Explain The Weird Plants, please (threat)

The Oviraptors' march across the island was not escaping the notice of the vast majority of its residents. Even those deep in the mountains had seen tracks of the new raptors making their way through, dropping seeds at their heels and moving on to the next place. They never stayed in one place for long, but their presence was felt long after they left. At the sites where they dropped their seeds, large plants sprouted within hours, and seemed to reach their full maturity within weeks. They would tower over many species on the islands, their strange heads titled down to the earth instead of stretching towards the sun. Their stems were green instead of woody but were thick enough to hold the entire structure of the plants upright. They curled in on themselves, like a tightly woven rope that spiralled upright, lifting the head of the plant like a waiting cobra.

Cherry had first seen one of these monsters on her usual patrol through the wooded areas of the Dead City. It had been normal at first, the usual trees and creeping vines were in abundance, but as she drew closer to the heart of the city, these plants seem to die back. Their bark crumbled, their leaves browned, even in the middle of a fairly pleasant summer they were dying in front of her eyes. Even the hardy vines that thrived in any scenario were shrivelling up beneath her claws. She followed the trail of death until she noticed greenery re-emerging into the woods, but it was these strange, new plants instead. Some looked vaguely familiar, the plant the herbivores had named 'kudzu' looked like a variation on the typical creeping vines, but others, like the towering green-headed beasts were completely alien to her. She had been observing one of these enormous plants when she caught the first sign of movement. As she looked at its strange head, like a green bud tightly shut and refusing to open, her feathers prickled. She turned around sharply, expecting to find something sneaking up behind her, but the woods were silent. Unpleasantly silent. When she looked back at the plant, its leaves were slightly parted.

"Are you keeping up, Cherry?" Sparrow whispered. The pink and white Utahraptor startled out of her reverie, brought back to the task at hand. Her new companions, a pair of brown striped twins, had been escorting her on this mission. They put up with her limitations with good humour, allowing her to rest while her exhaustion passed and taking the lead on hunts where her coloration made her too obvious. Even at night she found herself too brightly coloured to be camouflaged, she would never be able to sneak up on an Oviraptor without their help. She had seen the attempts of others, their arms laden with gifts, to try and approach the skittish raptors but they were, rightly or wrongly, too wary to simply allow a predator to walk up to them unchallenged. If they had any chance at all it was through a stealth attack, and once they had an Oviraptor in their clutches they could actually begin to get some answers. If her hunch about the new plants was right, these raptors had a lot of explaining to do.

"Spotted," Piper breathed. Cherry followed her gaze to a sleeping pack of Oviraptors nestled under a crumbling overhang. It was a dangerous spot to rest, but perhaps the danger was what had kept predators from making a move on the sleeping group. It wouldn't stop them though, they were agile enough that a collapsing old building was a trivial thing to escape from. Maybe the Ovis were faster on the flat, but few things on the island could outmanoeuvre a Utahraptor. CHerry's eyes scanned over the various shapes in the pack, some adults, some juveniles, some looked fresh from the egg. If they wanted an answer to the plant question they would have to tackle an adult, Cherry doubted a hatchling would have anything useful for them, but as a last resort they could snatch one up and use it as a bargaining chip. For now, she set her sights on two of the adults, pointing them out to the others in her pack.

They were both bald and brown, the female with sharp spines sticking from her hips and a faint tinge of blue underneath them. The male had a strip of green paint in the shape of leaves arcing over his crest, while she had a similar pattern wrapped around her neck. They were easily identifiable, almost a matching set, they were good targets for the pack to focus on in their ambush. CHerry hunkered down where they were, letting the other two creep closer with their more subtle colouration. Piper took the left, her stronger side, and managed to hide in a bush near the flock before the guard had a chance to spot her. The sound of her moving provided cover for her brother to make his move, taking the right side and flattening his body against the building's wall. They stayed perfectly still, Cherry's cue to act on her part. With a screech she leapt from the bushes, waking the whole pack at once and throwing any chance they had at coordination out the window. The more conscious adults, including the tall grey guard, scooped up the hatchlings as they ran but for the most part the Oviraptors scattered. Cherry saw both of her targets split from the pack, each heading in a different direction. It was the best chance they had, both {Piper and Sparrow would have a chance at grabbing one of them. The pink Utahraptor watched them run for a split second before deciding to join Sparrow to help him take down the female. She may prove more difficult with her spines, and Piper was ruthlessly efficient at her job, she was less likely to need the help when bringing down a single panicking Oviraptor.

Sparrow lunged from his cover, shouldering the Ovi to the ground and following it, bringing his claws down to pin her. She tried to flip upright, pointing her spines towards his open jaws but he pulled back in time. Before she could make another move, Cherry pinned her down from the other side. With two raptors holding her in place the female stopped struggling and froze, Sparrow could feel her pounding heartbeat under his clawed fingers as he dug them in further, making sure she was going nowhere before letting her arm go from his mouth to look up. His sister was wrestling with the male, kicking his gut and grabbing his neck in her jaws. Piper kept her firm grip on his throat and with enough pressure the Oviraptor realised that struggling would only hurt him more. He quieted down like the female had, and the three raptors now had two Ovis in their clutches.  Cherry leaned back on her heels a little to look directly at the female's face.

"You're very hard fellows to talk to, you know that?" she grinned. The female didn't respond, just glowered back at her. "Don't tell me we came all this way for nothing? You're going to tell us all about these strange plants? Right?" She punctuated her polite question by setting her foot down near the Oviraptor's head, letting her claw gleam in the moonlight. Fear crossed her features, but the female remained silent, either through choice or intimidation. Cherry sighed and looked back at Piper who had managed to shuffle over with the male's neck still in her teeth.

"Lahna, for goodness sake, just tell them!" the male wheezed through his compressed windpipe.

"Quiet, Varpunen!" Lahna snapped, "We will not yield?"

"You won't yield? For what? You're really that dedicated to choking the life out of these islands, huh?" Sparrow growled. Piper kicked the legs out from under the male and he choked as his body hit the ground. Blood began to seep from between Piper's teeth but his airway remained uncompromised for now.

"We're bringing life to the islands," Varpunen hissed.

"The wrong kind of life," Sparrow argued, "It's choking the trees, it's killing the grass! Why the hell are you doing this?" Both Oviraptors said nothing, bracing for the inevitable instead of complying.

"You really won't tell us who sent you?" Cherry asked quietly.

"We cannot," Lahna replied simply. The pink Utahraptor sighed.

"Alright, let them loose," she ordered. Piper huffed in annoyance but let go of Varpunen's neck. The Oviraptor staggered back out of her immediate reach, looking at the pack with a mixture of fear and confusion. Cherry and Sparrow let go of Lahna in unison, jumping back to avoid retaliation. She stood shakily, her arms braced and claws clenched like she was ready to fight but neither carnivore nor omnivore made the first move.

"Get out then," Piper snapped. The Ovis stared for a brief moment before they both turned and ran full speed into the city streets.

"And if we catch you doing any more gardening around these parts, you won't be walking away next time," Sparrow snarled after them.