DISCLAIMER
Still don't own Jurassic Park, nor any of its characters or plotlines. I claim hold on Rose, Mily, the members of the search team (except Billy, who belongs to the original people, and Zain, who belongs to Zain Takura – Saiyan Historian, who allowed me to borrow the main frame of his own character), and the plotline of THIS story.
To note, thank you for the reviews!! Please keep them coming, if you could! =3 I love for people to give me their insight and thoughts on my works! And it certainly gives me more of a good reason to keep writing!
Chapter Nine
"We're going after her!"
"Lizzy, be reasonable! In fact, think of those raptors! They killed another one of us, and nearly killed you!"
"I don't give a fuck about that, Kyle!" Lizzy's eyes are dead-set, determined to find her sister again. "We've finally found her, and I'm not giving her up so easily to those damn lizards!!"
"Lizzy..." Mily's eyes are full of sadness, as well as such disruption of thoughts about this island. Rose is living with the very creatures that had killed her family... And she doesn't want to leave them. She's practically leaving her sister, her only family, to live with the raptors instead. It makes no sense at all to Mily...
"Calm yourself," Zain said as he manages to stop Lizzy from her fast-pacing, much like a captured panther in a cage. "We're gonna follow the tracks, and be prepared to face-off a bunch of raptors."
"W-we are??" Kyle isn't thrilled to learn that.
Billy looks around at everyone before sighing. "I suppose that we are... Rose is the only survivor. And we will have to try and at least find out how she managed to be part of a pack of raptors... It has never been done before. And it was thought impossible."
"Until now..." Mily groans. "Why must Rose make things so difficult for us??"
Despite her anger, Lizzy can't help but give a grim smile at that. "I guess... it's in her nature..." Sighing, Lizzy nods to Zain, whom in which steps back from her. She's much calmer than she had been for the past two hours. "Alright then... We're going to follow the tracks, but if Rose will not come back with us..."
"We won't know what to do until then, Liz," Mily said as she approaches Lizzy and lays a hand on her friend's shoulder. "I can only suggest that you don't worry about it until then."
"Okay." It's all Lizzy can say in this situation.
"Then let's load up. Goin' to the theme park will hold until afterwards." Billy nods to the jeeps. "Now that it's down to just the five of us, I say that we only take one jeep, carry our remaining inventory with us. Plus, we can pull the gas from one and refuel the other without wasting more gas than we need to right now."
"Got it," Mily said with a vigorous nodding of her head, heading right to one jeep and pulling the items out of it and to the other. Zain comes to her aid and helps her out, all the while Lizzy manages to find a tubing to push into the gas tank and pull out the fuel to go into the other jeep's tank.
Kyle tries to help moving, but because of the attack on his back and shoulder from the much earlier incident and the over-straining of his muscles to climb the tree, he finds that he couldn't lift something heavy without screaming out in pain.
"Leave it to us, Kyle. You've been through worse situations than we have so far," Billy said as he instantly pulls the box of equipment out of Kyle's hands. With a silent nod, Kyle moves to sit in the jeep they're taking with them.
It's going to be another long day.
Sitting next to the largest rock to stay out of the sun's harsh rays and stay in the shade, Rose cradles her knees against her chest while her chin lays on top of her knees. She keeps thinking back to Lizzy's look of betrayal when Rose told her sister that she wasn't returning back to society with her. Closing her eyes tightly as though attempting to block out the sight of her sister's hurtful face, Rose moves her head to rest her eyes and forehead against her knees instead.
'Lizzy is angry about my decision... And one more person is dead before I could stop the pack...' Everything is starting to feel like it's her fault. This is the reason and more to why she was shutting people out of her life, to avoid this feeling at all costs. When her family was killed and eaten, it was then that she started shutting down after the shock and grief wore off. She felt like it was her fault, even though she was nine and had to stay behind for the sake of school.
But now the feelings couldn't be avoided anymore. Allowing herself to become attached to the pack, to Okaa and to Levine, she has let her feelings flow freely. And there's no avoiding the feeling of guilt and hurt, but at the same and confusing time, feeling free and happy about what she decided. Levine needed her, and Rose needed Okaa and the pack. It was just as simple as that.
Crooning at the human's strange behavior, Okaa nudges into Rose's hair, confused of all the different shifts in her scent. Hurt, afraid, happy and relaxed is all evading Rose's scent, and Okaa is confused on how they could all be there at once.
"I-I am alright..." Rose manage to say through her tight throat as she turns her head enough to open one eye and look at Okaa. "You do not have to worry..."
Not satisfied in the slightest (even though Okaa didn't understand Rose in a least bit), the raptor lays next to the human and curls around her. Sighing, Rose leans into the lizard's embrace, feeling the rumbling of Okaa's crooning through her ribs and the gentle nudges against her face from the muzzle of the raptor. So much opinions certainly can flip once one understands the other much better than the first impression leaves; Rose can never again think of raptors as ruthless, killing machines. They're just like any other creature, if not as smart (or smarter) as humans.
Apparently, Levine doesn't want out of the cuddling, as it is that the little dimorphodor starts yanking at Rose's pants-leg, in which Rose responds by scooping up the bird and cradling it in her arms. The bird squeaks out in content as he snuggles into the embrace until he was comfortable enough to fall asleep.
"Little brat..." Rose said, but she's smiling all the same as she closes her eyes again.
After some time, Rose is up and about again, helping the injured raptors the best she could. Though she finds that she has to endure just as much pain, since almost every bullet she pries out, the victim snaps his or her jaws against her arms or slash her with its talons. So by the time that she finished with the sixth and last raptor, she had to fix her own earned wounds, even stitch a few closed once cleaned.
'Talk about battle scars... I ought to earn a few purple hearts for this...' Rose thought without grumbling as she starts bandaging once all is clean and stitched if needed to be. She's happy for tolerance of pain, for it was painful with the needling to her skin.
Looking up at the sky, Rose finds that the day is starting to sink into the late evening, so she pushes her sore muscles to walk to the rock and climb on top to catch the remaining rays of the sun to get warm before the night sinks in. Laying on her back and sprawled out to catch all the warmth she could get from both the surface of the rock and the rays, she can already see the moon clearly.
"Full moon..." she said quietly as she continues to watch the sky grow darker and darker. Closing her eyes, she keeps finding herself not missing the conveniences of entertainment, food or anything else that makes one's life comfortable. The quietness of the island with occasional noises of actual life is music to her ears. She doesn't miss microwavable food or easy-to-go food anymore. For the three weeks that she's been stuck on the island, she's been 'cured' of the messed-up society and its rules, its laws, its guidelines and its mixed-up want of how Americans should be; should be skinny, should be healthy, should be rich, should be everything that most people can't be. Money is of no importance, but it's needed to get the food, and if you're not rich enough, you have to settle for the non-healthy items, in which results to one getting fat.
'It is not a wonder of how the government is screwing around and not helping when they should...' Rose thought as she opens her eyes again. 'Money has to be much more important than the people to the government... And yet, the government says that it is important for people to be healthy, but the cost of the right food is much more than the non-healthy, so what does the people go for then...?' Shaking her head to stop thinking on the government and society, Rose clears her head as she can finally see the moon stand out in full glory, the sun beyond the horizon and circling the planet to rise on the other side hours away. 'You never could see the moon this clearly in the cities...' Smiling in spite of how the day went, Rose is feeling at peace. The decision to stay brought about many conflicting emotions, but they worked out to just let her be at ease. She's finally happy.
A hand clamps over Rose's mouth as she's startled out of her sleep, giving out a muffled "Hey!!"
"Shh..." Mily removes her hand as she presses her finger against her lips, letting Rose know that way that she's still free, but shouldn't let the raptors know that a non-member is in the area.
Nodding slowly, Rose watches Mily indicate to a part of the forest that she came from, then climb off the rock. Rose follows afterwards after a minute. Checking on Levine to make sure that the dimorphodor is sound asleep and nestled under the remains of her shirt, Rose follows after Mily to the forest.
"Thanks for not sicking the raptors on me," Mily said quietly with a grin once they were far away from the clearing.
"Like I would do that to you," Rose said back to her with a smile. Mily blinks a few times, but her grin now spreads ear-to-ear. Rose is at last smiling like she means it, and it makes Mily more than happy about her now.
"C'mon, the rest wants ta talk with ya. And no, we're not gonna drug ya to sleep then drag you back to society with us. Or at least most of us aren't going to try and do that to ya." Mily laughs as Rose chuckles, following Mily deeper into the forest.
"I know that Lizzy is the one that does."
"Quite right!" Giggling, Mily turns around and hugs Rose tightly. "But I'm for one happy that you're alright, and even find peace in yourself."
Rose blinks at she awkwardly hugs Mily back. "Find peace in myself?" Grinning slightly now, she laughs. "I suppose you could put it like that."
"O'course!" Letting go of Rose, Mily looks over Rose's shoulder as though expecting the raptors to pounce out at her any second. Grinning again once she was sure nothing is coming after them, she grabs onto Rose's only non-bandaged hand and leads the way. "Looks like you went through World War III or somethin'."
"I kind of did, in a way," Rose replies with a side-smile.
Being led through the density of the forest, they finally come across a very small clearing with the jeep right in the middle of it.
"Found her!" Mily said as she waves wildly at everyone. They give out a sigh of relief as Mily and Rose approaches them. Rose looks to Lizzy, who in which goes right up to her and slaps her in the face.
"Ouchies..." Rose rubs her cheek as she looks back at her sister. She can clearly see that tears are now running down her face as she looks like she wants to pound the living daylights out of Rose and hug Rose all at the same time. "Missed me much...?"
"Oh Rose!" Lizzy throws her arms around Rose's neck and shoulders, hugging her little (but tall) sister to her. Rose can only give a slight smile as she hugs her sister back.
"The hell happened? Did the raptors punish you or something??" Zain said in some concern as he eyes at all the bandages all over Rose.
"No." Rose gives a small smile at him as she is finally released from Lizzy's grip. "Some of them just could not take the pain of having bullets pried out of them." She finds herself hugged by Zain, in which results to her hugging him back.
"That must've sucked." Rose laughs at that understatement.
"You do not know the half of it," she said as she pulls away from the embrace. She looks to Kyle and Billy, since they've remained quiet during the entire reunion. "So...?"
"You really are livin' the wild life, aren't you?" Billy said with a laugh. He reaches forward with a hand. "I'm Billy, the leader of the operation bunch here, though as you've seen, it's dwindling down in size of the group."
"It was not your fault, Bill," Rose said as she lightly shakes his hand. She looks to Kyle, but he seems like he'd rather remain silent.
"That's Kyle. He's rather shy at times, but I think this time it's in fear of raptors pouncing out of the shadows to attack him if he was to even look at you," Billy said with a small sigh.
Kyle gives a slight huff as he finally approaches Rose and holds out his hand stiffly. Rose shakes his hand gently, in which made Kyle's grip loosen in almost an instant. While he remains quiet and rather withdrawn, he can tell of someone's personality just by shaking hands with them, and he found much gentleness in her instead of what he was told by Lizzy, Mily and Zain. She was supposed to be so cold that being with her was like talking to a wall of ice, or something like that.
"H-hi..." he said quietly before stepping back and looks to the side, almost like he's ashamed for being hostile at first towards her.
"Sooo... I am going to assume that there was a reason for tracking me down," Rose said with a slight smile to everyone. "It was a risk for Mily to enter the clearing of the nesting grounds to get me"
Lizzy's heart is already starting to accelerate at how Rose is taking everything much calmly and gently than she ever had with any situation. "Well, duh, yeah," she said as she leans against the jeep, resisting the impulse to clutch onto her sister and never let her go.
"Most of us is here for information now," said Billy with a slight smile again. "You've accomplished what no human could do before."
"Get close to a pack of velociraptors and continue to live to tell the tale of each and every day with the predators?" Rose said with a grin. She's getting the general idea of what they want now, so it must've meant that the message of her staying is clear to them. Billy nods to her answer. "That itself is rather an interesting story... But perhaps you would like to tell me of what has been happening with you as of late during these two or three weeks of searching...?" The search team can get all the information they could want, but Rose also wants info about themselves and the accounts of their search. A lot is rather full of holes to her. Johnson certainly is at the top of the iceberg, but there are others...
"Would be fair enough." Billy nods to Mily, who in which goes over to the pile of wood in the middle of a circle of rocks, lighting it up with fire to create a source of light and heat, making Rose blink from the sudden lighting. "As you've seen, we're tryin' to be as careful as possible to avoid running into your pack."
"Of course," Rose said with a nod. Being pulled to the fire by Mily, she finds herself sitting on the ground and listening to the accounts by everyone one at a time. Things start to become clear to her as the time passes, and before she knew it, it was her turn to share her accounts since she's been on the island. "Somehow, it all started because of a egg-stealer, a troodon..."
W00t, another finished chapter, and things are starting to clear up between the sisters and the group of humans! But things never remain calm, do they? winks Who knows what's in store next for the raptor-human girl and the search-and-rescue crew! But do you know what? You have to waaaaaiiiiit! Tee hee! See you all in the next chapter, and make sure to leave reviews as you can!