New Worlds

AvalonReeseFanFics

A/N: Well hello there my wonderful readers! I know it's late but here we are! The next update. And for those of you who guess who she was going to meet next well… you're right. Part of this chapter is from the flashback chapter in World's Combined, so if it looks familiar that's why. Other than that I hope you guys enjoy it and I'll see you next week!

Chapter 17 – The Tenacious Tens Part 2

Rhum and Una were in the middle of exploring a new area of her mother's territory when they suddenly found themselves surrounded.

It wasn't like they didn't know the Stegosauruses were coming, they had felt them, Rhum had heard and smelt them as they came closer and closer, but they also assumed that they were just migrating through on the way to another food source. That wasn't uncommon.

It was a whole family herd and they were moving slowly too. Rhum said it was only five Stegosauruses. Five adults, anyway. Two males, three females, and then a few hatchlings, though they were juvenile and large enough to do damage.

They had gotten out of their way to watch them go by, but they hadn't gone by. They had spotted Rhum and Una and just circled around them.

Now one sick Stego her pack could take on, but a whole family of them, no. Not even her mom's pack was strong enough to help her now.

Rhum had slowly backed her away towards a tree, she was supposed to climb it but she didn't want to leave him like that, so she had stayed on the ground with him.

Rhum kept hissing, barking at them in warning to stay away and they had done just that though they did low at them almost insistently.

"What do they want?" Una asked Rhum.

"They want you," he hissed back and she frowned. Why the hell did they want her?

But then one of the larger ones pushed the juveniles into the circle, and she could see the problem.

One of them, the littlest one, had a whole front leg and part of his flank covered in needles.

She had seen needs like that before, they were on this really pretty tree, they grew close to her mango grove but they didn't have any fruit, just really sweet smelling flowers. It was not a safe tree to climb at all.

She had tried once and pricked her hands all over. She cried for a whole hour after that as her mom tried to lick her better.

This little guy must have fallen into them or something.

Either way they clearly wanted her to get the needles out.

"Oh this is starting to get ridiculous," Rhum said. "Apparently they're here to ask if you'd…"

"They want me to get the needles out," she finished for him, already pushing past him.

"Wait a second… you're not actually going to…"

"I pulled needles out of your snout didn't I?" she asked because she had. Granted he had gotten himself stuck in a thorny bush but she still saved him from it.

"Yes but that's me, you like me."

Una shot him a scowl as she approached the nervous and clearly in pain stegosaurus. It was about as tall as her, and eyeing her carefully.

She held out a hand for it to sniff before she slowly slid to the side where all the needles are.

"This is going to hurt… tell them this is going to hurt," she ordered and though Rhum didn't want to he did just that.

Una began to pull, trying to grab as many needles as she could at a time, but they were slippery so she had to do it one at a time. And there were oh so many!

But she kept at it, plucking each and every needle she could out of the hide. It was long tiring work and by the time she was done the sun was beginning to set and she had eaten all the mangos she had brought with her that day.

When she was finally done, the young one trumpeted, trying out it's newly needle-free leg. It turned back to the older ones, probably it's parents and rushed towards them. They took turns sniffing at the leg before trumpeting at her.

Then they were leaving.

"Aw…" Una said as they walked away. "Usually I get something out of it."

"Probably should have told them that before you took all the needles out," Rhum said.

Una nodded, yeah, she'd have to start doing that from now on.

-JP-JP-JP-

The following morning, after she spent almost a whole day picking needles out of an ungrateful Stegosaurus juvenile, the Stegosaurus herd found her again.

This time they found her when she was with her mom and most of the pack. The adults once again surrounded them, and the pack's response was to make their own circle. A protective one around Una.

"They must think we're a threat," Rela hissed. Eyeing up all the Stegos that had circled around them and seemed to be shifting nervously.

"Well tell them we're not!" Roc cried but was mostly ignored as the alpha male lowed and just like that all eyes were on Una.

Una winced as she looked at all the faces pointed in her direction. "He's asking for me again, isn't he?"

"He's done this before?" Rela hissed and Una winced.

Una had purposely not told her mom that a herd of Stegosauruses had surrounded her and Rhum the day before because she was certain that she'd be so upset that she wouldn't let Una out of her sight anymore. So they had sort of watered down the story.

"Well…"

"What exactly do you two do on your days out?" Rela hissed but Una was already pushing forward.

"It's fine, they're nice. I got this."

"You don't know what they're saying!" Rela cried but Una was already moving forward with Rhum following.

All the while the alpha male chuffed at her. "He wants you to follow them, wants to take you somewhere."

"Oh! Okay!" she cried.

"What? Are you crazy?!" Her mother cried. "You're just going to follow… Rhum do something!"

"Well… she doesn't really…"

"Doesn't listen to you? Is that what you're going to say? Why am I leaving her with you then?"

"Mummy, calm down," Una said. "If you're so worried why don't you come with me?"

"You think I'm just going to let you leave with them?"

Una shook her head, but it wasn't just Rela who came with her, but the whole pack. It made one hell of a strange sight, a pack of raptors walking side by side with a family-herd of Stegosauruses as they marched through the jungle.

Eventually they lead them to a grove of bushes, this was where the spiky fruit grew. She knew it tasted sweet but it was too hard to open up without getting hurt.

Una watched as the Stegosauruses all took a spiky fruit in their mouth and then dropped it to the ground in front of her. Then they all deliberately squished it revealing the fruit inside.

They were showing her how to eat the spiky fruit!

"Oh! Thank you!" she cried stooping down to pick up the first of the pieces, she ran to the nearby stream and washed the dirt off before taking a bite.

Sweet but tingly!

The alpha chuffed at her again and she turned to Rhum who bobbed his head at him.

"He says if you every want more food, just to come ask, they'll help you gather."

"Tell him I say thank you!" she said already bending down to pick up another piece to eat. Rhum told him and then he was calling for his family-herd to leave.

Una turned to see that the pack was all standing by watching in surprise as this happened, except her mother who was glaring at her.

"I think it's time you start telling me the truth about what you've been up to, oh hatchling of mine."

Una winced.

Yeah. She was in trouble.

-JP-JP-JP-

After her mom found out about all the helping she had been doing she had basically been grounded.

She got the longest lecture of her life.

How stupid it was for her to put herself in harms way to help prey. But she wasn't really going out of her way to find these creatures she just… happened upon them and decided to help. How did that make her a bad guy?

Her mummy would want someone to help her if she was stuck, wouldn't she?

She would, but that did not make her feel better and it didn't stop the lecture. The lecture continued, on and on, until it was finally decided that until Rela could trust Una to go off on her own and not cause trouble, and Rhum to be able to actually manage her, not just stand by and over-see her stupidity, the two of them were locked down.

At first they weren't allowed to leave the nest. Both of them were grounded. No tree climbing, no exploring, no wandering, just the two of them in the nest behaving.

It was torture.

Yes Rhum had her practicing her scenting, yes Una could splash in the river and catch him fish to eat. But other than that there was nothing else to do and she was bored. She practically died of it.

Eventually, after a few moons where she had shown herself to be on her best behaviour, her mother agreed to let them go to get mangos for her.

It also helped that she was super annoying the whole time, bugging her mummy about letting her go somewhere, anywhere at this point. But Una hadn't even been allowed to go get food for herself, her mummy had other pack members doing that.

But she was behaved, she was annoying, and her mom let her go to the mango grove to get food.

When she came back, and she hadn't caused any trouble, her mummy agreed to let her go, only to the mango grove, to get food and back.

After a few moons of that working, her mom started to add other places. She no longer wanted Una anywhere near the meadow, but she was perfectly fine with biped places, so she got to go back to exploring those. It was odd, to hear her mother speak so positively about trusting her in biped nests when she had never liked Una anywhere near them before.

She was not allowed to go to any of the biped nests by cutting through the meadow. She'd have to go around.

It was absolutely nonsense.

Una felt like a little baby hatchling again.

She knew better than to argue though. She'd have to behave to prove to her mother that she could. Then once she was let out of her mother's watchful gaze again she could go back to doing whatever it was she wanted to do.

That day, however, she was doing as was asked.

She was in the jungle, making her way to a new biped facility. It wasn't new, new, but she hadn't been to this one often. It was on the out fringes of the territory, which meant that it could be in her mom's territory or reclaimed by another pack.

She was going to find out when she got there.

She and Rhum were walking, not running that day, walking because she was planning on doing a lot of climbing in that facility and she'd need all her energy.

They were about halfway there when Rhum stopped in his tracks. He raised his head to sniff the air and then lowered into a crouched stance. Una mimicked him. Freezing beside him, and crouching down low.

"What is it?" she whispered.

"Predator," he whispered. "Closing in."

"What? Why? There's no prey over here."

"It's probably just moving through the jungle. Get ready to climb."

"What is it though?"

"Uh… something big…"

Yeah. Helpful.

So the two stood, waiting to see what would come. Rhum nudged her towards the tree so she could climb up it if necessary. The ground beneath their feet began to quake, she heard the creaking of trees giving way to the bulk of whatever was coming, long before she actually saw the predator.

It was a Tyrannosaur.

It was a full grown one, there were mating scars on its jaw and haunches. It wasn't injured but it was way out of its perceived territory. But it wasn't passing through.

It stopped the second it saw them, and both her and Rhum realized that it was there for them.

"Climb!" Rhum shouted. "Climb!"

He sprung forward, as if he could take on a full grown Tyrannosaur and Una scrambled up the tree.

The Tyrannosaur charged too. Rhum jumped up onto it's face, but he simply shook him off. By then Una was a couple branches up and still climbing, but she hadn't been fast enough.

The Tyrannosaur jumped up, chomped down on both her and the branch she was on and then the world literally went black because she couldn't see a thing.

This was it. This was the end of her.

-JP-JP-JP-

The Tyrannosaur came to a lumbering halt in that little clearing it had claimed for its nest. Here the ground was warm and cracked and there were a great many trees and bushes to act as cover. Perfect for raising hatchlings. It had picked its nest to be protected by the roots of a dead tree, but in last night's storm the wind had blown the tree back revealing the web of roots to the sky.

It plodded to the fallen tree where its mate stood protective watch and then dropped what it had been carrying in its mouth to the ground.

Una came tumbling out of the Tyrannosaur's gapping maw and landed with a wet smack against the ground below. She waited, waited for it to finish her, waited for baby bites to rip her to pieces but nothing came.

All that came was the soft exhale of it's breath against her dampened body and the worried groans of two dinosaurs much bigger than her.

But Una didn't speak Tyrannosaur. She didn't know what they wanted. She turned her little face up to them and saw that they were both just staring down at her, exhaling in low moaning grunts as if attempting to speak to her.

And then she heard the twitters.

Hatchling twitters.

She turned towards the tree she had been dropped before, its roots making jagged peaks against the afternoon sun. The ground had come loose beneath it revealing hidden holes and quarries. Little places for a hatchling to fall down. Too little for big giant Tyrannosaurs to fit their head through.

They must have lost their hatchling in the ground. It must not be able to get out.

They wanted her to save their hatchling.

Una carefully got up, slow and sure as to not make any sudden movements, she didn't want them to think that she was going to run or something.

She made a big show of peering down into the hole. She did this for two reasons, firstly she wanted to see if she could at least see where the Tyrannosaur hatchling was, and secondly, so the worried parents knew that she had understood and was looking to get the hatchling out.

At first glance she couldn't make out where it was. So she lowered herself into the cavern the uprooted tree had created looking into all of the divots and holes for any sign of a hatchling.

And then she found it.

Half in a hole that had a root running through the opening. Well how the hell had it gotten in there?

She made no noise to try and reassure it, because she knew it wouldn't understand her version of raptorness, instead she just went straight to digging.

It took some time but she managed to dig a hole big enough for it to get out. But it wouldn't move. Great. So she dug the hole a little wider, wide enough to get her arms in.

"Right… I'm going to reach in," she told it even though it wasn't going to understand it. Sure enough she reached in and it nipped her, its little teeth lacerating her arm.

Una withdrew her arm, which was already bleeding and then peered back into the hole she had created where she could see the little Tyrannosaur pressed to the back of it.

She turned back to the parents who had stayed where they were but were looming over top of her still. They had gone silent, simply choosing to watch her.

"Can you tell him… her… it… it? Just tell it to let me grab it!"

They continued to stare at her. One, probably the male, the one who had come to get her in the first place blew out a gust of hot air into her face. Yeah like that was helpful.

She'd have to distract it by herself.

She thought about what she should do a bit before she put her hand in again, being sure to keep it far away from the little Tyrannosaur. She wiggled her fingers around, listening to its warning growls and waited. Sure, enough it lunged for her hand, which she quickly withdrew, and with the other hand she grabbed it by the back of its neck.

It took some maneuvering but she managed to pull the little Tyrannosaur out of the hole and up into her arms, all while it was struggling and braying, no doubt for it's parents.

Finally, the parents were making their groaning noises, she hoped were soothing words so it would stop fighting her. She put the hatchling on the embankment and the second she let go it rushed to its parents who both bent their muzzles down to sniff and prod at their baby.

Did that means she was good now? Could she leave? She figured she could.

Una quickly pulled herself up out of the hole and edged herself away. When she thought herself clear she sprinted the rest of the way to the trees, making a beeline straight to her mother's territory.

-JP-JP-JP-

Once she was far enough away from the Rex's nest Una began to breathe normally.

Granted she climbed up into a tree first to catch her breath because she felt safer in a tree, but once she was up there, once she had caught her breath and sort of calmed down she began to think.

She knew she was making a name for herself on the island, she didn't think it had made it all the way to the predators. But she had a feeling she knew why that particular Tyrannosaur had come for her.

The hatchling that Sarah had helped fix, he must have grown up by now… right? He would have already known that bipeds help, as bipeds had helped him heal his leg. With her growing reputation he must have figured she was the best bet.

At least he hadn't eaten her.

She figured she could go home. She stopped off at the meadow and used the river to wash everything off of her. He hadn't marked her so she figured she could just wash the saliva off and be okay.

To test, before she went back to her nest, she moved up to one of the Hadry herds. A couple of the Hadry's knew her, so when she got close she was hoping they'd do what they usually do when she was around.

And she was rewarded with a little bit of a head butt. It knocked her off of her feet as the female above her huffed over her, nibbling at her hair in an affectionate way before letting her up.

She pet its snout affectionately before heading off to the nest, knowing that she probably didn't smell like a Tyrannosaur this time.

But before she even got to the nest she could hear the brays of grief wafting through the air. Someone had died?

Una rushed to the nest, where she found the pack in a circle, their snouts turned up to the canopy braying their sadness to the branches above them.

"Did someone die? Who was it?" Una asked.

It was rude to interrupt a mourning ritual, but she could see the whole pack, she couldn't see who was missing.

They all turned to her as if surprised to see her and Una realized right away that it was her. They were mourning her.

Rhum must have told them all she had gotten gobbled up by the Tyrannosaur.

Oh boy. She was going to be in trouble again.

They came varying barks of surprise and happiness and then the whole pack was charging her.

Her mother got to her first, knocking her over and to the ground so she could sniff her all over. Other snouts came to join, knocking against her head in affectionate manners. Rhum's, then Roc's, then others in the pack.

"Where have you been?!" her mother shrieked, causing all the others to step away. "What happened? How did you escape?"

Una, finally able to stand up, turned to her mother. "It just let me go."

"Just let you go?" her mother echoed sounded as shocked as Una had been when it happened.

"Yeah. It took me to it's nest…" "To feed you to the hatchlings?" "…No. To help me get it out. It was stuck and…"

Her mother suddenly barked, and Una went quiet, knowing exactly what was going to happen next. "A Tyrannosaur took you back to it's nest… to help it's hatchling?"

"Yes?"

"And you did?!"

"Well it's not like I could have said no! I don't know it's language and they were both looming over me and… and… well I figured if I helped it would let me go, and it did and now I'm back and… why are you mad at me?! This wasn't my fault!"

"You should have never started helping," her mother snapped. "Now all sorts of animals are going to come to you for help, more predators, and then what? Hmm? What happens if one is angry that you can't help, then what are you going to do?"

"Well I unno!" she cried throwing her hands up. "Can't we just be glad it didn't eat me?"

Her mother snorted at her. "Of course I'm happy you weren't eaten… this time. But the fact remains that you've started down a very dangerous path and I'm not sure we can turn you around."

Oh boy. Here we go. She was going to get grounded again.

"It'll be safer for you to stay at the nest."

There it was.

Una groaned. "Aww… but mummy."

"No. Until further notice you will stay with us. No more solo trips until we get this managed."

Una had no choice but to agree.

The following morning the Tyrannosaur found her again, dropping a whole haunch of something that was huge and used to be alive in front of her. She had been told to come hunting with the pack, so he had done it in front of all of them.

She stared at it and then up at him as he shifted back and forth and chuffed at her and then she turned to Rhum.

"Uhm… he said that's for all of us… cause he figured we were upset…. After yesterday," he said. "And uh… he says thank you for helping."

"Okay, well next time, tell him not to put me in his mouth, I'll come with him, just… you know… not like that."

Rhum nodded relayed that information to the Tyrannosaur who nodded as well.

Before he left, Una had Rhum confirm that he was that baby Tyrannosaur with the broken leg grown up, and she got his name.

Grunt.

Her mother wasn't happy that it had happened, but she got food out of it and didn't have to hunt so she wasn't complaining either.

Una was just happy she had made a new friend.