs by mixing with Hish-Qu-Ten?", he asked, "you Bright Spears are usually very... adamant about giving the Hish a face-full of gun-barrel".

Hult-nah'Mei-jadhi rolled her eyes, and replied, exasperated, "I have absolutely no worldly idea. She's the only Bright Spear I know of who thinks anything even slightly positive about the Hish, nevermind mates with them. Maybe she has a fetish for the taboo of it", she remarked, crassly, angrily taking a swig of her own flagon.
Setting it down, she squinted, and suddenly asked, tentatively, "is it... is it not forbidden in other Clans to fraternize with Hish-Qu-Ten?".

Zazin' thought on that for a moment, trying to recall the last time he'd heard of any significant scandal of the sort, before answering, "in most Clans, I believe there's no specific rule against it. In some, there's laws about keeping such matters confidential, within families. Forbidden isn't the case for most, but the... stigma would still be very blatant".

She looked at him with something approaching mild confusion, and frowned to herself for a long moment, mandibles flexing... before she shook her head and seemed to dismiss it. He wondered what she'd expected to hear from him. In any case, he reiterated his earlier question—

"So... aside from... all of that", he said, "how was your childhood, and how does the rest of your family treat you? What was it you etched onto your Trophy— Luminous… Villa, yes?".

Hul'Mei scoffed, ruefully, "well, officially, yes. Really, my mother lived at Luminous Villa. I and the rest of my siblings, though…". She petered off, enraptured in deep thought, even her chewing momentarily halted...

She eventually started back up, again, "where we actually lived was this small, backwater cottage on the outskirts of the city. I didn't see it until I became a teenager, and I saw barely anything beyond a single square-dohret outside that dingy cabin. If it wasn't for the sake of training or Hunting, we weren't allowed to leave that area", she said.

"A trainer would come by, every other day, for most of the year, and... I suppose we had a fairly decent education, all things considered, but... mostly, I and my siblings were just bored stiff, seventy-five percent of the time. Mother only spent as much time with us as she needed to, and mostly lived in the Villa. I remember having no idea where she was or what she was doing, most of the time, but looking back, I can only assume she was calling up that Hish firebrand of hers and having many a rutting-rendezvous", she said, not bothering to hide her bitterness about the subject.

Zazin' couldn't help but bark a laugh at the phrase "rutting-rendezvous", not just because it was the Yautja equivalent of "booty-call", but because the phrase just so happened to be alliterative in Yautja, and alliterative in English, when directly translated. He stuffed an arm between his mandibles to contain his chuckling, and Hul'Mei gave him a strange look.

"I'm sorry", he assured, quickly, "I'm laughing about nothing— please, continue".

She raised a brow at him, and for a moment he thought she would take issue with him, but eventually a smile to match his own creeped onto her face. Which Zazin' took to mean she didn't know why he was laughing, but didn't really mind in the end, as it made her smile to see him smile.
He could tell because Vo-Gua often did the exact same thing, whenever he laughed at something she didn't understand. Maybe he had an infectious rictus, when a good mood had the decency to strike him, at least.

Hul'Mei stared at the table, as she eventually continued speaking, "well... as far the family, itself, I never knew of any aunts or uncles— all I ever had were mother and my siblings".
Her expression darkened into a stiff stoicism, and the bitterness in her words mounted in intensity, "my mother, well... her most frequent pet-name for me was mutt, or... creature... and my siblings took to her example. So...", she pointedly looked at him from under her brow as though to see if he judged her any more harshly for what she'd said, before finishing, "you can guess what kind of relationship I had with them...".

Zazin' blinked at her, absorbing what she'd said, but then balked, and questioned, "hang on— I don't understand. Your mother and siblings mocked you for being part Hish? But... they were certainly mixed-bloods, as well, yes? Why single you out?".

She canted her from side-to-side, seemingly sheepish at having left out the following detail, "yes, well, the thing of it was that all of my siblings were half-siblings— all from different fathers, and none other sired by mine", she clarified, matter-of-factly.

"Those that sired all of my siblings were Prime Yautja. Mother was half-Hish, though she didn't look it, all that much, and my father, the Bad Blood, was half-Hish, also. So, where all my siblings were quarter-Hish, I'm technically half-Hish... and I was unfortunate enough to wind up actually showing it", she said, tugging on her lower-mandible as though to point it out.

"But if your mother was half-Hish, like you, why would she make an issue of it?".

"Who knows?", she dismissed, shrugging, "I sometimes thought that she tried to make me feel bad about it, as opposed everyone else, simply because I was the only one in the family that showed obvious Hish traits. Maybe she found it irksome that I was the only visible indication of her philandering...", she explicated.

A long moment passed, as Zazin' quietly swallowed a chunk of meat... before he declared, adamantly, "your mother is a frigid bitch".

She'd been about to take a bite out of a piece of jerky, but snorted, and laughed at his comment, saying, "I'm glad you think so— I tend to agree!", smiling widely.

"I hope she didn't succeed in making you regret your heritage", he said, seriously, "it is a vicious thing to make someone repent for where their blood flows".

Her smile faltered, and she sighed, "I... don't think I know how I feel about it. Part of the reason I read the Nightstorm Commentaries was to figure out where I came from, but that just left me with more questions than answers...", she said, crossing her arms and leaning back on her stool. She didn't quite seem dejected, but definitely unsure of herself... and something about that made him angry. Seeing her feel anything less than entirely confident about her heritage triggered some form deep discomfort in him...

A beat passed, as he tried to think of something profound to say... before Zazin' abruptly blurted out the first response that came to his mind, "it makes you beautiful, if that's any help".

She looked at him, blinking, looking somewhat surprised. He had complimented this very thing about her, yesterday, but the both of them were surprised to hear him say it so genuinely, and not just for the sake of banter.

"Really?", she said, curious. Her expression became indecipherable, and it surprised him how stoic she could make herself appear. He wondered if she allowed her emotions to go on full-display on-purpose, if she only made a conscious effort to hide it some of the time, or if every interaction they'd ever had was disingenuous and she was just acting...

He chose to use Occam's Razor and assume it was the second...

Zazin' answered her question, honestly, "yes. I was dead-serious, yesterday— however jovially. You have an... exotic tang to you that strikes the eye, nicely. I'd say you inherited the best of both `flavors`".

She blinked, again, and smiled, though made a visible effort to try to suppress it, "so... you do find me attractive", she said, almost sounding giddy. "I'm... not unpleasant to be around".

Zazin' genuinely balked at her, disbelieving that any of this was even in-question, "of course! What— you thought I lied? No— you are... a very desirable young woman, Hul'Mei. Why would I lie about that?".

She held out her arms to either side, and protested, "well— I am unsure, I just... thought that I was average-looking! I... thought you were just being charitable and... tolerating me!".

He shook his head at her, "believe me, sugar, if you didn't look as good as you do, I probably wouldn't have had very much patience for you, at all".

She snorted, "`sugar`?".

"Yes. You've never heard that one, before?", he insisted.

"No! That's so... juvenile!", she said, laughing to herself. He merely shrugged at her, picking one of the last, remaining naxa-fruits, and gestured at with it, "it certainly suits you, with how tempting you are", he said, in a tone far too serious for the subject-matter.

She held her head in her hand and closed her eyes, shaking her head. He could see her trying to suppressing a grin, despite herself, and he chuckled.

After that, the pair of them allowed the conversation to peter off in comfortable silence, and they proceeded to finish the platter. Though... he felt like he was forgetting something.
After they finished their food, they sat and talked for a while— he asked what her Epithet was, and she replied that she had none, and had never bothered to register one. She asked why his Epithet was "The Blue", and he told her it was due to his skin-tone, and that all of his brothers had the exact same Epithet. They then talked more about why certain people had particular Epithets, and how certain political figures might have received them. Eventually, the mess-hall began to close for the night, and they got up to leave.

It was as they were walking back to his quarters, however, that Zazin-Vor'mekta realized that he'd forgotten to ask something that had been bothering him for a while, and he was reminded of it when the topic of Epithets came up.

"Hul'Mei?".

"Hm?".

"How did you get your name?".

At his asking that question, Hult-nah'Mei-jadhi stopped walking, and froze. She'd been walking ahead of him, making a show of it, again, and so Zazin' had to step around her, and turn.

"I mean... ' observing sister'?", he said, tentatively, "it's not very... typical". He looked at her as she stared at the floor, and frowned. The air abruptly became a lot staler... and he suspected that he may have made a mistake by asking that, because she looked as though she'd seen a ghost.
The look in her eye was so uncanny that it genuinely unsettled him, and he shifted on his feet, stepping back in the hallway and going to lean against the wall, crossing his arms. Hul'Mei's expression seemed, at first glance, utterly neutral, but there was a... fear in her pupils, as they focused and unfocused, minutely darting in place. Her mandibles were almost eerily still, in their sockets— only the tiniest of twitches at the tips of her tusks. The sort of expression one expected in a person suffering catatonia...

This kind of reaction from her was... new... so Zazin' couldn't claim not to be curious as to why. He prompted her with something different question—

"What was your birth-name?", he asked.

At that, it was like a switch flipped in her mind, and she instantly looked up, animated again, and looked to him with a shake of her head, mumbling, "oh... it... my birth-name was `Rhaana`", she said, in an oddly-calm monotone.

"`Rhaana`...", he echoed, testing how it sounded, "hm. Certainly better than `Oggtoh`, like mine was".

The Yautja take their names very seriously. On-birth, it was custom that a child was given a birth-name, derived from various dead-languages and dialects, but this birth-name was treated as a placeholder. When a young Yautja reaches a certain age (what age, exactly, depended on the Clan), they are told to Hunt a creature (like a Quatza'rij) as a final test for having learned the basics of The Path.
This Hunt would be the child's first official Hunt, and would be the basis for how the child receives their "true-name". Zazin' got his for having been exceedingly patient and careful while stalking the Quatza'rij, and his father hoped that he would one day become an actual "Stalker"— the official Title "Vor'mekta". But, Zazin's' first love had always been the combi-stick, and his father's attempt at a joke fell flat. He did like his name, though... and he'd sometimes thought of taking up a speargun.

One's "Naming Day" was typically a very special occasion for a given family. But not for Hul'Mei, it seemed...

After pretending to have heard his comment, she went back to spacing out, though now, she appeared very, very troubled, instead of frozen. She stepped to her left, slowly, closer to the wall opposite his and leaned her shoulder on it, apparently lost in memories.

Zazin' could see very easily that she was quite disturbed about her true-name, or at least, the story of how she received it... but he still wanted to know, and it wasn't entirely clear why she might be hesitant to share. He sensed that there was something very poignant, here, that needed addressing. He had a sensitivity for when the true heart of a matter was on the verge of being found, and that inkling was kicking off, right now, as he observed her closing in on herself. So... nothing ventured, nothing gained.

He calmly asked, again, "why the name `observing sister`?". He didn't like to be insensitive, but... the fact that her response to the question wasn't flat-out refusal or anger, if it apparently bothered her this much, intrigued him.

Hult-nah'Mei-jadhi's eyes snapped in his direction as he'd asked, again, and once more her expression turned stone-cold. She looked away from, staring into the middle-distance as though a black-hole's event-horizon stretched out before her, and the universe's infinite secrets were laid out in the open. She was silent for a long time, a furrow in her brow slowly deepening.
What in Paya's name could be going on in your head, right now, sugar? How deeply does this bother you?..., he thought, beginning to get worried, as Hul'Mei's head and neck started tilting to one side like it was the joint of a machine in dire need of tightening. It was... honestly kind of creepy.
As he waited longer and longer for some variety of response, the sound of distant clanging and whirring in the ship's structure punctuating the eeriness of the whole spectacle... he started to hear small noise. Like a wheezing...

He noticed Hul'Mei's chest beginning to rise and fall more intensely, as small huffs and puffs filtered through her mouth... combined with a slight twinge. He'd never heard an adult-woman make such a noise, before, in his life, and as she started breathing faster and faster, the wheeze only became more apparent.
Soon, she was hyperventilating— hands seizing up and arms shaking, uncontrollably, expression still uncannily still and cold.

She seemed almost about to fall over, and Zazin' made ready to catch her, but her feet scrambled to keep her upright. At this point, he grabbed her shoulder—

"Hul'Mei! Seize yourself!".

As suddenly as it had started, it completely ceased: her body going still and her eyes abruptly returning to normal with a few blinks. The moment she registered him, mandibles twitching in shock as she realized what had happened, she roughly shook herself out of his grasp and stepped away.
He allowed her to right herself...

She stepped forward a ways, breathing heavily, and holding her head in both hands. She was mumbling something under her breath. She shook her head, frantically, and groaned to herself like she had the galaxy's nastiest hangover. Confident that she wouldn't collapse, again, he let her go and stepped away, allowing her space, as she started to dig her claws into her scalp and mumble a series of profanities under her breath. She turned toward the wall and slammed her forehead into its metal thrice— not hard enough to injure her, but clearly out of frustration.

With her face pressed to the wall... she finally took a deep breath... and let out a shuddering whine, gently bashing a closed fist onto the wall. Her entire body shook... and Zazin' couldn't stand to watch this and do nothing.

"What's wrong, Hul'Mei?", he toned, softly. He found himself reflexively generating a rumbling purr in his chest (meant to assuage upset children), as he moved closer to her, around to her left side.

She seemed to hold her breath when he spoke up, before turning away from him with a shoulder on the wall. In a pitifully small voice, she simply said, "I haven't thought of it in so long. I... I repressed it— I can't...I'm sorry— I want to, but... I can't talk about it...".

"How you got your true-name?", he asked, tentatively.

"Yes!", she all but screamed, whipping around and giving him a glare over her shoulder. Almost as quickly as her temper was enflamed, though, it faded, and she hung her head, slowly turning around to face him and moving away from the wall. Her eyes fixated on the floor, mandibles wound up and clenched together, tightly.

Pauk... this was a bad idea..., he thought. He didn't bother trying to stop himself from purring, and simply held open his arms. Hul'Mei looked at him, stoically, for at least six heartbeats before lunging forward and accepting the hug. As she did, he said, "I'm sorry. I should have known better than to press the issue".

"It's... okay...", she said, quietly, "I... it's frightening how quickly it came back... after so long trying to forget about it...".

They held each other for a long moment, saying nothing. When they eventually separated, Zazin' bowed his head and upturned his palms in admission of guilt, saying in his most professional tone, "I must take responsibility and apologize for causing this... had I known the pain, I would never have asked".
"No!—", she said, quickly, surprising him, "no, I...". She sighed, rubbing at her eyes with a hand, saying slowly, "it... it is an old wound. I... I just... the shock of having it resurface after years of having forgotten was... intense. It was as though I was four years-old, again— the smells, the sounds—", her breath hitched, and a shudder went through her.

She made a point of looking him in the eye, then, and declared, slowly, "I... it is past time I started to deal with it. Or... at least try to deal with it— it's been screaming in my dreams for years, and I should have tried to confront it, a long time ago. You are not to blame", she said, pointing a claw at him. The look in her eye told him she was genuine about all she said, though he wasn't sure how much he believed that...

Hul'Mei looked down at her own hands, frowning, and said, "I... I can't answer your question. Not now. And... not for a while. I... need time to think about it and... reabsorb it, slowly...".

Zazin' blinked, nonplussed— surprised that she was even entertaining the idea of telling him about it, at some point. "Okay...", he started to say, before suddenly getting an idea—

"If I tell you my secret, at some point, would you promise to tell me yours?".

What in Paya's tits am I doing?!, he internally screamed at having said those words without first thinking about them.

Hult-nah'Mei-jadhi, though, looked at him and didn't immediately scowl or snarl — which he took as a good sign — and she appeared to think on the proposition. Her mandibles flexed pensively, tusks scraping together. Her eyes shifted repeatedly between ambition and fear; hope and hesitance. All at once, Zazin' felt his heart pounding in his head as he worried that he may have permanently scorned her with that blunder. On some level, he didn't know why he was so worried about pissing her off...

But then, like popping a balloon, his anxiety was dispelled as she suddenly said, "yes. Agreed", with a nod.

Okay..., he thought,...good thing that didn't backfire...

"Can we go to bed, now, please?", Hul'Mei asked, rubbing the back of her neck, "I... am really tired, now".

"Yes. I... am also tired...", he said, matter-of-factly, beginning to walk by her side down the hall. As they started walking, he felt her arm drape over his shoulder, as she decided to lean on him.

"Zazin'?".

"Hm?".

"Could... could you call me `Rhaana`, from now on? I don't think I'm comfortable with my true-name, at the moment...".

"Very well...", he said, "... you can call me Za-Vor, then".

"Okay...".


Meanwhile, on Guardian...

Samantha had just about finished the third chapter of her book. She'd draped herself across the length of the couch, on her back; after Anteros had finished eating a microwaved steak, he joined her and laid sat on his haunches next to the couch, soon laying down on his side. The book was an old classic— a fantasy novel about a thousand year-old necromancer who'd returned from exile to conquer the land he once called home. Samantha had always heard good things about it, but had never gotten a copy.
It was... fun to read the book, himself, through her eyes, and see the scenes of the book play out in her head. Anteros suspected he could quickly get used to being in her mind while she read, as a pastime...

Samantha abruptly yawned, her jawbone popping unpleasantly, and she bookmarked the page she was on, and closing the book as she sat up with a groan. Anteros stood up to his feet and walked around the couch, allowing her to stand up, stretching as she did so, and chucking the book onto the couch-seat.

As Samantha then lazily trudged over to the nightstands on either side of the bed and switched on the lava-lamps while Anteros went and flipped off the lights, he noticed her mind swiftly return to the events of the day and everything he'd told her about. The book had been a good distraction, but now that she was getting ready to sleep: she had no option but to think of the day's developments. Namely: what he'd been doing, while she was safe and sound in the ship— how he'd put himself in mortal danger just to get food.
As Samantha turned on the second lamp and came walking around the side of the bed, she found herself realizing how insulated she'd been from a lot of the worst of what had happened, since finding Anteros.

Anteros stood on two legs at the foot of the bed and watched as Samantha walked past him, into the bathroom, brushed her teeth, and then came trudging back in. She had a deep pain in her chest, and Anteros felt it too, as she padded over and stood at the foot of the bed with him, staring at his feet with a morose look on her face. He calmly waited, in front of her, as a lump formed in her throat.

"Anteros?", she said, "be honest with me. How likely was it that you could have died, out there?".

"To be frank... very", he said, "it's the closest I've ever been to getting killed in my entire life".

That pain in her chest doubled, and a steady stream of silent tears ran down her face, as she took a deep breath and tried to compose herself.
He reached out with a hand and clutched at her arm, in support. She reflexively grabbed and held his wrist with her opposite as she sniffed and tried to keep her breathing even. She shook her head at herself, "why am I crying over something that didn't even happen? I should just be glad that you're still here...".

... words could not express how... touched Anteros felt, at hearing that, and seeing nothing but authenticity in her head.

"I don't know, Sam. Grief can be... weird", he said, knowing from experience.

She looked up at him and reached up to his face with both hands. She grasped both sides of his head and pulled him down, pressing her forehead to his, and asked through a shaky voice and blurred vision, "are you okay, Anteros? Are you... are you going to be okay?". She didn't even know why she felt the need to ask that...

"I am, Samantha. And I will be. I'm not going anywhere", he affirmed.

A sob broke its way through her composure, and she stuttered, "I-I... y-you... Anteros. If you died out there... I don't know what I'd do. I don't know what I'd do without you! The thought of it just... it breaks my heart, a little...", she drew in a painful breath through bared teeth, and shook, as Anteros wrapped her in the tightest hug he could get away with, without hurting her. Her feet hovered a foot off the ground, and he held her to his chest, a hand cradling the back of her head as she rested her chin on his shoulder.

"M-bu—but... that's... that doesn't make any sense!", she whined, the tiniest of a chuckle audible in her tone, "we've only known each other a few days! We're not even the same species! But... I can't imagine leaving without you— leaving you behind...". She mumbled most of it through a slurring ramble, by this point, but he understood every word, and every unspoken one.
She didn't need to explain how it felt to imagine him dying— how it felt to imagine the devastating pain of that kind of loss. She didn't need to describe to him, in flowery prose, how the feeling of having lost him would have been like having the contents of your entire torso forcefully ripped out and torn up. How even thinking of it, now, put a physical, tangible ache in her sternum and a pulsing numbness in her head. She didn't need to say these things... because he heard and understood all of it. And that... gave him what he'd felt was missing, from earlier...

Anteros... felt something, in his chest. A warmth. It had been there for a very long time, ever since his time in the Hive. But... before, it was like a cold, hollow vacuum. He hadn't noticed it, he hadn't paid attention to it, and he hadn't given it much thought, but somewhere along the line, that vacuum became filled. And instead of cold, it was heat. He supposed he'd felt it, on some level, throughout his time with Samantha... but it was only now that he took conscious note of it, for it tripled in intensity and made him feel something approximating a mix of giddiness and sheer awe. A massive... broiling, warmth and fullness, pushing on his insides and kicking his heart into overdrive. It had no connection to that sickening vertigo he'd felt with the Praetorian— that feeling was dead and gone. This was something deeper than instinct— and far more powerful. Wholesome, even. It was like the complete inverse of her imagined feeling of what grieving his death would have been like; an inversion of grief.
And he could only call it... "love". He wanted to laugh at the idea that anyone could be confused about what "love" is, now that he knew it— love is an inversion of grief! Not precisely its opposite, but rather, the other side of the coin!

Granted, all of this was just in his head, and The Unknown had been pitching a massive fit this entire time, as it bucked and thrashed and wanted to make Samantha feel better. But, still...

It didn't escape his notice that a similar feeling erupted from her, for him, though she didn't seem to inwardly acknowledge it. She started smiling and laughing to herself, even through tears, as she buried her face into his neck. He held her for as long as it took for the tears to dry... and eventually set her down on her feet, as she rubbed at her eyes and sniffed.
She took a deep breath and swept back her hair, sighing, smiling. She looked up at him from under her brow with a smirk, shaking her head, "you are way too special to me...".

Anteros made a show of slouching and gently head-butting her collarbone, saying, "I could say the same of you, sweetheart". He nuzzled the side of her head, like a cat, making her giggle, and asked her, "ready to sleep, then?".

She sighed, again, feeling a pang of fatigue, and whispered "yeah...". She turned to the left to face the bed, and lazily stepped toward it. She took her time standing at the foot of the bed, brushing her hair out of her face and picking at a few knots in her mane. And it was at that juncture that Anteros decided to partake in a spot of tomfoolery to lighten the mood—

He reached over and flicked at her buttcheek with a digit.

"Hey", she said, turning at the waist, hands still occupied with her hair, "hands off the goods, bucko". The tiniest of smiles mixed with a feigned scowl. Anteros enjoyed that she could have fun with him, so effortlessly.

He made a show of shrugging at her, "well, hurry up and get in so we can sleep".

"So eager to get into my bed, are you?", she said, dryly.

"Eager to sleep, really".

She grunted faced forward again, taking yet more time to stretch. "You know you can go and sleep anywhere you want. You don't have to wait for me".

"We both know you'd be asking for me after fifteen minutes alone, anyway. I'm practically your teddy-bear, at this point", he said, chuffing at her. "You'd go to pieces without me".

She pouted theatrically, and made a show of crossing her arms and looking at him out of the corner of her eye. "Hm. You're not wrong. But you could just tell me to hurry up instead of flicking me, like that. That stung...".

"I could'a done a lot worse. I could have slapped it, instead, if you'd have preferred that".

In that brief instant, she had the sense whatever answer she gave had the chance to trigger the jaws of a bear-trap. She hid a small, naughty smirk, as she decided to poke the bear... and Anteros was more than happy to deliver the punchline.

Samantha rolled her eyes at him, haughtily.
"Yeah, right, like you'd ever have the balls to sla—".

A clap of flesh snapped the air, and Samantha yelped, falling forward unto the bed.

Immediately she turned over and scrambled away, laughing despite herself.
"Okay, okay, okay, okay, okay, okay! You win! You have the balls— fucking dammit!", she said, wincing, and rubbing at the offended flesh with a hand.
"Remind me not to call your bluff, like that. When did you get so touchy, today, mister?", she accused, unable to wrangle her expression into anything other than a smile.

Anteros slunk up onto the bed, following her.
"Oh, right, sure", he said, dryly, "because asking to spoon with the dangerous alien was such a sterile thing to do, and definitely not touchy, in the least. We've been oh-so clean and decorous until now!".

He sat, while she continued to get herself situated on the bed. "Frankly, I just try to match the energy you give me, darling. I wouldn't keep doing it if you didn't find it fun".

She rolled her eyes, again, though more at herself this time. "Alright, fair enough. Maybe I should stop playing along with the banter, so much— that slap might've left a mark".

"Believe me, if I were going any harder than ten-percent, you wouldn't have an arse left. Not that there was much of one, to begin with...".

"Oh, fuck you— you know that's bullshit", she scoffed.

"Yeah, I do", he admitted.

"Good".

Samantha laid back and held open the duvet for him. He laid down, and like the night before, she scooted toward him until her back was flush with his chest and the back of her head was up against his throat, under his chin. As he weaved his left arm under the pillow that her head rested on, she blindly reached for his other hand, wanting to direct where to put it; he put his hand in the way of her flailing and allowed her to do so. She pulled it around to her front, promptly wedging his forearm between her breasts and hugging it like a stuffed animal— using him to keep them separated and more comfortable.
She apparently didn't care that his hand now hovered in front of her face, talons held inches away— she somehow still found ways to surprise him with how much trust of hers he had. Anteros felt more of that warmth, in his chest, as Samantha's legs jockeyed for position with his, eventually intertwining in a way that both found comfortable.

Anteros pulled the blanket over them with his tail, and Samantha smiled to herself in happy comfort. Although, he now had something to say...

"Samantha?".

"Hm?".

"If you have another nightmare and you get scared... of me... it's okay", he said, "I promise that I won't run away, again".

She blinked, staring up at the lava-lamp, four feet away, before saying, "then I'll promise not to get scared". She reached up and behind her with one hand, still clutching his own with her left, and patted the side of his head, whispering, "you don't deserve that kind of behavior, from me, Anty".

"But you couldn't help it", he countered, "and I shouldn't have flipped the table or been so petty about it. I should have prioritized your trauma over my, quote-unquote, depression".

Samantha only shook her head, "no, Anty. I promised I would help you, and I'm promising now that I won't treat you like a monster. End of story".

"... okay".

Minutes later... they were both asleep. Anteros had had a long day, after all... he was a lot more tired than her.


1) "Yeyin" & "Ibara'ah" = "brave" & "wanderer".