She tapped her fingers on the cool sheet, watching the liquid shimmer of reflected light outside the window weave and sway across her wall as she slowly counted. Fourteen thousand and eighty nine. Fourteen thousand and ninety...
...one particular ripple caught her eye, a swim of silver through the dancing blues. Tide was coming in. That was one thing she loved about living underground; the sea was nearby and she left her curtains open at night to catch reflected light. Fourteen thousand one hundred and six...
She'd meant to wait the full fifteen thousand count, she really had, but the tide was coming in. It was time to move now. She'd already waited a year longer than she'd intended for her hunt, but she'd felt it a week ago. Her target. Hers. It had washed in on an early morning tide and there'd been a small seismic event that closed a few tunnels. Something from the deep was trapped now in their relatively shallower sea. Trapped and hungry, it's usual prey being much larger.
It was going mad.
Animals were far harder to read than higher sentients but she could feel it out there in the water, frustrated and weakening. Before long it wouldn't be much of a challenge. It could do a lot of damage to the ecosystem in their bay, though, before it was starved out. And besides, she was pretty sure not many people had ever hunted this thing!
Granted, she wasn't dumb enough to go out unarmed like katzu were meant to. She wasn't equipped to tear through a monster with her teeth and hands. Plus she was just a hell of a lot smaller than most katzu in existence. She had a long blade strapped to her leg and several smaller ones in her belt.
And she was going to cheat like no one's business.
She didn't have the genetic thrill of hunting that Dilan did, or the sheer bloody minded machismo that Braig held close. No, she had the need to earn her standing though, and the need to be considered an adult, and she had psionic abilities that were a natural weapon in the right circumstances. The telepathy was stiiiiiill probably cheating though.
The boys were due in with the rest of the clan in the morning, she was hoping to meet them with her kill, and that meant slipping out her window and padding down to the water now when it was rising with the tide. Oh...and not getting caught. The adults would kill her. Granted, you had to tell SOMEONE when you went out on your hunt, it was a safety thing, so she'd pulled Kiziah aside after supper and told her she'd sensed something for her own hunt.
Still, she was pretty sure everyone else would try to stop her. Sometimes she got a little tired of the obvious fact of being fragile. Still, that wasn't something to think about now.
Now she had to clamp her teeth down on the rebreather stick and dive. There was enough reflected light just from the natural city ambiance that swimming at first was easy, besides, she had a mental feeler out to her prey. But then, oh it got deeper and it got darker. She hadn't counted on that, not really, and that was the first mark up to enthusiasm over planning. Most hunts were about enthusiasm though. It was okay.
Besides, it glowed.
That was nice.
In a terrifying, stripes of glowing flesh in darkened deep sea creature kind of way.
She'd known, when she first felt it, that was it was alien; something from so far outside the normal range of her waters that it might as well have come from another planet. She hadn't know quite how alien though, she hadn't seen it. She was seeing it now. It's head had heavy, powerful jaws meant for snapping into prey and latching on; it wasn't quite as wide as her chest but the difference could be measured in centimeters. Just under the jaw the segments began, soft and pulpy like a worm but in rings, and each ring had either a set of point edged legs or a set of undulating fins and the whole stretched longer than she was tall by...a great deal, deeper into the darkness.
She could feel where it's mobile, nightmare of eel and millipede body connected to the bulk of itself though, the churning stomach and heart that anchored to the stones set deeper than she'd ever swam before.
That was...going to be fun.
Yeah.
Best to think of it that way instead of taking in just how much bigger it was was in reality. Right. Stabby legs, swimmy legs, and a hell of a jaw. She could work with this. Seriously, she could. And to think she'd almost not taken the bigger knife in case it was cheating. She couldn't laugh, hysterically or no, she'd lose the rebreather. Chalk one up to forethought?
Sure.
She was an idiot.
And she was out of time because it had given up on waiting for her to be lured in by the pretty lights and was arrowing that wedge of a head in her direction!
Okay, so she didn't have katzu battle instinct, but adrenaline was almost as good because when it shot through her system she was grinning around the chunk of plastic in her teeth and she had knives in hand before her heel even connected with the underside of the striking beak. It was anchored, she could get away if she had to. With that knowledge and the tingle of excitement in her system?
Suddenly she was starting to see the appeal.
Granted, underwater battles were nothing to write home about, they were inelegant and lacked the grace of other coming of age battles, but the more she scored fins and fended off stabbing legs? The more it felt like coming in to her own.
And the more she could focus. It wasn't mind reading, not as she knew it, the plucking of thoughts fully formed, it was more like learning to interpret the impulses from the brain as the monster wove and grasped at her. It was...sub-telepathy? Maybe? She'd talk it over with everyone later, For now it meant she was doing alright, because she could tell when it was trying to dodge left, or to strike low. When it wanted to wrap around her and writhe to stuff her full of holes. She could follow it's instinct and that? That was helping.
It wasn't enough for a win but she was annoying the hell out of it! Go her?
Annoying didn't kill any dinners though, not by a long shot, and she'd tire long before the starving, half made critter would. She'd have to do something more useful sooner or later, so with a firm nod to herself she pushed off from the rock wall she been nearly tossed into and headed straight for it, a lovely, tempting target with a handful of steel leading. More importantly she started pushing, or at least that was the only way she knew to describe it. Actively trying interfere with those impulses she was sensing, just a stutter or two.
She didn't know if it worked, but the monster snapped it's maw open in front of her and she lobbed a blade into it's throat. The dumb thing swallowed instinctively and that was most definitely more effective if the sudden, whipping motion was anything to judge by. Distantly she noted that it obviously had no regurgitation action because that knife was NOT coming back up...
...annnnnd then she was back at the wall with a stinging chest and aching back, though she'd managed to keep her head from hitting too hard. Whipping eel millipede nightmare things hit like a train it seemed. Ouch. And she was damn sure it hadn't meant to hit her, it wasn't even trying to hit her now, which made the tag all the more insulting.
Wait. Wait wait wait. There was something important in this scenario and...HER REBREATHER! Hitting the wall had snapped her mouth open and her lovely oxygen source was now floating ahead of her in the waters. She was so very screwed if the monster ate that too. She eyed it a moment then sprang again, her aim was a little off, but with a whipping monster churning the water no one could blame her right? It just meant she had to jackknife her body to catch it when she passed over it. And it meant she took a sliding graze of one of the stabby legs high on the shoulder instead of the chest. It stung, but she could live with that, especially since she had the ability to breathe again.
Adulthood right scars were a normal factor anyway!
Orrrrr that was still the adrenaline talking. Yeah, probably adrenaline. It took three more knives lobbed before another made it into the snapping mouth to further upset her prey, and by that point thick, oily blood was starting to slither from it's mouth. At least it didn't dim the glowing any? That was probably chemicals in the skin, uncontrollable and unnoticed when dealing with swallowed cutlery. Lucky her!
This was getting to be too long away though, she knew that Kiziah would be assembling a rescue mission sooner rather than later, so she drew the longer blade from it's strap against her leg and braced herself, darting forward and taking several more shallow slices from the crabbing legs to ram the longer blade up under the thing's chin. She didn't have much strength in the injured shoulder, but both hands managed to make the tip slid along the hard beak to lodge in the softer skin right behind it. A jerk on it's part and desperation on hers saw the blade up and through the mouth then higher into the brain.
About damn time.
The best option was to hug herself close to the body as it gave over from directed thrashing to helpless twitching; death throes could take her out. She knew that, honest. When the legs around her finally stilled in a final flutter she felt it. Signals were still coming, they just weren't being acted upon. Maybe the reason she'd felt things so clearly was that there was a secondary brain down below with the heart. She hadn't figured it out before because the upper brain was the control brain.
Of course it had two brains. The adrenaline had bled out somewhere during the dying spasms, so it was more grumbling and duty that got her moving again, pulling herself down the grisly, monstrous ladder to the hunched lower body. At least this was easier. Safe in it's rock cave, the main body was more leathery skin than anything else, sealed to the wall like a shellfish clung to stones. It wasn't even that big honestly, only a little bigger around than she was when spread eagle, and she was really hoping this end was buoyant. A few knife blows to areas where she felt nerves or sensed a heartbeat and all was stillness.
About damn time.
It took longer yet to pry the softer body away from the rock walls, but then she was back at the no-longer-snapping head, hilt of her long blade set against her good shoulder as she started the slow, arduous swim back upward. She got it to the surface, barely, and got the blade, still in it's victory position, wedged into a buoy so her prize was pinned like a bug sample and wouldn't slip back into the depths.
And then? Then she was exhausted and it seemed the smartest thing in the world to climb up onto the buoy, lean against one of the cool metal struts, and close her eyes a moment. The katzu always seemed to have more energy after a hunt. Oh well, she was only human, right?
An adult human though!
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