Gina looked around. Leaving Jajaqin behind, she had opened a further gap on...him, she guessed, these Jovians came in all kinds...and again leapt into a tree.
Leaping into trees does not get old. I love low gravity. This particular moon, midway out from the sun but fairly far from its planet, was a tad on the cool side. She had dressed for the part of prey: snug pants, athletic top, thermal vest, running shoes and a crocheted hat from her mother. If she stayed still too long, she might get colder than she liked, but not dangerously so. But it was all dark colors which served well in this forest with its ruddy foliage, and when she moved quickly she could open up to avoid overheating.
She had taken no weapons. Prey don't have weapons. But when she had disarmed Jajaqin and subsequently returned his gun, she had nevertheless kept his knife. The size of a large human machete, she wore it strapped to her back and so far had found no use for it.
From her elevated vantage point, she scanned her surroundings. In the distance, a small cloud of the little bird-analogs zoomed into the air, suggesting a disturbance that might be important.
That was all.
A mass dropped onto her back, wrapped around her body and dragged her out of the tree.
"What..." She didn't have time to say more before she landed, then tangled and fell over. She looked up. "Erb?"
A Llobban even higher in the tree than she had been stared down at her, two eyes focused on her and two more looking off to one side. Uh-oh...
Here they came: another Llobban swarming through the underbrush, also armed with a net in addition to what appeared to be a small forest of three-meter long blunt spears. Llobbans had evolved in water but graduated to land a long time ago. They were denser than most Jovians, almost as dense as Gina herself, and strong and quick. She had tried arm-wrestling Erb but the absence of bones in their body made it a pointless exercise. Erb had no leverage, but with three tentacles together could pull as hard as she could with one...and Erb had forty-eight more arms.
She stood, stumbled, and then jumped hard to get the net out from under her feet. While still aloft, she flung the net away from herself, trying to send it in the general direction of the Llobban who had netted her in the first place. The newcomer was just thrusting a couple of spears at her as she landed, but she parried one and grabbed another, applying a twisting disarm move to it as she advanced. More spears came at her but she had wrenched this one out of the Llobban's grip, her one hand being more than equal to any one tentacle.
The Llobban in the tree had neatly fielded her thrown net, sorted it out - fifty-one tentacles versus a net looked like a difficult problem in dimensional topology - and flung it back at her. She dodged, and it landed on her opponent, the second Llobban.
Gina stabbed her seized spear through net, snatched another away from the struggling arms and poked it through the net too, driving them deep into the ground close to the Llobban's many armpits. Tentaclepits? A half-dozen or so more spears and she had effectivel pinned the whole person to the ground, though their companion was making their way down from the treetop.
Both nets were neutralized, most of this one's spears were stuck under the net with it. The other one in the tree didn't appear to have any spears, maybe they had wanted their arms free for climbing. Might have something else about its person, but she didn't see anything at the moment. Llobbans didn't wear clothing so there wasn't much concealment beyond their gear harness. Maybe they'd just try to grapple...that would be difficult. All those arms and pretty strong too. But she had leverage and they were working individually.
"Gang up on me!" she shouted at them, tucking a couple of the spears under one arm and darting away.
