ArchivedLogs:Vignette - Concrete Jungle

Vignette - Concrete Jungle
Dramatis Personae Killian	2015-09-02 "It was imperfect, but so was he."
Location <NYC> Bronx
Paws widen and thicken. Bones enlarge and rearrange with grinding crepitation all over its body, the orthopedic crunching more felt by its endurer than audible to any nearby. Claws thin and retract as ligaments form where none had been. Black and white fur ripples, shines with flecks of gold muted by the shadows of the night. The hue deepens to a sandstone orange, melting towards the dog’s body as it shortens from a soft, lengthy coat to a fine, smooth one. The orange becomes dominant, black remaining only as numerous rosettes. Muzzle shortens as canid teeth become better classified as fangs. Brown eyes soon gleam in olive-touched yellow, miotic pupils intent, unmoving from the soiled coat-swathed sleeping man. His rancid, unwashed scent burns the jaguar’s nares. What doesn’t burn is the smell of living flesh and the dried blood that clings to the human’s scathed knee. Shifter’s mind road a very grey line. Once, his human intelligence and control was much more prominent. But Prometheus had warped him. It was unsurprising after being subjected to every test they could fathom on one such as him while staying just shy of death, and deem it an appreciation of the pursuit of scientific knowledge. Not only could they test his power’s limits, but they could trial any sort of treatment done or theorized to animals in the veterinary realm and beyond, and have those sensations, those consequences put into words and true anthropomorphic descriptions. The results could be groundbreaking, revolutionary. And they made certain to remind him of that. The possibilities were endless and it certainly felt as though there would be no end to what they could do to him. However, where many had acted out in violence as a result of such lengths the scientists pursued, he was quick to befriend a more passive aggressive stance. He intended to survive. It meant playing along. But to assume that meant he was easy would cost them. To handle him without the proper equipment was unquestionably the same as petting a snake and assuming it wouldn’t bite. He took advantage of carelessness. But the consequence of surviving no matter the cost meant nearly four years of being held captive under such circumstances. He withdrew. He paced the anxiety, bitterness-driven pace of a caged animal. Hatred was born and nurtured, raised with sickening care until it oozed at every corner for revenge. Of the Prometheus project. Of humans. Eventually, he found the animal mind far more resilient to the torture, and useful as an amateur’s barrier to psionic invasion- something a little deeper, a little more confounding to dig through. It was imperfect, but so was he. It became easier to be a beast than to be a man. The jaguar toys with the feeling of the floor of the concrete jungle beneath its pads. A step forwards grants no sound, no warning of the predator’s approach. Another follows. The steamy mist of an air vent curls around its languid, ghosting form, making the unseen view all the more nightmarish. Shifter didn’t recede into the instincts when he killed; he reveled in it. He could fill in the gaps where an animal would be frightened or distracted into confusion. An assassin that could be anything, would be anything, to make the perfect kill. The man sleeps under his layers of stolen garments, ignorant of his surroundings, but not stupid. Few are fool enough to consider themselves safe in this city. Or anywhere. The homeless slept lightly, as they had to. The deed needed to be done with precision and speed for the sake of silence. For a target such as this, out in the open and asleep, Shifter would have made a venomous choice. A dart frog or black mamba, perhaps. But the one who put a price on this man’s head, the one who purchased his death, wanted him gone, vanished. Erased. It meant no puncture wounds, no traceable poisons on a body left to be found on the streets. It meant a meal. Muscles coil. Every inch of the giant cat’s body tenses for the spring. The leap is nothing less than lightning fast, a blur of speed and practiced perfection, the landing in impeccable balance as the jaguar’s teeth penetrate a jugular vein and the trachea in unison as its body simultaneously lands atop the man to crush the breath from him. The laundering dealer attempts to cry out, but has no air to do so and the immediate reflex to gasp for breath grants only the gurgle of sanguine drowning. Even in his last seconds of strength, as fingers vie for purchase on the jaguar’s face, there’s nothing to save him as the beast jerks him up from the ground by his neck. The angle drains his blood into his lungs as Shifter, within the natural prowess of the form he’d taken, drags the dying body back into the lightless alleyway, leaving only the pile of coats behind. Just as powerful forelimbs catch hold of the lower rung of the fire-escape ladder to scale the jaguar and its kill up to the landing not all unlike it would have with an antelope up a tree, terror-widened eyes of the human dilate, glaze over and fix as death finds him mere moments after the attack. The cat pulls the weight of its trophy through the opened window of the second floor room, readied with the lip of the sill and the floors covered in trash bags. Shifter enjoyed the kill and every precisely crafted moment before it; he lets the animal enjoy the feast to follow, resolving to be second in a competition that’s becoming harder and harder to define. And he’s alright with that.