Riddik's Story: Escape

Getting the three newly-hatched beasties to his room had been an adventure. After all, the tunnels, though dim, were still lit. The tiny swarmlings were only a few inches long and managed to hide in Riddik's fur, feathers, and clothing. When one bit him, he hit it good, nearly smashing it flat against his forearm. Neither one dared bite him again. So they were safe enough, burrowed under cloth and fur.

The bigger one, though, she was trickier to deal with. She kept tangling up with his feet, trying to keep under the shadow of his body and his helpfully outstretched wings, making him hop around and curse every time he nearly tripped. In return, she tried a couple times to snap at his feet and tail whenever he accidentally-- or not so accidentally-- kicked her. Since that only resulted in him snapping his wings shut and a pained keen as even the low light hit her skin, that didn't happen often. He didn't, however, stop her from growling and snapping at Twenty-Eight when he ventured too close.

"Guess she's not falling for your charms," Riddik smirked the last time Twenty-Eight, in a rare show of curiosity, ventured into that shadow to sniff at the beastie's tail, and nearly got his nose bitten off for his trouble.

"You've managed to attract a group of useless little monsters who can't even stand a little light," Twenty-Eight retorted. "I hope you're happy."

"Heh."

Riddik didn't bother actually answering that beyond the single, dry, unamused chuckle. They were at their rooms, now, and he promptly escaped into the darkness of his own, leaving Twenty-Eight to stew outside. He didn't bother turning the lights on, just pulled his goggles up and let the grues explore. Not like there was a lot to explore, but they were little guys. Maybe it'd seem bigger, to them. He wandered into the small, attached bathroom and turned the water on in the bathtub to let them splash around and get clean from their egg-goo and the blood of their clutchmates. That was where all three immediately went first, whether drawn by the sound or actually wanting to get clean. The big one was obviously more dominant, swatting and snapping at the other two whenever they annoyed her, but neither did she try to eat them the way she had the others. Whether that meant she felt some kind of truce or connection with them, or just that she wasn't hungry anymore just then, Riddik couldn't guess.

Twenty-Eight was right, though, he thought as he sat down on the bed and watched the three hatchlings flutter, creep, and dart around the room after their bath. What he could do with a trio of dumb, vicious, light-sensitive beasts like these was limited. But he hadn't had a choice, and if there was one thing he prided himself on, it was his resourcefulness. He'd figure something out, make some kind of use of them. At the very least, he could make some sort of pouch or case for the little ones and just turn nocturnal for dealing with the big one. At best, he could find some way to protect them another way, whether it be by magic or just clothing them, as ridiculous as that sounded.

All in all, though, it was a good thing he preferred the dark, too.

The biggest of the three, the girl whose color he really couldn't discern-- his own sight didn't work that way, in the dark-- but he guessed was a mottled sort of gray, finished her exploration first and came crawling back in his direction. Riddik watched her closely, half-expecting another attack. He hadn't really proved yet that he was stronger than the big ones like her-- none of the big ones had paid him much attention, except her-- and he wasn't really sure just how smart the little beasties were. There was something to them, as they'd made it perfectly clear to him that they weren't going to try to eat him-- at the time, anyway-- before coming within striking range, but that didn't require anything more than self-preservation instinct, empathy, and minimal intelligence. Even an animal knew to act submissive to something that could squash it with very little effort.

When the grue stopped just out of range, he grinned a little. "You're just as wary about me as I am about you, aren't you?" he commented.

The grue said nothing-- well, that wasn't surprising; he hadn't expected her to-- but she regarded him, as much as anything completely blind could regard anyone. Her wedge-shaped head tilted this way and that, as if she were listening to things he couldn't hear or didn't bother paying attention to, and a little, warbling chirrup came from her toothy little mouth.

"Wonder if that was a yes or a no," Riddik chuckled, settling back in the bed and opening his wings more comfortably.

The little beast made the expected lunge, which he intercepted with a kick that sent her sprawling across the room with a squawk. "You do that again," Riddik warned, sitting up again and pulling out his shiv to display to her, "and I cut you, instead of kick you." To make it stick, hopefully, he even shot a picture into her head of her making another lunge, and him cutting one of those funny ear-stalks right off, haloed with his own particular brand of sight. "You understand me?"

The grue gathered herself up and crouched by the tail, two-pronged tail lashing like a cat's and face pointed directly at him. Riddik had no idea if she understood him, or not. She was blind; did images make any sense to her? Did words? He resheathed the shiv and settled back on the bed again, pointedly not watching her, waiting for another attack that might suggest that she hadn't. The other two had stopped their fluttering around and were clinging to the wall near the ceiling on the other side of the room. Riddik had the feeling they were waiting to see what the big one did.

For a long moment, nothing happened, but then he felt the thin mattress shift and a glance her way told him she had put both foreclaws on the bed, head just barely breaching the mattress. "If you're going to play nice, you can come up," he told her, lacing his words with a little telepathy: invitation and warning both.

There was another pause, but then the grue slithered up onto the bed and flopped down next to him, like a small, tired, slightly damp dog. He patted her skinny side with a chuckle and said, "Why don't we both just say we'll not hurt the other one on purpose, and leave it at that?"

The grue snapped her teeth in the general direction of his hand but didn't move away, and he felt something that could have been agreement tickle into his brain, and it felt a bit like it could have been from her. It certainly wasn't from him, or from Twenty-Eight. What was more, it was a reluctant agreement, which made sense. He could guess why, too. "If I start getting too soft, you can go ahead and bite me," he suggested. "But only if I do. And don't be surprised if I bite, back." And he had no intention of doing so.

That got something he was much more certain was from her: an obviously answering, and less reluctant, agreement, echoing a little with just as obvious exhaustion. Well, he could give her that. It had been a long day for her, being a baby and all.

"Then we're both on the same page," Riddik said, satisfied, and closed his eyes. The tiny swarmlings fluttered over to burrow into his feathers again, and within moments all he got from the three of them was an overwhelming sense of sleep.

Eventually, Riddik knew he'd better learn to fight that off, but right then it took him by surprise and he couldn't help but join them.

His last thought for the night was, Damn psionics....