To Tame a Predacon [Rewrite]

1: Where it Began

A forest of matted plant cover and towering monoliths muffled the light that managed to make it past their branches. Below, where the brush had been eaten away by various creatures searching desperately for some form of sustenance, rested a predacon. She was not large, no veracious teeth, but she had horns twice the size of any other. They aimed forward, standing sharply at attention, even as she slept. They were a formidable weapon, but only if she was alert to use them. Her pack would surely wake her at the approach of danger. But wait, this predacon was alone. The pack had moved on hours ago. She had no choice, she tried to follow, but with the wound on her leg, she was too slow.

She was exhausted, low on coolant and leaking what little energon she had left. When the pack finally left her view it took her two full days to give up. Two full days of hindered stumbling to realize she would never catch them. She was too tired to continue trying. So she settled among the brambles and fell into a heavy sleep. Never the kind of thing one should do when they are alone. Worse still when they are alone and leaking.

Many of the beasts on cybertron were passive, they traveled from place to place searching for energon. When they were fortunate enough to happen upon a deposit or reach a place suitable for digging they would den up and stay until they had run the deposit dry. Once they had done so, they'd rise and move on. However, many is not all. Not all creatures on cybertron were passive pack animals. In the brush but moving just slow enough to keep it from rustling was a predator. One of the many creatures who chose a simpler, but far bloodier path. There were places on cybertron to find energon, where it occurred naturally, but there was just as edible fuel within the other predacons.

Its quarry shuttered slightly in her sleep and the hunter froze as her eyes opened slowly. She managed to pull herself upright and began towards the stream of coolant. There was little fuel but there was plenty of coolant to keep from overheating at least. She let her head down low, and drank. She would need months to recover from this, if she could last that long in a forest that had clearly been occupied and stripped of fuel already.

She was moments from bringing her head back up when there was a crash of foliage and teeth sinking deep into her neck. She thrashed, whipping her tail and trying to pull her head free. Her tail connected with her attacker and she tried to make it count, but she could feel her muscle control falling away. The predator wrapped one forelimb up and over her back, hooking its claws in and taking more control. Teeth sunk in through plating, the force of the jaws cutting and crushing, further and further until they hit something lethal. The prey dropped down, trying for one more lash of her tail, but it was far too late for that to save her.

The predator felt her prey go limp, she had known her fair share of tricks, so she gave one last deep bite before she was willing to let go. She released her grip on the being she had made a carcass and looked down at it. Blue began trickling from where she had bitten, she lapped it up quickly, before picking a spot at the base of the neck and got a good grip. She stood and began to half carry half drag her prize home. She wasn't at her strongest, times were lean, she got by on half the fuel she should have. But she was still by far strong enough to carry something just over half her size. On the other hand, with some of her visibility taken up by the carcass, she wasn't keen on getting jumped. She was wiry of having to travel far with a fresh and leaking carcass, there were many a desperate rogue in these forests, she was just one of them. Thought the brush and out onto the planes, she just had to make it to the cave without-

She dropped it and looked up, making fierce eye contact with another rogue several years her junior, and physically smaller. He was full grown, a rather unimpressive male who had likely over stepped his place in his pack and been exiled, at least from the look of those injuries. He was thin, lanky, and looking at her prey with desperate eyes.