Thanks [EN] - 001

The woods were completely silent. Stiles could hear his own breath, but that was all. There was no background noise, not even the wind seemed to rustle through the dry autumn leaves. Scott looked at Stiles with large, shocked eyes. “Why is it so silent?” he whispered, automatically adapting the volume of his voice to the lack of sound.
      “Don’t ask, dude,” Stiles hissed. “That’s like the biggest horror movie cliché ever.”
      “But-” Scott was cut off by a growl. Stiles spun around and was just in time to jump out of the way of the female werewolf aiming for his throat. Barely half a second later, another large animalistic form appeared from between the trees, tackling the first one to the ground. Derek. Before Stiles even had time to do more than blink in confusion at the sudden outburst of furious growls and snarls, Scott was occupied by fighting the second of the three alphas they’d been trying to avoid. Stiles was starting to get a bad feeling about where this was going.
      And of course, he was right. Paying better attention to the shadows, he spotted the third and last alpha. The tall, broad-shouldered man seemed to be approaching Derek from behind, while Derek was still busy not getting killed by the female alpha. Stiles sighed, sucked in a deep breath and started waving his arms. “Hey! Scumbag, over here! Yeah, that’s right, I mean you. What are you waiting for? Afraid of the big bad human?” The pair of blazing raid eyes had locked onto Stiles now and the wolf was slowly advancing on him. So far so great; step one of his plan had succeeded. The problem was that he hadn’t really worked out yet what step two was. “Shit,” he cursed.
      The wolfman just grinned, showing two rows of pearl white, scarily pointy teeth.
      “Shit,” Stiles repeated.
      He stumbled back two steps, but he knew trying to outrun a werewolf was a hopeless endeavor. He looked around and grabbed a handful of dry leaves from the ground, for lack of anything better to defend himself with. He had no freaking clue what he was going to do with them, but on the upside his attacker seemed to be just as confused as to his intentions as he was.
      He decided his best defense would be a good offense, even if it was ninety-nine percent fake. At least it would buy him some time. He started yelling again, sounding much braver than he was. “I’d think twice about mauling me, if I were you. Look what I have here!” He held up his hand with foliage. The alpha was not exactly trembling with fear, but he lifted one eyebrow, listening. “Yes, that’s right. Deaton taught me some more magic tricks. I suppose you know what mountain ash and wolfsbane can do to your kind? Well, fancy finding out what this does?”
      “You’re making this up.” The man’s voice was surprisingly human, considering his everything else looked rather wolf-like. However, that was not what worried Stiles about this first sentence the alpha had spoken.
      “Try me,” he responded, doing his very best to sound self sure and defiant, even though he was lying trough his teeth.
      “I think I will.” The werewolf was grinning again, coming closer to Stiles once more. Stiles gulped and frantically searched his brain for anything else to say, coming up with a grand total of a lot of panicked nothing. Just when Stiles was certain his life was about to meet a premature and overly gruesome end, someone jumped the alpha from behind.
      Stiles looked the other way and made sure to keep a relatively safe distance from the two mythical monsters attempting to rip each other’s throats out, until he heard someone yelp and beat a hasty retreat. Only then did he dare looking up again, to see Derek stalking towards him. A bit further away, Scott was still fighting the second alpha, but it was very obvious he had the upper hand, and apparently it was so sure he was winning Derek didn’t even think it was necessary to come to his rescue as well.
      Instead, Derek sent a disbelieving look in the direction of Stiles’s right hand, in which he now realized he was still holding some useless brown leaves. “What were you planning to do with those?” Derek asked, disapproval dripping from his voice.
      Stiles had no patience for Derek’s strange moods right at that moment. “Hey dude, don’t diss me. I just saved you life, a ‘thanks, Stiles’ would be awesome. I mean, thank you for saving mine, but I’d really appreciate some acknowledgement for my own efforts as well.”
      Derek just scowled at him. Stiles took that as a sign that he would most likely not be getting a fruit basket for his trouble.