Gigasect (1)

It used to be that whenever someone spotted a tarantula, they would point at it in horror and scream, "Kill it with fire!"

That's a little harder to pull off when your enemy is a ten-foot-tall, hairy, eight-legged, half-human half-spider monstrosity with venomous, twelve-inch mandibles strong enough to mash an average human adult into unrecognizable pulp within three minutes.

Fortunately, Yantu isn't your average adult. Or an adult at all, really.

He hides himself amongst the lower branches of an old tree, where the boughs are thicker and more likely to support his weight. He steadies his breathing, feeling his heartbeat slow down as a sense of calm washes over him, and carefully monitors the mutant's movements.

This one is moving rather sluggish, the ends of its fangs still faintly red with fresh blood. It's eaten recently, which makes it a far easier target than one at full power.

Yantu slides an arrow out of the quiver on his back and nocks his bow, training the tip on the mutant's head. It stumbles aimlessly down the path on unsteady legs, coming closer with each step, unaware of the hunter in the trees.

Yantu breathes in and out: one, two, three, one, two, three.

The mutant's head jerks up with the twang of his bow as he fires, but it's too late. The arrow tip pierces it between the eyes with a resounding thud, and catches on fire. It shrieks, its human hands coming up to claw uselessly at its flaming head, but it only takes another four seconds before its grotesque body collapses to the ground, its eight legs curling up with its death. The stench of burnt flesh fills the air.

Yantu isn't bothered by the smell anymore, not after so many years of breathing it in. He watches as the fire burns until nothing of the mutant is left but ashes. He sighs in relief, unfolding himself from his position in the tree and stretching his arms up to get rid of the minor kinks in his muscles from holding himself in that crouch for too long.

That's one less enemy to worry about in this neck of the woods.

He casts a cursory scan over the trees to make sure there's no others nearby, then shimmies down the tree to scatter the ashes. No need to let any other hunters know that someone was here recently.

Yantu scours the area for anything useful. He finds a patch of wild mint growing a little deeper in the forest, but its leaves are small and sparse. Not good enough to make anything out of them. He marks the spot in his mental map and continues his search. The trees are silent around him, any wildlife having long since fled with the mutant’s approach.

Little shafts of sunlight pierce through the thick forest canopy overhead, lighting the way for Yantu to see, and to help him keep track of the time. Gigasects are more active at night, so it’s prudent for him to be able to make it back to his home before the sun sets lest he be caught and made into one’s next dinner.

He comes across some scattered remains: chipped bits of bone with tiny shreds of flesh still clinging to the edges. There's a jaw fragment half-buried in the dirt. A handful of teeth strewn about. A few scraps of cloth soaked in blood. Clearly, this was where the mutant had eaten its last meal.

Yantu shakes his head and kneels to gather what's left of the body. He digs a small divot in the earth and buries the bones, sending up a quick prayer for peace.

He can at least do this much for the ones who didn't make it.

The sound of a distant crash makes him leap to his feet, warily scanning his surroundings, ears straining for the telltale sound of lumbering footsteps. He slips two throwing knives into his hands just in case.

Five seconds pass. Then ten. Twenty. Forty. Sixty.

He relaxes, but doesn't let go of his knives. The noise had been caused by something in the woods. Yantu looks for the tallest, sturdiest tree around and climbs up for a better look.

There isn't anything amiss from the tops of the trees when he surveys the forest from his perch. Except—his eyes narrow at the crooked form of a sycamore, leaning against its neighbors. Half of its leaves are missing, and a good chunk of its thinner branches have been snapped as if something large had run into it.

Yantu gauges the direction of the sun and feels his shoulders loosen a bit when he realizes that the sycamore is nowhere near his home. Good, that means he doesn't have to grab his emergency stash to make a quick getaway.

His ears prick up at a slight rumble, followed by the sound of a flock of birds taking off from the trees near the sycamore, screeching in panic. He grimaces. Part of him doesn’t want to get involved, but he also doesn’t want to let a potential threat keep skulking around his forest.

It’s a moment’s work to get down from the top of the tree and back to the ground. Yantu gets on his hands and knees and puts one ear close to the ground to see if he can tell exactly what kind of danger he’s facing here. His hands press into the dirt, all five fingers spread out. He closes his eyes, takes a deep breath, holds it, and listens intently.

Thump-thump-thump. Thump-thump. Thump-thump-thump. Thump-thump. Thump-THUMP-thump. THUMP-THUMP!

Yantu’s brows furrow in confusion. It’s hard to make out, but there appears to be two separate sets of vibrations originating in the same area. One is definitely a Gigasect, which makes the other one—

He leaps to his feet and dashes away through the undergrowth, feeling his heart pulse so loudly that it echoes in his ears.

A human. A live human. It’s been ages since Yantu has met another person like himself and not just the leftovers of a mutant’s meal. He hopes that he makes it in time to save them.

As he gets closer to the disturbance, he hears an unknown voice yelling, "Get back, you beast! Back, I said! That's right, stay away from me if you don't want this fucking stake lodged in your eyes! I ain't afraid to use it!"

Yantu slows, conflicted. It sounds like whoever this human is, they're managing just fine. But this voice—a little hoarse, a little high, tinged with equal parts desperation and bravado—sounds like a woman.

He's never met another woman after his mother passed away.

A curious feeling takes hold of him and compels him to creep forward on silent feet. Years of living in the forest have taught him the value of stealth; walking just like the big predators do, one foot in front of the other, each step in the shadow of the last. Neither leaves nor twigs crunch during his approach.

A short, shrill scream makes him tense. "Oh, you've done it now, you motherfucker! Take this!"

There is a meaty thud up ahead, followed by the characteristic shriek of a Gigasect in pain. The ground shakes as it stumbles backwards, crushing several trees as it loses its balance and falls backwards onto the ground. Its limbs thrash uselessly at its hairy sides.

Yantu dives behind a row of bushes to avoid being seen as a much smaller figure stalks fearlessly up to the wailing mutant. He peeks out between the leaves as best he can to observe the human.

He was right, the human is a female. He knows this because of the strange lumps protruding from her chest, which he himself lacks. Her hair is nothing like he's ever seen before: a bright orange color reminiscent of the clouds at sunset, hanging around her ears in little curls. She is carrying a rather wicked-looking knife, the jagged tip still dripping with clear ichor.

She stops just a hair out of range from the Gigasect's flailing legs and scoffs at it. "What a weakling. I should've done this sooner." The woman ducks under its legs and begins to stab viciously at the joints where the legs connect to the body. The Gigasect's movements become even more violent, tearing up strips of dirt and detritus where its feet impact the ground.

Yantu watches her hack off all of the mutant's limbs, muttering increasingly louder renditions of "die, die, die, just fucking die already, you piece of shit" with each leg that she succeeds in sawing off.

By the sixth leg, it stops flailing and just lays there pathetically, twitching in sporadic bursts. Yantu almost feels sorry for it. By the time its last leg is severed, it has stopped moving almost entirely. It waits for its death with resignation.

"What are you looking at?" she snarls.

No answer.

The woman's curls bounce as she delivers the final blow with a frustrated scream, driving her knife through its head and finally killing it. She spends the next few seconds panting over the body.

Well then. Yantu decides to stay in the bushes out of self-preservation, sitting still as a statue as the woman sighs and draws out her knife with a wet squelch. She flicks the blood off, but doesn't put the knife away, holding it firmly by her side.

"Come out." Her voice cracks through the silence, nearly making Yantu jump out of his skin. She surveys the area with sharp turquoise eyes. "I don't like being spied on. Come out, I said."

Yantu doesn't move; barely blinks and breathes, even. She can't find him here.

Her lips peel back in a snarl and she lunges forward, hacking off a chunk of foliage somewhere to Yantu's right. He flinches, but still doesn't expose himself.

The woman harrumphs when she doesn't find anything. She scrubs one pale hand through her bright, curly tresses and mutters something too low for him to make out. Then she finally turns on her heel to leave, though not without giving the dead Gigasect a last disgusted kick on her way out.

Yantu stays in hiding until he is reasonably certain that she won't return. He peeks out to be sure before crawling out of the bushes on his hands and knees. He quietly approaches the downed Gigasect.

Dappled sunlight turns the disfigured corpse a mottled brown. Its hairy legs are scattered in the dirt, transparent blood sinking into the gray earth and filling it with a sense of death. The humanoid part is limp, its naked torso hanging with arms akimbo over the side of its enormous arachnid body. Its beady black eyes stare out from a slackened face, a thick trail of blood oozing out from the stab wound that ended its life.

It looks pitiful like this. Yantu shakes his head and pulls out his bow to set it alight, so that the stench of fresh meat won't attract any other predators in the forest.

He startles violently when a knife buries itself into the dead mutant's abdomen, mere inches from his face. A gasp escapes him before he can stop it. As he whirls around to face the threat, his eyes meet furious aquamarine, loose threads of untameable orange hair flying around the woman's face like young leaves before a storm. She stalks forward, the line of her shoulders taut with menacing aggression.

Shit.

Yantu backs away, holding his bow in one hand and showing off the emptiness of his other. He tries his best to appear unthreatening as possible, but the woman’s long strides eat up the distance between them in a flash, and in seconds, he finds himself bodily tossed to the bloodied ground.

He hits the dirt with a muffled yelp. The impact winds him, a streak of too-bright light flashing across his vision momentarily. Yantu blinks furiously to regain his bearings, then he tries to scramble back to his feet.

He stills as he registers the sharp edge of her knife come to rest tenderly across his throat. She must have grabbed it from the corpse after incapacitating him.

The woman inhales sharply when he looks up to meet her gaze, “What the—a kid? The hell are you doing out all the way out here?”

Yantu blinks at her, unsure what she’s asking, exactly.

The silence stretches between them when he doesn’t speak. The woman narrows her eyes at him. “Answer me. I’m not made of patience, kid.”

Yantu drops his eyes, though he can’t see the knife, then looks back at her.

She seems to get the hint because the edge of the knife is pulled directly away from his throat, though she still keeps it close. “Do you even understand what I’m saying?” she asks, a touch derisively.

Yantu wants to roll his eyes at her, but his intuition screams that doing that right now will be a Very Bad Idea. He settles for giving her a curt nod instead.

“Hm, so you can understand me, but you won’t speak. Or is it that you can’t speak?”

Yantu slowly raises one hand, the palm open and all five fingers spread out once again to show that he is not in possession of any weapons, taps at his throat once, and shakes his head. The woman is tense the whole time he moves, watching him like a hawk until he completes the action.

“Can’t?” she says.

Yantu nods.

“Hm. I suppose that means you won’t be able to tell me why you’re out here instead of in a camp. Fine, whatever. I’m not in the business of killing kids, anyway.” She finally takes the knife away, allowing Yantu to breathe a silent exhale of relief. She stands back up and offers a hand to help him off the ground, putting her knife back into the sheath hanging from a leather strip around her waist.

Yantu dusts himself off once he’s back on his own feet. He makes a face when the sliminess of the blood-soaked mud smears over his exposed skin and stains his pants with blotches of brown not unlike the color of animal feces. He gives the woman a baleful glance.

She snickers at him, “My bad, but in my defense, I thought you were an enemy.”

Yantu huffs. She’s lucky that he knows there’s a river nearby where he can wash his clothes.

“I’m Merina, by the way. You got a name I can call you? It’s pretty tiring to keep calling you ‘kid’ all the time.”

Yantu taps his throat again.

“Oh, right, you can’t speak. Do you know how to write?”

He nods. He casts about for a decent stick. Morbidly, he entertains the brief thought of picking up one of the Gigasect’s hacked-off legs to draw in the dirt with, but discards it just as quickly since that would probably be ill-advised.

“Here.” Merina hands him a twig she picks off of the ground near the bushes.

It isn’t the greatest stick—too thin, too gnarly—but it’ll do. Yantu moves over to a patch of dry earth and slowly begins to draw out the letters of his name.

Y-A-N-T-U.

Merina leans over to read it when he’s done. “Yan-too,” she says, completely butchering the pronunciation with her short, high ‘a’ sound and the too-long 'u'. “Did I say that right?”

He vigorously shakes his head no. He draws a downwards arrow from the ‘a’ and painstakingly spells out ‘yawn’ beneath it. Tapping the new word, circling the ‘yan’ part of his name, then tapping the new word again.

She raises a thin eyebrow at him. “Yawn-two?”

Yantu stares at her, unimpressed. She stares back, equally serious, for all of five seconds, before she snorts and looks away. “Crikey, kid, take a joke, will you? Nice to meet you or whatever, Yantu.”

He actually rolls his eyes this time, dropping the twig into the soil beside his name. When no blow comes forth in response to his sass, he feels safe enough to pick up his bow from where it had fallen to the ground. Yantu gives it a good shake to remove the dirt. But before he can set out for the river, Merina claps a hand on his shoulder to stop him in his tracks.

“Where do you think you’re going?” Her grip is like steel—unyielding.

Yantu gestures at the sorry state of his pants and mimes washing them.

“You’re going to… clean them? Water’s gonna do jackshit for those pants, you know. Gigasect blood stains like nothing else.” The woman steers him in a different direction, ignoring his silent protests. “Come with me, I’ll get you some new clothes. It’s my fault yours are like that in the first place, anyway.”

Yantu tries one more time to escape, but to no avail. Her fingers are practically crushing his shoulder now, and she shows no signs of letting him go. He feels rather like a mouse that’s been caught by an owl to be carried off to its doom.

He gives up and lets himself be hauled off when it’s clear that he can’t get away. Well, he supposes it’s time to change out of these old rags anyway.

After a minute or two, Merina releases him so he can walk beside her. Yantu rubs his aching shoulder with a subtle wince.

"So Yantu, how long have you been out here?"

Yantu shrugs. How do you convey you've lived here your whole life without speaking?

"Figures you wouldn't know," Merina says under her breath. She drums her fingers against her hip. "I'm going to go out on a limb and say that you've probably been here a while. Do you like living here?"

Yantu cocks his head at her, drawing his eyebrows down in confusion. He doesn't quite understand what she had just said. He has never lived anywhere else but the forest. This is his home. Of course he likes it here amongst all the greenery and flowers and partial sunlight and the wild animals. This is his territory.

Merina seems to take his silence in an entirely different way though. She scrunches up her nose in an odd manner and—to his bemusement—pats him on the head with short, soft taps. "Don't worry, I'll get you out of here. If I ever find the sorry bastard who left you here in the first place, I'll cut his dick off!"

Yantu cringes away from her, one hand covering his own privates protectively. That sounds like a man’s worst nightmare!

The red-haired woman snorts out a low, ugly laugh, the kind that bubbles up from your chest and makes you choke on your own spit. “Not you, silly! I mean whoever decided to leave you alone here to fend for yourself. ‘Cause that’s some serious bull—”

BANG!

Whatever she’s about to say is interrupted by a high-pitched whistling sound and the impact of something exploding the tree right next to them. Yantu throws himself backwards to escape the shower of splintered wood and the ominous hiss of something colorless being released into the air. Leaves and broken branches rain down around him, obscuring his line of sight. He breathes harshly, wild-eyed. Who dares to attack him in his own forest?

Yantu tries to struggle to his feet, only for his muscles to involuntarily relax. He crashes to the ground, the world swaying in an alarming way. Colors blur together, sounds distorting into screeches that seem oddly muted, like he’s hearing them from underwater. His shoulder throbs from where he had hit the ground, and his heart thunders in his ears as he lays there, uncomprehending.

He can’t move. What’s going on? A burgeoning sense of panic seizes him in a vice grip as he tries his hardest to get his body to do anything, even twitch a finger, something, anything.

He fails.

“What the—who the fuck did that? You cowards! Come out and face me!” Merina bellows through the abrupt haze of dizziness that sweeps over him.

The world slows to a syrupy halt. Yantu blinks slowly, his eyelids feeling heavy and sticky as if they've been drenched in tree sap. His thoughts become fuzzy and indistinct.

What was he doing? He can’t recall.

And who’s talking? They’re so loud…

"—up! Kid, wake up! Don't touch him, you—hey! What the hell, he’s just a kid! No, no, STOP—”

White-hot pain bursts in his head, little fairy lights behind his closed eyelids twinkling, his pulse throbbing hard and banging rocks against his skull. Yantu lets out a silent, pained breath.

When the darkness rushes up to meet him, he has no choice but to fall into it face-first.