##This is my first fanfiction, so I hope it'll be good enough for those who read it (I am French, so as much as I dislike it, I may have missed some mistakes in my chapters, just tell me what they are and I'll fix them as soon as I can)##

##I have to thank XLR8ION for letting me use some of her ideas that I found in her fanfic "Family" (I won't tell what they are, spoilers inside): thanks for letting me use them, and good luck for the rewriting!##

-Disclaimer:I do NOT own the Alien franchise, nor the Predator one -

-With that said, enjoy!-

01

Jogging

It was at the end of October. While the days were growing short, the temperatures were still way higher than usual, so it wasn't that unusual to see people wearing only their shirts to avoid the suffocation. The tree leaves were slowly turning to red, yellow, and every color between, and although most of them were still holding on, quite a few of them were already lying on the ground. Since a forest was near, the wind often blew quite a few packs of brown, curled up leaves, much to the joy of the children, who enjoyed playing with them.

It was the end of the day, with the sun slowly setting, and most people were already getting back home after a day of hard work. Among the few one still on the streets, a tall young man was jogging, sometimes jumping aside to avoid hitting a kid. Wearing a black shirt , some jeans and sunglasses, he wasn't really athletic, like most people who jog, but rather thin, with a somehow weak building. It wasn't that he was skinny, rather that he was giving off the impression that the slightest push of wind could send him flying.

Avoiding a middle school boy riding a bike, he then turned to the right, following a hiking trail that was climbing a nearby hill. Quickly reaching its top, he paused for a few seconds, his sweat glowing in the fading light. Removing his sunglasses, he tried to distinguish the landscape, a difficult task for him, since he was blind.

Well, even if he was somehow blind, in the most human sense, he could still 'see' what was around him, although the colors were missing. The easiest for him to sense were the living beings, since he was even able to somehow tell how they were feeling, which allowed him to get along well with most people. Of course, when he was still young, he thought that everyone could do the same, but he quickly realized it's wasn't true at all, so he stuck to the part of the 'blind', 'disturbed' child, never telling anyone about how he felt the world. Even though, his parents loved him, and that was more that he could ask for, so he didn't do anything to make them think he was a lot more perceptive than what the 'blind' label would allow.

Disturbing his thoughts, an ear-piercing noise made him cover his ears, while searching for the source of the disturbance, which he managed to pinpoint, falling with great speed from the sky. The last glimpse of it that the young man managed to catch was just before it collided with the ground behind a nearby hill, which was already far enough from town to avoid being noticed, although the impact shook the earth quite badly. The smell of something burnt filled the air, following the sound, and the young man decided to go and take a look, since he was curious and still had some time before nightfall.

Before heading to the approximate location of the impact, he sent a message to his parents, writing "I may be a little late, you can eat without me. Kane", then jogged to see what it was that fell from the sky, already wondering if it could be some kind of meteor, or a big satellite part.

While running, he started to think about how much he would be able to sell it if it was a meteor. Not that he had a real love for money, but rather for what money could buy. Since he was categorized 'blind' at an early age, his parents spent quite some money to get him into an institute specialized in educating children supposedly like him, so when he got out of it during middle-school, and found out about libraries with books that weren't written only in Braille, he started getting interested in them. Of course, whenever he would ask his parents to buy him some, they would look at him and say 'Don't you want another one, one that you can read?'. So he stopped asking them, using his allowance to secretly buy books whenever he could. Of course, first, he had to learn what the letters were, finding which Braille code went with which letter, but eventually, he managed to learn them all. Afterwards, he started to get interested in medical papers, curious about his condition, and learning things a middle-school student, and later high-school, wasn't supposed to know. Little did he know that by reading those papers, he came to be more knowledgeable about medical things than most doctors in town. Before he knew it, he could tell precisely whatever was happening to someone, if it was a simple flu, or a more serious kind of disease. Of course, when he started to diagnose people, he made a few mistakes, but he quickly learnt from his fails, and became even more interested in medical stuff.

Lately, he was trying to get enough money to buy a very specialized book, about a world study on blindness, which was his very idea of the Holy Grail of books. Whatever it was that fell down, it would surely be way enough to get him what he wanted, and maybe enough to save for a few months.

Lost in his thoughts, Kane didn't realize immediately that he was staring at a huge crater, at least fifty meters large, and deeper than he was tall, although he was definitely not small, since he was already 6'7'' tall, causing him to often be mistaken for a college student. But what was really amazing wasn't the crater, but rather what caused it. It was obviously not something natural, and its metallic, yet simple shell, wasn't really damaged, which was quite impressive, since it must had fallen for a few hundred kilometers before crashing. Smoke was still coming out of it, and even from where he was, Kane could feel the heat coming from the ship.

The ship, as he had to call it, was not the kind of aggressive-looking, heavy-armored warship you'd see in movies, but rather a smaller, more furtive kind of vehicle. It looked more like some kind of furtive ship, an infiltration one, used to hide oneself from whatever could be dangerous for its users. Watching closer, Kane noticed that whoever the 'users' were, he didn't want to mess with them, since the door which was open was obviously made for something, or someone, even taller than him.

Before he could study any more of the ship, he felt a kind of tickling in the back of his mind, and, curious, began to walk towards a nearby grove, where most of the trees were still standing, the closest ones having protected the others from the impact lying on the ground. Most of them were fairly old ones, but a few smaller trunks were among them, lying wherever the 'landing' of the ship blew them off.

Feeling the sensation in his mind grow, he directed himself towards a small place surrounded by large rocks near the stream of a little river, looking around to check if anything was a little off. Of course, he didn't know if anything dangerous was around, but if the owner of the ship wasn't here to sightsee, he would like to avoid being caught off guard, since he didn't know whatever the visitor was there for.

Walking as silently as possible, Kane kept looking for anything that would be out of place, but the only thing he could sense was that something was there, something that wasn't from Earth, and that whatever it was, the forest inhabitants deemed it dangerous enough to cease their usual sounds. Anyone beside Kane would have been unable to tell where was the source of the disturbance, but since his was only able to feel the world with his peculiar 'vision', his other senses were put to full use, which allowed him to sense that whatever was disturbing the forest, it was close.

Turning around a huge rock blocking his path, he saw something on the ground. It was big, and for what he could tell by his own experience with his sight, it was dark-colored, but what disturbed him the most was that it felt somehow familiar, even though he didn't remember ever seeing anything like it.

Starting to get closer, since the being didn't move at all, he sensed something behind him, and turned right in time to see something leap from a nearby tree, colliding with him and sending him to the ground with incredible force. Feeling dizzy, Kane tried to get up, but something pushed him down with enough power to nearly knock him out, weighting heavily on his arms and legs.

Trying to struggle, he heard a loud hissing sound, which he could tell was a threat from his aggressor, who was obviously displeased by his attempts to free himself. Understanding that struggling would only angry whatever was holding him down, he ceased to move, while attempting to focus his senses enough to see what was happening.

At first, he could only see some simple shapes, but his 'sight' and other senses sharpened, recovering from the overloaded state they were in, and he gradually managed to grasp the situation he was in, which was quite strange. For what he could see, a girl was pinning him down, holding both his arms and his legs on the ground with a strength far greater that Kane could have expected, and hissing threateningly.

Although the way he was held down would have prevented anyone else to see more than the girl's face, his peculiar vision allowed him to see that although her face was human-like, her body wasn't. Her arms were finished by four long fingers, two of them acting as opposite thumbs, while two longer and larger ones stood on top of the hand, each and every one of them finished by sharp claws that were cutting his skin quite badly. Her chest was covered by some kind of exoskeleton, which also covered her arms and legs, who were more feline-like than human. Finally, he could sense a tail with something sharp digging the ground a little too close to his head.

Threat! Threat! Threat to Stryss!

What he just heard rendered Kane speechless. He had heard a girl's voice, quite clearly, speaking inside his head.

Threat! Kill threat! Quickly kill! Stryss wounded! Take care of threat and after help Stryss!

Too surprised to feel scared, Kane spoke up.

-Hey, you're speaking about your friend, ain't you? Want me to...

He couldn't finish his sentence that he heard a new hissing sound, and at the same time he felt à burning sensation on his left eye, where the girl had cut him.

Aouch! It hurts, dammit!

Suddenly, the girl stopped moving, watching Kane with wide eyes, as if she didn't see him before.

Threat speaks? How come?

The same voice than before rang again inside his mind.

-Of course I speak! What I'd like to know is...

The girls hissed again, her face closer than before.

Well, she would be kind of cute, if she wasn't trying to kill me, thought Kane. Once again, the girl stopped moving, her face so close than his that he could nearly feel her lips on his nose. Of course, at the moment, he didn't feel like trying to kiss her or anything near, since she was still holding him down and was obviously trying to figure out if she should kill him or not.

Threat spoke again! 'Cute', what is?

Since he always heard the voice inside his head, Kane started to figure out why his aggressor wasn't understanding anything he said. He decided to try something.

Uhm, hello there? he thought. Seeing the girl watch him intently, he tried once more.

Hello? Can I help you?

Suddenly, Kane felt a huge wave of emotions flow over him: anger, pain, fear, and also curiosity.

With her face still inches away of Kane's, the girl smelled him all over, loosening her grip. Deciding not to try escaping, the young man didn't move, letting the weird being smell him for a few minutes.

No threat? Threat like Stryss and K'tyss?

Dunno what you mean by 'like you', but if your friend is injured, we'd better help her before it becomes dangerous.

Stryss helps? So Threat is not threat?

I'm not a threat, and my name is Kane. K-A-N-E.

The girl let him go, then crawled on all fours to the being Kane had seen before the girl-K'tyss-, pushed him to the ground, waiting for him to help her.

With the help of his new acquaintance, Kane managed to pull the unconscious being the girl called Stryss closer to the stream of the river, with the cool wind cooling them. Delicately lowering the head of the alien on the ground in a position that wouldn't put too much strain on her neck, he felt a burning pain on both his forearms. Watching them, he saw that most of their skin was being consumed by something. Hurrying to the water while whining loudly from the pain, he pushed his arm in the water, screaming to the pain it caused him to feel, but fairly sure that whatever was dissolving his skin would be washed off by the stream.