A/N I do not own the movie, Epic; it is owned by Blue Sky Studios. I DO own my OC, Tabitha, and her species, as well as a couple of other characters that will pop up.

Early the next morning, Tabitha awoke to find herself in her childhood bed. Aqua and Terrence had insisted on her staying with them until she found a permanent residence.

She yawned, stretched, and put on her chipmunk coat. She picked up her whip and tooth dagger, put them in her pockets, grabbed her bow, and stepped outside. It was early morning. The sun was barely rising, making the pond light up like fireflies were sitting on the surface. Tabitha sighed softly, leaning back against the log, arms crossed. After living over a year with the Boggans, she had forgotten what her own home turf looked like until now.

Thinking of the Boggans reminded her of the real reason she left. Her slight smile fell away. Shaking her head of the memories, she walked to a large patch of bare ground and a small tree. Perfect.

Taking a deep breath, Tabitha grabbed her whip, and swung it at imaginary enemies. It was even better to imagine said enemies were Leafmen, Toxicad, and Rosoide. Sometimes, she grabbed her tooth dagger and sliced at the air. At some point, she carved a stick figure into the tree and used it as a sort of practice dummy. She decided to try a trick of throwing her dagger and pinning an enemy's hand or other thin-ish appendage to a wall.

As she started to use her bow—she used random twigs she found as the arrows—her brothers and their friends found her. "Hey, Tabby," Clement said. "You're not part of the Boggans anymore, so you don't have to train."

"I may as well make myself useful." She answered, spinning around and letting an arrow fly into the tree. "Besides, you know me; I'm not one to sit down all the time."

Tacitus nodded in agreement, elbowing Clement with a grin.

At some point, after Tabitha gathered her arrows, she whistled sharply. Keller II came swooping down, allowing Tabitha to jump onto his back and steer him around as she let her arrows fly. They flew up and around the tree, flying among the branches. Tabitha liked all of her training, but flying was the best part. She loved flying.

The other Amphibiqui watched in awe, never having seen one of their own flying on a bat, much less any flying creature. Tabitha even showed off by grabbing her arrows back, turning Keller II to do a back flip, and leapt down to the ground, allowing him to roost again.

"Wow, Tab," Wilton whistled. "You learn all that from the Boggans?"

"Just basics, flying and archery," She shrugged. "I was kind of a fast learner."

"No wonder you were the general!" T.J. remarked. "I'll bet you were the best!"

"Well, I dunno. The one before me was a great general too."

"Who was he?"

"Dagda, son of Mandrake. He was killed during the Pod War." She took to calling the war between the Leafmen and the Boggans the Pod War, as the queen's pod had been the one that initiated it.

"So, Mandrake's own son was general, and then you?" Campbell asked. "That means there were two people he was close to that were Boggans."

"I told you, we were just friends." Tabitha frowned. "And don't worry, that chain was broken when I left."

"Say, I remember you." An Amphibiques said, interrupting what Campbell was going to say. "You were the Amphibiques Who Hated Water! Remember her, guys?" He turned to his friends. "She rarely stepped foot in the water? She preferred to be on dry land."

Tabitha scowled lightly. "Hello to you too." She said bitterly.

"Don't listen to them, Tabitha," Clement said, clapping her shoulder. She pretended she didn't nearly stumble. "I think you've impressed them today with your tricks with your whip, dagger, and bow and arrows. Keep it up, and you'll have a different reputation."

"Yeah, something like the Amphibiques in Boggan's Armor." Campbell nodded.

"I was kinda that back when I was with the Boggans." She chuckled. "Though, ironically, I never wore armor."

"What kind of armor do they wear?" T.J. asked. "I've never really seen a Boggan well enough to know what they wear."

"Mostly bark, dead leaves, and bones of small animals." She answered. "Some Boggans were insects, though I knew a wasp and mosquito who both wore a hummingbird skull helmet."

"They used animal bones for armor?" A female Amphibiques exclaimed with a sickened face. "Gross!"

"I'll be the smell was atrocious." Another female Amphibiques said.

"Eh, you get used to it." Tabitha said. "It's not like this place smells like a bush of roses either."

That night, Tabitha was sitting on a tree branch near Keller II, who was hanging in a higher branch. He had eaten his fill, and was still awake. He occasionally groomed a wing or his face, and would nudge Tabitha's shoulder, squeaking, if he felt he wasn't getting enough attention.

Keller II was different from the original Keller, Tabitha had found out back at Wrathwood. Keller had been a bit more dependent, using his hearing and smell to find where his rider was. If she wasn't careful, she would startle him if she didn't make a noise to signal who was with him, and he was liable to snap. It also amused her when he would hiss upon hearing Toxicad's voice.

Keller II, however, was more like the other bats. He was independent, and didn't need to use echolocation so much to decipher where he was, or if someone was with him. He was also more affectionate, probably because Tabitha had been stressed when meeting him, and he had wanted to cheer her up.

Tabitha scratched the bat's ears, sighing. Even though she was at her old home, and had very nostalgic feelings, there was something else: homesickness. She missed the old tree stump that Wrathwood was, the moss and feather down beds, and even the dank smell. The wet, fishy smell of the pond just wasn't the same.

She missed Barlow and Sting too. They were her first official best friends, as well as her teachers. They always seemed to have something to talk about. She had been lucky that they weren't like the silent Boggans. She didn't know Xanthor very well, but she missed him anyways. He reminded her of her grandfather, who had died when she was a child: soft-spoken, stubborn, firm, and gentle. He had also been handy at fixing injuries.

She definitely didn't miss Toxicad and his nasty insults, or Rosoide and his flirtations. She was very glad to not always be on her guard in her old home. The Boggan cousins hadn't tried anything life threatening, but she knew it was sometimes better to be safe than sorry.

She found that out of everything she missed, she missed Mandrake the most. Although Barlow and Sting were her best friends, Mandrake was a close friend; his friendship felt different from Barlow and Sting's. Perhaps they were close because he was a large part in her training to become a warrior, he trusted her enough to steal information from the Rings of Knowledge, and named her general of the Boggans after Dagda's death.

But if he trusted her, why didn't he listen when she told him about Toxicad and Rosoide? Granted, she didn't tell him everything; only that they were bothering her and making her feel uncomfortable. But she felt he should have listened anyway, since she was the general, and too important a figure to bother to the point that she was uncomfortable. "Did he not trust me?" She asked out loud. "Or did he think I could handle it on my own? Maybe he didn't think it was quite so bad."

She ran her fingers through her bangs, sighing heavily. It hurt that Mandrake didn't help when she said she was being bothered by Toxicad and Rosoide, and that he didn't even listen. He brushed her off, telling her to ignore them and they would leave her alone. He was more interested in the new Boggan trainees anyway.

"If it had been Dagda, he would have been out of bed in a flash." Tabitha grumbled. "Maybe it was because he simply didn't care?"

Tabitha, for shame! That is a lie, and you know it. Mandrake does care for you! She remembered Xanthor telling her when she voiced the same thought. She had countered by asking why Mandrake wouldn't listen about Toxicad and Rosoide bothering her. Xanthor had said something like that hadn't ever happened in the Boggans. But that still didn't tell her that he cared for her.

Tabitha blinked as a memory resurfaced. After Keller died, and Mandrake was bandaging her arm, he was telling her she could grieve and still be strong. Then…he kissed her.

Tabitha touched her lips with a finger, remembering how it felt to have Mandrake's own lips against them. "It was just a kiss," She said stubbornly, shoving her hands into her pockets. "It doesn't mean a thing. Besides, that was days before Toxicad and Rosoide started bugging me." She wriggled against the tree trunk until she was comfortable, and drifted off to sleep.

Wrathwood

"I'm just stating the facts-"

"What you think are facts and what we think are facts are two totally different things." Sting snapped.

"Especially when it concerns your precious Tabitha." Toxicad sniffed.

"That's the first time you've ever called her by her real name." Barlow remarked. "You must be getting smart to realize her name isn't 'Amphy.'"

"Hey, I'm smart! I became general, didn't I?"

"Only because you were the best candidate after Tabitha." Sting pointed out.

"'After' meaning she was better than you." Barlow smirked.

"She was not a better general than me!" Toxicad yelled. "I'm the better general! I'm bigger, stronger, and am actually a Boggan! She's just a lowly Amphibiques! It's good that she's gone!"

"She might have been an Amphibiques, but she took to the Boggan ways like a fish to water." Sting frowned, crossing both pairs of arms. "You may be bigger and stronger, but she was fast and clever."

"You're not a better general than her either," Barlow added. "All you've been doing is bossing everyone around too much and boasting that you're better than her."

"Plus, spreading that disgusting rumor about how she became general."

"I'm not bossing everyone around, I'm overseeing the training, and telling Boggans how to do things. And I am a better general. Besides, how are we really supposed to know that Mandrake simply 'chose' her to be general?" Toxicad asked. "Those two were seen together quite a bit when she was a warrior."

"Tabitha's not like that!" Rosoide protested. "She wouldn't stoop to that level!"

"How do you know?" Toxicad asked. "You barely even knew her."

"I knew her enough." Rosoide said stubbornly.

"If you knew her enough, you would have known to leave her alone when she told you to." Barlow said. "You were on her ass since day one."

"She was just playing hard-to-get. All women are like that."

"It doesn't matter whether all women play hard-to-get or not. She was simply not interested." Sting said, scratching under his hummingbird helmet. "Besides, even if she was playing hard-to-get, she would have been with someone else a long time ago regardless."

"Who?" Rosoide immediately asked.

"What's going on here?" Mandrake had stepped in, raising an eyebrow. He was holding a new staff with thick, hardened rot on the end. Since his old one had been unable to be retrieved from the tree knot along with him, he simply made a new one.

"Nothing, sir." Barlow said quickly.

"Actually, we were talking about how I'm a better general than Tabitha was." Toxicad said proudly, smirking at the flabbergasted Boggans.

Mandrake said nothing. He simply scowled at Toxicad and left, his bat cloak trailing behind. "He didn't say anything," Barlow grinned, elbowing Toxicad. "Especially not whether you were a better general or not."

Toxicad growled at the smaller Boggan, only making him chuckle.

Mandrake may not have made a sound, but he wanted to tell Toxicad that he wasn't a better general than Tabitha. He had seen him do his duties, and was disappointed. While he did oversee the warriors' training, he was too harsh, even for a Boggan, overworking them until some dropped from exhaustion. And he usually bragged about how he was the greatest general since Dagda, was better than Tabitha, and spread that nasty rumor.

Tabitha was a harsh general too, but she didn't push everyone so hard; she reserved that for herself. Save for Toxicad and his friends, none of the Boggans had any complaints about her. He had half a mind to replace Toxicad with another Boggan capable of being general. He only had the large Boggan second on the list because he was strong and seemed to have no trouble giving orders. The last reason was an understatement, as he was learning. He had told Boggans who asked that the rumor about how Tabitha "really became general" was false and ludicrous, but most continued to believe Toxicad.

Upon finding himself in his room, Mandrake sat on the edge of the bed with a sigh. The night he had slept in his own bed again, he found it smelled different. The unfamiliar smell smelled like water, a tiny hint of blood, and strangely, lotus blossoms. It took him a full night of smelling it as he drifted off to sleep and woke up to remember where he smelled such odors: Tabitha.

A Boggan's sense of smell was just as strong as any other creature. Their sharp sense of smell enabled them to tell if something was beginning to rot, and how long it rotted. Their noses were so strong, they were able to detect small odors, somewhat like a Stomper's dog. Even though Mandrake wasn't always close enough to Tabitha to memorize her smell, he was able to at least remember it. He knew she smelled of water because she was a water creature, regardless of her dislike for water. And the blood was from her injuries. As for the lotus blossoms, he hadn't a clue. Despite it being almost a full day since she left, his bed still smelled like her.

He also didn't know why Tabitha's scent would be in his bed, at first. That mystery had been solved when he found that the bed had an unfamiliar indent in it, like someone else had been sleeping in it. Plus, the Boggans said she hadn't slept with the warriors much. She did on a few occasions, but mostly elsewhere. She had told them she slept in the training arena or bat cave.

Mandrake didn't know why Tabitha would sleep in his bed. She was always happy to sleep where she usually slept. He shook his head, deciding not to ponder on it and get a headache. Although he stopped wondering why Tabitha would want to sleep in his bed, he couldn't stop thinking about Tabitha, period. He could envision her perfectly: her aquamarine-colored skin, her dark-brown eyes, her stringy black hair—which, comically, she hated being messed with by other people—her thick-furred chipmunk coat, and her cocky, strong, independent attitude.

Mandrake laid a hand on his face as he clenched his teeth. He missed Tabitha, deeply.

A/N Well, my mouth's feeling better. I just have a couple spots of numbness, but aside from that, I don't need to use gauze anymore (I stopped needing it about two days ago...I think?) and I'm able to eat, though I'm still eating soft foods like soup and yogurt. I miss solid foods though. Last night, I made a list of solid foods I want to have when my mouth's done healing. It's kinda long :3

This chapter, I feel, is a heck of a lot better than the last one. Probably because it's longer, and maybe because I was in a better mood than when I wrote the last one. I dunno. Not sure if anyone else's doing this, but I'm calling the war between the Leafmen and the Boggans in the film the Pod War, since the main focus of the war was stealing/getting back the pod.

I kinda like moments where the story is in the character's thoughts, and events/characters, etc. are described. Like the difference between Keller and Keller II, and Tabitha's conflicting thoughts about Mandrake. I dunno why. Might be one the things that makes me tick...tock XD Though I hope I'm not going TOO into detail in some parts, like the aforementioned. I guess I have a habit of putting a lot of details into my story.

Who do you think Sting meant when he said even if Tabitha was playing hard-to-get (she wasn't) she would have been with someone else? The question being WHO would she have been with? I think we know who it is...;)