Redhawk Caldera Over my dead body

Let's fight some puddy tats, @FitzDutiful! :P

His good mood hadn't wavered since making up with Fox. For the moment, all was right in his world: he and Fox were as tight as ever, the pups would be here in a matter of weeks, relations with the plateau were mending and the caldera pack itself was still bustling along. He didn't care about Mikael or Tempest anymore; they were gone as far as he was concerned. Nor did he bother dwelling on Magpie's presence here. She was Fox's sister and, though he would never say it to his wife, she was her problem too.

The sun shone brightly as he strode around their mountainous home, wearing a circle around the caldera's base. That further buoyed his mood. The winter had been strangely mild. It hadn't even snowed very much. They'd seen a drop in prey but not a single one of his members had gone hungry for any length of time. They were a prosperous pack in a bountiful place and, for the millionth time, he was reminded of how perfect a place this would be for his and Fox's children. Peregrine grinned like a fool.

Something moved in his peripheral vision and he turned, jade eyes scanning away from the caldera. The sight of a lynx loping right toward him wiped that foolish smile right off his face. The Alpha's ears swept backward and he bared his teeth. He didn't wait for the wild cat to come to him. More aware than ever of everything at stake—he'd just been thinking about all of it, after all—he charged directly toward it. He would cut off the lynx's path, then chase it away. If it put up a fight, Peregrine would fight back until one of them lay dead on the ground.

Fitz had been on patrol. He was still toying with the idea of creating his own pack but had no idea how to go about doing it or whether anyone else in his life would understand. Would Raissa? Would Fox and Perry? Speaking of, ever since Raissa and Fitz has officially declared their mateship things had been a bit strange between them. Not in any one way he could put his paw on, but something was odd. They spent time together, but only when they were at home. It felt, in some ways, like he hadn't seen her for a long time.

Feeling a bit down, it took him a while to recognise the scent of lynx on the air. As soon as he did, he became alert. Unwilling to allow anything to threaten his home he loped after the beast only to see Peregrine heading directly towards it too.

He approached from the opposite side, pincer-moving the lynx. It's only options were to turn back to the border or fighting them. Either way, FitzDutiful was game. He had found that physical exertion was a good way to deal with down-in-the-dump moods. As he got closer, it didn't appear that the lynx would run away. It seemed as though it was going to be a fight to the death unless Perry had any smart ideas of how to encourage it to go away.

The thought of a fight made Fitz smile a deadly grin as he wished for the lynx to stay. A fight sounded good about now.

Feel free to PP the lynx as much as you want!

The lynx halted in its tracks, though it did not turn and flee. Its lips wrinkled back from its needlelike teeth and it hissed. Peregrine met the sound with a fresh growl of his own as he closed the distance between them. He briefly wondered at the feline's audacity, though there wasn't much time for thought. He needed to take action to protect his pack from this threat.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw something (or someone) else moving toward the cat. He couldn't look, though, else he would be exposing a blind cheek to the lynx. He kept coming, rearing up on his hind feet at the last second and launching right at the wildcat's whiskery face. At the moment, he didn't care what harm befell him, as long as the lynx didn't get anywhere near his family.

Fitz saw Perry smash the lynx in it's scary face. FitzDutiful had been aiming to collide with the lynx and body smash it to knock it away from his alpha. That, however, wasn't needed and so FitzDutiful skirted around the back of it instead and attacked the horrid beast with a bite to its flank.

He wondered if the lynx would turn the attention onto this new danger but instead it kicked him aside and carried on concentrating it's attacks on Peregrine. His ribs felt bruised and he was winded as the fight continued. Blood was seeping from the lynx's rump but it didn't appear that anything fatal was occurring.

It took him a few moments to be able to bring himself back upright and reassess the situation to see if he needed to delve back in and help Peregrine find the killing blow.

The lynx's teeth might have carved his nose to ribbons had the other, unknown assailant not given it a sound bite to the haunch. The cat screamed and spat, causing Peregrine's ears to ring and slick back against his skull. He fell back, hoping to take advantage of the wildcat's distraction. But the lynx barely paid any attention to the other wolf—the dutiful Duty, he saw now—and sprang at him before Peregrine could properly collect himself.

It attacked with its claws, landing parallel blows on Peregrine's shoulders and leaving deep gouges that shredded the flesh and muscle all the day down to his chest. He yelled in pain, though he had just enough presence of mind to dart his snout downward. Even as the cat lacerated him, one of his lower teeth punched right through its left eye, halfway blinding it. Blood and other fluids gushed from the eye socket even as the lynx unleashed another, shriller cry.

The beast fell back and, though bleeding heavily, Peregrine snapped at it, cutting into its opposite cheek. The cat screamed a third time, the noise one of fear and pain. With a final hiss, it then wheeled and scrambled away, stumbling because of its diminished vision and the wound to its backside. The Alpha male leered as it fled, teeth bared, and only tore his gaze away when the lynx finally disappeared.

"How're you holding up?" he said to Duty, sucking in a deep, shaky breath. He looked down to see the fur on his chest absolutely slick with blood. It looked like oil against his dark fur, though some of it ran down his forelegs and colored the snowy ground bright red. "Can you come here and check how deep these are? I'm feeling a bit faint," Peregrine blurted, sinking to his haunches.

Just as Fitz came to his feet, Peregrine yelled in pain and the lynx, severely wounded, ran away. It was a confusing moment. When the lynx had knocked him back he had hit his head and felt dazed. It was slow to clear though he had enough thought to think coherently.

"I'm okay, I think." he replied to his alpha, not quite realising that all the blood on Perry's fur was his own. He took a step forward before collapsing to the ground as his sore ribs screamed out in agony. "I think it got lucky."

Pulling himself back up, he walked to Peregrine by keeping his right foreleg off the ground. It didn't hurt as much if he held his leg close and kept the weight off it. He doubt anything was broken, just sprained. As he neared closer, the fog cleared even more and he realised exactly how deep the wounds were on his shoulder. Not being a medic, he couldn't help but wince. "They're pretty bad. I think I recall some Lavender Hyssop around here that we can put on to keep infection out, and some Leadplant to seal it. Give me a moment."

Fitz disappeared around a nearby tree and came back with mouthfuls of the stuff. He patiently attempted to apply them to Peregrine's wounds, wincing every time his eyes fell on the gouges. "Good job I'm not training for a medic, eh?" he said, trying to joke. He had learnt enough through his naturalist training to perform first aid but that was as far as he would ever be able to go.

FitzDutiful took a look and, for some reason, the words "pretty bad" made Peregrine very woozy. Or maybe it was the blood loss. "Duty, I... don't know what you just said," he muttered, eyebrows knitting together as he tried hard to stay alert and focus. "But it sounded legit," he quipped in a dry voice, taking several deep breaths as his Delta momentarily departed.

He returned quite promptly and began tending to the Alpha's wounds. Peregrine winced but stayed quiet. Only when Duty spoke did he look up and say, "Call for Ashton." He didn't mean to imply he didn't appreciate Duty's help but they did have a Healer on hand just for times like these. Of course, it didn't occur to him right this moment that he hadn't actually seen Ashton in weeks and that any call for him would go unanswered. He was a bit distracted, after all.

FitzDutiful dropped the swab of antiseptic that he had been about to apply on the floor when Peregrine asked him to call for Ashton. "Perry..." he said slowly. "No one's seen Ashton in weeks. I think he just upped and left..." he trailed off, unsure of whether to call or not. In the end he figured there may be a healer in training that he didn't know about and sent up a call for anyone with knowledge to come.

In some ways it was a bitter sweet moment. It was for Ashton that FitzDutiful had learnt the names and uses of these plants. It was to be a support for their healers that Fitz had learnt first aid. Now he was having to use that knowledge for they had no healers, and Fitz wasn't even a qualified naturalist!

With a sigh, he pulled back once the last of the dried leadplant was stuck to Peregrine's wounds. It seemed to be keeping the majority of the blood in, though he didn't know exactly how to make the bleeding of deep gashes stop. "Just... don't go in water and get this wet, okay?" He didn't really know if that would matter but it stood to reason that it needed to fall off on its own. He was momentarily concerned that he had used too much of the antiseptic. He had tried to be sparse, just putting on enough to lightly cover the wound, but he had a bit of a funny taste in his mouth from the application and it was having an almost worrying effect of making the room spin - or was that an after effect of his head wound?

A couple hours from now, someone's going to come across their unconscious bodies just laying there... HAHA.

Duty's remark had a sobering effect on the Alpha male, whose lips pursed. "What?" he asked, brows furrowing again. He tried to think on when he'd last seen the pack's hippie medic. He hadn't seen or heard from him in a while. And he'd never hosted his pack play session. But wouldn't Somnia have said something if her beau had become scarce? Shouldn't Peregrine have noticed for himself, especially after getting so hung up on Mikael and Tempest vanishing?

"Well, fuck," he muttered under his breath. "Just keep doing what you're doing," he encouraged in a pained but grateful voice. "Is Ash really gone? That stupid son of a bitch!" he spat before Duty could answer. Hadn't he gone AWOL once before? And now he was tied up with Somnia, which meant the Gamma would probably be really upset right about now. Peregrine mumbled a few more oaths under his breath.

"That fuck nugget had better stay gone, else I'm going to rip off his danglers for abandoning us in our time of need," Peregrine said, perhaps a touch melodramatically. It wasn't like Ashton could have anticipated the encounter with the lynx. But wasn't the whole point of a having a pack being able to count on one another at any given time? He couldn't count on Ashton ever again. "Poor Som. God damn it."

The next moment, he swooned. "Ayy... I think I'm gonna lie down. Maybe someone else will come. Maybe someone else is magically a Healer in disguise," the Alpha murmured even as he sank to the ground. It hurt like hell to put weight on his torn shoulder, yet he had no choice because sitting upright suddenly become impossible. His head swam and it seemed the only way to stop it from popping off his shredded shoulder blades was to rest his cheek against the cool ground.

Meanwhile, his fresh wounds wept blood and lymph, turning the snow beneath him into cherry slush.

And that is a perfect way to end!

Peregrine started out on a rant against Ashton. At least, Fitz thought it was a rant against Ashton. It could have easily been against Fitz and his dreams of creating a pack of his own in the near future. Had he mentioned that to Peregrine yet? He couldn't remember. Everything was so hazy and so blurry. The adrenaline had kicked in to help him deal with the problem at hand now his injuries were catching up.

To steady himself he dropped his right leg to the floor, transferred his weight onto it. That promptly collapsed under a searing pain of agony and he had to roll over to get it to stop. With Peregrine out of his line of sight, he heard the alpha lay down too but the words made no sense. What was happening to him?

Before he knew anything else, little tweety birds were flying around him as darkness enveloped him in its sweet embrace.

I'm actually going to keep it open just in case a would-be Healer wants to pop in and try to help! If not, I'll just punt it into the archives after a few days and we can say they eventually crawled away from the scene, haha...

Peregrine heard a sound behind him, yet didn't react to it right away. Only when the silence went on for a while did he finally mutter, "Duty?" Grimacing, he lifted his head and glanced over one bleeding shoulder to see his comrade collapsed nearby. "What the fuck?" he whispered to himself, then began the painstaking process of rolling over, standing up and walking over to the fallen Delta.

"Dude... Duty... hey?" the Alpha male muttered, nosing his pack mate. He was so confused. Had he sustained an injury that had caused him to pass out? Peregrine didn't even think about the possibility of an overdose on the medicine. "Dude, wake up," he said, batting weakly at the male's slack face.

He swooned again. Peregrine tipped forward, practically toppling on top of the prostrate FitzDutiful. He grunted, managing to roll away to avoid impact. He came to rest beside the other male, then exhaled shakily. He needed to lay here and sit still before trying again to help. He was in no condition to administer first aid, not to mention his lack of knowledge.

Well, he would just wait here in the hopes that someone would eventually stumble over them and help. In the meantime, he slowly stretched out a foreleg—his shoulder screamed in protest—and set one of his broad paws on top of Duty's.