Shink!</I>
The rat didn't even know what hit it. One moment it had been sniffing around the piles of junk and trash that people tended to dump in alley ways, and the next second it was skewered through the middle, impaled at the end of a very large, black scorpion tail.
Which turned out to be attached to a rather tall woman, growing right out of her tail bone.
Grinning proudly, Erus lifted her tail and carefully slid the dead rat off the barbed tip before letting her tail curl back up behind her harmlessly again. Turning the rat over in her hand, she peered around the alley for a few more minutes, sniffing at the air for any more signs of varmints, and then, finding none, she shrugged and stepped out of the alley and back out onto the streets, taking a casual bite out of the dead rat as though it were an apple, and ignoring the horrified gasps of a few people around her that witnessed that. What was their problem? Really, now...wasn't like it was a crime to eat and walk, she thought, slurping up a rat intestine like it was a noodle and licking her lips after. Which it did kind of resemble from a distance...a sauce covered noodle. That was until one saw the rat she held, which was suspiciously missing its belly.
Of course, she was pretty much used to all the odd looks she got on a daily basis, and truth be told she revelled in it! Even as she walked down the street, taking dainty bites from her "snack", she flashed blood-stained grins at the people she passed and waved her tail behind her happily (and it was probably lucky that she had a soldier's uniform and was pretty well known around this part of the town, otherwise she just might have gotten thrown in an asylum). It wasn't just when she was on her self-appointed "pest control" missions that she got stared at, though--she was just plain weird on her own. For one...she had a scorpion tail. A scorpion tail that was really, really big, and really, really long when she actually uncurled it, which was kind of a pain in the butt because it was virtually impossible for her to sleep on her back as a result--though that was also due to the little bat wings that grew from her back, the things absolutely useless; she just never thought about getting them removed. Then there were the ram's horns, a proud set of them growing from her skull and curling along the sides of her face. Tawny lion's ears replaced normal human ears, and when she smiled, she flashed huge canines set in a mouth that, while it looked like that of a weak-jawed human, was well equipped with all the muscles required to crush bones. Which she did, as she ate the things.
Other than that...she looked pretty normal, whatever normal was. She was tall, just a few inches shy of six feet, with a sturdy, muscular build. Her eyes were slightly tilted and gray in color, and her hair was the same tawny color as her ears, shoulder length and dreadlocked as she never had bothered to brush her hair; she saw no point.
Dressed in the blue and silver uniform of a Serendipity soldier (though she'd had to make some adjustments to account for her wings, which resulted in a bare back, and her breeches had to be tailored in a way so that they also fastened in the back, around her rather thick tail), she made her rounds around the city. There were no wars going on. No people breaking laws today. Which...meant today was just one of those days that she spent keeping the rat population down.
Kind of boring, really.
Yawning, she frowned and finished off the rat with a final bite, chewing on its tail absently as she walked (she'd eaten everything else already, bones and fur included), and then she paused to peek inside another alleyway, flicking an ear and sniffing the air. Aw. No rats there...oh well! She was already pretty full, actually, after already eating three of the things, but she could still kill the ones she came across to save them for later!
She much preferred fresh meat to the stuff they served down in the mess hall. Gross stuff, that. But she did like the socializing, so she still ate there, sat down with all her buddies and munched on whatever it was she caught that day. They never liked that, but as long as it wasn't them, they didn't complain too much.
Picking her teeth with a claw to remove some fur that had gotten stuck there, she gave a bored sigh, flicking the fur off her fingers, and headed toward the nearest tavern. Nothing was going on so she could afford a pit stop! Besides, she was thirsty now, anway.
Opening the door to the tavern, she stepped inside and gave a sniff, loving the scent of human flesh that filled the closed space. Ahh...her favorite...but she had to use restraint. She was under the law, now, but it wasn't too big a problem. She still got her fill now and then.
Erus strode up to the bar and ordered an ale, and the bartender was quick to serve her, though he oddly didn't seem intimidated or weirded out at all; nah, Erus was a regular and after a few years of the same thing, well...he seemed used to her. Even if she had given him a bit of...trouble a few years back, but she had since stopped trying to nibble on drunk customers after she learned that was apparently very rude. Taking up her mug and taking a sip--she didn't really like or dislike the flavor, she just liked the color, foam, and bubbles, and lucky for her, her alcohol tolerance level was sky high; poisons in general just didn't have much of an effect on her--she headed on over to find a seat...
And ended up sitting at a table across from an interesting pale, veiny man. Erus found it rather boring to sit alone for, despite her odd habits she was a strangely social creature. The table was chosen completely at random, as usual--she did the same thing at the mess hall, unless she could find her favorite elf, Khas (but he seemed to try and avoid her for some reason), because it allowed her to talk to (and bother) a lot of different people!
Kept her entertained and all!
Uncurling her tail and draping it across her lap--for she couldn't sit in the chair otherwise, not chairs that had a back to them--she stretched out her long legs and crossed them at the ankles, setting her mug on the table top and leaning back in the chair a bit, squishing her folded wings. Then she grinned at the man across from her, her lion-like ears perking up. "Hello there. Who are you?" she asked bluntly, smiling genially.