Boundless

...and Strings

***

"Wow! That's so cool!", the voice had a childlike quality.

"It's an ancient type of technology! Useless!" Another individual exclaimed, unimpressed.

Lar'jar had wasted no time and brought the kids to the platform as well. There was no doubt in his mind the kids would thoroughly enjoy being allowed to explore all that alien paraphernalia.

Oomans were one of the few sentient prey the Yautjas had the opportunity to hunt, after all.

"That's what prey use, you morrow. We should know everything about it!" A third voice added.

Lar'jar was responsible for a group of 20 young males. They were all relatively young. Not yet at the age to leave their mother for Hunter training, but already being waned of the maternal presence.

It was their first off-world journey where they would not have a supervisor overseeing the whole trip - the kids were expected to keep consistently good behavior as they would go from tutor to tutor until they were brought back home.

Teaching discipline from childhood was one of the many things that would increase their chances of surviving their blooding Chivas.

All 20 were helping organize Lance's hoard, which included a modern Dropship and some vehicles - and a group of seven kids was avidly discussing it.

"Can we go inside?" One of the kids asked.

"Don't touch anything", Lar'jar cautioned, deciding to follow them inside just to be sure. The Medic was quite positive Lance kept loaded guns there.

And then a sharp and loud noise surprised all Yautjas inside the dropship, and the Medic was pleased to see how seven males had become instant alert. But praise would need to wait.

Lar'jar rushed outside the dropship to find Ze'ev berating a kid (he had ambushed his nephew into helping him with those younglings).

"Everyone's alive?" The Medic shouted upon seeing blood all over his nephew's maroon right paw.

"A kid got a chest injury. He will survive", the Hunter shouted back.

"All right, you pests, everybody out", the Medic barked to the boys inside the ship.

Growling their laments, the kids jumped off the dropship.

Lar'jar followed, wondering how his brother would react to the horde of kids.

***

Lance wolfed down 400mls of Ah'kaedh's blood.

The Enforcer observed as the Medic examined her some minutes after, eyeballing the state of her throat since such small changes could go unnoticed by the scanner (the downside of hacks).

"It does look better", he declared, after inspecting her once more with the biomask on, to add the footage to her records.

The Medic asked her to take liquid diet to see how her stomach would react, and her throat had suffered again with her tummy's rejection of anything that was not water (or blood).

(At least she was able to keep water down).

"Told you", she murmured, running her fingers inside the glass to collect the remains of blood.

"And your stomach?" the Medic went on.

"No nausea", she said and sucked the finger coated in green.

"Do you want more?" The Medic asked after seeing how avidly she cleaned her digit.

Lance nodded awkwardly. For her human sensibilities, it was freaking creepy to ask for blood (or maniacally lick bloody fingers). And here she was, asking for more.