Chapter 15- Achelousaurus

With the threat resolved, I returned to Clarke and Raven, who was busy connecting the radio to the pod's battery.

When I arrived at the pod, I saw Raven reaching her handout and grasping Clarke's hand. Who would have thought that these wouldn't have introduced each other as soon as she got treated by Clarke?

"Hi my name is Raven Reyes, and I am glad to be here, but... Clarke, right?"

Hearing her name, Clarke nodded showing a confused face as she continues to listen to Raven's words. "This was all because of your mom, she was supposed to be here with me as well."

"My Mom? What happened to her?"

"Kane happened. She had to stay behind so that I could come down here."

"Was she hurt?"

"I don't think so. This was all her plan in the first place before I kind of forced myself into it. We were trying to come down here together. Oh, my god. I remembered why we couldn't wait any longer. The council was voting whether to kill 300 people to save air and give the rest of the people living on the Ark a few more weeks or even months of extra air."

"When, Raven? When will the council kill those people?"

"Today!"

As soon as she recovered that memory, Raven quickly connected the radio and the next thing that we knew, she radioed back to the Ark.

"This is Raven Reyes transmitting from Earth! The 100 have made it down here alive! We need to speak with Dr. Abigail Griffin. I repeat, we need to speak with Dr. Abigail Griffin urgently! "

For a few seconds, nothing was heard, but just when we almost lost our hope, we heard a voice.

"Ra-en,-ou there?"

The transmission was broken, but at least they heard us. Time to save 300 people from a pointless death. I walked next to Raven and took the lead since I was the one leading this group of delinquents.

"Ark, come in. This Leon Kennedy, acting leader of the 100. Please respond."

"Leon, thank god you guys are alive. I'm Dr. Abigail Griffin, a member of the council…"

Before Clarke's mother could continue her phrase, a male voice interrupted her.

"What's the situation down there?"

"No radiation, I believe that's what you want to hear. We can survive here without any related to radiation."

A third voice interfere again, but this time, the voice was the familiar voice of Jaha, the man that sentenced us all and the same man that sent us down here in a warzone.

"How many of you are alive?"

"89 are still alive, from the total 100 people that you have sent here to die."

"My son, Wells Jaha, how is he?"

Right when I was about to tell the man that his son was killed, a horn was heard, freezing us all, since that meant that the grounders were going to attack us. I didn't bother responding any longer as I had to prepare myself for the fight that was coming.

"Finn, Bellamy, Clarke, Raven take the radio back to our camp. We'll hold them long enough for you to make it back home. May we meet again? Team, form up."

Bellamy tried to say something, but seeing that I didn't even care about him after what happened in the forest, he just gritted his teeth before swearing that he'll do better for all of us. Raven glanced for one last time at my back before picking up the radio, ending the transmission.

When the four of them left the open area, we were already ready for an attack and despite knowing that we may not make it back home, no one fled, which surprised me. Their loyalty to me was an unexpected effect after that night, but then again I was one of the few people that didn't act like a tyrant.

Exactly one minute after the group left, a loud roar made our blood freeze in our bodies, followed by what seemed to be an earthquake. Before anyone of us could react a huge creature broke through the tree, sending pieces of wood in all directions.

The creature itself looked intimidating, being at least 5 meters long and three meters high, with a parrot-like beak and two sharp horns, clad from head to toe in iron-like scales making this creature the equivalent of a tank.

While the creature seemed as confused as we were, that didn't stop it from rushing toward us. Thankfully, due to its size, it wasn't that fast, and even more luckily for us, it wasn't easy for it to turn around.

It didn't take us long to exhaust the poor thing, making it feel down while still glaring at us as if we were the bad guys. Fortunately, it was just one creature, otherwise, we wouldn't have been able to defeat it without casualties.

Now that the creature couldn't hurt us, I walked in front of it, looking the creature in the eyes. While not having the same eyes as a human, I could still recognize the fear that it held when the creature looked at me. I may have killed humans before, but not one grounder looked at me the same as this poor creature. There wasn't any hate in its eyes, just fear. Its animalistic instincts were most likely screaming to get up and run away from us, but the sad truth was that despite what its instincts were saying, the poor creature was too tired to even move.

While I was thinking about the creature's fate, I felt a hand on my shoulder. Turning my head around, I saw Roma standing on my left side.

"What are you going to do with it, Leon?"

"I don't know. The grounders had chased it towards us for a reason, so we can either kill it or let it live, risking another attack just like this one."

Suddenly, Miller's voice was heard from behind Roma.

"What about using it as a burden beast? We can have the creature take the whole pod back to our camp. We won't have to make countless trips to bring everything back, saving both our time and lives."

Miller's idea was great, but there was one big problem…how would we make the creature obey our orders? It wasn't sentient enough to understand our words, but maybe we can use the classic carrot and stick method. While it was certainly a big beast, my instincts were telling me that it wasn't a carnivore and as zoology taught us, the bigger the creature, the less likely is that it would eat you.

Looking at the exhausted creature, I thought why not? And thanks to one rule that Bellamy and I made for our teams that venture outside of our walls, we could use the rope to tie the pod of the creature and use it to bring the pod back to our base. Even though it's kind of cruel to use an animal like this, I'd rather use this beast as a pack mule than to kill it when the only real damage that it inflicted was some exhausting.

The rope wasn't exactly normal either, since the radiation had mutated some of the wildlife. At the same time, these mutations also made the vines stronger than ever, transforming the once normal vines into something that was as resistant as the chains used by our ancestors. Our only problem related to Miller's plan was the weight of the pod and since we don't know anything about this creature, I wasn't sure if we could even implement this plan.

Shaking off those dark thoughts from my head, I walked toward the creature as slowly and friendly as I could, hoping that I wouldn't scare it any more than we had already done. By the gaze, the creature gave me, I can say it went marvelously for someone that hadn't had a pet in his entire life.

Seeing that the creature didn't react when I put the rope on its back, I decided to push my luck by gently placing my hands on its belly before slowly pushing my hands up, as if I was guiding the creature to follow my movement. On my fifth try, the creature finally reacted and slowly it got back on its feet. For a second no one knew what would happen. Maybe the creature would charge us again or maybe it would just stay still, letting us tie the rope around its body.

What surprised me was the reaction of the creature. Rather than being confused, maybe even fearful of what we could do, this creature just looked at me, as if it was judging me, or at least that's why it seemed to me. When I managed to tie the rope successfully, I walked towards the pod, ready to tie the other end around the pod, but before I could even reach it, the creature directly charged the pod, impaling its horns into the pod. We were dumbfounded by what just happened and before we could aim at the beast, she just raised the pod and walked beside me, as if she was waiting for my orders.

"Well then, our new friend seems to handle the pod by herself. "

"She?"

"Yeah, it's a female apparently, but enough for that, we can't waste any more time here. Let's go home."

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