Spotted Hand - Eqahkali the "Middle finger"

"Why does he have those spots?" Was the first question that any of the other Kin children would ask. "Why'd you hit me!" was always the next. Eqahkali was never the most tactful - nor the most patient - Kin. Especially not now that he'd been separated from his family.

The snarling 4 year old snapped at anyone who got near. Doctors, Kin handlers, anyone. Especially humans, because they smelled wrong. No, not especially them - if Eqahkali ever saw that family of his, he'd snap at them worse. Because they were the ones who threw him out. "He's different! There's something about him we can't explain!" Fah - Eqahkali distanced himself from the other young Kin and sulked in a corner.

The big laboratory building had adequate sleeping arrangements for Kin, but he wouldn't sleep in human beds. The other kin around stayed clear of him too - because there was always a faint hint that something was in fact different about him. The spots on his hair were nothing.

It took more than a little prodding, and more than five months hard work on the part of the Kin scientists, to find out just what it was about 'Kali that disturbed people so. His ability to pick up stray thoughts from the already-known Psionics in the area tipped off one of the scientists. But it was the pyrokinetic testing that opened him up.

The pale foam-green of his eyes changed to a bright yellow, when Eqahkali was presented with a flame. It responded to him - burning the hands of the Raccoon Kin that was running the experiment. "You know you should at least try to be acceptably kind," she told him. "Because when you're older, they won't be as forgiving as I am."

"I don't want to be forgiven," 'Kali spat.

"I know you want to go home and-"

"I don't want to go home!" Kali said, leaping to his feet and his tail lashed sharply back and forth. His ears were pressed down, and his eyes flared dangerously brightly. "I won't go back there! I have no home!"

This was certainly not typical behavior for a Cheetah, nor for a child this young. He'd barely turned five, and the Raccoon worried that he would become more and more of a problem. She pacified him with the offer of a walk outside, down the spiraling cement ramps. Eventually he stopped bristling, and she re-evaluated the situation.

He'd have to be sedated, of course, but for how long? And what would it serve? He was a pyrokinetic. They uniformly seemed dangerous and moody - it was probably some kind of chemical side effect. They hadn't pinned down just yet what it was that caused the psionics in Kin.

It didn't matter. He would never take medicines. He'd have to be given them somehow...

***

"If you keep burning the papers, you're never going to learn," the Human teacher sighed, and gave Eqahkali a glare that few of the Kin in the room could interpret properly. They'd all been brought up on nearly exclusively Kin worlds or villages, so their exposure to the Human expressions she threw at them was quite limited.

"Why should I need this? I'm not going to be allowed to become a -- whatever," Eqahkali said, "botanist. Doctor. Reporter - it doesn't matter."

What was worse, was that not only did the teacher know this, but the whole rest of the Kin in the room also did. There were five other students, all of whom shifted around uncomfortably when 'Kali got like this. They didn't have powers that could counter his, really. One of them had a bit of water shaping, but she could hardly compete with the heat and flames that he brazenly threw around. The smell of burnt paper drifted around in the room as the students fell silent.

"Well," the teacher said, "then I suppose that you won't be interested in furthering yourself enough to try."

Eqahkali blinked, calm but angry. "Try what? Try my hand at teaching?"

Several others snickered at that. The guards just outside were wary because of course, this was one of those classes. How a bunch of nine year olds got to be so angry and dangerous, they didn't understand. But they were. Trouble, nothing but.

They'd be shipped out soon anyway, and no one really understood the point of spending time or money trying to educate a bunch of outcasts. Exiles could probably do without the ability to read or compose music, they'd be living off whatever they could hunt with their claws and fangs - if they survived at all.

But it was the governor's wife, and she was pretty rich, and she wanted to try and prove something could be done.

Too bad that didn't last...

***

"You did what?" Eqahkali asked, quietly. The prison population was numbed and chilled by the storm front that had brought a gigantic snowstorm, but still they milled about outside when they had the chance.

"I killed her husband, the governor," said the young Tiger kin. He was too cold to look anything other than miserable, but he looked faintly proud of himself. Or mad. It was hard to tell.

"Well good," 'Kali said, "because those stupid math lessons were about to make me crazy enough to do it myself."

"I heard they were doing that," the Tiger said. "Humans are idiots."

"So are Kin, when they think they're humans," someone else put in, and Eqahkali nodded. He agreed entirely. He fit in well with this batch of newcomers to the prison, though he was much younger than they were. None of them were much older than their early 20s but most were still older than 'Kali.

"Why are they afraid of us?" 'Kali said, quietly. He held his hand up, a small sphere of flame and heat appearing over his palm.

"Because they're lame," an Alligator - out in the cold? - commented. "They don't know a good thing when they see it. My mother told me that if she had her way, all her children would be like me, and we'd all have good jobs in fisheries and rescue missions. But no..."

Eqahkali assumed he was a water-shaper or something similar, being a 'gator. "That's a good point," he said. "Our powers could be of some use."

"Only if we're controlled by the 'right people'," the Tiger said, snarling. "And that's never ourselves, you know. Never. We can't know how important we are, we can't ever be our own selves." He looked away, bitter.

"We will be ourselves," Eqahkali said, "once we're exiled."

The others around him paused, and then turned as one with shock on their muzzles.

"You heard me," he said. He was ten. They were scared. "Sure, we're going to have to survive on our wits and our abilities. But where else are we going to be able to use those abilities? No one comes back from Planet Twenty - maybe no one wants to."

After a heated debate, mostly mentally because there were guards wandering by - and nearly everyone in the barracks could speak with their minds - the 'Gator said, "I have to agree, then. Kid's got a point."

"He's got too many points," a passing bird-kin said, clacking his large beak and fussing with his tail. "I don't want to live somewhere I don't have a decent set of radio stations..."

"You'll get used to it," Eqahkali said. "Or, you'll probably die."

He gave the avian kin a big wide toothy grin.

***

This group needed him. 'Kali was sure of it. Though he wasn't the oldest, and wasn't the youngest, he fit right in. The middle - that was a good place for him to be. It meant that he could boss the younger ones around, and the older ones could count on his opinion when they needed it.

Of course, they counted on it when they didn't need it too. And his endless snarling and snapping. Why he had to get caught up in the vines above, why he was such a noisy boy... Boy!? He was eleven! That was old enough to hunt on his own, and everything.

Now, little Laka? She was just a kid, and 'Kali thought it was pretty messed up that the humans had exiled her. But then again... She was downright painful to be around when her emotion control got out of hand. She was hungry - he found something for her to eat. He or Jahk, because they were usually left behind when Etehmaro and Cuhsoyi went hunting.

Jahk was pretty cool, though. They were hardly apt to argue, Eqahkali knew that Jahkonu was the more intelligent - but he also got them more interesting results when he'd do something. They were troublemakers, together. When they didn't have to deal with Laka, of course.

Or, when the older pair decided they were being annoying. But it wasn't like they could be tossed out anywhere. Both Cuhsoyi and Etehmaro seemed to want to keep the group together, at any cost.

And you'd have to be an idiot not to want a shapeshifter and a healer on your side, right?

Etehmaro sometimes creeped Eqahkali out, because he was ... well, human. But then he was also sometimes completely cheetah - equally confounding. Their society for generations had been built on being neither and both. So now? What was he?

Eteh was special even among witch-kin. And while he wasn't jealous, 'Kali knew that his own gift of fire would have to grow stronger if he was to become anything other than the second-in-command... Which he wasn't. Did he have it in him to lead? Hardly. But did he want acknowledgement that he was strong, and powerful? Yes, of course.

He was always quite mature - but moody. So much so that one day when the jungle was silent for the first time in weeks, he had no idea why.

"Why aren't we hunting?" He said, storming up to Cuhsoyi.

"Shh-" she said, tilting her ears. "There's a ship. Can't you tell?"

"Laka's been blinding me all day," he muttered and turned away. "How could I tell that?" He started to walk back to the river.

"Stay close," Cuhsoyi warned, distractedly. "Don't wander too far away. There might be a drop off and if there is, I don't want you out on your own."

"I can walk where I want to," he said, defiantly. Stomping off, he did just that. And almost fell directly into the paws of one of the local Panthers.

"You should watch where you're going!" He yelled at the spotted Kin.

The Panther was so surprised that this little squirt of a Cheetah would say something like that - when he'd just bumbled directly into his own hunting ground - that all he could do was shoot his eyebrows up and start laughing. Eqahkali was only spurred on by that.

"Stop laughing at me!" He demanded, and the moss hanging from the tree branch above the Panther caught on fire.

It promptly fizzled out, a combination of the drizzle and the plant shaping that the cat Kin had going for him. "Easy there, kid," he said. "You're not impressing anyone."

"I guess that's the problem then, Isn't it?" He spat, and ran down the bank of the river. Unfortunately - again - he ran toward one of the dropoffs, where a short but sharp waterfall could be heard. But at last, he pulled himself to a stop, noticing two things. The panther had followed him with worry on his muzzle, and there was a ship in the sky not more than a mile away. Hovering.

There was a drop off...

***

"Why do you think we haven't found any of them?" Eqahkali asked, and Cuhsoyi shrugged.

"I don't know. I wish Laka was more cooperative today, but she's being her typical self again." Cuhsoyi said gently. They searched, leaving Jahkonu behind with Laka since 'Kali was already out near the ship. Several of the local other Kin were also looking for the dropped kin-witches. But they found nothing.

For another day they searched, but still found no sign that anyone left the ship.

Shortly, though, the tribe was ready to move into the plains - the Panther had named them Spotted Hand, and so they were. They would remain curious about the ship, but would never quite know what happened. They weren't alone.

***

Eqahkali was well and truly miserable. The Lion pride they'd been caught by were ... big. And mean, and... worst of all, they could cancel out his pyrokinetics. They could stop him from doing what he did. It was all he could take - he spent a lot of time sulking, and snarling. But even the smallest youngest Lion Kin were so much bulkier than he was even though he was years older than they were. So he remained quiet. Mostly.

He could feel it when the Master would leave, and the second-in-command would come in and take over his nullifying duties. The Lions kept their slaves inable to do their most basic telepathic communication, and effectively stopped anyone from plotting behind their backs. But the second wasn't as good as the Master, he would never be.

Eqahkali could feel Laka, fearful and lonely. He thought he could sense Jahk, near her, they were always together because of their complimentary powers of metal and plant shaping. Those who were 'useful' like that got to work their powers freely.

And poor Cuhsoyi... She was miserable, tending to simple wounds and insect bites, being made to minister to the abusive females or the gristled ugly elders. She was hardly taken seriously as the speaker of Spotted Hand, because even though there were five females to one male in the Lion pride, the females did the work - and the males did the leading.

Eqahkali didn't think on Etehmaro. The shapeshifter was the worst off of the bunch - since he was only able to use his power as an 'eclectic' thing and not a useful way. 'Kali was made to lift and move things for one of the females, a ranking one who had several offspring.

After they'd hunt or work, the Lions except for the vigilant nullifier would take turns just lounging around. This took up most of their day. So Eqahkali and the others usually spent the few hours they could as the lions slept in desperate quiet conversation.

It wasn't enough. Eqahkali needed to get away. He knew that it would be disasterous, though, after Etehmaro tried to escape and the Master burnt Cuhsoyi. Burnt her. Because someone else tried to leave.

"They're so... Human," Eqahkali said, a silent breath. "They take everything they want without asking. They run over land without noticing what they've disturbed... They hurt and hurt and hurt..."

"It's all right," Cuhsoyi said, she was healed but Eqahkali and Etehmaro both looked on her with guilt. Eteh because he had brought it on, and 'Kali because he'd thought so hard about trying to escape himself. He knew that this too was part of the Lion's domination game. If one fell the others would have to suffer. So 'one' didn't fall.

The trio of Cheetahs (Jahk and Laka were both kept permanently in the Master Maker's hut - working their little lives away) fell silent, and glanced around. Their mental urges were to contact one another, to touch minds gently and assure one another that they were going to pull out of this and be a tribe again.

It would take another few months for that to happen.

***

Jahk was the mastermind. Everyone knew it, even Etehmaro - who was very smart indeed - admitted that the young metal shaper was far more clever than he. And that at least, was something that 'Kali could appreciate when he killed the Master Maker and left the Pride without their main Nullifier.

That meant of course, that their empathic senses, their mental abilities, and their psionic attacks would work fully again. Almost atrophied after nearly two years without using them, but not one of them failed. Eqahkali felt the tingle of Laka's fear/joy/anger at being part of the scheme. She'd helped Jahk - and Jahk plunged a knife into the Maker's back. Right then, 'Kali knew that he was free to do whatever he could.

He was exceptional at causing havoc anyway. So that was what he did.

The Lioness bitch that had owned him for these last months suddenly screamed - wailing about the straw in her cart. The straw was the first thing to kindle. Her fur was the next. At thirteen years old, Eqahkali became a murderer - the best kind of revenge long plotted out.

But that wasn't where he stopped. Eqahkali spun around and saw the younglings in a strange daze - panicking when they saw their mother and her goods aflame. Maybe if they tried to help her, they'd perish too. Good. But he went on behind the Maker's hut, into the Second's lair and began to burn things. He knew that the things the Slaves had been making were used to trade for other items - luxuries like guns or human-made clothing or whatever. The Lions were so slovenly. They'd take whatever was shiniest and leave the important things alone.

The silks and papers and decorations of the hut went up in flames abruptly, with a whoolf noise. A satisfying one to a pyrokinetic like 'Kali. He moved on around to the next hut - and the next. By the time he'd come around the back of the Maker's hut he saw Etehmaro and Jahk, one of them had just sent Laka out of the village on a loper to keep her safe. She was surely going to hate them for it, but more certainly her delicate young empathic mind would collapse if she felt too much of the pain and death they were dealing.

When they all were about to get out of the village, they were confronted by a large young male. And Etehmaro's long-unused powers came to life again. 'Kali stayed well out of his way - took Jahk and they ran the way that they'd sent Laka.

The village burned for the whole rest of the day, and into the night - but Spotted Hand didn't care, and didn't look back to see whether it was put out, nor if any of the other Slaves got out alive. They didn't know, and they didn't want to know.

***

"That was really amazing," Eqahkali said to Etehmaro. "I mean, wow. That was... Big."

Eteh gave a bit of a grunt, and half a laugh. "Yeah, that was ... new."

They were about five days away, barely able to sleep and hardly letting their tired bodies rest. But they had to, now, they were exiting the plains and going across a gorge. The Lions wouldn't follow them this far, would they?

The worry in all their minds kept all five from sleeping soundly. Eqahkali thought he sensed something flittering around his mind in the half-sleep they all shared, but it might have been Laka or ...

"You've really riled them," said another voice, unfamiliar to the group. While the others slept, even Laka, Eqahkali sat up and sniffed around.

"Who are you," he said, "what do you want?"

"I'm not a friend of the Lion pride, and I want merely to tell you - good work." The voice remained a phantom until 'Kali lit up a small ball of flame and two startled eyes shone back at him from across the small clearing. "Nice. You were the one to set the fires."

It was a jaguar, not like the panthers that lived in the Jungle. Panthers were bigger - but Jaguars were meaner by far and had a reputation that Eqahkali remembered from his early 'school' days.

"Why are you here?" Eqahkali asked. "Why not slit our throats while we sleep?"

"What would be the point in that? The Lions stole my son - and worked him to death, more years ago than I have fingers. You did well to kill them. They are angry, but they are without several of their elders, and they're in chaos now."

The spotted orange and black Kin reached out carefully and placed a scarred hand near the fire over 'Kali's hand. "This is ... interesting."

"It's still hot," he said. "Don't touch it unless you like being burnt."

"I do not," the Jaguar said. "But you should know that the Lions will want to hunt you."

"That much is obvious," Eqahkali muttered.

Mentally, the Jaguar reached out to the young Cheetah. You must be brave. Fire and metal are your friends. Lions will fear you, but you have to become an adult to get the respect you want so much, little Cheetah.

"How do you know what I want so much," 'Kali said, darkly. "And what's your power supposed to be anyway?"

"You did not see me, nor smell me." The Jaguar's orange and black spots turned into a blotty black wash, then back to normal. "It's not your five-fingered friend's power, but it's close. And my power is fading. I can hardly control it sometimes. I ... I am old, Cheetah boy, and I wanted to thank you for killing them. You did the right thing, and you might not know it. Killing another person is harder than you know - maybe some day you'll know that difficulty. They made it easy." He sighed, and stood. Easily as tall as Etehmaro but with a low slung build and short legs and arms, this Jaguar had a multitude of scars over his back and legs - whip marks - Eqahkali recognized them. "If you don't become respected, you'll become feared. Learn the difference, before it's too late. Those Lions deserved what they got... But will your next targets?"

"Some wisdom from an old kin..." Eqahkali said, as the Jaguar faded into the shadows. Since he couldn't be smelled nor felt mentally, 'Kali didn't know whether he'd left or was just hanging around. But he was right. And 'Kali knew it. Was he to become a fierce warrior defending his tribe?

Or just a murderer?

***

It took them another couple years of moving around and finally locating the Twelve and One tribe of Cheetahs, to really feel safe. The Elephant village protected them from the outright incursion of the Lions, while the Plateau prevented any great problems from the south.

Eqahkali thought that Laka was acting weird for a while, before they met the other cheetahs. She had the hugest crush on Etehmaro and maybe she'd find someone among the Twelve.

Maybe Eqahkali would find someone too. But first he'd find himself a dragon.

A dragon. Maybe it would spit fire. Maybe he could ride it and spear kills from above - the fine spears that Laka and Jahk provided him threw very well, but he was never at the angle that he wanted to be. He knew that a couple of the Twelve could actually fly themselves, using a power similar to Cuhsoyi's telekinetics. But fire could do him a better turn. He knew how to use fire.

Maybe, he thought... Once he found his dragon bond? They would go and finish the job they'd started on the Plains. Destroy the Lion Pride once and for all.

Or, maybe, someone would talk him out of that.