[Seasonal] Cold Sabotage

On cloudless nights, the sky has always been graced with a spectacular view of nebulae and countless stars. With human cities long left dark and void of pollution, a view like this is common, but no less breathtaking, as an arm of the Milky Way painted a bright streak into the near cloudless sky up above. The full moon illuminated the ground below in a soft, cold light, keeping most at ease and safe from dangers otherwise lurking in the shadows.

Mute stood motionless on a small rise right at the forest’s edge. With the darkness softened to a gentle blur and a fine layer of snow over the landscape, her shape stood out where it would otherwise melt with the dark. With a calculating squint, her eyes peered down between the trees onto the dead city below and its desolate streets. The empty shells of ruined buildings were powdered in a faint and fragile sheet of white when the first snow came down in the evening. Then, once night came, the concrete had been rendered frozen, cold as ice. It was apparent from even here that no creature mills about the freezing buildings lest they want to be frostbitten. With a twitch in her brow, she sneers.

Behind her, Sliver and Kimiko were caught squabbling, trying to nip at each other like unruly kits. Bright nights had the raptors restless. The colder season soothed some into sleep on calm nights like these, while some used the absence of suffocating darkness to stay watch or hunt. They both expected the latter and were accordingly stoked for action.

Mute didn’t speak for a long moment, but the second she stirred to stride toward the city, whatever play the raptors were caught in was cut short. They look at each other for just a moment before diligently following the cryo’s steps without second thought.

“We aren’t hunting?” Sliver asked, her voice just shy of protest once she noticed where they were heading. “The moon is lighting up the meadows like the sun does. We’d have such an easy time stirring up some herds and picking at the sick. There’s nothing in the city but cold rock.”

Kimiko stayed silent, smart enough not to object, but in the way her eyes glanced between Sliver and Mute, she was asking the same question. She was not one to doubt their leader, but she would have loved to know why she picked them and for what.

Mute’s feet left clean prints in the thin layer of powdery snow, and when she leered back at the raptor without turning her head, Sliver swallowed hard. Letting it go, the matriarch returned her eyes to her destination ahead and didn’t pay any further attention to the uthas. “Cold rock is hard to sleep on. Not to freeze their tails off, I bet on Sergeant and his cute little troupe to hide inside a stone tower to get all cozy. We’ll take that opportunity to snoop around,” she explains in an almost conversational tune, although the patronizing edge in her voice was palpable.

They rarely got to scout the city. Too many corners, too high cliffs, and it smelled all kinds of off. Not only wasn’t the territory theirs, but the urban areas were also poor hunting grounds for the likes of them, who aren’t familiar with them. Yet the feathered utha looked forward to exploring the city.

“Ohh, we’re spying around?” Sliver chirped with an added bounce to her step.

“I want you to be discreet,” Mute continues, ignoring Sliver’s question. “You’ll get as close as you can to their den and find where they store their food. I want this to be a hard winter for Sarge, so remember where they put their food, take what you can and get rid of the rest.”

Kimiko, who’s been trailing behind both near silently, shook her head slowly. It was an intriguing mission, and she’s not opposed to it at all, but there was just too little info to go off on for her to be at ease. Tilting her head to the side, she voiced her thoughts, “Do they have guards or anyone keeping watch? You want us to mess with their stores, but we’re just two raptors. What’s the plan here? There’s barely any plants to hide in the city, and we’re on unfamiliar grounds.”

Mute scoffed, almost amused, and disregarded her concerns completely with a single comment. “Take it as practice.”

Maybe she didn’t know either what they would be met with. Maybe she simply didn’t care for how they ended up approaching their task. In her mind, even if Sergeant and his sidekicks were awake, they’d rather have their noses towards the sky like naive dreamers or have their sorry hides huddled in some corner than stand outside and watch for thieves. All things considered, she thought him endlessly naive.

She knew not to underestimate him either. His pack was multitudes larger than her plus two smaller predators. Caution was advised, and as soon as they stepped onto cracked asphalt and slinked between broken buildings, her pace slowed accordingly.

Even in the night’s clear air, the city smelled of rust and rotting furniture left in the abandoned buildings, but the scent of a dozen predators and their leader was hard to miss. With a subtle nod of Mute’s head, the nimble raptors are sent ahead to work quick and work quiet.

With the right scent found, Sliver and Kimiko ran ahead without question and followed the smell to its strongest point. The ground was hard and so much colder than the padded forest ground, it sapped their body heat every single contact their feet made with it. To say it was unpleasant to walk across the streets was an understatement.

The cracked, but unnaturally flat parking lot they found themselves on was devoid of any other creature. Broken vehicles with rusted shells and flat tires are strewn about the place, but other than neat piles of plastic sheets, tarps and trash in general, the area was uninteresting at first glance. The roof above the flat surface stopped the snow from covering the space, but thanks to the open sides, the sharp breeze kept it chilly and unsuitable as a shelter.

It was deceptively hard to smell out any fresh meat this pack might've stored away in this cold, but the traces of food did hang in the air. Just where?

With nothing else to hint at an obvious stash, the raptors split up to each side of the wide parking space and examined anything of note.

Kimiko froze in place each time a rat scurried from one crack in the ground to another or whenever distant calls of stray canines or cats bounced off the tall building’s walls. In one way, it had her at ease that their claws scraping the concrete wasn’t the only noise in the city, but it wasn’t enough to dispel the fear of a stranger cryo’s teeth if they were found out. In her eyes, there was nothing noteworthy, nothing but noisy trash if one disturbed it, nothing but risks if she wandered too close to the buildings nearby.

Startling her out of her thoughts, Sliver let out a sharp chirp. The white-snouted utha was met with a both panicked and incredulous look across the distance, which she only met with a half-apologetic shrug.

Sliver stood on top of a lopsided car, peering into its miraculously intact windshield, when Kimiko joined her.

“Check that out,” Sliver said, her voice barely hushed in her excitement. “They copied the shopkeeper and just stuffed all sorts of things in these boxes. No idea how they sealed them, though.” Scraping her claws at the bent metal and seams of the glass window, she didn’t manage to break in. Even when she had the right idea to lodge her claws in the groove of the closed doors, she didn’t manage to pry it open. Not if she wanted to do it quietly anyway. “I just… can’t get it to open.”

Kimiko took a look inside, while Sliver still occupied herself testing the old vehicle for weaker spots that didn’t creak. The lot’s roof didn’t just block the snow, but the bright moonlight as well, which made it hard to make out details in this dark. But there definitely have been items and materials placed into the car in some sort of thoughtful manner. Inspecting nearby vehicles, it was clear there were more of these clever caches. Unfortunately, those with broken windows and weaker frames had only common trinkets thrown into them.

“What are you two doing?” growled a luckily familiar voice. Mute caught up and stared at them with more than just disappointment in her eyes. They were supposed to scout the area, not fool around with old relics. She was about to scold her henchmen, but decided against it, considering the building’s open windows, anyone could be eavesdropping from.

“Sarge’s pack stores things in these boxes,” Sliver answers after her attempt at chewing a car door open resulted in failure.

“We can’t open them up,” Kimiko added, ”but I don’t think they are storing food in these anyway. Just… stuff.”

With a displeased growl, Mute closed in to examine the vehicles herself. It was unclear whether she was more annoyed at the raptors’ incompetence or the fact that Sarge had the intuition to use the urban environment in such a way. It’s such a simple trick, too, but unfortunately, none of them knew how to open doors.

They would rather not stay here any longer. The more they lingered, the more likely their scent clung to anything they touched. Checking out the last few places to look, Mute approached the larger vehicle in the assortment of broken-down cars, which promised to be better suited to hold large carcasses, followed by the raptors right at her side. The pickup truck that served as a fresh meat stash during warmer seasons was just waiting out in the open. Empty. Its wheels long deflated, and axles rusted beyond use, it was unassuming amidst others. The tarps and fabrics in its bed, that previously hid fresh kills from flies and bugs, were left there, the very faint smell of blood still clinging to them. Otherwise, it was empty.

“He moved it,” Mute hissed, frustrated that she knew it’d be too risky to scout the buildings, too. She turned violently and started to stride away from the truck. It made no sense for him to move the stash. It was cold enough outside to keep meat fresh and undetectable unless anyone was looking for it. He had no reason to think anyone would sabotage him. She certainly didn’t spill a single word about the plan till this night.

The raptors took hurried steps back when she passed them. Before either Sliver or Kimiko could ask how to proceed, Mute dug her teeth into the metal frame of a car and jerked at it till it bent and tore with a terrible noise.

“Take anything useful you can, get rid of the rest!” Mute growled as she trudged to nearby cars to open those up in the same style. The plan stayed the same. She’d make it hard for her rival cryo to get through the winter by any means. They might’ve failed to steal any valuable food, but she’d make sure he’ll lose his neat, useful storage boxes.

Startled by the sudden switch from stealth mission to calculated rampage, Sliver moved first to jump into action, throwing and shoving items out of the vehicles, while Kimiko was caught anxiously watching for movement around them.

That’s not what she thought they’d do, but it was foolish of her to think this wouldn’t happen. It just takes one stranger to investigate and sound alarm for them to be practically doomed. They aren’t prepared to fight a large pack, and even running is more likely to fail.

A loud crash snaps her back to action, as Mute tore a car’s door right off the frame. The hinges must’ve rusted through ages ago, for how easy it broke off that it even took the unshakable Mute by surprise. Kimiko didn’t linger on her worries further and simply picked up anything practical that Sliver threw out without looking.

With a last spurt of daring audacity, all three of them took whatever appeared of use, threw the rest to the ground, and trampled one or the other thing in a hurry. Practically digging through the materials stored in the metal boxes, they made quick work of it before the first footsteps sounded into the streets, and they made their timely escape.

The aftermath was dirty bandages, bad for curing any open wounds, broken glass and debris on the ground, making the parking lot far less comfortable to traverse, and cars bent even further out of shape than before, which made useless storage spaces now that most were unable to be put back together.

Mute and her smaller helpers were gone before anyone knew what really transpired. The only thing left was the chaos and the tracks in the snow, but ultimately, there was no proof of Mute being the culprit.

Then again, who else would wreak havoc during such a peaceful night?

(2217 words according to Google Docs)