So I'm back once again, relishing in the fact that I'm practically writer's block-free for the time being. So, some of you really wanted me to tie up some of the loose ends I purposefully left at the end of Before I Leave This World. Well, I'm tugging on one of them, mainly the one about 'What happened to Audra?!' and here you'll find out what happened to her. :)

If you're a reader who doesn't have a clue about what's going on and what I'm talking about, please go back and read Before I Leave This World. It's a two-shot that introduces who Audra is and why I'm writing her...like this (spoilers, I don't want to tell you about the story yet!).

So I hope you enjoy Chapter one of On My Own. I'll try to not make it boring, lol.

1 - Out in the Cold - 1

The day started like any other day that had come before. It was nearing the end of autumn, and winter was fast on the approach. No snow had fallen yet, but it would be falling soon if the nippy air was anything to go by. Maru was physically prepared for winter, even though, mentally, he wasn't. He never really liked snow, because, at times, it felt like it would never stop falling from the sky.

Unfortunately, he hated to admit that it was also fun to rough-house in. When he had the chance, he would chuck snowballs at his teammates.

On one morning, halfway through November, he exited his hanger and went around to the back, his mind set on gathering some of the chopped wood stored there. It was uncomfortably cold outside, and all he wanted to do was light a fire in his stove so that his room in the repair-bay hanger (he called the entire structure 'his hanger') wasn't so freakin' cold.

He reached the backside of his hanger and spotted the pile of wood right where he left it. Good, the Smokejumpers decided not to mess with him this time, then. Though, when he thought about it, the temperature out here was cold enough to keep most sane people inside when they didn't have to be outside. But that thought made him muse, How sane are some of the Smokejumpers, anyway? Were they insane enough to brave the cold weather in order to bug him? He settled with rolling his eyes, and decided that he'd just have to keep an eye out for anything out of the ordinary.

He moved to gather some of the chopped wood up into his forks, when he paused as a foreign sound drifted into his range of hearing. He quieted his engine and listened carefully, the wood suddenly forgotten for now. Why had that sounded like someone groaning?

The sound came again, this time extremely faint. It sounded like it originated from his left. Slowly, he turned to look in that direction, and spotted nothing that the noise could have come from, from what he could see through the trees. But then the noise came again, and he decided to roll forward and investigate. The groaning sounded like it was originating from a little ways off the air base. Maru only stopped long enough to wonder about who could be out there at this temperature before he rolled away from the rear of his hanger and into the trees.

Under his large wheels, the dead pine needles and leaves crunched, having been made brittle from the frost that now came every morning. He swept his gaze back and forth as he slowly rolled along, being sure not to miss anything. The crunching of the frosty forest flooring set him on edge; and with every, rare, groan, he found himself getting closer to the source.

Several minutes later, he spotted something at the bottom of a hill, several feet away. Maru abruptly halted when it caught his eye. Narrowing his eyes at it, he held his breath for several moments, unsure of what he was looking at. It appeared to be like a pale, sandy-coloured log that was lying on the ground, covered in black, purple, and orange fabric. On one end, black grass-like, stringy stuff seemed to grow from it, and what looked to be a face was located just under that. It moaned faintly, telling him that it was the source of the out-of-place groaning. He slowly rolled over to it, eyes stretched wide as he did so, immensely curious about what he had just found.

Maru came to a stop by this strange…thing, and look down at it. The way its chest rose and fell and the sound of breathing left its mouth let him know that, in some way, it was alive. He poked it gently with the end of a fork to see if it would stir a little. And it did.

The creature's eyes snapped open; wide with pupils practically pin-pricks in a sea of hazel-green. A blood-curdling shriek left its mouth and it shot up, scrambling back and away from him without, strangely, the use of wheels. It braced itself up against a nearby tree and stared at him with a wild look in its eyes.

Maru stared back at it with a startled expression, quite surprised that something without wheels could move so fast. He could see intelligence in its eyes, but the emotions flitting in them were muddled and confused, as if it didn't understand what was going on. But overall, the chief emotion in those duel-coloured orbs was fear.

It made the tug feel like he was suddenly facing a wild and frightened animal. This creature looked like it was willing to attack him, even though it was smaller than him, if he got too close. He held up his forks in what he hoped was a placating gesture, and watched it closely to see what it may do. What was it thinking? Was it even thinking?

Its breathing picked up speed and it held out an appendage (one that he could only compare to as a pitty/tug-fork) in attempts to ward him away. Maru tried to figure out how to deal with it without making the situation worse. He wanted to say something to calm it, not wanting it to go off and hurt itself in its confused state and hoping to reason with it, but it beat him to the punch.

"St-stay away!" it cried in plain English. It waved its fork out in front of it and tried to move away, moving as if it was a car with flat tires moving over rough terrain, and stumbled backwards, away from him. The tug was stunned that the tree-like creature could speak, so all he found himself managing to do was stare at it as it, albeit slowly, got farther and farther away from him.

He stared at it and watched as it stumbled a few more feet away, never taking its eyes off of him in the process. In seconds, its stance became extremely unstable, and it began to wobble violently. Then, with one final stumble over a root sticking up out of the ground, its eyes rolled up into its head and it collapsed to the ground.

Maru didn't waste any time and rushed up to it as soon as it stopped moving. He peered down at it and saw that it had become substantially paler than it had been before it had abruptly come to life and panicked. It looked almost sickly.

For a second, the mechanic wasn't sure about what he was supposed to do. He had never seen something like this…thing…before. Would Blade allow him to bring it on base? The tug blinked and shook himself. He was the medic and mechanic of Piston Peak Air Attack, and if someone needed help, he would help them. And maybe if he managed to nurse it back to health, maybe he would be able to get some answers from it. Like: why was it out here when the sky looked fit to rip open and blast the region with a blizzard? What was it, and where did it come from?

Carefully, he gathered the creature up onto his forks, tilting them up so that he could bend one around it and secure it in his grasp. He then turned and gently carried it back to base, making sure that he didn't jostle it about as he did so. It didn't take him as long to return to the base as it did on his search for the creature in his forks, and soon he was inside his hanger and trying to find a comfortable place to lay the creature down on.

It didn't have wheels to sit on, so would a mat be an uncomfortable surface for it to lie down on? What did tree-like things like to lie on? Lying on the ground with nothing separating it from the concrete under it was out of the question—it was proven so when he found it out in the forest. Seeing it lying out on the forest floor unprotected struck him as odd.

Several minutes later, he had thought of a solution, and he set the creature down on several cloth sacks that had been stuffed with random rags and even spare tarps. Now all he had to do was sit back and wait for it to wake up again, and pray that it wouldn't be as disoriented as the last time when it did.

When she experienced her first cognitive thought, she realized she was staring at blackness. It felt like she was just waking up from one of the best sleeps she had ever had, even though her back felt a bit sore and her arms and legs felt like they had led weights strapped to them. She sucked in a deep breath of air, and that's when she noticed that something was wrong.

From what she remembered, she had never smelt the smell of gasoline inside her house, and definitely not while she was in her bedroom. She could also smell oil, and the only reason why she knew she was smelling exactly that was from the days where she would step into her father's workshop and smell the oil and gas wafting from the jerry-cans and open oil containers. Her father would always be tinkering with his car pet-project—an old Ford F-150 from the 90's—when she found him working out there, especially after her mother passed away.

She stopped herself there. She didn't want to sadden herself with thoughts of her deceased parents.

She cracked open her eyes, blinking several times to clear the sleep from them before she squinted against the light that was there to greet her. To her, it was too long before her eyes adjusted enough for her to open them fully. And the sight that met her confused her immensely.

The ceiling she was looking up at did not belong to her bedroom. The ceiling above her was metal and was sloped, supported by metal trusses and beams. Was she in her father's workshop? It would explain the gas and oil scent that permeated the place. But she didn't remember falling asleep in the 'shop. Why would she? That's where Nick was staying.

Wait! Nick! Her brother! She shot up into a sitting position, eyes stretched to their maximum width. What happened to them?! she demanded to herself. How did I get here?! Where are Nick and Damion?! And then it hit her, and her panicking came to an abrupt halt. Her heart slowly returned to its normal beating, and her throat relaxed. Something had happened to them, but she was sure they had made it back to Nick's dimension. But…where am I? She took careful note of her surroundings, and was alarmed when she saw where she was.

She appeared to be in someone's workshop—it wasn't her father's, that was for sure. She was sitting on a bed made of what looked to be burlap sacks stuffed with soft…stuff, and it made her wonder about who had decided to make her comfortable while she was out of it. She expected strangers to start leaping from the woodwork any second, and she wasn't sure she was ready to meet them yet. She blinked once and rested her face in her hands, thinking back and trying to remember what had happened right before she had woken up here.

She turned and placed her booted feet flat on the concrete floor. The workshop was huge, so huge that she didn't doubt that an aircraft could fit in it. It was much bigger than the workshop that had belonged to her father—Nick had to practically squeeze to fit inside it. To her left, there was a large metal shelving unit filled with machine parts of all kinds. Right across from the "bed" she had woken up on, there was a workbench, and next to that there was a wall filled with pictures. It felt like a workshop as much as it looked like a workshop.

The part of the wall that was covered in pictures plucked at her curiosity. She wanted to go see what the pictures were of, but the sudden presence of a stranger's voice startled her and caused her to look over in the direction of the speaker.

"Good, you're awake." A blue and silver—was it a forklift?—rolled quietly into the workshop. She was chilled when she saw that it was driving itself, and that its 'windshield' was, instead, its eyes, which sported green irises. Audra didn't know how to process this revelation.

"Since you seem so calm this time around," the forklift continued, "I have a few questions to ask. I need some information so I have something to tell the chief when he returns from 'patrol'. Other than: I found an odd half-wild, half sentient animal out in the forest."

Audra blinked once. A few seconds went by where they stared at each other before she abruptly blurted, "Who are you?!"

Short chapter is short, I know. But a story has to start somewhere, right? If you liked how it is so far, tell me how! I'll understand if you don't though. :3