Hello, all. It is I, AzureF, returning from the pit of latency!
This... is the sequel you all said you wanted! I got to writing it, and though it will NOT be updated as quickly as the first story was, it has more than enough ammo to be finished soon. After that, I begin working on the last story in the series.
BEFORE reading this, oh new readers, I HIGHLY suggest that you read the first in the series, Unreal, or else you WILL be lost. Fair warning.
Unfortunately, my overwhelming inspiration for this has forced me to put ItEoaPS on hiatus for a while. I'm still owrking on it, but until I can figure out Kwei's character in more depth during the current part of my story, I won't be able to continue.
But no fear. I haven't given up on a story yet, and I never will.
This chapter is astonishingly long. Other chapters won't be quite this lengthy... or I don't think they will.
Damn, it's warm in this ship today, I thought, wiping a droplet of sweat off my brow as I stared up at the ornate, orange-lit ceiling of the ship, sighing, Not like it isn't always. How do they stand it?, I thought, wiping a droplet of sweat off my brow as I stared up at the ornate, orange-lit ceiling of the ship, sighing,
Well, I knew the answer to that question pretty well. The Yautja came from a tropical planet, where temperatures were even more hot and humid than the insides of their ships. In fact, the ship was considered downright cool to them, even though it made both my roommate and me miserable. I had a feeling we would get used to it eventually, but after only about month of riding with the ship I still felt temperature fluctuations pretty keenly.
And it wasn't like I could complain. I mean, I had wanted this for my entire life, and an opportunity for this type of life and adventure was a once in a millennia chance. I wasn't about to be driven to the point of wanting to go back to my old life just because of a little lost comfort. It wasn't as if I hadn't been in this type of weather before, either. In my old hometown the more humid part of summer was much like the average atmosphere inside the ship.
"It would still be nice to have some normal comfort, though," I sighed to myself, fingering the string on my neck and the old, battered, and half-melted coat held loosely in my hand that was my only link left with my previous life, the one I had left rather abruptly to be thrust into this one. After my first adventure, I had never had the heart nor the will to get rid of it, even after retrieving the precious trophies from my first Xeno encounters on the ice of Antarctica.
Antarctica… it seemed like a whole lifetime had occurred since I had been there, stranded under the ice and being pulled along by events that were disconcertingly familiar. Familiar as in memorized, for they had been the same events of a movie, a simple form of entertainment turned all too real in the course of a single, life-changing miracle. I had changed those events by falling into the picture, saving two of the characters that were marked to die by successfully taking down one of the more powerful Xenomorph drones, one that would have been dubbed the 'Grid alien' had it lived past my fateful fall and been able to murder two of my very best friends.
Yes, Chopper and Celtic, as I still called them much to their amusement and chagrin, had become my friends, along with Scar and Lex. Geez, Lex had surprised me in the simple fact that she had agreed to come along with me. She had barely known me at all, besides the fact that I had been in the pyramid under the ice and was fighting with the 'hunters', as she had dubbed them. Well, she had known that I was a girl from a different dimension and all, but it was still amazing that she had decided to come.
"What are you doing, moping in the corner like that?" came a voice from the doorway. I smirked, lifting my head from staring at the already well-worn digits and flashing a quick smile at the woman that had come into the room, looking so much different from what she had when I had first seen here. Then, she had been a normal, if determined, human woman stuck in a crisis that she had had no idea how to get out of. Now, in her Yautja derived armor and with the proudly worn mark on her cheek, she seemed so much more confident. Happy, even.
"Thinking," I answered.
"About home?" she asked worriedly. I shook my head slowly.
"Not yet," I sighed, "But I was getting to it. Mostly I was thinking about Antarctica."
"Thinking about how you got into this, right?" Lex was amazingly perspective, I noted. But then again, I'd noticed that long before, even before we had been bunked together on the ship.
"Yeah."
"Not having regrets, I hope?"
"Hell no!" I said vehemently, "I'm damn glad I met up with you guys. You're all the best friends I ever had. I never had friends that good in my own dimension."
"Good, because those friendship ties are going to be stressed again," replied the woman airily, her tone suddenly light. I narrowed my eyes in suspicion, "Celtic is going to try and give us another lesson in formal Yautja language in thirty minutes, so I suggest that you get ready. You can't go out there in just your human cloths again like you had after we got here; I know you remember what happened."
"Gods, Celtic is going to try and teach again?" I groaned, leaning my head back in mock prayer while ignoring the last comment the woman had made, "That guy is a horrible teacher!"
"Don't let him hear you saying that," warned Lex, "You'll get another cuff on the head. I heard your curse from the next room the last time, and you know how good these walls are at absorbing sound."
"What? It wasn't as if you were doing any better than me, though. Yautja language is hard to pronounce! I'm still not really sure if what I say is a greeting or an insult to his mother!"
That got her. Exactly as I had intended, Lex burst out laughing, having to lean against the wall with one hand in an attempt to stop her consuming giggles. In a moment, I began to chuckle as well, and soon we were both laughing our heads off so hard that it seemed as if we had both reverted to giggling schoolgirl mode. I saw a Yautja walking past in the hall through the still open doorway pause slightly, look over, grumble with twitching mandibles, and continue walking with a shake of his head.
What? Is anything beyond gloating laugher dishonorable, now? I thought snidely as I watched him walk away, one eyebrow attempting to rise as I finally stifled my laughter, frowning as I remembered that not all of the Yautja were willing to accept Lex and me as warriors, even though we had proven ourselves many times over. I had gone through computer simulations, training, and even one fight with a Youngblood –caused by the wearing of my human cloths, I might add- in which we both came off rather battered, but with better respect for one another, and still many of the creatures refused to accept me. Lex had gone through even worse, being challenged by a full-blooded warrior and attacked brutally in the ring to the point of almost having her windpipe crushed by the larger and much more powerful creature's foot. If the elder hadn't come along at that time, she might have died.
Yeah, what I had gone through on this ship was a small thing compared to what Lex had. I hadn't been challenged by an opponent easily twice my size and four times my power and experience, then beaten so badly that I had to go to the medbay for days. I had been lucky.
Still, she had had Scar to comfort and visit her as she recovered. Hehe.
Maybe it was a bit of that aura around me I had noticed somewhat in reality. Even then, I had somehow instilled fear into people, even though I had had no ill will towards anybody in my life. In this place, as well, people tended to avoid me. All but the four friends I had gathered, and perhaps the elder when he came along, ever spoke or acknowledged my presence for more than the few milliseconds it took to figure out that I was one of the humans. Sure, the others were tolerant, but not polite and certainly not talkative.
Well, perhaps if they were they'd learn, like the others, that humans were a lot more than just prey.
With some difficulty, I pulled back to present time, noticing that Lex had managed to close the door and was already setting about throwing armor at me as she rummaged about in the storage draws set on the wall. Deftly I caught the pieces, glad for the reflexes that I already had a natural talent for and that had been honed to a fair degree by both training in the simulators and against my combat instructor. My armor was a strange mix of metals, seeming to be almost thrown together but in actuality was anything but. From what I'd heard, one of the master smiths on the ship had made it and Lex's because she had wanted a challenge, and found it in trying to fit armor for a 'ooman', as they called us.
It was rather beautiful in a deadly way; perfect interlocking plates of differing colors and textures all arranged in a mosaic that provided almost flawless defense. I felt so unworthy of the apparel. Perhaps, when I knew the language better and was allowed to roam any farther than the kitchens, beginner's training arena, and the spare rooms used for teaching, I would go and thank the smith properly. Yeah, that was a good idea.
"Jess, you're off in your own world again," Lex informed me, and I snapped myself out of my again dazed reverie with an awkward grin and stood, all my casual armor held in my hands as I slipped into the adjoining 'bathroom'. I noticed Lex's raised eyebrow before I went in, and I gave her a quick mock-glare before closing the door behind me by slamming my hand on the button by my head. She had gotten pretty used to my tendency to go off into my own mind, completely disregarding anything around me for hours at a time as I stared at some random object. In a way, we both found it funny and I was glad that someone, some other human, was able to understand.
"I'd better get back into the real world unless I want Celtic pissed at me again," I muttered softly as I slipped into the armor, fitting everything in its place with an ease that was born of long practice. It had taken me a week to figure out exactly where each piece of the armor went, and how it locked together, but now it was almost like getting regular cloths on. Only a few seconds of work was needed to acquire a presentable result.
I turned to go out, feeling a bit better now that I had snapped myself out of my thoughts and was going to go somewhere, but I suddenly caught the image of my reflection in the shuttered window looking out into space. Because it was so dim in the room, the reflection was pretty accurate, and I gaped slightly as I noticed the changes in what I looked like now. I stared at my arm, then the reflection, then the arm again, trying to remember if it hadn't always been that muscular. Well, I knew it obviously wasn't, but I had barely noticed the change at all. Hell, I might have even reached that goal of weight loss that I had been striving for years ago; I certainly looked skinny enough for it! In fact… I looked like an athlete… An athlete?
Blech.
Well, better an athlete than dead, I guess. Hehe, what I wouldn't do to see my mom's face if she saw me now! She'd probably scream, or faint, or both. Probably both. I mean, what person that had known me so long ago wouldn't after remembering the shy, quiet girl that was only outgoing at home and being faced with the new, more 'me' me. Especially the new me in armor.
"Heh, but if I went back I'd have to leave this, and I love this more than I ever loved home," I muttered to myself softly, "Sure, my family knowing where I am would be nice, but what's the chance of that?"
None. Nada. Zero. Zip. It just ain't happening.
"I return to the world of the living!" I announced as I strode out of the bathroom, throwing my only outfit of human cloths on my slightly messy bed. I would have to wash them later, when I didn't have anything else to do. Lex looked up from sharpening her favorite weapon, the spear that had been given to her by the elder, and let a grin brush her face as she lovingly set the work aside so that she could stand. It was quite strange, now that I really noticed, how different our armor was. Where hers was a very dark type of blue-black metal that shone with a polished sheen, mine was dull and of dozens of different shades and textures of brown. If one didn't look at it right, they would swear I was wearing leather.
"Good, you take forever!" she said, stretching as I looked at her reproachfully, "I almost thought you drowned or something."
"Funny," I said dryly, "Maybe I did, and you're staring at my vengeful ghost come to haunt you for all eternity?"
She looked at me, and shook her head.
"No, I know you. If you had come back as a ghost you would have come up with a better entrance than that."
I considered.
"True."
I punched the button on the door to the hallway, and it opened promptly, revealing an empty hall as far as the eye could see. I had a sneaking suspicion that the elder had purposely given us our quarters in the most unvisited part of the ship to avoid confrontations with other Yautja, and personally I thought it was a pretty good idea. I knew that in every community as large as this one was, there were always a few individuals radical enough to try something stupid, like killing the humans in their sleep…
Not a good image. Especially not since I slept like a rock.
"So Lex, how do you think today's lesson is gonna go?" I asked conversationally as I trod the slightly echoing hallway, hating the cold silence of the ship's corridors. It was far too much like the shifting passageways of the pyramid for my liking, and often I found myself keeping an eye out –aka listening- for Xeno's even when I knew very well that there were none aboard the ship.
"It might go better if Scar is there," she replied, using the nickname that I had derived from the movie and Internet. The epithets were what we both referred to our friends as, even though we knew very well what their real names were, now. Scar was the only one that didn't seem to find the nickname embarrassing, and indeed seemed to like being called by it more than his own name, "He's the only one of them that's really any good at teaching, anyway."
That was only partly true, for where Scar was extremely and surprisingly patient when it came to attempting to teach the two of us their language, he tended to go a little too far for our abilities in combat training. Chopper far exceeded him in that respect, sparring only to our limit and no more, judging almost perfectly when one of us had reached the point where we couldn't do any better if we tried and stopping at that. The only thing he really didn't let us do was slack off; every training session was a grueling test of endurance and skill that, though it was more difficult than anything imaginable, was extremely rewarding, as well.
As for weapons and the use of them, that was where Celtic was strongest. I had been amazed at how much knowledge had actually been packed into that brain of his. Mostly the impression of being irritable, anti-social, and aggressive had impacted my assumption that the Yautja had been slightly dumb, and the movie hadn't helped, but now I knew that he was merely overly reckless and stubborn. Though those traits were major character flaws, they were alright by me, and in fact made him a bit more entertaining when it came down to casual banter.
"You just wanna see Scar," I taunted lightly, my tone teasing. Lex was used to this, and replied in her usual tactful manner.
"Fuck off."
I snorted with a laugh that was just barely held in as I punched the button for the door to the correct room, but I still couldn't hide the mischievous smile that had risen to my lips. Lex's smirk told me that this long-running joke wasn't over by a long shot, even if we had to go through a grueling session with Celtic first before she could start on getting me back. Man, it was amazing how much she actually had changed. Looking back at the movie and events in Antarctica, I would barely have been able to fathom this individual that was so much like me hidden beneath that slightly uptight and commanding behavior.
Cool.
"You two are late," came the gruff, guttural voice that I recognized as belonging to the largest of our three friends. He spoke slowly and clearly, having learned long before that speaking fast made it pretty difficult for us to understand him at all. In fact, he had a scar to prove the result of a misunderstanding during training. It just hadn't been good for him to say 'don't attack' that quickly…
"You know me, always liking to keep my audience in suspense," I replied, switching from Yautja to human in between words to make the sentence as confusing as possible. I seemed to have a talent for that that I had discovered while looking up words on the computer panel in our quarters, even though the switch rasped my throat horribly.
"Sit," he ignored me and gestured to the chairs near the back of the room, and with a muffled snort I made my way over, plopping down and promptly crossing one leg. Almost immediately I had reverted back to school mode, taking a bored yet attentive posture that I had yet to get rid of. Lex took a seat in the chair beside me, raising an eyebrow as she saw my now familiar pose.
Hey, they couldn't say anything. I'd been told that I was a great student at home.
Almost immediately Celtic had begun his 'lesson', telling of the various formalities of the language and the grammar rules of the informal version of the tongue we already knew for the most part. I decided to pay attention, seeing as it was important to show respect to elders and such, and informal Yautja just didn't cut it when it came to ceremonies. Briefly I wondered why Scar and Chopper weren't here; the three often taught the 'oomans' together, as it was easier on both them and us.
Still, after a few minutes, I felt myself begin to drift a bit, but managed to keep enough of my thoughts focused on the lesson so that I didn't choke if Celtic decided to ask me a question. In fact, I was staring blankly at his forehead, just above the scar that marked him a warrior. The large brownish-gray spot there looked vaguely like a dog sitting, if I looked at it from an angle.
"Jes'ca?" Suddenly, I found myself addressed by my name, and I sighed slightly as I heard again the apparent inability to really get the syllables down. Celtic's mandibles twitched fractionally as he awaited my answer, and I interpreted the twitch as smug anticipation.
"Forty-two," I said jokingly, but then I became serious before Celtic could react, "In that situation I would be sure to keep my head down and eyes lowered, but not lowered enough to completely obscure vision. I wouldn't want to be caught off guard if they got angry for some reason or other. Also, I would be sure to leave the area as respectfully as courtesy allows to give them time to cool down, seeing that I had just majorly pissed them off. Oh, and I've told you guys hundreds of times to just call me Jess. It's easier."
I could see that he had been trying to catch me daydreaming again by his expression as I looked up at him, and I smirked lightly as Lex gave a nod of approval. Well, I had always loved getting my old teachers with that. I listened better when I wasn't paying attention… though my notes suffered because of it. Memorization helped with that little bit.
"Correct," he said after a pause.
It's not as if I don't listen, people, I thought, Contrary to popular belief, I do in fact have a brain, and it functions rather well.
I heard Lex answer a fairly difficult question that had been put to her easily, and gave her a wink when she got it right. I knew I probably would have had trouble with it, as I had actually begun to daydream again and missed part of what Celtic had been saying. Ugh, so much for saying I had a long attention span.
My fingers found the end of my hair, and I let my eyes drift down from the spot on the Yautja's forehead to observe the rather faded purple color that was the remnant of my old life and my first adventure. Oh, how I wished there were a way I could make those color streaks permanent! Only a month and already they were barely visible, my natural golden-red hair showing through the color in several spots. With a silent sigh I raised my scarred hand to lift my bangs from my tawny eyes and continued listening to Celtic's lecture.
Was it just me, or was he beginning to sound like my old Astronomy teacher?
"That is all for now," Celtic finished gruffly, gesturing for us to stand with one clawed appendage. I jumped up spryly, stifling a yawn and flexing my legs to regain some semblance of suppleness in them. Too bad Yautja didn't measure time like humans did, because I would have really appreciated a clock around, being a bit of a clock-watcher, "Jess, you are wanted in the training room. Lex may go."
"See ya later, Lex," I said to the other woman, flicking my fingers by my eyes in a type of half wave, half salute that was my version of a farewell. She let a small smile brush her lips as she pressed the door mechanism and walked out into the hall, heading back to our room and probably the weapon cleaning session that she had begun earlier. I turned to go, but nodded back toward Celtic with a grin, "Great lesson, Celtic," I said in informal Yautja, "I think I may have actually learned something that time."
"Yet you cannot learn to speak my name properly?"
"I like Celtic better," I replied, passing through the door and turning in the opposite direction that Lex had, ignoring the rumbling snort that came from behind me as I left. Celtic could be so uptight sometimes, but I knew that the name wasn't as big a deal as he made it out to be. It was just another one of those subjects that made for good mock-arguments.
The vents near the bottom of the hall hissed, beginning to spew out a thick, mist-like substance that wasn't quite fog, but in fact a type of atmospheric substance that had a chemical makeup like that of the Yautja homeworld. It served to humidify the air in the ship and ensure that the air didn't become stale. Now, after a month of living here, I actually found the yellowish-white gas comforting, and its strange smell didn't bother me anymore. I really barely noticed it at all now.
The door I was looking for wasn't far, but for at least the thousandth time I missed it, completely bypassing the door that looked almost exactly like the blackish brown walls around it while I was lost in thought. With a small sigh and a sarcastic comment to myself, I did a quick U-turn and found it, pressing the button lightly and striding through the doors to come into a large, open area that was fairly well lit. The floor was made of a sandy material that shifted slightly under my feet, and the walls were flatter and made of a brighter material, adding to the light. The door closed behind me with a sliding sound, cutting off the mist that had been billowing into the training room around my legs.
"Good to see you still remember where the training room is, Jess," chuckled a growling voice from the more shadowed part of the room, and I turned with a half-grin, looking up at the taller form and cocking my head in a teasing manner.
"Nice to see you, too, Chopper," I replied, setting a hand on my hip as I looked out over the sandy pit, "Now let's train."
Oooooo, training. Fun-ness.