Ace woke up and pushed herself into a seated position, needing to move a dog off of her arm to do so. With a mind lightly fogged by the last vestiges of sleep she looked around the place she had slept. Light streaked in the open door, pale and diffused, barely illuminating the place in which she rested. She had fallen asleep in a room with no windows, so there was no sunlight to pain her still tired eyes. If she strained, she could barely make out that there were four walls and a ceiling, the light was so dim. The room was filled with bodies of slumbering dogs, some clustered near to her, others sleeping in their own pack arrangements. She could feel their minds, even if she could hardly make out their bodies. She lifted her arms above her head and stretched out the kinks the hard ground had worked in overnight. After pushing one warm body off her legs she stood and walked out of the room, nudging sleeping forms this way and that as she made her way to the door. She ran her fingers through her hair to put it back in some semblance of order as she looked about her new home.
The dog she had dominated had woken up when she stretched. He had slept by her head, near her yet not quite touching. As she stood, he followed, stretching out the kinks in his back before going after her. He looked up at her wondering what exactly had happened last night. Somehow, his position as leader of the pack had been usurped by this, a toothless soft skin. He fell in at her heels, walking slightly behind her out of curiosity. His entire existence had been upturned last night, and he could hardly comprehend what made this human person so different from all the others he had seen.
Ace was aware of her canine companion's musings, and bit back a sigh. Even this mutt thought that she was a human. How entirely degrading. He could only comprehend that she was a more powerful human than he had known. She fought back the impulse to aim a kick at him for the disgusting thought. Was it so difficult to tell the difference between plants and humans? She sighed, then remembered that he was merely a dumb animal, and could hardly be expected to figure out what even the humans could not.
Ace paced through the abandoned warehouse, up rickety stairs, in and out of rooms defaced by the occupation of so many animals. It wasn't as disgusting as it could have been, given that the building had been inhabited by feral beasts, but it still was much dirtier than her tastes preferred. She wondered if it would even be worth her effort to clean it, seeing as she would keep sharing the building with them. She could strip everything from the building, but it would not take long for it to return to the state it was in now.
Standing in the large open space that had been a manufacturing facility of some sort, she looked around her. This was the largest room, and still the filth she saw was enough to turn her stomach. With a sigh, she turned to go back the way she had entered, then stopped. There was a ladder against the wall near the door. She looked above her, and saw a small room near the roof. With a smile that said nothing of happiness and much of triumph, she climbed the ladder and entered the room. It alone had stayed clean, only a layer of dust between her and a place to stay.
Dust she could handle. With a thought, she created a wind that lifted the dust and swept it out of the room. She was very thorough, yet in a matter of seconds the place was cleaner than it likely ever had been, and there were no pesky motes floating in the air to settle and mar what she had done. It was perfect, or as perfect as she could make it.
She turned and made her way back down the ladder. The dog was still there, waiting patiently for her to return. She ignored him. After that little trick she was hungry. She left the building and headed back into the more populous areas of town. The dog still followed her, closer to her heels as more and more people were on the streets, but she still paid him no mind.
At random she entered a diner and sat down at the counter. She ordered eggs, with toast, fruit, and milk, and dug into them greedily when they arrived. Still hungry when her plate was empty, she ordered donuts and an omelet. This filled her, with some scraps left, so she tossed them to the dog that sat at her heels. He took it gratefully, making the offerings disappear almost before they hit the floor. People might have stared at them, but Ace neither knew nor cared. They were all merely human, and why should she even bother with acknowledging their presence enough to be curious about what they thought?
Satiated, she stood and left. It was nothing for her to stop the waitresses short term memory from entering her long term storage, leaving the woman with empty plates and no recollection of when she had walked out. Some might view her eating and running as theft, but as she saw it, the humans grew that food from the blood of her sisters. She was entitled to as much of it as she desired, and if the humans complained than it just showed how selfish they truly were, to not give back what they had stolen from the plants. Ace refused to even contemplate how hard the humans had worked the soil to grow the food, or the cook to make it, or the waitress who served her. Their sacrifice was insignificant in the face of how terribly the plants who were not her had been made to suffer.