Redhawk Caldera The Dance at the Gym

Did a couple quick rolls for this one.
- Maximum two other participants, but as it's set at the foot of the Caldera, so is open to non-RHC wolves too.
- I rolled a 1d10 to figure out what injuries Bronco will take on, feel free to do so for your own, or make that decision yourself- no rules here :3
- I just figure we can go a few rounds, and then the cougar will run off.
- Would preferably like to keep this fast-moving, with a new round every 3-5 days at most.

The wind had picked up just a little bit as Bronco made his way down the slope toward the borders- not to leave, but to do a patrol while he was in the area. One more night, he thought, and then he would head back to the Glen. It'd been too long since he'd been able to spend this much quality time with his family, and he felt as though it was a much-needed visit, to work on his own personal relationships. Maybe this was a sign that he was supposed to be more present, for the new year. Maybe, this was just life's way of telling him he should visit more often, and actually seek out and spend real quality time with each of his relatives. The idea made him feel happy, and he still had a smile on his face when a large, stone-grey predator struck him right in the side, sending him tumbling down the remainder of the slope, watching the scenery roll around him in a blur of white snow, and grey skies. 

He came to a stop and slowly pulled his legs back underneath him, wincing slightly. Fortunately, the snow that had fallen overnight had definitely saved him from some severe injuries. While he was shaken and bruised, he felt fine, but-

- the cat had its gaze locked on him, and was prowling down the trail he'd created when he'd rolled down the slope. He gritted his teeth together, to show off his snare of teeth in warning, and switfly, he tilted his head back and bugled a short but loud summon- hoping someone patrolling in the area or even wandering nearby might come to his aid. The cougar had the high ground, and yowled at him in contempt. He thought perhaps it might be trying to make a claim on the caldera- though it had obviously not considered the fact that a pack of wolves had already done so. It continued to cruise toward him with long, confident strides, but Bronco held his ground, knowing to begin an attack without any backup would be suicide.

She'd just healed up, but when someone called for help, there was no way Fennec wasn't answering.  She wouldn't lie and say she didn't hesitate.  But Bronco needed backup and Fennec had no way of knowing who would answer.  Towhee wouldn't even hear the call.

This is stupid, she thought, but she did it with a grim smile as she began to run towards the call.  Already the movement hurt but she ignored any ache.  She was here now because the Caldera needed her, and right now, Bronco needed her help too.  Were dad and Fig even back yet?

Fuck,  she spat as she heard Bronco's rumbling.  Where is it.  Her ears were already straining as she circled around to his flank, but if he could clue her in, she'd know what to expect.

It didn't cross her mind she might be more liability than asset here.  More was better than few; she'd trained enough to think that maybe, just maybe, she might shift his odds.

Their gazes locked upon one another, the panther continued to prowl forward, and Bronco held his ground- but did not like it when the animal came close enough that he knew it could cross the distance with a few quick pounces...So he began to back up, moving away from the base of the Caldera, which was just as well- he figured he might be a bit better off on flat ground anyway, and he didn't like having the cougar above him. He continued to growl softly and deferred to the creature, hoping there'd be a chance that maybe it might just decide to leave him alone, and change its course. At the moment, it was quite obviously stalking him, though he refused to turn his back on it. 

He saw, up the slope, a beige form heading his way and he did not dare lift his gaze from the cougar's intense, ash-blue gaze for fear it might get spooked. It only seemed concentrated on him, and he'd prefer it that way. For a moment, he thought it might've been his mother coming toward him, and he was relieved. If his mother attacked the creature from behind, she would have the upper ground, and then the two of them could chase it off together. Nellie was also capable of such a thing- but as she got closer, he could see how pale her fur was in comparison to the coats belonging to his sister and his mother. Her scent drifted in his direction and he saw the cat pause as it realized at the same moment- that there were now two wolves rather than one. 

He growled and took a step toward the cat, causing it to crouch and hiss, but it bought Fennec enough time to have made her way down the slope and to his side, but this didn't necessarily mean they were safe. In a low, voice, he cautiously spoke, and began to gently press his shoulder against hers. He knew Fennec was bold and strong- but she was blind, and cats were both silent and deadly. "Move back." He said, as the cat began to stalk forward again. Its eyes roved from him to Fennec and, unnervingly, it seemed to focus in on her moreso than him. He growled, with hopes of catching its attention again, but in all likelihood, it had noticed Fennec's blank stare. "Slow, keep moving back," He said steadily. He couldn't hear the cougar's careful, silent pawsteps. As he backed up, he stepped on a small branch. The sudden crackle was like the click of a trigger being pulled- and the cat launched itself toward the pair of wolves, bounding through the snow with powerful strides, and would overtake them in an instant.

Alyx wasn't a fighter. She knew the urgency in Bronco's truncated howl could only mean there was some kind of threat involved. She didn't know the first thing about handling herself in a fight, but she couldn't just leave Bronco to deal with whatever it was on his own. Not after what he'd told her the other day. She flew across the snowy mountain, more lanky limbs than muscle, not much of a threat at all, and changed course abruptly when she spotted not only Bronco, but Fennec.

Fennec, too, was kind of on her side. If it had been Niamh, she might have turned the other cheek (and regretted it immensely later), but she couldn't leave the two of them to fend it off alone. But that was a fucking cougar.

Now, Alyx knew a little bit about cougars. Her parents, for all the faults she perceived in each of them (but mainly her mom), did not allow their children to go around uneducated about potential dangers. But Alyx didn't know the first thing about fighting a cougar, and approached it very much the way she would approach hunting a deer, which was to go straight for the back end. She peeled back her lips, drove herself through the snow in a semi-crouched run, and reached out to snap her jaws shut on the cat's hind leg as it lunged for Bronco and Fennec...

Only for it to whirl on her with a screaming yowl and knock her flat on her ass with a swipe of its paw.

All of Fennec's fur along her back stood on end as Bronco told her to get back.  She felt a brief hint of irritation, but didn't act on it as the rational side of her realized, in an instant, he was doing the same.  It wasn't him ordering her to get behind him.  He was letting her know that it was coming.

She refused to back up faster than he did, but she let her pelt brush his to know where he was (and for reassurance, honestly).  She was alight with the urge to attack the thing head on, but she also had no concept of the danger they were facing.  Only what she could glean from sound... and of that there was very little.

It makes no noise.  That meant it was light, and probably quick.  Lean?  Short.  She tried to paint a mental picture while she carefully tracked backwards... until Bronco's twig sounded behind her and she jumped, just in time to hear the scuffle start ahead.  Someone else had joined the fight alongside.

A yowl and a thud.  The first sound was no wolf, and that was what Fennec launched herself at.  Catch hold, force it down, don't give it time... 

She managed to take the creature by surprise at least, but she'd misjudged.  When she went for the neck to push it down, her teeth caught it's shoulder instead.  She bit, but couldn't catch, and all she managed to do was distract the damn thing into whirling on her next.  Her teeth glanced off.  It was then that she learned a valuable lesson she hadn't yet needed to content with - some creatures carried threats outside of a bite.

The cat turned and raked it's claws across her shoulder.  Fennec didn't even feel it right away... she was too caught up in tracking where the thing was, and she knew if she backed off, she'd lose it again.  So she snarled and snapped at it once more as blood began to well up and run, unnoticed, down her right foreleg.

He'd opened his jaws to brace and meet with the cougar's onslaught, only to see it scowl and pivot, unleashing its wrath not upon himself and Fennec, but upon Alyx who had attacked from the rear. A small shock of wind- carried forth from the cougar's momentum, brushing his whiskers back but now that the cat had turned its back on him, he surged forward- with Fennec doing the same and launching toward its shoulder. With each snap from the jaws of the wolves came a swift vengeance from the cat- who dashed Alyx aside with a sweep of its mighty paw, only to pivot and rake its claws through the fur of Fennec's shoulder an instant later. The cat was surrounded- and became frenzied. 

It whipped toward Fennec as she bit into its tawny fur, so Bronco seethed forward to lunge and snap at the side of its neck which was presented to him. The fur and skin were thick, and the muscle so dense he couldn't get a good grip- and had missed its jugular by several inches. When the cat reared back, he fell back to the earth but before he could hit the ground it brought one of its heavy mitts directly down upon his heac, catching the back of his skull with its scythe-like claws and raking them down across his forehead, nearly pulling his scalp with it. Blood wept from the four jagged, parallel wounds, and got in his eyes, obscuring his vision. He staggered backwards, attempting to shuffle closer to Alyx. A cat caught in a corner would lash out in all directions- but if they presented a united line, he hoped they could use their numbers to simply intimidate it into running off. 

"To me- flank me!" He called out to Fennec, hoping she might circle around. "We don't need to kill it we just need to chase it off- if we all stand tog-" Words hurriedly spoken, but with the blood obscuring his vision, he hadn't seen the cat lunge forward again to clap one of its hefty paws against shoulder so hard he thought he heard something click. He tumbled sideways. He thought he felt something soft, and wondered if it was Alyx- but he was too blinded by the blood in his eyes and shocked by the blow to his shoulder to see.

She hit the ground with a whuff of air, wheezing at the suddenness of it all. One second she'd been locking her jaws on its back leg, the next she was in the snow. With a groan, Alyx lifted her head to survey what was happening, and was shocked by the sheer blinding speed of the animal. It looked too big to be able to move like that, but with feline grace it twisted and turned, slashing at Fennec and then Bronco. When her brother hit the ground, Alyx bared her teeth and cried, no!

She scrambled to her paws again and charged the cougar, barely hearing Bronco's call that they stand together. She was too fired up after watching the great bloody cat harming her siblings. She'd got off lucky with just a few superficial scratches where its paw had met her flesh, and thought she was in better shape than either of them for another go. What Alyx didn't realize was that cougars were as clever as wolves, and it had seen her, and it knew she hadn't grown into her body yet, and it knew how to best her.

The cougar did a crazy wrestling jump off the nearest tree and knocked her head clean off with one swipe.

Before Alyx realized what was happening and before she could do anything about it, the cougar pounced at her. Next thing she knew, she was on her back and pinned against the base of a tree with the cat's jaws around her throat, crushing, while she tried desperately to suck in a breath and kicked her hind legs at it helplessly.

The scent of blood was everywhere... some of it hers, a lot of it Bronco's.  Fennec's growl turned feral and Bronco's call registered too late.  She was on a one track goal now... shove this thing to the ground.  Pin it, end this.

But it moved again.  Someone had shouted 'no'.  Alyx?  She felt her stomach twist with overwhelmed frustration.  When it came to a fight that was one on one, Fennec knew that she could at least track her opponent.  When it came to a multi-angled one like this, she just.... couldn't.  She couldn't worry about them.

End this now.

She threw herself on it one more time.  It was preoccupied with the easy prey in it's jaws and did not attempt to dodge, so Fennec's adjusted aim hit home.  She tore at  the back of its neck and her teeth bit in deep.  The cat yowled and presumably released Alyx... its back was defenseless, and with three of them, even an easy meal would kill it in a matter of moments.  But Fennec didn't let go.  Instead she pulled the animal sideways and tried to leverage herself over it to hold it down.

In doing so she learned a very important lesson that had gone unheeded the first time. The cougar's claws hooked into her underside, low on her ribcage, and began to tear downwards.  It was only by sheer luck of the terrain, something that Fennec's move failed to account for, that she fell sideways off of it and landed heavily on her uninjured side. The powerful hind claws lost contact just before they made contact with her softer underbelly in a move that, without a doubt, would have eviscerated her.

She staggered to her feet and snarled as shock and fear overwhelmed any rational course set before her.  Fight and you die.  Run and you die.  So she did neither, and instead bared her teeth to join Bronco's show of force.  She'd never been that consciously close to dying before and she was vividly, terribly aware of it.

He could hear a high pitched ringing in his ears as he drunkenly tried to lift himself to his feet, only to find that his left forelimb was more or less uesless, and that he couldn't maneuver it properly. The last strike by the cougar had dislocated it, and he felt nearly incapable of moving anything from his shoulder down. He rubbed his face against his other shoulder, stumbling as he did so, trying to get some of the blood out of his eyes and succeeded in restoring his vision just enough, and just in time, to see his sister get pinned against the base of a tree by the throat. 

Fennec was upon it like a whip, and clenched her jaws into the thick muscle and sinew of the nape of the cougar's neck, wrenching it sideways. Incapable of jumping or even running, Bronco hobbled toward his sister where he would make a stand- emitting as fearsome a growl as he was capable of producing, whilst Fennec side-stepped to join him. When surrounded, the cat was a whirlwind of savage claws and teeth- but facing three wolves together, wounded as they were, seemed to shake its confidence. 

With a savage yowl and hiss the creature lunged and swiped, and Bronco did his best to dodge, but held his ground. His vision was blurred- and he could not clearly see either Fennec or Alyx to know if the cougar's last few swipes were avoided or not. He felt the air just above his temple stir and felt a sudden pull as one of the cougar's claws hooked into one of his years and jerked free, tearing through his ear so that the tip half of it dangled loosely as a flap of skin. He snarled and lunged- and it was only then that the cougar's patience and confidence had worn thin enough that it hissed, and backed away. Within a few moments, it turned and bolted, and mere moments later, in the silence that followed, Bronco slowly tilted forward and face-planted into the bloodstained snow.

Spots erupted in front of Alyx's eyes as she yawned her jaws wide, trying to breathe, but it was like sucking air through a cracked straw. There wasn't enough getting to her lungs. Her vision was swimming. There was pain, too, radiating out from her throat. A strange clicking sound, the feeling of something shifting in her throat when it shouldn't shift, the whistling of her breath as it squeeze down a strangled airway. Even she could hear it. It terrified her.

The cat let go, but not without shredding its teeth through the thin skin of her throat. It missed her vital vein by less than an inch. Blood dripped steadily from her mangled throat as it tore away from her, catching her in the flank with a long slash as it went, and the best Alyx could do was weakly bare her teeth at it. She could taste blood in her mouth. Hers, or the cats? She couldn't be sure.

Blackness buzzed at the edges of her vision, closing in, swallowing her. Her breath rasped audibly in her throat. She knew that was wrong. There was something wrong. She saw in slow motion as the cat disembowled Fennec—no, no, her sister managed to get away before the claws did that much damage. Even slower was the way it tore Bronco's ear in half. Then it was running away, and Alyx's consciousness slipped away with it.

The last few slashes from the panicked beast were wild and without focus, thank god... only one caught, a superficial wound to the side of her face.  She didn't dodge, or advance... all she did was continue to snarl, stiff and terrified and furious.

It finally ran.  And as it did, Fennec both heard and felt Bronco fall next to her.

Hey.... fuck.  Bronco, hey,  Panic laced her tone.  Alyx!?  She called this out before leaning down and shoving her muzzle under Bronco's chin, making sure his face was out of the snow so he wouldn't get smothered. C'mon.  She whined, listening for a response from either.

None came.  She had to keep it together, and the steps laid out one by one in her mind.  Find Alyx.  She staggered towards where the cat had been and nearly stumbled over her sister's prone form.  There was blood, and Fennec felt acrid fear as she noted where it was.  Not enough to be a major vein but... shit.  This wasn't good.

She grabbed Alyx's scruff and carefully, slowly, began to pull her over to where Bronco was.  Her main aim was not to move her throat, but she needed to get them close so that she could get this in check without losing track of either.  If that cougar came back, she wasn't about to let it nab either of them.  Her ribs and leg protested the work immensely but she ignored that, pushing through until she had them side by side.  Alyx was breathing, if struggled, so she was secondary.  She had to stop Bronco's bleeding first.

She didn't have anything to work with.  For a moment she just stood, at a complete loss.. before taking a step forward and just lowering herself onto the worst of it.  By draping herself across, she attempted to use her own body to apply pressure to the wounds on his neck and scalp.  It required that she not completely let her weight rest, and she knew she couldn't keep this up for long.  But she had to for long enough.

From this position she sent up a hoarse howl, one that begged anyone nearby to help.  She couldn't move them by herself, but she'd remain here until someone managed to hear.  Eventually someone would, and she'd follow woodenly to the medic den.  Until then she did what she could, cleaning and applying pressure in turn while trying to also keep them both warm.

prob last for me! Gonna work on the assumption that someone helps them move <3 anyone can feel free to insert their char having done that

Last from me; feel free to add in another post or archive, Chelsie <3 fun thread! Thanks both of ya for being so quick with this! I'm also cool if others want to say they stopped to help get them back up the hill, just mention it on the Disco. Niamh'll have helped out a bit; Bronco will remember none of the trip up the Caldera.

Bronco would be more or less useless for some time following the cougar's departure. It would allow Fennec some time to press on and tend to his wounds without having to worry about him pulling away in pain, and by the time he did come around, it was because his mother had stepped in and had screeched in such an unholy manner which had finally awakened him. She fretted over both of them, but he could make out none of her words. He blacked out again when he saw Alyx, prone, the dark fur of her throat sticky with blood. 

Moving Bronco back up the Caldera would take both patience and strength- he would sag against whoever moved along with him for the few steps he could manage, and tumble to the ground when he tried to use his left forelimb. However they got him back to safety was well beyond him- but he would be grateful later for those who had helped drag, push, shove and carry his battle-weary body up the caldera's slope to safety.