Waiting for a Star to Fall [Casmir | Sara] [CLOSED]

[luscen]

Casmir didn't even wait for the rat to finish bellowing his order; he was immediately pulling out a flashbang and throwing it on the ground just as the Beshilu yelled at the golem to crush the Hunter. Predictably, the rodent squawked and threw his hand up to ward off the sudden, painful flare of light, and the Hunter took advantage of the creature's disorientation to snatch the phone out of its hand. 'I'll need that to keep the spirit weakened while I banish it,' he thought, ducking under the golem's heavy swing, using his boxer's agility to bob around the construct's side before it could pivot around to snatch him. He'd need to figure out how best to disable the stone construct, eventually; even if he had wanted to blow the thing apart, which he wasn't necessarily wont, he didn't have enough grenades on hand to break through the thicker stone that was no doubt protecting its core, and the longer he spent fooling around, the more time the Skinwalker had alone with Sara.

That was not a concept he was willing to prolong more than necessary.

The Hunter darted off in the direction of the shadows, holding the phone aloft for light and keeping only his right eye open. He could hear the rat screeching bloody murder somewhere behind him, but he needed to deal with that troublesome spirit first, while it was still weakened from the light; otherwise he'd be back at square one, but with a golem and a plague rat trying to kill him, all while he could see neither. All in all, not a very ideal scenario to be in, the blonde thought.

The golem's heavy footsteps lumbering after him reached Casmir's ears. He couldn't evade it's attacks with only one eye open, but unfortunately, a gust cantrip wouldn't do the trick here. Instead, he pulled out a spell scroll and began reading it under his breath, before turning and flinging it at the sentry, while still keeping his stride. The stone giant reached forward, looking to grab the Hunter by the hem of his coat, but chains of light sprung out from the parchment, wrapping themselves around the golem and halting its forward movement. It wouldn't detain him for long, not with his strength and the Beshilu on hand to help break him out. But it would buy Casmir a few more precious moments to deal with the fear spirit.

He furtively searched the corners of the warehouse, before his eye caught sight of the quivering form of the pale shade- it was small, and decrepit, with a large head and a whip-like tail, its smokey black outline flickering like a candle in the wind. Casmir drew a small stone from his pocket, flinging it at the creature, who had turned towards him too-late to flee. The stone, inscribed with the Norse rune of banishment, erupted with a bright light and a crack like thunder; much like a tongue of fire being snuffed out, the spirit vanished, fleeing the mortal plane with a wail.

'One problem down, two more to go,' Casmir thought, tossing the phone away and turning to face the Golem and Beshilu.

[tsukikoko]

If Casmir thought he would have a moment or two, he was about to be sorely mistaken.

The Beshilu, ignoring the trapped golem despite it's groaning cries, skittered silently after the Hunter once it had recovered from the flashbang and ascertained such a device was not capable of harming it. When you were a creature rooted in fear, cautious and underhand reactions were a necessity. Now, with the blonde's attention diverted, without the backup of swarm mates and with John's warning nipping at his heels, the rodent sought to strike while the man's back was turned. It would gnaw him down... yes, yes. Hollow out his insides, feast, grow in power, nest inside his skin, nibble and chew his bones to dust.

Only the stone and ensuing flash of light, stopped the plague spirit from descending upon Casmir long enough for him to turn, as the creature hesitated in the wake of another spirit's banishment. But it was only for a moment, in order to strike before this human could pull out another stone. While he might have a few tricks up his sleeve, this man didn't hold the stink of the wolves. He was human. Only human. The Beshilu felt confident enough to devour him.

With a hiss of fury the creature leapt upon Casmir, each of its four, twisted hand-feet landing upon his chest. The long, muscular band of its tail attempted to wrap around the man's neck, so it could squeeze the life from him. It tried to bite at him, knowing full well the toxicity of its own bite would fell a mere human with ease. But, to the rodent's annoyance, all it got was a mouthful of durable clothing for its trouble. One mangy ear flicked towards a groan from the golem, as it finally managed to free itself, yet could not advance for fear of harming the rodent it protected, but the Beshilu did not care. The lonely craving for swarm mates and the potential this human body would provide, to any shards of its own kind nearby, was too much to ignore. All it needed was a bite. Then- then it would dart away, let the golem grab hold of this frustrating mound of flesh and hold it down until it stopped squirming. Stopped breathing.

Another shriek of indignant fury, a flash of pointed buckteeth in front of the Hunter's face, as the rat tried for a second bite.

Within the closed side room, Sara found herself smiling, leaning her cheek into the fingers running down her face. Bestial, attentive eyes watched her every movement, her every breath, drawing her deeper into their beautiful depths until she could hardly think.
"You really are a beauty, sugar." A wider smile, the slightest flush across her cheeks. He still had her pinned beneath him, but the shifter found she quite liked the warm weight of his body so close to her. "You wouldn't mind gifting me something, would you?"
Now it was the skinwalker's turn to smile, as his fingers, claws slowly extending from the tips, ghosted over Sara's collarbones, and all she could do was giggle. With the rat gone and this soft, supple woman so tantalisingly close, the temptation to take... just a little bit, was fast becoming too hard to ignore.

[luscen]

The Hunter felt the wind being knocked out of him as a smaller body hit him with the full force of a four-footed leap. The Beshilu had assaulted him, ignoring the constricted golem. 'Should have expected as much!' Casmir growled as he brought his forearm up to keep the rat from choking him. His other arm managed to fend off the rodent's vicious teeth, the incisors clicking and clacking rabidly in an attempt to rend his flesh.

'If that thing bites me, it's going to cause trouble...' Beshilu weren't were-rats so much as manifested plague spirits. Like werewolves and vampires, they could breed via bite and create more of their kind, but unlike the other species, it wasn't so much that they were turning another human into one of them. Rather, it was more akin to the way a siderwasp would capture its prey alive, so that its young had something to feed on. The Beshilu didn't have to kill him, it simply had to bite him, infect him with its toxin. After that the golem could do the rest of the work.

Speaking of, Casmir heard the construct finally shatter the bindings he had placed on it. Fortunately, it was wary of advancing so long as its master was in the way, but the Hunter's limbs would tire before long if this kept up. Moving around wasn't an option, especially after what happened with Flashbulb McGee and his trusty sidekick Magpie the Flaming Pickpocket; the moment he put himself between the rodent and his little stone soldier, he was as good as dead. As such, he needed a way to divert the rat's attention long enough for him to deal with the golem and rescue Sara.

Sara. If the rat was here, that meant she was alone with the Skinwalker. And that was an exceptionally dangerous prospect. The coyote was a creature of habit, and being left alone with such tantalizing prey was like putting a kid next to a display of candy and telling them “don't touch.” It wasn't going to be a thing that happened. The more seconds that ticked by while he was messing around, the worse it would be.

Casmir's eyes darted from the rat to the open door, just past the construct. Beshilu were craven and self-absorbed by nature... Maybe there was a way he could protect Sara from the Skinwalker, all the while getting the rat off his back for a moment. It was worth a try, at least.

“Are you sure... you have time for this?” Casmir grunted as he struggled to keep the Beshilu from biting him. The putrid smell of the rat's breath made his eyes water, but he mustered through, regardless. “You know... what Skinwalkers are like... Right? What happens to you if John finds out you left the two of them unsupervised?”

[tsukikoko]

The mention of John had a remarkable and very immediate effect on the Beshilu. It's eyes widened, a vicious, possibly terrified hiss escaped it's jaws and it planted both rear feet against the Hunter's chest in order to spring away from him. The golem moved forward, but a snap of the rat's tail, like a whipcrack through the air, halted the construct's movements instantly. Clearly, a conditioned response. The creature narrowed it's beady little eyes at Casmir, trying to figure out who he might be, to know that name.
"How do you know-?"
A sentence never finished, as the Beshilu shook it's head, discarding the half-formed idea it had been forming. Not a chance this scarred human was a plant for the Kumiho to check up on their progress. Much as it hated to admit though, even internally, the blonde was right. It had been a mistake to leave that impulsive canine alone with the woman they needed to keep pristine. If that idiot damaged her...

Best not to finish that thought.

Another, slightly different snap of the rat's tail, a quick gesture in Casmir's direction and the Beshilu bolted back towards the open door. Not a moment later, the golem, which had been stood still as a statue, shook itself loose and made a sound not dissimilar to shearing, shrieking metal. It lowered one shoulder, forming a slab of stone in front of itself with one arm, before charging in the Hunter's direction. A massive, rock battering ram.

Within the room, Sara felt hands lifting her hair and the featherlight trace of clawed fingers across the back of her neck. Something... sharp rang in the back of her skull, like the shrill call of an alarm, or the frantic call of a terrified bird. But it was muffled, faraway, as though at the end of a very long tunnel. It was only nerves, her manipulated brain assured her, nothing more than anxious nerves from being with a man who made her heart beat so rapidly. His gaze looked as though it might devour her, such was the hunger alight behind those beautiful, bestial eyes. It was a look that sent an excited shiver straight up her back. He smiled again, she felt his fingers begin to increase the pressure upon her neck.

With a horrible caterwaul, another body, mangy and threadbare, collided with the skinwalker. She heard a curse as he was sent sprawling, breaking their eye contact.

An explosion like shattering glass took place inside the shifter's head. Instincts screaming of danger flooded her system, colliding like stars with the remaining shards of the skinwalker's control to form a hectic maelstrom, focused directly on the Beshilu that had lain its grubby little paws upon the object of her obsessive, compulsive affection. Before either creature could settle their dispute, remember what they were here for and round back on Sara, her body had already reformed.

Though the tail remained ever green and scaled, now a lithe, powerful jaguar was thrashing its way off the sofa and onto its feet. With a snarling bellow and a flash of fangs, the massive cat descended upon the equally large rat creature, who was too slow to get out of the way and ended up pinned beneath her. Slim, twisted fingers took hold of her jaws, trying to keep them open and away from the rodent's squeaking face. Something long and lean curled around one hind leg as she tried to cuff the creature with a heavy paw.

Then there was something on her back, arms looping beneath her forelimbs and dragging her backwards with ludicrous strength. She was lifted off the rat, risked being hauled off the floor entirely. The shifter began to twist inside her own spotted skin, trying to get her claws or fangs around on this new, unseen attacker.
"Don't damage her, don't DAMAGE HER!" She heard something screech, even through her own furious snarling and writhing as she and the other assailant (unbeknownst to her, the skinwalker) were sent rolling across the floor by her efforts.

[luscen]

Casmir's bluff had worked, it seemed; the rat leaped away from him in terror, and the Hunter wasted no time in sucking a lungful of fresh air in gratitude, though he was mindful of the massive stone sentry that now had clear access to him. He braced himself for an attack as it took a step forward, but the rat ordered it to a halt with a single crack of its whip-like tail. Casmir's eyes narrowed as he took in the new information.

'Useful trick...' he thought to himself, again thankful for the brief pause in combat. Even a few seconds could make a significant difference. The respite, however, was short-lived, as another tail-snap brought the golem back to the fore, charging towards the Hunter like a bulldozer. Unable to roll away in time, he instead whipped out a gust scroll, using it to propel himself to the side and away from the construct's destructive charge, though not without suffering a minor friction burn to his shoulder.

'I need a way to disable him...' Casmir's mind raced as he quickly got up and retreated to the now-secure shadows of the warehouse, ignoring the burning pain in his limb. The golem's eyesight wasn't much better than his own, he now knew, so it wouldn't be able to easily spot him as long as he kept out of direct sight. Hopefully its orders would prevent it from trying to recklessly smash apart the support pillars in the meantime, but even if that were the case, its sand could likely sniff the Hunter out from his hiding spot. If he only had a whip he could swing, that might be enough to fool it into assuming a dormant state, but unfortunately he didn't think to bring one with him. His coat was only so big, after all...

Casmir ducked around another pillar, evading the golem's lumbering form as it began to search the warehouse for him in earnest. If a whip was out of the question, what were his options? He could try breaking it down to expose its core; a lengthy war of attrition he didn't have time for, right now – never mind that he didn't have enough grenades on hand to do so, anyway – so, that was out. The next option was to disable the magical circuits that allowed it to move. Possible, but without knowing more about its construction, it would again be too lengthy of a process, and one that would involve him having to duck in and out to apply some sealing runes, evading the golem's swings all the while. So he'd have to scratch that, too.

The Hunter withdrew to the corners of the warehouse as the golem edged its way around his current hiding spot, its stone head grinding along with the hiss of sand spreading along the floor as it hunted him. He was being driven further away from the door where Sara was in order to avoid being caught by the tenacious construct, a fact that frustrated him, but the reality was he couldn't beat this thing in a head-on fight. Instead, he considered further on how best to disable it; the final option was a deactivation command. All golems had one, alongside their activation one. The upside was that both commands were usually universal regardless of the golem- “life” to turn it on, “death” to turn it off. The downside, however, was that these commands were often in the master of the golem's native tongue, and Casmir couldn't be sure if the construct was of the Beshilu's design, or simply a relic it had appropriated from somewhere else.

He didn't have time to cycle through a list of possible words, however. Every second he wasted here would put Sara in more jeopardy. So, he took the rat's display of dominance to mean that it had – if nothing else – broken the golem's original bindings and fastened its own in their place. Unfortunately, the Beshilu's language wasn't something he could speak, as it sounded like nails on a chalkboard, and was impossible for human vocal cords to recreate.

That didn't mean he couldn't write it, however. He'd dealt with the the rats before, as like any good plague spirits, they were often trying to find ways to cross the threshold between the spirit world and the human one, and sometimes used writing in their methods of maintaining contact between groups. Deciphering their language had been a pain, but he'd managed well enough, and believed he knew the proper word for “death” in their tongue. Now it was time to see if his linguistic prowess paid off.

Ducking down lower to avoid avoid another searching sweep, he wrote the word on a spare slip of paper – something he tended to keep on hand in case he needed an unexpected rune or scroll spell – being careful not to scrawl too loudly and expose himself to the construct. That done, he crept out of the shadows, behind the golem; he needed to get this into its mouth, otherwise it was nothing more than a scrap of parchment with a nonsensical word written on it. He could try to get its attention, see if it would grab him, but more than likely it would simply try to flatten him.

Better to go for the direct approach, then.

The Hunter kept his eyes on the ground, watching for any stray bits of sand that might alert the golem to his presence like before. Just as he was about to make his move, however, there was a sudden commotion from the room the Beshilu had fled to, followed by its frantic, screaming voice ordering someone “Don't damage her!” The golem's head turned towards the sound of its master's voice, giving off a bemused moan from its stony face. Casmir capitalized on its distracted state, taking a running leap towards its shoulders, and wrapped one arm around it's head, shoving the slip of paper into its open mouth before it could grasp him and tear him limb from limb.

[tsukikoko]

Casmir's bold move proved to both serve in his favour and be a one-way trip to a bruised back. For though he reached for the creature's mouth, it was alarmingly quick to raise giant, discordant hands of metal and stone, to grasp for the Hunter. Fingers gripped the back of his coat with incredible strength, threatening the structural integrity of the material even just by grasping it, before snapping forward as though by sheer reflex. The golem didn't even make more than a half-formed sound, the paper disappearing as it's mouth came together. But not before it sent Casmir slamming towards the floor.

Luckily for the scarred man, even if he found himself winded or in pain, he had nothing else to fear from the construct. For in the next moment, it was completely still, the Hunter's parchment having done its job in returning the golem to a statuesque state of 'death'. There it would remain, immobile, until either the elements dissolved it, or another person with the correct knowledge was able to awaken it once again.

It was at around that same moment a loud thump sounded from the side office door, swiftly followed by a frantic scrabbling against wood. The door rattled and groaned, complaining from a sudden heavy force upon the other side. A second thump followed, further scrabbling and the muffled sounds of an altercation - shouting, bodies struggling and an animal shrieking.

For on the other side, with the skinwalker having failed to pull Sara back under his control, the shifter had begun to fight in earnest.

She had made a valiant attempt to escape, only to be dragged back by her captors as they made efforts to restrain her without damage; their desperation not to hurt her had given Sara the few precious seconds needed to get to the door, but it hadn't been enough in the end. Now she bit, clawed and wrestled with her attackers, snarling with terrified fury. The skinwalker was immensely strong for his size, but her feline body was flexible and dangerous, allowing her to slice open his skin along his arms and face. Damage that, unfortunately, only seemed to make him more excited. She saw the swelling of his pupils, heard the near-crazed laughter as slammed her paws to the floor and put his feet on her hind legs to pin her down. The rat continued to screech about not leaving marks on her, that she needed to be kept still. She could hear him moving around to her back and frantically struggled to turn herself over. Small, creepy hands parted the fur on her haunch and with a strangled cry the shifter twisted her tail in a desperate attempt to rotate her body. It was enough to jostle the rat, sending something that sounded suspiciously like glass clattering across the floor.

[luscen]

Casmir cursed mentally as the golem's hands grasped his coat; the construct's shoulders were exceptionally wide, and he had thought it would have a bit of difficulty getting to him if he stuck close to its small head. Apparently, that wasn't the case, and the stone sentry didn't bother wasting time dislodging the Hunter from his perch. There was a brief rush of air, followed by a thundering impact as the golem slammed Casmir into the ground hard enough to rattle the foundations of the warehouse. Even with his body armor, the scarred man would have likely had his spine severely injured had it not been for the extra layer of protective charms he wore.

Yet even with the extra layers of defense, Casmir felt his back muscles knot in tension, the ache born of buffering such a blow burning with an intense pain. He let out a strangled groan, then looked up as the golem's form went still. It seemed as though his trick worked, which just left the problem of the rat and the coyote.

The Hunter shrugged off his protesting back, standing up and drawing his revolver. The sounds of a struggle drew his attention to the door- it seemed as though his idea to have the Beshilu keep the Skinwalker in check had the added bonus of waking up the redhead. He wondered idly what she had transformed into, as he doubted a ferret would be capable of such commotion.

Nevertheless, he needed to settle things, quickly. Skinwalkers were exceptionally dangerous, even with the proper precautions. And even though he wasn't too concerned for himself, the addition of the Beshilu, on top of keeping Sara out of harm's way, piled on a number of complications. He'd had to resolve this as quickly as possible.

The Hunter silently approached the door. A flashbang was the obvious opener, but it would disable Sara as well, which could make things more difficult for him. And without knowing the situation, he couldn't simple fire off rounds recklessly- at best, he'd only graze his targets, and at worst, he'd hurt her. And yet, the longer he deliberated, the more danger she would be in. He needed to make a decision now, or else he'd only make things more difficult.

Casmir took a calming breath and closed his eyes, focusing his senses. Noises, smells, the feeling of other presences in the room just on the other side of the door... There was the scrabbling of claws against stone, furious, panicked roaring coming from a feline mouth... sharp breaths, with a hint of a laugh in them... the Skinwalker was on top of Sara, holding her down and keeping her from moving, just on the other side of the door. The Beshilu wasn't yelling, which meant he was doing something to try and pacify their captive. A sudden yelp, followed by the sound of the rat cursing.

'Now!' Casmir decided, getting up and flinging the door open. He tossed in a smoke grenade, rather than a flashbang, the room filling with a dense black shroud. Rather than shoot the Skinwalker and risk hitting Sara with a stray bullet, he stepped in and brought his silver-lined boot crashing against the other man's face, hard enough to dislodge him from the shapeshifter's back. Pressing his advantage, he grabbed the coyote by the hair. Divide and conquer was often the best strategy in this situation, after all.

“Keep an eye on the rat,” he stated, throwing the coyote outside into the warehouse proper. “This won't take long.”

[tsukikoko]

The addition of sudden smoke and the slam of a door only heightened Sara's panic further; the sounds and confusing, near burning scents, coupled with the smoke obscuring of her vision, had the jaguar flailing wildly and scrabbling to get away as soon as the skinwalker's weight was thrown from her. Casmir's voice, a deep thrum that cut through the chaos, did not settle her; she felt a fresh beat of terror pulse through her core, recognising his tones and recalling how he had threatened her at gunpoint not all that long ago.

Why was he here now? He might have kicked the skinwalker off her, but that did not mean he was to be trusted and could be just as much a threat as either super she'd been fighting with.

Each breath irritated her throat, had the big cat hacking an animal cough as she tried to find a way out. She didn't know where the rat was, had no idea the creature was chasing after the syringe Sara had knocked away, with it's tattered shirt dragged up over it's nose. Despite Casmir's intrusion, it knew that to let the shifter escape would be suicide. But even though it was a spiritual creature, the Beshilu inhabited a body of flesh and bone, it too was affected by the smoke filling the room and only managed to find it's way through the room by virtue of it's uncanny memory. Spindly, rodent fingers felt beneath the rotten, shattered remains of office equipment, before curling around the cold, clinical shaft of the syringe.

Out in the main body of the warehouse, Casmir had barely time to state his instruction to Sara before the thrown skinwalker was rolling with his momentum, launching himself to his feet from all fours and barrelling towards the scarred Hunter with a strange, lanky gait that fell somewhere between human and animal, without seeming to know which it should be. He made a grab for Casmir's coat snatching the material and balling it into both fists, with the aim of dragging him forward. Despite being a fairly large man, the Hunter's weight didn't seem to bother his opponent at all and it became quite apparent the skinwalker could lift him from the floor if he so chose. For the moment, however, he was more interested in spinning the two of them into the centre of the warehouse as though dancing to his own, crazed tune. Though a boot-shaped patch of irritated skin, like a sudden allergic reaction, was now carved into the creature's face, he still wore a wide, rictus grin on his face.
"OOhh what a pleasant surprise! Didn't think I'd be seeing you around again. Come to finish the little lady off after she got away from you, have you, Hunter?"
The super practically spat his final word, fangs flashing and pupils narrowing to dangerous slits, the first real show of anger he'd presented. His head began to contort further; elongating and cracking as his fangs crowded forward, ears sharpening to points and neck bulging with shifting muscle. When he spoke again, his voice was oddly distorted.
"Truth be told, I was hoping to get my fangs into you."
The skinwalker lurched forward, mouth opening far, far too wide, as he moved to latch his teeth into Casmir's neck.

At exactly the same moment, trailing smoke in their wake, Sara and the Beshilu came crashing out of the office room in a tangle of fur and limbs, tumbling across the floor. The spirit-rat had attempted to run out of the door and cut the shifter off, thinking she would inevitably try to make her escape once the smoke had cleared. With syringe now held securely in it's tail, the plan was to grab her with both hands and inject as quick as it could. What the creature hadn't anticipated was her making a mad-dash through the room in a desperate attempt to escape the choking smoke and her own situation.

The two had collided in the doorway, the larger, heavier shapeshifter knocking the rat off it's feet and then tripping over the fetid creature. It had rounded on her, remembering only at the last second not to harm her, buck teeth clacking together over empty air instead of her flesh. As they rolled together across the warehouse floor, Sara's instincts led her to grip the rat with her front paws and kick out with her rear, claws extended, to protect her vulnerable underbelly. It shrieked in fury and pain as she cut deep. Her ears lay flat against her head in response, reflective eyes wide, shining discs of stress. The stench of putrid blood and rotting flesh assaulted her senses, lit basal sections of her brain that warned her away from whatever inedible substance was. Yet, rather than letting go, the screaming rat grabbed handfuls of her fur and held on, trying to navigate her paws and find an opening to stab her with the needle.

[luscen]

“Get used to disappointment,” came the terse reply, as Casmir widened his stance and raised his arms. He didn't seem surprised at the sight of the Skin-walker's horrifying transformation; rather, his eyes were sharp, searching. As the monster moved forward to sink his teeth into the Hunter, Casmir ducked down and stepped in, his fist surging upwards and crashing into the coyote's stomach with a thundering blow. With those thickened neck muscles, the Skin-walker would have been able to shrug off a punch to the head, even from someone as hardy as the red-eyed Hunter. So instead, the human had opted to attack a more vulnerable spot, and disrupt the shape-changer's momentum.

Had his opponent likewise been a human, the Hunter would have pressed the advantage. However, even with silver-backed knuckles embedded in reinforced armor-backed gloves, Casmir was still just a mortal, and what would be a crippling blow for him would likely serve as little more than a nuisance to someone like the coyote. In short, weapons would serve him better than his fists.

As such, after delivering his punch, the Hunter followed with a sharp uppercut that shifted into a back-step. He drew his revolver with the opposite hand in the same motion, bringing it up center-mass and firing off a round. Skin-walkers were exceptionally tough to kill, but that didn't mean they were exceptionally tough to hurt.

And Casmir would see to it that this one hurt a lot.

[tsukikoko]

Both punches landed solidly, filling the air around Hunter and coyote with an acrid stench not dissimilar to burning hair as the silver reacted negatively with the creature's skin. The crack of a firing gun was near deafening in the enclosed space, completely muffling the wet splat of blood as a bullet tore open the skinwalker's torso. While it didn't hit the coyote square in the centre torso, inside glancing off the creature's side, the wound was, nevertheless, substantial.

Even with a number of wounds, some of which would be grievous on a mortal creature, the skinwalker only seemed to grow more crazily excited, and appeared hell-bent on taunting Casmir with a falsely high, sing-song voice.
"Ooooo, YES DADDY, hit me harder!"
One of the creature's arms was now far larger than the other, bulging unnaturally with distended muscle, while each finger became tipped with lethally sharp claws. His face, similarly, became disjointed. It pushed out around the cheeks and mouth as yet more fangs crowded and enlarged. But the mismatched shapes and sizes of the skinwalker's body didn't seem to slow it any, as it lifted the massive, bestial limb of it's transforming arm and brought it down in an attempt to cleave Casmir in twain. When it spoke again the creature's voice had deepened and garbled significantly, but the words were still clear enough to make out.
"It's been so LONG since anyone's HIT ME like that! Give me MORE, make my pulse race!"
Apparently, despite the damage the blonde had already inflicted, his opponent was either unaware or uncaring of the actual danger posed. After all, no mortal or super had managed to kill him thus far, even if they'd damaged him. To the coyote, Casmir would be no different.

The malformed, still-transforming creature bounded towards Casmir, its second arm beginning to join the first in that horrific, swelling change. It was a crazed beast, hurling itself manically towards the hunter in a flurry of haphazard fang and claw.

Then, slicing through even the sounds of fighting, a yowling, feline cry of pain and panic. With one arm sliced down to muscle and one eye closed from where the shifter's head had collided solidly and broken the eye socket, her Beshilu attacker had nevertheless managed to slam the syringe home into Sara's shoulder. She lashed out wildly, both back legs and her tail slamming into the rat and sending it sprawling away from her, head smacking into one of the warehouse support columns. Not dead by any stretch, the rat was nevertheless stunned by such an impact.

As soon as the weight of it was off her, Sara turned on her heels and scrambled for the warehouse exit. Her ears were ringing from the gunshot, her breath came in ragged pants from exertion and stress, there was a strange cold sensation in her shoulder. Yet the sight of Casmir fighting made the jaguar hesitate, nearly trip over her own paws. Why had he come back? Was he helping, should she trust him, leave, help him? The creature he was so brutally engaged with was a horrific monstrosity that stood Sara's fur on end, she couldn't just leave him to fight it. What if he was killed? But hadn't he tried to kidnap, possibly kill her?

Decisions and doubts jostled for space, blurring together as her mind began to swim. She took a step towards the battling Hunter and skinwalker, driven to help despite herself. Only to stumble, her legs buckling. The cold at her back continued to spread. The syringe, caught in her flesh and fur, finally came free and clattered to the floor beside her. A crooning cry, scared and filled with the dread of realisation, gurgled up from her throat.

She'd been hit. Drugged. What was happening? She needed to get out, needed to- why wouldn't her legs work? The cool, dusty floor was pressing into her underside. She'd fallen, tripped? With a groan she tried to rise, only to stagger and fall again as the sedative set to work. In desperation the shifter began to crawl, the weight of her tail, a limp mass behind her, seemed suddenly insurmountable. She could barely think. Her vision swam, plunged into darkness as she reverted to her human self and senses. Another soft, groaning, plaintive cry as she continued to weakly drag herself across the floor.

[luscen]

The blows landed, that much Casmir could see and smell, but it didn't seem to have much of an effect outside of making the Coyote more blood-crazed. The silver likely wasn't as useful against the Skinwalker as it would have been for a werewolf; common counter-measures against Supers tended to have varying degrees of effectiveness, after all. Some were more wary of it than others were, and some just tended to let their berserker rage soak up the damage.

'Need some juniper ash or sage,' The Hunter thought to himself as he nimbly side-stepped the beast's crushing blow, ignoring its verbal attempts to throw him off-balance. The plants were more of a Navajo-based deterrent that might have been more effective for dealing with the thing, given its origins- local remedies for local problems, and all that. Sadly he didn't have any on hand at the moment, which made things a bit more difficult.

Well, he'd just have to improvise.

Casmir took a few more steps to the side, baiting the Skinwalker to follow him. The thing was fast, and strong, but years of experience and a single-minded resolve to continually improve himself had given the human an almost preternatural sense of timing; there was little that could hit him directly, thanks to his finely-honed instincts and his disciplined mental state. So many Supers became empowered by the sense of fear in their victims that the scarred Hunter had taken to learning how to quell it, instead adopting a stoic, unflappable front in the face of danger. With nothing to feed on, frustration and over-reliance on their superior muscle mass would make most prey sloppy, leave them open.

All he had to do was exploit those openings.

So, as the Coyote went in for another wide overhead swing, bringing his bloated, over-muscled arm down to try and smash Casmir against the floor, the Hunter calmly side-stepped again, angling his revolver across his chest and shooting two rounds into the beast's elbow joint. The Hunter wasn't the greatest shot, but at this range it didn't matter; the hollow-tipped bullets tore through the muscle like tissue paper, and the misshapen monstrosity began to topple forward now that the limb supporting its weight had been compromised. The blonde grasped a set of knuckles at his side with his free hand, triggering a sharp crackle of electricity with his grip, and leapt upwards, delivering a brutal gazelle punch to the creature's jaw.

Before Casmir could press the advantage and follow up on the assault, however, the sounds of a struggle diverted his attention. The redheaded Shifter had broken out of the room, grappling with the Beshilu. The feline had managed to stun the rat, and made a bee-line for the exit, much to the Hunter's immediate relief; surely she knew this city better than he did, especially with the benefit of a dog's nose. Finding her way home shouldn't have been a problem, then, which would leave him free to deal with the Coyote without having to worry about any potential collateral damage.

Something was wrong, however. The cat paused just at the threshold of the warehouse, turning to look back at him, ears flattened anxiously against her skull. 'What are you doing?' Casmir thought anxiously. She was practically free, what was she hesitating for!? 'Go home you daft bint! Get out of here!'

He was just about to turn and fire a few rounds in her direction to try and scare her off, when – of all things – she started to walk clumsily back towards him! Casmir was just about to tell in no uncertain terms to piss off, no longer able to keep his attention split from her and the rallying Skinwalker, when the sound of a heavy body falling to the ground caused him to break eye contact with his opponent entirely, feeling his blood go cold at the sight of the woman's now-human form lying motionless on the ground, her red hair limply pooled around her like a shock of blood on the cold, gray floor.

[tsukikoko]

Casmir's diverted attention proved to be one of his more perilous mistakes, for it gave the skinwalker long enough to not only recover from what had been a rather painful wound, but to transform it's second arm into a similarly misshapen mass of muscle and spreading fur. Allowing it to rise once again.

Within seconds, despite dripping a thick ichor that must have been the creature's blood and no longer possessing enough sanity to speak, the skinwalker threw itself upon the blonde Hunter with a speed and ferocity nowhere close to human. Massive, clawed, nightmarish limbs clamped themselves around Casmir's body and in the time it would take him to blink, the skinwalker had hefted him from the floor. The creature's grip was a crushing vice of iron, threatening to crush ribs by sheer pressure alone. But it didn't hold him for long. In a half second the freakish coyote monster cast it's arm back, before tossing the man it held as though he were no more than a ragdoll, watching with a strange, chittering bark of laughter as Casmir's body sailed through the air into the further reaches of that dusty, dark warehouse.

The head, now completely animal but still unnervingly wrong, held split jaws in a permanent grin of black-tipped teeth and oozing saliva. Jaws that widened ever further, unhinging as though they wished to swallow Casmir whole once it chased after him. It's nose twitched. The creature's teeth clacked together with an audible, echoing snap, as it's glowing eyes swivelled in their sockets. Another deep inhalation, a panting whine of unconstrained excitement. With the Hunter thrown so far, now out of sight and out of mind, Sara's limp body, laid out so openly and defencelessly, was a delicious temptation the beast found difficult to ignore. It had been so long since he'd had one of the fairer sex and she'd been enticing him all evening, through her closeness and the mental captivation he'd maintained over her for so long.

John's warnings went forgotten. The rat and his earlier incessant squealing, too, went ignored.

The skinwalker about-faced, the massive, misshapen body dragging itself through the warehouse and carving channels through the floor with it's claws. Within moments it was upon the unconscious shifter, who didn't stir even when lifted from the ground by the claws of the monster who wished to devour her. Her head lolled, body slack, with only the steady rise and fall of her chest revealing that she was still alive. Even when a long tongue left a black stain of ichor across her neck and cheek, Sara did not so much as groan, so powerful were the sedatives she had been given. The monstrous coyote could have easily swallowed his prey whole, given the size of his still-grinning jaws. But, instead, the creature sat back on it's haunches, drooling over and inspecting the shifter's body as it sought the best place to sink in a claw and peel her skin from her. Only when it turned her over and spotted the scar at the base of her tail, a seam that led up to her spine, did the coyote give a twisted, curdled sound of an excited yip. The old, healed wound looked like the start of a zipper to the beast's twisted mind, the perfect starting point.

[luscen]

Casmir was torn between fighting the Skinwalker or going to Sara's side; if he tried going for her, the Skinwalker would just cut him down. If he focused on his opponent, however, he might wind up getting past the Hunter and going for the vulnerable shifter, anyway. Neither option was ideal, but the decision wound up being made for him, however, as the nightmarish coyote snatched him up in its claws, black-tipped teeth flashing in a too-wide grin that seemed to split its face in half. Casmir felt his ribs groan in protest as the creature squeezed him, yellow eyes glinting in pleasure from the agony it was inflicting on the Hunter.

Before he could try to break its hold, the Skinwalker abruptly decided to hurl Casmir away, where he crashed into some crates a good ten feet away from the the misshapen monstrosity. Apparently amused by this feat, the beast let out an unsettling guffaw somewhere between a dog's bark and human's laugh.

The Hunter, meanwhile, pushed himself up, shaking the stars out of his skull and bracing for the Skinwalker's imminent follow-up. It seemed that the coyote's attention had been taken by something – or rather someone – else, though; suppressing a curse, Casmir saw the creature literally drooling over Sara, one wicked black claw reaching down to touch her just above her tail. Apparently he'd wanted to indulge in his craven before he finished playing with his chew toy.

Casmir didn't even bother trying to get its attention; rather than take aim with his revolver, however, he grabbed another small, polished stone from his coat. Keeping Sara's prone form firmly in focus, he tossed the stone inscribed with the Norse rune for travel down near him. A flash of blue and white blossomed outward from the point of impact, as the runic magic warped the space next to him, teleporting the redhead from beneath the monster's claws, and over to the Hunter's feet. It was a minor trick, and limited by the fact that he had to see the thing he wanted to move, but nonetheless it had taken her out of the Skinwalker's grasp, a fact it was no doubt bemused and upset by.

Never one to let an opportunity go to waste, Casmir capitalized on the creature's confusion, firing another hollow-point shell into it's back, near the lower portion of the spine. “You want her?” he yelled across the length of the warehouse as he picked up the unconscious shapeshifter. “Then come and get her!”

With that he turned and ran, heading deeper into the warehouse with an infuriated Skinwalker no doubt hot on his heels.

[tsukikoko]

For a half second after Sara disappeared from within the grasp of it's claws, the skinwalker simply flexed the sharp fingers of it's strange, disjointed hand and blinked. Whereas the creature, even when receiving injuries, had been having a twisted, psychotic form of fun, now anger surged forth at the stolen prey. A thick, black tar that bubbled up from the monster's core, so potent it began to seep out from between it's teeth in dripping globs. Though each splash of ichor vanished soon after it touched the floor.

Before the creature could turn, another deafening crack of a firearm ricocheted through the enclosed darkness of the warehouse. Despite the dark, Casmir's shot found its mark, slamming into the skinwalker's back and earning a bellowing scream of fury from the creature in response. The noise was so loud, Casmir's shout was drowned out in the wake of it.

Not that he had to worry about the skinwalker chasing after him, even if it hadn't heard his words.

The black ooze of the monster's anger spilled from the new wound in it's spine, bubbling and writhing in a freakish, supernatural display that perfectly matched the misshapen horror show the skinwalker had become. For a good few moments, the creature's lower body was completely useless, but that didn't stop it from using the bulging strength of it's forelimbs to turn and come crashing after Casmir with alarming speed, hellbent on rending the Hunter in twain. Large, animal jaws snapped together as it dragged itself through the warehouse, sending further sprays of black anger into the air. The dark interior of the building had no effect on the creature's eyesight, or ability to see the retreating form of Casmir's back. It reached for him, trying to crush him under the weight of it's massive, clawed hand-paws. At one point the coyote monster lowered it's head to the warehouse floor, turned it's jaws sideways and attempted to snap forwards at the Hunter's legs and waist, ripping up chunks of concrete in the process - even leaving a fang or two behind in the process.

[luscen]

The sound of claws scraping against stone in a frenzied rush didn't take long to reach the Hunter's ears. 'Looks like I pissed him off,' Casmir thought to himself humorlessly. 'Apparently a little too much.' Sure enough, the Skinwalker had managed to close the gap in short order, literally nipping at the human's heels despite being paralyzed from the waist down. Apparently, it was no longer interested in indulging in its psychotic form of fun, devolving instead into an animalistic rage; a predator furious over being denied its prey.

Casmir just managed to leap away from a vicious bite that tore up a section of the stone under his feet. The coyote paused just long enough to spit out a bit of stone, teeth, and black ichor at him before resuming the chase. Normally, this situation would have been an ideal moment for the Hunter; having lost its more human-like capacity to mind its surroundings, the frenzied Super would have been perfectly primed to be led into a trap. As it was, however, Casmir had no trap, as he was more concerned with keeping Sara out of danger.

'This is what I get for choosing to play bodyguard!' he thought to himself as he adjusted his grip on the unconscious redhead. He'd never be able to outrun that thing at this rate, especially once it recovered the use of its legs. He needed to get some distance, otherwise this chase would end very badly for the two humans.

Reaching into his belt, the Hunter grabbed the last of his Gust spell scrolls. The cantrip flashed, shooting him upwards as he used it like a springboard to get up to higher ground. His ascent was cut murderously short, however, as the Skinwalker managed to muster enough strength to leap up, claws raking through the air and tearing into the Hunter's leg. Blood and fabric flew through the air as the monster managed to shred through the layers of his pants and lacerate his thigh.

Pain wracked Casmir's body as he fell to the floor, the unconscious shifter knocked out of his grasp and just out of reach in his current condition. Thankfully, the mesh underlayer in his pants had kept the Skinwalker from taking the limb completely off, but as it was he'd be lucky if he didn't bleed out. Casmir could only scream mentally as he fumbled in desperation for a jar of special salve in his breast pocket, every second another chance for the Skinwalker to either rip his throat out, or turn his attentions towards the redhead he'd been after this whole time.