To say that the group is surprised when morning comes and there's an empty spot where Kara and Lena's tent used to be is an understatement.
There's a panic set between them that they can't shake, afraid that something terrible has happened to them, the main theory being that the Kryptonians they saw before had stumbled upon them and taken them somewhere, similar to how they got taken by The Rebellion.
That fear goes away when they find the note though, the one Lena wrote out in her very careful swoopy handwriting to tell them that they had gone on a side mission and to stay put because they will be back in a few hours, a day at most if they can help it.
That doesn't mean that Alex isn't trapped in an endless cycle of pacing, something Nia isn't even contemplating, spending her now free time to rest, sleeping in and simply lying on her mattress with a book open, her eyes lazing over the words throughout the day.
If Kara and Lena could see the relaxing day that Nia's now having in their absence, they would be immeasurably jealous because they have been up pretty much the whole night wandering around trying to find the camp of the environmentalists.
It's kind of funny that they thought that they might accidentally run into them a second time because their camp is so far away from where they do actually end up finding them, almost a four-hour walk away at that.
"Look, I can see a campfire." Kara points through the trees to where there is a soft glow peeking out between the trunks.
Lena waits until they make eye contact to nod at Kara to let her know that she sees what Kara is pointing at, too nervous to say anything right now since they haven't yet figured out where the people are, afraid that they will be overheard.
They make a large loop around the outskirts of the camp they find closer to the fire, finding a small group of them, six to be exact. They know that because across a branch is six jackets hung up like they are on a coat rack, each with a crest over their left breast pocket.
The fire is barely more than embers, left to do as it will overnight with nothing more than a single thick log atop of it to keep it going for as long as they can force it to overnight without any attention so they can all sleep in their pods.
Yes, pods. There are six pods lined up, three on one side and three opposite those. They are all facing inward towards the fire and are perfectly aligned.
Even Kara has never seen anything like it, but that's not saying too much since she was so young when she left Krypton and these pods are quite clearly suited to these environmentalists.
Each pod is short, only a meter tall, and about a meter wide too, although they are pretty long, almost seven feet, pretty much just a sleeping pod. In fact, exactly a sleeping pod. The pack of each person is to the left of the entrances of the pods, each one opening upwards, made of some kind of plastic material that seems to be pretty durable and strong, rigid in a way an ordinary tent is not. It's intriguing.
"I think they must all be in their pod, I don't know if they are asleep or not though so we have to be quiet," Kara whispers over to Lena, her hand unconsciously gripping onto the edge of Lena's shirt to keep her close.
"Where are the H'Rakas?" Lena answers back, creeping slightly closer to the pods. "Shouldn't they be here?"
Kara shakes her head. "They are pretty but they can be smelly and they produce a lot of waste, they will be close by but away from the camp because of that, I'm sure of it."
"Ok, let's go find them then," Lena says, turning away from the camp to make a bigger circle around the area.
The H'Rakas aren't in the area they already circled, they would have seen them but they could be a little ways away, it's hard to know the general practice for keeping creatures like these around.
They widen their search area, trying to tread as carefully as they can as to not alert the other Kryptonians of their arrival into their neck of the woods, the last thing they need is to be discovered.
Kara takes the lead, flitting around and keeping her eyes peeled and her ears straining to hear any sound that could give away the location of the H'Rakas.
It's freezing out here at night. Lena can barely feel her fingers anymore and wishes she could lace them with Kara's to try and get some feeling back into them but she doesn't want to slow her down either so instead she just stuffs them as far into her pockets as she can manage, pressing her palms onto her legs, only the material of her pants separating them.
Sneaking around with their own packs on their backs is difficult but they don't know how long they are going to be before they get back to camp and they will need their tent if they are going to be out here for longer than they bargained for.
"Kara?" Lena whispers into the sharp night air when a strange noise makes its way into her ears.
Kara spins around in lieu of an answer, looking over at her with a questioning glance.
"Listen, I can hear something."
Kara tucks her hair behind her ear as she listens out, closing her eyes as she tips her head up to the sky, listening past the breeze rustling the trees around them. In the distance she hears it, the same thing Lena could hear before, the sound of deep, heavy-set breathing, the kind of breathing that could only come from a massive beast of a creature. "I think that's them, let's go."
They still have to wander a little bit to find the H'Rakas, the sound isn't loud enough for them to be able to figure out exactly which direction it's coming from until they are closer, but they do get closer.
The noises that they originally thought were breathing becomes clearer and the closer they creep, the more they realize that it's actually snorting. A breathy noise that is unnerving in a way they can't place.
There are six of them, one for each of the environmentalists. The good thing about H'Rakas is that they are strong. They can easily carry two or three people and yet here these guys are with one each, they must have been carrying some heavy equipment or something to have one each. Kara doesn't really care about that though. What she does care about is that there are six here and they only need to take two. They can easily manage with two and there will still be four left for the other Kryptonians.
Lena watches Kara slowly ease her way through the trees towards them. She stays further back, keeping hold of both her pack and Kara's, giving her girlfriend more stealth to get to the beasts.
They may be a little ways away from the cam but they are still in hearing range of them and if the environmentalists get woken up and alerted of their presence then they will only have a few minutes to make themselves scarce before they are over here and their plan is foiled.
She watches with bated breath as Kara creeps towards them, all six of them are looped to a few trees by ropes tied into a harness around their heads and necks, keeping them from escaping without cutting into their flesh.
Kara walks right up to them, going for their fronts so as not to startle them and holding a single hand out in front of her as she edges closer to them, her nerves obvious in her movements.
The mighty beasts rear back slightly, their massive front feet coming off the ground a little before stomping back down, giving Kara a warning to stay back.
She listens, freezing in her spot, not backing away, just staying completely still, giving the H'Rakas chance to get used to her before she tries to head towards them for a second time, not wanting to upset them any more than she has to.
They still have a few hours left until sunrise, they can take a few minutes to earn the trust of the H'Rakas before they steal them, or at least Kara can. Lena is not getting anywhere near those things until she absolutely has to. It's probably better for Kara to be the one trying to retrieve them anyway since she's more familiar with them.
Kara waits. She watches the animals with a keen eye, waiting for a slight slouch of their backs before inching closer, stopping again when they become unsettled.
She goes through this process a few times until she is standing right beside them and tentatively running her fingertips along the top of one's head. "Hey there, big guy." She murmurs to it, lips quirking up at the chance to be this close to something so magnificent. "Aren't you a handsome fella? Yes, you are. Yes, you are."
"Kara!" Lena's voice whisper shouts from the treeline. "Hurry up, it's not a dog."
Straightening her jacket, Kara gets to work on the ropes, untying them from the tree. The knots are tight and she struggles to get them to give way but with a little bit of twisting and tugging, they slowly start coming loose.
The rope is thick and the pressure of it against the freezing skin of her fingertips is unpleasant and as she tugs at it, her knuckles press uncomfortably against the bark of the tree, sometimes catching the skin to the point where she's probably going to have graze marks there.
One is undone, she has it loose and all she has to do is lead it away slowly. She thinks about taking it to Lena before coming back but she doesn't want to have to earn the trust of the other one again if she leaves, it could add several minutes onto their side mission and Kara is sure that Lena's anxiety is just as bad as her own right now.
Instead, she gently ties the rope of the freed H'Raka around her waist. She doesn't think it will move away since it hasn't once tried to escape from where it was tied to the tree but it's just a precaution.
With the first one freed and under her control, she moves on to the second one, the one right beside it. She has to gently coax the first one to follow her a couple of steps but it eagerly follows the tugging of the rope, utterly unbothered by her moving it.
Kara's fingers find the second rope easily and she begins working on it right away. Her head coming up to check her surroundings every few seconds, her nerves frazzled with the pressure. She meets Lena's eyes from time to time as she does this and she can see the fear in the green orbs looking back at her.
She's almost got it, the rope is almost loose when it happens, something spooks the H'Rakas, namely, the one she has already freed.
It starts tugging at her, trying to move away into the trees and away from whatever it is that it's scared of.
Kara fights against the growing pressure around her waist, her hands moving from trying to undo the rope of the second H'Raka to grab onto the rope between herself and the first, tugging on it to try and tame the beast that is now rearing up again, this time with its eyes glued onto the treeline at a ninety-degree angle to where Lena is standing by.
Both Kara and Lena find their eyes drawn to the spot, searching through the darkness to find whatever it is that has the H'Rakas going crazy.
A snap of a twig, maybe a branch.
Purple, unyielding eyes peer out from behind a bush, watching with rapt attention and unblinking as they keep their focus trained on the H'Rakas, making prey of the animals.
Whatever creature goes after huge dragon-like animals, Kara does not want to meet and she does not want to be in the crosshairs of them fighting.
This is not a battle she's willing to fight.
She does the only thing she can think of; leaping up onto the back of the H'Raka she's tied to, she grips onto its sides with her knees and pulls up, prompting it to go, letting it pick up the pace and start running.
She grabs hold of the harness around its neck and uses it to guide it towards Lena, holding a hand out when she's on her way past her, wordlessly telling her to grab on and jump on behind her because they are leaving now.
Lena makes the jump look easy, probably a mixture of adrenaline and fear making her into a sudden Olympic-level athlete. Even with two packs, one hanging from each arm, Lena manages to land centred behind Kara, her arms coming up to grip around her waist.
"Ooh, good jump." Kara can't help but comment, even though the terrifying situation they're in.
From behind them, they hear what can only be described as a shriek followed by a roar. Both sound familiar and yet not so, identifiable in a way that they know that the shriek is from the tied-up H'Rakas and the roar from whatever the purple-eyed creature is.
"Kara, make this thing go faster." Lena screeches into the back of Kara's neck, clinging onto her waist for all she's worth.
If the awful noises from behind them weren't enough, the overwhelming noise of shouts fill the air, Kryptonian words being yelled out somewhere behind them.
Due to the low-hanging branches and the speed at which the H'Raka is running, they are forced to look forward, to watch out for when they have to duck and press themselves as far down as they can or to lean in time with the mighty beast so they don't slow down a turn and send them all careering into a tree.
There's no time to look behind them to see if they have been spotted, no time to keep an eye out for anything other than themselves.
The shouting and screeching continues behind them and they just have to keep going, keep praying that the one H'Raka they have managed to obtain can get them out of there.
There are too many trees. They can't take flight here, they wouldn't make it through the branches, the H'Raka knows it too, it knows its limits and that's a hard one, it can't make it through there so why bother trying, instead, it's just running, taking them far off in a direction that Kara and Lena can't even fathom.
Neither of them knows where they are going but while they can still hear noises behind them, there's no point in them stopping, not that they know how to actually properly ride this animal in the first place. They really should have thought this through better.
The H'Raka just keeps going and going, all the while the noise behind them gets quieter and quieter the further away they get, giving them the impression that just maybe, they are actually getting away from everything that happened.
Lena loosens her grip on Kara marginally as they slow down to a trot instead of a full-on sprint. "Do you think we lost whatever that thing was?"
"I don't know but this little fella seems to think we're safe enough that we can slow down so I'd say we're alright for the minute." Kara turns her head to the side, looking at Lena from the corner of her eye.
"What are we going to do? We need two."
"One is better than nothing." Kara answers, not sure where they go from here now, their plan can't work with only one. "We will have to wait until we get to a clearing before we can take off and then we'll be able to see what's going on. I just hope that the other Kryptonians aren't flying their H'Rakas looking for this one."
Lena sighs, slumping against Kara's back. "I didn't even think of that. We really need to get high up though so we can see where we are going. It's going to be light soon too."
"I know, let's just –"
A roar ricochets through the trees behind them, followed closely by the thudding claws of the other H'Rakas as they gallop in their direction, steaming behind them in their desperate need to escape.
"That's not good." Lena has the chance to squeak out before their H'Raka takes off running again, egged on by the thunderous steps of its brothers and sisters.
They get right back to ducking and weaving, seeing the fellow H'Rakas running alongside them, all without riders, which means that none of the Kryptonians managed to keep them at the camp. This certainly explains why it's so normal for H'Rakas to escape from environmentalists, one predator comes along and the H'Rakas, while usually mild-tempered, become so frightful that they break free and run.
The problem is that the predator is running after them.
Clinging onto Kara, Lena dares to look back, taking Kara's cues to duck and lean while her eyes search the brush they are galloping through, her gaze sweeping in search of those purple eyes they saw before, the ones that hold nothing but pure bloodlust.
There's nothing there that she can see, but looking to the sides of them, she can see five other H'Rakas, all charging in the same direction, dead focused on their route out of the way of the predator, the one she can't see, the one that she's afraid of anyway.
It's in her fascination with the other creatures alongside them that she misses Kara's cue to duck, failing to do so and hitting a branch. Her grip on Kara's jacket isn't enough and her fingers slip free of the fabric.
The force of the blow sends her flying off the back and before she knows it, Lena is lying flat on the ground with the two packs atop of her, the wind completely knocked out of her lungs, leaving her wheezing to try and breathe again.
In the rush of what happened and the unexpected jolt, she takes a few fleeting moments to come to her senses, realizing that she's now been left behind when there's some killer animal chasing after them, probably hiding in the bushes somewhere, ready to strike.
She only has one real weapon on her to try and protect her but by Rao is it a good one.
Hands shaking with panic, she digs into the pack she quickly identifies as her own, hand gripping the item she has stored standing vertically in its sheath along the right-hand side.
Her long fingers circle around the handle and within seconds, she has the sword free, the metal glinting in the moonlight as she spins around, searching for any hint of either Kara finding a way to turn the H'Raka around, or the beast following them…and there it is.
She faces those eyes, they're watching her.
Lena holds the sword up, the tip facing towards it so that if it rushes forward, it's going to impale itself.
They stare down for what feels like hours but is probably only a few minutes, Lena barely daring to blink, before it does take a step forward, not a large one, just enough for it to step out of the bushes, exposing itself to her so she can finally get a good look at what she's facing off with.
Oh shit.
The sword probably isn't going to be all that helpful because the creature is basically a kangaroo on steroids, it's so big that she's not even sure she'll be able to get close enough to it to hit it.
Its legs are easily a couple of metres long and as she looks at it, it rears up to its full height, more than doubling her own. It's covered in feathers, greens and browns that help it to blend into its surroundings, its only giveaway is its eyes.
Its face is huge, a muzzle with massive sharp teeth bared at her in a menacing way that sends ice through her veins.
This might genuinely be the day she dies.
She keeps the sword pointed at it and gulps, her fight or flight mode kicking into gear as it begins to lean down, bringing those teeth closer.
In the question of fight or flight, there is only one prevailing answer for a Luthor and it's obvious. Lena takes a great swing at it, a powerful yell bubbling up from her chest as the sword takes its first swipe through the air.
It stumbles back out of the way of her but she's not done. A second swipe with another yell and it's backing up more but it doesn't last, its head swooping down and teeth chomping towards her.
She flicks the sword up, all of her fencing lessons as a teenager coming back to her as it flicks across the jacked-up kangaroo's face.
A thin line of yellow blood seeps out from the gash and it lets out a yelp, high-pitched and loud.
Lena takes advantage of its current distraction, bringing the hilt of the sword down onto the back of its head while it is lowered close to the ground, sending it sprawled down against the dirt and tree roots, disorientated.
Now it's time for flight.
Grabbing the two packs and slinging them over her shoulders, Lena breaks out into a run, practically flying with how fast she's running, the adrenaline gushing through her body in a way that if Lena didn't know better, she'd think it had all pooled in her legs because she's not just running, she's running.
She doesn't stop to look back, just focuses on putting one foot in front of the other and lets the packs clank against her back with each step, the handle of the sword growing sweaty in her palm but she's not letting it slip, not when she might need it.
Realistically, she knows that she's not going to be able to outrun this thing for long, by the size of its legs she knows it's way faster than her.
The average kangaroo on Earth can run at speeds up to thirty-five miles per hour so it's safe to bet that it would be even higher for this creature and the only thing stopping it is the high density of the trees. It hasn't had a straight run and because it's so large, it can't manoeuvre around the trees as well as the H'Rakas could, that's how they all escaped.
She keeps going even when she can barely breathe and all of her muscles are begging for her to stop. Lena is in the best shape of her life from the vast amount of walking she's been doing but she cannot run for a long period of time, not at all. She could walk this with ease but running is a no-go.
Her eyes become unfocused for a second, her mind whizzing to find a way out that doesn't include more running.
Lena begins to think of maybe finding a place to hide, somewhere small where the oversized kangaroo-bird-thing can't get to her and so she looks to her sides, trying to find somewhere, maybe somewhere more densely wooded or somewhere she can force herself between the exposed roots of trees like she's seen in the terrible movies she only watched for Kara's sake at their old movie nights.
She spends too much time looking around her and for the second time in a very short span, she wishes she'd kept her eyes forward because one second the floor is beneath her feet and then next she's falling and not just to the ground.
She's falling down.
Lena just ran off the edge of a cliff by accident.
Oh shit.