PART 1: THE ROOT OF HER KINGDOM
They called her an heiress. A headline. A tragedy with a bank account.
At twelve, {{user}} lost her parents to greed, inherited more money than most people imagine—and walked away from everything.
No cameras. No courtrooms. No name on a building.
Instead, she built her world in the canopy of the Amazon.
Her home grew from the trunk of a ceiba tree—three stories of weathered wood and steel sinew shaped to flow with its spine. Not a mansion. Not a fortress. Something older. An instinctual refuge.
A single human door sat sealed into the base of the trunk. Locked unless she opened it herself. Next to it, a custom-engineered dog door, not for people or pets, but for species. Wolves. Hyenas. Snakes. Otters. Boar. Caiman. Animals without wings or climbing claws. Each permitted access by sound—the growl, call, scrape that her home knew as friend.
The second-story balcony curved wide and open to the canopy, unreachable from the ground. That was for the others: jaguars, monkeys, birds, bats, anteaters, lizards—bears too, whose claws had scratched those beams since they were cubs. The balcony was a memory space, not a lookout—where flyers glided in, climbers curled up, and generations settled like dusk.
Because she didn’t just heal.
She raised.
Cub by cub. Fledgling by fledgling. Baby after orphaned baby, plucked from traps, floods, fires, and death. She’d fed jaguars from syringes, rehydrated gorillas through bloodied nights, held bats beneath lanterns until their wings dried straight.
And they returned.
Night after night, they brought their young. And those young brought theirs. The ones who stayed claimed corners like dens; the ones who roamed came back with season and storm.
It wasn't her voice they listened for.
It was her existence.
And no predator, no prey, no claws or fangs ever crossed her threshold with harm in mind.
Because this wasn’t a house.
It was a legacy.
PART 2: THE KNOCK BEFORE THE WILD RETURNED
Rain whispered through the trees like a secret passed mouth to mouth. The jungle pulsed with heat. TF141 moved like hunted things—mud slicking their legs, breath ragged.
“Two squads behind. One on our left,” Ghost muttered.
“If we slow down again, they’ll box us into that ravine,” Gaz warned.
"Then don’t slow,” Price growled, scanning ahead.
That’s when Roach pointed.
“Lights.”
There, rising through the canopy—a ceiba crowned with amber glow. No wires. No walls. Just a balcony on the second story, open to the night, where a figure lay stretched across a couch beneath a quiet projector glow.
A woman.
Popcorn in her lap. A parrot on one shoulder. A monkey curled on the other. Two more monkeys perched along the beam. An action film flickered across the wall—explosions in slow motion, illuminating the wood.
“That’s a civvy,” Soap said, panting. “Has to be.”
“And unless Makarov’s men want to risk a tribunal,” Price added, “we just found our safe zone.”
They approached the trunk. No staircase. No exterior access to the balcony. Just a single human door nestled in the roots, sealed beside a large, clean dog door. Tech hummed faintly behind it. Light sensors glowed, waiting for the right call.
Price knocked.
Three times. Sharp and deliberate.
Above, the woman paused her movie mid-chase.
She didn’t startle. Didn’t sit up fast.
She moved slowly, blanket slipping off her legs as she disappeared indoors. The monkey murmured. The parrot shifted.
Seconds passed.
Then soft footfalls echoed from inside the trunk. The door unlocked with a heavy click.
She opened it calmly—barefoot, face unreadable, framed in the glow of lantern light.
“Military?” she asked simply.
“Yes, ma’am,” Price answered. “Being pursued actively."
She opens the door wider, "Kick your boots off down here, help yourself to whatever."
They step inside.
Kick off their boots.
Follow up the spiral staircase.
First thing they see:
Bolted furniture. Huge empty shelves. Scratch marks on every piece of furniture. Something between den and cathedral.