The best kind of trophy - Yautja x Reader

Chapter 10: Stars above, and the age of foreshadowing

If someone had told her that by the end of the week Max would have not only been let in on a state secret, but then proceeded to give the government the metaphorical finger, be abducted by a humongous alien, and then get lost in a place that would have been every Sci-Fi nerd's wet dream, Max would have personally shoved that person in a straightjacket and dragged them off to an Asylum.

Well. She was fucked, not literally (not yet), and not hyperbolically. The situation was dire.

Having walked straight a-not-so-little plaza, Max couldn't really formulate one coherent thought.

If she thought the streets she was on before looked lively, this place was absolutely teeming with creatures.

The shops, each accessible via catwalks or slim staircases that violated every OSHA regulation out there, stretched to the very roof of this place, which was a glass-dome letting the light, or lack-there-of, from space infiltrate the innards. Many stalls littered the center and betwixt those, Aliens of all kinds, shapes, sizes, and color mingled. Her Translator was picking up so many stray sentences, each of a different language, that it was starting to heat up significantly in the shell of her ear until it seemingly had given up its valiant effort, and announced that it would shorten the radius of eligible speech for translation.

On one hand, Max had found herself relieved that the translator wouldn't be blowing and/or melting off her ear just yet, but on the other hand, she was somewhat bummed that she wouldn't get to eavesdrop on the various creatures and their topics (and also maybe get a heads up should attention fall on her).

It was only when a hulking creature, even bigger than Tau, though most of the bulk could be attributed to feathers, brushed past her flank and left an almost electric sensation to seep into her cloth and skin, that she realized just how overwhelmed and overstimulated she felt.

"What the fuck" was the only string of thought within her mind, repeating like a mantra as the realization that she was way, WAY, out of her depths continued to sink in.

Her feet felt glued to the spot, and her mind was struggling with whether to focus on what had just happened, or on everything that was happening around her. Feral instinct and curious intellect were competing, whilst rational had long since thrown in the towel. Her bones itched and her spine tingled at the sheer amount of plain dangerous and strange-looking creatures, at their claws and the weapons they carried, and her soul ached with starving curiosity and gleeful wonder.

There was also that nip of anxiety and confusion in her nape at what just happened when Tau sent her away. From the look of it, he seemed tense, but didn't seem to have worries about his own safety given how amicable he interacted with his kin. This meant that he was on edge because of her safety, which just conjured up more questions. He must've deemed it safer to send her off alone into the midst of a bunch of alien travelers despite knowing how intrigued everyone would be by a human. Ergo; this community was way more sound than what he made her believe, or the new arrival was just that much more dangerous, that sending her off on her own would have been the better bet. Either way, Max was going to trust his judgment on both parties, for now. If Sci-fi and common narrative tropes had taught her anything, it'd be to trust your knight-in-shining-(though rather skimpy)-armor's instructions, unless she was keen to re-enact being the damsel in distress whisked off to a flesh market.

Tau had been as cagey and brief in his answers as one can get, but Max had gathered by now that humans were a rare sight in the galaxy, which, from what Max had read between the lines, had something to do with his people's hunting practices, or well, precautions. Apparently, there were a few stray human colonies, some self-governed, others under the protection of more or less benevolent civilizations, strewn about the galaxy, most of which attribute their existence to abductions by various factions from way back when. There were also strays, but those tended to be in such good company that they wouldn't be messed with, or stayed hidden, much like she was now. Given the rarity of humans, like any rare thing, there was a demand for them. Be it for trophies to display in a species zoo, or scientific analysis and autopsies by other civilizations, or just plain for their biological components to use in sci-fi-tribal-witch-doctor-medicine, one would be hard-pressed to find an alien who wouldn't be interested in getting their hands (or paws...or claws) on such a rare specimen.