Hmm...that was true and interesting. Humanoids did like control. Erus had never thought about it before, but it was true. But in her case, maybe a little control was good? That's what she had been told, that she needed to learn how to control herself, and when she'd grown older and way too hard to handle that had been when her "parents" had given her over to the military. Which she actually didn't mind since they catered to her tastes when she actually got some action. But she'd never really thought of it as a bad thing before...not when everyone kept telling her it was good...
That was very interesting...
Easily distracted, that thought kept her occupied until Nagranesh said something that really got her attention.
It was, indeed, time to play their game.
But just as she'd started to grin, Nagranesh also went on to say something that swept that smile right off her face. She gave a start, her gray eyes going wide.
Count to twenty? But Nagranesh--! She paused in her thoughts when he licked her cheek, but then he was already off and out of the building, vanishing into the darkness outside and leaving her inside the building to count. Which she couldn't do. Her strange muzzle twisted into a frown as she paced, ears flicking. He probably didn't know she couldn't count. Now if he'd told her to recite a long poem or riddles or the alphabet, that was another thing entirely and she could do that without even having to think about it. That didn't necessarily mean she actually understood a lot of what she was saying, but she could still do it. It came naturally.
With a slight sigh, she sat down. Well, he'd told her to count, so she would count! She didn't know how many twenty was, but she just figured that once she got bored she would have counted enough! With a smile to herself at that plan, she started to count, aloud because she never had been able to do that silently.
"One, two, three, four..." Erus had to pause after four, the words just spilling out of her mouth whereas before she actually had to think long and hard about it and it never did sound right to her. It had always just felt and sounded...off. Blinking her gray eyes a few times and tilting her head in confusion, she opened her mouth and continued, and still the words just flowed freely--and something told her that it was all coming out in the correct order, too. She didn't even know how she knew this, but she felt it, like she'd known it all forever, and before she knew it she'd reached the number twenty. After that, however, she found she could go no further...she had no idea what came next, or if anything even came after twenty to begin with, but that didn't matter! Somehow, some way, she'd actually done it! Really done it! Or at least she thought she had! No matter, she'd reached twenty and now she had to find Nagranesh!
And what was more was that she was really excited to find him now, even more excited than she'd already been. He'd be able to tell her if she'd done a good job, and if there was one thing Erus absolutely ate up, it was praise.
Lunging to her feet, she turned and bounded out through the doorway, paws making surprisingly little noise now that her claws were sheathed. For all of her bulk and brawn, she could move quietly when she wanted to. However, once she got outside she stopped, nose lifted to sniff the air carefully. Nagranesh may have normally been scentless and tasteless, but he had also been covered in a great deal of blood and Erus had only cleaned away some of it whereas her own body had been effectively cleaned by Nagranesh's strange tongue. No, he'd told her not to worry about his own body and had instead told her that the blood would just dry and flake off, but that was also where he had made his mistake. Maybe he'd done it intentionally?
In any case, it wasn't long before Erus picked up the bitter scent of blood and took off racing down the street like a bloodhound, all of the awkwardness she expressed in her humanoid form gone. However, it wasn't long before confusion struck her again, the scent trail growing messy as she followed it back and forth across the street, and a low rumble of annoyance left her when the scent trail went from being just a little messy to a jumbled mess that made no sense. Skidding to a stop in the middle of the street, Erus turned around in a slow circle, sniffing busily at the air and then lowering her face to the ground to smell that, too, trying to make sense of it all. Where had he gone? He couldn't have gone too far...and how could he go all over like that?
Ears drooping, Erus stamped a hind leg in slight frustration before, after a moment of thought, she burst into a casual trot and decided to just continue down the street. Mm...his scent was confusing, but it all seemed concentrated in this area, so all she had to do was explore around, right? Right! One thing was for certain: she wasn't giving up! She had to find her new friend and tell him all about her new ability! And Gods if she wasn't bursting to tell him! That, if anything, is what made her search a bit frustrating. She wanted to find him and tell him right now!
Determined, she wove in and out of alleys, quickly leaving the ones that bore no traces of his scent and persistently nosing around in every corner of the ones that bore even the slightest traces of his smell. She knew good and well that she'd have to rely on her nose over her vision because, while her vision was rather good, Nagranesh was still a black creature in the black of night.
However, after a while of "hunting", there did finally come a point where that familiar scent grew noticeably stronger in one of the alleys. Erus' muscles tensed with anticipation, ears perked, as she began to poke around in the area, nudging aside trash and cartons, butting metal containers out of the way, and then, finally, catching sight of the barest hint of a black, fleshy body.
"FOUND YOU!"
So much for discretion. In her excitement, she abandoned mind-speech entirely.
In a flash, all eleven feet of hard, muscular manticore was soaring through the air, only to come back down in a hard pounce atop her tentacly friend. She kind of forgot her own strength and weight, but her claws weren't out, at least! That could have ended badly. "I found you, I found you! Told you I could find--OH! Nagranesh! Nagranesh! Guess what?! I can COUNT!" she gushed, grinning from ear to ear and wiggling like an excited, if scary, dog. "I couldn't before, I could never count ever, but then when you told me to count, I could! See, listen! One, two, three, four, five, six..." She recited her numbers proudly and quickly, chest puffed out and beaming like a child.
Well, a monster child.
Finishing up, she gasped for air, having not taking a breath. "I did good, yes?"
