The Alt Four in: Big Game Blunder

by Bloody Simpson Chibi

After thwarting an alien invasion, the girls find themselves targeted by yet another menace from the stars while they're playing paintball. Will they have what it takes to survive the galaxies most deadliest hunter or are they all trophies in waiting? Rated M for bad language and brief nudity.

The Alt Four in: Big Game Blunder

(Hey everyone! I'm back on my Alt Four shit, this time with another certain horror franchise alien species. This is the first time since I started this series that I'd have to go back to the same category but what are you going to do? The Alien and Predator franchises are so intertwined at this point that it's no wonder FF groups them together like this. This, of course, might beg the question, "Will this story and my previous story be interconnected somehow?"

The simple answer is yes but actually no.

While I do intend to link the stories together to some degree, it'll mostly stay in the realm of references and callbacks. When it comes down to it, none of these stories are really canonical with each other so this will be no exception. Hey, if the Evil Dead movies can get away with screwing up their endings and openings, I can play around a little here. The important thing is that this will be my first fic dealing with the Yautja which, along with the Xenomorphs, are one of my all-time favorite fictional alien species. I will do my best to do the creature justice, (within the confines of a parody story of course)

With that being said, I hope you enjoy this story and please leave a review if you did. Now let's start off where we last saw the girls, gazing out into the stars...)

The four girls laid on the grass, sweating and panting, their wounds aching and blood and slime staining their clothes. The last of the rumblings died down and with them, the last of the invasion that had nearly wiped out their town. The girls looked up to the stars and contemplated what they had been through.

"Aww! That sucked about Bob though," Sally whined. "I was so excited to meet a real-life alien we could go on adventures with and all we got were a bunch of scary jerks! I hope the next aliens we meet are friendly."

"I hope the next aliens we meet never come here." Penny replied. "One invasion was enough."

"Oh, lighten up Penny." Emily argued. "Just because these guys were bad doesn't mean every alien race is, right Ginger?"

Ginger didn't nod nor shake her head. She simply laid there, staring up at the stars with her arms under her head. "I mean, there's billions upon billions of stars right? It's a big Universe. There's bound to be some friendly species out there."

Ginger never took her eyes off the stars as she spoke. Emily, Penny and Sally followed her lead and gazed out into the night sky, allowing whatever thought crossed their mind to cross as they contemplated the thousands of worlds they were staring at all at once.

Little did they know, a creature from one of those billions of stars was watching right back.

Thousands upon thousands of miles away from the Solar System, a lone ship was floating listlessly in space. It was a simply-shaped machine, a main body and two engines on either side like the fins of a whale, all gray aside from the blue-tinted windows at the very front. Behind theses windows stood the sole occupant of the spacecraft. To most of the creatures he encountered on his journeys, he had no name, sometimes not even a form. But to his friends and family back home, he was simply known as Ze'joth.

Ze'joth came from from a proud and ancient race known as the Yautja. The Yautja lived for one thing and one thing only, the thrill of the hunt and Ze'joth was no exception. He had been a hunter for far too many moons to keep track of. He had visited many worlds, slayed many foes and claimed many trophies. As if recalling this, he briefly turned away from the window to glance at his collection. The wall behind him was covered in the skulls of his many worthy kills, including the Hard-Meat he marked as his first kill. Ah yes. Ze'joth was quite an experienced hunter but with experience came boredom and with boredom came ennui. He found himself craving something different, something a little more challenging than the typical Tynnar-Cicies or Blord-flaknr.

It was one of his comrades who had suggested a little blue planet known to its own race as Earth. Apparently, these creatures, calling themselves Homo Sapiens or Humans, despite their lack of claws or venom or strength, were still a force to be reckon with, having taken out many a fellow Yautja over the decades. Ze'joth was intrigued and set off to find this "Earth" and see what these "Humans" were capable of. Before long, however, he began to wonder if perhaps his comrade was pulling his leg. Sure, they were combat Humans well-versed in fighting, different factions spread throughout the planet, not to mention a bunch of disturbed individuals that committed acts of violence against other humans for no real reason. (Ze'joth deduced they were the Human version of Bad-Bloods) but none of them seemed like they could provide enough of a challenge for them, especially given how pathetic their technology was compared to his.

That was, at least, until he noticed her.

It was a stroke of luck really. By all rights, her very existence should have slipped completely under Ze'joth's radar. After all, she was just a child-maker and and a adolescent one at that. She had no training in any of the combat factions of her world and only seemed to spend her time idling with other, similarly dressed child-makers. However, there was one remarkable thing about this human female and her companions that Ze'joth simply couldn't ignore. Somehow, they seemed to constantly attract the attention of various predators, creatures like him who lived to hunt weaker prey, creatures that by all rights should have been able to make quick work of the girls.

And yet, in every single encounter, it was the girls who came out on top.

Ze'joth couldn't make sense of it. These young females had no experience in hunting or combat and yet, they seemed to dominate every single threat that came their way, including a invasion of Hard-Meat that had almost destroyed their town. He was watching them now, resting from their latest battle as they laid on the ground. They seemed to be congratulating the smallest of their group for destroying the Queen, which confused the utter hell out of Ze'joth who assumed she only surrounded herself with the other child-makers for protection. It was clear to him now what his comrade meant. There was something special about the humans, especially these females and especially the crested one that called herself Pen-Eee.

Ze'joth had made his decision.

Shutting off all of the cameras, he started up his ship and set a direct course for Earth. He took another glance at his trophy wall and imagined the skulls of Pen-Eee and her friends right in the center. The thought alone pleased him. The engines of his ship blasted away a bright blue light as ship began its journey toward the blue planet.

---

It was a bright and sunny Saturday morning in Oakwood and on a bus stop on the outskirts of town sat four girls. Ginger and Emily were sitting on the bench, the former reading a book and the latter listening to music on her phone. Sally was squatting on the sidewalk besides them, staring at a trail of ants as they crawled from a crack in the cement. As for Penny, the punk girl was leaning against the stop sign, arms crossed and her head bobbing up and down. Despite her muted disposition, however, she was easily the most excited of the group.

"Oh man! Oh man! Oh man!" She smiled. "I can't believe the day is finally here! I've been waiting for this for days!"

"Penny, will you calm down?" Ginger said. "It's just paintball."

"I know!" Penny beamed. "And we're totally going to crush the competition!" She made a fist as she said this, her teeth fixed in a sneer.

"Umm...could someone remind me," Emily muttered as she took off her headphones. "Why exactly are we doing this again?"

"You know that empty rec room at the end of B Hall at school?" Ginger asked.

"Um...yeah. I think so. It...It's where the debate team has their meetings right?"

"Correction. It was where the debate team had their meetings." Ginger said. "Last week the debating got...well...a little ugly and they disbanded the group. Principal Hall said the room's up for anyone who wants it and after a brief discussion with our class president, it was decided that the owner of the room would be chosen by a paintball game."

"Oh...ok..." Emily trailed off. "But...I...I don't think any of us are in a club."

"That's why when we win the room, we'll make one!" Penny answered. "It'll be the Punk Rock club!"

"No, the Dinosaur Club!" Sally interjected.

"Dinosaur Club!?" All three girls asked in unison.

"Yeah, I even already got the poster done and everything, see?" Sally got up from her ants, reached into her pocket and pulled out a piece of paper she then unfolded a few times. She proudly displayed the picture to her friends with Penny walking over to the bench for a better look. It displayed the girl's heads on the bodies of dinosaurs, Penny on a Tyrannosaurs, Sally on a Stegosaurs, Ginger on what was most likely a Triceratops body and Emily as some sort of hadrosaurid, water plants hanging from her mouth. The whole thing was drawn in Sally's typical scene-style, making it all the more uncanny.

"Um...why am I eating plants out of a swamp?" Emily asked.

"It's called aesthetic, Emily." Sally replied. "Look it up!"

"Okay that's enough." Penny tore the poster away from Sally. "We are not having a club about stupid dinosaurs. We're having a punk rock club and that's final."

"Stupid?" Sally growled. "Dinosaurs aren't stupid! You're stupid!" Sally tackled Penny as the two girls fought for the poster. "Give it back! Penny!"

"Get off of me!" Penny shouted as she tried to shove Sally away.

Ginger and Emily watched the fight from the comfort of their bench.

"S-So Ginger," Emily spoke up. "W-What club are you thinking of starting if we get the room?"

"Heh. Well that should be obvious." Ginger said. "What we really need is an occult club."

"An occult club," Emily repeated. "Yeah...I think I could go for that."

Ginger smirked. "Good, then I guess that's two votes for occult club. I think we might have won before we even played the game."

"But...we still need to win the room first."

Ginger nodded. "True, and the worst part about is, a lot of other girls have their sights set on that room. The competition will be pretty stiff."

Just then, the bus rolled by, announcing its presence with the hissing of its breaks. Penny and Sally, who happened to have her teeth stuck in Penny's jacket, ceased their squabble to look up at the bus. They looked at each other and then got into another struggling to be the first one on board. "Last one in is a rotten sandwich!" Penny shouted as she shoved Sally away and ran into the bus. Sally landed with a thud on the floor, reclaimed her poster which was torn but otherwise still in good condition and jumped up. Hey, wait for me!" She shouted as she followed Penny onto the bus.

Ginger got up and stretched. "Well, guess that's our cue. You ready Emily?"

"O-Of course!" Emily answered, trying her best not to stare as Ginger finished her stretching. The two girls boarded the bus and took their seats behind their friends. As the bus left the stop, Emily noticed that a huge bulk of the other passengers were their classmates, all wearing stern expressions she figured were their game faces. Her confusion only grew when she noticed Pam sitting across from them, humming the tune to Barbie while painting her nails.

"Umm...guys," Emily asked. "Didn't Pam die like a week ago?"

"Huh?" Ginger lifted her eyebrow. "What are you talking about?"

"You know, she was the first victim of the alien invasion?"

"What alien invasion?" Penny asked from the seat before them.

"Did they come for our coffee?" Sally followed up with.

Hating the feeling of all three of her friends staring at her. Emily gave up. "Nevermind. I must have imagined the whole thing or something." Emily sighed as she rubbed her temples. Ginger and Penny exchanged a nervous glance and sank back in their seats. Sally followed suit while smiling and humming the X-Files theme.

"You know, this reminds me of the time that we destroyed an alien infestation in the sewers." Sally casually brought up.

All three of her friends stared at her, Penny with confusion, Ginger with another raised eyebrow and Emily with annoyance.

---

Before long, the bus reached its destination at the Oakwood Recreational Center. More than half of the patrons departed the bus and entered the building, heading straight for the paintball prepping hall. Waiting for them there was a tough-looking woman in a military outfit and a single scar resting over her cloudy left eye. Her chestnut hair was held back in a ponytail and while her overall appearance gave the impression she was in her late twenties, her face seemed to suggest someone much older. Ginger could tell right away that this woman had seen actual combat before and wondered just how someone like her wound up here of all places. Of course, she never actually asked as, despite being a Goth, she valued her life.

"My name is Sargent Yetti!" The woman shouted. "And I will be overseeing this combat simulation!"

"Um..isn't this just paintball?" Octavia asked with a shaky raised hand. This earned her Yetti's face in hers.

"All recreational activities involving firearms are combat simulations to me! You got a problem with that!?"

"Ma'am no Ma'am!" Octavia cried as she cowered behind Gina. Yetti nodded and backed away to her former position.

"To your right, you will find the locker rooms where your uniforms are waiting. Once you're done there, I'll take you to the armory to get your equipment as well as explain the rules of the game. Now ten...Hut!"

Everyone made a made scramble for the locker rooms save for Penny and Ginger who just casually followed everyone else.

Once everyone was changed and ready, they followed Sargent Yetti to the armory where they were each given a paintball gun and and three rounds of paint. "The rules of the game are fairly simple." She began once everyone had a gun. "You will be deployed into the jungle, A.K.A the paintball field in teams of five. There will be a 10 minute cooling period before the game can begin proper. This will allow all the teams to put enough distance between themselves and get a better scope of their terrain, all to ensure a fairer game." Yetti picked up a paintball gun from her back and pointed it at the dummy standing at the far end of the room. Imitating machine gun fire, she blasted the dummy with several rounds of neon green paint. A lot of the girls gasped at the sudden display of violence with Sally straight-up throwing herself on the floor and curling up, her exposed and shaking buttocks in the air.

"If you get hit with an enemy's paintball, even once, you are dead!" Yetti shouted once she had finished emptying her ammo onto the poor dummy. She cocked her empty gun and slid it behind her back. "Don't worry. It doesn't mean you're actually dead. The paintballs hurt like hell but are completely harmless." Just as she said this, the dummy broke into pieces from the force of the paintballs. Yetti either didn't notice this or willfully chose to ignore it. "The winner will be determined by how many on your team are standing at the end of the day. Speaking of which, I'm sure you noticed by now that you all have different colors for your paintballs."

The group examined their rounds and realized Yetti was right. They had all gotten different colored paintballs, some red, some blue, some pink and so on.

"The color of paintball you received will determine which team you're on. So go ahead and search for your teammates. Each team should have five members so I want you to gather together and split from the rest of the group so we can know who's who!"

The four edgy girls looked at their rounds and sighed in relief as they realized they all had red paintballs. "At least we'll all be part of the same team." Ginger said.

"Yeah," Penny agreed. "But who's our fifth?"

"That would be me." The girls turned to see Megan approaching them, red rounds of paint across her waist like a belt. "Just try not to slow me down, alright?"

"Funny," Penny scoffed. "I was just about to tell you the same thing."

The two girls glared at each other for a moment and Emily was sure she could see a flash of lightening between the two of them. Maybe she had just been watching too much anime recently.

"Knock it off, you two." Ginger gently tapped their both of their heads. "We can save the infighting for after we win and we have to decide what to do with the room."

"Oh I already know what I'm gonna do." Megan smirked. "A new practice hall for my band."

"Screw that!" Penny shouted. "The only music playing in that room is punk rock!"

"Metal." Megan defied.

"Punk rock!"

"Metal!"

"Punk. Rock!"

"Country!" Sally interjected. This earned her a punch in the face form both Megan and Penny simultaneously. Ginger sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose as Emily groaned, unsure of what to do. As this was happening, the other teams gathered and split off from the main group until only the red team was left. Thus, Yetti was able to continue.

"Alright, now just so we're perfectly crystal clear, here are the teams!" She gestured to Pam and her cohorts, Peggy, Carla and Cindy as well as the latter's boyfriend, Todd, all of them sporting pink paintballs. "Team Alpha!"

"Hell ya!" Todd shouted. "I'm an Alpha Male! Whoo!"

"More like the Alpha Dork." Pam mocked.

"Hey, I'm the one surrounded by pussy so I think that mean-GAH!"

Cindy kicked Todd in the nuts. She didn't appreciate she and her friends being compared to a harem.

"Next is Team Beta!" Yetti gestured toward the team next to the Alphas, consisting of Alex, Octavia, Gina, Nelly and Samantha.

"Then Team Omega!" She then gestured to the edgy girls with Penny fuming at the name.

"Omega! Omega!? I'll Omega you, you bitch!" Megan had to hold Penny back from trying to tackle Sargent Yetti.

"What's Omega mean?" Emily asked.

"I dunno, some low-fat thing?" Sally suggested.

Ginger just sighed and buried her face in her hand. This was certain to be a long day.

Yetti ignored Penny's threats of violence and went about naming the rest of the teams. Once that was taken care of, she took out a remote from her pocket and opened the garage door behind her. The teams stopped their inchatting and shouted in discomfort as the light blinded them. Yetti, unaffected by the invasive sun rays, took out a whistle from beneath her jacket and blew as hard as she could on it, scaring most of the teams into running outside. "The time starts now!" She took out a stopwatch and started a countdown on it, prompting the rest of the teams, including our edgy heroes, to join the others outside. "Remember, 10 minutes before you actually go hunting! With this, Yetti saluted the fleeing parties and went back inside.

The game had officially begun.

---

Unbeknownst to Yetti or any of the teens as they held the debriefing inside the armory, an spaceship neared the very edge of the playing compound. It was mostly invisible, bending light so as to blend in with the sky and the tree tops. The branches cracked and birds flew off in panic as the ship descended into a clearing. Once it was on the ground, it was briefly relieved of its invisibility as its sole occupant departed.

Ze'joth surveyed the area, taking note of all the smaller lifeforms surrounding him. Feathered creatures flew overhead, their nest disturbed. A fuzzy creature with elongated ears stared at him from behind a tree before darting away to safety. Yet another, smaller fuzzy creature stared at him from the tree branches, some sort of food clenched in its paws. Along the ground, a many-legged animal scurried by.

Quite fascinating. But not what he was looking for.

Of course, to Ze'joth, all of the animals surrounding him were nothing more than small bodies of heat, orange splotches in his internal infrared vision. This helmet helped to get a better scope of the area and, after a bit of outreach on his vision, spot his intended prey coming out from a nearby building in packs. He already knew his quarry, his ultimate prize was among them and for a moment, he felt tempted to head off right for them. But this was only for a moment, after which, he decided to wait. Why rush things after all? He had plenty of time on his side and who was to say the other so-called Human wouldn't make for a fun warm-up? With his wrist computer, he restored both his ship's invisibility as well as his own

The hunt had finally begun.

---

"Man, can we, like, stop for a second?" Pam whined. "I'm, like, totally tired!"

"We've barely been walking for five minutes." Cindy brought up. "Don't you want to get an advantage over the other teams?"

"If we want a real advantage, I say we forget the stupid-start up period and start hunting now!" Todd shouted. "I'm aching to paint some bodies!"

"That...sounds absolutely harmless." Pam teased. "Go back to threat school!"

"Hey fuck you!" Todd flipped her off as Cindy held him off.

"Whatever!" Pam turned around. "I, like, have to go powder my nose so BRB!" She waved as she vanished into the bushes, leaving Peggy and Carla to watch the quarreling couple.

"I swear we find ourselves in the weirdest situations," Peggy mused. "I mean seriously, we should be at the mall or the pool or something teen girl-related! Not shooting balls of paint at each other! Who comes up with this crap?"

Carla shrugged.

Far away from the hustle and bustle of the group, Pam finished up her business. "There!" She said as she placed the puffy makeup brush back into her makeup kit and wrinkled her nose in the mirror. "Cute as a button and ready for lovin!" Pam placed the makeup kit back in her pocket and examined her gun. "You know, maybe that idiot Todd is actually on to something. Maybe we should get a head start on the rest of those losers." She gripped the gun tightly. "Especially those edgy freaks! We should take them out first! Show them who the real top predator is!"

Suddenly, she heard a rustling in the forest.

"Huh!?" She panicked and pointed her gun into the brush. "H-Hello? Is anyone there?" Pam nearly powdered her nose for real as she was certain she could hear some sort of animal sound, like a low chitter-like growl. More rustling and she cocked her gun. "S-Stay back! I...I'm warning you!" She frantically shook her head from side to side, her eyes wide open in fear as they desperately searched for something out of place and her ears listening for even the tiniest sound outside the songbird's duet. For a few seconds, nothing happened and she briefly considered if perhaps nerves had played her for a fool.

Then she heard a loud thud a few feet in front of her, followed by another low growl.

With a yelp, she pointed her gun toward the trees, certain she could see...something moving among them.

"E-Eat paint, tree demon!" Pam screamed in terror as she shot at the invisible beast. As the recoil from the gun forced her eyes to close, she couldn't see the trees move and the entity dashed to the side. The trees and rocks before her were splotched with pink as she emptied her gun of its ammo. It was only when she could only hear clicks at she finally opened her eyes again and looked around herself. No movement. No growling. Not even birdsong as her blind shooting had scared them off. Only the deathly silence of the forest.

"H-Hello?" Pam called out with a shaky voice. "A-Anyone there?" She shivered, hating the silence and wanting to hear something besides the dripping of the paint, anything at all.

She got her wish when she heard the blood-chilling sound of a blade being unsheathed, accompanied by the sensation of said blade shooting right through her stomach cavity. Instantly, Pam tasted blood in her mouth and opened it, allowing a trickle to fall from the corner of her lips. She dropped her useless gun as she felt herself being lifted off the ground by whatever had impaled her, all while that horrible chittering growl happened right in her ears. Against her better judgement, she looked down at the weapon that took her life, or rather weapons as she noticed two strangely-shaped blades protruding from her stomach, only visible to her now because of her blood and offal coating them. With only a small groan as a reply, Pam went limp just as the rest of her team arrived, drawn in by her panicked screams from earlier.

"Pam! Are you ok-JESUS FUCKING CHRIST!" Todd screamed in a high-pitched voice.

"Todd? What is-AHHHHHHH!" Cindy and Peggy both shrieked as they witnessed their friend hanging dead in midair and bleeding from her middle. Carla opened her mouth in shock but aside from that, hardly reacted at all.

"W-What happened to Pam?" Peggy trembled as she pointed a shaky finger at the invisible figure holding up her friend's corpse. "W-What is that?"

As if to answer the party girl's question, the creature known as Ze'joth to his comrades retracted his wrist blades, allowing Pam's corpse to fall back to the floor with a thud. From within his helmet, he could hear the voices of the other humans and set his controls to record.

"You done fucked up, son!" Todd screamed as he pointed his gun at the invisible Ze'joth. "Fire!"

Without their leader to tell them what to do, the three girls pointed their own guns at the alien and fired relentlessly. The once-quiet forest raged with the sound of four paintball guns coating everything around them in neon pink, including the invisible creature. Todd screamed like a manic throughout it all, sheer adrenaline pumping through his veins. The pink barrage didn't stop until all four of the guns were empty and clicking. By then, the entire area in front of them was coated in pink, including the creature that killed Pam.

"Yeah!" Todd screamed. "We see you now, asshole!"

"Um...Todd?" Cindy asked.

"What babe?" Todd asked.

"We see him...now what?"

Everyone's hearts dropped as they realized they got so preoccupied with making the invisible creature visible that they didn't stop to think how they would go about killing it afterward. As if realizing this as well, Ze'joth summoned his wrist blades once again and, with another low growl, produced the laser guide to his shoulder cannon. The three red lights appeared on Todd's chest and slowly rose up to his forehead. The petrified jock's eyes followed the lights as they moved and, as he realized what was about to happen, he could only think to utter one thing.

"Well, shit."

The following blast echoes through the trees.

---

"You guys see anything yet?" The young man said as he scanned the tree before him.

"Negative Arnie." His black-haired friend answered as he looked to his right.

"Man, it's been three whole minutes since I painted someone orange!" The heavyset boy to their left announced. "I wanna draw some more blood!"

"Easy Dolph." Arnie replied. "You can't let yourself get too excited now. You'll scare off the prey. Arnie turned around toward the two teen trailing behind him. "Jean! Steve! You guys find anything yet?"

"Nope!" Jean, a lanky boy with greyish-brown hair replied. "Nada. No way. No how. Neg-A-Tory."

"Just let me at em when we find them," Steven, a short blonde boy said. "I'll give em a paint job they ain't ever gonna forget."

"Again with the mafia talk." The black-haired boy shook his head as he turned to Arnie. "But they do have a point Arnie. We've been walking this trail for awhile now but we still haven't run into any other teams. Maybe we should just move on."

Arnie sighed. "Maybe you're right, Sylvester. Maybe you're-

Just then, another teen suddenly fell out of the bushes in front of the group face first. She quickly picked herself up, staring at the boys like a startled rabbit. They quickly recognized her as one Emily Fisher.

"Hey! It's that there emo girl in your history class, Arnie." Jean pointed at her.

"And she's about to be history!" Dolph laughed as he pointed his paintball gun at her.

"Dolph wait!" Arnie called out.

Emily squeaked as an orange paintball missed her forehead by a single inch. Quickly, she scrambled back to her feet and vanished into the bushes on the other side of the trail.

"Get her!" Sylvester shouted, enticing the other boys to a hollering frenzy as they followed the emo girl into the forest.

"Guys! Hold on!" Arnie sighed as his team left him behind. "Idiots." He growled as he cocked his gun and followed them into the tree.

It didn't take long at all for Emily to vanish from their sight with her small stature and before long, the boys found themselves near a river. Next to the river was a large boulder. The river itself was pretty shallow, Jean only getting his ankles wet as he thread through it in search of Emily. All four of the boys were wandering aimlessly throughout the riverbank as Arnie finally caught up with them. The tan-haired freckled boy took a moment to catch his breath before berating his men. "What the heck is wrong with you guys? One girl looks your way and you go buck wild!"

"It's the thrill of the hunt, Arnie!" Dolph defended as he lifted up a rock to see if Emily was hiding under there somehow. "You'd know it if you actually knew how to hunt."

"Dolph, you uneducated hippo!" Arnie shouted. "You take that back before I-

"Ca-Kaw! Ca-Kaw!"

A female voice echoed through the riverbank, putting all five boys on alert. They looked all over the area for the source of the sound and waited for it to happen again.

"Ca-Kaw! Ca-Kaw!"

"It's them!" Steven shouted as he cocked his gun. "It's those spooky girls!"

"But where are they?" Sylvester asked. "I can't tell where that call is coming from."

"Caca! Caca! Oops! I mean, Ca-Kaw! Ca-Kaw!"

"This is really grilling my onions." Jean said. "Hey! Come on out and show yourselves!"

"Jean!" Arnie barked. He growled in frustration as his men continued to ignore him, looking around and pointing their guns everywhere as they tried to mentally track the source of the bird calls. As for Arnie, he was also pondering them but only because he had heard about this technique from his Grand-pappy. Now if only he could remember how exactly it worked. There was a voice calling but you couldn't tell where it was coming from.

"Ca-Kaw! Ca-Kaw!"

Then it hit him like a ton of bricks.

"Wait!" Arnie shouted. "It's a trap!"

"Over here!" The voice called from behind a tree on the other side of the river. Without a second thought, the boys, save Arnie, fired their orange paintballs at the tree, Jean hooting as he did so. "We got you now, girly! Yeeee-haaaaw!"

So caught up in their painted assault were the boys that they failed to noticed the four heads poking out from behind the boulder. From under these heads, came four guns that pointed directly at the boy's shoulders. Arnie noticed this and, realizing he was outgunned, dropped and rolled out of the way as the new guns fired. The boys never even heard the shots through their own rabid firing. They simply felt a sharp sting as red splotches suddenly appeared on their shoulders and hips. The force of the blast knocked them all down, with Sylvester's nearly empty gun falling out of his hands and into the river.

"Hell yeah!" Penny shouted as she jumped on to the rock and raised her gun up high. "Another team bites the dust!"

Realizing that the gunfire had ceased, Arnie got up and gasped as he saw his men laying in a pile of red, dripping defeat. Growling, he grabbed his gun and pointed it at the taunting punk girl. Before he could take the shot, however, he felt a ball of paint explode on his shoulder and winced as he felt a few drops land on his face. He looked back toward the river to see Emily poking out from behind the tree, her gun still pointed at him.

"They planned this." He muttered under his breath. "Right from the moment she fell in front of us, they planned this and we fell for it hook, line and stinker!"

"Sorry boys, looks like you're out!" Penny laughed as the turned around and pulled down her pants and underwear. "But feel free to take a shot if you'll make you feel better!" She laughed as she shook her bare ass at them. Both Megan and Ginger groaned, Megan in discomfort, Ginger in embarrassment while Sally burst into laughter.

Arnie, face as red as Penny's mohawk, gritted his teeth before getting back up. "No thanks! Wouldn't count at this point but-

Sally laughed even harder and Arnie got even angrier.

"We will get you for this! Come on boys. Let's go!"

Sylvester, Steve and Dolph all followed Arnie at once, groaning under their breath at the humiliating nature of their defeat. Jean, however, remained, his eyes fixed on Penny's shaking bottom. Arnie was quick to notice this and, with one more annoyed growl, marched up to the country boy and grabbed him by the hair.

"Yoww!" Arnie!"

"Boy, you need to start thinking with the brain in your head!" Arnie shouted as he pulled his friend away. "Not the one in your pants!"

Emily crossed the river and scratched the back of her head as she made watched the boys vanish into the wood. "Remind me again why I have to keep being the bait?"

"Because you have the most chasable presence out of all of us." Megan suggested. "You just reek of prey energy."

"Thanks." Emily stated flatly.

"No problem." Megan replied.

"Okay Penny." Ginger spoke up. "They're gone now. You can pull your pants back up."

"And hopefully for good this time." Megan added.

"Aww what's wrong Megan?" Penny asked as she reconcealed her behind. "Afraid you'll turn gay or something?"

"You know, at some point, someone's probably gonna actually answer your taunt and shoot you right on the ass." Ginger suggested. "And the humiliation of that happening would outweigh any that the teams we defeated felt."

"Nah, it would be pretty funny." Sally giggled.

"Shut it, Booger-head." Penny retorted as she slid back behind the boulder. Around this time, Emily had made her way to the rest of the group as well. "Oh come on, Penny. Give Sally some credit. After all, if it weren't for her voice-throwing, this plan wouldn't even be possible."

"Whatever." Penny scoffed. "Alright guys, so what's the plan? Do we stay here or move this party somewhere else?"

"Why would we go somewhere else?" Sally asked. "I still have yet to see a fish in the river."

"There are no fish in that river, Sally." Emily explained. "It's just a prop for the paintball course."

"When there's water, there's fish." Sally defended. "It's nature's way!" Sally put her hands to her hips with a huff like she had won the argument and Emily, not wanting waste her energy on the futile, resigned with a sigh.

"We should go anyway." Ginger said. "By now, the teams we defeated have had chances to cross paths with those still in the game, no doubt telling them our plan. We need to find somewhere else and come up with a fresh strategy."

"Sounds good to me." Megan grabbed her gun. "Let's go!"

"Hey! Who died and made you leader?" Penny challenged.

"So you want to stay here by yourself when the next team shows up?" Megan asked.

She and Penny glared at each other for a full minute before the punk girl relented and picked up her gun. "I'm only going because I want to." She answered with emphasis on "I" The other girls grabbed their guns and together the team headed off into the woods.

---

"And that's why I will never, EVER forgive Kohei." Octavia growled. Then she sighed. "I'm sorry. I know that's not a reason to be moping around all week."

"Hey, you can't help how you feel when things like that happen." Gina patted her girlfriend's back. "Besides, it could be worse. Remember when you finished the Marineford Arc in One Piece? You were inconsolable for a month!"

"Please don't remind me." Octavia sniffed.

"Ummm...you have any idea what those two are talking about?" Alex asked Nelly as the two walked in front of them.

"Just mindless drama from one of the many manga franchises that girl is obsessed with I'm sure." Nelly fixed her glasses. "She really needs to move on to American literature already."

"I heard that!" Octavia shouted, earning a laugh from Gina and a blush from Nelly

"Hey Samantha!" Alex shouted. "Anything near our rear?"

"Nope!" Samantha replied as she walked backwards behind the group, looking all over for any signs of enemy intrusion. "Nothing yet!" She groaned. "Man, I wish we had some action already! We've haven't seen another team in like, forever!"

"Patience is a virtue, Nelly." Alex laughed. "Doesn't always pay off but when it does, it's usually worth it."

"Since when did you become a walking motivational poster." Gina asked.

"Hey, when you see them all the time at the gym, you tend to start picking them up in your head."

"Not sure if that's a good thing." Octavia said.

"Aren't you always going on about how not giving up is so important?" Nelly challenged.

Now it was Octavia who was blushing. "All I'm saying is there's a time and a place for everything."

"Now, now!" Gina as she placed her hand on Octavia's shoulder. "There's no need to start any fights, especially right now when we're supposed to be working as a team."

"That's right!" Alex nodded. "So until the last paintball flies, let's at least to act as a unit. Cool?"

The other girls murmured in agreement.

"Alright Samantha, how are things looking back there?" Alex asked. She expected to hear the skater girl's voice right away but only heard birdsong. "Samantha?" She turned around, which prompted the other girls to do the same, allowing them to behold the same unsettling discovery as their friend.

Samantha was gone, her gun laying on the forest floor. It was sprinkled with what appeared to be droplets of blood.

"Samantha?" Octavia asked right before a rustling through the trees made her her yelp. The girls huddled together as the branches above them continued to shake and relieve themselves of leaves which fell to the floor around them. With no other plan of attack, Alex screamed at the girls to fire at the branches. At once, the falling leaves were torn up by the upward barrage of blue paintballs the girls shot out. It was only a short while before the gravity caught up with the paint and sent it flying back down toward the girls, causing them to shriek and groan as the paint splattered against their faces and bodies.

"Tactical retreat!" cried Alex as she led the group away from the falling paintballs. Once the paint had stopped falling along with the branches and leaves they had taken out with them, the forest once again grew quiet, the birds having silence their song. Alex checked her gun, confirmed she had about half her ammo left and cocked it before pointing it at the trees. The other girls followed suit, a gun pointed at each direction. Slowly and without realizing it, the girls began to circle, their gazes constantly shifting from side to side in search of what had attacked them.

"You guys see anything?" Alex asked in a hushed whisper.

"No!" Octavia answered.

"Do you think we scared it off?" Gina asked.

"Likely, given that most animals would have been scared off by that barrage." Nelly answered. "But we don't know if that was an animal or not."

"If it wasn't an animal, than what was it?"

Just then, something large fell in front of the girls, kicking up dust and leaves as it landed. The light bended around it, giving the trees behind it an otherworldly wavey look. The girls pointed their guns at the creature, all four of them feeling their blood run cold as it uttered it's horrid chitter. As Alex looked the thing over, she couldn't help but notice a blue splotch of paint on one of its legs. This was the same creature that was just above them alright, the same one that had taken and possibly killed Samantha. Alex wanted to know what the hell was going on, if her teammate was really dead, where the hell this thing even came from. But she knew better than that, she knew better than to ask questions like that in a life-or-death situation. Right now, the only thing that mattered was that she get out of this alive and take as many as the others with her as she could. Thus, she shouted. "Fire!" at the top of her lungs and thus, the girls emptied their ammo onto the invisible beast.

The creature grunted as the paintballs smashed against its body, painting more and more of its form in sky blue. Despite the barrage, however, it didn't budge. It didn't so much as move back an inch as the girls emptied their guns onto it. Before long, the blast from their guns had been reduced to empty clicks. "Shit!" Alex cursed as she and the other girls frantically set about reloading their guns, Octavia dropping her ammo onto the floor as she tried to reload. "Shit!"

The creature studied them closely as he prepared his own weapon.

"Almost...Almost...Got it!" Gina shouted as she stood back up, her gun fully loaded and ready for action. She pointed it directly at the creature and asked. "You surrender yet, punk!?"

As if to answer her, three red lights appeared on the forest floor, emerging from near where the creature's head should be. They slowly approached Gina and climbed her leg onto her stomach. As she looked down at them, she slowly realized that they were tracking beacons for a much more powerful and much more lethal gun. "Oh...poop."

"Gina!" Without a moment's hesitation, Octavia got up and violently shoved her girlfriend out of the way just as the creature blasted its weapon. The resulting plasma blasted right through Octavia's chest cavity. The blasted smashed right through her spine and continued toward the trees, eating away trunks and branches before finally dissipating. Octavia, having already died when the blast incinerated her heart, fell over to the forest floor, a steaming hole where her back once was.

Gina stared at her girlfriend's lifeless corpse, her mouth agape and her pupils small and dumbstruck. "Octavia...Octavia!"

"Shit!" Alex grunted with a shaky voice. "Th...This thing's out for blood..."

"You...You bastard!" Gina started shooting at the creature again as tears streamed down her face. "You killed her!"

"Gina! Stop!" Nelly cried. "Our guns are no good! We have to retreat!"

Gina stopped for a moment as she realized Nelly was right about the guns. They were paintballs doing nothing but making the monster that killed Octavia slightly more visible. With a ferocious shriek, Gina snapped the gun in two over her knee, breaking the glass capsule that was holding her paintballs and leaving the edges jagged. It wasn't much but maybe, just maybe, she could kill this thing. With a roar of anger, Gina rushed toward the creature, holding up the half of her gun with the jagged glass side.

"Gina! No!" Alex held her hand out after her as she dashed toward her certain demise. The creature, still invisible enough that the girls couldn't clearly make out its movements, grabbed another weapon on its person and flung it toward the rapidly approaching girl. Hearing the sound of something whirling in the air, Gina flung her broken gun at the creature determined to make it bleed. She got her wish as what remained of the glass capsule smashed against its side, a few of the resulting shards digging into its skin and causing it to shriek in pain,

Unfortunately, Gina had already been decapitated by the disc-like weapon the creature threw before she could realize this.

"Gina!" Both Alex and Nelly cried as they watched the gamer's head fly into the sky and land among the branches. As soon as her head came to rest within the trees, her lifeless body joined her girlfriend's on the ground. In their confusion and grief, neither of the still living girls heard the air whirling as the device that killed Gina was coming back toward them. It tore through the side of Nelly's stomach on its way back to its owner who was currently holding his hand over his new wound, neon green blood seeping from the wound. He caught the disc and placed it back on his person as he wiped the glass shards away.

"Fuck! Nelly!" Alex cradled the wounded nerd in her arms. "Are you alright?"

"I'm fine." Nelly whispered. "The disc-like object that cut into me pretty much only cut through the epidermis." Nelly coughed and Alex winced as she could feel the nerdy girl's blood flowing over her body. They needed to get out of here now. "Track! Don't fail me now!" Leaving both her and Nelly's paintball gun behind, Alex took a mad dash through the forests as the invisible monster watched on.

"You done fucked up, Son." Todd's distorted voice sounded from the creature's helmet.

---

"Penny!" Sally whined as she followed her friends through the forest. "My feet hurt! Can't we take a break?"

"We've been walking for 15 minutes, genius!" Penny scolded.

"Please!?"

"You know Penny, it might actually be a good idea to rest for a bit." Ginger put in. "It'd be easier to discuss an attack plan that way."

"Plus, it would shut up Rockfeller Street Rat over there." Megan pointed her thumb at the groaning Penny who was leaning against Emily for support. Right as Megan finished speaking, both girls fell down.

Penny sighed. "Alright! Let's take five!"

At once the girls stopped walking. Megan took out a cigarette and lighter and helped herself to a smoke while Ginger helped Sally and Emily up. Penny found herself a tree near the path they were walking and leaned against it with her arms crossed, her go-to resting position. Megan walked up to her and offered her the cigarette. "So how many teams do you think are left?" She asked as Penny took the cigarette.

The punk girl took a puff and exhaled, watching the smoke float from her mouth into the sky. "Can't be too many now. Especially with that room at stake." She handed the cigarette back to Megan. "I'd say this game's got about an hour left. All we have to do is hold out for that long."

"If you say so," Megan placed the cigarette in her mouth as Penny started sniffing the air.

"Hey, do you smell something?"

"Something...what?"

"Something foul...maybe dead?" Penny crinkled her nose at the stench.

"Now that you mention it," Megan stomped out her cigarette. Without the tobacco to interfere with her sense of smell, she finally detected the stench of rotting flesh in the air. "It smells like something died here."

"Yeah," Penny pinched her nose closed. Only question is, what?"

"What's wrong with you guys?" Ginger asked as she walked up to the girls.

"Something reeks around here and for once its not Penny's taste in music." Megan replied through her own pinched nostrils.

"Fuck you!" Penny shouted.

Ginger rolled her eyes and sniffed, wincing at the odor. "Goddess, it smells like roadkill!" She closed her nose. "Where's it coming from?"

"I don't know. Somewhere around here, I'd wager." Megan started looking around the grass. "Maybe a predator's leftovers or something."

"There's no real predators around here or prey for that matter." Ginger said. "Just birds and insects."

"Well something's making that awful smell and if we don't find out what it is soon, we-

Penny felt something cool and wet slap against the side of her mohawk. She shivered for a moment and slowly brought up her hand to rub it off. She squirmed as she realized it was liquid and by rubbing it, she was actually wiping over her scalp. She brought her hand to her face and her eyes widened as she recognized the red substance on her fingertips as blood.

Another drop landed on her shoulder.

Gulping, Penny slowly looked up to the branches of the tree she was under. She was only able to see where the blood was coming from for a few seconds before a third drop of blood landed on her face. She cried out as she backed away from the tree, desperately trying to wipe the blood from her face.

"Penny!?" Ginger rushed up to her friend. "What's wrong?..Holy shit! Blood!"

"Blood?" Megan, Sally and Emily rushed over to their friend as well, panicking as they saw the blood on her face.

"Penny! What happened!?" Emily asked fearfully. "Speak to us!"

"Who did this to you? Was it your inner demons?" Sally asked.

"N..No...It-It isn't mine!" Penny pointed to the tree behind her. "In the...in the tree..."

"The tree?" Megan stomped toward the tree, her head craned upwards. "What's wrong with the...oh...fuck..."

"Megan? What's wrong?" Ginger asked as she finished wiping the blood from Penny's face. It was still smeared in red but at least she could see and thus lead her friends to Megan's side where they were all able to take in the horror hanging from the branches.

From the tree hung five bodies, four female, one male with a smoking hole where his head used to be. Their expressions were twisted in surprise and fear. They had been completely skinned, devoid of identifying hair or clothes as well. Flies and other insects had already been helping themselves to the exposed muscle and soon the maggots would come. The most disturbing thing about this whole situation, however, was the fact that these bodies were hanging upside down like dressed deer.

"Fuck!" Ginger shouted as she backed away, Emily and Sally screaming and holding each other as they did so. "Who...Who are they?"

"I don't know but I think we can let the police handle that part." Megan said. "Let's get out of here!" With this, Megan took off into the forest.

"Megan wait!" Ginger shouted but the metalhead girl was already gone. Groaning, she turned to her friends and shouted. "Come on guys! Now's not the time to get split up!"

"B...B...But...the...the...body!" Sally whined.

"No, Ginger's right!" Penny snapped out of her own stupor. "Besides, whatever did this might still be around so we should put as much distance between ourselves and this fucking mess as we possibly can."

The weight of Penny's words hit Emily and Sally like a truck and after exchanging a fearful glance with each other, they cried out and ran after Megan. Ginger followed them to the edge of the forest and stopped to call Penny to her. "Penny come on! Let's go!"

Penny continued to stare at the skinless corpses for a few moments, unable to sperate them from the mental image of a slaughtered pig hanging from a hook in a slaughterhouse. To see another human being in such a state, it left her with a feeling she was not accustomed to at all, a feeling of smallness and total helplessness against a larger predator.

"Penny!" Ginger shouted.

Forcing herself to face reality for the moment, Penny shook her head and ran to Ginger and both girls took off after their friends, leaving the hunks of meat that used to be humans to the insects.

---

"Ahhhhhh!" Sally cried as she ran through the forest.

"Sally! Wait!" Emily shouted. "You're going to hurt yourself!"

"Can't hear you! Too busy screaming!" Sally screamed. She continued to scream until she reached the river that she and her team had set their traps for half of the whole game and ran through the river. The uneven footing on the river floor caused her to trip and fall into the shallow water. The river threatened to pull her along the current until Emily arrived, grabbed her and pulled her out onto the river bank. She pushed against her scene friend's chest until she spit up water right as Ginger and Penny showed up.

"Sally? You ok?" Emily asked.

Sally nodded, only for her cheeks to inflate and for her to spit out a mouthful of water. Within that water was a single tiny fish that proceeded to splash about the riverbed until in landed back in the river. Sally giggled to herself. "I told you there were fish."

Emily tried to process just what the hell a fish was doing here but forced herself to give up that fight and, along with Ginger and Penny, helped Sally up to her feet.

"Pssst!" Megan whispered loudly from behind the boulder. "This way!"

The four girls wasted no time running to the safety of the boulder. Once the team was huddled together, they fell silent, their ears open for any change in sound, any sign of danger approaching. They held on to their guns tightly, despite knowing full well that paintballs would be useless against whatever the hell skinned those bodies. The wait seemed to last an eternity with no sound but the rushing of the river and the occasional singing of the birds to fill the air. After a uncertain passage of time, Megan began to whisper.

"So...anyone have any idea just what the fuck did that?"

"Beats the hell out of me." Penny said. "Maybe there's a serial killer on the loose again, a real psycho!"

"Great." Emily deadpanned. "Just what we need."

"I don't think so." Ginger argued. "I don't think a human is capable of pulling something like that off without being noticed in a place like this, even if the bodies were just teenagers." Ginger tapped her chin. "You know, this reminds me of a story I once heard, about a cryptid sighting back in the 80's."

"A...cryptid sighting?" Megan asked with a raised eyebrow.

"Oh! Like Bigfoot!" Sally chirped.

"Not exactly," Ginger said. "And to be honest, I'm not sure how much credence to real give this story but apparently, back in the 1980's, a man named Dutch Schaefer led his team of paramilitary soldiers into the jungles of South America in order to rescue a foreign cabinet minister. While they were there, they ended up getting attacked by an unexplained creature."

"How unexplained are we talking about here?" Emily asked.

"Nobody knows where it came from or what its purpose was. All we have to go on in terms of appearance was a rough sketch Dutch made during his interrogation after coming back without his men." Ginger took out her phone, flipped the data on, and showed the screen to the rest of the girls. It depicted a monstrous creature with dreadlock-like appendages on its head and horrific mandibles around its jaws.

"Talk about one ugly motherfucker." Megan muttered.

"What happened to Dutch?" Emily asked. "And for that matter, what about the creature?"

"No one knows for sure what became of Dutch but there're theories." Ginger said. "As for the creature, Dutch claimed that he mortally injured it in a fight and it blew itself up afterward."

"Interesting story," Penny butted in. "But what does that have to do with our current situation?"

"It has to do with the fact that, shortly before spotting the creature, Dutch reported that he and his men found skinned humans hanging upside down from a tree!" Ginger answered violently. Penny gulped and everyone else stiffened. "There's something else." Ginger continued. "The only other survivor of the massacre was a native woman named Anna who claimed that creatures like that one had been coming to the jungle to hunt for centuries." Ginger looked at the drawing on her phone. "And while they're few and almost unheard of, there have been other sightings of the same type of creature all over the world."

"So what you're saying is, some sort of demon alien...thing...is going around hunting people like deer?" Megan asked.

"I'm just relaying the story. I'm not asking anyone to jump to any conclusions."

"I sure hope not because that's a lot to take in," Penny said as she got up. "I still say it's some sort of psycho doing this and I say we take him out ourselves!"

"With what?" Megan asked. "A paintball to the crotch?"

Penny looked down at her gun. "Shit. Good point. We need to get some real weapons and fast!"

"What we need is to find Sargent Yetti and get the police involved!" Ginger argued. "We're not equipped to handle something like this!"

"That's never stopped us before." Sally spoke up.

"What?"

"What?"

"Guys! Shush!" Megan hushed them. "I think I hear something."

The other girls silenced themselves at once and waited. It wasn't long before they heard what Megan was talking about. It sounded like two screams, both female, ringing out through the forest at the same time. As they watched from the relative safety of the boulder, one Alex Manson burst from the trees and across the river, carrying a bleeding Nelly Brown on her back. Once she was on the other side of the riverbank, Alex tripped over the wet mud and rocks and tumbled down, accidently rolling over Nelly and causing the nerdy girl to scream in pain as they came to a stop. Ginger, Penny and Megan all ran out from behind the boulder and rushed to the injured newcomers.

"Guys! Wait!" Emily called out to no avail.

"Alex! Nelly!" Ginger called out herself. "What happened to you guys?"

"I-Invisible..." Alex groaned as she rolled herself to her back. "Invisible monster...killed the rest..."

"Invisible monster?" Megan asked.

"As hard as it might be to believe, it's true." Nelly rasped as she held her wound. "We were attacked by some sort of nearly-invisible assailant and not within the parameters of the game either. We...The...The others were...killed."

"Shit." Penny muttered as she realized Ginger's story might apply to the situation at hand after all. She hated when that happened. "So...So what did it look like?"

"Oh I don't know. Kinda like a bunch of wavy rocks and trees." Alex replied sarcastically. "It was invisible, you damn fool!"

"Sheesh! Sorry! Penny complained. "I was just trying to help!"

"I think the best way to do that is to get back to the armory and get the police involved." Ginger repeated.

"And some medical attention for Nelly," Megan said as she threw Nelly's arm over her shoulder. "She's losing a lot of blood."

"Alex, can you stand?" Ginger asked as she held out her hand to the health freak. Alex grabbed her arm with enough force to nearly knock her down and picked herself up.

"Yeah, I think I can manage."

"As can I." Nelly said as she pushed herself away from Megan's body.

"Are you sure, Pointdexter?" The metalhead asked.

"I'm sure. Despite the large bloodstain on my side, I can assure you the injury is quite minimal. I'll be just-"

It happened so fast that none of the girls had any time nor idea of how to do anything about it. One second, Nelly was standing there, bleeding but otherwise fine, and the next she was gone, her disappearance followed by a blood-chilling whooshing sound as if something had flown right by the girls. Their hair blew to their sides and a few seconds later, a sickening crack could be heard from the nearby woods. Slowly and reluctantly, all of the girls, including Emily and Sally from behind the boulder, turned to the edge of the woods and saw Nelly hanging against the trunk of a tree, a new, larger and bloodier wound on her stomach, Her glasses had been knocked from her face and with her dying breath, she feebly held up her hand toward the girls as the invisible object pinning her to the tree glitched and sparked its way back to the spectrum on visibility, revealing itself to be a spear-like weapon.

"Whoa!" Penny marveled darkly. "It's a fucking spear!"

"Nice observation, genius!" Megan hissed. "Now I think it's a good time to get outta he-

"You done fucked up, Son!"

"...Todd?" Sally asked

A loud thud silence the scene girl at once. Once again, all girls turned in the same direction, only to find nothing but a strange invisible shape standing before the river, shaped like a human but far larger.

"Oh fuck!" Alex cried. It's him! It's the monster!"

"Son of a bitch!" Penny pointed her paintball gun at the creature. "Eat this!"

"Penny wait!" Ginger cried but her punk friend was already blasting away like there was no tomorrow at the invisible creature. Red splotches appeared on the human-shaped mass which didn't move at first. Then Megan got closer and started shooting as well, causing the creature to back up a little.

"Megan!" Ginger cried.

"We can knock it down with enough force!" Megan shouted. "But we have to get close!" She continued to shoot at the monster, stepping ever closer as the creature stepped back.

Ginger sighed as she mentally scolded herself for going along with something as completely idiotic as this and ran to Penny's side to join in, adding her own artillery to the barrage. Seeing the creature struggle even more, Emily and Sally exchanged a nervous glance before rushing out of the rock and shooting at it as well. The force of five close-quarter rapid-fire paintball guns pushed the screeching creature back to the edge of the river. By the time it finally lost its balance and fell in, it was dyed almost completely red.

"Alright!" Penny shouted in triumph. "We sure showed that bastard!"

"Yeah, we really knocked him harmlessly into the river with our paintballs." Ginger deadpanned. "Now let's get out of here before he gets up!"

"Sounds good to me." Megan cocked her gun for no reason and with that, the girls turned their backs on the creature as it slowly began to stir. The river water was quickly doing away with the red paint on its body, leaving a blood-like streak running down the stream. As the creature got to its feet, a single spark lit up on its side. Then another. Then another. The crackles and pops produced by the creatures failing cloaking technology caught the girls attention and forced them to turn around again. They watched on as the creature stepped out of the river, water dripping from its continually exposed true form. Its skin was scaly like a reptile's and from its head protruded several dreadlock-like extensions. Its reptilian body was barely covered, mostly just wearing a loincloth, some armor on its torso and netting on its limbs, allowing the girls to see the rippling muscles that held the creature's body together as well as the green wounds on his side. Sally felt herself blush and quickly forced herself to think about cheese to make it go away.

"Sweet Goddess," Ginger whispered. "It really is the same creature."

She as well as everyone else present watched the creature as it reached for its belt and produced a strange-looking gun. It pointed this gun at the girls and fired.

"Shit! Duck!" Penny and Ginger ducked to one side while Emily and Sally ducked toward the other. Megan wasn't sure which way to duck and so tried to fall forward. But by then, it was too late as the creature shot its gun, sending a net flying directly toward Megan. The metalhead girl was caught in the net and rolled toward the trees screaming as the net closed tighter and tighter around her, cutting into her skin and clothes.

"Megan!" Sally screamed. She and the other girls turned away at the last minute, not wanting to see the net finish the job its job with their friend. The screams stopped and the slush of gore could be heard as the net folded back to its proper form.

"Megan," Emily whimpered as the smell of blood hit her nostrils.

"You son of a bitch!" Penny shouted with tears in her eyes as she pointed her paintball gun at the creature. "You're going to pay for that!" She tried shooting at the creature again but he only responded by producing a disk-shaped weapon and cutting the gun in half. Sally fired a shot directly at the creature's head but it only responded with producing a pair of wrist blades and destroying that gun as well. With a threatening click, it back handed Penny toward the woods and grabbed Sally by the throat, lifting her off the ground.

"Sally!" Emily and Ginger began to shoot at the monster with all they had but alas, it could not help in anything besides giving the creature's armor a paintjob. The gun-like weapon on its left shoulder pointed at Ginger and produced three red tracking lights. Emily noticed these lights on Ginger's abdomen at once and stood in front of them, pushing Ginger back and bracing herself for what she was certain would be a fatal shot.

"Emily!" Ginger and Emily wrestled with each other over who should take the shot. Just as the monster was about to make the decision for them, he was struck on the back of the head by a large stick. The blow made him let go of Sally who fell to the ground right on her butt. She whined as she rubbed it. The creature turned around to face the new attacker which turned out to be none other than Alex, holding the splintered half of a rotten log with both hands. "Come on, you motherfucker! She cursed. "I ain't going down without a fight!"

"Alex!" Ginger shouted as she and Emily realized just what was going on.

"Forget about me!" Alex demanded. "Go! Now! Hurry! I'll hold him off!"

"But Alex!" Emily tried to argue but the gym rat wasn't having it.

"Now!" She shouted as she went for another strike. The creature grabbed the log and with a single squeeze, broke the thing into pieces that fell over Alex's face, blinding her and making her cough.

"Alex!" Sally cried as Ginger rushed up to her and grabbed her by the arm.

"Come on! We have to go!"

"But Ginger!"

"That thing came to kill us!" The goth girl shouted. "We can't win this fight! Not like this! We need to retreat!" Ginger rushed toward Penny who was just getting up and barked at her to follow. Penny growled at being given an order and briefly considered lending Alex a hand. However, when she turned toward the fight, she saw the creature holding Alex up in the air with the angry gym girl screaming at Penny to run. So serious was her glare that Penny had no choice but to obey and take off with her friends. She vanished behind the trees just as Alex was thrown hard enough against the ground to break her ribs. She coughed up blood and tried to get back up only for the creature to pin her down with a single foot. She looked up at the monster she knew was going to kill her and muttered. "I'll see you in Hell!"

The creature stared at her for a few seconds, recording her dying words unbeknownst to her and lifted its hand. With a single thrust, he punch into her back and wrapped his scaly fingers around her spine. With a single yank, it pulled out her entire spine, her head limping from the other side before falling away completely. He held up the spine to the earth's Sun and roared in victory.

His main prey might have gotten away but this hunt was proving to be fruitful nonetheless.

---

The four girls ran through the woods as fast as they could. It occurred to them that they weren't running toward the rec center but that didn't matter at the moment. Besides, if this thing, whose hunting weapons and tools far superseded any human technology, decided it wanted them dead, they doubted the police would be of much help. And so they ran, ran past the trees and rocks, scaring away songbirds and insects. They only stopped running once they found a hidden cave near the roots of an ancient tree. It was small but the interior would be able to hold all four of them at the same time and it made quite the hiding place. They made their way into the cave at once, squeezing against each other at the entrance until Emily popped out of the group and rolled inside.

She wound up rolling to the right and hitting the side of the cave head-first, knocking her flat on her back. As she groaned in pain and rubbed her aching head, she noticed a disfigured human face in front of her and screamed in fright. A few more seconds passed as she stared back at the strange face before realizing it was her own reflection, created on the shiny interior of the cave. She chuckled to herself upon this revelation and got back to her feet, only to be knocked down by Sally rolling on the ground.

With one less girl trying to squeeze with them, both Ginger and Penny were able to walk in with dignity. They were also quicker to notice the reflective cave walls with Penny immediately flipping it off in response. By this point in time, Sally had ceased her rolling right on top of Emily and noticed the reflections as well. She made silly faces and wagged her fingers as Emily's head spun.

The first few minutes within the cave were spent in mostly silence. Emily curled up next to the wall and Sally sat with her, ready to provide comfort and bad puns if needed. Ginger tried to do more research into their foe but found she would not access her data within the confines of the cave and leaned against the wall as well, one leg wrapped around the other. Penny started pacing, back and forth between the entrance of the cave and beginning of the dark network she and her friends dare not thread. She replayed the events has they happened in her mind over and over again, every so often stopping to look at her reflection in the cave walls. After a few minutes of this, she suddenly screamed in frustration and punched her own reflection. All this succeeded in accomplishing was drawing blood from her fingers but the message was clear.

She was pissed.

"I can't believe this!" She barked. "We just...We just let that bastard kill Alex and Megan! Not to mention Nelly and...and...who know who else!"

"Alright," Ginger rose her hands as she could sense what was coming." Let's just keep it nice and calm and-"

"Calm? Calm!?" Penny fake-laughed. "How the fuck are we supposed to stay calm when some reptile...hunter...thing...from who the fuck knows where is hunting us down like animals!?"

"Ginger's right! We should calm down!" Emily spoke up. "That way, we can figure out what to do."

"What to do? What to do!? What can we do!?" Penny reached for Emily's gun and ripped it away from her person. "This is the most advanced weapon we have! A fucking paintball gun! Meanwhile that thing's got a fucking laser on its shoulder! This is useless!" With another feral scream, Penny smashed the gun against the cave floor, breaking it to pieces. Emily sighed as she watched her gun get destroyed, only to feel something grab her arm. She turned around to see Sally, whimpering and hiding behind her like a scared child. Given the kind of rage that Penny was flying into at the moment, this was more than understandable. Thus, as badly as she wanted to stay away from the roaring fire in front of her, she sighed and tried speaking to Penny again.

"Penny, it's alright. I know you're scared and everyt-

"Scared!?" Penny twisted toward Emily, making both her and Sally jump. "I...I'm not scared!"

"Penny, now's not the time for this crap." Ginger chided her. "It's obvious you're scared. We all are. It's nothing to be ashamed of, especially in this situation."

"You don't understand!" Penny argued. "I'm not scared! Scared is hearing a weird noise in the middle of the night because you happen to be awake for it!"

Ginger raised an eyebrow in confusion. "Huh?"

"Scared is watching a horror movie and covering your eyes during that one scene you hate but cringing because you can still hear what's happening!"

"Penny?" Emily asked.

"Scared is wanting to break out of a roller-coaster after it starts because you realize you don't have the nerve to go through with it far too late!"

"Penny...are you ok?" Sally asked.

"No Sally! I'm not alright! Because I'm not scared!" Penny started to tremble, her legs threatening to give out from under her. "I...I'm fucking terrified!" She squeaked.

"Penny.." Ginger stepped closer.

"What are we gonna do?" Penny fell to her knees. "There's no way to beat that thing and there's no way to escape it either. We're so fucked we're practically royals!"

"What?" Emily asked.

"Penny, don't despair, alright?" Ginger placed a hand on her shoulders. "We'll get through this somehow!"

"No we won't." Penny wrapped her arms around her legs. "Face it. We're boned."

Both Ginger and Emily racked their brains trying to figure out what to say to bring Penny out of her funk as they both knew she was their best chance of escaping this situation with their lives intact. Before either of them could figure out the magic words, however, Sally got the ball rolling, not with her mouth, but with her hand as she slapped Penny across the face, eliciting a shocked gasp from the goth and emo girl.

"Sally..." Penny whispered as she held her stinging cheek and turned back toward Sally, her eyes teary. "That...That fucking hurt, you bitch!" Without a moment's hesitation, Penny punched Sally right in the face, sending the scene girl rolling further into the cave. She stopped rolling just short of the endless tunnels and unfurled herself, shaking her head violently. "There we go! That's the Penny we know and love!"

"Huh?" Penny questioned.

"Penny, out of all of us, you're the last person to let yourself get overcome by fear in a crisis." Sally explained. "Why are you giving in now?"

"Um, hello!? Did you not see the fucking laser cannon on that thing's shoulder!?"

"Yes. I saw that. And I also saw the spear, the killer net, the Wolverine claws and the sharp DVD."

"I...don't think that was a DVD." Emily brought up.

"The point is, that monster has a lot of scary weapons not to mention how much bigger he is than us plus-

"Sally, if this is suppose to make me feel better, it's not working."

"What I'm trying to say, Penny, is that we're against incredible odds right now but that's never stopped us before!" Sally placed a hand on the punk girl's shoulder. "And that's never stopped you before! You've always been the one to get us out of the most stickiest situations when it really mattered."

"What situations is she talking about?" Emily asked.

"I have no idea." Ginger replied.

"I know we can survive this! I know we can beat that Jamaican monster! But we need your help!"

Penny's trembled lightened as she stared at Sally. Once they stopped, she pushed Sally's arm to the side as she did Gingers and pondered her situation. Sally was right in saying the odds were against them. In all likely hood, the girls would end up dying regardless of what plan they came up with. At the same time, however, she felt disgusted with herself for letting her fear consume her like it did. Part of her wanted to blame it on the guilt she felt in not being able to save Megan and the others and maybe that was the case to a small degree but ultimately, it didn't matter. All that did matter was that if there was any chance of her and her friends getting out of the rec center alive, they would need a plan.

And if she was to die at the hands of that creature, she was sure as hell going to go down fighting.

Wiping the almost-formed tears from her eyes, Penny adopted a commanding pose. "Alright! That asshole wants our skins! Let's make him work for them!"

Sally cheered and Ginger smiled. Emily just uttered a flat and lifeless "yay." as she was sure she would soon be killed.

"Ginger," Penny pointed to the Goth. "You're the smarty-pants of the group. Get any ideas?"

"...Thanks." Ginger replied flatly before tapping her chin. "Well, right off the bat, we know we don't stand a chance against the creature's weaponry but if Dutch's story is true, and I think we can safely assume that it is, its still mortal. I think we should focus on getting rid of its weapons somehow."

"Alright, so we disarm the creature but how exactly?" Emily asked. "It's not like he'll just put them away if we ask nicely!"

Penny happened to notice her reflection in the cave wall behind Emily once again and smirked. "Maybe we don't have to, Emily. Maybe we don't have to."

---

Ze'joth winced as he placed the last of the medicine on his side wounds. He was so caught up in the thrill of the hunt that he had forgotten about the injury one of the Humans gave him. Didn't help that he happened to run into his most prized hunt while taking out the rest of the previous team. He leaned against the tree trunk he was currently patching himself up on, his scaly feet rubbing bark off the branch he was resting on. He placed the medicine back in his wrist packet and reached for the branch above him where he grabbed a shiny white skull.

This skull happened to belong to the last Human he killed, the strong dark-skinned girl who had managed to get the jump on him. This only served to please Ze'joth as it meant his friend was right on the money about how resourceful these humans could be. Even without proper weapons, they still managed to put up one hell of a fight and even drew blood from him.

He was certain the hunt for the one named Penny would be beyond thrilling.

Deciding he had wasted enough time tending to his wounds, Ze'joth placed Alex's skull on his belt and jumped down from the tree, hitting the ground with enough force to cause a slight tremor. The plant's Sun was beginning to go down but he figured he still had an hour or two left before it went down completely. Of course, sleep was the furthest thing from Ze'joth's mind at the moment. He just knew that Humans liked to rest at night and thus his quarry would most likely hold up somewhere for the night if given the chance. He would need to move fast.

He decided to check the spot where he had last seen them. Aside from some bloodstains on the river bank, more bloodstains overlapping a hole in a tree, and what remained of the Human called Megan, there was no sign of any struggle. Ze'joth sat on the boulder next to the river and carefully scanned the area for any sign of human life. But alas, there was none to be had. Just more songbirds and some strange movement in the river too small to be of any interest to him. Ze'joth tried his invisibility cloak again but all he got for his trouble was a few cracks and sparks. He shrugged as he figured he had gotten enough use out of his invisibility anyway. Besides, one more handicap on his end would prove to make thing far more interesting. So he messed with his wrist computer and activated his recorded voices.

"You done fucked up, Son!"

"You done fucked up, Son!"

"You surrender yet, Punk?

Ze'joth waited patiently for the humans to respond to their friends voices. He was sure they could hear them well from where they were. A few minutes passed and nothing seemed to happen. Ze'joth decided he needed to cover more ground and started walking. Almost as soon as he started moving, however, he heard a small thud behind him. Without breaking a sweat, he turned around and fired his plasma cannon, watching as it felled several trees before dissipating. The damaged trees fell to the forest floor, one after the other, throwing up a huge cloud of dust. As it settled, Ze'joth scanned the area again, certain he had claimed yet another trophy.

To his surprise, however, his scanners picked up a single shape rising from the dust cloud, coughing and gasping.

"Oh God!" Emily shouted as the dust started to settle. "I am so glad I went to the bathroom before we started this stupid plan! Otherwise I...would...have..." Emily trailed off as she noticed the hulking alien monster in front of her. "Uh...hi?"

Emily stiffed as she saw three tracking lights appear on her face and with a panicked squeak, ducked behind a large tree which took the brunt of the blast. She rolled out of the way as the tree fell and vanished into the underbrush, little more than a blip in Ze'joth's heat vision. Ze'joth replayed the voice of one of his last victims before giving chase.

"You done fucked up, Son."

Ze'joth leaped toward the top of one of the trees still standing and from there began his pursuit of the emo girl. He hopped from tree to tree, never taking his eyes off the frightened girl as she desperately ran through the forest. He could see her breath weaking as she was clearly unused to running and he wondered if perhaps he should simply go for the net and be done with it. Before he could carry out his attack, however, she suddenly vanished from his vision, there one moment and gone the next.

Ze'joth stopped his leaping and scanned the area for any sign of her. He could find nothing. Her heat signature had simply vanished. Little did he know that, while running away from him, Emily had dived head first into a mud puddle Penny had discovered earlier. She was already rising out of it, wincing as she felt the moistened dirt slip beneath her clothes. "I'm going to need a 24 hour bath after this." She whined as she turned to the creature in the trees. To her amazement, it had stopped and was looking around, having completely lost track of her. "Holy shit!" Emily whispered. "It worked! Penny's batshit insane idea worked!" Emily finished climbing out of the mud puddle. "Better hope the rest of it works too." Emily ran as fast as she could toward her friends, which wasn't too fast considering how the mud was slowing her down.

Ze'joth grew frustrated with being unable to find his prey and jumped back down to the forest floor. He searched very carefully, his eyes peeled for even the tiniest sign of movement. He didn't get any movement however. Only the sound of one of the human's voices.

"Hey Mr. Vag Mouth! I have a sausage for you!"

Ze'joth recognized the voice as one of the many he heard screaming earlier today. They must be close, possibly even protecting the one that got away. With an intrigued chitter, Ze'joth slowly made his way toward the direction of the voice. It helped that, as he continued to walk, the voice continued to call for him, sounding louder with each and every word.

"What's wrong? Can't find the party? Just follow your nose!"

"Does it stink around here? Or is it just me?"

"Here, kitty kitty kitty!"

Ze'joth found he was starting to grow annoyed with this voice. He wanted nothing more than to silence it forever. He prepped his shoulder cannon, ready to fire the second he heard rustling. Instead what he heard was a very loud and annoying:

"POLLYWANNACRACKER!?"

Without a moment's hesitation, Ze'joth fired his cannon in the direction of the voice, only realizing too late that no one was actually there. The plasma beam traveled through the forest and hit something reflective, a piece of cave wall with a glass-like surface. The plasma was redirected by the surface and traveled back to the sender. Before Ze'joth could tell what was happening, the plasma blasted the cannon to smithereens. The force of the blast also scrambled the HUD within Ze'joth's helmet, resulting in a horrible screeching sound that forced the great hunter to screech in pain and grip his head. What was left of the plasma cannon fell to the forest floor, ruined and smoking.

After a few minutes, Ze'joth was able to get comfortable with enough of the screeching static to mess with his wrist computer. With no other options, he set the HUD for a soft reboot and hoped that would bring it back to normal. Only problem was this would leave him blind for a few moments as the screen would have to power off first. He considered removing his helmet when he heard footsteps all around him. Through the eyeholes in his mask, he could hardly make out four shapes all around him but from their voices, he could tell they were the humans he had been hunting.

"Hey Dreadlocks!" Ginger shouted. "Over here!" She waved her arms and moved her feet in place to get his attention. Her gambit worked as, despite being nearly blind, Ze'joth took his combat stick and hurled it like a spear toward the muddy Goth girl. She jumped out of the way just in the nick of time to allow the spear to wedge itself int the tree behind her. Another weapon rendered useless.

Ze'joth growled and grabbed his throwing disc, only to feel a small rock strike the top of his helmet. He snapped in that direction to see another girl, the one with green hair covering her eyes, shaking her butt at him. "What's wrong, you Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle's reject? Can't hit a target right in front of you?" She slightly tapped her behind as she said this. With an annoyed growl, Ze'joth threw the disc in Sally's direction. The scene girl cried out in surprise and jumped down at the last possible second, the disc tearing at the seat of her pants and a few strands of her hair. It whizzed around the air as it circled back toward its owner who reached out for it, only for the last of his vision to be taken as Emily hopped onto his back and covered his eyes. He hurled his fist in a futile attempt to shake the girl off and howled in pain as the disc wedged itself into his side. Angry and in pain, Ze'joth grabbed the emo girl's arm and hurled her toward the tree before him. She uttered a loud groan as she hit the trunk with her back and slid down.

"Emily!" Ginger and Sally shouted.

Emily got to her feet and whined as she rubbed her back, only ceasing when she remembered the hulking and royally pissed alien hunter standing in front of her. "Umm...Typo?"

Ze'joth grabbed his net gun and launched its namesake at her. Remembering what happened to Megan, Emily cried out and rolled into a ball, hoping that her death would be quick if not painless. Before the net could entrap her, however, Penny chucked something out from the bushes in front of her. Had the girls had more than a single second to actually see what it was before the net wrapped around it and reduced it to splinters, they would have seen it was a rotten tree stump.

Ze'joth roared in frustration as he watched the net and wood crumple to the ground.

"Alright, asshole! Game's over!" Penny jumped from the bushes in front of Emily, a wooden spear tightly gripped in her hands. "You alright, Emily?"

"Umm...yeah." Emily got up. "Totally did not almost pee myself or anything like that. I-I'm fine."

"Good. Then let me handle this!"

"But Penny-

"Hey Master Chief!" Penny taunted, ignoring Emily completely. "I heard about one of your little friends coming over here a few years back and stirring up trouble in South America! Probably thought a bunch of teens with paintball guns would make easier prey huh?" She twirled the spear around and pointed it directly at Ze'joth. "Think again."

By now, Ze'joth's computer had finished rebooting and his thermal vision was back on. This didn't do him much good as thanks to the mud all over her, Penny appeared as little more than a blue blob closer to him than the rest of the blue in the forest. He did recognize the spear and the position she was in as one of confrontation. She intended to fight him off Just as he figured she would eventually. All annoyance and anger melted away as he realized this was the moment he had been waiting for. A true and balanced struggle with a prey he had traveled the stars for. Of course, it could manage to be even more balanced.

"Hey asshole!" Penny barked. "You got any thoughts in that head of yours? I'm talking to you! Hello!?"

Slowly, Ze'joth reached for the tube at the side of his mask that provided him with air, twisted the end and pulled it out. A stream of alien air hissed as it escaped into the atmosphere. Ze'joth waited a few seconds for the air to empty out completely before repeating the process with the other tube. Now fully disconnected from his own life support, Ze'joth clasped both sides of his mask with his scaly fingers and pulled it off. The girls watched with equal parts fear and wonder as Ze'joth pulled his helmet away from his face and tossed it to the ground. Even though they had witnessed the drawing that Dutch had made from his own encounter with the creatures, it was not nearly enough to actually prepare them for the real thing up close. Small yet fierce yellow eyes, a completely alien mouth whose corners were marked by digit-like organs and a mottled black marking on his forehead. Ze'joth chittered as he exposed his face to his prey and gauged their response.

"Dude...I was so wrong..." Penny whispered. "Ugly motherfucker doesn't even begin to cover it!"

With this declaration of war, Ze'joth unsheathed his wrist blades and roared as loud as he could, scaring every bird within the trees away from the area. As they blacked out the sky overhead, Emily snuck away to where Ginger and Sally were hiding and watched as Penny pulled her leather jacket off and refixed herself into a battle position. A single gust of wind blew through the clearing as both contenders stared each other down. No longer was this a simple hunt but a battle to the death.

A battle that began with both combatants roaring as they charged each other.

Penny jumped back at the last second as Ze'joth swung his blades. She continued to dodge his strikes again and again until he went for a straight shot toward her stomach. She stopped the strike by wedging the spear in-between the blades and kicking Ze'joth's arm upward. Ze'joth took this opportunity to to backhand Penny, allowing one of his blades to slice her cheek. The punk girl winced and gritted her teeth as blood trickled from the fresh wound. Deciding to go on the offensive and thrust her spear toward Ze'joth's chest. The hunter reacted by grabbing the spear right before it could hit him, pulling Penny close and headbutting her away. She fell back on her ass, the spear embedding itself into the ground.

"Penny!" All of her friends shouted.

As Ze'joth stepped closer to his prey, he felt a spasm of pain and remembered the disc still embed in his side. Without a moment's hesitation, he ripped the disc from his side, roared in pain, and stomped toward Penny as she was getting to her feet. She only had a mere second to grab her spear and pluck it from the ground when she noticed Ze'joth looming over her, one scaly foot raised above her head. "Oh shit!" Penny cried as she jumped back right as his foot came down. She quickly scrambled to her feet and pointed the spear at him again, only for him to slice the pointed end of if off cleanly with his wrist blades. He then sliced through the rest of the spear down to where her hands were with his disc for added insult, earning another slash across Penny's chest. "Fuck!"

"Penny! Maybe if you pee your pants and cry, he'll leave you alone!" Sally called out.

"No way! If I have to fight dirty to win, I'll do it my way!" That's when Penny noticed how...unprotected the creature's lower half was. "And I think I just found it." Without a moment's hesitation, Penny delivered as powerful a kick as she could muster into Ze'joth's crotch. The hunter roared in agony, the echoes of which traveled throughout the entire rec center. He fell to his knees and dropped the disc.

Now was her chance.

Penny grabbed the disc before it could hit the ground and slashed the creature across the throat. A spray of bright green blood shot at her face and into her open mouth as the creature hissed in pain. It reached for its throat but only succeeded in getting more of its blood sprayed over its body. After a few moments of trying and failing to close the wound, Ze'joth fell back with a thud, gurgling as his blood continued to leak onto the forest floor.

"Penny!" Sally cried as she rushed toward her injured friend, Ginger and Emily not far behind. "Are you alright?"

"I'm fine." Penny said as she dusted herself off. "Just got some cool new scars. That's all."

"I'm just glad you're alright, Penny." Ginger said as her gaze shifted toward the dying alien at her feet. The girls gathered around Ze'joth as the life drained from his neck. He looked up weakly to the creatures that had vanquished him, not with their claws, or venom or even weaponry but with their intellect and sheer desire to survive. It was this same drive to live that helped them vanquish all other foes they had encountered before and now, they would add him to that list. He felt no shame nor upset in losing to such worthy prey. On the contrary, he only felt a strange sense of gratitude, gratitude in being able to be sent off with one of his best hunts before the Black Warrior came for him.

Alas, he still had one final job to do. Couldn't leave his tech with these humans, now could he. With what remained of his strength, he opened up his wrist computer and typed in the kill code, setting the timer to 4 minutes. He laid back down as the timer began to beep loudly. As the sight left his eyes, he noticed the girls all looking toward his wrist and their eyes growing with worry.

"I'll see you in Hell."

"Hey, his watch thingy is beeping!" Sally pointed out. "Do you think he's late for a meeting?"

"I don't think that's a stop watch, Sally." Emily pointed out. "I think that's a damn bomb!"

"Shit!" We gotta get out of here!" Penny took off into the forest with the others close behind her. The girls ran as fast as their legs would take them. Emily already felt like her lungs were going to explode. Nonetheless, they kept running, running and praying to whatever deity was listening that they got out of the blast radius in time.

As they made it out of the thicker neck of the woods, they were suddenly stopped by Sargent Yetti pulling up in front of them in a jeep. "Just what the hell are you girls doing?

"No time to explain! Running for our lives! Bye!" Penny grabbed Sally and Emily and rushed past Yetti with Ginger right behind her. Yetti tried calling after the girls but they completely ignored her and vanished from her sight. It was only then that she noticed the loud ticking noise coming from the trees and, against her better judgement, hopped out of her jeep it investigate. "What in tarnation?" She pressed through the trees until she came across a clearing. Within this clearing, a dying alien monster with a strange box on its wrist. Said box displayed a series of symbols Yetti could only guess were numbers in the creature's own language. As these numbers had just about run out right as Yetti realized what the girls were running from.

"Well shit."

The resulting explosion raced through the entire rec center in almost a minute. Thankfully, the girls had managed to find a hole under the fence that separated the center from the rest of their city. Sally was the last one to climb out right as the explosion happened, sending all of the girls flying away across the road. They landed in a clearing and tumbled further into the middle of it as the explosion consumed the entire center.

"Oh man," Emily whined as she watched the explosion dissipate. "My phone was back there."

Ginger patted the emo girl on the back. "Well look on the bright side, Emily. At least we survived."

"And kicked some major alien ass in the process." Penny cheered. "I am fucking awesome."

"Well aren't you on cloud 9?" Ginger asked with a smirk.

"You know it!" Penny confirmed gleefully. "Honestly, after all that, I feel like I could take on anything!"

Just as Penny said this, a giant spaceship materialized overhead. All four girls looked up in shock and horror as the middle of the ship opened up and a staircase-like extension lowered itself between them.

"Except this!" Penny shouted. "Shit!"

Down this staircase descended another creature like the one the girls had just vanquished, except more blueish in color. Unbeknownst to the girls, this alien was known as Pag-een and was the friend that had told Ze'joth about their world. After seeing Ze'joth's ship leave for Earth, Pag-een decided to follow him and watch his hunt from afar. Of course, part of him was saddened by his friend's death but not by much. It was his people's way of life, after all, and from the look on Ze'joth's face as he blew himself up, Pag-een was certain his friend died happy. And why wouldn't he have? He did get to face off against one of the toughest creatures this planet had to offer and even get a few licks in. Pag-een himself felt in awe at these so-called Humans and while he had another hunt waiting for him on TrES-2b, he figured the human called Pen-Eee had fought hard enough to be rewarded.

"A-Alright you alien scum-bag!" Penny challenged as she picked up her fist. "I-If I'm going down, I'm going down fighting so put'em up!"

Pag-een stared at the girl in slight amusement before reach at his belt and tossing her a small knife from his homeworld. There, it was nothing more than a simple skinning knife and the Human wouldn't be able to get much use out of it otherwise, thus, Pag-een saw no harm in giving it to them. Without another word, he ascended the staircase which went up after him, and the ship vanished before the girl's eyes.

"Ummm...Thanks?" Penny muttered as she stood there in shock, the knife gripped within her hand.

"Wow!" Sally looked over the knife like she was staring at fish in a aquarium. "A real alien-knife! Do you think it has a lightsaber mode?"

"Just because somethings from space doesn't mean it had a lightsaber mode, Sally." Ginger spoke up. "You watch too many movies." She took her turn staring at the knife as did Emily. "Although I must admit, it's pretty cool."

"Yeah..." Penny looked down at the knife, her fear and confusion washing away to be replaced by her delight as she realized she had basically earned this knife. "It's like I said, I'm fucking awesome!"

"Wow, Penny." Emily spoke up. "Just think, you're probably the first human being to ever possess actual alien weaponry. This is a very significant situation!"

"It sure it, Emily." Penny nodded as she lovingly examined her new prize. "It sure is."

---

Penny sighed with content as she sunk into the living room couch. On the TV was the broadcast for a monster truck show happening out of town. Her parents and siblings were out and it was just her and the dog. Next to her was a tub of freshly-microwaved popcorn and in her hand, a cold beer straight from the fridge. Life couldn't be better...

...except that the beer was in a bottle with a really stubborn cap, something Penny only realized once actually tried to open it.

"Come on...come on...give up the goods, you piece of-" Penny growled in annoyance as she felt the jagged edges of the bottle cap cut into her mouth. Angry and in pain, she was just about to give up and throw the bottle against the wall when she suddenly remembered her knife. Smirking, she took out the alien weapon and, with a single stroke, relieved the bottle of the top side of its neck. Some of the beer spilled out over Penny but she was too busy enjoying the amount remaining in the bottle to notice. Before she could finish the whole bottle, she pulled it from her lips and wiped the foam away from her mouth.

"Life is good."

The End

(Yeah, not my best work. But with FF refusing to work right for the past few months, I have just lost all motivation to keep writing on the site. I'm not going to drag this out, I'm taking a break from the site and thus all my ongoing stories are now on hiatus. I hate doing this but I can't work under these conditions. I need to figure out a game plan. I will come back here, most likely before the year is out and let you know what I decide. But for now, consider this the last Alt Four story for a while and I'll see you around. Goodbye.)