Scourge ran.

It was winter, the tropical island’s climate had taken a slightly chilling turn, night fell upon the campus like a pack of wild dogs on freshly slain carrion, and Scourge ran.

His bare feet thudded heavily in the undergrowth, long black claws digging into the fresh peat, rending vegetation with each step to give him much-needed traction, his chest rising and falling with exertion. Finally he was back into his natural groove, having stalked amongst the crowded hallways of that bloody heap for so long that he could barely remember being this free to run before. His tendrils snaked forward, securing a grip on a thick bough with their armored lengths as they pulled him up into the canopy with a lazy ease.

It was wonderful, after years of being held in that insufferable tank, slumbering as they changed him… as they destroyed him… weeks of clearing out the last vestiges of human life from his new home, to be able to test his strength once more, to try his endurance, it was intoxicating. He allowed instinct to take over, the thick tentacles emerging from his back working for him, pulling him in graceful, loping arcs through the trees, every few swings kicking himself away from a trunk to alter his course.

Still deep within the forest, far from the dim lights of the campus, he fell to the floor. Descending rapidly from the treetops, he hit his knees on the cold, hard ground with a thud, still panting from his-all out sprint, soft hitch to his breath as he held his hand over his chest. His heart… it beat a maddening cadence on the inside of his ribs, thudding madly in his chest, pumping with renewed strength, renewed vigor, not the guttering death-whimpers it had so weakly throbbed as he lied bleeding to death in that dark, wet alley.

He was free. He was alive.

A mad laugh tore itself from his throat, hysterical with mirth. This is what he had been seeking, ever since he had awoken this feeling had been missing but it was finally back, this feeling of purpose, of being a cohesive part of the world around him instead of that alien other, this was ecstasy.

The laugh finally began to die down, fading back into ragged panting as he rested on his knees, reaching down to the belt cinched tightly around his waist as he removed the precious cargo that had accompanied him down from the ship. Three vials, each with a tiny, sleeping worm within, their fragile little bodies held in a stasis much like his own. Three little Caddis larvae, the last vestige of a long-dead swarm.

This was why he had come to the island.

If the labs were home to his own birth, they might be persuaded to help him now. The larvae were alive, but sterilized so as to be no harm. The little cobras needed their venom back, so to speak.
But now… now that he was here…

Something else had been awakened within him. Something primal he hadn’t felt since his days of active duty… a yearning, somewhere deep within, near the very core of him… a need to hunt.

His head swiveled up at the sound of that cry, somewhere far in the distance. He stood, swinging with ease back into the treetops as he went to investigate, driven by that primal urge once more.

Air rushed past Scourge as he dropped like a stone, the ground coming up to meet him as the trees blurred on either side of his vision. All sound was muted, a combination of the thick steel mask covering his entire head and his complete and total immersion in the moment. He closed his eyes, narrowing his focus until he was a mere few feet from the ground, his tentacles snapping up and slamming their armored lengths into the jagged trunks of the trees before him. Stomach plummeting with speed and vertigo, he swung mere inches from the ground, allow the momentum to shoot him back up through the arms of the trees, breaching the canopy with a tumbling spin before locking his eyes on the campus in the distance, repeating the whole process once more as he ran out of momentum, slipping into another tumultuous fall to the ground.

This thought hadn’t occurred to him earlier, he had been so consumed with meting out vengeance. He had never even fathomed that this transformation could be… advantageous… could be… enthralling….

Could be fun.

As he drew nearer and nearer to the place he had determined as the origin of the cry his progress grew less loping, ceased to be composed of those theatrical dives and surges upwards, and breaking through the treetops in an arching display of dominance over the forces of gravity itself before dropping back down into a low swing. Now his movement was more focused, resting with his talons, both hands and feet, sunk deep into the yielding wood of the tree trunks, using them to kick off and anchor himself in another trunk in a series of short, rapid dashes.

He paused as he reached the outskirts of the forest, looking over across the campus spread before him. It was a buffet. He relished the sight, the stillness of the campus in the darkness, some areas flooded with light and others still holding creeping remnants of the shadow that surrounded this island of humanity within the boundaries of the raw nature of the forest. His breathing was ragged, watching as the small ventilation units near the line of the chin on his mask exhaled clouds of fog a millisecond out of time with his breathing, the hot, moist air condensing as soon as it left the warmth of his curved, emotionless helmet.

The scream again.

He looked up immediately, feeling his insides go to ice water. This was it; this was that rush that had been absent all those years. Blood thudding in his temples, he circled the outskirts of the campus, remaining a shadow darting through the trees, the only sign of his presence the glow of the eyelets on his facemask, glimmering in the shadows of the forest like the bioluminescence of hatchet fish in the abyss.

Finding a spot on the right side of a thick maple tree, he drove his massive left claw deep into the bark, using the impossible strength of his hybridized arm to hold himself effortlessly, crouched on the side of the tree. His eyes scanned over the scene and he found himself hammered by the sight. That lumbering crustacean pinning the girl to the ground, its claws dwarfing her lithe form as its mandibles dripped lust across her bare flesh. The sight stirred something primal within him, the merging of that need and his indoctrinated instincts causing him to scan the creature for weak points, feeling a vague need to make its prey his own. This searching, however, was disrupted by a soft, deliberate movement in the distance. He narrowed his gaze, running over the scene before him but seeing nothing that would cause such a movement.

A silent curse left his lips beneath the visor. Had his helmet’s computer not been damaged he could have made a much more thorough search of the proceedings. He resigned himself mentally to finding someone to fix it at some point later, he had a feeling he would need it. Removing the small three vials from his belt, he slid them gently into a hole bored into the side of the maple, mentally marking its position on the perimeter of the school before leaping to the top of the opposite bleachers, standing silhouetted against the dark night sky, searching intently for what had moved.

Scourge paused for a few moments; perched upon the railing of the bleachers opposite Shai’s hiding space, his eyes tracking over the parts of the campus within his view before he let out a resigned sigh, cursing beneath his breath. Whatever it was that had moved, it was likely gone now, probably just a coat one of the girl’s had left behind flapping in the cold breeze that whistled through the narrow passages of the campus buildings. He slid his helm up for the briefest of moments, taking a breath and allowing the cold air to fill his chest, braced by the chill.

He fixed his gaze upon the strange crustacean and its prey, taking stock of the situation. After a few moments of concentration, he noticed that during thrusts of its strange jointed pelvis it exposed a pink, raw stretch of connective tissue, and with another quick scan of the area reasoned that he could probably tear one of the fence-posts that surrounded the rubber-coated all-weather track out of its cement housing with relative ease and then run it through the back. However, he wasn’t entirely positive if the being was sentient or not, and whether it would be more likely to fight back or run away in pain. Either way, he considered taking the beast’s pretty little prey for his own. There was no honor in that, though, no challenge. She would probably be reduced to sobbing, weeping, and begging the thing to stop for the next few hours anyway.

That wasn’t what he was looking for, not just yet, at any rate. He vaulted down the stairs of the bleachers with a few easy steps, leaping across the track onto the field, and crossing in a quick sprint, leaving the scene of the screaming, squealing little victim and the crab-beast behind him.

His sprint carried him over the fence on the other side of the field, loudly storming up the stairs before taking up his perch on the railing behind the other bleacher, staring out across the campus in a crouch, the hiss of his rebreather barely audible to even him with the loud cries of the girl behind him.

Still…

He tightened his grip on the railing, kicking off from the back of the bleachers and clearing a wide jump to the opposite rooftop, not bothering to mask the sounds of his movements just yet, there was no use in doing so unless he spooked some quarry out of its hiding place.

Walking along the side of the building, he looked down into the alleyway, fingers scraping idly on the concrete of the waist-high ledge.

Scourge’s footfalls took him to the side of this building as well, making the relatively easy leap to the next one and landing with a good bit more grace than the last. He stalked slowly, hearing the beams of the roof beneath him creak loudly with each step, his bare chest rising and falling with each breath, waiting and watching.

Nothing…

He cursed again, not wanting to actually have to break into a building to find himself suitable prey tonight. Not only had he no idea as to the layout of the campus, where the best spots were to find students, or even where the dormitories were located, he felt that unless he chased a girl into a building, finding her in her room would be a little too constricting for him to get the proper joy out of the hunt.

With a sigh he dropped to his haunches on the edge of a building, feeling that urge dying in his chest. Perhaps tonight wasn’t the best night to be tracking. Perhaps he had just gotten caught up in the moment with that violent and intoxicating display of power that dumb crustacean had put on in the middle of the sports field. Perhaps-

Perhaps he had given up to soon.

His gaze turned to a rooftop two buildings in the distance and slightly to his left. There a bright figure pulled herself up with strain, a cascade of luminous hair reflecting the moonlight on the dim roof. His eyes glowed with interest, closing the gap between them with a leap to one of the buildings between them, landing in a crouch, his glowing eye slits locked on the girl’s shape.

A low, audible gasp vented from the slits carved into the sides of Scourge’s mask as she saw him, locking gazes for that brief, still moment. His blood went hot with lightning at the sight of the trepidation crossing her features, her body language turning at once from languid, despondent, but calm to that of a frightened bird, quick and skittish as she made for the ladder, slipping over the side of the building with haste. He savored that movement, watching as she cut through the moonlight, elegance forgotten in that desire to pull herself as quickly as she could over the ladder.

Muscular legs carried him across the rooftop as his hear thudded against his ribcage, beating a violent tattoo in his chest, feet pumping to the cadence. This was the feeling he had missed from his days in active duty and so very much more. There was no waiting here. No fastidious, time-consuming, grid-based tracking on electronic sensors to bore him into a stupor and clogging the back of his mind. Here he was free, free from outside influence, allowed to stalk and hunt on his own. The thought, it was… intoxicating.

Bare scaled feet pounded the rooftop, picking up his pace before leaping and clearing the gap with ease. He slowed, momentum carrying him in a skid up against the edge of the building, next to the ladder Shai had only a few moments earlier used to descend. He peered down into the alley, not seeing any sign of her directly below.

With another agile leap he dropped to the ground below, hair snapping quickly about his face as he looked left and right, eyes eager for any trace of the escaping girl. He caught a faint trace, her hair trailing behind her and snapping around a corner, turning on his heel and taking off in a sprint after her.

Scourge followed her to the end of the corner, turning on his heel and sliding into a crouch, blood thudding in his head and his breath misting in front of him, feeling every inch the predator and entranced by it. Pausing for a moment, feeling his muscles tense in preparation, he watched her run, admiring those long legs pumping as they carried her through the twisting alleys.

After tensing for those few moments, he sprung. Moving from a quick leap into a sprint, he rounded the corner she had passed a few moments before. With a rake of his claw, he pulled himself up the sheer wall, scaling it in an animalistic dash, following her with his eyes locked down on her form far below. His claws dug into the brick as he climbed, muscles working beneath his scaled flesh as he glared down upon her, tentacles arched up behind him threateningly but doing little to propel him as he gave chase.

When she broke out into a full-on sprint towards the dorms he sprung. Kicking off the wall to give himself momentum, he soared easily through the air, hitting the solid concrete with a crunch. He landed on his shoulder heavily, tucking into a roll to carry himself forward without injury. Finally rolling onto his feet with nary a stumble, he turned to face her, scaled chest heaving, tentacles pulled into a threatening array behind him, both hands clenched tightly at his sides, and his bright, neon green eyes burning madly in the darkness.