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Owen pinched at Delta's hind leg quickly with a sharp hiss and she yipped, a guttural half-bark, half-snarl and skittered back behind him, cowing in an over-exaggerated display of submission, head low, eyes downcast. He stared down carefully until she had backed up behind Bravo and Echo, into her proper place in the hierarchy, in front of Foxtrot and Charlie, who both watched her with more casual enthusiasm than Owen was really certain how to curb.
"Eyes on me, eyes on me. Okay, hold. Hold!" He enunciated sternly when Echo stepped toward him and the strip of goat meat he was holding hungrily. She bowed back into line, pawing anxiously at the ground, talons kneading the dirt. But she obeyed.
Bravo's eyes were locked just below his, rigid- it was good to see, she wasn't making eye contact so she wasn't challenging his authority. She didn't act like her packmates though- rambunctious, like the pups they were, she was different. The eighteen hours between her and Echo's hatching had clearly apparently her status as second-in-command, and her genetic makeup was clearly giving her a certain prowess over her sisters.
He took a bite of the seared meat and looked down at them while he chewed, asserting his dominance as the first to eat. Bravo waved her tail, the first she'd betrayed her impatience but otherwise remained motionless. Delta and Echo watched the meat hungrily and Echo pawed at the ground but stayed in place, and Charlie at first bounced, before looking at Bravo and stilling quietly, ducking her head. Foxtrot yipped and stepped forward, but Bravo whipped her head about with a hiss and puffed up, swelling her chest and baring her teeth. Foxtrot whined and stepped back, ducking in submission until Bravo turned back about and deferred to Owen.
He was breathing heavily, tense hand wrapped white-knuckled around the handle of the gun at his waist-band, the sound of Bravo's hiss still echoing in his mind. Even at barely two feet tall, these things could eviscerate him like land-dwelling piranha, and he was starting to think they realized that.
His fingers loosened, then fell slack.
"Good girl," he said, and waved a hand behind him, without looking away, at the guards he knew were all watching his girls through a scope. He tossed Bravo a chunk of meat and she caught it between her teeth with a satisfied yip and ran to the far wall with her prize to tear it into smaller chunks. Echo puffed, leaning upward and caught her chunk the same way Bravo had, scampering off to a different enclave beneath a tree. Delta missed her chunk and scrambled after it, and Charlie couldn't stop herself from skipping forward and chittering low submissive food-begging noises and he had to get her to back up before he could toss her a chunk of meat.
Foxtrot, however, was an issue.
The five of them were all velociraptors, yes, but each had unique DNA- as the scientists responsible for their existence had hoped to see different success rates and results with each. Unlike Bravo, who's incomplete genome had been finished with black-throated monitor lizard, Charlie, who was full of green Iguana DNA (giving her a thankfully more passive nature than her sisters), and Delta's mixed avian DNA, Foxtrot's designers had had the brilliant idea of stirring Asian Lancehead into her genetic make up.
She was slower than her sisters and smaller by far, though not quite a runt, bright-yellow green with a startling jet black stripe down the center of her snout traveling down her spine and tail. Less noticeably though, was her rather creative jaw structure. She'd had to undergo somewhat extensive dental surgery early on to correct what the researchers referred to as "incongruent biological instructions" causing her to grow two separate sets of teeth at the same time- something that was, if her high pitched yowling had been any indication, incredibly painful.
While they had fixed her jaw problems and removed the vestigial venom sacs, they had not quite curbed her tendency to bite.
When he pulled her slice of goat meat from the bucket, her pupils swelled and the base of her tail swung, and she leapt when his arm went up, grabbing his forearm with her front claws and digging her hind claws, sickle and all, into his right-side chest, over his ribs.
Some part of him knew he had to remain in control or this situation would spiral quicker and farther into the shitter than it already had, but that part was far more reasonable than his first instinct, which was to cry out in pain and swing his arm upward. She latched her teeth onto the goat meat strip in his hand, digging her claws into his forearm further as she tried to rip away the slab with her teeth, but his fist had clenched around it tight automatically and it did not come. She opened her jaws to take the whole hand-
And Bravo barrelled into her, shrieking a noise Owen had never heard her make before, and the claws tore out of his chest and off of his arm and he slipped to his knees, gasping for air before shakily jumping back up, screaming "Weapons down weapons down!"
He turned when they refused to lower them to see Bravo watching him, chest heaving. Foxtrot wasn't moving, and neither was Bravo- but she wasn't dropping eye contact. Echo and Delta and Charlie all backed up, yipping quiet and submissively, obviously not wanting to be a part of the dominance scuffle.
"Come on- down-" he said, careful to keep the shake from his voice and his eyes trained on hers and not her claws or her teeth. She ignored him, stepping forward threateningly, "Bravo-" he started, tone low, and she leapt forward a foot or so sharply with a high pitched bark, baring her teeth.
"Owen!" Barry's voice sounded behind him, but Owen knew better than to look, "She thinks Bravo is a designation of status! She thinks you're challenging her!"
“What the hell?! She’s challenging me,” he hissed. Barry was supposed to be the expert on animal behaviour here, he was just the Marine who knew how to handle getting his ass chewed by dinosaurs.
“No, no, she was protecting the Alpha in her pack from a rogue member’s attack- she was only staring at you because she was uncertain why you did not defend yourself! Now you’ve made it a challenge!”
Owen cursed and pulled back his lips, baring his teeth in a display of dominance and stepped forward with a heavy stomp. The other three scuttled into the underbrush but Bravo stayed stock still, head dipped, tail up and rigid. She growled, low, pupils shrinking and Owen barked back at her, a noise he rarely used for exactly this reason- the surprise of hearing him mimic their tones, whether he had gotten it correct at all, caught her off guard and she paused. He used the opportunity to dart forward toward her, aggressively, and if by instinct, she dropped her head and her eyes, falling back and away.
And that was it, the encounter over, the mood entirely different. He stopped and glanced at Foxtrot, who was most definitely not moving anymore, before going through the standard daily herding routine of getting them all back into their designated sub-paddocks. They were used to it by now and did it almost without thinking, as far as he could tell, but by the time he had Charlie rounded up, he was light headed, chest screaming fire and adrenaline steadily wearing thin in his veins.
He stumbled out of the buffer cage and into the waiting embrace of several very concerned medical staff, Barry cursing swears Owen didn’t understand in French.
“You nearly got yourself killed!”
“Yeah, I noticed,” he wheezed as a medic cut his shirt off, “I was there.”
“Owen, my friend- you cannot go back in there. That was the last time.”
“Yeah. Yeah, I know.”
“They are definitely learning, but just because they know what you want them to do does not mean they will do it. These are dangerous animals.”
“We have to rename her, don’t we?”
“Hm?”
“Bravo. We can’t keep calling her that.”
“That’s what you’re worried about?”
“Well- I mean, look, she’s blue, ain’t she?” He winced as the medic worked, scrunching his eyes shut, “That starts with a B, makes sure nobody confuses her or anything. Is Blue okay?”
“That’s hardly the major concern right now, my friend.”
Owen shrugged and immediately regretted the motion, “Ugh. I think Foxtrot is dead.”
“As do I.”
“Are they going to replace her?”
“Probably not.”
Owen sighed, and let them lead him to the medical vehicle with only a few worried glances back at his raptors, penned down in their cells, Blue’s eyes following him all the way.