Bleeding Heart

Naithei put his bio-mask back on, his now missing mandible still ached. A r'ka, more commonly known amongst the Yautja as "serpents", had gotten too close as he killed one of its kin which gave him no time to defend himself.

He was located in the middle of a desert planet, not too different from the Yautja homeworld only it was a little cooler here. Unfortunately, enjoying the climate and the admiring view was an impossibility.

It was another Hunt gone wrong. Though rare, they were not uncommon. A trio of unblooded Yautja was sent here in order to receive their blooded status. Most Hunts were successful, this was just one of the many failed ones where the serpents managed to eliminate all the initiates. Naithei's duty was to get rid of the serpent hive and destroy all evidence that they were ever there. So far he was having trouble locating the serpent hive. He managed to track it down to a certain area of the planet but no luck locating its entrance. The serpents always made their hives in dark places and almost always underground. The topography of the area showed that there was a cave system nearby, which was where he was headed before he was ambushed by several serpents. He didn't want to admit but he was getting slow in his older age. At least that's the excuse he was using so he wouldn't have to admit he dropped his guard.

Naithei approached one of the bodies and retrieved his shuriken from the serpent.

"Are you here to help us?"

Naithei turned around as fast as he could and threw his shuriken, but whatever his target was he clearly missed. His shuriken flew out into the distance, all he could do was wait until it returned to him or find it afterwards. He scanned the area to locate the source of the voice. It was human, that he was sure of.

"Are you here to help?"

He turned around again and pulled out his combistick, extending it in the process. The human in front of him flinched. It was a child. Male or female, he couldn't tell.

"Are you here to help us?" it asked again.

The human child had its clothes torn and missing a shoe. It had blood on it but it definitely didn't belong to the child, there were no open wounds.

"Are. You. Here. To help us?" Naithei repeated the words, although his was unnatural and distorted.

The child was taken aback. He wasn't going to kill it, it was dishonorable to kill children and unarmed combatants. But that didn't mean he had to save it either. A serpent would come for it eventually anyway. Naithei leaned forward and roared at the child and it fell hard on its back. The child started to hyperventilate and ran away in fear. Good. Now it was time for him to get back to work. First though, he had to track down his shuriken.

---

Location: Unknown

Time: 7:47, Earth time

"Man what the hell was that?!" asked one of the mercenaries.

"What the fuck else is it gonna be Aizawa?!" another asked sarcastically and with a lot of anger.

Yeira was still sitting next to Marcus who got a pretty shaken after the scream from earlier. All the others were arguing, probably out of fear. Their boss was the only one who wasn't angrily shouting at someone, instead he was trying to calm everyone down.

Out of the corner of her eye she spotted Evelyn who was busy fiddling with a container for some reason. She saw her pick up Marcus' weapon earlier but now it was hanging from her shoulder. Evelyn released the latches on the container and opened it. She looked inside it and even moved a couple of things to see what exactly was in there. After a few seconds, Evelyn nodded to herself and pulled out the M4 Yeira had given her earlier. Before she could raise her voice and ask her what she was about to do, Evelyn pulled the trigger and fired into the container. Everyone stopped arguing and turned around to look at the source of the gunshot. 'Way to get situation under control.' Yeira thought to herself.

"Everyone. Please. Shut the hell up." Evelyn raised her voice and spoke with a commanding tone. "Now, I don't know what is out there, but I'm sure as hell calmly talking about amongst ourselves is gonna solve it." Evelyn was being sarcastic. "So can we all – PLEASE – be quiet and let the man with the tumor talk?"

"Well... uh... thank you." the boss was hesitant.

"You're welcome." Evelyn was firm.

Everyone was quiet. They were all dumfounded that she had just shot into a container to the point that it looked like they were more interested in that rather than the shitshow going on outside. Yeira looked back at Marcus who, unsurprisingly, showed no reaction. The boss, or "Dutch" as he called himself, started explaining things to everyone.

"Now, I'm sure you're all a little scared. But I'm here to tell you that what's out there..." he approached one of the windows and pointed outside, "is very much killable."

"Bullshit." Aizawa interrupted. "Everyone there heard all the gunshots, both from Marcus and Corben. They must've wasted at least 200 rounds maybe more."

"They were shooting blindly." he said firmly.

"And how the fuck do you know, sir?" Corben asked.

"Because we made the same mistake." Dutch admitted.

"We?" asked Evans.

Dutch exhaled and rubbed the back of his head in frustration. After a few moments of silence he finally looked up again and continued.

"My old team and I. We encountered one of these things in South America. When one of my men died, we thought it had been local militia. But then... another one of my men was killed. He had a gaping wound on his chest, we chased it down into a treeline and shot in every possible direction until we ran out of ammo. We only hit it once." Dutch looked around the room. "Five men. We were all armed to the teeth; assault rifles, grenade launchers, a fucking minigun. And we only hit it once."

"Why? What was its purpose?" asked one of the 'coats, if Yeira had to guess then she'd say that was Kovacs, the old bastard that got them into this mess.

"To hunt worthy prey. Establish itself as an apex predator."

"And how does it know if someone is worthy prey? They psychic too or something?" asked Evans.

"My men and I took out an entire camp of guerillas by ourselves. It liked what it saw so it started hunting."

"Yeah?" Corben cut in. "Josiah didn't do shit and he still got nicked. Care to explain that?"

"As long as you're armed, you can fight, therefore you become prey."

"Their standards for 'worthy' prey are questionable if merely holding a weapon makes you a target." Evelyn spoke up. "You got any advice on how to take these things out?"

"Look to the trees. You will never find them on the ground unless they challenge you directly."

"That just tells us how to spot them." Yeira spoke.

A few people here and there, including Evelyn, turned around. "What we really want to know is where to shoot."

---

Agile Blade stalked ever catiously. A group of humans had left their dropship minutes earlier. There were five in total and as far as she could tell it was four males and one female. It was obvious as to why she and the other initiates hadn't attacked when they left; the humans hadn't proved themselves worthy prey. However that didn't explain why neither the Bad Blood nor the heretics hadn't chosen to attack.

The other initiate, shortly after arriving at the same location as her, decided to stay behind, but she didn't know who he was expecting to fight, every faction was at a stalemate.

The group of humans that she was following was moving a lot more catious than she was but they still stood out. What surprised her was that they were constantly looking at the trees. One encounter and they already knew the way they moved. Luckily for Agile Blade they were looking too high up into the trees but she still hid whenever possible so they wouldn't notice the distortion created by her cloak. Her reason for following them was that by walking out in the open they'd attract unwanted attention and she wanted to be there for that. Not to fight, but to study. She knew how Yautja fought, she just wanted to know how the Bad Blood or the heretics would go about it. A theory that she still wasn't able to confirm was that the Bad Blood still followed suit to traditional hunting tactics and that the heretics liked to toy with their prey. So far she still wasn't able to confirm that theory.

She heard them talking in a low voice from time to time, probably to keep tabs on each other. The humans were in some kind of formation, almost like a straight line. The one in the front covered, well, the front and occasionally looked up at the trees. The one behind him covered what she assumed were the areas that he couldn't see, the third and fourth covered the left and the right respectively. The last one, the female, covered nearly every area but occasionally turned around to survey behind them.

If she were the one hunting them she'd use a ranged attack to take one out, cause them to panic a little. She'd let them try to figure out where to find her but by the time they'd trace her weapon back to its source she'd already be within killing range of another. After that, well she wouldn't know what to do after. Nathei would've told her that if she had done that she'd be dead as soon as she got that next kill, and he'd be right. She was nowhere near as fast as the other Yautja so getting in close for a kill surrounded by others was never an option, but she'd gladly accept the challenge, see if she could actually pull it off.

After a few more steps Agile Blade finally grew tired of waiting for anything to happen. No one was taking any action; Young Bloods, Heretics, Bad Blood, not a single one made a move.

Now... now she felt like testing something. Sometimes if you want to see how your prey reacts to an attack, you have to be the one to attack. "Make yourself the test" Naithei would say. And that's exactly what she set herself to do. She leaped towards the nearest tree, roughly three meters ahead of her and the fifth of the humans immediately followed her movements and seemingly called out to its colleagues. As soon as she reached the tree three projectiles blew right past her and another two hit a branch right above her. Now she knew at least one of them was trigger happy. Agile Blade heard arguing amongst them, if she still remembered the language she'd probably understand so she could only assume they were scolding the human that shot at her and with good reason, he just gave them away. Next she pulled out her shuriken and threw it East of her position and she started moving in the opposite direction. This time none of them shot.

She eyed each of them as she made her way around them; three followed the shuriken and the rest looked around aimlessly. Just as she was about to reach the opposite side of the treeline she placed her arm in front of her and just barely caught her shuriken. Agile Blade had forgotten that they work more like a boomerang and almost paid the price for it. She closed up the shuriken and holstered it. She peeked around the tree to check on the humans. They kept on moving, but now they were more on edge. They were all now frantically looking around them, flinching at every sound now. Agile Blade actually felt kind of bad for them. If this spooked them so easily, she couldn't imagine their reactions to an actual attack from any Yautja. Agile Blade descended slowly but just as she was about to reach the end she let herself drop. It caused a loud enough sound to attract their attention again. She pulled out her combistick and extended it, she knelt down and looked around until she found a big enough rock. She threw it up in the air and as it fell back she swung her combistick and hit it mid-air. She couldn't tell exactly where it landed, all she knew was that they were focusing on the sound of whatever the rock hit. She stepped out from behind the tree and quickly inspected the situation. None of the humans were focused on her. Agile Blade prepared her combistick and launched right in between the third and fourth humans. One of them shot as he turned and another pushed him aggressively and yelled at him. The female remained focused, she touched her ear and then spoke. Now she knew they had communications with someone else. The female calmed her companions and ordered them to keep moving. Whoever she spoke to was the real person in charge. For now, this information would do. Now she had to go looking for her combistick.