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The Fighting Irish: To Hell and Back, With Love	By : girlyhero Category: M through R > Predator Views: 3343 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own nor profit from Predator, Alien Vs. Predator, Alien franchises.

Chapter List
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Chapter Two: Predator and Prey

After the last drop, Naranarti landed the ship in a grassy patch near where their campsite was set. The Yautja was not very large, but he made up for it in muscle-mass; broad chest and strong limbs, scars decorating him from previous hunts and fights. His skin was a pale orange and mottled with brownish-green spots. His dreadlocks were long and had a tendency to tangle at the bottom, also a brownish-green, decorated mostly by bone beads-- the longer strands woven into the femurs of small mammals. His eyes were deep sunk and orange with a dark green ring on the outside of the iris. The tusks of his mandibles were nothing to brag over, but they weren't short either. He was considered handsome in most standards, though most Yautja females were more concerned of prowess. His claim to both was the two long scars spanning from the back of the ridges of his forehead down over his eyes and cheekbones stopping at his mandibles, his blooding-scar dead-center above his brow. The scars were from a bare-fisted fight with a young, vicious Queen Kainde Amedha, hard meat, a xeno-morphic alien being bred for hunting. If he had any vanity, it was centered on those marks.

He leaned back in his chair and waited a bit longer, knowing the impatience of his two students was growing. They could deal with it; he needed to wait for confirmation from their N'yaka Ba'kev'thei, their Clan Leader, the Elder Nanaiyude. Naranarti's sire. He'd "accidently" taken a Pyode Amedha, soft meat ("oomans"), who was not worthy of the Kv'var, the hunt. He had planned on returning it to its homeworld, but it had gotten a chute strapped to it and was rolled out the ramp despite his orders.

This made things mildly interesting for him at the least. The hunts had began to become strangely boring in the passed seasons. As an Arbitrator and Ne'kev'thei, an Elite Warrior, Naranarti should have been doing more besides dragging new bloods to the hunting grounds. He wanted to be on the front lines, in the frenzy heat of death and blood and gore. The Neyen'ku, his clan, was still too small to spare him in the war, and there was little to no criminal activity on his clan ship. He was their only Arbitrator, and he count on one hand the other Elite Warriors including himself, excluding his father. If not for the war, there would be dozens of Elites in his clan, but the Hish, the Yautja-sister-race of their species, were ruthless and dishonorable, worst of all they were cowardly; they couldn't wait for the fight to hit the ground-- they wanted to dogfight in the vacuum of space and destroy several carrier ships to avoid actual battles. S'yuit-de Mar'cte-thwei, cowardly Bad Bloods.

The race wars weighing heavy on both sides, reaching into their cultures and everyday lives, disrupting their hunts, their honors. Elder Nanaiyude missed a mating season because of the war. Naranarti had to admit, on the day of his sire's return, he'd been terrified. Though he had stayed his ground near the stronger, larger Yautja, Naranarti had braced himself and even attempted to block a blow when he had unseemingly blocked his path. But when Nanaiyude wants to hurt something, he tended to usually with the excuse "I'm bigger than you" to justify it. Later, he actually approached his son about it and apologized, an Arbitrator outranking a Clan Leader, but Naranarti had shrugged off his sire's "brief insanity" and considered it best he be attacked and not one of the more "fragile" males-- a mean joke he laid over the hunters listening in, and a good way to save his sire's honor.

Seliklei, their unblooded mechanic and Naranarti's younger brother-- mother's side-- slinked into the cockpit. "Mei-hswei, have they replied? The others are getting restless."

"I don't care," Naranarti replied evenly.

"Not to be disrespectful, but," he bowed his head, then looked at him in annoyance. "They're breaking shit." He was a head shorter than Naranarti and had a similar build but unproportionate as he still had growing to do. The greatest difference was their skin color. Rather than a pale orange, his skin was a pale moss green with deep brown spots. His eyes and hair color were the same as Naranarti's, but his hair was shorter and pulled up against the back of his neck in a large metal clip. It had a more functional purpose than decorative. It wasn't uncommon for him to squeeze into ventilation to access wires and panel boards that had overloaded. Lately, he was stuck with the grunt work-- preparing the prey.

"Then you'll have something to do, while we're gone. Maybe you won't fuck that up."

Seliklei took a small step back. Though Naranarti gave him more freedoms than he deserved as an unblooded hunter, he still risked a broken mandible. Naranarti was much like his sire, lenient on occasion but then unexpectedly-- violently-- strict. "I had not realized that particular Ooman was not a mark."

"Of course, because I had absolutely no reason to order you leave her be!" Naranarti hissed a warning. If Seliklei stayed in the same room with him any longer, he would have to beat him senseless.

Seliklei left with a fast bow and quicker stride to escape his brother's wrath. He heard the signal of an incoming transmission just as the door shut behind him.

Naranarti slammed a claw to the controls, and a holographic screen raised into the air to his left. A profile view of Nanaiyude focused on the screen. The older Yautja still had some color left in his skin and hair. His spots were more orange than brown, the skin around them might as well be white. His hair was a dark gray, originally black. He'd cut some of the front dreads shorter since the last Naranarti had seen him, just brushing his shoulders. The rest was probably dangling far longer than his son's. One couldn't tell from the holographic screen, but Nanaiyude was much larger than Naranarti, or any of their Warriors for that matter. It was a genetic miracle of good-breeding, but behind closed doors, it was called abnormal-- a male as tall as their largest female was unfathomable, but when he was standing in front of you... He was only upset Naranarti did not grow to his stature, but he made up for it in prowess and intelligence. He glanced at Naranarti with a glare, not necessarily hostile-- he always looked like that with his mossy brown eyes. Before Naranarti could start an honorable greeting, the Elder spoke.

"I have spoken to Matron S'esutuhn about your predicament. She has given me the honor of making the final decision."

C'jit! This could go many ways, Naranarti knew. Rarely was there room for optimism.

"Tell me about the Ooman," Nanaiyude ordered, "What makes it unworthy of the hunt? Cowardly? Ill? Maimed? Inept?"

"She is not cowardly from what I could tell," Naranarti replied. It was more of a defensive answer.

Nanaiyude noticed. "Is she pregnant?"

"No...Inept would be the main issue. Physically and psychologically."

"Explain."

Naranarti hesitated. "She's physically weak, not having the means to defend herself armed or not. She also has never made a kill, and from what I had observed, she's never willing harmed anything."

"Not even for food--? Oh, I forget most Oomans trade for food rather than hunt it themselves... Just because she has never killed doesn't make her any less dangerous or worthy."

Naranarti felt stuck. There was little more he could say, except...

"I am currently looking over your data on her... that private file you archived---"

Naranarti's eyes widened.

"You made it quite difficult to hack," Nanaiyude said. He glanced at his son once more and smiled in amusement at the look on his face. "You've been getting bored; I understand. Let us make it another challenge for your students along with the first one you've set up for them. Capture her alive and unscathed. Then, you may take her back after your duties are finished... Or do as you wish with her-- make her your friend, slave, pet, mate, I don't care. Think you can handle that?"

Naranarti's eyes began to dry they had been wide and focused so long. He blinked and regained his composure. "Yes, Elder," he replied. He expected a dismissal of the transmission, but Nanaiyude still held the line open. He looked as though he wished to say something else. The Elder was wise. He'd lived great experiences and didn't mind sharing his philosophies with him; Naranarti didn't mind listening either.

"It doesn't matter," Nanaiyude said, "What species they are, females are the most dangerous beings in the Universe, whether they maim anything or not."

Naranarti thought on that. It seemed factual enough to him-- females are always smarter than males. Their intelligence is what makes them dangerous. Her intelligence is what intrigues him to begin with.

"Don't get lost in her eyes." Nanaiyude ended the transmission as he trilled with laughter.

Naranarti made a choking noise. He didn't expect the comment.

What was it the Oomans often say? Pauk mei'tekai.

Fuck my life.
*****

"This is rjet c'jit!" M'yreti hissed. He was a tall and bulky, brown striped Yautja. His hair was shoulder length with wooden beads at the tips, brown like his skin. His eyes were a dull yellow with orange specks. He had several little scars about his body with a nice acid burn on his calf. His lower mandibles were tall and clicked without intention-- he was noisy. He was sitting on a bench with his legs propped up on a shelf. He lowered one and gave the wall a good kick with the flat of his foot out of boredom. He'd been looking forward to this hunt for several seasons. For it to be so close, he could taste the Soft Meat in the air, blood and fear pumping through their tiny veins.

"If you break something," Mhrende said. "Naranarti is going to skin you with the Oomans." He was smaller that M'yreti, the smallest on the ship. He was leaner and lighter. His muscle tone was more for speed than anything. He had a more ruddy coloring than his colleague and teacher. His eyes were a shocking red, similar to his speckles making him glow. His hair was a maroon, clay color and had been dreaded to crimp in waves-- a process that was much more painful than normal dreading except to the tougher hides of females. M'yreti occasionally teased him for looking like a miniature female because of it.

Sometimes he smelled like one too, hence the insistent teasing. Mhrende knew they only did it to remind themselves that something was amiss with him, his hormones. He was still a young blood and hoped his bodily chemicals would even out soon. Their clan was small enough; it didn't need him to be Jeh'd'te, selfish, so to speak in literal translation...

M'yreti mimicked Mhrende in a hissing tone. "Skin you with the Oomans-- Shut your face, Lou'dte Kalei."

Before he was blooded, Mhrende would have attacked anyone who would have called him that, a nasty term for a child-bearing female, a bitch. Oddly, he'd gotten used to it from his friends, so he never challenged them. They didn't intend to harm his honor, at any rate; they would have been more public with their insults if they had. He picked up a broken piece of metal and threw it at M'yreti. It scratched him and he hissed. Mhrende trilled.

"Shut your face," the mechanical voice said. They both looked up to see Naranarti walk into the holding, fiddling with the mimic command on his gauntlet. Seliklei was trailing him and took a place at attention near the wall. "Both you bitches, up! Weak pups, ready your equipment."

M'yreti lept from his bench and trilled. This was what he'd been waiting for.

"Don't get excited," Naranarti hissed. "There are new and more challenging conditions for you to abide." He waited for his two students to line up in attention near in front of Seliklei before continuing. "I have been given orders from the Elder to issue a new lesson of judgment. Mercy--"

"M'di H'chak�" were the excited cries from his students: No Mercy.

"Wrong, fools!" Naranarti hissed. "There will be mercy. As earlier, I told you of the one female that you were merely to capture and release, as she will be challenging to find if she functions properly in this environment. There is now another that you are only to capture. Alive!"

Mhrende and M'yreti looked at one another and even glanced at Seliklei who just shrugged.

"This female was taken from their homeworld by accident. She is not a worthy kill, so rather than hunt her as a trophy, you will capture and return her to the ship to be placed back into cryogenic sleep."

"So this is what you fucked up," Mhrende murmured to Seliklei. When he turned his attention back to his teacher, he caught a back hand in his lower jaw. He fell backward into Seliklei, the two toppling over like a stack of combi-staffs.

"About 'fucking up'," Naranarti added. "If either of you harm her, the consequences will be dire to your honor. Maybe even your life, depending on how pissed off I am."

"Is she a child?" M'yreti asked, having seen the one he spoke of and how small she was, assuming she must have been an adolescent.

"No, just unfit prey."

"We're learning constraint," Mhrende said standing and murmuring the correct apologies to his teacher-elite. He had figured it out. "Something vital if we are ever to become warriors, teachers and leaders ourselves... Otherwise, I'd be unconscious?"

"Or dead. Now, get your gear ready. We will be heading to the encampment shortly."
*****

The base site was built around the skeletal remains of some large, ancient creature. The bones had been bleached by the constant sun, moss and mud caked in places where the bone cracked acting like a natural glue keeping the structure together. Hollowed vertebrae were placed as fire-pits in the bare mud and dirt. Ribs lifted out of the ground menacingly making the walls of the encampment, leather and synthetic fabrics weaving about. Where the sternum still linked the ribs chains and hooks hung ready for new prey to be skinned and prepared. A diagonal pillar was centered under the sternum. It was a stone pillar covered in xeribium metal, designs and symbols cut into it by concentrated acid. It squared at the bottom, surrounded by the broken bones and skulls of previous hunts, and lifted vertically about three feet then shot out at a thirty degree angle, the four sides tapering to a vicious point. Paya'ra Nihkou'te, Paya's Tusk, is what it was called.

It was the final step to warrior-hood, throwing the remaining bones of your trophies under the pillar. Naranarti laid his hand on the pillar in reverence. As a warrior he was permitted to do this, touch the pillar directly; it was forbidden to mere hunters, blooded or not. He mused over the day he was brought to the hunting planet for the first time, long before he received his best scars. He remembered seeing Nanaiyude standing just as he was by the pillar as he and his colleagues prepared their tools and weapons. Both had swelled with pride when Naranarti threw the broken bones of the Pyode Amedha at the foot of Paya's Tusk, a shattered skull among them, too fractured to be a worthy trophy-- he'd had three to choose from anyway. He wondered if the remains were still under the pile, deep in the mud and dirt, or if they'd finally decomposed. He trilled and left to inspect his students.

Mhrende had been watching him in awe. He had plans to kill as many of the Oomans as possible. He wanted to be able to lay his hands on the pillar before they left. Maybe then, the other hunters-- those that weren't his friends-- would no longer challenge his honor...or violate him over a failed mating season. Maybe, he would grab attention from a female of the Lux'a Clan and sire a pup or two if he were lucky. It would help to get his mind off of what he really wanted, what made him Jeh'd'te... he really needed to stop staring at Naranarti.

While Mhrende kept his desires silently to himself, M'yreti was openly boasting to Seliklei who was trying to ignore him while setting out the rest of their supplies in one of the vertebrae. "We're allowed to kill six of the eight Oomans, and I have six places to set my trophies," he said clearing six areas to clean and polish the skulls.

Naranarti smirked. M'yreti was setting himself up for disappointment.

"I'll have the first kill!"

Mhrende hissed at him. He'd accept the challenge. "I doubt it," he said. "You're too loud. You won't even inflict the first injury."

"You won't even be able to find one until they bite you on the ass!"

"Oomans don't bite," Seliklei murmured.

"Shut your face!" Both growled at him.

Naranarti was amused, but the mood needed to become serious. "Seliklei," Naranarti called. "Are you finished?"

"There are four powercells for recharging the plasma castors. And an extra breathing mask in case one is damaged."

"Just one?" M'yreti wasn't keen on the idea of suffocating if his mask and spare-breather were damaged or destroyed.

"Surely the great hunter M'yreti could destroy all six of his prey in four sleep-cycles!" Seliklei had become annoyed at hearing the incessant boasting since they arrived.

M'yreti growled and roared at the small unblooded hunter. Seliklei jumped and took a defensive stance.

The trilling of their teacher stopped them. M'yreti stepped back and retracted his challenge, expecting Naranarti would intervene-- and break something vital of M'yreti's person. It was not uncommon for their teacher to start laughing at their stupidity and then issue a severe and painful discipline at a sudden and unexpected moment.

The trilling increased, and soon the Arbitrator Elite was vocally laughing in hysterics. The noise echoed against the bones and trees, sound waves spreading over the land. His mandibles were spreading so wide, they nearly pushed his mask completely off his face.

Seliklei gathered his now empty crates and headed back to the ship, chest puffed in pride as he felt he'd won the fight before it had even began through the laughter of his brother. It was good to have friends and family in high places. M'yreti still stood stupefied and confused-- am I in trouble? Generally, when Naranarti laughed at him, the laughter came to a sudden stop when his fist slammed into M'yreti's mandibles. Mhrende had grabbed his combi-staff and was smiling, pleased for an unknown reason. Maybe the mixture of amused and hostile musk and pheromones were creating the excitement.

Naranarti settled his laughter back into his quiet trill, letting the endorphins race on their own, enjoying the mild high. The camp became quiet, and he looked over the two that remained. "Enough of your idiocy," he finally said slamming a palm against the side of M'yreti's helmet, knocking him into a mild stumble. "Let's go kill something."
*****

"Did you hear that?"

Jesse looked up towards the trees. She could have sworn she heard something in the distance, an echo.

Like laughter.

"Some kind of animal?" Samadi had been relinquished of bondage as per order of the Colonel. He was helping form a shelter with torn and fallen branches, the chutes as a roof and floor.

Donnelson and Rina also heard the noise. They stared into the jungle sternly, breathing shallow to strain their ears.

"Man!" Trevor held one of the branches like a weapon. "I don't need this shit!"

Jesse's sight had traveled to the skies. It looked as though they had darkened slightly, a purple hue in the corner of the canopy opening. "Is it night," she whispered. No one had heard her.

"Hush, boy!" The Colonel ordered, "And go get some water!"

Trevor grabbed the plastic bags from Rina's pack and started heading towards the stream. "Hey, Flynn, come give me some back up."

Trevor the Mop-head and Flynn carefully pushed through the underbrush looking about for anything amiss. The stream was to the side of a clearing. Not wanting to be out in the open, they decided to camp a few yards inside the forest. The moving water caught Trevor's eye and he dove to it, dunking the plastic bags. He wanted to fill them and get back to the camp quickly.

Flynn watched him. Staring, he noticed something odd about the ground. It was darker. His gaze began to raise over the horizon. It had become twilight, and the darkened skies were revealing more clues to their location. More than enough to answer their questions. "Eh---um, Rina, Colonel," he called into the forest through a cupped hand. "All of you need to come here..."

Trevor zipped the bags as Flynn finished yelling. "Fuck that noise! Let's--" He was about to head back into the forest until Flynn grabbed his shoulder and spun him to face the horizon. He became speechless and his jaw dropped along with the bags of water.

The others joined them with guns drawn. As they exited the treeline, they lowered their weapons and gazed in awe at the skies. The twilight sky was a warm violet color, two satellite moons fixed in the haze, the sun's rays disappearing at the edge of the clearing. A line of slow moving rocks twisted about in the open space, alien hues gleaming off them as the ice over their surfaces reflected the light from the shrinking sun. The satellites were glowing orange and green, showing off the craters and caverns of their surface.

"So," Lou said, "Was there anyone who didn't think we were on an alien planet?"
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The Fighting Irish: To Hell and Back, With Love