March 11th, 4:23 AM, Atlas City, North Carolina, USA.The sound of pencil tip scratching against paper echoed through the silent apartment for a time, a pair of hands held a journal open while yet another pair of hands scritched with a pen in one, and a pencil in the other. Silent contemplation scored through the mind of the writer, along with the faintest ripple of ‘ink’ on the skin of their four wrists. Flesh became metal, became copper wires and iron sheets covered by tough rhino-like leather, before bubbling and swirling with ink yet again. The metal pulsed and writhed, exposing flesh and bone, vein and meat. Then it sank away again, becoming skin, then chitinous sleeves of a brilliant ruby red.
J-3, Jericho, sat at the coffee table in the living room of the apartment, writing in their personal journal, and sketching absentmindedly in a temporary art book that they had “
requisitioned” from a nearby art store upon first arriving in Atlas City.
The apartment was quiet, the sounds of traffic and general city life outside filtered in just barely.
The area they lived in was quiet, peaceful and relatively well off for all things considered.
Alex would be awake soon, around five, and Jericho would be there to surprise him. Heh. The guy never seemed to startle or be surprised by Jericho’s antics. Probably wouldn’t even really question, at least not with any seriousness, as to why there was a series of carved bone and bronze trinkets on the kitchen counter.
Their attention returned to the journal, Jericho’s tongue slid from their lips and rested out in the open air, forked as a snake’s… for the moment.
They wrote on in Spanish.
“
Y’know, I never quite understood the type of people that Alex hunts. Or hurts. I guess I never understood Supers in general. Or humans. Some can be incredibly kind, I know Alex is. Others are so… Fucking stupid.
Some assume they can harm him? Like that’ll work. Others try to bargain- one ‘dude’ apparently tried to offer Alex coke in return for Alex not cracking his nose into the pavement- and yet more try to run.
I usually catch those. Alex tells me not to eat them, but I really want to.
I don’t know how to tell him I’m gonna need to eat more than just a regular human meal soon. I haven’t had food in a while, not since… Arizona?
I don’t miss that place. Menagerie almost caught up. Burned up a lot of mass to get out of that one…
I wonder if they’ll send Kaylen after me. I hope not. I liked her…”
Jericho’s writing was abruptly sidetracked, their focus shifting and yanking their head towards the nearby window. The panicked breathing and gasping of what they
assumed to be a human female passed by on the street below. Their ears twitched, swirling with ink before growing into a pair of massive bat-like things. The breathing became that much louder, whimpers and whispered prayers echoed up to Jericho.
They briefly, for all but a moment, wondered if they should do anything at all. Then, “Help, oh god help me please…” whispered it’s way into Jericho’s hearing.
They sighed heavily, swiftly launching themselves up and into movement. Ink swirled violently, rose up around them before settling back into their new skin. A shark-like skull, adorned with a short sail made of iron and bone, extending along the spine and out into a long, thicker at the body, thinner at the tip, tail. The metal was bone white, and along the spine spread out like a sleeker, somewhat thinner armadillo shell. The exposed flesh was thick as crocodile skin, leathery like an elephant, and scaled like a fish. Midnight blue and black to better blend into the dark, with ‘gauntlets’ made of iron-reinforced bone adorning the hands at the fore. The hind legs had similar ‘armor’.
The arms and legs were startlingly close together, as the back was highly arched to allow for as much of the form’s space to fit in.
The face had two blade-sails on the upper and lower jaw, the lower extending halfway to the throat and the upper running along the armor plating of the back. The tail tip was adorned with a barbed stinger, looking almost as if someone shoved a barbed spear-head on the end of a whipping length of flesh.
Two blades extended from the armored forearms of the monstrous form, onyx black and nearly impossible to see in the night air. A pair of startling blue eyes took up residence on the vicious face, along with rows and rows of needle sharp teeth. The form was tall at eight feet at the shoulder, and a lengthy thirteen feet… but it had the grace of a shark in water.
Jericho slinked out of the apartment, opening the window silently and clinging to the wall of their building as they crawled down to street level.
They knocked nothing over, and moved with an alien grace that belied the absolute strength of their form.
Their maw opened up part way on the way down, and the electric burst of scents from the world around him exploded across their mind. Their snout twitched, and the smell of blood wafted from a block over.
They moved, swift as a cheetah on the hunt, silent as a snake in the brush.
The morning came with Jericho dragging a bound, gagged, and blinded man to the apartment. His form had two tendrils extending from the chest, made purely of flesh, holding the hands and legs of the unknown man. The man, dressed in the suit and tie of a businessman, with the hidden crest of a nearby mafia clade pinned to the front shirt pocket stank of alcohol. When Alex woke, Jericho was sitting calmly in their monstrous form waiting for the other to pay his attention. Their maw was holding the man’s skull in its entirety, though the human still writhed and occasionally made muffled screams and shouts.