milliways_bar | (no subject)

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In and then Out of Milliways: Christine mentioned things dropped in a vent, and Spoon went to help. 'Cause that's what you do for friends. And that's why he's stumbling back into the bar with a really abashed looking Predator (insomuch as Predators can manage the expression) behind him making sure the door closes all the way. She's got most of a remarkably dead body with her.

Spoon is butt-ass naked and carting the head with him. He's also missing rather a lot of bones. Like the front third or so of his ribs, his entire lower jaw, and several fingers. All the soft flesh has grown back, at least?

...Face it, he looks like shite and Christine looks like a Predator, and the two of them are carrying a large, dead Xenomorph.

Anyone who can get past that might notice in a non-horrified and panicked and/or offended part of their brain that Spoon's got a reverse-acid-burn of scar-free flesh

((With, uh. Bonus fixed headlinkage.))

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"I know he is," says Wells. "And as soon as he's not hurting any more I'm gonna kick his arse so hard his stomach'll want to know when he swallowed a boot. But it looks like he killed the whatever-it-was."

She nods, absently, mostly because it's Wells. not because things are making sense.
"But he's hurt. An'. He was happy about..." She's not sure she wants to follow on down that trail of logic, because it only leads to 'he did it on purpose', and that's not at all a happy place to go.

Not that it's sunshine and rainbows as it is, really.

"Yeah, we'll both have a talk with him about that, I'm sure," says Wells. "But we should sit down now. Might be a while before he gets cleaned up enough to come down here."

His tone, overall, can be summed up as "Oh, I can't fuckin' WAIT to hear this one".

She nods, again, and shakes his hand off, moving with entirely too much prowl and not enough walk to the couch. Once there, she curls up with a pillow (she'd rather have a Spoon, but Spoon is hurt, he came back hurt and she doesn't know what to do with that) in the manner of all feral kitties - if poked, she can bite.

Not a happy kitten.

Speaking of not so happy. Ever had to admit the greatest freak chance of your life came along and you sort of screwed it up and let one get away and almost got a helpful alien eaten?

No? Well crap. Guess you won't get it then. Anyway: this a predator with less than her usual ebullience. She's going first because she doesn't want to disrespect the smaller hunter's ability to ignore his injuries, but also would hate to have someone walk into him while he's structurally disadvantaged.

There's a sort of rolling growl/click to herald "I am here."

Spoon walks around Christine to the couch, kneels down and offers Ace his non damaged hand. It's as close to forgive me? as he can make right now.

Submissive? FUCK YES.

Wells gives Spoon a look, but turns his attention to the predator instead. "My name's Wells," he says, coming to his feet. "I don't know what he might've told you or not told you, but I'm his pack alpha. D'you mind telling me what happened?"

She just kinda looks at Spoon. There's a battle, here.

She's still stunned. Stunned, and horrified, and increasingly furious, and guilty for feeling all those other things, since she only just said the other day she'd never ask him to stop taking risks but THERE'S HALF OF HIS FACE AND TORSO MISSING, for all that the gaps are covered in skin, and she's still not entirely convinced he's not actually dead, come to tell her so.

Weirder things have happened. Ace has long ago realized it's not safe around here to ever rule anything out.

Eventually she reaches out, tentatively, and takes his still-whole hand. She hasn't forgiven him, not yet. That requires being able to realize what was done in the first place.

She listens, looking down at the level of about Wells' hairline. Her gaze suddenly drops about a half-inch closer to his eyes when he introduces himself further. "No.

"The creature in your oddly furnished territory is a kainde amedha drone. They come from egg-laying forms, which come from eggs. The egg-layers place an egg in a host until it emerges and molts into what you saw.

"I knew of two eggs brought back onto a human outpost," it does not shift, but its shoulders are not proud, "and thought there would be two drones. I killed them, but I lost a weapon in a column of one of those oddly large vents the oomans think are a good way to move air. I came here looking for a way to cut them open, since I cannot leave them.

"It did not occur to me that one human might have been infested without their dealing with it." There's a sharp, rasping click as she snaps her mandibles closed all at once. "So there were three. It is my shame, and I will tell of that in this year's reckoning.

"It found him, and he dealt with it. It is his pride."

Pride with how he dealt with it comes later. He'll talk about it when he can talk. Right now?

Right now he's closing his whole hand over Ace's hand, and forcing her fingers to his pulse, to feel that his heart is beating. When he's sure she's felt that he puts her hand over his heart, then his damaged hand over hers.

If she's meeting his eyes, he's meeting hers. It means 'I survived, and I came back to you'.

There are some days... not many, to be honest, but some, that she really wishes she were telepathic. But she isn't, so she can't demand answers there's no physical way for him to give. There's very little point in yelling at him (though she does squeak in distress when there's NO RIBS UNDER HER HAND WTF) because he can't exactly respond in kind, and Ace likes fair fights, unless it's Daleks.

So she goes with what she has left.

She slaps him, hard, across his cheek with her free hand, then moves off the couch onto the floor to sit next to her mate. He's an IDIOT, and she's furious at him, but he's her idiot.

Wells' mouth twitches a little, but he nods. "Y'know," he says, "I've seen what happens when humans act on faulty intelligence about the numbers of the enemy. It generally goes bloody poorly. Good to see someone takin' responsibility for it."

Contrary to popular opinion, Wells is perfectly capable of exhibiting civilised manners. It helps when the target is a completely unknown species that he's reasonably sure could remove one or more of his limbs without batting an eye.

"That thing was damned impressive, I'll give it that. What'd it do, that it took out that much of his, ah-" He indicates the general area of his own body that corresponds to the places where Spoon's got bits missing.

Thankfully, "faulty intelligence" translates into the proper context. The violence gets a sideways roll of her head as she expects some sort of response, but she decides she doesn't know what the crazy aliens are doing and lets Spoon handle it.

"You saw the way it was gutted further than a prey animal would be. That was so that it could be emptied of blood. The thwei is," there's a short roll of clicks for this one and a hand motion, and the translator has to speed up a bit, "molecular acid that eats through a claw's thickness of metal in an eyeblink.

"We have evolved with resistance to it. We meet them in close combat. I did not expect another species to do so. He bit its throat open."

Spoon accepts the slap, not rolling with it so that the full force of it hits him. That means 'You have every right to be mad at me'. He keeps his grip on the hand that she let him have, and sighs softly because he'd really, really, really like to be able to apologize better.

No, it means he's still playing daft. Sulkily she leans against him, giving him a look when the big... alien person mentions biting off the head of a critter with acidic blood.

So very daft.

But if it was acid...

She makes a face in horror. The skin had grown back. It's lucky she's already hit him, she'd have gone for an actual punch at this point.

"Christ Almighty," Wells says, looking to Spoon for a moment. "Didn't think he'd be willing to do that outside of full moon."

Of course, there was the sword-battle in Fionavar, but still... well, who can tell how these things go?

"All right. He'll be recovered in a day or two," Wells decides. "You two did damned well. Better than I could do under the circumstances, I reckon. Thank you for bringin' him back on his own two feet."

Headtilts are, apparently, universal. What are you talking about, Wells?

"He did it himself. All I did was work to remove the acid at the end of it. I could not get to the drone before it reached him, and he accepted the challenge.

"I do owe a recognition. That fight is a threshold few enough of us cross." Her head swings sharply to the side, showing the hooked scar on the corner of the jaw of her mask. "This is my Clan mark. I earned it four years ago in the kainde amedha chiva. A kainde amedha faced and killed is a kainde amedha faced and killed. Species does not matter. The Blooding is the Blooding."

Spoon gives Ace a look that is supposed to mean 'I had no idea it was acidic until I had my teeth in it!' and dips his head apologetically. Really. That was the first thing he did that did anything to it! Ow.

...Hold it, wait, what? He earned status somehow? What?

Make that two nominally human predator people staring at Christine in surprise. One with canine confusion, one with feline.

It's almost like a matched set. A matched set of crazy fuzzy whackos.

"Say what now?"

"Ah, right," says Wells. Then he leans forward to see the scar, brow furrowing a little. "Bit like the tattoo I got to commemorate my first real campaign in the desert, I think," he says, "only with more importance?"

He rolls up his sleeve to show the 'desert rat' tattoo on his upper arm just above his vaccination scar. "Only that was for fighting my own species, 'cos there's only been us on Earth so far as I know. That-" he gestures towards Spoon, indicating the places where there used to be scars. "-means a whole fucking lot more. Well done."

Not like the Iraqis could've melted him without resorting to Sarin or VX, after all.

This clicking is not translated, because it's the yautja for "uhhh?" She's never had to tell anyone this before.

"It is. . . Unblooded serve. Pack alphas," she actually just said "hunt leaders," but the translator's in the groove now, "take groups out. Unblooded wait behind and move the injured hunters from the way and carry the meat home."

Carrying Spoon's kill was different. He had his hands full with the head, and would have had to drag it, which is no way to treat a first kainde amedha kill.

"Unblooded do not hold land, compete for mates, carry the weapons of the clan, or hunt alone. Their names are not called at gatherings. They die and do not become fallen gods. They are not truly hunters. They are unknowns until they meet the Blooding, because we do not know whether they are true hunters or not.

"Kainde amedha are unchanging, our ancestral enemy; the thing we cannot see, the thing that is sometimes our predator when we go to make it our prey. To face one now is the same fight as meeting one a thousand years ago. They are our threshold. When the kainde amedha have come for you, you are Blooded, or you are not."

Okay, okay, okay. So. Spoon...just became a beta? By Christine's people as well as his own? That's cool, right?

Aside from, you know. The kitten who looks like she's going to kill all of them except possibly Sarge.

"Aaaah, all right," says Wells. "That... makes more sense. Congratulations, Spoon, you've had your rite of passage."

Trial of manhood, adulthood rites, bar mitzvah, whatever.

"I am Blooded, a hunter of my Clan. I witnessed. There was no hunt leader, only the hunt. It is up to me to recognise what he has done." A very long clicking growl that isn't translated. ". . . I do not know how. My mark was done with a piece from the back of my kill. It did not go through my skin because our hides resist their blood. His does not hold the scar at all."

Which is good, because he'd be kind of sad right now. But it is kinda a sticky wicket when it comes to marking him.

Spoon...is almost glad he's not the one who gets to explain silver. But he...well, he earned it, didn't he? Ace may be angry, but...he earned it. There's a faint whine at Sarge, because it's all he can really do.