Chapters It stared forward at its unsuspecting quarry, its catlike eyes narrowed in a cold, calculating gaze. It pulled back its top lip in a silent hiss, preparing to pounce. It was on the hunt, to kill the competition in this new territory. Harder battles were yet to come but for now, this was a start. It was ready, and the manticore was not.
It decided right then to swagger into the clearing where the manticore was eating its latest kill. It fanned out its feathered arms in a classic challenge, and hissed, opening its mouth wide and baring its teeth. The manticore looked shocked. It was the top predator of its environment, and this creature, a full head shorter, had the audacity to challenge it?
The manticore readied itself, facing its opponent and looking it over. Male. Three claws on each hand. Four claws on each foot, one of which was vastly oversized. Lizardlike proportions, but covered in grey feathers, with a lateral stripe of white going down the length of its body. The primaries on both its arms and legs were tipped in white. Tan, scaly skin and emerald eyes. It was foolishly showing him its side as it walked, circling him, and leaving the perfect opportunity to rip its ribcage open. This creature was foolish and arrogant. The manticore would make short work of it.
He lunged, aiming for the long tail. Taking its balance was the key to taking its life. All he felt was the gentle brush of feathers on his upper lip and nose. How had he missed it? Suddenly, too quick for him to turn around, he felt a searing pain go up his rear right leg, from his thigh to his haunch. He looked back, and to his horror saw three deep slashes going up his leg, which had cut cleanly and shredded the muscle. His enemy’s hand was dripping with his blood as it slowly and pompously walked over to stand in front of him.
Unable to support his weight, he fell forward. The enemy loomed over him, and then jumped onto his back, standing on the spot right over his shoulder blades. It was surprisingly light, he thought. Then, before he could get it off with his tail, two large daggers of pain shot into his spine, making his body go limp against his will, and he felt a set of wickedly sharp teeth slowly and gently come over his neck before his vision cut to black.
“I think I’ve got something! Maybe a hadrosaur!” Sandstone said from her section of the dig. Tyra walked over, and was pleased to see that for once, her intern was right. It was, in fact, a tooth from a hadrosaur. Nothing too special, but it was still good that she had been able to tell.
“How can you tell, Sandstone?” she said, not giving away her approval just yet.
“It has a shape that allows it to pack in with others of the same shape. It’s small and leaf shaped.”
“Good job. You guessed right.” She took the tooth and examined it. “Doesn’t seem particularly big though. Maybe we have a smaller species, or a juvenile.” She knelt down with Sandstone in the dirt. “Maybe we can find the skull, or a fragment of the jawbone.” She started to help Sandstone dig.
Hours later, after giving up the search, they sat down in Tyra’s tent, where the third member of the team, Granite, was cooking dinner.
“Nothing?” he asked.
“One tooth,” Tyra replied sadly. Lately, their staff had quit, and productivity had greatly decreased. They were digging in the Macintosh hills, south of Ponyville, and sadly, there was no funding left in the dig. Stubborn as she was though, Tyra was probably going to dig here until she had to sell her tent for dinner.
They weren’t going on much, and her partner and intern were really just her volunteering colleagues. Still, over the course of two years they had all become good friends.
Granite, a strongly built grey Pegasus stallion, put a comforting hoof over Tyra’s shoulder.
“Don’t worry. We’ll hit something good eventually. If not, we can just go join another dig and earn enough money to get back on our hooves. I heard Levine has hit a treasure trove of troodontids.”
At the mention of her rival, Tyra’s face soured. “Levine can kiss my-”
“Tyra, be professional.” Sandstone said as she carefully blew on her soup, interrupting Tyra before she could finish her remark.
“Right.” She replied, and then cleared her throat. “No, I would prefer not to dig within fifty meters of that condescending and unpleasant but undeniably successful stallion.” With that, she started to eat Granite’s mushroom soup out of one of her paper bowls.
It could smell something, hear the sound of hooves hitting the soft soil, and the clinking of metal. It slowly used its hand to part the branches in front of its face. The thing it had been hearing was a hoofed quadruped with golden rings around its neck and hoof. It took another sniff of the striped creature, and information came pouring in.
Female. It was a female. It smelled of strange foliage, wood, oil, and other hoofed creatures. As it watched, the hoofed thing hid in a den covered by a piece of tree. It narrowed its eyes at the hoofed thing. This would be its next target, for sport. Not food. Slowly, it crouched and then pushed hard off of the ground, jumping high into the air, and landed on a tree branch. Climbing from branch to branch, it started to move, positioning itself where it could hunt and watch the den.
Zecora looked out the window, feeling a strange presence, and saw two green eyes. She blinked, and they disappeared.
“Silly me, it was probably a trick of the Everfree.”
She then started to mix potions.
Fluttershy was very confused. All of her animals were hiding in her house. There were even some new ones. She had never seen a golden eagle, and here was one in her bathroom. Most worrying, though, were the two creatures in her kitchen, cowering next to her bunnies.
A timberwolf and a giant scorpion. Something out there was scaring monsters, and they were going to the only place they could think of for safety. Most worrying, she had found three claw marks going through her door this morning. Something was stalking these creatures. She had to protect them, but she didn’t want to go outside. What if whatever was out there was waiting-
“Fluttershy!”
She jumped, and shakily looked over at Applejack.
“A-Applejack! Hi! What are you doing here?”
“I was walkin’ Winona and something spooked her. She bolted in here, and… Is that a timberwolf?”
“I don’t know what’s going on. There are more creatures in my house than there have ever been! Something is scaring them out of Everfree.”
“Sounds mighty fishy. Have you thought of lookin’ into it?”
Fluttershy showed Applejack the claw marks.
“Alright, I can see why you wouldn’t want to check. Those went right through your door!”
“Yeah…”
"Anyways, while I was here, and since I brought Winona, I thought maybe I would ask if you could watch her for a night, because she's seemed a little under the weather and the veterinarian is gone to Manehattan and all, but, since you're busy with so many creatures-"
"No, no, she'll be safe with me, Applejack."
It smelled them. A treasure trove of creatures. Food. Prey. It needed to eat, so it could continue to hunt the striped thing. It waited for the moon to come up, and then it quietly made its way over to the den where the creatures were hiding. It scratched at the door, quietly, gently. It was always quiet on a hunt, and as delicate as possible. Quiet was a given, as speed had to yield to stealth a lot of the time. As for delicacy, if it wasn't careful in it's kills, the best parts could be ruined.
Its claws finally broke through. It had broken through the door earlier, just to see if it could, after determining that the striped one could not be reached quietly. It felt inside the door, felt the cold metal, and flexed its claws, splintering the wood around the metal. Then it pulled the metal away, and pushed the barrier away, slowly. Quietly, it snuck in, and started to look for something to fill its stomach. One creature of the right size could fill its belly.
If it had known this place was here, it would have never gone hungry again. Birds, rodents, reptiles and so much more. There were fish out front in a stream, and even a yellow hoofed creature further up in the den. It really was a great place to hunt. It finally picked one animal, a small rodent, nice and plump. It didn't need much or want much. Just something it could carry away that would keep it full.
Delicate as ever, it slowly slid its jaws over the creature’s neck, and bit hard. There was a small pop. The creature might as well still be asleep. Peaceful. Then, it walked over to a large arthropod with a long tail, and precisely cut everything sharp off, slowly killing the thing. Predators would commonly kill each other off in situations like this to assert their territory and dominance over food, and it knew that more food was guaranteed if the arthropod was killed. It couldn't do anything about the wood creature next to it, as they were unable to be killed, but they instinctively left it alone anyways, and they didn't kill to eat. They didn't ever eat, probably. It usually ate their kills after they left. Or, it had before it had killed that pompous manticore. Now it had left its mark, and left the arthropod in a pile. It delicately picked the rodent up, and trotted out, soundless up to the point where its tail hit the barrier, knocking a feather loose and creating a large wooden crack. It ran off as creatures screeched shrilly in terror at this sudden sound, unseen, back into the night.
Fluttershy awoke with a start at the din of a house full of frightened animals. It was the middle of the night. She went downstairs, and the sight was horrid. The giant scorpion from before was dismembered, its legs, pincers, and tail lying in a pile around it. It was obviously dead. Her door was shredded, and the doorknob was lying in the dirt a few feet outside.
The most terrifying part of it all was that she was missing a bunny. She quickly found Angel, and put him up in her room. Then, she started a frantic search that lasted well into morning. No blood, no body parts. It was as if the bunny had just vanished. She was familiar with predators that left little behind of their kills, but this was taking it to a whole new level. Applejack, who had come to pick up Winona and frantically run in after seeing the door, was relieved to find her friend safe. She hauled the dead scorpion outside, and then helped search for the rabbit, but it was gone.
Eventually, Applejack went to get the rest of their friends as well, mostly for the sake of Fluttershy's comfort. Fluttershy refused to leave her animals, and Applejack hadn’t been so keen on leaving her, so she hurried as fast as she could and gathered everypony else. Pinkie was the only one who didn’t seem worried.
“Fluttershy, you need a better door!” was her only remark.
“Pinkie, this is serious!” Twilight said. “Something has broken in, it’s killed one creature systematically and ran off with another, and we don’t even know what it is! Fluttershy, did it make any noise?”
“Not that I know of.” She turned to her animals. “Did anyone hear anything before the sound of the door?” None of the creatures nodded.
“Did you all miss this? I mean, look at it, it’s huge!” Pinkie said, as she picked up a large grey feather, with a white tip, and a border of black between the grey and white. It was a good eight inches in length, not the biggest but certainly nothing small. None of them had ever seen one like it before, which terrified Fluttershy even more. She had seen everything, which meant that this was new, and new predators could have a devastating effect on the fauna of an ecosystem, which could mess up the ecology of the whole place and leave an ecosystem in ruins and, and… Oh no…
What would happen to anypony that got in this thing’s way? A predator like this could easily kill a pony, and probably would if it were hungry, desperate, or bored enough. Images of maulings she had seen when she had talked to troubled animals at zoos came to mind. A creature with claws like these would go for the thighs, midsection, and throat, and it would cut those. Asphyxiation, blood loss, immobility and evisceration. The image of blood finally got to her.
Fluttershy fainted.
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.
"Well, princess, I don't know what animal this came out of."
The veterinarian had analyzed the tooth for a full day. Twilight had left it in her care and then gone to try and find entries in books in her library about large predators again. It covered the usual, dragons, giant spiders, manticores, drakes and hydras. Then there were more exotic creatures, like the powerful wyverns, giant basilisks and strange and elusive cockatrices. But nothing behaved like the mystery creature stalking the Everfree.
The veterinarian held up the tooth. "I'm not saying that this thing is nonexistant. I've just never seen an animal with these teeth before. I can tell you what this tooth is used for though." She slammed the tip down on the counter, embedding the tooth deep into the cedar wood. "It's a cutting tool. The creature here probably has narrow jaws to give it a scissor-like bite. It likely bites and then pulls back, stripping the flesh from the bone. At the same time, this is a powerful bite if it can crack bones to get to the marrow. This likely isn't it's only weapon either. From what I understand, most cuts left in the victims of this animal are too clean to be bite marks. It probably has at least one set of claws, with blades at least as sharp as this tooth." She pushed the tooth sideways, creating a long gash in the counter. It didn't even follow the grain of the wood. "Another interesting thing I found is that this animal has serrated teeth. It's bite is likely ridden with bacteria. An infection from this creature wouldn't take long, assuming you didn't die from massive blood loss first."
Twilight watched the tooth power through the counter with a grave expression. She stared at it for a while after the vet finished, pale with horror from her description of this animal's method of killing. It was nothing short of a monster. A living weapon. It needed to be found.
"Princess?"
Twilight took the tooth. "Thank you for trying, at least."
"What are you going to do when you find this thing?"
"No idea... If it hurts anypony, I'll probably have to kill it. It's already killed a cow. I should kill it for that."
The vet looked down with a grave expression, then nodded. Twilight took that awkward silence as an opportunity to walk out. A creak of the boards above her on the front porch nearly made her bolt as images of grey feathers disappearing over a rooftop danced into her head. The feathers here were pastel yellow though. As was the pony they were attached to. Fluttershy had tears in her eyes as she lighted in front of Twilight.
"Twilight, please tell me you were joking! You won't actually kill it, will you?"
That face was hard to deny, and Twilight didn't like to make her friends sad, but she had no choice here. "Fluttershy, I may have to. It's already killed one of your bunnies and a cow too! If it hurts anypony else, I'll have no choice... Were you eavesdropping?" Fluttershy nodded. "Then you heard the vet. This thing is dangerous."
"W-Well, you heard how specialized it was! T-Twilight, it's just a-a predator! It's only doing what it does!"
"That's no excuse."
"Can we at least learn about it before you..." Fluttershy trailed off as her words were replaced with squeaks. She really was trying hard not to cry. Twilight's expression softened.
"Yes Fluttershy, we can learn about it first."
Fluttershy simply nodded and turned to walk away. She held her head low as she left. Twilight sighed and started to walk home. She hoped this would all be-
As she walked, she went past one of the panthers. The one with the shasqua. Everything seemed normal about him. His sword was ordinary, but at the same time looked very elegant. She looked at the handle as she went past. Shasquas were designed as one handed sabers. This one had no guard, but it did have a gold pommel attached to the brown leather of the handle. As she looked down the sheath, she noticed a grey feather, cut presumably by the blade, attached to the handle. She was in a short enough distance, and decided to use an identification spell.
All she got in return was a hiss.
She immediately turned, and let him go a few feet before she started to follow him. Her mind raced. If he knew what this thing was, was it possible he brought it here? Was he responsible for the monster terrorizing the countryside? If so, why had he brought it? He must be a poacher, as she thought. That gear that Pinkie had mentioned, in the balloon, it must have been their gear for trapping. She wondered ow they all factored into the team. This one was probably the leader. The wounded one, maybe a tracker or second in command. The third was probably an engineer. But what about the unicorn?
The panther rounded a corner. Twilight followed, and as she rounded the corner and realized she was in an alley with a drawn saber pressed to her throat, she figured she hadn't been as stealthy as she wanted to.
"Why are you following me?" The panther said, with cold eyes drawn into slits.
Twilight needed to think of something, fast. Wings, a horn, and a crown probably didn't matter to this guy. She pulled out the tooth. "You're looking for this too?"
The panther grabbed the tooth and gave it a good look. "Where did you find this?"
"A dead cow. Care to explain? You obviously know what this is."
"You're quick to judge. I don't have to tell you anything."
"You're going to kill it, right? Sell it to the highest bidder? Did you bring it here?"
He gave back the tooth and sheathed his sword. Maybe Twilight had been a bit too quick to jump on the situation. It was too late now. She needed this guy if she wanted to find the creature, so she grabbed him with magic. "Please help me!"
He turned with a growl, but the soft, quiet sound of Fluttershy clearing her throat stopped them both.
"Twilight, that's quite enough."
"Fluttershy? How did you find us?"
"Well, I saw you following him." Twilight made a mental note to find and read a book about stealth. She and Fluttershy both turned to the panther. "Sir, my friend here has been terribly rude, and I'm sorry for that, but she's right. You do seem to know something about a creature she wants to find as well. Could you please tell us what you know? Maybe we could help each other."
The panther considered her words for a moment, then nodded. "Deal." He took a book and pencil out of Twilight's saddlebags and wrote something in the book, much to her dismay. "Meet me at this address at sundown."
***
It leapt through the trees with speed and coordination matched by nothing else. Every day, it woke up not knowing what the food would be for that day. There was a certain beauty to that. Waking up not knowing what the day would bring. Not having to protect a brood or pack. It didn't need them. It could kill on it's own, and the things around here were soft, weak, and tasty.
As it went, it caught a glint of something through the branches. Curiosity overtook it, and it caught itself on the next tree, before running through the branches to... Oh no...
A metal box with bars instead of walls was on the forest floor, with two black cats and a hoofed thing with a horn standing around it. Cold, Icy fear gripped it as it looked at the three and their container. It took a sniff of the air and identified the individuals. The one who made the strange noise, the one it had wounded when they caught it, and the one that had tortured it in it's container. It's feathers had grown back since she had torn them out, but it was still a fearful sight. Where was the fourth? It pulled it's lips back as it stared at them, eyes narrowing. It's pupils constricted in a cold, fear induced rage.
They would catch it if it wasn't careful. and then they would probably kill it. It had to strike. It couldn't attack the way it had been, though. They knew it, and it's methods. It would have to improvise. It began to look around for the traps in the trees. Those had been it's downfall last time. It started to scan- There! There was one. It cut it quickly and quietly, setting an alarm. Then, it screeched. The three came to check, as it thought they would, and it went to cut as many traps as it could, making sure to hide them afterwards.
***
Twilight and Fluttershy found the address, which was a large apartment for four, and Twilight gave Fluttershy the tooth to hold. The only one in it now was the panther though. He was polishing his blade when they came in, and gave them a gesture to sit on a couch located in front of the room's window. They sat.
"So Princess, you want to hear of this creature?"
"Anything you can tell me is good."
He set his sword on the table. "We were in Zebrica when we stumbled upon a special location. An oversized river basin. It was quite nearly walled on all sides by sheer cliffs. Local zebra guides took us down a remote pathway leading into the basin, on the agreement that they would show us down and then immediately leave. They thought us crazy to go down there. The original hunter party was a size of twenty two, but all but four of us were killed by the beasts inhabiting the basin. You have never seen creatures like these, Princess, they were horrifying creatures, that could strike both fear and awe into even the most fearless hunters. A dragon slayer was among our group, and even he was afraid."
Twilight took all this in. First off, dragon slaying was illegal. She thought of brushes with the two large dragons in the Everfree forest. What creature could scare a hunter of dragons?
"There were plenty of creatures, in all shapes and sizes. Even herbivores, though they were not to be trifled with like the herbivores in this forest. Every creature here was rough and hardy, built to either fight or run for a long time. The hunt began early, with our teams tracking a large carnivore. This proved to be our first mistake. This was the one that killed and ate the dragon slayer, plus two others. But it was the least of our troubles. You see, the creature in your woods, he is a loner. Whereas most members of his species are fast, vicious and relentless, he was smart, calculating. Like us, he took his time when pursuing a quarry. The pack alone killed off thirteen members of the party. With six left, we took drastic measures. The one pony in our party was a unicorn. She had predicted the hunt going sour, because she is quite the pessimist, so she had a gateway leading back to an undisclosed location in Equestria. I could give you three guesses where.
"We were going to leave, but we thought, 'We can't return with empty paws.' So we set traps. We knew the pack hunters used the trees to move, so that is where we set our traps. His natural curiosity overtook him, and we caught the creature you now have in your forest. Our plan was to showcase him to fund a new hunt, where we would be better equipped to face the creatures in that basin, but he freed himself from the cage we kept him in. While escaping, he killed two members of our party and injured a third. Then, he was loose in the forest. Deeper than the old castle of the two sisters. We assumed he would stay hidden, collapsed the portal to prevent any leaks, and went back to Zebrica to gather our things, leaving some in the forest. We came to retrieve those things, and heard of the events here. Now, we wish to clean up our mess."
"Why didn't you just state that out front? We want it gone, right Fluttershy?"
"Oh, well, um-"
"We could help. Maybe we could even have Fluttershy use her natural talents with animals to ki- ah, catch it."
"Is it true?" asked the panther. "You could help?"
Fluttershy stammered. "I- I umm.. Well... No. No, I could not help you."
Twilight's jaw dropped. "Fluttershy, why not?"
"Yes, why not?" The panther inquired.
"Because it's the bats all over again! Twilight, you want nothing more than to see this creature dead, and this guy just wants to exploit what he admits is a naturally curious and kind creature for the sake of going and capturing more to exploit! And you both want to use me to do it!"
"Kind?" Twilight interrupted. "How can you possibly call this creature kind after all it has done?"
"When will ponies learn what predators are? Twilight, what is a predator?"
"In zoology? Any animal that lives by preying upon other creatures."
"Exactly! He's just doing what he does! He's actually very minimalistic by the looks of it."
"That's not true! Look at the creatures he's killed. A manticore, mostly intact, a cow, mostly intact, and a drake, completely intact."
"Some predators are picky. And we only just finished moving the drake. He was heavy. There was no way any predator with half a mind would have waltzed back into town to feed on that kill! It's too densely populated... Look at wolves for a moment. Do you like wolves?"
"Why yes. They're beautiful creatures."
"And have you seen their hunting behavior? They kill out of boredom. Without remorse or care. At least this animal only kills when it needs to!"
"And what's to stop it from hunting a pony next? Fluttershy, this thing was in your house! It could have easily killed you and been gone in minutes!"
"But it didn't! That's my point, and I'm sticking to it. I'm sorry Twilight, but I won't help you! I won't have a repeat of the bat incident!"
"This is bigger than the bats! This isn't about saving an orchard, this is about preserving a healthy ecosystem and possibly the citizens of this town! I'm doing this with the best of intentions, can't you see that?"
"Some of the worst things imaginable have been done with the best of intentions!" Twilight recoiled a bit. Fluttershy took a few breaths before continuing in a calmer tone. "As far as I'm concerned, you're no better than the group that brought this animal here in the first place."
With regret already hanging over her head from those words, Fluttershy turned and walked out, her mind resolute. She had to find this thing before Twilight and the panthers did. She had no idea where to start.
