1 First Blood

"People are like dogs. There is no such thing as a dog that is born a vicious killer, no they are shaped by their environment and become that through the actions and consequences of them. While genetics can explain who you are, it's your actions that define what you are." - Me, the author

In a part of the arid desert that occupies most of Pandora, if you look close enough you could see a small cabin backing onto the sandstone outcrop built out of wood, scrap metal and what looks to be part of a skull of a creature that would be the size of most modern day skyscrapers. About 2 feet above the door stood a small dirty window which would be the only thing letting in natural light. If someone looked closely at the bottom corner of the window, they would notice a pair of bright green eyes curiously looking out into the distance.

After a few hours, as the sun reaches its peak the green eyes notice a figure walking alongside an outcrop that jot the landscape. The figure is wearing clothes that consist of dark brown and scant patches of leather to patch holes and act as armour, with hair that matches his clothes and a pair of black tinted goggles over his eyes. The man stuck to the walls, constantly on the lookout in case of anything that wasn't him showing its face. As he got closer and closer to the cabin, the boy recognized who it was and climbed down from where he was and ran to the door.

The boy waited at the door, excited to be able to talk to someone again as he has been alone since the day before. The man came to the cabin once every other day do see if the kid was still alive and kicking.

Once the man got to the door he waited for the knock. The knock was the mans idea, if it wasn't going to shoot and eat him, they would know the knock.

Knock-knock, knock, knock.

Hearing the familiar pattern, the boy grabbed the Tediore repeater on the side table and started to unlock the door.

Clank. Clank. Shhlk. Clank.

Once all four locks were open, he stepped back and into the corner with the repeater aimed at whoever would have walked in.

The door opens, and no one walks in, the man is off to the side looking in, looking to avoid getting shot. He sees no one, and takes a step inside, still observing his surroundings. He then closes the door and hears a young voice say, "Bang!"

The man spun around, unholstered his shotgun and pointed it in the direction he heard the noise from. He looks to see a familiar figure. He sees the young boy of about five years of age boy who lives in this cabin. He was easy to recognize with his bright acid green coloured eyes, hair that was as dark as night, baggy small brown cargo pants with his dusty, stained long sleeve shirt hiding in the corner that was hidden by the door pointing a repeater that he knows is loaded, directly at him.

"Hahaha! Well you little shart stain, looks like ya finally got the jump on me. Now put that thing down and come get some food"

This prompted the boy to lower the gun, run over and excitedly wait for arrival of food. He had finished the last of his the previous night before he went to bed and was hungry.

The man lowers his bag onto the sheet of metal what was placed on a flat rock acting as a table and put his shotgun back into its holster. The boy sat on the other end of the table with his eyes focused on the bag, excited to see what secret it holds in it today.

The man smirks and opens the bag and there's a pair of clunks as a roasted leg comes out of it, as well as a box of bullets. The kid looks confused as there usually is two legs, and he knows that he can't eat the ammo!

"Starting from now on, I'll take you out and you will have to hunt your own food. You better hope that you are good at it or you won't be lasting much longer."

The boy just nodded his head at what was said, but his eyes never left the roast leg. The man just shakes his head at the boys antics and pushes the meat in front of the boy, who happily grabs it with his one free hand, the other not leaving his repeater. After a few minutes, the boy stops eating, and takes the partially eaten leg and hides it in a dark green footlocker and pushes it back into a poorly hidden spot.

The man chuckles at the boys antics, as like most people on this planet, the boy is also prone to putting his valuables into some kind of a box away from prying eyes.

The boy then grabs his own bag to go out with. Now, calling it a bag would be a bit of a stretch. It's could be better described as an old pant leg with one end sewn shut, the other end having a draw draw string to close it and an old belt stitched to it so it could be slung over his shoulder.

He put a few handful of the pistol rounds into the pocket on the bag, grabbed his one extra magazine for his pistol and made sure it was full and put that on his waist between his belt and pants.

Feeling like he has everything he will need, he walks to the front door where the man is waiting and they head on out into the wasteland.

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In a matrix of winding sandstone canyons, crevasses and caves, two figures can barely be seen as they creep along the shadows, moving from one spot to another. both of them are making the least amount of noise as possible, and both have their heads on a swivel, looking out for anything that moves.

Being only a few kilometres from the cabin, they abruptly come to a stop. They both see a creature in the distance. This thing was a medium sized dog like creature with what looked like honey plates of armour on its back and head area. It was brown in colour with the armour being a darker brown. This thing had claw like talons on its feet with a mouth that opened vertically instead of horizontally.

As the boy observes the creature that should only be found in the depths of the darkest of dreams, the man puts a hand on his shoulder and points at it.

"See that there? That ugly beast is called a skag. Now that ones a whelp, there's a pup being the only one smaller, but where there's a pup you can guarantee there'll be an alpha. These uglies live in packs, so where there's one, there's more. Now kill it and we got some dinner."

The boy nods his head at what was said, and start to slowly walk closer. When he is about thirty meters away from it, he stops and sees that the skag hasn't noticed him yet. He puts both his hands on the gun, and lines it up to the skag. He looks down the iron sights, and is aiming for the centre of its chest. He breaths in and...

BLAT! BLAT!

He fires the gun twice, the first hitting it in the chest staggering it, the second is a glancing blow off the top armour plate. The beast saw the boy and started to run at him.

BLAT! BLAT! BLAT!

The boy got another three shots into the skag, but they didn't slow it down at all and now was just a few meters away from him. The skag then leaped at the boy, with its gaping maws wide open, looking to take the boys whole head in one go. What the boy didn't notice when it was far away was the hook like things that line the side of their mouths, or it's glaringly red eyes that only reflect the madness within the beast.

Cu-CHUNG!

The definite sound of a shotgun going off is heard, and an explosion of red mist erupts from what used to be the skags head. The body still traveling in the air is knocked to the side, narrowly avoiding the boy as it passes by him.

The boy looks to his left and sees the man there, shotgun in hands and aiming in the direction of where the skag was before it noticed them. The boy does not understand why, there was only one skag, there's nothing there. Still, he does the same and aims in the direction.

"Smart choice lad, these scavengers alway travel in packs. Hopefully there's no alpha or one of those crazy elemental ones. The only people I've seen who met those and burned to ashes, cooked from the inside out from shocks or turned into liquid goo."

The boy nods, not wanting to be a goo puddle and observes where they could possibly be coming from. About ten meters from where the skag was standing, he can see in the corner nook where the wall meets floor some rocks piled up with a small opening down deep into the ground somewhere, as well as a few piles of who-knows-what off to the side.

If there were any skags in there sleeping, the gun fire definitely woke them up. Soon two more whelps and an adult skag emerge and they start to run at the duo with madness and fury visible from their eyes.

The boy aims at the closest skag and starts unloads the rest of the bullets in his magazine into it. The first whelp goes down when the gun has only two bullets , he then points it at the other whelp and shoots it in the front leg, causing it to stumble and get knocked over.

When the adult skag is only five meters away it leaps at the boy, aiming to get rid of the smaller prey first. Unfortunately for it while it is leaping the man pushes the boy out of its way and unloads two shotgun rounds into its chest and belly, killing it mid leap.

The two then look to the last living skag, that is limping towards them with the delusions that it can still kill the duo. The boy replaces his spent magazine with the full one from his belt, aims it at the skags head and BLAT! BLAT! He shot it dead and gave it a double tap to make sure it stays dead.

The man smirks at what the boy just did, and pulls out his buck knife like blade that was poorly hidden from his boot and walks towards the skags, motioning for the boy to follow him.

They walk up to the nearest skag, the one that had its head blown off and the man stabs it just below its ribs should be, causing the boy to flinch. He drags his knife down and slices its stomach open, spilling open what it had eaten and not yet digested. The man sees nothing that interests him or is of value, just some half digested body parts, rocks and some scrap metal.

"Hey boy, know why I did that? These dumb things eat anything. Literally. I once pulled a live grenade out of one. Now that had be diving for cover faster than you could swat a fly. But look here and tell me what you this thing ate."

The boy inspects what came out of its stomach, pointing at the body parts saying, "We aren't the only people around." Then at the metal, "There's some kind of metal building around." And looks at the rocks, being predominantly the same sandstone that can be found for miles around, "And that this guy didn't travel too for."

The man nods at this explanation, "Good eyes boy, there's an old abandoned Dahl complex about a few hundred meters north of here."

He crouched down and is looking into the boys eyes at the same level and puts the knife into the boys hand. The boy understands that it is now his turn and puts his repeater between his belt and pants and grabs the knife. He walks to the adult skag which is only a few meters from him and lucky it's on its side and doesn't meet to be moved. The shotgun rounds to its chest and belly tore it up enough that he could easily cut the remaining bit and open up its stomach.

What he didn't notice when he was standing back a little was that the stench. It's open up stomach reeks enough that it made his own hungry stomach feel a little queasy. With the knife he pokes around the mess and finds some goodies. He found a magazine with eighteen pistol rounds, a machine gun ammo magazine of some sort with twenty four rounds in it, and a strange purple crystal. He kicks the magazines and crystal out of the pile, and kicks some loose dirt onto them. The dirt absorbs most of the stomach acid and smell, enough to be not a bother to the boy anymore. He grabs the pistol magazine and puts it in his bag, puts the purple crystal into his pocket and passes the machine gun ammo to the man.

The man nods at this action, "Good. You got a good head on your shoulders, that'll keep you alive longer. Now that purple rock there is a rarer find, but that's just a pretty rock. If you find a skag pearl, those are worth some good coin, if you can make it back alive. Those things are all smelly like and bring all the skags around to ya. Now do the other two and see what we get."

The boy then goes and disembowelled the remaining two skags. The first had another pistol magazine that worked with his repeater, and a box of shotgun shells. The man smiles, as it's not every trip that you return with your dinner and more rounds.

The boy passes the man his knife back and looks to see what is going on next. The man walks to the first skag whelp, kicks it onto its back and cuts the inside where its hip meets thigh. He then proceeds to remove the leg from the joint and then cuts it of at the elbow joint, harvesting the most amount of meat in the least amount of time. He then butchered the second leg as well before going to the other two skag whelps and ignoring the adult skag. "See kid the older and bigger there guys are, the harder and less good tasting the meat. I tried to eat an alpha one time, and my tooth is still in that damn leg somewhere. That and this is the quickest way to get food." The man then butchered the other two whelps, while the kid put the full magazine into his gun, and reloads his now empty mag.

The man passes two legs to the boy, and puts the remaining four in his bag. "Those two are yours, now put em away and let's get out of here before anything else shows up." The boy nods and does as he is asked. While the two of them are walking away with there guns once again unholstered the man smirks and says, "Oh, I hope you remember where that skag den was, new ones will have moved in within a few days."

The boy is startled at that, as he only knows the direction that his house was in, not at all sure the distance.

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The duo made it back to the cabin, and the man got a fire going, put a wire grill over top and started to cook the days kill. While the man was doing this, the boy was watching intently as if he knew how to make food, he wouldn't go hungry anymore.

"Now boy, what did ya learn today?"

The question snapped the boy focus off from the food and to the man. He thinks for a minute before replying, "Aim for the head." This got him a nod from the man, "The faster they move the harder they are to hit." This one earned him a chuckle, "Bigger guns use less bullets. Oh! And the smaller the skag the yummier they are!"

"Hahahaha! That not wrong boy. Now here's your roast legs, I'll see you next time kid. I hate being out at night on this God's forsaken planet."

The man leaves, with the boy watching him slowly get farther and farther away. When he is no longer in site the boy turns his attention to the fire, and put it out.

The boy grabs his newly acquired items of the day, and fills his magazines full. He now has three magazines for his pistol, a almost full box of pistol rounds, and his purple crystal the size of his thumb. He is happy having more stuff, and wants to turn the crystal into a necklace for good luck. He grabs a space shoestring and wraps it around the crystal, and noticed that it unraveled. He tries again this time tiring knots around it to trip it from falling through, which seems to work. He then ties it to another string and ties the string off into his new make shift necklace.

After his little crafting experience, he then eats some more meat from the leg that was given to him, and hides the two that he... hunted for.