Dinah Costigan snuck through purple and blue underbrush, wearing clothing borrowed from her friend's mom and shoes that she had to stuff with extra socks just to make them not slip and slide around on her feet, and holding heavy walnut-stock hunting rifle that would have cost her eight hundred bucks easy back on earth. A light rain fell from the sky, making the air around her heavy with water and the musty smell of earth and plants. The sun wasn't up yet, and the twilight made it hard to see more than a few yards in front of her. She was cold and wet, and she'd skinned her bare knee on an unseen rock about twenty minutes ago.

And she was loving it. She hadn't stopped grinning since she and Luc and Mrs. A had left the campsite.

She was hunting again.

It was something her mom had never liked her doing. Said it wasn't 'ladylike'. Said it was a primitive bloodsport, that it glorified killing innocent creatures. Never mind the fact that Dinah and Paw always ate what they killed, never mind the fact that Paw skun what he shot and turned it into cured leather for sale in town. Never mind that the meat that Mom ate was probably from some poor critter caged up in a factory somewhere that had never known the smell of fresh grass or the feel of sun on its fur.

Dinah slid her feet forward in the special testing kind of walk that Paw had taught her, feeling the earth beneath her foot, making sure that every step was quiet and that her foot wouldn't catch on anything–like that there rock she just felt with her toe. She skirted her foot around it and planted it, then brought her hind foot up forward again. It was slow and methodical, but it was dang quiet and it made sure she didn't skeer away any critters that she might want to shoot.

Of course, she probably didn't need to walk like that. Not thanks to her hunting buddies.

Well, thanks to Luc, anyway. Mrs. A was pretty good at movin' like a shadow. She might even be quieter than Paw was, and she moved like she meant business. Probably how they taught her to move when she was in the army. Or marines. Or whatever she'd been in. Mrs. A was hanging back, letting Dinah take the lead, which was awful nice of her considering that she probably knew more about this kind of stuff than Dinah did.

But Lucas… Dinah stifled a giggle and glanced at the boy out of the corner of her eye. He was trying, bless his heart. He was trying to copy her movements, trying to keep his big ploddy feet from finding every snapping twig or tripping rock or slidy patch of mouldy leaves. But lord and butter, he wasn't very good at it.

Even as she had the thought, poor Luc's foot, stuffed into a set of his mom's Trainers, stepped on another twig that broke with a sound like a gunshot in the still morning air. Luc winced at the sound and tried to hide the redness in his cheeks.

"Sorry," he whispered, his hands choking up on the stock of his little one-shot 16-gauge.

"It's okay Luc," Dinah said, grinning. "Ain't no one alive who knew how to move proper on their first hunt. You're doin' fine." Boys needed careful handlin' like that, otherwise they got so het up over making mistakes that they were just no use at all on a hunt. "Here, try watchin' how me an' your mom does it. You bend your knees like this, right? And kinda shuffle-step forward, like this." She demonstrated, pacing forward slowly and deliberately amongst the underbrush.

"It feels weird," Luc said, trying to copy her movements. "Like my whole body wants to move faster or something."

"You gotta tame that instinct," she said. "Huntin's all about steadiness and patience. You go runnin' off all crazy like, and the only thing you'll be bringin' home for dinner is a powerful hunger."

Lucas nodded, looking all serious, and tried to adjust himself. He did a passable job of it for the next few minutes, until his feet found a half-buried root and he tripped so hard he almost face-planted into the earth.

Dinah very resolutely did not giggle. Even though she wanted to.

They moved as quietly as they could, with no real end goal in mind. They'd decided before they'd left the camp that they'd stick only to the parts of the jungle that Mrs. A had Claimed for them already. Ain't nobody wanted to meet up with another Zone Keeper again, even if the last one had resulted in her meeting and befriending Onesie. They'd had Bel and Liv with them that time, and that had been most of their heavy firepower on that one. This time, Bel and Liv had stayed back with Mr. A and Onesie and Harry and the elf. Said they wanted to try out the crafting stations and help see if any of the stuff they'd brought back from the Dilligaf would be useful.

Dinah suspected they just didn't want to go out at what was the local equivalent of 5 in the morning to try and shoot something.

They were using the age-old hunter plan of following the river, looking for where herbivores might come to drink. So far, Dinah hadn't found tracks of anything that might have fit the bill, but that was partially because she was finding traces of the Forest Mantas here and there, and realized that their acid was probably sweeping away any traces of hoofprints or other tell-tale signs of game.

But… It was strange. Even though she hadn't found anything, she had this weird feeling like she was getting closer to her prey. Which was just nonsense. She was on an alien world with all new rules and new critters… There was no way she should feel like she was closing in on her quarry. But even as she thought it, a shiver went through her and she got the definite sense that she was close.

"I think something's up ahead," she whispered to her hunting buddies. "Get ready."

There was a couple of muted acknowledgements, and she started creeping forward. The underbrush seemed to part around her as she moved, and her feet felt like she was walking on firm asphalt and not squooshy muddy jungle floor.

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The river curved slightly away from them, and there was a particularly thick copse of trees just ahead, hiding the path she was taking from view. She entered slowly, carefully, rifle leading. And there, standing quietly beside the river bank, was…

It looked like if a deer and a goat had had the most beautiful baby in the world and then made sure it learned how to eat people. Its coat was glossy brown and speckled white, its horns were curved in like a mountain goat's, and its long snout was slender and bearded but with a couple of prominent fangs jutting down from its upper lip, almost like a sabre-tooth tiger. It's haunches and six legs were thick and powerful, and Dinah could see even from here the goodly amount of meat on its bones.

It looked like good eatin'.

"Holy cow," Luc whispered. "Is that a deer?"

"Ain't like none I've ever seen," Dinah whispered back, slowly raising her rifle stock to her shoulder. "She's a beaut though, ain't she?" She could almost smell the scent of steaks grilling, of roasts and ground chuck and…

The critter didn't move as Dinah raised her rifle and peered down the iron sights. She settled her aim right over the critter's barrel chest, right where the heart would have been on a hind of the same size. She moved her trigger finger to the trigger guard, letting her breathing slow and steady. It was an easy shot, probably the easiest she'd ever had in her life. The critter just stood there, not moving, not even blinking. Heck, it was practically looking right at her–

It was looking right at her, she realized. The critter's two wide brown eyes were locked right on her, calm and cool.

Well, if the critter was too dumb to run from a hunter, that wasn't her lookout. Her job was to put food on the table, not to give the other guy a sportin' chance it was too dumb to take…

Something ain't right here.

The realization crawled up her head like a bug in soft shoes. Slowly she moved her finger from the trigger, and slowly she lowered the rifle, peering at the critter.

"Di? You okay?" Luc whispered from beside her.

"Gimme a second," she whispered back, then started backtracking in her brain. What was wrong? It didn't feel like a trap, not really. Not like it had when the Zone Keeper had showed up. There didn't feel like there was danger in the air, or like something was waiting in the wings to jump on her… But something definitely was off.

There was a rustle from off to her left, and she glanced over to see the head of one of them feathered serpents, the ones that sometimes brought scroll messages to the family, dangling down from one of the lower branches of a blue-barked tree. It was watching her.

She blinked, and then narrowed her eyes as a thought came to her. She started looking closer into the underbrush around her. There were other critters there. A couple of horned birds with what looked like scales on their wings. A big ol' six-legged badger-like thingummy that had orange and blue stripes. And another one of them feathered serpents. They was all half-hidden in the brush, and they was all looking at her like she owed them money or something.

She peered at them for a second. Then back at the big critter in the clearing, still not moving.

Come to think of it, ain't all the critters that brung us scrolls sorta fall into the same size category? They were always small, birds or snakes or moles or stuff. And they always looked just a little bit too intelligent. The deer critter didn't look like that, but…

Well. Best to just find out, right? Rip the bandaid off.

"Hey," she said in her normal voice. The sudden noise caused Luc to jump, and for the critters to jerk in surprise. But the big one, the sabre-deer, didn't move despite its own obvious startlement. It's muscles jerked and its eyes widened… But it didn't move.

Which sorta confirmed her sneaking suspicions.

She lowered the rifle all the way and pointed at the feathered serpent nearest her. "You. All of you. Are you messing with that critter somehow?"

A look passed back and forth between all the… Liv would probably call them 'System' critters. Then one by one they turned to the one she had addressed first. That one nodded slowly, as though not used to being addressed so.

"Are you messing with it so that it won't run away from me, so's I can kill it and bring it back to the others?" Dinah demanded.

Another slow nod, this one accompanied by a bit of a shifty-eyed look.

"Di, why are you talking to the snake?" Luc asked, staring at the whole conversation.

"Because it's about to get thumped, I think," Dinah said, feeling anger rising in her now. She jabbed a finger at the snake. "I know you guys got this whole weird 'bunch of animals with one brain' thing going on with yourselves, right? Something-Loci, Liv called it. You bring us messages and can sorta communicate and think and stuff, right? So my question is, is that," her finger swung to point at the sabre-deer, "part of that whole thing? Is it one of the System Critters? Does it think? Is it aware like you are?"

The snake listened intently to her, and when she finished her questions it shook its head vehemently and repeatedly.

"No to all my questions? It ain't part of you, and it ain't thinky like you?"

A nod.

Dinah glared at it for a long moment, ordering her thoughts.

"Okay, two things. First, thank you for trying to make it easy on us. I dunno if it's because I'm that Naturae thing or if you just like us or whatever. But second; you can't just override a critter like that, okay? Huntin' doesn't work like that. Yeah we're huntin' for supper, but doin' it like this is just disrespectful. And worse, it teaches bad habits. And worse than that, it ain't fair to the critter. It's gotta have a chance against the hunter. That's how the hunt works. It's me against them, an' the one who's better is the one that gets fed. So no more putin' a whammy on a critter an' droppin' it right in front of me like I was goin' to the super market, okay?"

There was a rustling and trilling between the various system critters, and the spokesnake nodded slowly again, looking contrite somehow.

"Okay good. Just so's we're clear." Dinah nodded, giving the snake one last glare for good measure. Then, in one fluid motion, she turned, raised her rifle, and shot the sabre-deer right in the heart. The critter didn't even buck, it just collapsed to the ground like a puppet with its strings cut.

"What the– Di, I thought you said it had to have a chance!" Luc squawked after the sound of the shot had faded.

"I said from here on out," Dinah said, slipping the rifle onto her back by its strap. "And from here on out, it's gonna be tougher, just like it's supposed to be. But I'm also huntin' for our table, and I ain't dumb enough to let a meal for all of us go away just because it offends my sense of honor. You can't eat honor, Luc. Lesson one of huntin'. So's if you get good luck, you give thinks for it and take it."

"Now that," Mrs. A said with a grin, "is an attitude I can get behind."

"See?" Dinah hooked a thumb at Mrs. A. "She gets it. Now c'mon, I'll show ya how to bleed and gut the carcass. You got the rope I told you to get, right?"

Lucas made a face, but followed her into the clearing. She felt a little bad about shooting the sabre-deer when it didn't have a chance… But she'd feel better when she had some real meat warming her belly later.

Besides, like the man said. Everyone gets one freebie.

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