Walking through a strange environment with a loaded weapon, potential danger on every side, moving smooth and slow so as to not be heard, friends and allies to either side of her, Dinah couldn't keep a smile from her face. She felt like a hog in mud. Like a badger in a honeybee nest. Like a sockeye in a crick. She wasn't just comfortable with how things was right now.

She was in her element.

She moved her feet in their borrowed shoes just like Paw had showed her all those years ago, smooth and all slidey-like. Knees bent, lead with the ball of your foot not the heel, 'cause the heal would thump against anything it touched and cause lots of noise if whatever it thumped didn't like the thumping. Don't move in no hurry, 'cause hurry makes you loud. Move smooth, like butter in a pan. Move slow, like you was sneaking up on a skittery kitten. Slow is smooth, and smooth is fast.

The multi-colored underbrush slid by her and her new family as they stalked forward like wolves on the hunt. Bright blue leaves rustled with their passing, and they wove their way around purple trunks and green branches like snakes. Dinah watched Mrs. Albright real careful as they went, and saw in the other woman the same moves, the same quiet confidence, that Paw had always had on a hunt. They was cut from the same cloth, was Mrs. Albright and Paw.

Paw would have liked her.

Dinah banished the thought and focused. The butt of her rifle snugged up tight against her shoulder, the barrel aimed low so as to not accidentally point a loaded gun at no one she didn't want to shoot. But she held it tight and ready, ready to bring the barrel up and unleash hell on whatever might deserve it.

"See anything?" Olivia whispered from where she stalked along just behind Dinah, who in turn was just behind and to the left of Isabel and her two skeery lookin' sword things.

"Naw," Dinah whispered back, not looking away from the foliage ahead of them. They were following some kind of game trail, it looked like. something had worn down the grass around this area to the nub, either from repeated passings-over, or from eating as it went. Grazer. Or maybe one of them forest mantas they'd seen a couple times. Those critters looked like they could raze the grass down, if they had a mind to it.

"Me neither," Olivia whispered, trip-stepping closer. "Think there's something out there?"

"Yup," Dinah said simply, nodding to emphasize it. "You feel the air?"

"Uh… You mean how it's hot and muggy and gross?" Livia asked, and Dinah snorted at her friend's tone.

"Naw, like how it's heavy and kinda greasy? Feels like it's charged up somehow, like if you touched it it'd be like lickin' a nine-volt battery?"

"Like how the whole world is holding its breath, and is just about to burst," Mrs. Albright added quietly, and Dinah glanced aside to see the older woman looking at her with approval. The look caused a little burst of pride to bust open in her chest, but she tucked it away for later. Right now she was huntin'.

"Okay yeah, I guess, kinda?" Livia said, frowning. "I mean, it's still hot and muggy and gross, but… I guess I can feel what you're talking about?"

"That means there's somethin' out there," Dinah said with conviction. "Ain't sure what. Back home it could'a meant a deer, could'a meant a bear, could'a meant some idiot city-slicker with hundred-dollar camo pants and a rifle he ain't never fired. But sure as heck, there was somethin' out there."

"You uh… Did lots of hunting? Back on Earth?" Livia asked, and the little stutter in the question almost made Dinah flinch. That was something she'd never told her friend. Never told anyone this side of the Rockies. Because a mountain girl from Kentucky who liked huntin' and fishin' and shootin' didn't really fit in with folk from a high-dollar private school in California.

"Yeah," she said quietly, not looking at Olivia. "It was… Fun. Not that we killed stuff just to kill it, not like them idiots who came around every fall from the city," she hurried to add. "I ain't that kind of crazy. But me and Paw, we ate what we killed. And used the parts we could use, too." She smiled at the memory of her real buckskin dress her Paw had presented her with one Christmas. It had been soft as goosedown and just the most stylin' thing ever.

"How come you never told me?" Livia asked next after a long pause.

Dinah's smooth walk hiccuped into something that Paw would have snickered at. She grimaced and glanced at her friend out the corner of her eye.

"Didn't want you to hate me," she murmured, looking away.

There was a long drawn-out silence as they kept walking, and she glanced at Livia again to see her friend frowning, looking into the middle distance, obviously digesting what she'd been told.

Then, casual as a clam, Livia took her new staff in her hand and used it to bop Dinah right on the noggin.

"Hey!" Dinah squawked, then softer when Isabel turned and glared at them. "What's the big idea?"

"That's for me," Livia said, glaring at her. "To remind me to thump you again when we get back. Because I'm pissed at you."

Dinah winced. She'd known it. Knowed it would come to this. "Sorry, I just–"

"Not for the hunting, dummy," Livia said, still glaring. "For thinking I'd hate you for it. I mean, good grief Di, do you see my family? Mom's a gun-nut, Dad used to be a barroom brawler, my big sister is apparently the second coming of the norse god of bloodlust, and my little brother…" Livia paused and frowned. "Okay, Luc is almost disgustingly normal, but the rest of us are so entirely not. Of course I don't hate you for hunting. But I'm kinda hurt you thought I would."

"Sorry," Dinah said, sheepish this time. "I mean, every other girl I tried talking to about it treated me like I was a leper afterwards. Becky Montgomery even put a buncha fake blood in my locker once."

"Becky Montgomery was a bitch," Livia said with conviction.

"Language," Mrs. Albright said warningly.

"Sorry Mom," Livia said immediately.

"Thank you. And much as I appreciate you girls' willingness to open up with each other, you need to focus now. Something has changed."

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Dinah immediately perked up and began looking around, trying to see if she could figure out what Mrs. Albright had detected. Ahead of them, Isabel had crouched low and was staring straight ahead. And as Dinah looked, she noticed that the undergrowth was starting to thin out ahead. Were they approaching a clearing of some kind?

Then she got it.

"It's quiet," she whispered, and this time the barrel of her rifle came up and started sweeping left and right slowly.

"So help me," Livia growled, "if you say 'too quiet', I'm gonna bonk you again."

"No Liv, listen," Dinah said, still as quiet as she could. "Ain't no birds, no crickets, no bugs buzzin', nothin'. Forests only get like that for two reasons. A big storm brewin', or a big predator out an' about. And I don't think the forest considers us 'big predators'.

"... Oh." Livia swallowed and took a firmer grip on her staff. "So, something's out there, then?"

"Yeah," Isabel said, the sound of her voice causing both girls to jump. "Just ahead. Come here, all of you."

They made their way forward slowly and quietly, smooth and slow just like she had learned. Livia tried her best to copy her, and Mrs. Albright… Heck, she was quietness. Dinah marveled at how she moved and it was like she just passed through the stuff around her, not disturbing a single dang leaf.

She needed to get Mrs. Albright to teach her how to do that.

They drew abreast of one another just at where Isabel was hunkered down on her haunches, her gristly swords held low in her hands, her eyes steely and aimed square into the center of what turned out to be a big ol' clearing, maybe a hundred feet across.

There was a thing right around the middle of the clearing.

It had six legs, just like everything else around this place. It was long and sleek, like a mink, but with no head that Dinah could identify. It was dark-furred and about as long as a pickup truck, and it was prowling like a cat. It turned this way and that, like it was hunting something. And then, just as Dinah hunkered down next to Bel, the thing stopped, and pounced.

And at first Dinah thought it had exploded.

The front third of the furry thing, the part that was just ahead of its legs, split open crosswise, rippling open into four different sections. Tentacles lashed out from deep inside a four-jawed red fanged maw, slapping into the ground and drawing something round and wriggly up out of the dirt. The tentacles wrapped around what looked to Dinah like the world's biggest pill bug, yanked it into the thing's mouth—

The four jaws snapped shut with an ugly crunch, and the pill bug's high-pitched keening wails were suddenly cut off. The mink-thing turned this way and that, its body rippling obscenely as it chewed with the teeth inside itself. Then it went back to snuffling and stalking around the clearing.

"Don't move," Isabel whispered, eyes wide and staring at the mink-thing. "I think it's hunting by vibrations."

"Right," Mrs. Albright said, and Dinah noticed that her really cool rifle was pointing right at the mink-thing. "Good catch, mija."

"What's the plan, Mom?" Olivia asked. "Do we kill it?"

"It's a predator, a big one, and dangerous," Dinah said, settling the sights of her own rifle over the mink-thing as it kept hunting in the clearing. "Billy could take care of it, but I'm thinkin' it could cause us real problems if we encountered it and wasn't ready for it later."

"Yeah, no kidding," Bel said, glaring at the monster. "I don't like the idea of meeting it in a dark alley, that's for sure. I think we should scrag it."

"I think you may be right," Mrs. Albright said. "Let's wait for it to get a little farther away from us. Then I will lay down fire. Dinah, you go to the right and we'll catch it in a crossfire. Isabel, draw its attention. Olivia, keep it busy with your terrain management. If it does hunt through touch, you should be able to confuse it."

"If it… Oh for crying out loud," Olivia grumbled. "I'm the Quaestor. I can just use the system to figure out what it is and what its weaknesses are. Hoolio, scroll m–"

"Sh!" Dinah whispered urgently, seeing movement on the other side of the clearing. "Something is happening!"

The other women all went silent as something emerged from the underbrush opposite them. It was small and humanoid, with the proportions of a child. A slightly too-large head set on small white shoulders and s pudgy torso. It wandered out of the jungle almost carelessly, and stood swaying back and forth on pudgy feet barely a dozen steps away from the mink-thing.

"Oh my god," Olivia breathed, eyes wide. "Whats is that?"

"Whatever it is, that thing is gonna rip it to shreds," Bel growled, shifting her weight forward. "We've gotta stop it. I'll charge in. Mom, Dinah, cover me. Liv, you–"

Dinah didn't hear the rest, because she was watching the little glowing figure as it waddled and bobbled back and forth at the edge of the clearing. The mink-thing had frozen as soon as it walked out, and Dinah could tell that its full focus was on the little humanoid. Slowly it turned, slowly it began stalking forward, tentacles slipping out from between its quarter-jaws and dripping. The little humanoid figure seemed totally oblivious to the danger.

And that's when Dinah's eyes opened so wide she was amazed they didn't make a click sound.

Her hand moved before she could even think about it, slapping palm-first into Bel's chest and pressing, keeping the older girl from moving forward. Bel flinched from the blow, then blinked and stared at Dinah in confusion.

"Dinah, what the–" Bel started, eyes narrowing in anger.

"It's a trap," Dinah blurted, not looking at Bel, her eyes instead focused on the scene before her.

The others froze.

"What do you mean," Mrs. Albright asked, still peering at the scene through her rifle scope.

"That thing ain't acting smart enough to be anything other than an animal, but it ain't got six limbs. It looks human, but it ain't. It's just sitting there, when anything with the sense God gave a stone would know to get the heck outta there." The words came fast as the mink-thing stalked the child-thing. "That means it don't want to get away. That means its a trap. I don't know what kind, but–"

She cut off abruptly as a section of the jungle, right about the place where the child-thing had come from, rippled.

Three sections about ten feet off the ground of what Dinah had thought was jungle and open air opened, revealing dual-irised eyes the size of hubcaps. The eyes swiveled. Focused. On the mink-thing. Which was in turn utterly focused on the child-thing.

Dinah watched, first in fascination then in dawning horror as the jungle beneath the eyes rippled as well, the camouflage of whatever was hidden there unable to keep up with motion. A mouth–no, a maw appeared, a vertical slit twenty feet long that opened and opened and opened, revealing serrated teeth the length of Dinah's forearm set against a backdrop that was equal parts blood red and inky black.

The mink-thing pounced on the child-thing, except the child-thing suddenly wasn't there. It was fifteen feet up in the air, suspended on a long black tendril that Dinah hadn't seen until just now. The mink-thing screeched, an unearthly wail of betrayal and anger–

And then it was gone. Dinah blinked, eyes wide, as her mind replayed what she'd just seen. Frame-by-frame in her brain, she saw the tentacles flash out from the maw, wrap around the body of the mink-thing in mid-air, and yank. The maw snapped shut, cutting off the mink-thing's screech.

And for the next couple minutes, the only sound that came from the clearing was the sound of chewing.

"Told you it was a trap," Dinah whispered through dry lips.

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