Thanks to my beta Imagine Kayla, as always, for reminding me that there needs to be more flirting. *bonk* u go to horny jail.


Chapter Thirteen: Outcast


They would be returning to the original site. Once they'd finished the trek up from the falls, she was able to locate her own fleeing trail back to where she'd left Farmiga. Runite stepped away into the surrounding jungle, melding out of sight, leaving Nasira to continue on, seemingly alone.

She wore her mother's scarf folded and wrapped diagonally across her shoulders like a sash - her ripped t-shirt had long since been doing fuck-all to protect her from the suns' glares. Beneath it was the fastening for her spear, collapsed and hidden under the fabric.

The question of Farmiga's fate was answered quickly upon arriving back at the scene. Her hands were bound and the spear had been extracted from her leg. A shiny burn stood out against the skin where apparently it had been seared closed by a plasma cannon. She was panting, now, and could no longer summon the energy to look at Nasira with disdain. After so many hours of this treatment in her condition, all she had left was blank animal shock. A smear of blood on her cheek could have been hers or Cooper's.

Standing above her was Tresses, arms folded and stance irate. Next to her on the ground was a waxy lump of piled-up appendages. Milky fluid oozed like glue, slowing down and solidifying with jungle crud stuck all over. A semi-intact headstalk had its platinum hair just askew and, apart from a delicate line of white blood trailing from her nose, Markel's obsolete expression looked restful.

A dangerous stridulation emanated from behind Tresses' mask the longer Nasira delayed acknowledging her eminence. Chills popped up on her skin despite the heat of the day. Would Tresses' true face be the last thing she saw at the moment of retribution? Would she even get that far?

She laid her hand over her chest in a polite greeting, remembering that she was essentially there to beg. Her throat worked but nothing came out. She hadn't thought about what to say. She hadn't wanted to let Markel bring it up with her back then and hadn't even allowed herself to explore why she was going out of her way for Farmiga in the first place.

It was stupid for her to try to balance everything she'd lost with this one life, but neither could she shake the nagging need to see it through.

A stealthed form shouldered past her, taking a place beside Tresses. Runite.

He was not the only one - a few more stealthed forms stalked just off to the side. They were just ripples and flashes in her periphery, but that was all she needed to know that she was being circled.

One stealthed form stayed stationary and didn't move like the others. Upon her noticing it, the active camouflage swiftly shed to reveal Carbide. Just the sight of him sent clarity surging through her brain.

"Him," she said, addressing Tresses but jutting a forceful gesture at Carbide. "He is a killer who revels in terrorizing the weak."

The sound from Tresses intensified. Her golden mask tipped down to scan her. When she found confirmation of what was going on in the neighborhood of Farmiga's abdomen, her head jerked up.

"That's right," said Nasira, choosing death. "On your watch, this happened."

Tresses hissed but her head snapped to Carbide.

He let out a grunt of denial: "M'di thei Lou-dte kalei tarei'hasan."

Tresses cut him off with a snap of her mandibles, forcing him to look subserviently downwards before he could get too far into whatever bullshit. Nasira couldn't help but be reminded how Tresses had been the one to keep the others in check when they'd been trying to kill her. Now that she had no such protection, she was keenly aware of it.

The empty eyes of all the skulls on his fetish fixed on Nasira along with his own, piercing blue and shiny as he leered at her from under his heavy brow. His spindly tusks and wild spines looked like the facial ridges on a dangerous, pale viper sizing her up as a meal.

Nasira glared right back until Tresses' approach forced him to actually drop his gaze. She held her hand out - he had no choice but to pass her the bloodsoaked spear. She barked a question; he, a denial.

She seized his arm and jerked him forward, overpowering the interface on his wrist computer into revealing the holographic recollection of him impaling Farmiga's leg with the spear.

Tresses adjusted her grip on his gauntlet and slammed him to the ground. He froze, the submission instinct within him superseding his pain, until she moved away from him back towards Farmiga.

Her own hologram reared up, showing a planet Nasira recognized as an old Company colony, probably one of those decomm'ed mineral refineries from the prior century. A counter in the corner kept track as the hologram showed a handful of revolutions around the system's sun, counting out a biological year's reprieve for Farmiga.

Tresses held out a hand, waiting on the edge of patience for her determination.

Nasira nodded, satisfied.

Tresses signalled for her subordinates to move in on Farmiga. These emerged from stealth for the first time. They were females - the first she had seen apart from Tresses herself. They were both taller than any of the average males, confirming what Nasira had once thought about their sexual dimorphisms.

She had no time to further study them before they grabbed Farmiga's shoulders between them, hauling her away, but she did notice that the masks they wore had no Blooded scorch marks on them.

Through the trees, a sliver of spacecraft glimmered light distortions as the ramp lowered to admit Farmiga and her custodians. When the ship sealed behind them, it disappeared from view once more.

Tresses signalled again and another stealthed pair Nasira had not even noticed advanced. Runite stepped up with a snarl, a vicious inquiry that Nasira couldn't translate.

"It's okay," Nasira said to him. "Whatever she decides is all right with me."

Runite let out another threatening sound, not so easily convinced, but he stayed put.

A voice issued from Tresses' mask: "You have a choice."

Sveldman. It could have been a recording from yesterday or ten years ago - it certainly didn't answer any of her questions about his Blooded mark.

Tresses' wristblades sheared forth out of her gauntlet. Her intricate, beaded hair stirred about her waist as she indicated the blade - option one.

She pointed out into the jungle, sweeping her arm. Then she clenched her fist and indicated what was left of Cooper in the trees. Option two.

"I'm not running anymore," said Nasira.

The pair of females forced Nasira to her knees in front of Tresses.

Her blades were twice the length of any other, longer than Nasira's entire torso. She looked nervously between them and the pile of undone limbs before steeling her resolve.

This time, she would take the hit and that would be the end of it all.

Tresses cocked her arm back to deliver the executive blow.

Something knocked her out of the way as Runite jumped between them, snarling. The two females restraining her were both bowled over by plasma shots that missed Nasira so narrowly her skin was singed on their way past.

Stunned, she didn't resist as Runite dragged her to standing by the arm.

Carbide let out an eager snarl as he bent his knees into a fighting stance. Before he could attack, Runite blasted him in the face with another shot from his shoulder cannon.

He went down flailing and cursing. "Ell-osde'pauk ooman-pauk-de!"

Tresses seized the metallic netting entangling her torso and tore free of it with her bare hands. She whirled to seek where Runite was now dragging Nasira into the trees.

With a bellow, she withdrew from her waist a small pair of objects. Not her deployable laser grids, but something else. A set of tiny, roving discs. They zoomed off in pursuit, catching up to Runite and sticking themselves onto his prosthetic.

A crackling blue current was suddenly tethering him, yanking him back and Nasira along with him. The metal arm jerked as if overtaken somehow. Runite strained against his malfunctioning equipment; the hologram on his wrist glitched and flashed as the whole computer went haywire - then darkened.

Nasira may have been unaffected by this new device, but the prosthetic's grip around her arm was ironclad - she wasn't going anywhere without him.

Tresses snapped something harsh. "Shyysht-d'lex, Ru'tiek! Si Ell-osde Hish!"

He froze, no longer resisting the tether as his gauntlet cycled through reboots and even began to spark in some places.

The two females he'd fought off were getting back to their feet, as was Carbide, but still he took his time to contemplate her words.

Runite said, "Ki-tka ahj Hish."

Tresses's icy mask locked on him. She pressed a toggle on her interface and the tether evaporated. Runite's gauntlet flashed with heated red symbols once more before coming back to life and the prosthetic resumed obeying his commands, leaving the two of them both free to escape.

He tore off part of his wrist computer and tossed it away like it was trash. Nasira waited beside him and looked up at him, full of apprehension, to see what he would do next.

He stayed where he was, unmoving, staring down Tresses with a rumbling growl that was controlled but could just as swiftly revert to dangerous.

The pair of females clicked behind their masks and started to move in again.

Tresses roared and held up a gesture to keep her subordinates back. A snarl from Carbide, who was none too happy about being kept leashed, but he obeyed along with the females.

His pale gaze was on Nasira like a fixated madman's. In his mind, he was probably inventing newer and more ferocious methods for her disembowelment. Nasira fought the urge to square up from afar, keeping her focus with Runite.

Tresses flexed her stance like she was fighting an impulse to tear straight through both of them. She clenched her fist and opened it again, then pointed harshly out into the jungle with another roar. For good measure, her shoulder cannon wheeled up into position and spun itself full of deadly energy.

Her arm was nearly yanked out of the socket as Runite pulled Nasira off her feet. Leaves and ferns whipped at her face as he lifted her through the jungle at breakneck speeds. He moved so fast and smoothly in this fractional gravity that she hardly even had to keep her footing to keep up with him, just let herself be hauled after.

They covered ground so quickly her perception actually felt somewhat streaky. The next bellow they heard from behind them was Tresses. It sounded almost faraway now, although Nasira supposed that to be some kind of trick of the jungle wilds, and Runite reacted almost simultaneously, as if he'd been waiting to hear it.

The next thing she knew, she was soaring upwards into the canopy. He was an instant behind her, intercepting her arc and tackling her against a truck with his stealth already enabled. She froze, allowing him to shield her.

The leaves they'd disrupted drifted down to the jungle floor, taking what felt like an infinitely stretching period of time to settle while the both of them held still and silent, awaiting whatever pursuers would emerge.

One stealthed form bounded past and continued on - Carbide, if his heedlessness was anything to go by. Nearly twenty full seconds later, the two stealthed females came combing the treeline. They passed within a few neighboring trunks of their hiding place before continuing on.

Another few moments passed and still they waited. The tree trunk was hard against her back and something was itching at her collar. It had taken until now for her to think about her manner of hiding. His chest was hovering inches in front of her face and his chin bumped the top of her head. She realized his hips were leaning against hers, igniting a fiery blush inside her body that was sure to get them both skinned.

She tapped twice to signal that she thought it was time for him to start letting up - just as a watery form alighted on the trunk nearest.

Runite pressed closer to smother Nasira's sharp intake of breath. Even stealthed, the aura she emanated was primal and formidable, and the mere suggestion of her unseen form stalking through these wilds seemed somehow more terrifying than actually looking her in the eye. Even with Runite to shield her, Nasira felt as though she was a prey animal caught in plain sight.

A trio of thin red lines sliced over the jungle … and then over them. The beams bent and distorted as they passed over Runite's invisible shoulders, and then back into the jungle. The huntress leapt off her purchase in the direction the others had gone.

Apparently she had sensed nothing amiss.

It took Nasira a moment to realize her heart was not the only one thundering in the tiny space they shared. It might have been all clear for an hour or ten seconds before Runite shed his stealth and tilted his mask down at her - there was still not a part of him that wasn't pressed against her.

Nasira opened her mouth to speak. "I…"