#kwei angst

Your stylus hastily scribbled away on your data pad. Your feet scrunched against dead leaves and brittle branches. Your head was down, your focus elsewhere as you traced the path, marked down trees, wildlife, and among other things as you made a 3-D model of the landscape that you were traversing. You, in small terms, were a map maker and a navigator. When the company went to a new world, they would send you too, your main job being to create accurate maps for the team to use and safely navigate the terrain. Your second job was to identify wildlife. And that included both plants and animals – minerals too at times. Your third job, to live and be able to serve out your contract.

It was a sick game, you had concluded once. You had a long allotted time you needed to serve out to the company, and you would be lucky if you didn’t die during an assignment. You found your steps slowing at the thought. Your hand holding your stylus rising slightly to brush your mouth with your knuckles. You felt a shiver run along your spine.

You’ve been lucky. Lucky enough, but being sent to so many planets, it was only a matter of time before you lost your footing. Not that the company would care if you died on one of these assignments. If you died right now, they would see your death as a momentary pause in progress before sending another to replace you and hopefully recover the data you did collect before your death. Oh, and they would be mad that you hadn’t served your full contract, but, of course, what could they do to a dead man? Make your relatives (both close and distant) suffer, you suppose, but it wasn’t like you could do much about that. However, you had heard that the company made someone’s grandpa serve out the rest of a person’s contract when said person ran away and went into hiding. You pressed your lips together. The only living relative you had was your older sister, and she had served out her contract a while ago. Right now, you reckon; she is probably living on a beach with her fiancé. While you remained out of sight and out of mind.

And even though she is free from responsibilities, you wouldn’t want to put your time onto her. So you grit your teeth, and lived.

Even though living was proving harder than previously thought. You wiped a stray bead of sweat off your face as you went to sit down on a rock. As of now, the company, also known as the Weyland Yutani Corporation, had sent you to a planet covered with rainforests. It was so humid here that you had already drenched three sets of clothes with sweat alone, and getting your clothes to properly dry after washing them was a nightmare and a half.

Now, usually when someone hears of your position and mission details, they expect you to be a synth. I mean, why send a human to do such a dangerous job? The answer was a multitude of things. For one, it was cheaper, you were easy to replace, didn’t cost as much as a synth, and you had a contract to serve out. And you were terribly good at your job. You accidentally became important and good enough that you were sent to the harder planets to map out – but not important enough that the corporation cared about your wellbeing, of course.

You stretched your legs out as you continued to sit on the rock, rolled your shoulders, cracked your neck a bit. It could be worse-

You heard a branch snap, and you felt the hairs on your arms stand up – your skin erupting in goosebumps as you looked around. You stood up, took off your backpack, carefully slid your stylus and data pad into your zipper pouch before closing it back up and slinging it over your shoulders again. Another twig snapped, leaves rustled, the wind stilled. For fuck’s sake-

You turned on your heel and broke out into a dead sprint down the path you came from. Behind you was a noise, erratic breathing, with more branches snapping underweight. You didn’t dare you look back as your sole covered feet squished and sunk against barely dry mud, dirt and grime. Low hanging branches smacked you in the face, twisted vines that you previously navigated through grappled with you – threatening to entangle you, but you pulled hard as you continued running. Behind you, you could hear something grotesque and loud. Like a jaw was unhinging and getting closer to swallow you whole.

Then, your foot got caught in an uprooted old tree, the hard wood of the root catching your laces as you fell face first to the ground, the wind getting knocked right out of you as you felt the fabric of your clothes give you nasty burns on your knees and elbows.

You heard something snarl above you and you pushed yourself to roll and lie on your back, your upper body being propped up by your elbows. The thing that was chasing you was large, disgusting to look at and even worse to smell.

It’s tongue ran along it’s sharp teeth as it lunged for you. You shut your eyes tight. You did say that your luck would run out eventually, after all, you just didn’t think it would be today. Though, as soon as the thought flashed behind your eyelids, you heard another sound. One as grotesque as what the monster had made. The sound itself was hard to describe, but it was like a loud squelch. Like something sharp puncturing something squishy and wet. You flinched, your eyes still closed as something landed near your feet. Almost shakily, you opened your eyes. The monster that was chasing you was lying on the forest floor, a spear of some sort sticking through its chest as a orange liquid spilled from its mouth. You scrunched your nose up when a putrid smell hit your nose. You coughed as you covered your nose with your sleeve, “that smell is so gross,” you muttered as you went to stand up. Your eyes still on the beast that was dead on the ground – but something was off. The space in front of you looked … distorted?

You took a step forward. Your hand reaching out slowly until your fingers pressed against something solid until your whole palm was flat. Whatever invisible thing was in front of you was cold, and metal. It made you laugh, but that was impossible. The only things that you knew could be invisible and killed big beasts were-

You froze in place, your hand basically groping a hard patch of pure muscle. Uh oh.

You yanked your hand away like whatever was in front of you had burned your skin, and just as you turned on your heel to run again, your face smacked right into a spider web. You screeched loudly as you danced about. Your arms waving erratically around you as you tried to get the webbing out of your face.

“Get it off, get it off, get it off, get it off-!”

Behind you, the yautja disabled his cloak. He watched you for a moment. His scanner not picking up any sort of weapon on your person. And watching you prance around like that made his mandibles click as a sound erupted from his throat – a chuckle of sorts. The new sound itself made you pause as you hastily pulled over the silk strings from your hair and face – eyes flicking back as you saw the yautja in full view now. And when you finally got the last bits of webbing off of you, your full attention was finally back on him. Though, when he took a step forward, you took a step back.

As a navigator for the Weyland Yutani Corporation, it was your job not to cause trouble or hinder the mission in any way, and that included not dying. Especially not dying to a species you could actually communicate with. The corporation basically hammered various alien species’ languages into your head. And that included yautja.

You cleared your throat as you tried to calm your racing heart and steady your shaking hands, “thank you,” you managed to say in yautja tongue, “I hope I didn’t hinder your hunt in any way.”

You watched, with baited breath, as the yautja hunter tilted his head at you as if studying you (and maybe being a little surprised that you could speak his language). After a moment of looking you over, it huffed, another odd sound, “Not a hinder,” he ended up saying, “you were good bait.”

“Bait?!”

You didn’t mean to come off as offended, but you were, in fact, offended.

He jutted his head back to the dead thing behind him, “it had been following you for a while, waiting for you to take a rest and show exhaustion.”

“And how long have you been following it,” you dared to ask.

“Not following, tracking. I noticed you first, then it.”

You made an ‘oh’ sound as you suddenly felt stupid. You knew the planets you visited were in no way, shape, or form “safe,” but you didn’t think you would run into something like this. You jumped a little when your wrist band pinged and you brought your arm up to see a holographic message pop up.

MU/TH/UR – Status?

A message from mother… if the company finds out about the yautja here… You quickly typed out a ‘fine. Status normal.’

MU/TH/UR – Recent records show elevated heart rate and adrenaline spike.

You looked at the yautja who was still carefully watching you. ‘Ran into a spider web.’

MU/TH/UR – is that all?

‘Yes.’

MU/TH/UR – continue with navigation and map modeling.

‘Understood.’

It was probably a mistake not to tell your boss that there was a yautja on the planet, however, he did save you even if you were just bait to him.

“You are probably already aware of the others that are here,” you said as you looked back at him, staring up into his mask, “but I didn’t tell them about you… consider it as repayment for saving me, even though you weren’t actually trying to save me.”

You watched him nod before looking you over one more time and turning his back to you. His body crouched down as he examined his prey that was still twitching on the forest floor. You stood there awkwardly for a moment. He wasn’t attacking you, nor was he trying to engage in anymore conversation. Do you walk away? Continue mapping out the terrain? You thought back to your assignment and the message you got. Best continue on then. You took off your backpack once more to get your stylus and data pad out. And once you shouldered your pack again, you opened up the 3-d map you had modeled so far. If you go back up the path, you could continue where you left off.

You glanced to the crouched yautja. His back was still to you. Carefully, you moved around him. Your lips pressed into a firm line as you went to leave.

“You have a map?”

The question caught you off guard as you found yourself frozen again. Your lips pressed into a tight, thin line as the yautja stood back up. He grabbed a hold of your arm and turned you back to face him, his mask tilted down, and you reckoned he was looking at the holographic map. The details looked realistic, as if a synth had scanned the area and inputted the visuals into the data pad itself.

“One that I’m still working on, but yes.”

You could tell he was studying you again while a heavy silence hung in the air before you heard a clicking sound come from him. He turned his back to you again as he went back to tending to his kill and you released a breath you didn’t even know you were holding.

PART ONE.

he's heard of humans. was aware of their existence in the never ending cosmos. maybe even saw one before, from a distance - far far away. never thought much of them either. however, you were pretty funny. with the way you dance around and scream when you walk into a spider's web and all.

PART TWO.