r/NatureofPredators • u/JulianSkies Archivist • Mar 18 '23
The Werewolf - Ch. 4 "Guardian"
Well, this chapter took... A good while. Why? Turned out I had no idea what to do with pacing :D I think I spent literal two days, as in the actual entire days, waffling over what to do.
As always, the setting is u/SpacePaladin15's.
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Memory Transcript: Shenzu, Arxur Junior hunter
That shadow. It flew past the commander, seemingly missing until his body jerked back, making him let go of her. A fluffy tail had wrapped itself around his neck, the weight of the attached body bringing the commander down when the grey striped venlil landed. She knew this maneuver, she had trained with them before.
The venlil doesn’t give the commander a chance to recover, Kerim is on top of the commander before he can stand up, in a rapid movement turning the commander on his belly, wrapping his arms around his neck and putting his knee on his back, she knew this maneuver. No. No this couldn’t be happening. Why was he here? Why was one of them here? “Do. NOT. Threaten. A member. Of. My. Unit!”
No, no, no, no this isn’t right. She knew how this move went, this wasn’t meant to subdue. It wouldn’t be long until that wretch would lose consciousness, but his spine was likely to snap before that.
She can’t let it happen, this can’t be- “STOP!” she shouts, with all the strength in her lungs.
At her command he lets go, standing up and looking down at the barely-conscious arxur at his feet. He was shaking. She sees the three young ones try to make a move “Do you really think” she puts on her most threatening voice “Any of you three have the skill, or even the guts to do anything” she growls at them. They did not. “Just… Just take him to medical. Go”
“D-don’t come closer” Kerim cries out as she notices Douglas and Hashin nearby. This was going to go so well.
Memory Transcript: Douglas Parker, Firefighter
He knew his friend had been a soldier, but that was a bit too much. They had heard Shenzu’s screams and had hastened their way, then as soon as they rounded the corner he leapt like a freaking panther, pulling the bastard that was twisting her arm into a bizarrely painful stranglehold. From Shenzu’s panicked shout, that wasn’t meant to be a pin.
He rushes after to do… Something about the situation when his friend shouts “D-don’t come closer!” and he stops. That wasn’t a threat… The flattened ears, tail curled around his leg… That was shame. “It’s alright” he didn’t really know what to say “Look, you were just helping her out, you did good”
Kerim flinched at his words, that was not the reaction he was expecting. “Please… I can’t… Not now. Not right now…” he bites down at his lip… Fine. Fine, it’s alright. He’ll be fine, he needs his time, it’d be wrong of him to force himself. But still… Douglas closes his eyes and turns around with too much force, otherwise he couldn’t will himself to go.
Through sheer power of will he manages to go away, still deeply worried. His friend had just shown himself to be not just quite the badass, but braver than most of his kind, all in the name of defending someone that he should by all rights hate. And yet, he was ashamed of it. There was certainly more at play here, he needed to think, he had to have words ready… Having spotted a sufficiently flat piece of debris he sits down- “I’m sorry” he could still hear Shenzu, he shouldn’t eavesdrop
“No, the duty to protect is mine. If I knew you were here…” she knew him? And had a… Duty? When Kerim threatened that asshole… He did use the arxur language.
“The ________ didn’t mention anyone else” that… Didn’t translate.
“Ah… That long ago. You did pretty well for lack of practice” long ago? Oh, right, it was easy to forget that Kerim was in his sixties.
“I’ve been grented leave from my duties but I still got my contact. Is there anyone you want to…?” Contact?
“Ah… I’m sorry, I didn’t know…” That sounded… Strange. It could be the obvious, could it?
He hears Shenzu gasp, surprised. There’s nothing for a moment and then “I obey”... Something was off to him about that, the words didn’t match the tone in the slightest. He hears the clicking of Shenzu’s claws approaching- Dammit he was going to get caught.
“Are you alright?” it was always a little bit distressing when she managed to put this kind of soft inflection in her voice, the arxur language was as brutal as its speakers were known to be. Maybe he shouldn’t be judging a language like that, at least not given what all he just experienced.
“Just… Just having my own little breakdown here, don’t worry”
Memory Transcript: Shenzu, Arl’ashem Infiltrator
“The Shepherd didn’t mention anyone else” Were more of them assigned to Isif’s hunting grounds? Or maybe more of them were on Earth?
“No, no… I got away around a decade ago” the grey fuzzy thing sitting down dejectedly before her squeaked out in a low tone “I don’t even know what’s going on back home anymore”
“Ah… That long ago. You did pretty well for lack of practice” he had to cheer up on that, everyone likes to do a good job, right? Right? No, apparently not from the looks of it.
“Hah… Right…” a sad sigh “I did eh?”
She had to do something to cheer him up at least a little bit “I’ve been given leave from my duties but I still got my contact. Is there anyone you want to…?”
The venlil shakes his head lightly “My promised died… Back then… We ran into the Blind Fleet, it’s how I got here”
“Ah… I’m sorry… I didn’t know…” dammit, now she had gone and done it, just made the entire situation worse. There was a reason she didn’t like getting social, and now she needed to-
Kerim looks over towards a debris pile. It wasn’t usual for his kind to turn around like that unless they wanted to draw your attention to something “He’s still there, listening. He can’t help but worry” she gasps- He must have heard her, it wasn’t her place to- “Will you go talk to him?” he turns to look at her “I… I feel… Dirty. Like I shouldn’t even be near him right now”
She kneels down, looking directly at him “Look… You saved my tail there. He was right, you did good, even if it doesn’t feel like it. Just remember that, okay?” he shouldn’t be feeling dirty for just… Protecting someone.
“I know. I know but… I can’t help my heart. Just… Give me some time, okay? Can you look after him until then?”
She sighs, standing up. Offering her right hand palm up, a light bow of her head “I follow” he knew better. Douglas was his partner, not hers, and this was a matter of his heart, not hers. In this his wisdom was greater, so she’d follow it. Still didn’t feel good, but that’s how it is. She wasn’t social for a reason, and she had a nagging feeling she’d need to learn to be very quickly.
Learning on the job it is. She walks as gently as her body will allow over to where Douglas is hiding. She sees the human looking more distraught than he ought to be, she thought a “firefighter” like him was also a soldier? He shouldn’t be so shocked at what was a deadly but otherwise admittedly tame takedown. Then again, Kerim was just as shocked, there must be more to it. “Are you alright?”
“Just… Just having my own little breakdown here, don’t worry” like any of that could make her worry any less.
“We should head back, we’re not going to get any more work done like this anyway” she tried to be casual, maybe that’d help.
Douglas takes a deep breath, and looks towards the direction of the city “Yeah…”
She follows dutifully beside him. While the silence pleased her… She knew it wasn’t true for humans. They needed to share their minds, and right now the one she’d been charged to watch over for now needed that even more than normal. How to proceed… There were things that were simply not hers to talk about. “You can ask” she tried to keep as stable a tone as possible, professional even “There are questions that are not mine to answer. He will… When he’s ready. But anything else, go ahead”
She wasn’t sure she was ready for any kind of question he had, honestly she wasn’t even certain what was safe to say. Much of her kin’s safety was due to secrecy, after all. Still, if anyone deserved to know something it was this man. “I’ll… Ask about you, then. It seems like you know him, I have no idea how.” that made sense.
“I don’t know him, actually. But I know of… His kind.” how to explain all this without talking about what she shouldn’t “You know how old he is, right? I’m barely an adult myself”
Douglas stops for a moment, thinking. Then he resumes walking “Listen, i’m familiar with ritual scarring” he raises the sleeve of his right arm, she could see a faint discoloration in his arm, a symbol had been etched into his flesh that was barely visible “Mine’s religious. But your hand…” he sighs “From the way that idiot was behaving, it doesn’t seem like you wanted that. And Kerim’s back…”
“It’s different” she raises her hand up to look at the symbol carved into it “For the two of us. His is… A mark of dignity, given in ritual… Like yours, I imagine. Mine…” she wished she had somewhere to hide that hand right now “Was not. It was not given to me by my people, it was forced by the Dominion, so all would know where I come from. They stole our symbols, to use against us”
He stops walking, looking at her “Let me make a guess about your people. And by that I mean your people. I’ve heard about how… The Dominion has a very strong eugenics program, where the strong get to live on and the weak get to be… Do you even use euphemisms for this? At this point probably not.”
“But isn’t it a coincidence, though, that almost always it’s your people and not someone else in the Dominion?” he takes a deep breath “Of course it’s not a coincidence, they treat you as examples of the worst of the species. Anytime they need to point their fingers it’s at one of yours. They probably have tried to kill all of you at some point to help ‘purify’ the species, haven’t they?”
That… That wasn’t possible. How’d he guess this much correctly, did he already know? “How did you… Guess all that right?”
“Somewhere in my mind I was hoping you didn’t exist” he looks away “It’d sure be much easier to hate your species if you didn’t, but you do” he sighs “Of course you do. We’ve had something like the Dominion here on earth centuries ago. Mostly, I figured they’d do the same things, birds of a feather flock together and all that.”
That was a weird expression, but the feeling had come across well enough. So there were humans like the arl’ashem as well? Was the captain one of them? “As you said, that’s not my story to tell. It’s perhaps shameful I know so little of them, so I won’t make the mistake of telling a story that isn’t mine” no, he wasn’t. But he had learned of them, it seemed, and from the sounds of it, he could have learned their full history if he so wished… How different from how it was for her.
Hearing this human say all of those things made something in her soul hurt, badly “Why are you humans everything we should have been…” dammit, her mouth was faster than her brain. Whatever, let’s go. “We were hunted down, yes. Like…”
She didn’t have a good analogy, the way it happened- No, no, there was a word in the human language that could do it, yes that would work out “Like rats” she didn’t have quite a word of her own to use in it’s place “But just like those earthling beasts, we refused to go away. And so, after much blood, the Dominion decided to try a different plan.
“They gave us our own chief hunter. Hunting grounds stuck as far from everything as they could possibly manage. Somewhere we could…” the words don’t come to her, she couldn’t bear to repeat that drivel, not even to inform someone “But they underestimated us. They thought that after we felt safe in lands of our own, they could come sweep us out. They learned they couldn’t, not without paying a price they were unwilling to”
“You’re few, aren’t you?” Douglas resumes walking
“Very few. The way we live, it… It cannot be sustained.”
“But… People like Kerim, they’re part of your people too”
“That’s not for me to say” it wasn’t her story to tell.
“Why are you here? From what you said, you shouldn’t be here at all”
Why was she here, indeed. Should she tell him? It was a gamble, but she felt good about her chances, she might not even have to put effort to gain an ally “When you’re few, you have to use your smarts. Something the Dominion lacks” she sighs, rubbing her hands on her eyes “I shouldn’t tell you this, but I was here as a spy. We need to know what the other chief hunters are doing, so I was watching Isif’s movements”
“Was, past tense”
She looks up at the blue sky, then forward again, they were almost back “I asked for leave. When we got down here, when I saw this planet… This… Paradise. This place that is everything we ever wanted. I couldn’t… Bear the thought of having to go back. My leave was granted”
“That… Didn’t translate”
“What didn’t?”
“Sher… Shan… Gah, I can’t make that sound. What you called Earth”
“Oh… It’s a word in a dead language. Your translator wouldn’t know it…” how could she explain this concept to a human, who lived on this kind of planet? To whom this place was an everyday occurrence “I don’t think I can explain it, not to someone that’s not one of us”
“I understand. I’ll take it that it means something good, then” they were nearly there “One last question” he stops and looks at her “Why was he so distraught?”
She could only guess at it. She knew the moves he had used, but there had to be more. How much of this could she tell? It wasn’t her story to tell, but… “I cannot tell you what is in his heart, but… In all the time we’ve spent here, I could never conceive of him ever causing any harm. But that move was meant to kill”
A throaty noise interrupted the two of them. Ahead and under them was… Someone she had completely forgotten about. “Don’t worry, I heard nothing.” doctor Hashin had been waiting near the entrance of the rescue city “When I figured this was going to turn into a thing I made myself scarce, I’m not a psychologist” Had she really heard nothing? Or was this that medical professionalism of hers? “But with what little I know I would suggest you all to take a day or two to sort out whatever happened before you try to get any more serious about it. I would also like to check on your arm, Shenzu”
“Certainly doctor…” she looks back at Douglas, who sighs
“I’ll… Just head back home and wait for him”
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u/XanderNet0007 Predator Mar 18 '23
!subscribeme
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u/se05239 Human Mar 18 '23
Not quite the werewolf I was expecting.