((ooc: Continuing from Heartworm, Preparing for War, and over a year's worth of other threads that all began in Hunter's Apartment. 'Cause Calley promised back then that if he was going to commit suicide, he was going to do it here, and Calley keeps his word a surprising amount of the time.))

There was something moving inside the wall of the apartment. To be more specific: it was moving in an air vent, and the luxurious apartment in the grandiose building was owned by one Hunter Antonescu. To be more precise: there was a monkey in the air vent. A Red-Handed Tamarin wearing only a thin black collar around its neck. The squirrel-sized monkey worked the screws of the vent loose with practiced ease. It lowered the grate to the floor. Then it was in.

The place hadn't changed much in a year.

There was the bed. There was the golden clock on the nightstand. Here was the lush carpeting between the monkey's sensitive paws and there was that smell in the air that a bachelor can never totally avoid. There was no sound of a shower, this time. No humidity from drifting steam. There was only the open vent, the monkey, and the sound of a gold clock ticking.

Then there was a human boy. He was eighteen now. At seventeen, he'd looked like fifteen. At eighteen, he was starting to look like the man he would become, if he had the luxury of a few more years. His shoulders were finally starting to broaden out and set. He'd gained an inch of height, more from holding his spine straight than from any growth spurt. He was as thin as ever, but his stringy muscles had gone from awkwardly trying to emulate a cat's acrobatics on two legs to being comfortable flowing under any skin. And he had many skins now. He was Italian, Hungarian, German, and Irish; he was also Persian, American, Siberian, and so much more. He walked over to the bedroom window wearing only a silver chain around his neck, and not looking particularly embarrassed for it. He opened the window easily. Took out the screen, and leaned it against the fashionably off-white wall. Then he backed a few steps away, taking in a deep breath as a shallow wind cut its way between buildings and into the apartment. The air wasn't fresh. This was New York, and that was New York air. It wasn't fresh, but it was what he knew. The teenager closed his eyes, taking another meditative breath.

Then there was a Red-Tailed Hawk, sitting next to a Red-Handed Tamarin on the floor. The small monkey and the fierce bird were back-to-back. The bird was wearing a thin clear collar under its feathers. It tilted its head to the side in a jerk as the monkey chittered a nervous laugh, wrapping its tail around itself. In the blink of an eye, they had switched places: the monkey sat where the hawk had sat, and the hawk juxtaposed at its back once more. This time, the monkey wore the collar. A small black collar that blended with its fur. The hawk rustled its feathers for a moment, its head cocking back to stare at the monkey, as if feeling some remorse, or guilt. The monkey stared back. Its breath was shallow and quick. Its tail was curled around its legs again. The hawk looked towards the window, and took a single hop away. Then another. It spread its wings, and flew.

Twenty seconds.

Twenty seconds was the most it had. As it crested towards the ceiling of the apartment, the monkey collapsed on the floor behind it like the puppet it was. The air collapsed out of its lungs. Its heart would keep beating, though, for twenty seconds.

Nineteen seconds.

The hawk crossed over the sill of the open window, beating its wings to keep its course as a gust of wind through the threshold buffeted its light frame.

Eighteen seconds.

It tucked its wings, and dove straight down. Ascending was preferable, but slower. Descending held a certain swiftness that it needed.

Seventeen seconds.

Back in the apartment, the tamarin's heart gave a final lurch, and stilled much sooner than expected. The explosion was more than the hawk could have ever imagined. The force of it sent a sharp crack straight down the steel inner frame to the concrete below. The high class building shuddered for a moment; an elegant man not expecting the blow to the back of his head. It staggered drunkenly, then stilled.

The hawk didn't notice any of this. The shock wave had come immediately, backhanding the bird into the side of the facing building. It struck wing first. Ribs next.

Crack; the building echoed as it shook; crack, crack, crack.

The bird twisted off the building's side, and began a less hurried descent. Its eyes faced upwards for a moment, catching the cloud-covered sky. It noticed details as its body turned in the air, the wind catching the slack in its good wing and twisting its body in a spiral: it noticed the black smoke beginning to lazily drift out. It noticed that the smoke did not come from an apartment: it came from the vertical crater where three and a half apartments had been. The floors above and below were the source of the rapidly licking fire. The apartment of Hunter Antonescu, he noticed, was gone. Completely, and irrevocably gone.

Holy crap, he noticed, in an easy-going gray haze that mirrored the clouds, that was around my neck.

The glass rained down with the sound of crystal snow. He watched it following him, even with him, glittering around him. In a vacuum, objects of any weight fall at the same speed.

The hawk's slow spiral brought its unfocused eyes facing the pavement. It blinked. Then it struggled: it beat out its wings, and gave a sharp shriek of pain that ended wetly. Crack, the apartment had echoed; crack, crack, crack, in perfect time with its own breaking bones. Its matchstick ribs had easily pierced its lung. It struggled with itself in the air, as the glass glittered around it.

The pavement approached as something stirred in the back of its mind. I know this day is yours,[/color] it interrupted formally, but I would rather see it to its end, rather than its beginning. The hawk stilled its struggles as its consciousness traded hands. Then it stretched out its healed wings, and flew in an arch back towards the sky.

The glass hit the pavement in a clatter of unexpected hail, bouncing and shattering and catching the dim light. It was an ugly day.

We are free now. We could just leave it at that.

No. I can't.

I understand.

Its flight leveled out over the top of New York's buildings. Consciousness traded hands again, and it tilted its wings in a steady, energy-conserving glide towards Mondragon Labs.

- - - -

When it landed, the world did not hold its breath. Nothing changed. The guards walking the complex barely glanced at him; they either hadn't heard of his actions yet, or they had been given orders to let Hunter deal with him. It was what Hunter did best.

The hawk shifted to an eighteen year old boy wearing nothing much at all. He touched this throat briefly before entering the building. Then, with a Cheshire grin tugging at one corner of his mouth, he waved to the receptionist behind the desk. Noin Mortman raised a four-fingered hand in reply, her professional face making it clear that she was not one to be thrown off by such trivial things as naked boys strolling up to her desk.

"Could you call up Hunter for me?" Calley asked easily. So easily, that the slight tremor in his voice was quite easy to overlook as a trick of the ear. "Tell him I'd like to talk to him. Oh, and you can tell him I quit."

He turned on one heel, and casually walked back out the doors. He'd rather hold this fight outside, on the expansive lab grounds. And there would be a fight. After a year of cowering to that man, he was sure Hunter wasn't going to let him just go. ...Even if he hadn't blown up the man's apartment with a bomb of his own manufacture. Heh. Totally worth it.

Calley tilted his head up to the overcast sky, and waited to find out just how far he'd come in a year. His mind felt unusually quiet. The clutter wasn't holding its breath--it was just breathing. Thoughts of the future didn't trouble him. There were no errands to run, no homework to do, no tests to study for, no one expecting him for dinner. He had no plans beyond this day, hour, minute, and second. Calley focused on the rise and fall of his own chest as he waited. The man would come. Beyond that--who could say? He didn't know what he was waiting for. Life or death. Both were terrifying, in their own way. For now, though, there was just this.

Just a gray sky, and the strange feeling of the breeze brushing the back of its hand along his throat without hindrance, for the first time in over a year.

Hunter was informed of the explosion at his apartment within five seconds of it happening. He had been walking through the lab and his watch had alerted him to a disturbance. Moving to the wall he tapped and brought up a computer screen and entered his security clearance bringing up Calley’s vital stats as well as what happened prior to the explosion.

Upon analysis he was still not entirely sure what had happened. Through seemingly no cause his heart had just stopped. Hunter caused the screen to retract and relocated to the war room, where he used the apartment’s security, combined with the data from the collar to reconstruct the events that happened in the apartment. He pieced together what had happened, but it was making little sense. Since when could Calley duplicate himself? Hunter was about to bring up data of Calley for the last month when he was informed of Calley’s arrival at the lab, requesting to talk to him.

Calley hadn’t come here to talk. What Hunter found mildly confusing was that Calley had come here to fight. Calley had been confrontational with Hunter before, but never looking for a physical fight. Hunter strode out of the lab and found Calley, standing there calmly waiting. Stepping out he strode opposite Calley about twenty paces away. “I’m surprised that you came here,” Hunter said, “You could have tried to run. However, I have analysed all the data and discovered that you escaped the explosion alive, so coming to face me was a prudent decision, as you know I would have tracked you down. This way you don’t have to worry about me catching you off guard. You’ve got some balls boy, and for that I’ll give you the honour of the first move.”

The lanky eighteen year old backed away steadily as the man came out, leaving an ample barrier of space between himself and his employer--his former employer--as the man walked a good twenty paces into the yard. He didn't back up like he was running; he backed up like water moving around a dropped stone. His blue eyes stayed on Hunter, gaze as relaxed as his stance. There was no need to fear at this point, no matter what his heartbeat said. At this point, the man might even still be thinking of pounding the crap out of him and forcing him back under his command. There was something that Calley had spent a long time coming to terms with: injuries didn't matter. Not to him. Not to any degree. They sucked, and they hurt, but that was just another thing he'd trained for; there was no need to fear the man at all until he turned serious enough to kill.

That would probably be soon.

"Don't kid yourself, Hunter." The eighteen year old said levelly. He was surprised by the ease of his own tone--and then again, he wasn't. A part of him was watching this scene. Living it. The other part was in his mind, racing through a hundred different forms. A thousand. Cataloguing, systems-checking, touching base and last-minute organizing shelves that were already in perfect order. "Really, don't kid yourself. If I wanted to disappear, I would have. This isn't about me being afraid of you anymore."

He leaned towards the ground, and a moment later, the largest Bengal tiger he'd ever had the pleasure of seeing stood in his place. It picked up a broad paw, and began its silent pacing. "This is about killing the monster under the bed." Its steps took it in a broad circle around the man; it perfectly walked along the circumference of that twenty paces, like it and Hunter were two points on the same compass. "And I think you know where you can shove your honor. Let's not pretend that this is going to be a polite little turn-taking game of cards. Go. Whenever you've got the balls."

The tiger continued its pacing, around towards the back of the man. Its steps were slow and fluid, light and steady. There was nothing to gain from hurrying this. He knew the man was strong, and fast. He'd witnessed those abilities himself far too many times. The man was also upwards of a few centuries; since he still had that unmarred pretty-boy face, Calley was certain there was some sort of healing factor at work in his body. How quick was it? How strong? Could it re-grow limbs, restart a pierced heart? Calley was fairly certain his own healing could. He couldn't speak for the man's. Yet. Hunter also commanded some form of telepathy--he knew it could force suggestions into a mind, or block years of memories, but it obviously could not read minds. He knew it had to do with the man's eyes.

And that's why the tiger that so steadily watched the man during its liquid pacing was not Calley. Calley was inside of it, curled around its heart, drifting through its veins. Heartworms. A mere hundred of them, none positioned where they would interfere with the tiger's movements. Calley had spent an inadvertent twenty-seven hours practicing heartworm forms, and something else: how to slip his main consciousness between splinters with ease. It didn't matter which of the heartworms was his main splinter right now--he could be any of them, just as quickly as the man could attack.

So Calley watched through the tiger's eyes, but there was nothing in the tiger's mind for Hunter to affect. Could he work his telepathy through a television screen? That was the question. That's the effect of what Calley was doing.

He would continue his pacing until the man attacked, and then he would decide what to do. At this stage in the battle, Calley had only one goal: he wanted to test just how he compared to the man's real abilities in a fight, using a mere tiger. Such a basic form, with only its vocal chords compromised by chimeraing, and then only to give it the ability of speech.

Once he had gotten a sense of the man's real strengths, then he would start showing his own.

At this stage in the battle, there was no need for fear. He was well feed, well rested, and well prepared. The tiger's breathing was a hair too rapid, its heart trying to drown out the finer points of its hearing, but he was able to direct its steps in that comfortably measured manner. There was no need to fear. The worst the man could do was hurt him. Severely. It would take one hundred and one simultaneous deaths for him to really be in trouble. At this stage in the fight.

The large tiger paced around the man, its silent steps bringing meaning to the word: Hunter.

Tyger, tyger, burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

Hunter gave an internal smile at Calley’s little speech. He was impressed, the boy had come on a long way from the snivelling little wretch he’d found in his apartment over a year ago. Whether Calley liked it or not it was Hunter who had helped him grow, pushed him, challenged him. Now Hunter would get a good look at the fruits of his labours.

Calley was now circling him as a tiger. A tiger was no threat, Hunter had fought real ones in the jungles of India and never so much as broke a sweat. Calley knew that a tiger would be little challenge, so there was only one possible reason for Calley to be circling him in such a form. He was measuring Hunter up.

Nothing in the animal kingdom was a match for Hunter, which meant that Calley would need to go beyond simple animal forms for this to be a fight. One thing Hunter was cautious of was Slate’s ability to instantly heal Calley’s wounds. That meant that the surest method to end this fight would be a single, instantly lethal blow. However Hunter did not want Calley dead, not yet at any rate. He’d invested too much in the boy to simply kill him.

Hunter suddenly sprang into action. Moving faster than the tiger could he rushed it and swung a kick. The aim was to break the neck in such a way as to paralyse, but not kill the boy. Were he to apply fractionally more force it could become a killing strike, but for now a crippling blow should suffice.

Seriously?

The tiger watched the attack coming; it only had time to begin arching its body away: it moved with a speed like reflective terror, curving its form back as if to dodge the coming blow. Its tail moved with the motion of the rest of its body, swinging closer to the man as his spine move further away.

Seriously, Hunter?

He saw the kick coming. The man moved fast--faster than the tiger could hope to move, faster than most of his large mammal forms could hope for--but hardly faster than light, or the electrical impulses between neurons. Calley had trained with Kaz. Hunter wasn't that fast. Comparatively. He watched the attack coming, knowing that he couldn't avoid it. But still.

Seriously, Hunter? A kick?

He watched the man's leg raise, take aim, and descend with all the simplicity of an insult; he watched the man establish a firm and perfect balance to counter that momentum, using his opposing foot and his body. He watched, and let his own body arch into a half circle, with his tail moving towards the man. He watched until that man's own vision of the tiger's body would be obscured by that leg, and until averting the attack would cause a serious loss of balance. Then he shifted.

If the man was seriously still thinking that brute strength and--and kicks were going to do this, then Calley obviously needed to give him some incentive to think otherwise. And he might just test the man's own brand of healing, while he was at it. Calley dedicated this shift to his Isabel.

From each vertebra along the large feline's spine, another bone shot up. To be specific: a rib bone. They came from the form of a very sick Rottweiler, not that it mattered. They fused with the vertebra in a manner that would make it impossible for the tiger to move freely anymore. He wasn't planning on moving, though; he was planning on bracing its four thick legs against the ground to provide an excellent base for that man's kick to land on. What mattered far more than origin or abominable grafting was this: each rib bone ended unnaturally short, at a splinter's sharp point. This had all been very clever in his head. 'Oh, lookie here, Hunter, bone spikes for you to ram yourself into! Take that, Mister Speedy McSuperStrength!'

He'd forgotten that he wasn't exactly an Isabel: he was no bone manipulator. He was an animal shifter. And he'd just shifted so that the marrows of those bones were exposed, and all their little nerve endings, too.

****. That. Hurt. If he had time to think about it later, he would resolve to never ever ever try imitating his Isabel again. For now, though, he had to stick with the plan.

Fortunately, the crippling pain would only last for the bare fraction of a moment that it took the man's blow to land, and sever his spinal chord. Bliss.

Sadly, there would be no time to enjoy it. If the man's attack landed, Hunter would have skewered himself through the leg with several rather sharp, thick bones, and succeeded in breaking the tiger's spine. Calley wouldn't have a tiger form for the rest of this fight, because he and Slate had decided that Slate was going to keep his healing powers out of this: they couldn't waste the energy on healing a failed form, when they had many healthy forms on reserve that could be switched to for the same expenditure of energy.

If the man tried to avoid the attack or redirect it, then Calley had little instinctual doubt that it would put the man off-balance. It was a kick, after all; it wasn't made to be quickly and easily changed. Either way, his own actions would be the same: he would move them past the cordial greetings of this fight, and into the warm-up phase.

He would shift to manticore.

The true manticore of myth had a man's head, a lion's body, and a tail capable of shooting poisoned darts. Its name meant, quite aptly, 'man eater'. They had found it in the same children's book on world myths that they'd found the chimera, the griffin, and the ouroboros. The "man's head" bit was impractical--scraped. The lion's body was solid--kept, and they'd let it keep its head, while they were at it. They'd found the basic lion form easily in a zoo, though it had taken a bit of Mondragon Labs training room time to build back up the creature's muscle mass after years of being brought its dinner behind bars. The most interesting part about the manticore of legend--the part that made them pause on its page after flipping past sphinxes and harpies and sirens and wraiths--was that tail. That beautifully poisonous tail. They had originally been thinking something in a poison dart frog-patterned skin, but had discovered, unfortunately, that the poison was synthesized from its diet in the wild, and the frogs kept at zoos were actually quite harmless. Uselessly interesting. They'd thought porcupines for the whole 'shooting darts' thing, but you know what else was useless? Porcupines. They didn't throw their quills, thank-you-very-much-his-kindergarten-teacher. Thankfully, he'd thought of a very happy monstrosity that listening to zoo keepers' lectures hadn't crushed all hope out of: the king cobra. Again, quite an easily acquired form. There were, in fact, seven king cobras kept in zoos and private collections within two hours' drive of Calley's apartment. That made seven poison glands, fourteen poison ducts, and fourteen rather sharp fangs at his disposal. He'd worked on the basic forms, modifying the basic shape of those fangs to be somewhat more useful: he'd smoothed out their wicked curves, and made them promisingly straight. Then he'd planned out something that was supremely unholy: it involved a turtle.

The manticore's tail was a lion's, right up until its tip. Its final vertebra fused solidly with the hollowed shell of a painted turtle. From the shell, from all angles, protruded twelve promisingly straight fangs, connected by twelve venom ducts to six venom glands packed into the shell's protective hallow. The form was called manticore. He liked to call that tail, however, Bowser. The thirteenth and fourteenth fangs dwelled in the lion's mouth. It sneezed as it shifted: the venom duct was severely pressuring, and compromising, his nasal cavities. A fair trade-off.

Oh, and porcupines? Not entirely useless after all. The lion's golden fur had been replaced, all along the length of its body from nose to Bowser with the dark brown fur and quills of a North America porcupine. Unlike its European counterpart, the North American porcupine's quills detached singly at an attacker's touch, and lodged in their skin most painfully. The backwards-facing barbs on each of their tips steadily worked each quill into said attacker's flesh more deeply as the individual moved; unremoved, these encroaching quills had been known to cause a festering death in foolish predators over the course of several days. They were also noted for being exquisitely painful to tear out.

But enough about his dangerous pelt. Hunter, after all, would be more interested in his tail. It had started its swing when the man had first started his attack; now, it was positioned to keep right on going. Its momentum carried that venomous mace at its end around towards the back of Hunter's other leg. If it hit, the angle would drive four or five fangs into the man's calf and inject quite a healthy dose of nerve-targeting venom. Calley's own healing couldn't process venoms. He'd be interested to see how the man's matched up.

Your turn, Hunter.

And really, you should be more careful what you touch. You might just get burned.

In what distant deeps or skies
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand dare seize the fire?

((ooc: In case that was confusing, a form summary--
Manticore:
- lion's head, body, and tail
- porcupine quill fur
- venomous mace at the tail tip
- venomous bite.))

Hunter was mildly impressed by Calley’s defensive tactic of launching out sharpened bone. It meant he’d have to skewer his leg for his attack to connect. Still, the wound would be minor and he’d suffer minimal negative effects, so continued his attack. The tiger was crippled.

However, the moment after he crippled the tiger it was replaced with something out of legend. Hunter recognised it as a good attempt at a manticore. Lion body, poisoned tail, and a little twist with the spines across the body. So Calley could mix forms now, this would make the fight much more interesting. While no animal could hope to match Hunter, perhaps if Calley put together the right parts he might challenge him. The manticore however, would be insufficient.

He’d seen the tail coming round while the boy was still a tiger, and now as a manticore it was barbed in an unusual fashion and probably poisonous. The poison was of no concern. No toxin in the animal kingdom could phase him, and only the very most potent man made concoctions could have even the slightest effect. Still, that was no reason to allow the attack to hit.

The shift had freed his leg from the bone, allowing him complete freedom of movement, and impressive as the creature was it was only a lion at its core, and Hunter was faster than a lion. He shifted his foot slightly so he was stepping on the manticore’s neck and pushed off with his other leg, swinging it up and over so he was standing atop the manticore, neatly avoiding the tail attack. The barbs failed to pierce his shoes, leaving him unharmed where he stood. Here he paused briefly to analyse the new form and to determine where to hit for a crippling strike.

...The man was on his neck. He felt this, and stopped his tail's swing short. The man was on his neck. Hunter had used his injured leg to maneuver himself up--the only conclusion that Calley could draw from this was that the man, like himself, had the capacity for instantaneous healing. Either that, or he was an adrenaline booster like Nika, and his veins were pumped too full of fiery momentum for him to even feel the rather sizeable holes those bones would have made.

If he was an instant healer, then could he control it, or was it an automatic heal? How much energy did it take? If it was an adrenaline boost, was that likewise the source of his strength and speed? How long was the maximum it could hold out before he began feeling its effects?

Questions for later. For now, there was a man. On his neck. The sharpened spikes had hit true--that much he was sure of, since he'd felt them jar all along their lengths at the impact. ...Not the most pleasant sensation on raw nerves, and not something he was looking to repeat. In general, he wasn't planning to repeat attacks; he didn't want to become predictable. But the spikes had worked. And there was a man. On his neck.

There was a very basic fact about Calley's power, and this was that it used a very basic unit of energy: the shift. Healing a paper cut was one shift. Healing a gunshot wound was one shift. Shifting to a mouse was one shift. Shifting to a manticore was one shift. Shifting to splinter into two birds or two hundred or shifting to change his eye color in cat form were all the same: one shift. This was annoying for small things, and a blessing for large. It was also the reason he and Slate had decided ahead of time that Slate would do no healing during this fight: that was one shift less that they had to use. Calley had come a long way from when he'd passed out from shifting eight times in a day, but he still had an upper limit. It was more like fifteen in a row now, with perhaps twenty-five in a day; not that he had the luxury of taking all day. He needed to keep at least three of the fifteen on reserve to complete Ouroboros--probably four or five, since he suspected it might take more out of him than a mere 'shift'. He'd already used three. That left seven, to be safe. Shifts were not to be wasted. This form was still good; there was no reason to shift.

Except that Hunter. Was on his neck.

Calley did the irate thing to do: once more, he launched the Rottweiler's rib bones out from a large feline's vertebra. This time, he was more specific with his attack: he only launched two, and he only launched them directly up through the points where he felt the man's heels. An attack similar to this had been fast enough and strong enough to pierce even Kaz's hide, when he'd sparred with the man. A change, this time: he didn't sharpen the spikes, so he wouldn't have to deal with that pain again. The force and speed at which they shot up should suffice to pierce anything short of steel. The extra length... was an extra treat, from Calley's well of love right up through Hunter's shins. The man was, in all likelihood--given that the attack was instantaneous, and unheralded by any sign--about to regret his indulgent pause. There was no such delay on Calley's part.

Calley made a token attempt to not waste the shift: at the same time he shot up the bones with the aim of piercing straight up the lengths of Hunter's calves, he also splintered off two very innocuous forms that were quickly moving from his most loathed to most loved: heartworms. If either of the bones succeeded in piercing Hunter, then the heartworms tucked neatly into the miniscule hollows he'd scored on their sides would soon be raising inquiring heads into Hunter's veins. If they found the environment friendly, they might just move in.

Oh, and this time? Calley wouldn't be politely pulling back those spikes, either; not until Hunter made him.

Don't daydream on top of a manticore.

Really. Don't.

And what shoulder and what art
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And when thy heart began to beat
What dread hand and what dread feet?

The bones that fired straight up an unprecedented speed caught Hunter momentarily off guard. At the instant he felt the pressure he dived forward, but that only reduced the injury, not avoided the attack. The bones scored bloody groves down the back of his legs. Hunter’s dive bought him significant space, landing a full four meters away before he rolled into a crouch.

So far Calley had managed to inflict injuries upon him twice, neither of them minor. He’d only connected once, but in doing so landed a crippling blow. Hunter knew that Calley could only shift so many times a day, but the current number was unknown to him. His wounds had instantly clotted, but he had suffered muscle damage that would take time to heal. The effects were mildly hampering, reducing his speed to only just above a lion’s, which would make life more difficult.

Calley was going all out, using all of his new tricks. Hunter was seeing no reason not to use his. So far he’d been fighting Calley with his own innate physical abilities. He had many more abilities in his arsenal. After the mutant registration act, especially his fights with Stalkers Hunter had come to realise that not everything could be solved by use of just his innate abilities. He would, at times, need to call upon other’s abilities.

In that vein he’d had Ingram develop a new defence system round the lab, one unique to him. Something that would allow him to make full use of his powers. While he was confident that he could defeat Calley with his current level of power, it would be a close fought thing. There was little sense in dragging this out.

Out loud he spoke the following command, “Night’s wrath, human, Shogun, Aquamarine, Abyss.” From the nearby building a quartet of darts flew, hitting Hunter in the arm and injecting their doses of blood. The human blood would accelerate his healing, reducing the damage he had received to negligible within a minute. Shogun’s blood would give him a sixth sense that would allow him to see Calley’s shifts fractionally before they came allowing him better information of the battle. Aquamarine was the blood from the mutant whose DNA was in Paragon’s Aquamarine gem, giving him the ice manipulating power.

The final blood was from Abyss, procured from a clone that had been hit by the Stalker’s power suppressing attack when Ingram was searching for a countermeasure. Hunter had yet to try out Abyss’s blood, but was familiar with his powers. It might take him a little while to determine how to utilise the void, but the psychic sense offered by Shogun might make it easier. The other power of Abyss’s was quickly evident, as Hunter bulked out and grew in size. His skin changed to granite grey, not Abyss’s normal red tones, and no tail grew. Questions that could be answered later.

Hunter rose from his crouch, now towering over Calley. He could sense living presence all around, including several within Calley. Calley had the ability to make copies, Hunter knew that. Now it seemed he had made copies inside of himself. That most likely meant that a fatal blow to the fighting form would not be fatal to Calley. Good.

Rather than waste time trying to work out how to make clones Hunter activated his newfound ice manipulating abilities. In his right hand a giant sword appeared, in the other an enormous shield. Hunter ok a defensive stance with his weapons and waited for Calley to make the next move, waiting to see how he’d react to Hunter’s changes.

(OOC: I’ve ignored the heartworms you try to infect me with as my blood will kill them off if they enter my bloodstream)

((ooc: I figured. The idea of running reconnaissance on your blood appealed to me, though. *did not premeditate that move failing in the least...* ))

A swing and a hit and a miss all at once. He smelled the blood on the man as he dove overhead, but it had ceased to be fresh by the time Hunter hit the ground again. Curiouser and curiouser--the man did still seem to be hurting a bit. Not entirely an instant healer, then. Just a supremely fast one. How much time, then, did he have before the man fully healed? For how long would he be injured enough for it to even mat--

>> “Night’s wrath, human, Shogun, Aquamarine, Abyss.”

Four darts slammed into Hunter's arm. Honestly, Calley had half been expecting them to hit him.

Four darts for five calls.

Calley didn't have time to wonder what the calls actually meant: the man immediately puffed out like an inflate-a-suit of muscles, in a fairly good imitation of that last one: Abyss.

So they were names. And somehow, those darts had allowed Hunter to copy the abilities behind the names.

Abyss. Super strength, obviously. No monkey tail--no extra appendage and no extra balance to worry about. No six independent and fully-formed personalities in the man's mind--he, ah, assumed--so Calley doubted he'd have to worry about the clones. The clones were far more than the mere copies their title implied, after all, as he had learned when he went into their home turf to meet them. The void: without the clones, not entirely a worrying thing. Calley had never seen Abyss enter his own void; even if he could, what would the affect be? Another way to one-up him on speed? The guy would still have to take himself out of the void to attack; Calley knew the void, and he knew you had to set foot outside of it to have arms and legs again. As to the Hulk look: the lion's face gave its best deadpan stare. So Hunter had gone from super-strength to super-stronger. Big. Freaking. Deal.

Who was Aquama--?

The original owner of the ice shield and sword, he presumed. So. An ice manipulator with a fair degree of control. The guy had gone from assault with a deadly I-am-a-weapon to assault with a deadly frostbite hazard. Stylish and all the mutated rage, but the difference between a black belt and a black belt with a knife.

Shogun. Shogun could be a problem. From what Calley knew of him, he was a blind samurai whose innate telepathy allowed him to compensate for his lack of vision. Given the special weapons the guards had been grumbling about having used around them--some sort of phosphoresce bacteria, or some such--Calley presumed the guy could sense the presence of living creatures. Not inanimate things, though, since he wouldn't have needed the fancy living glowies otherwise. And there was more to it than that: telepathy of some sort, though Calley didn't know to what degree.

Therefore, it was safe to assume his plans were laid bare in the man's mind.

...The man who was still standing there with his drips-when-warm sword and shield, like he was being all polite and inviting Calley to attack, again.

Scratch that. The telepathy must be more limited than he'd thought; perhaps only surface thoughts? That'd be nice. The guy already had the speed advantage. A little extra speed advantage in the telepathy forewarning department just added super-faster to super-stronger. Calley had gone into this fight expecting to be thoroughly outmatched in both areas. It wasn't any more of a problem than it had been thirty seconds ago.

...Shut up, pulse rate, and get out of my throat.

Human. Why human? Four darts for five names left him with the conclusion--the hopefully correct conclusion--that the intimidating 'Night's wrath' was the code word to initiate the dart slinging. But that left him with a dozy of a wild card in Hunter's veins: human.

Veins.

Calley's two heartworms had died a fairly unpleasant and rapid death, not unlike salt on leeches--given this recent encounter with Miss Nash, that was the first imagery to come to mind. Before they'd died, they'd suffocated. Just a little. The guy's blood was surprisingly oxygen poor for someone who jumped around as much as he did. Oxygen poor and toxic. Was the 'human' some kind of counter to that? He'd taken extra strength and winning good looks from Abyss; perhaps he took blood that wouldn't corrode and/or suffocate his own systems from humans. Maybe. Though honestly, if that was the case, then Calley would have a hard time understanding how Hunter stayed alive without constantly infusing human blood into his system. He was assuming it was blood--the color sure seemed to fit, in the moment before it injected fully.

He was overanalyzing this. He was overanalyzing this, because it was a good way of coping with an entirely unexpected development without letting his brain switch to static-screen panic. He was overanalyzing this, and the man was standing there being chivalrous to a manticore wearing twin spikes dressed in his own blood. The chimeraed lion gave a shake of its neck. Splotches of red hit the Mondragon Labs ground, redecorating it in a Pollock theme. The shake had not been cosmetic: he'd been testing how those spikes affected his movement. Not too bad. Unlike the entire series of spikes, just two didn't lock up his spine to any significant degree. The extra weight on his neck made them impractical for long-term use, but having a sore neck tomorrow was not his most pressing concern. He would spend all day being grateful for the ache, in fact, if he had the luxury of living with it.

The manticore lazily, with the utmost air of a disaffected housecat, settled its rear down on the ground and began to lick the back of one paw. The paw lifted to an ear, and began moving in smooth circles. A spot of blood that had errantly settled there was picked up, and tinted all the fur in that area a darker shade of auburn as it was diffused.

"You know, Hunter," it voiced, "you really should treat your employees better. I liked the job." Golden eyes did not blink as they watched the goliath with the fancy toys. "I hated you." The past tense: hope embodied.

It was the man's turn again. Calley still had no reason to rush this; especially not while he was still processing what the man's own shift could mean. It didn't seem to change much. And yet, somehow, it seemed to not change much in very bad ways.

This was hardly the most poetic moment in the fight.

Calley had chosen not to respond. That meant that Hunter would be unable to cause a mistake on Calley’s part that it could exploit. It did however offer him other advantages. Calley had handed him back the initiative, given him time to finish healing and allowing him to explore Abyss’s abilities.

It was the latter that would cause Calley the most concern. Hunter keep his eyes focused on Calley as he used Abyss’s powers in conjunction with Shogun’s special sense to check out how Abyss summoned his clones. He could hear a voice in the back of his mind, a voice just like his. This led him to surmise that he only had a single clone with which to engage Calley with.

“If you won’t kill the runt then let me,” the voice said.

“Once I work out how to let you out,” Hunter replied in his mind, “And I don’t want to kill him, just cripple him so he’ll listen to us.”

“Why?”

“Because the boy is proving his usefulness, I’d like to keep him on the payroll. The conditions of his contract will change obviously, but I believe we can come to a satisfactory conclusion.”

Throughout the conversation Hunter had been doing two things. One was to endeavour to make the void open. When he focused on an area behind Calley he felt something with Shogun’s sense, but couldn’t work out quite how to manipulate it to any effect. Two, to distract Calley from what he had been doing, he began to cover himself in ice plate armour. It would deflect the majority of animal attacks and while shifting would give Calley the force to punch through the armour, it would drain the boy’s energy.

It turned out Abyss had great energy reserves, reserves that Hunter now had access to. It would be a long time before he tired. His wounds were healing at a good rate, and the ice that was made was stronger than steel, so he was progressively making himself invulnerable to Calley’s attacks. Once Calley realised this Hunter would start to negotiate a new contract. However, if he found out how to unleash his clone, who apparently had a more violent temperament than him, then Calley might get beaten into submission first.

((ooc: This post dedicated to Zephyr, Second in Command of the Kabal, who knows the reason why.))

The man wasn't moving. He was just standing there, working on improving his ice sculpture imitation. Calley didn't know how strong that ice plating was. He had a bad suspicion that it was the sort that would dull about five sets of nails before he'd get an actual scratch through. And seriously, ice plating while holding an ice shield? Could the man get more redundant if he tried? ...Actually, he clearly was trying. And yes, actually. The answer was 'yes'.

Yeah...

The manticore's heavy tail swished like an irate cat's, hitting the pavement with a crack that put several fang-shaped dents in the concrete. This was not going well. It didn't take a genius, an above-average intellect, or even someone like him to realize that. The guy was pumped up and ready to go and Calley's only way of hitting him with a manticore form was to shift again. Somehow, that seemed to defeat the point of conserving his shifts. The lion's brown-quilled ears lowered flat against its skull. Its golden eyes seemed to catch the dim light from the cloud-filtered sun, and burn with it. A muscle on its foreleg gave a twitch where it sat. Its tail slashed to the other side. Crack. More holes in the pavement. There was no way to win this with a manticore. There was no way to even make a dent without wasting a shift, and the guy would just heal it. His tail swished as he went over the blatant pattern to this fight in his head:

The guy made the mistake of coming close, and landed a crippling-but-ignorable blow. Crack.

He shifted to land a hit. Crack.

The guy stood on his freaking neck. Crack.

He politely shifted his request for the man to step off. Crack.

The guy leveled up, and evolved into--theme music--Hell Has Frozen Over Abyss. Crack.

There really weren't any mistakes in that last move he could see. The guy might possibly be a bit slower now, what with carrying around Abyss' bulk and the ice armor, but that wasn't something he should bank on. Up until now, all of his hits had been landed because of Hunter's mistakes. The lion's ears tried to sink flatter against its skull, but there were already as low as they could go. Crack. His tail took it out on the pavement instead. A weight dropped from a height + an unyielding surface = satisfying breakage.

Satisfying breakage, indeed. Calley felt stupid even thinking about it. Seriously, though. It was about time he tried for a hit that wasn't just a mistake on Hunter's part. And for the first time since this fight had begun, the man was far enough away that Calley could pull this off: he needed that space buffer to ensure he got a slight head start. A slight one was all he needed, for this shift.

The manticore was dropped like a hot potato. In its place on the ground, for the fleeting moment before it burst into the air, was hunting bird of dark and light. The peregrine falcon was, uncontested, the fastest species in the world. Its famed hunting dives had been recorded to reach 242 miles per hour. For the sorts of people who called their cafeteria a canteen, that would be 389 kilometers an hour. They weren't too slow the rest of the time, either.

Though he had no way of knowing it, he quickly left Shogun's range of soul-sensing: a mere fifty feet. He easily ascended past the 50 - 100 meter mark of Shogun's senses being able to tell the difference between a clump of trees and a hawk, and left the range of those borrowed senses entirely behind. Shogun's powers were made more for people than for birds of prey, truly. He settled into a level flight in an easy circle over Hunter's position. The buildings of Mondragon Labs and the surrounding area laid themselves out below him like a child's map. Hunter himself was an easily seen toy of a man. Clearly a boy's toy: just look at those muscles. The bird of prey took a moment to give this a second thought. Did he really want to do this? Really? Did he really want this ludicrous action tied to his respectable name?

Weight dropped from a height + an unyielding surface = satisfying breakage.

Yeah, he kind of did. The falcon tucked its wings, and fell into the superb dive its kind was famous for.

As it fell, it kept its sharp beak pointed towards the man; subtle flicks of his wings and tail could adjust his course as necessary. He gained speed rapidly. Too rapidly. He hadn't used this form much--he wasn't used to the marked difference in velocity between this and his usual Red Hawk. He'd intended to launch his attack at thirty feet up. Instead, he panicked at sixty, and stretched his wings to pull up. He shifted at the same time. Then the falcon was racing back upwards, and something that cast a very large shadow was plummeting down with all the grace of a large dead weight.

An adult blue whale, to be exact.

Yeah. Yeah, he'd really just done that. The falcon surveyed its work with a slightly surreal feeling. The whale was 110 feet long, and weighed in at 181 metric tons. Take that, super strength. Take that, ice shielding. Yeah. He really had just dropped a whale on Hunter Antonescu.

From sixty feet up.

Traveling at approximately 200 miles per hour. Or 322 kilometers an hour, for those people who had track suits sitting around in their closets like they were the cool thing to have.

If nothing else, the splatter should be quite fantastic.

His only move after this was Ouroboros. He'd come too far to go down quietly; not without at least trying that.

Image by WereCat