304 Large Game
Titanyana inspected her shoulder in the dim morning light, poking and prodding while Petunia made right her hair.
"How was it?" Petunia could see the bruising as well, and while it wasn't particularly bad there was a lot of it. "It doesn't hurt too much does it?"
"No, its fine. A little sore, a little swollen, but it's not that bad." Titanyana was more interested in the source of the bruising. "I don't think the weapon was designed for someone of my stature."
"Not suited for a queen?"
"Not suited for someone so small." Titanyana could tell how much the incident irked Petunia. "It weighed much more than I do."
"How did you use it then? I know you are strong, but you aren't that strong."
"It's . . . Donovan helped me. He stood behind me, guiding my hand."
"Oho? Did you make any 'progress'?"
". . . not really." Titanyana's ears flattened. "He did end up hugging me, sort of, and he was otherwise pretty close to me, however the rain sort of ruined my plans to snuggle up with him."
"I imagine Leno wasn't much help in that regard."
"No, he certainly wasn't. I can't blame him though."
"When do you plan to tell everyone?"
"Tell them what?"
"That you have a mate." Petunia raked her brush along the nape of Petunia's neck, causing her to tense up and straighten her back. "You know they'll be trying to find you one the moment your coronation is complete."
"I think they've already started."
"Leno?"
"Yes."
"I had my suspicions." Petunia released a deep sigh, her breath tickling Titanyana's ears. "Poor kid."
"I don't want to hurt his feelings."
"So you don't think he's being forced to?"
"No, he's definitely been told to court me, but I can tell its more than just following orders." Titanyana closed her eyes, taking a moment to savor the brush scratching behind her ears. "His enthusiasm is appreciated, it really is, but I do want some time alone every now and again."
"Alone with Donovan?"
"And Diana, yes." The two of them fell silent as Petunia struggled to get Titanyana's hair in line. She had gone to bed with a soggy noggin, and was paying the price for her transgressions.
"What's on the agenda today?"
"We are inspecting our kill once Donovan wakes up. The guards set up a perimeter around it last night to ensure nothing eloped with the body, but we didn't think walking all the way out there was worth it at the time. Not without a good source of light, anyways."
- - - - -
Despite his closed eyes, Donovan was wide awake. He had been awake for a while now, actually. True to his promise, he had come back and slept with Diana for a bit after shooting the monster keeping her awake at night, however he hadn't slept as heavily as he should have. Donovan didn't know if it was the adrenaline associated with the hunt or concern about the size of said monster in the scope, but he woke up as twilight made it possible to discern the location of the dog.
She was snoozing on the corner of the bed, keeping Diana's feet warm.
In that regard they made a fine team, Donovan managing her upper body and torso while Mercedes guarded the fringes. In fact, Donovan was currently occupied with pampering this upper portion with some back scratches, Diana sleeping face down on the mattress.
He wasn't thinking about that, though. The repetitive motion did not occupy his mind in the same way a task would, so he needed to do something else at the same time, something that wouldn't disturb Diana, which meant training his ability to use Split. He circulated it, strung it, worked on the speed at which he could manifest them and tried to maintain as many as possible at a given time. He also worked on his ability to 'see' things with Split, which is why he knew Titanyana was sitting down outside the door.
She was nodding off a little, or at least he thought she was nodding off. It was difficult to determine if she was sleeping or just resting her eyes. Either way, she was clearly waiting for him to wake up.
"Hmmmm."
Fortunately for her, Diana seemed to be waking up, if a little bit slower than normal.
"Good morning, sunshine."
"Mhm." She rolled to face him, keeping her eyes closed as she blindly went in for a kiss on his neck. "-gmurmim."
A series of kisses followed, some landing on his neck or clavicle as she closed in on his lips.
"Mmmmm~" A morning make out, one of her favorite ways to wake up. It usually chained into something naughtier though.
- - - - -
Titanyana's breathing had become labored by the time their morning activities came to and end. It hadn't lasted too long, maybe only ten minutes, but it was more than enough to rile her up. Now she was fighting an elevated temperature and frantic imagination.
tump tump tump
That was her signal to stand up and right herself, take a few deep breaths, and act as though she hadn't just listened in on their intimate moment, or any of their other intimate moments. She didn't want a reputation as a pervert.
"Sorry about that." Donovan whispered to Titanyana after the door finished creaking, letting a mildly annoyed Mercedes through as well. "She, uh, needed to take out her frustrations."
Given the 'bruising' visible on his neck and the sweat on his brow, one of significantly lower than average intelligence might be convinced they had been engaged in a light brawl of sorts. Of course the pleased breathing of Diana in the background would quash any such suspicions, but she wasn't about to bring that up.
"I see." She forced a smile, fully aware of her red cheeks and flattened ears. "I only just arrived, so . . ."
"You don't need to lie." Donovan leaned down to whisper in her ear, gently shepherding her towards the stairs so they could get a move on. The confluence of prior events, his voice soft in her ears, and their physical proximity instantly drove her to the peak of arousal, but she kept her lid on. "I know you've been out there for at least half an hour. Sorry for making you wait."
"I, uh, wha-, huh?" Titanyana began to panic, thinking herself fully outed.
"It's embarrassing, I get it, I'd have preferred it if we didn't do that in earshot of you, but warning you might have ruined her mood further." Titanyana wasn't really listening anymore. "Sorry . . . should we get going?"
"Y-yes, yes we should." Titanyana did not want to drive him away, but this fleeting moment next to him wasn't something she could extend any longer.
- - - - -
"Nice shot." Seppard raised his cup of joe to Donovan as he blundered into the clearing they had cut around the corpses. "Looks like you got the lungs and ripped through most of its intestines. The second one shattered its pelvis, though it was probably dead by the time it happened."
The beast's body was colored black with red splotches smattered on its surface. Donovan initially thought the red was blood, but the constant rain and river of ichor flowing from the crater in its gut made it clear this was a natural color scheme. That was far from the most impactful aspect of it though.
"He's a big son of a bitch." Donovan did not have a good idea on the scale of dinosaurs, but he imagined it was close. Even collapsed on its side, the beast was at least three times his height, maybe more. He didn't even want to think about the difference in mass. "How does something this big sustain itself."
". . . you know, Diana asked a question in the same vein a few days ago." Seppard sighed, pouring out the rest of his cold and watered down beverage. "I get it, you don't come from the same background as we do and you seem to have a very concrete idea of what the world is supposed to be like based on your home planet."
Seppard rubbed his tired eyes with his free hand, pinching the bridge of his nose afterwards.
"Verdant Globes are incredibly prosperous pieces of territory, that much I'm sure you know. Crops grow faster, stronger, and more nutritious than on planets with lesser stars, and the people who live on them are generally much stronger with Split than their peers elsewhere - two benefits among many that are inconsequential to the point. Anything and everything organic grows better than it would elsewhere, anything and everything. That means the native wildlife, which is well adapted for the environment, is familiar with the land, and has not been subject to an organized entity culling their population numbers."
Donovan bit his lip, imagining how much of a nightmare it would be to exterminate these monsters without firearms. Volume could serve as an effective defense given the proper conditions, distancing vital components from the penetrating implement. If a sword or spear couldn't cut deep enough to sever a major artery or debilitate a limb, even the fastest and strongest combatants would struggle against a slightly less powerful foe.
"Most of them are ambush predators and they tend to be smart enough to avoid traps, meaning a would-be colonizer is pretty much always going to be face one unprepared. When you add on to that how few people can even contest them to begin with, it becomes easier to just conquer one from somebody else." The air hung heavy while Seppard paused, giving Donovan a moment to absorb that information. "To make things worse, we think this one is still a juvenile, and we don't think its the apex predator of this region."
"Why not?" Donovan couldn't imagine a bigger creature, though he was already in the process of reevaluating his expectations for just about everything. "I mean, it didn't look like it was contested last night."
"Why would an apex predator drag its kill off to a less defensible position right after securing it? Forget wasting energy, that would make it easier for any opponent predators to sneak up on it, especially at night and having to smell them through fresh blood."
"So you're saying there's something bigger out here? Roaming the plains?"
"Given the evidence . . . look, I can't say we've seen one, or even tracks of one, but it doesn't make sense otherwise. I know you probably aren't familiar with the wilderness in general, but the plains here are suspiciously devoid of animal life. We've seen neither hide nor hair of anything larger than a rodent, and even those aren't as populous as most of us anticipated. Now I'm not saying it's a definitive sign, they could still be hibernating for all I know, but it is incredibly concerning how terrified everything but the birds seem to be about roaming about during the day. I don't want to argue about it, but if you could please just take my word on this one-"
"I believe you." Donovan looked around, looking around until he found the other casualty of the night poking out over the top of the grass. "Though, now that you've brought my attention to it, I don't think we'll be finding our apex predator on the surface."
"A burrowing threat? Those are pretty rare, but not entirely unheard of."
"No."
"Then where do you . . . no, that's not possible. Something that large would-"
"You seem to have a very concrete idea of what the world is supposed to be like." Donovan threw Seppard's warning back to him. "Nocturnal activity, prey animals that look like mounds of dirt and grass from above, rapid retreats into difficult to navigate areas with overhead cover . . . if I were to design an animal to avoid a large airborne predator, those are the traits I'd add. Taking my hypothesis of mine a step further, I don't think our predator is capable of seeing red or infrared, and can most likely see ultraviolet."
". . . alright, the first half I can understand even if wrapping my head around the conclusion is difficult, but why don't you think it can see red?"
"The black fur almost certain acts to absorb ultraviolet, making it difficult to spot in that spectra, but red would stick out like a sore thumb if our predator could see it. Given how easy it was to see this guy in the scope last night, I have to imagine the spots are how they identify each other in low light environments, the infrared reflectivity bleeding into the visible red spectra." Donovan started looking up into the clouds, obviously not seeing anything above them. "I could be wrong though. As you said, I don't have much experience with the wilderness."
". . . I'll tell my guys to keep their eyes on the sky. I suspect we'll have more luck there than with an ear to the ground."
"And machine guns." They both dropped into a much more serious tone, tired exasperation replaced by fearful motivation. "A lot of machine guns."
"What are those?" Titanyana, lost in their conversation having been inspecting her shared kill, finally gathered enough information from it to ask a question.
"Think of the rifle we used last night, shrink it down a bit, and then have it fire rapidly without the need to reload. It makes up for accuracy with volume of fire, which also makes it decent at handling masses of targets or those you might not be able to get a consistent bead on."
"Like an airborne target." Seppard finished for Donovan, eyes looking up through the rain as well now. "Ideally they won't think we're food, but there's no telling when a specimen may get curious about our buildings, boats, or cattle. We'll need something to fend them off, if not kill them outright."
"In that case we might be better off with a few carbines or shotguns for those in less populous areas." Donovan thought back to the livestock Arc tried so hard to teach him the value of. "A few loud pops and holes in its wings should scare one away, hopefully."
"Certainly better than leaving them defenseless. It would increase their chances against, uh, you know." He gestured towards the monster they had yet to name. "Might not do it in one shot or even a full clip, but a smaller caliber weapon should still get the job done, eventually."
"Yeah, and in the five minutes it takes for the lungs to fill with blood, our rancher and all his livestock will find their way into its stomach." Titanyana and Seppard cringed at the thought. The as yet unidentified aerial predator might keep the beasties away during the day, but at night there was no such safety in place. "Not that I can think of a better option for them."
Donovan walked up to his kill, running a hand through its fur. It was short for how large it appeared, perhaps only as long as Mercedes' coat, dashing Donovan hopes he might be overestimating its size due to a fluff factor. Unlike the dog, this fur was tough, stiff, almost spiky when brushed against its natural direction. Perhaps this was typical of mammals in this region, or maybe it was a specific trait of this species. Either way, he suspected this was a defensive adaptation, something to give them a little bit better chance in a scrap.
"Do you want to make a trophy out of it?"
"Not really." Donovan didn't care for displaying corpses, especially not when he didn't work particularly hard for the kill. Sure, setting up the rifle was a pain in the ass, but all the kill amounted to was aiming and pulling the trigger. He hadn't tracked, spotted, stalked, or fought it on his own. In his eyes, he had performed something more along the lines of an execution. "Unless Titanyana wants one, I'd like you to see if something useful can be made of it."
"Come now, I'm not asking you to make it into a rug or mount its head on a wall." Seppard walked him around to the beast's head, which was a departure from the strange mix of caniform and feliform features. Everything above the shoulder blades looked to be reptilian in nature, what Donovan imagined to be bony plates covering everything but its eyes. "Take a fang or two, as a memento of the first kill on Nectar, something to tell a story about ten or twenty years down the line. I'm sure someone will make it into a necklace for you."
Seppard exerted a bit of force to open the mouth of the beast, revealing a surprisingly reasonable arrangement of teeth. There were three pairs fangs protruding from both jaws, all of which were sharpened to a mighty dangerous point, however they weren't as overbearing as Donovan was expecting - about a foot long. That made them larger than basically every terrestrial Terran predator, but not absurd for the size of the creature in question. If anything, the scale difference made them almost seem small.
"If you think it's that important, I won't say no. Titanyana?"
"I-I'd like one!" Titanyana blushed, tail whipping behind her back. "Though, um, I don't think it's a good size for a necklace."
"How about a trophy knife then? I'll have my guys take a bit of hide for a sheath and fashion a handle from the tooth. Looks to be about the right size."
"Yeah, let's go with that." Donovan thought this was a much more acceptable form of 'trophy'. Even if the knife never saw use, it would still have value outside of bragging rights. Titanyana seemed pleased with the decision as well, a giddy smile spreading across her face when he made eye contact with her.