To Tame a Predacon [Rewrite]

2: New Problems Old Enemies

Her limbs felt heavy. They had been her home for years. Ter, at first, she had taken pity on a lonely rogue and shared the meager fuel she had managed to dig up. But Ackerus had been there when she had needed the support, any fight she started he would join her in. He always backed her play, even when he couldn't quite keep up or couldn't see the outcome being anything positive. She had just walked out on them. It was justified... it was, they didn't deserve having to deal with the substantial drain on resources she was. And deep down she knew, this was how it was supposed to be, she always ended up alone. It was just the way things had always been. But she didn't feel ready for it this time, she didn't want to take a territory and spend all day sleeping or defending it. It sounded tedious, and... lonely. She needed alone time, but not always. She needed to find a new pack. This was, however, easier said than done. She was, even among predacons, a beast. Most pack leaders were smaller than her and thus she was a massive threat to their status. She had no desire to lead a pack, far too much work, but none of the leaders would believe that.

There was only one pack that she had a chance with. She'd seen one of her sisters a few years ago, she'd hinted about a pack headed by their father. She had personally never met the creature, her mother spoke highly of him while she lived and told Alpha that she was practically a carbon copy of him, and remembering her mother Alpha was certain she got her abnormal size from him. If anyone would be willing to take her it would be him, or so she hoped. Her sister had said the pack in question lived on the highest mountain in the far north. It was no short trip, easily several days of travel, that is if she only ran. Lucky for her she was not ground bound, she was a flier. It was rare among beasts of her size, but it gave her a substantial advantage that she often forgot to use. There weren't many who could follow her into the air to fight, and she never ran.

She unfolded and raised her wings, tail sweeping, and charged off. She only needed a few strides of momentum for the air to take her up.

It was a full day of flying, she didn't set down, she didn't want to. She worried if she did she wouldn't start again, she'd give into ease of loneliness. She beat back the wind until she reached the edge of a staggering sea of white. The winds intensified here, she'd heard stories of preds crashing, losing their place in a burst of sudden and unexpected cold fronts. She couldn't lose her wings to a crash, she knew they never heal the same, her leg sure hadn't.

She landed heavily but no damage was dealt. She could see the mountains, she'd walk from there. She tried to go over what she'd say. What does one say or do to introduce themselves to a father they've never met? She shook her head, the wind was rippling through her ears in a way that made her audio receptors buzz, making it impossible to hear anything that wasn't a base roar. The wind tore scent away and ice kept it from sticking. It was like going in blind. She didn't like it but there wasn't a choice. She didn't have anywhere else to go, or anything else to lose. So out she wandered onto the ice coated planes.

It grew easier with time, she took to digging her claws in to fight the wind and keep from sliding around on the icier patches. The mountain was the backdrop of everything ahead, they hadn't seemed this far when she had just started out. She went back and forth in her mind on whether to stop. In the current conditions she wouldn't be able to detect an attack until it was upon her, but she was getting tired. She hadn't stopped in days, and if she didn't get her energy back and scrounge for some sort of fuel it wouldn't matter if she heard the attack coming a mile away, she wouldn't be able to fight back.

She glanced around, looking for any sort of cover from the wind. There were a few divots in the tundra, but there was a better option off to her right. It would take her off in a slightly different direction, but a few extra hours of travel wouldn't bother her. So she altered her course and got moving, finding it all a bit easier now that she had a much closer goal.