A/N: Welcome back! It's been a hot minute, and I legit have no excuse other than 'my muse saw Zelda Skyward Sword come out and decided to re-fixate on Linked Universe again'. But luckily, I had this chapter mostly written, so please enjoy!! Also, I have FINALLY gotten a new laptop. So bear with me while I find free alternatives for Microsoft Word, and get used to the layout and formatting. Right now, I'm using LibreOffice, so let's see how well this will go...

~~~

Year: 2364, Location: Isla Sorna

Mei had never been in such a strange situation before. She had been beyond excited to have the opportunity to visit I-Island—especially since it'd give her a ton of new ideas for babies that she could make for the UA exams next year. She'd been riding a high of oil and inspiration the entire time, and when her return flight was delayed by three days due to a storm, she'd been more than a little frustrated. She wanted to get home and start making babies before her ideas ran away from her—as muse was prone to do at times—but anything made on I-Island stayed on I-Island. So making babies there while she was waiting was not an option.

So when she saw a smaller private flight that would drop them off on the nearest coast, she leapt for the chance to take it—despite the fact that it was a little sketchy. Either way, when she got to the mainland, she'd be able to buy another flight. She didn't like to wave around money, nor did she think of herself as a rich kid, but her mother did run one of the largest Support Companies in the world. Hatsume Industries was a multi-billion dollar company, responsible for distributing support items across the globe.

Mei was the youngest of three. Her older sister—17—was heavily into programming and was working in that field, despite having just graduated high school. And their older brother, who was 20, worked on I-Island as an inventor (which was how she'd gotten a free ticket to visit as a birthday gift).

Mei was the only one of the three who had any interest in continuing the Support business their great grandmother had built up. Her sister was content with programming, and her brother was far more interested in working on I-Island (not that Mei could blame either of them), so Mei was left with an open seat to take over for their mother—as long as she got to keep making babies, she was perfectly happy with that.

Which was another reason why she'd panicked when their plane was struck by lightning and was forced to make an emergency landing on an island that wasn't on any map she'd ever seen. An island that wasn't supposed to exist.

The landing was ferocious, and at the time she had thought that that was the most frightening part of it. She wished that the landing—which had killed several people on impact, including a woman who had been sitting beside her—was the worst of it.

But no. The raging storm hadn't been able to cover the sound of a roar that sent waves of hot terror through her body. She had been afraid before, but watching those claws tear open the side of the plane and that mouth of sharp teeth...

It was beyond fear—beyond anything she'd ever felt before. Her blood was ice and fire in her veins as her deepest instincts awoke within her, begging her to do something. What Mei felt in that moment wasn't fear. No. It was death.

She still wasn't sure how she managed to get away with five other survivors—they had been eight when the crash occurred. One man had a broken leg, and another woman had some bone sticking out of her arm.

But that wasn't the worst of it. She knew they were being hunted. Her newly awoken instincts were on hyperdrive, and she was acutely aware of every damn sound and movement they made. At one point, she suggested covering their trail—as the only child in the group, they almost didn't listen, but another survivor had agreed, so they made a half-hearted effort to do so without losing speed.

When they set up camp—an idea that Mei was not okay with, because it was so open and exposed—she had ignored the way the others tried to relax and rest. Something was wrong. They said she was just being paranoid, but Mei decided to throw her judgment out the window and listen to that screaming in her gut that she prayed would keep her alive and stuck close to the bushes.

She was glad she did.

The raptors attacked without warning, and she wasted no time in ducking behind the foliage she'd been near, praying that they were either colorblind or that her bright pink hair was dirty enough to remain unseen.

It seemed they were much more interested in tearing into her fellow inventors and survivors. A few ran off screaming into the woods, but Mei could do nothing but huddle down and pray for it to be over, too terrified to watch. She could still hear something in the camp, and knew it wasn't safe, but she couldn't bring herself to look—not with the images of that man's arm being torn off still playing behind her eyelids.

A sound behind her had her slowly turning. A quiet yelp passed through her lips as she lost her balance and fell out of her cover. A raptor was less than a foot from her, and that fear reared itself up once more, though not as intensely.

Another was behind her—she could sense it. The distinctive reptilian noises of the creatures came from just behind her, and she risked a glance to see how many there were, only to startle. It wasn't another raptor. It was a boy. A boy who sounded like a raptor and looked like a wild animal.

His hair fell to his shoulders in tangled knotted waves, leaves and twigs sticking out at odd angles. His skin was incredibly tan, which only made his innumerable and horrific scars stand out all the more. Claw marks and bite scars—some parts of his side and arms even had chunks missing—littered his torso, and a rather nasty scar that stretched from his lip down his neck and across his collarbone drew her eye. He had bright emerald eyes and he studied her with such intensity that she couldn't help but shiver.

A few more sounds fell out of his mouth, and it took her a moment to realize that he was communicating with the raptor.

The conversation that followed was both confusing and eye-opening. This boy—Izuku—had been surviving on this horrible island for three years. She honestly couldn't see how when her entire group had been wiped out in less than two days, but it only solidified her resolve to stay with him. He was her best chance of survival—and he was pretty interesting conversation, too.

Quirkless? She didn't care about that! This kid had a knife that she recognized as a tooth from the nightmare that'd greeted her when she landed here. If he could face down that and live, then villains weren't going to be an issue.

She'd only been there for three days, but she was already starting to settle in—or as much as one could do when their life was constantly being threatened. She missed her bed. She swore to herself to sleep in her bed more than once a week when she returned home.

Izuku was a conundrum, though. The boy often mixed Japanese and Raptor (which he was trying to teach her. She got the feeling that Ace was laughing at her horrific attempts to mimic their sounds) and didn't seem to be aware when he switched between them. It was entertaining and mildly frustrating, especially when she had to often ask him to repeat something once or twice to get a response in Japanese. On the other hand, she was picking up raptor rather quickly because of this immersion.

Today, she knew, would be a difficult one. Last night, she'd run out of the pitiful rations Izuku had snagged from the packs. Today she would have to learn how to eat from the island.

Izuku—always an early riser—greeted her with a close-lipped smile. "Morning!" He chirped, and she chirped back, earning a bigger toothless grin. Ace grumbled and growled irritably, and Mei could relate.

The raptor was less of a morning person than she was—and she was the queen of all nighters.

Izuku just laughed under his breath and scratched the raptor beneath her massive chin. Mei still shuddered at the thought of getting that close to those teeth, but she supposed Izuku had been with her for long enough that it no longer bothered him. He and Ace seemed to have a very close bond. "Come on." He chirped, adding an odd whistling sound under his words. The whistle was broken up into a few clicking sounds, and Mei thought she recognized the word for 'hunt' in there.

Ace perked up, repeating the word back.

"Yep." Izuku nodded, adding a confirming chirp.

Ace grumbled but stood nonetheless, shaking herself like a wet dog, earning a giggle from Mei. The raptor sent her a glare, but she didn't feel as afraid as she thought she should have been. Perhaps hanging around these two would give her a bit of a confidence boost.

Izuku sent her a thoughtful look. "Ace and I usually" he gave the raptor word for hunt "alone." He made a few clicking sounds broken occasionally by a few odd low-throated whistles that Mei—for the life of her—just couldn't understand how he made.

She had realized after the first day that this was his version of muttering. She thought it was kind of cute, especially since Ace tended to roll her head whenever he fell into the habit.

The raptor huffed, nudging her snout against Izuku's head gently, snapping the greenette out of his muttering. "Right." He decided. "Mei, why don't you watch us hunt for today?" He suggested, and Mei was pleased that she was able to understand the full sentence despite the bits of raptor mixed in. "Then later, we can decide what" here, he used an unfamiliar sound "you can take."

Mei blinked a bit before nodding. She could understand the gist of the sentence, so that was better than nothing.

Ace chirped irritably at Izuku, who gave a whistling growl back. After a moment of the two chirping and glaring at one another, Ace sighed in defeat. "Sweet." Izuku beamed. "Come on, let's go." Izuku swung himself onto Ace's back—which was amazing to see, because she never even considered that the prideful Ace would ever let someone onto her back—before extending a hand towards her. She blinked.

"She's not going to bite me, is she?" She eyed Ace warily, who seemed pleased with her caution. Mei made a low growling sound with her throat to convey her hesitation, and Ace rolled her head and chirped.

"Ace has agreed to let you ride her for hunting." Izu gave an amused smirk. "Come on, Mei."

She took his hand, startled—as she always was—by the hard calluses on his palms. Mei took a moment to remind herself that every action Izuku carried out, every seemingly effortless movement of silent predatory grace was hard earned, likely though countless near-death experiences.

She swung herself up onto Ace's bony back. It was decidedly strange and uncomfortable to ride a raptor. It was an amazing thing—an honor, in a sense—but still highly uncomfortable. The gait was strange, and the scales were rubbing her thighs raw. Ace's spine was uncomfortably bony, and Mei knew she would be very sore tomorrow. But Izuku... He moved with Ace. They were like a singular being, rather than raptor and rider.

Just when the discomfort of riding a raptor was bordering on painful, they slowed their pace. She spied a herd of... she wasn't sure what they were called, but she vaguely recognized the dinosaur by the distinctive horn-like protrusion. Izuku sent her a smirk. "You can dismount, now." He told her. "Watch and take note, because you'll be joining us on this soon enough."

Mei nodded, resolving to study how this worked. It was almost exciting, in a way. She was a woman of science. Maybe not in the sense of biology or paleontology, but she could still appreciate the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to study the behaviors and movements of these creatures.

And, if Izuku ever decided to return to civilization and become a hero, Mei had no illusions that he wouldn't want raptor-based support gear. And she had already decided to be the one to provide it. And to do that, she needed to study how Ace moved.

She was grateful to have grass beneath her feet again, and wasted no time in forcing her jellified legs to hoist her up a tree—one of the first skills Izuku had insisted she learn. She was still fairly clumsy at it, but she was able to scale most trees in about ten seconds—still too slow, according to Izuku, but it was still pretty good considering she never really climbed trees before.

She watched in awe as Ace and Izuku took off. They ducked and weaved together as they attacked the herd of dinosaurs, easily picking off a young one and separating it from the herd. Ace nipped at its hindquarters, and it cried out in panic.

Izuku stood upon Ace's back, balancing like it was the easiest thing in the world, before leaping forward and catching the young animal's horn, using his momentum to pull it to the ground. It flailed as Ace clamped down on its neck. After a moment of struggle, the dinosaur stopped moving.

Izuku gave a trilling screeching sound that Mei recognized as a call for her. She would never get used to hearing the cry of a velociraptor, let alone the same cry coming from Izuku.

She made her way towards the two, who were already digging in. Izuku was fiddling with something, and Mei tilted her head. Was she meant to... eat it raw? Like them? She wasn't sure if she could do that.

Izuku must've understood her thought process, because he chuckled. "Come here." He gestured, and she saw what he was messing with—a small campfire. He had a lighter in his hand—likely taken from one of the people from the plane she'd been on. "You can't eat raw meat." He explained as he skewered some pieces of meat on a branch and dug it into the dirt. "We'll cook it for you." He told her with a close-lipped smile.

"Thank you." She smiled back, and he startles a little, hair raising.

"Sorry, I forgot that people... tend to smile with teeth." He explained. "Bearing your teeth in this world is a threat, not a friendly gesture."

Oh, so that was why he always smiled with closed lips. She smiled at him again, careful to keep her teeth covered. He smiled back. "Sorry."

"No, you're fine." He assured her. "I'm just not used to it, anymore." He eyed the cooking meat with a bit of distaste.

Mei chuckled as she took over turning the branches to ensure it cooked completely. "Go eat your lunch, raptor-boy." She chuckled, and he flashed her a toothless grin.

The meat wasn't bad, but it certainly wasn't the best she'd ever had. For one, it had no seasoning, but food was food, and she was grateful for it nonetheless. She noted that the fire made both Ace and Izuku nervous, so the moment the meat was done, she snuffed it out.

"It's an attractant." He explained. "The light and smoke will attract any predators to the area to see what's going on. Because fire on this island is dangerous, and if there's something threatening their territory, they want it gone."

"Makes sense." Mei nodded as she ate what would likely be her only meal today. "I think there's a method for cooking food under the ground..." She tilted her head.

"Yeah, but I'm not sure how to go about it." Izuku nodded. "I think it involves volcanoes or something... either way, this isn't the island for that." He gestured towards the mountainous volcano. "Inactive." He explained.

"Ah." Mei nodded.

The three were silent for a while, letting their food digest. "Do you think anyone will come for you?" Izuku asked after a moment.

"Yes." Mei nodded. "My mother runs one of the biggest support companies in the world. I'm set to inherit it, and she and my father care deeply for me. My older brother works for I-Island, and he'll be worried sick, and my older sister will try hacking every database in the world to find me." She snickered a bit.

"Sounds like one hell of a family." Izuku smiled. "My mother's the only one who cared about me. I don't even know what she's doing these days... she probably thinks I'm dead."

Mei winced. "If you want... I could introduce you to them someday?" Was she overstepping her bounds? She wasn't sure.

Izuku hummed a little as he leaned against Ace, who was curled up in the grass. The image of the boy using the raptor as an impromptu pillow was both funny (because this was a creature that could easily rip him to shreds) and heartwarming. "Yeah... If I decide to go back, I'd like that."

"Do you think our rescue party will get stuck here, too?" She frowned. It wouldn't be a good thing if their rescue party couldn't get off the island either. There seemed to be no cell signal here, or at least there was none when Mei tried to call her mother after the initial crash.

"I don't know." He frowned a bit. "If there's a hero among them, then their hero phone should be able to catch a signal at the Tower in the Compound. But that's in the middle of Pearl's territory."

Mei winced. Izuku had explained the basics—Pearl, Void, and Red were the alphas of the three raptor packs. Alex was what he'd named the most troublesome T-Rex, but it was a small family of five. Go figure, T-Rexes mated for life. Okay. Spiny was a loner, and Izuku suspected that there were a few more living off the coast—apparently they were aquatic, but only came together to mate—and the mosasaurus made aquatic travel or hunting far too dangerous.

All other predators were scattered around the island or migrated with the prey. Pterodactyls and pteranodons tended to stick to certain areas, and Izuku assured her that his nests steered clear of the aerial terrors. But they did have territories near the Compound.

"The Compound sounds like one of the most dangerous areas on the island." She mused. "It's in Pearl's territory, borders Spiny's, has sky terrors littered around it, and... didn't you say those poisonous ones lived there, too?"

"Dilophosaurus." He corrected absently.

"How do you know all their names?" It'd been a question that'd been bugging her for a while, now.

"I snuck into the Compound during my first year, here." Izuku admitted, earning a reprimanding hiss from Ace. "I know it was dumb, but I wanted to see if there was a way home. Their computers still work, you know?" He chuckled. "Not that they can access the internet at all. Anyways, I found some notebooks and stole them, along with a few other things. They were filled with field notes on the different dinosaurs here, their habits and whatnot. It also had their names and some sketches. I studied the notebooks, adding some information of my own."

Mei raised an eyebrow. "Do you still have them?"

"Yeah, but I've memorized everything by this point." He paused for a moment as she held his gaze. She smirked when he understood what she was getting at. "Oh. Oh, you can... yeah, I'll grab them for you." He turned a little pink, earning a worried trill from Ace. "N-no, I'm not sick... it's called embarrassment." He assured. "It's a human thing."

Mei laughed a bit to herself. Being part of this pack wasn't really that bad.

~~~

Her first encounter with a predator after joining up with Izu and Ace was nearly a week after the crash. They'd all fallen into a rhythm with one another, and Mei was starting to really warm up to Ace. She'd even started hunting with them, joining Ace in startling prey towards the Strike Zone.

Her raptor vocabulary was expanding by the day, and she was able to hold stilted conversations with Ace through a mixture of Japanese and smatterings of sounds that still made Izu and Ace laugh.

He equated it to a very thick accent. It made Mei pout each time.

They'd been following a herd of parasaurolophus and triceratops. It was migration season, Izu had explained, and while he knew the general area that they moved to, he liked to follow them from one territory to the next to assure himself that he knew precisely where they were.

Unfortunately, they weren't the only ones stalking the herd. Alex the T-Rex paid them a visit—distinguishable by a set of claw marks on the side of his muzzle. Izuku had taught her the basic dos and don'ts for each predator. Raptors were best avoided by climbing trees—sharp turns could trip them up, as they couldn't turn as swiftly as a human, but running from them outright was hopeless. Dilos also involved tree climbing and lots of cover, as some of them could spray their venom up into the trees in the hopes of knocking prey down.

Tyrannosaurus Rexes were motion hunters. Izuku assured her that so long as she stayed completely still and didn't move, he wouldn't even know she was there.

Even still, staring into those bright yellow eyes and that mouth of razor sharp teeth bigger than her arm was one of the most frightening moments of her life. Every instinct in her was screaming to run, to move, to get the fuck away. But Izu's words echoed in her mind, and he shot her a look from the other side of the clearing with Ace.

The two were so still that even Mei almost didn't see them. Alex sniffed the air around her. She mentally thanked Izuku for his diligent scent-covering routine, because she was sure that he would've detected her otherwise.

Instead, Alex lifted his head and continued on his way. She let out a breath when he was gone, and Izu made his way back over towards her. "You okay?"

"Y-yeah. Remind me to practice awareness a little more." She couldn't keep her hands from trembling.

"You did fantastic." Izu sent her a smile, placing a hand on her shoulder. He seemed to have a bit of a higher body temperature, because his hand was very warm. Or maybe she was just really cold. She wasn't sure.

She gazed off in the direction that the predator had stalked off in. "Teach me." She decided. "Teach me how to survive."

"Haven't I been doing that?" Izu tilted his head.

"I mean... I don't want to feel so helpless. You... you're so confident and strong... I want to be like that."

He locked eyes with her. He had a constant predatory gaze, and it always made the fine hairs on the back of Mei's neck stand on end. She equated it to Ace's stare—the stare of a predator.

"Okay." He nodded, breaking eye contact and allowing Mei to relax a bit. "I don't really know what I can teach you differently, but if you really want to learn, I'll give you some crash courses." He gave a low whistle with a few clicks that Mei understood to mean follow quietly.

Ace chirped questioningly at him, tilting her head, and Izu chirped back with a low rumble to explain to her that he was going to teach Mei. There were some terms that Mei wasn't fully sure about, but it seemed that she was quite pleased that Izuku was taking it upon himself to educate her on survival.

Mei almost snorted. "So... where are we going?" She asked, adding in a questioning whistle-chirp at the end of her sentence.

Izu shot her a smirk over his shoulder. "You asked for experience. I'm going to take you to a predator's territory to get some."

Mei felt herself pale a little. "What have I just signed up for?"

Izuku's smile was quite terrifying with teeth. 

~~~

Ace huffed as she watched the pink hatchling hop around. She wasn't sure how human aged, but she thought that Mei must be quite young, because she could hardly use her fangs and claws.

Then again, Izuku had to make his own claws, and his fangs were dreadfully blunt—almost like prey teeth. But he was very much a predator—that much was certain.

She was unsure about Mei at first—the female seemed stupid and foolish. Noisy, stinky, bright and cocky (because who showed their teeth that much?!), Ace hadn't understood what Izuku had seen in the female... perhaps he was simply in heat?

But the pink-haired human had adapted phenomenally quickly. It made Ace realize—quite suddenly—that this was not an adult human, as she'd assumed, but a mere hatchling that had never been taught proper survival skills. Whoever her nestmates were had sabotaged her quite remarkably well, because without Ace and Izuku's intervention, she would've died.

After a couple of weeks, that stink was a thing of the past, and the hatchling was even joining them on hunts! Izuku had taken the hatchling under his wing to show her how to properly survive and defend herself—something Ace had been hesitant to do, because she could not move like a human could.

The two play-fought often, now, utilizing artificial claws and bearing their fangs at one another in a manner that was oddly friendly. Human were so strange. At least the hatchling was as much of a morning person as Ace was.

These past few seasons spent with Izuku had been some of the best seasons of her life. She had truly thought she'd been about to die when he'd found her. She'd known him only from their odd encounters and the rumors flying about her pack about an outsider. But... but he was different than they said. He saved her. Faced down the venomous ones with a vicious snarl to protect her, even though she was gravely injured. This tiny scale-less blunt-toothed thing with gangly limbs and fur on his head... had stood between her and her death, and growled back.

And so she defended him in turn. They'd been pack ever since. He was certainly odd—never had she seen the urine of another predator utilized as a defense, nor had she realized how intelligent this human was. But he could speak. She just had to teach him how.

Until they met the pink hatchling, she'd thought his 'Japanese' had been only his. A tongue that he'd developed because nobody had taught him speech. But no, this hatchling spoke the same tongue, and it made Ace realize that it was a human language.

Well, even hatchlings could be smart at times, she supposed. Mei couldn't eat meat like they could—she had to make it hot and tasteless over the glowing red fern that ate whatever it touched. Fire, Izuku had called it. It still amazed her that human had managed to control it.

But that was neither here nor there. Things were changing for Ace's small pack. Izuku—her alpha, her brother, her pack—was going to have to make a choice. He was convinced that other human would come for Mei. And Ace knew that a very large part of Izuku—larger than he was willing to admit, even to himself—wanted to go with her.

He had told her bits of his world—the nest he came from. She didn't understand much, but she understood that it was very different from the jungles and forests that they roamed. Ace knew, much like Izuku, that she would not do well in such a place.

No. Should Izuku choose to return, Ace would stay on the island. She would be here should he migrate back. She knew Red—as Izuku had named her old alpha—would accept her back if she came alone. But if Izuku chose to stay with her...

She watched as her alpha sat beside the hatchling, both sharing expressions of happiness. Her tail swung languidly behind her as a foreign pain pierced her heart. He could never be content here, with just her. Ace knew... Izuku needed his own human kind. Ace would drive herself crazy if she was the only raptor on the island. Now that Izuku had found another human, things could never be like they were before.

She felt a sad rumbling sigh escape her as her heavy gaze trained on the two. No. Her days with her alpha and the cheerful hatchling were numbered now; no matter how much she wished they weren't. She would miss him. And he would miss her. But this was what was best for Izuku.

Izuku may not have made his decision, but Ace could see... his heart had made his decision for him. She stood and walked over towards them, settling in beside Izuku and curling her tail around Mei, earning a somewhat startled look from the hatchling who still wasn't used to contact.

When the time came, Izuku would return to his old pack, and Ace to hers. She knew that Izuku would be the strongest alpha of them, and he would take the hatchling with him. Together, they'd form a very strong pack, and perhaps Izuku would take the hatchling as his mate when she was older.

As for Ace, well... Red would be wary of her for a bit, what with her new skills and tendencies, but she'd settle back in before long. She could contribute quite wonderfully to the pack, now. Perhaps she'd even jump up in rank. She wasn't quite brave enough to strike out as an alpha of her own.

No matter what, though, Ace was certain of one thing.

Izuku would always be her alpha.