Gone Fishin' [Open]

[Anonymous]

FIsh, fish, fishy fishy fish fish ... Much yum. Many yum! Malila scooped one up and gobbled it down. It gave resistance, flopping about like a jumping bean. But down it went, still struggling, into the pit of her stomach. If the suffocating journey didn't kill it, then the hydrochloric acid would. Even now its bouncing was beginning to cease, but the vibrations remained and the Utahraptor craned her head up, eyes closed with a very content look crossing her reptilian maw. She was smiling - an unusual sight considering dinosaurs don't have the right lip muscles to make facial gestures. But since this one had evolved to speak, it was safe to assume her lips could move to correctly form words. Therefore ...

Sitting at the coastline, Malila dove her muzzle back into the water. Where there was one fish, there were more! Too abd the water here was too salty with eroded nutrients for her to drink. She was getting a bit thirsty as it was. Ah well - she would venture to find a lake or stream later in the day. Right now her stomach needed filling, and she couldn't go an argue with it now could she? So here came a second trout. That one was big and required chewing and tearing. A third and, feeling fat and stuffed, Malila made the effort to catch a fourth to bring back to the tribal lands. Ooh! Tuna! What was it doing by the coast? Oh well. Content, she curled the giant fish in her forelimbs and turned to start a treck back.

There were giant plants all over the place, bright and vibrant in colors. Flowers sprouted in places they normally would not. Some of them were carnivorous - sMalila watched one of them gobble up a mouse earlier, and made it a point to keep her distance from the bell-shaped monstrosity. The dirt path was soft on her taloned, padded feet, and her body blended in so well with the surroundings - green with green, lime with lime ... The only thing that stood out about the Utahraptor right now was the fact that her stomach and snout-tip were light blue.

Not that she cared about those little quirks. Right now she was walking, and humming, and walking, and humming, and fighting the urge to nip a piece of that still-thrashing tuna ... both because she was full, and because she wanted to give it to the humans.

"Just keep swimming, just keep swimming!"

[Anonymous]

The smell of industry didn't fill the air. The people of this world considered this a tropical climate, but Entropy thought it was a bit on the cold side. And it was still a few thousand years too early for there to be any seas of sludge for her to swim in to her heart's content. Or perhaps a few million years too late...

Either way, this had to be Earth. All the green and blue everywhere. Not many worlds were like it, and Earth was the only one of its sort she had been shooting for. The one next door, one step closer to the sun, may have suited her better, but there didn't seem to be any food there. She had to eat, and this mortal realm's inhabitants were apparently too soft to adapt themselves to the demoness' preferences, so she would just have to adapt herself to theirs.

Why was she complaining, though? Sometimes she needed to get toughened up.

Entropy had determined earlier that this was an island she was on. Potentially a rather inconvenient place to have made her appearance, giving her a rather small area to move around in. Luckily, she had seen no signs of advanced civilization here so far, meaning that keeping to herself would be a lot easier.

***

Karin knew the jungles well, but she remained ever watchful as she walked the paths under the trees. The dangers here were many, especially when one was alone, but she had found that travelling alone was often a necessity, as her fellow tribesmen seldom shared her explorer's spirit. It was just as well, though, as she had to justify her excursions as "hunting trips," and it would be best if nobody found out that these trips took her outside of her tribe's lands.

Being ever wary of danger, Karin didn't miss the odd creature that happened to pass in front of her some ways ahead. It appeared to be a woman of some sort, but with wings and silver skin, dressed in clothing made of some black material. While there were some odd creatures in the islands, this woman looked much more like some sort of spirit of legend. She seemed... dark, too, with ominous wings and clawed hands.

This must have been some sort of evil spirit Karin had found. Biting her lip, she realized that she was in mortal danger now. Readying her bow and nocking an arrow, she moved behind a tree, hoping to hide herself before she could be seen.

As she did, though, the spirit woman stopped suddenly and turned back towards her, apparently having noticed her movement. In a panic, Karin did the first thing that came to mind. She released the arrow. Unfortunately, the arrow didn't strike true, as its target snatched it straight out of the air with her hand with frightening speed. Turning a bit pale, Karin staggered backward a few steps, then turned and bolted the other way.

"Wait!" came a call from the silver woman.

But Karin didn't stop. If she did... she would be eaten. The spirit was certainly angry now. She just had to run as fast as she could, and hope it would be enough. But with the speed the demon had shown, it would be a miracle if she got away...

As she ran, Karin looked back to see if she was being followed. Unfortunately, the demon woman was gaining on her quickly.

And while Karin was looking back, and not looking forward, she continued to run blindly. That was a bad idea. Just before she would have pulled her horrified eyes away from her pursuer, she felt her foot hit a root sticking up from the ground, and went stumbling headlong. And as it turned out, directly in front of her at the worst possible moment, there was a large reptillian creature carrying a fish in its mouth. Unfortunately, there was nothing Karin would be able to do to avoid crashing into it...

***

Entropy came skidding to a halt with a cringe as she saw the human woman go stumbling into certain doom. She then looked down at the pointy stick she still held in her hand. That had been such a dangerous thing to do, trying to play catch with someone with a sharp thing like this. A toy like that was just waiting to put someone's eye out. And then, there she had gone, running without looking where she was going. Entropy may not have been that kid's mother, but somebody needed to give her a firm talking-to. Right now, though, all Entropy would be able to do was hope that the impending collision wasn't going to cause too much injury to the two creatures who were going to be involved...

[Anonymous]

"Jus' keep shwimmin', jus' keep shwimmiiiiin'!"

Gleeful, cheerful, and happy-go-lucky, Malila trotted down the golden path with her prized catch of the day sluggishly tossing about in her jaws, thick lacerations piercing its soft scales. The tuna was dying slowly. What had been violent thrashes moments ago diminished to little more than meager spasms of a desperate, failing fish. The Utahraptor would have felt bad for the pescine brethren had it not been a decent meal that could feed kids back at the tribal grounds. Besides, it was a fish! They all tasted good and reproduced quickly: stripping nature of one would do no harm! Especially considering all the mouths it would feed.

The lime-embued cranium swayed back and forth to match the bouncing, jovial tune to her little song. Eyes were closed: she knew this place by heart and could wander about the path without actualy straying from it. It would be maybe ... ten minutes ... before she reached any civilization. Tail stiff at the raptor's rear and killer claws clacking randomly to fix a rythym, Malila was well on her way, heart swelling at the imagery of all those smiling faces awaiting back at home. How they would cheer and laugh and stroke her muzzle and pat her crest. She loved the attention so! A little love goes a long way ~

Of course, with the young Utahraptor oweni distracted by her random thoughts and sporadic obliviousness, she was clueless to the coming danger ... up until it slammed into her head on. The force of impact caused her jaws to part. The tuna slid free, slapping the dirt where it flopped helplessly. Malila, in the meantime ... her muzzle hurt. "H-Hey!" cried she, shoved back by another body pressing against her own ...

The Utah lost her footing, and off the golden path she went, rolling down a rather steep (though thankfully heavily grass-padded) hill ... taking the stranger with her.

Thunk! Thunk! Thunk!

"Ow! Ow! Ow!"

[Anonymous]

Seeing the two go tumbling down the hill, Entropy ran to the edge of the path and stared down after the two, biting her lower lip. If only her wings allowed her to fly, she would have pursued the two and tried to catch them before they were too badly damaged. Unfortunately, that wasn't possible, and getting down the hill would require care on her part. She wouldn't be able to take it too fast.

***

Karin was getting the worst end of the deal now. Unlike the creature she had run into, she didn't weigh nearly a ton. She was, in fact, relatively small. If the reptillian had landed on her, she would have been crushed. Luckily, fortune saved her from that fate, but the tumble down the hill left her rather banged-up.

Once she finally reached the bottom and came to a stop, the first thing she did was look up to see if the winged woman was flying down after her. To her relief, the woman wasn't in the air, but she was descending the hill by foot. It seemed that she was being careful not to fall, and was being slowed down as a result, but it wouldn't take her long to reach the bottom. Karin needed to get away before then, and hopefully gain enough of a lead to lose the demon woman.

However, before her inner survivalist could take over, Karin realized that the creature she had run into also might have been injured in the fall. She gave the demoness another nervous glance, then turned her attention to the reptile. It had sounded like it had said something just before they fell...

"Are you okay?" Karin asked as she looked it over. "Really... Sorry about that..."

Of course, she remained a bit tense even as she checked on the creature, as it could easily be as dangerous as any demon. On top of that, the real demon was drawing ever closer by the second, and could spring at her at any moment...

[Anonymous]

Of course, she hadn't been badly injured. Malila had been through this sort of thing before, granted it was because of her own stupid little mistakes, not the fault of other's ... She'd never been tackled to the ground before in her life. Who in their right mind would go after a Utahraptor? Honestly? The lizards were insanely malicious-looking, with their sharp teeth and killing claws and viscous expressions. Anything with sharp-objects attached to their bodies would present a threat to those who didn't know the species any better. As it were, Utahraptor oweni was a hard species to come by - few existed anymore, even with the seizure of the soil by the planet. Old races may have been resurrected but Utahraptors and a load of dinosaurs had not yet seen the ight of the modern era, still buried under layers of dirt, their bones telling more tales than they could. How Malila came to be, even ... was pure luck.

Chirping, the raptor's head shot up at the sound of a voice. It was womanly. It was gentle. It was concerned. And it was ... underneath her? Malila only now noticed that not only had she landed in a sitting position, miraculously unharmed ... but she had landed atop a huntress. Lucky for Karin, only the base of Malila's tail rested on her back. Had it been the lizard's full body, the girl would have been crushed. Quickly forgetting all aspirations of delivering a prize tuna to the tribe she loved so dearly, Malila jumped to her bipeds and made use of her long green muzzle. It nudged the woman in the side, just under the clavicle, in an effort to push her up to her feet.

"Maaa apologizess," cried the raptor, "fer fallin' on ya. Be's okay, not hurt?"

Something was running down the hill posterior to them. Not knowing whether it was friend or foe, Utahraptor oweni followed base impulse - she ran with the former.

"Be's okay! I think ... "

[Anonymous]

At least Karin was resiliant enough to be able to withstand having the raptor's tail land on her, though she wouldn't have been able to stand up if the reptile hadn't moved it. Having been raised among the dangers of the islands jungles, she couldn't help seeing the snout moving towards her collar bone as a potentially dangerous thing, but there was nothing she could do about it. Luckily, she wasn't so blindly paranoid as to not realize right away that the raptor was just helping her to her feet.

"My fault for running into you," Karin quickly replied to the reptile's apology, her voice tinged with the growing worry over the demoness charging down the hill after her.

Malila didn't seem bothered by the demoness, but a thousands stories floated through Karin's mind all at once, told by the elders of her tribe, about evil spirits carrying away a lost hunter or a villager that wandered too far into the jungle, never to be seen again. Karin had never put much stock in those stories before, thinking they were just told to scare children, but now she was seeing one of those dark creatures with her own eyes.

Deciding that the reptillian creature must have been okay, turned to run again. But as soon as she tried to take the first step, her leg gave way under her and she fell right back down again. There was a sharp pain in it, which her adrenaline had kept her from paying much attention to before, but she seemed to have sprained it while tumbling down the hill...

***

Though she was being careful, Entropy still made her way down the hill fairly quickly. It was steep, but luckily not too high for her. And her wings, though flightless, at least helped her to balance a bit. Before much time at all had passed, she had reached the bottom.

And that was when she saw the human girl collapse again. Her heart skipped a beat at that, knowing that the woman must have been injured, and not knowing just how bad that injury could be. In situations like this, she wished she knew some healing, but all of her study had been focused on fighting and combat magic. She did know a tiny bit of first-aid, but she was no healer in the least.

Of course, she didn't dwell on that thought. Wasting no time, she ran towards the girl to see what was wrong. But then she was stopped in her tracks as the girl spun on her, wild-eyed with fear at first, then setting her face into a glare of determined anger, and pulled a large stone knife from her belt. Though the girl said nothing, it was obvious that she would attack Entropy if the succubus got any closer.

Once the initial surprise passed, Entropy's heart sank a bit at that sight. Demonkind's reputation had preceeded it to this place as well, it seemed, and the succubus had been deemed an enemy on sight. She lowered her head for a moment, letting out a sigh, and would have just turned and walked away at that if she hadn't been as... compassionate as she was.

Instead...

"I'm not going to hurt you," she told the girl calmly, keeping her voice relaxed. "Just let me see if you're hurt."

At that, the human girl looked a bit surprised for a moment, her defensive glare wavering and ebbing away. Seeing that, Entropy carefully took a step forward. But then the girl raised the knife again, the glare returning, though not with as much conviction as before. She looked a bit less fearful now, and more... uncertain. She may have been reconsidering her initial judgement of Entropy, so the succubus gave her a moment to calm down, staying where she was and not making any aggressive moves.

[Anonymous]

"OKay ... maybe be's hurts a leetle beet ... "

What a miscalculation! Poor thing probably busted her leg up a good deal. Did it snap in the fall, or crumble under the pressure posed by Malila's heavy body weight? After all, Utahraptors were noted for their intense mass to make up for 'small' sizes. Compared to the common prey - Stegosaurus, for instance - they needed some merit to their form to keep them from flying off the hides of their kills when said kills decided now would be a nice time to shake, rattle, and roll. Killing claws didn't cut it all the time, despite them being able to sink in and hook to the flesh and subcutaneous layer beneath the epidermis.

Her tail lifted. A mighty thwap against the dirt signalled alarm. The demoness was down to their level but now backed away, for the injured human flashed a sharp object. A knife! Malila saw some of the Villagers wielding them when coming upon a hunted beast. They didn't have claws and teeth like she did. Tools made up what their fleshy, soft bodies lacked. Added confusion: why was the woman on her feet? Didn't one hurt?

Malila dared to nudge the tip of the woman's elbow with her blunt muzzle. Worry sounded clear: "You keep bein' standin' on dat, it'll bust up moar." Frowning, she added in a lower voice, "Please put shiny away?"

[Anonymous]

What the large reptillian told Karin seemed to be true. Standing on her leg did feel like it was making it worse. She couldn't have very well fought off an attacking demoness from the ground though, could she? The huntress was used to fighting through pain anyway, and would shrug it off the best she could as long as she thought she had to.

But the question was, did she actually have to? The demon woman was actually acting nice, not savagely attacking her as she had expected. But that could have been a trick to get her to lower her guard. Though she was visibly wavering now, that last bit of her resolve was refusing to go away.

"Please..." Entropy begged. The look of concern in her eyes appeared genuine, even a bit desperate.

"I..." Karin stumbled, starting to lower her knife, though slowly and carefully.

"My name is Entropy," the demoness offered. "I promise I'm not going to hurt you."

Though Karin still wasn't entirely certain, Entropy really looked sincere. That was, for the most part, why Karin finally decided to take the risk. First she lowered her knife, then lowered herself again to the ground to get the weight off her injured leg. Entropy wanted to help her with that second part, but didn't dare to make any sudden movements towards the girl, for fear of setting the whole situation back to where it had been. For a few moments longer, the huntress watched Entropy closely, but as the succubus stayed where she was, not taking any agressive actions, she finally relaxed her tense muscles.

"My name is Karin," the huntress looked up and told Entropy at that point, returning the favor of revealing her name.