It's not motivation to work on this story that I can't find, it's just any in general. I have the bad habit of not wanting to do anything at all when I get really stressed.

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Ace wandered through the streets of December, head bowed down with the weight of her thoughts. She wasn't paying attention to where she was going, passing through both good and bad areas of town without sparing a thought for her safety.

But then again, she was a plant. It just doesn't seem to be in their nature to assume that normal people could actually cause them any trouble.

She had a lot to think about, and no real place that she could call her own in which to do it. A small part of her conscience chided her for her reaction to Anne's apology, but the majority of her logically pointed out that the woman needed to suffer for the pain that she had put her family through. It wasn't like she wasn't going to forgive her. Eventually. After she managed to get her point across.

You just don't run out on your family. It's that simple. She brushed aside her leaving an hour ago with the caveat that she wasn't going to be gone all that long. Just long enough to think things over.

She wondered what they were doing right now, and with the thought let her mind drift towards theirs. The contact she made was light enough for the both of them to not notice.

Especially given what they were doing.

Ace stopped walking, flinching in disgust. Her heart sank in her chest as she realized that they had probably wanted her to leave. They didn't even care that she was gone, didn't bother worrying over her absence, didn't even think to wonder if she was going to be okay before they started in on each other.

Ew. She couldn't believe that she had that sensation in her brain now. Talk about entirely disgusting.

She shook herself, a shiver that worked the feeling out of her spine. Looking around her, she noticed that she was in a very deserted area of town. She could sense no human life around for a couple blocks, at least, and given the dilapidated condition of the buildings around her, she could tell why.

It was a bit of a puzzle that no one had liberated construction materials from the abandoned warehouses that surrounded her, but it was a mystery quickly solved when her mental search rested on the minds of the animals that resided in the buildings.

Feral dogs. Packs of them roamed these blocks, ranging about the city at night, and coming back here to den during the day.

Ace shrugged as she turned in place, then picked the building with the largest pack to make her own. Walking the block and a half towards it, she readied a mental command to subdue any attack.

She peered around the building, looking for a way in. She noticed a worn down track in the dirt and followed it to a broken window.

A growl threatened as she peered in, and a body flying towards her did more than threaten. Contemptuously, she knocked it out of the air with a sweep of her arm. The dog quickly recovered and launched herself at Ace again, but was stopped by a wall of air.

Ace wandered through the building, dogs leaping at her body, head, and feet with no success. The sounds of snarls, growls, and barks assaulted her ears like their bites could not. Eventually, the leader of the pack came to see what was causing such a disturbance.

She met him after turning a corner. The dog was a brindle mutt, closer to old that to young, but still powerful enough to defeat any challengers for his position. His coat didn't gleam as the fur was long and slightly matted, and his eyes were nearly lost under the scars that wrote their violent story on his muzzle, but his less than show condition did nothing to hide the canny intelligence in them, or the anger that he felt to have his sanctum invaded by an outsider.

He growled low in his throat as he padded towards her. Ace stopped moving and casually watched him approach, watched as he gathered his legs underneath him to spring. She watched as he launched himself at her, waited until the moment that she could snatch him out of the air and slam him into the wall.

His legs scrambled without hope of finding purchase as she kept them from striking even close to her body. His mouth snapped impotently, but the snarl that bared his teeth didn't abate. Whatever kept him from attacking, it didn't bend his spirit one iota.

Ace forced him to meet her eyes, forced his mind until it calmed under the weight of hers. It was a slightly harder fight that she had imagined, the dog's will being stronger than she had expected, but she bowed him to her intentions all the same. The growls eased, the snarl disappeared. Instead, the dog's tongue lapped fitfully in the direction of her face, until, when Ace was finally certain that she had him under control and let him fall to the ground, he came over and licked her chin and ear in a gesture of submission and supplication.

She rested one hand on his head to calm his mind, then let the barrier around them fall. Instantly, he was transformed back into the snarling monster as he fought to retain his status in the pack, and to defend his tenuous position as leader from his followers.

Ace watched dispassionately as one dog died, its throat torn out and her hound standing victorious over its corpse. Soon the lesser members of the pack, and after it proved the wise thing to do, then the rest came to give her homage. She took it as her due, then found a corner to rest in.

Warm bodies pressed around her, and her last thought before sleeping was that no one would be taking her away from here very easily.