"Click, click, click, clack, clack, clack," the unknown, unseen hunter, a brain so alien to that of the prey it stalked so as to be unrecognizable even as the lizard brain native to the land creatures of fur and warm blood which it stalked. This was the brain of a shark, an octopus, something reverted so far beyond the teddy bears as to harken to the primordial beginnings of life. This was a mind that knew only movement and not movement, meat and not meat. This was a mind that was hungry. Not with the physical sensation of desire for sustenance but with the urgings of a darker mind. It cared not for the flesh of that which it stalked. It had a taste for darker, more primeval reward. It would make trophies of the lesser beings which walked, beeped, hummed and made merry unaware that an eye was upon them, the eye of God. It would make them bear witness to the trophies it took, the shattered remains of those of their kind, the pathetic waddling non-beings would cry in terror when they discovered the rib cages torn asunder and the spines wrapped about poles with the viscera still attached as though flowering vines. They would see, and they would know fear.

It ran a pair of armored fingers across the bark of one of the jungle trees which comprised the outskirts of the camp, itself a veritable tree village. There were too many of these non-beings in the center to strike there. They could not, would not see It even if they were three feet away, but they would see a glimmer pass over the broken body of the first which It claimed, and should they turn upon the glimmer with their weapons they would catch one another in the crossfire and cause massive casualties to themselves in their folly. It would not let a single one of the lesser beings bring death to another. Death was It’s and It’s alone, and would be delivered to the moving balls of fluff and viscous wet only when It deemed it the proper time and place for them to meet the void nothingness of non-movement. It had no notion of an afterlife, and cared not if these beings believed in a God or Gods, some metaphysical representation of the planet their mother and progenitor. It was God, and It like the cold dead nothingness of space cared not for these beings save for their value as meat trophies and the validation they offered It in the eyes of the other Gods.

Their’s was a shared understanding that the moving world must kill to continue moving, and to prove themselves worthy of their mark as Hish-qu-Ten they must take trophies to prove themselves Gods among Gods and differentiate themselves from the spawnlings, who were mere Gods over animals and lesser beings. It would take trophies, and would return Hish-qu-Ten or not at all. The first thing that must happen, must always happen, was to establish the killzone. There was no strategic meaning behind this principle, whether aimed toward giving It the best chance at victory or otherwise. This was a principle which must be observed, a law of the Clan, the Gods among Gods. The killzone ensured that after the first several kills which would be carried out in secret, hidden from the other non-beings and done in complete silence to keep from alerting them would allow It the opportunity to construct a shrine to house and display It’s trophies in a place close enough that the teddy bears would find it when they went into the wood around their village in search of those missing members of their kind. They must see It’s trophies before the hunt began in full, must witness and know the fear of the outsider, the unknown hunter in the wood.

It was some three hundred meters from the lesser being’s village and had made It’s way around the perimeter by use of the trees and It’s immense physical power and bodily control never having stepped foot onto the solid ground below. It had noted the crude traps which the animals laid out around the camp, and if It was less focused on the task at hand It would have mocked them for their clumsiness. Their traps focused entirely on beings which must walk on the ground to reach their settlement, and were constructed of felled trees, boulders, and other nonsense which marked them so clearly as the lesser being when compared to It, their God for the time being. It could simply be in the center of town without ever having set foot on the ground, the things lived in scalable and defenseless trees. It assumed they were not very good climbers, or else they would have been killed long ago by another group of the non-beings which lived around them. Among the Hish-qu-Ten to leave such a breach in defense would invite the reproach and assault of another clan and with the full endorsement of the Exquisitely Blooded Great Hierarch, likely resulting in the total destruction of the Clan’s Mothership and surrendering of their lives and planetary holdings.

It would touch the ground however, but only once a proper teddy bear strayed too far from the center of camp and the supposed safety of their number. It had no concern for the tactical reason of taking one who was alone. It could launch an orbital strike from It’s Recon Ship and annihilate their species should It so choose, or even prime It’s control panel and lob it into the center of their town awaiting the inevitable explosion which would follow and vaporize everything within the camp leaving not but shadows of what once was burned onto the scorched earth which served as the foundation of the tree village. It stalked in the trees invisible, hunting for visible heat signatures which had strayed too far from the others not because It feared them, but because it was the law of the Clan, and as It was God over the teddy bears the Clan were Gods over It. This would be no longer after today. It would be dead and cast into the void of non-movement, or It would return to the clan Hish-qu-Ten. That came later, It knew. Now was the time to wait, to take three or four of the lesser beings by surprise and with absolute silence and then to construct It’s Shrine for them to find after they noticed members of their kind unexpectedly missing from their number.

@Liliya

"Dimni-a-wundah..."

"Ahh-na-uh?"

"Chuug-obo-fangowa!"

Two small thermal forms were approaching the Predator's location, each wielding a four foot wooden spear. They were sentries stationed to patrol the parameter of the Ewok village, Wunka and Nanta. They seemed to be talking about something, distracted.

“Ou-ah-tah tick, tick, tick, dlerbh,” It saw a convenient meal approaching the tree line some thirty meters away from the tree where it had been lurking in wait for just such an opportunity as this. Small things they were, hardly a fitting hunt for a God. They were however intelligent enough, having reached the barely higher than base animal understanding of crude tools of stone and wood and having developed the basic hunting patterns necessary to pass the requirements of the Clan, and so they were fit to serve as It’s rite of passage to Hish-qu-Ten. It would make it bad for these balls of glowing fluff unfit to serve even as meat to the Clan and yet somehow chosen as It’s rightful and necessary prey. It would ensure that they would know fear. The fear of the unseen hunter in the wood. The fear of God.

It could not be certain that they were incapable of smelling It out at a close distance. The furred species were often possessed of a highly developed capacity for smell. It could however be reasonably certain that they would not see It coming. The device used by the Yautja to disguise the hunters was advanced enough to keep most anything from seeing them coming without the benefit of some kind of artificial technology, usually dependent on the possession of something from far beyond this galaxy. Unless they were carrying something It had not noticed despite the several passages around the outskirts of the camp then it could be nearly entirely sure. It was not willing to settle for nearly sure. It would know the innate gifts and artificial constructs of the fur balls.

It went branch by branch, tree by tree over towards the fur balls approaching the outskirts of the supposed safety of their camp. Could It have broken a branch, sent an audible signal to the fur balls that something lurked in the woods? Of course. It also knew that they were not the only living things in this forest or on this planet. All manner of living things made their homes in these trees, and the breaking of a branch hardly surprised those used to living among a web of towering forest so thick as to block out view of the horizon. It was of a species more used to swamp than forest, but It was concerned not with remaining silent, but with remaining undetected. Noise was normal, even to be expected. When things became truly quiet it set the lizard brain to a panic, alerted a base instinct in the living to seek out the predator which had set the noisily industrious insects and other species to their forced, artificial seeming silence.

If not noticed through some advanced technology or highly developed capacity for smell It would make way over to the fur balls, never once touching the earth below. Their traps were laughably technologically backwards, but It had no intentions of being hit from right and left by falling trees or crushed from above by a boulder suspended by plant fiber ropes set to break against intruder's skulls. Would these things kill It? Perhaps not, but they would certainly force It to give up the hunt and retreat to the safety of It’s recon ship, something that would prove It was not meant to be Hish-qu-Ten and definitively force It to accept that the Gods among Gods would forever lord over It.

Should It manage not to set off any traps or be noticed as it approached, It would suspend via tree branches and It’s feet just above the fur balls, or as close to it as was possible given the terrain which would likely be near enough to reach out and grab them seeing as the things lived in tree villages, and It would wait and see. Seeing was everything to the predator regardless of it’s species. Should these beings notice as It was suspended a foot, two, even three above them and turn to fleeing It would reach out, grab them by the bases of their skulls and smash them into one another, or should they move far enough away use it’s retractable clawed gauntlets or even a thrown weapon or blaster to ensure that they did not make it back to the village alive. More importantly than killing them, however, was to see what they were capable of.

It was for all intents and purposes a shadow. It should not be visible to these beings, and if they noticed based upon It’s smell it would be telling indeed. They in that case would have to be hunted in a different manner than if they could not smell the predator in the wood, would have to be taken from downwind and with more care and precision than It was expecting. These were all assumptions on It’s part, and though valid must be backed up with evidence as is the way of a hunter. Once It knew the capabilities of the beings It could better hunt them, and math was the true science of the kill.

Should It be able to predict the beings patterns, movements, and their sensory awareness with absolute certainty than It would be one step closer to ensuring a successful hunt. Should It run in screaming and blasting, tearing the fur balls limb from limb before It had the understanding necessary to grasp what they were capable of It might well walk face first into a seemingly stone age tribe that happened to have access to advanced weaponry and for all It knew the kind of artificial sensors necessary to train a plasma sprayer at It’s center of mass from a half mile away. This was not a risk It would knowingly walk into, and so if not noticed before reaching the trees above the fur balls it would attempt to lean over them hanging from It’s feet as close to within arm’s reach as It could get depending on the terrain, prepared to strike the moment it noticed hesitation on the part of the fur balls. Otherwise It would watch and wait, the true goal being to gather evidence as to whether the fur balls could smell it from a few feet away.

@Liliya

Incredibly, the two ewoks stopped in a small clearing behind some bushes, dropped their spears, and begin making sweet, messy, teddybear love, just banging and banging. A third ewok shuffled over and began rooting for them several feet away.

"YUB NUB YUB NUB YUB NUB-"

As the third fur ball entered the scene It decided that it was time. Four would perhaps have been more desirable, and the two alone hadn’t been sufficient, but this could work. It would act, and with It’s action begin the process which must always happen, the first step towards instilling in the lesser beings their sheer fragility in the hands of a God. It had been largely unconcerned at the pair’s actions. Animals mated, even the Yautja had sexual reproduction. It was never a dignified or clean process, and it certainly wasn’t here among the fur balls. Because of It’s vision being largely relegated to the thermal bands of visual light it had been confused at first as to which animal was which in their sprawling mass, and for a fleeting moment considered if the two had morphed into a single being in the way of microorganisms before relegating the thought to the back of It’s mind and largely losing interest, simply scanning the tree line for any new and more interesting stimuli.

That new and more interesting stimulus had come in the form of the third fur ball. It pulled itself up atop the tree branch and attempted to make It’s way down the tree as silently as possible on the side of the fur balls. They would be highly unlikely to mate next to a trap It had simply not managed to detect, and so It would touch the ground here. Should It manage to touch the ground it would simply step over the pair of lesser beings so small as not to come up to It’s thigh even if they were standing and move directly toward the cheering third participant. Should It not be stopped and the pair not notice It stepping over them wrapped up in their own business as they were It would spin around the third participant, moving behind the fur ball in a flash which would have been hard to keep one’s eyes trained on even were it visible, and attempt to come to a stop behind the third, newer being with Its arms lowered to the creature’s neck level, Its own legs crouched to reach downwards more easily and with more potential force.

Should none of this be stopped It would gear Its massive armored mitts around the third and newest lesser being’s neck as it stepped behind it and crouched, pivoting at the hip and working It’s hands and arms into a rightward turning vice with enough energy to break bone and collapse internal muscular and organ systems. It would attempt to cleanly turn the fur ball’s head around in a one hundred eighty degree turn within Its hands and, if successful, move the lesser beings corpse towards the two other currently mating fur balls.

The voice recorder and sound amplifying device It wore was designed to mimic the sounds made by those beings it might happen to be hunting. Something like using a duck call made by a hunter to attempt to bring more of the animals to their location, at least in theory. The Yautja were famous among the Stellar species for having technology that rarely served its proper purpose however, and this was no exception. What actually did echo out from the amplifier was a shrill, wet, reptilian hissing mockery of the cheering and rooting the lesser being had been making before it had been turned into a corpse, if it had been killed at all. What was worse was that with each passing step its lifeless body, head spun round to face the wrong direction, was raising higher and higher into the air until floating a full three feet off of the ground when within a foot or two of the two other fur balls.

They would not see the God lifting the lifeless corpse into the air, apparently couldn’t smell It and at best might see some obfuscated glimmer like that of the mirage around a blazing flame vaguely behind their suddenly levitating once friend and tribe member. They would hear the mock cheering like the mad laughter of a darkling apparition as it rose higher and higher in pitch, though with a decibel level low enough that nothing outside of their immediate area should be able to distinguish it as anything but the off pitch chattering of their own kind at a reasonable distance.

It wanted, needed the pair to see, to hear, to know the fear of the hunter in the wood. It would even let them scream a little before it would take Its right hand from the dead being’s neck and, assuming it had made it this far at all, simultaneously punch forward and downward into their writhing, screaming meat with a single clawed gauntlet on the aforementioned right hand and arm constructed of two horizontally placed scimitar like blades some eighteen inches in length each upon the outside of the forearm and wrist meant to spear the two together and allow them to meet the void in one another’s arms. This was done for an emotional reason, but not for the sake of the pair. It would be done, assuming it was done at all and that nothing up to this point had been interrupted, because the two would make for an excellent display in the shrine It would construct for the lesser beings to find.

It would let them scream, but not loud or long enough to alert the others. Let them think that the two were simply enjoying their time together, for now. Should all of this go to plan and nothing come out from behind It screaming or swinging wooden spears toward the floating fur ball with its head on the wrong way, and thus the invisible God directly in the way of the seemingly levitating corpse, It would collect up the bodies in a single arm and begin the ascent up the tree from which it had come and the long process of constructing the shrine. It would be quite a while if it hadn’t yet been noticed before the three would truly be feared missing rather than intentionally avoiding the tribe for their own entertainments.

This all depended on It managing to scale down the tree, step over the pair of distracted fur balls, sidestep behind the third intruding fur ball while reaching Its hands down toward the creature’s neck, break it with a violent pivot at the hip and with the hands and arms, before approaching the pair once more playing a devilish mockery of the cheering the third being had been making before being killed. It would raise the dead thing in Its hands as it stepped toward the still living pair and, should this not have been interrupted, would intend on getting them to see the display before releasing Its right hand from the dead fur ball while crouching at the hips and punching forward and downward with the clawed gauntlet mounted on Its right wrist and forearm towards the pair intending on spearing them together with the dual eighteen inch blades set horizontally on the wrist gauntlet. If all went according to plan It would then gather up the bodies and make it’s way along the trees to construct Its shrine for the village to find once they became truly worried about the missing tribe members. Should any of this not come to pass or be otherwise interrupted It would naturally have to change strategy and alter these plans.