Dreaded Waters [A Predator Story]

Alternate Chapter 5: Conclusion.

Hopkins Village secluded alleyway - Hu'Kuo vs. Flint

"<You fight as well as you bark, Flint!>" Hu'Kuo snarled, twirling his Combistick.
With a powerful thrust, the benign Predator lunged towards his adversary fast enough to slice across Flint's left rib! Dripping a stream of fluorescent green blood, Flint lets out a pained howl before swiping his mace at Hu'Kuo.
"<And you haven't lost your edge for a mere weaponsmith, Hu'Kuo!>" Flint commented with a swing of his Oni Mace.
Hu'Kuo and Flint swung blades and rammed heads for hours into their duel. The two Yautja warriors continued to settle their rivalry under the seclusion of a distant alleyway from Hopkins Beach and away from any human life. It just became clear to Hu'Kuo that his observation/protection of the human female he spared was nothing but a cleverly premeditated distraction so that Flint could escape to tie up loose ends.
Now Hu'Kuo is caught in a fight not only to keep their presence concealed but also to keep Flint away from a team of humans under Hu'Kuo's reluctant guardianship.
This was not how he planned. This was something Hu'Kuo, a fearsome 700-year-old titan of his predatory species was unprepared for!
But like it or not, he had to finish this battle one way or another.
Getting back on his feet, the Yautja removes his chest armor.
"<No more games here, Flint!!>" Hu'Kuo roared, leveling the business end of his spear in his opponent's direction. "<We end this now!>"
"<Indeed, Hu'Kuo. LET'S.>"
Both Yautjas assumed their respective duel stances. Each locked in a statuesque yet ferocious pose with their weapons of otherworldly malice honed to one another.
A silence of twenty seconds occurred between the two until the wind picked up, sending a discarded beer can falling off a nearby crate and plummeted to the pavement. With a clattering metallic crunch, the sound alone signals either predator to break off from the ground, shaking the earth beneath their massive feet, charge at a breakneck speed towards each other and ram their weapons in a powerful clash!
The very noise was enough to frighten a flock of parrots off a nearby tree. The colorful birds ascended as far as their wings took them away from the neighboring trees of the alleyway and towards the sunlit coast.

Meanwhile, back on Hopkins Beach - 1:30 PM

Back on Hopkins Beach, an entirely different kind of duel was taking place. It was a competitive game of beach volleyball between Kim's team and a rival faction led by a rich upstart named Chris.
A wager was made for Kim and her friends Donny and Tamara to surrender the location of where they made their dive run in the Mayan Temple after being tipped off by a seemingly anonymous source.
In contrast to the Yautjas isolated back alley fight a few miles away, these human tourists are settling their quarrel through ten rounds in a sand-filled open court. The score was 7-14 after the game has accumulated a growing crowd of beachgoers. Kim's team played their best for the first half, even though she was still recovering from her injury. But fortunately, she had Mateo, nephew to their innkeeper, picking up the slack as their receiver. Donny and Tamara also flanked the two whenever one of Chris's team members attempted to serve a spike shot.
Halfway through their match, Donny calls for their ten-minute halftime break.
"Ten...heh... minutes...Donny boy," Chris advised with a finger pointed. He looked visibly exhausted from jumping and spiking. "Don't...spend...uhh.. too much time kissing Kimmy."
"You got a lot of balls, rich boy!" Tamara asserted until Kim settles her down with her hands on either shoulder. "Why don't you take jell-o shots of your granny's--"
"HEY! Enough, don't let him egg you on," Kim advised her gal pal, stifling her. "...He's only sweating because he's losing to a couple of amateurs outside of his daddy's pay grade!"
"OOOOH-HOOO!! BURN!!!" Donny jokingly hollered, giving Kim a high five.
When she extended her arm out, however, Kim groans with a wince as the wound on her side sends out a jolt of mild discomfort, making her arch over.
This catches the attention of Drew, Chris's wing-woman.
"Hey, pixie cut! You good there?" Drew called out from the other side of the net. "Bring your ass here for a moment. I...uh, wanna have a word with you."
"This can't be good," Kim murmured with a scowl. She then moved closer to Donny's visage and mutters in a low voice. "I think she might be on to me, 'D'. Hang back with Tamara and Mateo. I'll handle this bitch..."
Heading over to the net where her adversary smirked, Kim readied herself. Putting on a face that looked unfazed by her rib wound, she faced her rival.
"Let's make this quick."
Drew laughed coyly with her arms crossed.
"Oh, don't worry. I won't take up too much time. We both need a breather."
She then sized up Kim, hoping to find something out of place. Hardly a bead of sweat, save for some droplets of perspiration glistening her neck, thighs, and calves.
"You know you've been playing your heart out, Kimberly," Drew says coolly. "It's like you and your teammates wanna win so bad. Chris feels the same way but, eh, he just hates to lose. So why the effort in your passes and blocks? Scared we'll find out what your hiding under that pyramid?"
It wasn't that they were in a heated game, but rather what would happen afterward that has Kim a bit on edge. After everything she and her friends went through, Kim wasn't gonna let another life be put in danger of a horrific death by a group of alien Predators.
Especially her ignorant competitors.
"First off, we're not 'hiding' anything down in that pyramid, Drew," Kim tells her, resting a hand on her hip. "Whatever's down there ain't worth it. And as for that tip goes, I'm afraid you've been played like a harp. We don't know anything so you tell Chris and Marcus to just leave it at that."
"Whoa, was that bravado just now? You sound so sure of yourself this time, honey. Hmm, something's different about you this time around, and not just the haircut." Drew continued to scoff.
She then began to examine her counterpart once more, much to Kim's annoyance.
"Y'know...that's a cute little rash guard you got on." Drew then complimented Kim's beach top with false liking. She then gestures to the slight lump on Kim's side where her ribs were bandaged. "Last time we saw you on the beach you were no stranger to showing off your jugs a little. Why so modest now? Are you hiding a mosquito bite under there or did you get some kind of hickey near your muffin top?"
"Muffin top!? Oh ho ho, you trashy little skank! You're resorting to body-shaming now? You and Chris must be THAT desperate."
"No more desperate than you are at keeping secrets, ex-junkie!"
With every second Drew egged her on, Kim gritted her teeth to keep from losing her cool. Pacing forward to each other's faces, the two women glared at each other until Chris intercedes between the pair.
"Whoa, easy ladies!" Chris says, intervening between Kim and Drew. "Let's put that fire in the game, shall we?"
"Yeah, we shall." Kim nodded, folding her arms across her chest. "I want five more minutes, though. My team still needs a second wind."
"Make it fast, blondie. I'm in a mood."
Once the pair turned to walk away, Kim smirked, "So am I, pretty boy." An air of pure confidence overtook this gutsy female during the match while her opponent Chris was, from her perspective, gonna lose his nerve. She then strode back with her team and rejoined them kneeling in the sand for a huddle whilst rehydrating themselves.
"So, what's our plan, boss lady?" Donny asked his de facto captain whilst taking a swig of his Powerade.
Kim caressed her blonde locks over to one side to get an idea going.
"I'm thinking we keep replaying our strategy to make it seem we're a couple of one-trick ponies." She says, working up a strategy. "We rotate positions and to confuse them just when it looks like we're backed in a corner! Just like the match we had against those frat boys over at Venice Beach last summer."
Tamara snickers as this brought back a memory.
"We had more players on our side then, but yeah I remember. I spiked that loser in the nose hard he sprayed his girlfriend with blood and snot."
"Uh, let's keep it clean Tammy," Donny said, gesturing to Mateo. "The people here want some good clean sport. And we got a kid here. Besides, I think we may have overstepped our boundaries before halftime. By the way, is Marcus still..."
Donny was referring to, at one point in the game, he retaliated with an aggressive spike set that struck Marcus directly in the face. The impact alone sent this adversary off his feet and rolling across the sand in front of everybody.
"Yeah, he's still salty," Tamara says dryly to him. She leans herself back and spots Marcus from across the court lowering the clump ice pack from his bruised face and spits a wad of blood in the sand. "Ugh! Nasty. Let's take it down a notch, Donny."
"I only spiked him after you got hit!" Donny insisted, pointing to Tamara's reddened forearms. At one point in the match, Tamara blocked an oncoming shot from Marcus which resulted in both her arms being bruised. "They play dirty, we play dirty."
"Yeah, real noble Donny. But that doesn't mean we automatically have to sink to their level! God, sometimes I think I'm ---!!" Kim rebuked, frustrated at the position she and her team are in now. But it was mostly her.
In her mind, Kim was under pressure from riding two sides of a fence. One side, she's protecting her friends by maintaining her end of the bargain she made with Hu'Kuo while on the other side, at this very moment, is trying to keep other people from discovering the Predators base below the Mayan ruins. It was enough for her to nearly explode!
Sighing heavily, Kim regains her composure after seeing her team look at her with concerned expressions. "Okay...okay. I'm...I'm sorry, you guys. It's just... I'll admit we've been getting a tad carried away playing like a bunch of Olympic athletes on steroids. And it's pretty damn obvious that Chris wanted that 'anything goes' ploy just so we can lose ourselves in the game."
Clearing her throat, Kim continues with leading her team to win the competition and forget about the fact that she's being spied on by a cloaked drone that's been circling her like a buzzard or that two men from a faceless government outfit are planning to eliminate her and her friends before they leave Belize.
Finally getting a footing on her emotions, Kim brings her team together with a small lecture.
"Look, the real reason I agreed to come to this beach was to put that episode in the cave behind me...behind us, I mean. Yeah? If we're playing rough, it's for the right reason, so let's keep that in mind. Nobody needs to know what's down in that cave. Neither Chris's team nor anyone else must never know about those monsters. The last thing we need is a couple of bodies on our heads."
"Wait, monsters?" Mateo asked, earning him a glance from Kim, who turns to him and places her hands on either of his shoulders. She's been feeling pretty mortified keeping the boy in the dark about what happened to them so she decides to tell Mateo an abridged version of their encounter below Xunantunich.
"Mateo, there's no...easy way for me to tell you all the details but the bottom line is... I almost yesterday died on our trip," Kim solemnly explained to the boy with a hand pressed over her chest before motioning it to cover her side of the waist where she was injured. "Fue realmente aterrador. But luckily I had my team to save me in time. So when I tell you to trust me, you do just that and we'll cover you when things begin to fall by the wayside, got it? You got us tall people watching your back, playmaker."
"Playmaker?"
"It means you're our Ace in the hole, kid." Kim explained before turning to Tamara. "Hey Tamara, watch Mateo once we go in for the next rounds and he sets up a receive. Also, let's switch gears whenever we score a point, like how your team won during the Nationals."
"Hmm, that just might work." Tamara nodded in agreement. "Unless they saw me trip that day doing a lunge set then we're good to go."
Donny gets Kim's attention with a pat on her shoulder.
"Hey, what did Chris's side-chick say to you?" Donny asked.
"Nothing. She's the same as her boy toy." Kim replied. "But that's beside the point. No more playing by their rules or letting them get under our skin, boys and girls. We can still win this, even if we're on our last legs. I'm using this second chance to give you guys my all, and in turn, you got my back till the end of the line."
Her little speech was enough to leave her three teammates in awe of how inspiring she can be. Kim herself was also at a loss for words when she realized what she was saying.
Bashfully, she rubs her head.
"Eh, that was a bit much wasn't it? Damn. Is it hotter now, or is it me?"
"Don't sweat it, 'K',' Donny encouraged with a nudge on Kim's shoulder. "We can win this and wipe that smug look off Chris's face! So let's hear it, what's the game plan, boss lady?"
Kim proceeds to coordinate her team's game plan with a drawing of the court in the sand. She relays that Mateo should continue to be their net receiver for Tamara as she and Donny maintain their positions behind the latter two. Once the four of them got hydrated after memorizing the game new plan, halftime came to a close.
"Okay team, let's kick some ass!" Kim announced.
The crowd of beachgoers applauded as they were in for a show. Both groups converged on their respective positions on the sand-filled court, ready to continue their match. Donny held the ball for Tamara to begin her jump serve.
"Ready, rich boy?" challenged Donny with a smirk.
Chris scowled, seeing his competitors in high spirits wasn't what he planned.
"Your boyfriend's getting cocky here, Kimmy," he called over from the other side of the net. "What's got you all fired up?"
Kim chuckled, giving Mateo on her left a fist bump to boost their morale as well as Tamara on her right.
"You're the only one who's lit a fire under me, or perhaps a few sparks. But let's just say we've been through tougher scrapes than your douchebaggery. Plus... I'm handling something much bigger than you!"