To Catch a Predator, Or Prey (Open)

Fetid summer air clung to his skin, making his clothes stick to bronzed muscles. His brown eyes peered down at the gluggy sickly green swamp down below, intent and alert. And as a ripple occurred, disturbing the waters at the base of the tree he was on the werewolf let out a tremendous roar that shook the very air and surrounding trees. The ripple stopped immediately. Darius pulled back, hunkering down on the top of the tree at the centre so he was sitting directly on the trunk and slipped off the white sleeveless shirt he was wearing. Sweat glistened from his upper body. As he twisted to stretch idly, the hard, powerful muscles in his lower abdomen flexed. He tied the shirt around his waist, kicking away a mosquito with his bare foot. The morning sun was incredibly hot and the humid air made things worse. And he was sure there was a family of crocodiles lurking just beneath the surface of the swamp below. He leaned forwards slightly, searching for any more signs of movement. Nothing. The roar had kept them back for now. It was all he needed. If he transformed there would barely be any room for him to stay on top without falling off and he planned to stay well into the night. He’d used the tops of the trees as springboards to get to the tree he was now, having set out from the morning and stayed here until now where it was early afternoon. The bayou was chartered territory for him. He had been in marshes, wetlands and thick swamps before but never a bayou. Not one like this.

He pulled out a dented, broken smart-phone from one of the pockets of his cargo pants. The screen was shattered. The batteries had been removed as well as the circuit board which left the phone a useless hunk of metal. Well, almost. He crushed the phone into pieces in his hand easily, metal pieces snapping into fragments and chunks. Weapons, if he needed them. Or distractions. He threw the pieces up and down idly in one hand where the pieces made a clinking noise as they hit each other. Technology was one of his favourite things. Figuring out how it worked and how all these individual parts fitted together. He enjoyed tinkering and pulling things apart just to see what was inside and how each part worked and functioned. Figuring out how something worked and what all those individual pieces did, what their role was in making the object work were two things that he had always had a penchant for. Part of it was his natural inquisitiveness that drove him to do these things. He had seen this type of smart-phone before though so there was nothing new he could learn from it and he had some pieces at the apartment. But for now, he was neck-deep in a swamp full of venomous creatures. It was dangerous territory with a lot of predators and tiny insects, some of them poisonous. But he wouldn’t have it any other way.

Rina stood quietly at the edge of the marshy bayou. The smell resonating from the murky water made her nose twitch with dislike. With a grunt she looked around. With a grimace, she realized that in order to get to the salvina that at the current moment clustered around an old looking cypress tree. Pausing she narrowed her eyes at the cypress. The bark was still good and had no hint of water damage from what she could see, it would make a good salve for stings or bites. She smiled a little as she waded into the disgusting water. To keep her mind off of the filth that was now covering her legs as she waded in she began going over all the healing agents in both the salvina and the cypress bark.
Reaching her destination she pulled a small jar from the little black backpack and scooped up the salvina being careful not to allow to much water into the jar. When she had filled two more jars in addition to the first she replaced them into the bag. She then drew the large hunting knife from her hip sheathe and set to work on the bark humming as she became lost in her work.

As he hunkered down, gazing at his surroundings with a keen eye he saw another intrepid wanderer heading into the swampy waters. It was a girl. A fellow werewolf? She appeared to be though he couldn’t tell from her appearance alone. He started to become absolutely still, holding the fragments in his hand for he was still wary of the crocodiles lurking beneath. He was sure she would be able to protect herself somehow. This place was not for the weak or foolish after all. But there were many crocodiles. He watched her, dark brown eyes following her movements with interest. Would she flee in terror if he transformed? She was a werewolf after all. He doubted it. It seemed as if she were trying to retrieve something from one of the trees. Darius started to scale down the tree trunk he was on, sliding down in a not so graceful but effective manner by holding the tree with his hands and leaning away with the rest of his body so that the bark wouldn’t scrape his skin. It also meant he could jump easier and took less time to jump. His form started to change when he drew closer to the surface of the bayou. He grew larger, taller. Triple in size. Bones lengthened and widened. His shoulders and torso broadened, arms becoming more muscular. Black fur replaced human skin. A long, tapered muzzle with bone-crunching teeth elongated out of the bottom of his face. A furry, black tail sprouted from the base of his spine. Within seconds, a huge, hulking pitch black werewolf with ferocious gold eyes replaced what had once been a human. His chest heaved and expelled as he snorted when a reptilian head half emerged from the water in front of him, complete with a long snout full of tiny, dangerous jigsaw teeth and beady, almost dirty yellow eyes. Darius could guess how large it was underneath the water.

But he held no fear. His muzzle wrinkled, air escaping his nose and with a whip-crack of bark breaking underneath his claws, he lunged into the water nearby the other werewolf. He could smell her now. The scent of a werewolf. He plunged into the water, spraying it everywhere. He held his breath, not wanting to suck in any of the water. Darius felt scales brush his fur and even the snapping of jaws somewhere near his shoulder. He blindly lashed out with a hand, wrapping it around the first hard, scaly object he felt and emerged, breaking through the surface of the water and heaved the object he had in his hand from the water. It was a crocodile. He had it by its snout. It thrashed wildly, tail lashing out and writhed. Darius glared down at it, green-white swamp water streaming down his head, shoulders and arms and torso back into the swamp and snarled before throwing it over his shoulder with a grunt. It landed somewhere far behind him with a splash. He turned back to the other werewolf, finding rocky ground beneath the swamp water to stand on and said, smiling at her to show her he meant no harm, “Hey there. I’m Darius.” He glanced at her back-pack, the jar and the hunting knife,“What’re you up to, if you don’t mind me asking?”