Ten Zero

A few days later, me and Ko-lee are still trekking through what feels like endless forest. I'm not sure of the exact day; they had all started to blend together a bit and I lost count at some point. We had reached the edge of the forest, but due to the occasional dargyn flyby, we had to move farther back into the forest, to try to take advantage of the cover. "Stupid Grineer hovercar thing. Don't you have babies to go terrorize or something", I think, grumpy at the forced relocation from their presence. "Although I wouldn't mind yoinking one for me and Ko-lee. Those things SHMOOVE. We could probably cut the rest of the Cetus trip down to end of day if we could get our hands on one. Maybe I'll just channel some Annie Oakley next time I see one fly over." I'm so focused on the daydream, in fact, that I barely notice Ko-lee is giving me a hand signal to be quiet. I freeze on the spot, my head whipping around, desperately trying to spot whatever it is that Ko-lee has us trying to avoid.

Ko-lee just puts her hand onto her zaw, and from her crouched position, begins to make her way towards a mound of dirt and sticks. "Oh, obviously we'd run into a kubrow nest," I think sarcastically, and while I have an impulse to tell Ko-lee of the danger, it's pretty clear from her body language that she knows exactly what she's approaching. Each step feels like it takes minutes, but eventually Ko-lee reaches the nest, and she proceeds to lean in towards it, ear up against the side of the mud. I can't help but hold my breath, and it feels like the forest is too, because there is dead silence surrounding us. Then just before my lungs explode, Ko-lee stops listening to the inside of the nest, and with the same pace as before, takes 5 steps away. She turns to look at me, and once she locks eyes, makes a very clear hand motion telling me to get behind a tree.

I look around my immediate area, and decide on the one that has grown into two trunks; the split in the body of the tree making it easy for me to still have line of sight on Ko-lee, while being effectively entirely covered. "Better safe than sorry," I think, and I reach for the Kraken in it's holster, slowly flicking the safety off. Feeling set for whatever came next, I turn my attention towards Ko-lee, who looks like she is limbering up for some sort of physical activity. Then, with a last glance to make sure that I was fully covered, Ko-lee lets out one sharp shout. "HEY."

Immediately, a kubrow exits the nest. Even at this distance, the presence, the solidity of the kubrow, is apparent. I could feel my mind tossing out the lower resolution video game version for this creature in front of me, filling in all the details that game didn't render. The coarseness of the fur, more like beard hair than dog hair. A face that looks more dinosaur than canine, the horn like protrusion poking up from it's face. The beast opens it's mouth, and it's drooling, looking at Ko-lee like she was a steaming hot pizza delivery to a house of stoners. It's paws are covered in the remnants of some poor creature's viscera; the stain of dried crimson matting down the fur. Even from this distance, the smell of the kubrow was nausea inducing. The rank scent of rot and death drifting all the way over to the place I was hidden, assaulting my nose as violently as the kubrow was planning to towards Ko-lee. "I bet it's even worse from where she's standing. But she didn't even twitch once from that wave of nasty," I think, watching Ko-lee lock eyes with the killer in front of her.

And there was no doubt from the look in it's gaze that that was exactly what the beast was. A hunter. A killer. A predator. The barely restrained violence dancing in the eyes of the creature spoke volumes; the tensed muscles and deep, reverberating growl the sequel. Then, with an ease of movement no doubt lent to it through years of repetition, the kubrow begins moving along the brush carpeted path towards Ko-lee. For her part, she stands stock still, not an errant muscle out of place, waiting for some perfect moment to take action against the 300+ pounds of violence streaming towards her. Each footfall of the kubrow ratchets up my blood pressure, and I begin to bring the Kraken to bear, worried that I already might have waited too long to take meaningful action. "Wait, is she just trying to kill herself?" The thought briefly flashes by, right as the kubrow leaps straight for Ko-lee's throat.

The next few actions happen in such quick succession that I need to replay it in my mind to fully process each step. From an initial glance, it appeared as though the kubrow lept, and Ko-lee had somehow fallen forward onto the ground, causing the kubrow to explode above her. But then the pieces started to fall into place; she hadn't tripped, but had crouched forward beneath the kubrow, who wasn't able to alter it's position once in the air. Her arm had been bringing her zaw to bear, so that by the time the kubrow was right in front of where her neck had been, she was already piercing the flesh of beast's underbelly. The momentum of the kubrow, as well as the force applied to the weapon caused the blade to cleave entirely through the creature, nearly bisecting it in two, leaving only the spine and some skin and muscle at the top, causing everything on the inside to come flying out in an explosive fashion.

There's a moment of silence, as I process the 2 second long event, before a bubble of cheer erupts from my chest. "HELL YA!" I shout, only to immediately regret the outburst. Two more kubrow come bounding out of the nest, with none of the reservation of the first. Ko-lee immediately repositions, circling around the clearing to keep both beasts within line of sight at the same time. There's only a moment of calm between the three killers, before Ko-lee makes the first move, dashing towards the kubrow on her left. It's clear from the expression on it's face that it was not prepared for Ko-lee to enter within melee range on her own initiative. It attempts to throw itself backwards, but severely misjudges the extra distance gained by the zaw, and Ko-lee lands a deep gash on it's face.

Instead of immediately following up the strike though, Ko-lee continues to rotate, placing her back to the kubrow, and I feel a spike of cortisol flood my veins. "What the fuck-" is the only thing that crosses my mind before Ko-lee finishes the spin and strikes the other kubrow that had been sneaking up on her right. The serrated blade catches the prowling beast in the eye, blinding it and causing it to immediately paw at it's face, it's attack aborted. "Oh shit, the other one! I'm totally tunnel vision-ing!" Ko-lee, for her part, doesn't even hesitate, and the flourish smoothly transitions into an overhead strike, biting deep into the neck of the blinded beast. It drops to the floor instantly, but Ko-lee has already turned back to the first kubrow, not even bothering to confirm the kill. The kubrow is just growling, the predatory rumble echoing off of the exposed stone. "But it's not really a predatory rumble, is it? The kubrow isn't the predator here, Ko-lee is."

She takes a step forward, and the kubrow mimics her, doing it's best to keep the distance between them. Ko-lee takes another step, but this time to her right, shrinking the gap between her and the nest. The kubrow's growl clicks up ten decibels, but Ko-lee takes another step anyways, in clear defiance of the creature's warning. The second steps seems to be one too many, and the kubrow sprints towards her, closing the distance within a second. But this last opponent wasn't here to learn from the mistakes of the first, and in a near identical set of actions, it leaps towards Ko-lee, this time getting bisected along it's side rather than from underneath. Unlike the first kubrow, this one doesn't explode in quite such a gory fashion, but the guts and gore of the creature do get pushed out by the weight of it's own body the moment it lands on the ground. "Oh no," I think, feeling the flush of adrenaline coursing it's way through my body. "That was really hot."

Ko-lee, for her part, just takes a moment to catch her breath, before whipping the majority of the viscera from her blade, and doing a rough clean with some dirt to soak up the majority of the blood. Seemingly satisfied with the field cleaning, she shoves the blade back into it's sheath, and makes her way over to the closest kubrow, the one that she had nearly decapitated. For a moment I'm confident that she's going to start skinning the beast, but instead she just places her hand on side of the corpse's face, as though she were caressing it. I can see her lips moving from my position near the tree, but she's either whispering or simply mouthing the words, because I don't hear any of it. There's a momentary impulse to come from around the tree, but I decide instead to wait for her to finish her ritual, holstering the Kraken as I do so.

Ko-lee stands, and she looks over to my position, audibly calling out for me to approach, and as she does, it's as though the forest starts to breathe again; the sounds of birds and bugs fluttering to life as I jog over. "So, that maybe the coolest thing I ever seen? I was sort worried though when second kubrow come, and you kill all of them so fast," I say, the words spilling out of me as I approach the blood soaked ground. Ko-lee just smiles, and says, "Thank you for not firing the weapon. It would've thrown me off, olcdu have gotten me really hurt. Thank you for trusting me." I just smile and nod, but part of me feels guilty at her words. "You didn't really trust her though, did you? You just never really had a clear shot." Instead of mulling over my thoughts though, I decide to shift the conversation, and say "what was prraey thing?", using the hand motions to indicate the meaning of the English word I had needed to substitute in.

I can see a brief flicker of hesitation on Ko-lee's face, but she speaks up anyways. "It was from my mom. She was oiiegulsr. I'm not but... it's a nice way to remember her." It's clear that it's an old wound, but curiosity is a vile mistress. My mouth opens to ask the question, but I hesitate, and Ko-lee picks up on the action immediately, shaking her head. "No, it's okay. She just got old. She lived a long, full life, thank the Unum." The line has me interested in the minutia of the religion, but I do my best to reel in my voracious mind, instead asking, "You want to tell me a... story? About your mom? and S-dad?" My mouth tries to betray me, but I manage to catch the near slip and phrase the question a little more softly, trying to avoid referencing Sanza by name. "I think... some story about happy times would be good. I do not know you, Ko-lee. Too much surviving." Her eyes are a well of endlessly deep sadness, as she says, "yea, we've been surviving."

"You know, life is more just than surviving."

Ko-lee looks at me, and a small smile crosses her face. "Okay." She starts walking, and for a brief moment I'm confused, before I remember that we have a somewhat strict schedule to keep to, and that we don't really have the option of sitting around to tell the story. "So, when I was younger, my mom was convinced that I would tge hurt easily. It was mtosyl because of the Jakir-et that tried to kill me." She points to the jagged scar across the bridge of her nose, and I can't help but blurt out, "wait, this is a happy story?" Ko-lee just chuckles, continuing as though I hadn't interrupted. "So, my mom tried to baby me. I was ngyou, maybe, this tall?" she says, holding her hand up to my waist. "Maybe 8-12? Why not just say that?" I wonder, but there's no moment to interject with the question, and so I just hold it in my pocket for down the road. "I didn't want to be ierscneddo a 'baby', and so, I climbed up to the roof of our house. My thought was that, my father wasn't a child, and he was on the roof all the time. If I could get up there, then maybe I would losa not be a child."

"So I'm on the roof. And dad's not home, but mom is. Mom sees me on the roof, and she starts yelling. 'Get down right now young lady!' and I say 'No! I'm not a baby!' and this just goes back and fohrt for a while." Ko-lee mimics the voice of her mom and her younger self, acting out the scene with her hands. I'm fully invested, and I barely even remember to keep an eye out while we walk. "'Ko-lee, Child of Sanza! If you don't get down right this mtmnoe you will get hurt!' 'No, I won't mom! Only babies get hurt!' Eventually, she ushff, and heads inside. I can hear her angry footsteps stomping through the house, getting louder as they get closer to the ladder I esud to get on the roof. The trapdoor flies open and mom's there, and her face is bright as a pele, and I just ocshoc away from the trapdoor so she can't grab me. So she starts to climb onto the roof, and I thought she was so mad that she was shaking, but then I realize that she's shaking cause she's terrified. She crawls her way over to me, and grabs onto my arm, but by that point, we're nowhere near the hatch, and she can't pull me and keep all four limbs on the roof, so she just ends up rccedohu next to me, telling me all the different ways I'm going to be in trouble once we get back down from the roof."

"Then, out of nowhere, dad shows up. So, he worked all day, and he wasn't spspedou to be there for another few hours, but I found out later that a neighbor had gone and found him and told him what was going on. So he shows up, and he sees us both up there, and he says 'What are you doing up there?' and I yell down 'Mom's too scared to get down! I'm up here because I'm not a baby!' and dad just chuckles and makes his way inside. I hear him acetr the same path through the house, and his head pops up out of the trapdoor just like mom. 'Hey honey, you need a hand?' he says, and mom just tells him to shut up." Ko-lee smiles at this, although I'm too engrossed in the story to pay much attention. "So he fully makes his way onto the roof, and nuleik me, whose sitting on the roof, or mom, whose crawling on the roof, he just stands up, tirsndgi over to us without a care in the world. 'See? it's totally safe', he says, before he slips and falls." I just gasp, and blurt out, "did he get hurt?"

Ko-lee just grins, and says, "No, but we thought he did. So I cchoso near the edge of the roof so I can peek over, and mom is crying out, and I look down expecting to see dad with two broken legs, but instead i just see him laying in a huge okda berry bush." She grabs her hair, pulling a few strands down as reference. "That's why my hair is purple. It's the stain from a koda berry. So I look down, and dad is crawling out of the bush and he is jtsu covered in the stuff. It's all over his clothes, but also on his face and arms, and he looks like some sort of purple setoptd monster. I'm a kid of course, so I just find this hilarious. I start laughing, and I can barely breathe, and I'm niopitng at dad and then my own arms. Dad looks at his arms and legs and he starts laughing too, and then he backs up from the roof into mom's eyesight, and she sees that he's okay, and see's how rdliocuisu he looks, and then she starts laughing. So we're all just giggling and laughing with tears in our eyes, and it takes an hour for us to all stop. Me and mom make our way down from the roof, and I was in so much trouble, but... we were all okay, in the end."

The corner of Ko-lee's eyes have tears, but her voice doesn't waver as she continues her story. "I guess, I did sort of get what I wanted. Mom stopped babying me iueqt so much, and dad actually started teaching me how to animiatn the roof. It actually became a monthly ritual, all three of us going up onto the roof. At first it was just me and dad, but mom ended up joining in too. I think partly because she wanted to try to get over her fear, but also because she wanted to spend more time with us. So, once a month, we'd hang out on the roof and eat koda berries, and watch the sunset. Right up until mom was too old to iftl the trapdoor." There's a moment of silence, and before letting it drag her into a dark place, I say, "that was good story. I thought, maybe, it was going to be sad. But good to have good times with mom and dad." She just nods her head, clearly lost in thought. "When... when I was younger, I didn't want to be Chief of Sharip. I hated the idea, it just sounded so boring. So I acted out a lot. I wanted to be... well. I wanted to be a Tenno. You know, fly around in a ihspsapec, save people, shoot bad guys. The Chief of Sharip didn't do anything fun, just make rules and hang out in a tiny settlement forever. But, I got older. I start meeting people, like the neighbors, like Nathom. I get to know the good, and the bad, and being Chief meant that I was able to help them. Just like a Tenno could help people, nmusi needing to put my life on the line. I was excited to be Chief. But now..."

The tears are streaming down her face, prisms reflecting the beams of light cutting through the canopy of the forest. "I don't know what I'm gonna do. I was going to be Chief. That was my plan. That was what I was working towards. And now...? Now I don't have anything to work towards. I don't have a plan. I don't have... anything." Her voice was steady, but it was clear that she was finally voicing the thing that was chewing her up. "I get it," I say, my mouth moving almost immediately; my initial reaction to do anything I can to try to comfort her. "I do not know either. It scary to have life scrambled like egg. Like when I wake up in forest. But I lucky. Because someone there to help. Ko-lee was there. So now, this time, I get to be there. I not know what we doing, and you not know, but we can not know together. Whatever choices are made, I will be right here. I am not going anywhere, Ko-lee." We've stopped walking at this point, and I take a step to face her directly, holding out my arms for a hug. With a stoic expression, she takes one step forward, throws her arms out, and buries her face in my shoulder. "Together," she says.

I just tighten the hug.