Redhawk Caldera The Dance at the Gym

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.