Red in Tooth and Claw

It was careful, as always, to be quiet. It was looking out over a pasture that was dotted with black, white and brown things. They were rather large, with oddly rectangular bodies and dull expressions on their faces. They were mooing and communicating as they almost endlessly ate grass. They reminded it of wildebeests. It quickly yawned. Had it liked wildebeests? It had only ever had one or two. It couldn't even remember their taste. Maybe it would like one of these anyways. They were all nice and plump. It waited, and watched as they all went inside a large, red structure at the sound of a beautiful ringing. Except for one, that is, one that lagged behind because of a limp.

It jumped out fast, covering the distance easily, and cut off it's route to the structure. The creature it was hunting mooed in alarm and ran clumsily in the opposite direction, down to a stream, out of sight of the structure.

It simply followed, jumped on it's back, grabbed the throat, and cut with it's claws.

The stream ran red for a while.

* * *

"Twilight! Twilight!" Pinkie Pie was bouncing forward with her usual enthusiasm, but her excitement seemed focused. Twilight was trying every identification spell she knew on the feather she and her friends had found at Fluttershy's house, but she never got anything but a noise in reply. A hiss. So the thing hissed. That's all even her best spell would give her? She sighed as she put the feather down and turned to face her energetic friend.

"What is it, Pinkie?"

"So I was off duty today and I didn't have to help Mr. and Mrs. Cake at their shop so I packed a bag full of confetti and streamers and went out to pony-watch and everything was fine at first I saw Noteworthy, Sea Swirl, Thunderlane, Bon Bon, Minuette, Roseluck, and even Airheart! Airheart is in town!"

"Umm... Good, I guess. Pinkie, I really need to get back to-"

"No, you don't get it! Airheart gives other ponies rides here! She flew over in her balloon today with another balloon tied behind carrying a bunch of equipment and when she landed, you know who else stepped out?"

"Who?"

"Guess!"

Twilight rolled her eyes, opting for the easy way out. "Princess Celestia?"

Pinkie didn't even waste time questioning her answer. "Panthers! Three of them! I didn't stick around to see their gear because I came to tell you."

"Panthers?" This really was interesting. Panthers frequented Neighberia. They were renowned trackers and hunters. Some of the best zookeepers in Equestria were panthers. Some of the best poachers were too. "Show me, Pinkie."

"Okay!" Pinkie bounced off like a toy ball, with the difference being that she didn't lose altitude with each bounce. Twilight followed behind at a brisk trot, and soon they found the balloons, which were unattended. "Huh. They were just here." She went and asked a shopkeeper across the street, who pointed her to the street branching off to the left.

Eventually, getting directions from ponies on the streets and in shops, they were directed to an old bar. Pinkie recognized the place, and went in first. There was a slight cheer as she entered. Then Twilight entered and the place went a little more silent. Sitting in the corner were three panthers. One had an overcoat covering a heavily bandaged torso and seemed tired, another had a shasqua strapped to his belt, held his head high and looked as though he was the leader of the group, and the third was tinkering with gears and miniature pistons, giggling madly.

Twilight sat down at a table, and Pinkie followed. Soon, a pink unicorn with a curly white and grey mane reminiscent of Rarity's walked in. She was tall and slim, with a figure to match Fleur de Lis of Prance. Her green eyes held a hint of danger, and her cutie mark was obscured by an overcoat of her own.

Twilight was gearing to get up, go over and talk to them when Applejack suddenly rushed in with an anxious look on her face. She quickly looked around before finding Twilight, and ran up to her.

"Twilight, come quickly! It's horrible out there, just horrible!"

"What happened?"

"It attacked again! It's killed a cow!"

***

The cow was identified as Millie.

The killing blow was presumed to be three parallel cuts across the neck, presumably from the creature's clawed hands. After being killed by the stream, she was eviscerated. The heart, liver, kidneys and utters were completely gone, eaten away. The creature had also eaten large sections of meat from the body, especially around the haunches, ribs and shoulders. Unlike the attack on the manticore, the neck was intact here, although the cuts in it were deep. To Twilight it seemed like the only area of the neck not cut by this thing's claws was the spine. A few bones were also broken, and the marrow was sucked out of them. the flesh around one of these bones had a tooth embedded in it, presumably broken off as the attacker broke the bone. The soil around the cow's neck was darkly colored and damp, but the cow herself was cold. Long dead. Whatever this thing was, it had a voracious appetite. The scene was grisly.

When Twilight had first arrived with Applejack, she had taken several steps back and turned around, doing her best not to vomit. Applejack herself seemed bereft. Twilight didn't know the extent of her friendship with the local cows, but she must have been close. She left Applejack to go get the tooth, which came out with dreadful ease, leaving yet another gash in the mutilated body.

She sat, holding the tooth in her hoof and looking at it. It was sharp, with a serrated edge. "Did anyone see the attack?"

"Nah... They were all in the barn when it happened..."

"Applejack..." Twilight said quietly, as she pocketed the tooth. "How do you feel?"

"Been better, Twi... That poor Millie. She was old to begin with, and she'd been walkin' on a sore hoof for days. It's no wonder this thing chose her... What're you going to do with that tooth you just pulled out?"

"I'm going to take it to a veterinarian, to see if it can be identified. Oh, after we're done here, of course."

"Do you think that thing might come back to eat on her again?"

"I don't know. It's possible. What should we do with her?"

"Well... If ah were a cold mare, ah would set a trap around her body. But I'm not cold... Can we bury her? She deserves at least that much, after going through whatever hell this was..."

"Of course we can, Applejack."

The rest of the afternoon was spent digging Millie's grave and putting her in it. With Twilight's magic to help, the work went much faster than it would have otherwise. After burying Millie, Applejack fashioned a wooden cross for her, and Twilight used her magic to etch the cow's name into it. Then they sat down.

"Want me to walk you home, AJ?"

"Nah. You go on ahead, Twilight... Ah think ah'll stay here a while longer."

"Okay, Applejack. Stay safe."

***

Tyra wasn't usually a light sleeper. Then again, they didn't usually find fossils in this quarry any more. Earlier that day, they had found an incomplete skeleton of a juvenile hadrosaur. The skeleton consisted of a few phalanges and metacarpals, a humerus, fragments of a scapula, some vertebrae, and a jawbone. So far, only small traces of the rest of the body, but still, the tooth that Sandstone had found had belonged to something. Tyra had gone to sleep excited only a few hours ago, and maybe she had stayed that way in her sleep. She woke to the sound of sniffing. As she rolled in her sleeping bag, the sniffing stopped. She sat up, and found herself face to face with a surprised looking theropod.

He brought his head back towards his body with surprise as she sat up. Apparently he hadn't expected her to wake up. She took a good look. Large dromaeosaurid. Grey. Almost looked like a Utahraptor. He was feathered up to the base of his skull, and a little further along on the top of the head. He also had primaries running in a row, almost like those on a cockatoo, but shorter in relation to body size. For display, probably. They were the same grey, but with a black band bordering a white tip. The primaries on his arms had the same design. He had a stripe on his head, going from where the feathers met, over the eyes, to about midway across the depression that marked the antorbital fenestra. She theorized it must function the way a Cheetah's eye stripe functioned, although this was a thick border around the eye. The eye itself was slit pupiled, and a beautiful green color. The pupils were dilated in the darkness right now.

She chuckled, and put her hoof up to the soft feathers of his neck. He responded in turn by jerking away and turning to bite her hoof, only barely missing. She noticed he had a stripe running laterally from the base of his neck down his body. It was double layered, white on top of black. From a profile view, Tyra got a better look at the structure of the skull. It was very similar to that of Utahraptor, but the snout ended in a bit more of a box than a curve. Still, it was close. Tyra giggled as she laid back down. She wasn't even dreaming about a real species. She watched as he turned and left the tent. His tail had a fan of the same white tipped feathers as his arms and head. She smiled a bit as his silhouette disappeared, and then she closed her eyes.

***

It walked away from the soft den, utterly bewildered by the behavior of the female hoofed creature. It had tried to give her a warning bite when she touched it's neck. Why had she done that? Deciding to forget about it for now, it slunk back to the kill from earlier, only to find that it was gone. This wasn't a problem. It would just hunt again. It didn't need much after gorging itself.

The attack was sudden. A large reptilian pounced. There was little time to react to the giant, but it did, whirling to face it, and then running when it realized what it was. Not quite big enough to be a fire breather, but just as nasty. It ran, with the almost-fire-breather in tow, hoping to lose it in the mounds built by the hoofed ones. When it didn't, it turned to fight instead, fanning it's arms out to display it's feathers and raising the crest atop it's head. It also puffed out it's other feathers to appear larger, as the almost-fire-breather was about twice the size. Not daunted, the large reptile lunged with a mighty roar. the almost-fire-breather was quickly sidestepped, and It ran it's claws straight up through it's throat, making a long cut from the jaw to the wishbone as the reptile sailed past. Then, it ran as hoofed ones started coming out of their mounds to investigate.