Days in the Life
chapter 2
The Yautja was going to give the mask to him. Boy was sure of it. It was the only explanation that made sense. Why else would the mask be loaded with information, lessons for the young, information on the Yautja. He was still having trouble speaking their language, but he had only been reviewing what he found in the mask for the last week. That he even knew what to call them, what they called themselves, so soon after finding the mask as an accident. They rarely referred to themselves or their species as far as he could tell but on accident he found files on them that had the name for their species in it, along with the names they used for several other species that existed out there in space.
Now that whatever had been done to him to make him forget that night had gone away he could remember it clearly. The Yautja had worn the mask so that he would know what it was, and what he was supposed to do with it and had taken it off to hand to him when the people in robes had shown up.
Boy was not sure if the people that had shown up were there to protect him, or...for some other reason. They, or people like them were the ones that had kept erasing his memories. They knew he was there and had shown up several times in the past so they had to know how Uncle and Aunt treated him. It is possible that they were not protectors but keepers. Aunt and Uncle probably knew, they called him freak and monster all the time. Perhaps he was with them because he was one, or at least that they thought he was. Like the Yautja, if he was really like them in some way he could see why people would be scared of him. The Yautja did think of humans the way humans tended to think of the more dangerous animals that they hunted as far as he could tell. It would make sense if they were his keepers, if they thought he was a Yautja or like them enough to one day be one of them.
The problem is, that did not make sense either. They never showed up when he did something, or when Dudley or Aunt or Uncle did things that would make him hate humans when he eventually found out he was not one if that were true. They did show up when other bad things happened though. When the mail man was killed, and skinned by the scary laughing woman and the three men with her when he was really little they showed up and erased everyone's memories. When the little biting monster things moved into his cupboard and tried to eat them all they showed up. When the man took him from the park and kept him in a basement for a few days they came for him. Every time someone, or some thing, came to take him away or maybe kill him they came. Bruises and broken bones were not enough, but something that would take him away from the Dursleys was.
Why they came, and what they wanted from him just did not make sense. There was something he did not know. A piece of the puzzle that would cause it all to make sense was out there...he just had no way to find it. Instead of worrying over what he could not change or understand yet he decided he would learn. The mask had lessons, ones he was sure were there just for him. Maybe, in time, his lessons would reveal what he was missing.
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He was surprised that the first real lessons were in hiding. He shouldn't have been, really, but he was. He knew that the Yautja were hunters and fighters, so he had thought the first lessons would be on weapons or fighting or something else like that. Instead they were on how to hide, to avoid being noticed, and to stalk prey.
Even before his first day of school Boy found just how helpful those first lessons could be. In the time between finding the mask, and when he was to start school Boy worked hard to learn his lessons in stealth. After his chores were done Boy could all but disappear. Aunt and Uncle did not care, so long as he did all he was told as long as hhe was never seen around. Dudley hated it though. He liked hitting Boy, and chasing him through the neighborhood whenever he was bored. Being unable to find Boy made all his favorite things to do when his movies and video games got old hard to do.
Once school started Boy earned his first name. He understood that at least. The Yautja had several names through their lives. At first they had no names, like him, because so many died when they were young. Only the strong, and worthy survived long enough to start to learn the hunt. Then they were given spawn names, names for when they were young and learning. When they were older and had earned the right to join a hunt they were given their real names. If they survived the first hunt and slew one of the Hard Meat on thier own they were given a name by the hunt master, and a symbol scarred into their heads by the acid like blood of the Hard Meat.
Boy's new name was Harry Potter. He was confused at first, he was not told that would be his new name till the first class. Everyone else was given their names before school started he guessed, Dudley had even had his as long as Harry could remember. Aunt and Uncle must have told the school what his would be and not him, that or they let the school or teacher name him and never explained it would happen to him. That was not new. They never explained what was going to happen to him. They only punished him for not knowing what he was never told.
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Some of the survival lessons in the mask were....less helpful. Many of the plants and animals shown did not exist, at least not on Earth. And some of the ones that did...were not as useful as the mask said they were. He could not eat raw meat they way that the lessons said he should and some of the pants used for healing gave him rashes instead of preventing infection. Harry was starting to rethink the idea that he might be Yautja.
It was possible he was only part Yautja, or that something was supposed to happen to change him fully into one but he could not find anything in the masks database that backed up either theory. He did wonder if maybe he was one that had been turned into a human, but humans did not have that kind of technology. Of course, they did not have blasters or cloaking technology either but the night he received the mask there were men using it.
If he was changed, it could have been the builders that did it. They could do things like that. They made the Hard Meat and other things like them as a weapon and may have seeded life across the galaxy after all. Harry was pretty sure that the technology of the Yautja was stolen from them too.
None of the history shown in the mask said anything about inventions, or where space ships or the cloaks or anything came from. There was information on how to repair the cloaks and blasters...enough so that Harry was pretty sure he might one day be able to build one...if he learned enough science and engineering in school first. He just could not find out where it all came from. The Yautja apparently had no technology that did not help with the Hunt in some way, so he figured they must have stolen it and figured out how what they needed worked and skipped past anything else.
There was a lesson there. Take only what you need to fulfill your goals, don't carry around what is useless to you.
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Learning stealth and speed helped Harry in other ways too. He learned how to steal fruits and vegetables from gardens in ways that no one ever knew that they had been taken. He also learned how to get foods from the kitchen and occasionally from the store. He was almost never so hungry it hurt anymore.
The problem he had most, was that he could not practice all of the skills he was learning. He didn't have a way to acquire even the training equipment he should have, or even make most of it. He also couldn't practice skinning animals. He had learned enough he could hunt and catch those animals that he could find wild in Little Whinging, mostly Mrs Figgs cats and wild birds, but he could not practice cleaning, skinning, or taking trophies from them without risking getting caught. Even if there was no evidence at all if anyone had found a skinned cat he would get the blame.
At least he had talked Aunt into buying whole chickens more often. They got more meat out of them for less, and he could practice some techniques he learned by disassembling their bodies to cook them.
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He liked Harry Hunting. He could not let anyone know, especially not Dudley, or it would stop but he did like it. It was good training. It made him faster, and taught him better how to hide and how to move without getting noticed. It also taught him how to avoid multiple eyes at once as well.
The only problem was, that he could not let on just how good he really was at avoiding Dudley and his gang. If he did Dudley would have said something to Uncle and he would have blamed his freakishness and punished Harry, or worse they would get bored and stop hunting him and start beating up smaller children again.
It was hard striking the right balance of hiding and stealth, and letting himself get caught now and then. At least the beatings when he was caught were never as bad as when Uncle was really angry, and he could consider them endurance training. Bruises faded, and he learned to endure pain and not let it affect his skills.
The problem was sometimes he would get frustrated at the balancing act he had to do and when he did things would happen. They were always strange things, things that would make Aunt and Uncle very angry. Like the time he tried to jump on top of a box next to the dumpster while running from Dudleys gang so he could hop on the dumpster and from there go over a fence and instead ended up on the roof of the school. Or the time he was hiding in a tree following the Gang after they had lost him while chasing him into the park and while practicing the moves and thoughts that the mask said would control a shoulder mounted blaster somehow hit Piers Polkiss with a blast of energy that sent him flying 3 feet. He spent nearly two weeks locked in his cupboard after both of those incidents..
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It was just before Harry turned nine that he saw one of his keepers again. At least, he was pretty sure that is what the man was. He was short, for an adult, and round and wearing very old fashioned clothes. He also had a very tall pale purple top hat.
Harry was with Aunt while she did the shopping. Usually she did not bring him, but he had finished all his chores and since Uncle was at work and Dudley was at a friends house she did not want to leave him in the house alone. "There is no telling what freakishness you will get up to alone with no one to watch you. You just come along and carry all fo the bags, and if you do anything abnormal at all...just don't!"
It was as they were about to enter the store when Harry got a good look at the man. He was pretty sure that he had been following them since at least half way down Wisteria Lane, but kept getting told off for fidgeting every time he tried to turn so he could get a look at him. It was while he was holding the door for Aunt that the man stopped, smiled at him, and then took off his hat and bowed before scurrying away. Why would one of his keepers be so obvious? Unless it was meant to be a reminder that he was being watched. That thought made Harry even more paranoid than normal, enough so that he could hardly concentrate to answer Aunt when she started to interrogate him about the strange man.