Askaree

Come away, little lamb, come away to the water

This was getting pretty fucking irksome, really, Askaree muses to herself as the lackey she holds captive within the vice-like trap of her jaws continues in his pathetic and futile attempts to bludgeon her thickly-armored form. Crocodiles had been crafted by the artisan hands of Mother Nature to be her perfect gladiators: thickly lain with armor that was as hard as the earth's own stone and nigh impenetrable; jaws that bred thunderclaps when they came to a close, capable of pulverizing the flesh, muscle, and bones of creatures of a far grander scale than just a single man. In truth, the caresses of his fists were to her naught more than the teasing paddle of a cats paw.

Speaking of which...

In the moments that Tetradore once again finds his human flesh (rawr) and his place at her side, the mammoth ophidian woman releases her temporary chew toy, ivory fangs drawing from the cacoon of tissue within which they had found themselves, the squealching of liberated blood into the caverns of separated sinew a grossly audible thing. Her captive makes impressively swift work of distancing himself from her, though a gruesome tongue of blood and visera marks his trajectory towards his compatriot who stands, still dumbfounded, within the halo of light cast from the cabin below the deck upon which they rest. It is her jaws and her attention that turn upon this supposed "man of the hour", the would-be generous donor who would soon gift them with this luxurious vessel lest he find it more favorable to forfeit a limb or two instead. A low and yet nonetheless resounding growl burbles about within her gullet at the gentle caress of the Kitten King's fingertips upon the armored mounds at her back, two slitted eyes set aglow in the moonlight finding their target and faltering not a hair from his looming frame.

This is all that is required, it would seem, for Jack the Ripped to pilfer from his shattered self whatever misappropriated gall (either real or imagined) his reptilian capture might have allowed him to abscond with. Surely he wasn't going to do it. Surely. It is yet another precious gift given of the gracious hands of Mother Nature that Askaree hears him at all. She had, after all, fitted her scaled gladiators with infalliable hearing. Alas, she hears the swish of the denim of his pocket as he draws what she suspects, she hears the click of the metal lever before her eyes find him. Yep, he was going to do it. Fucking idiot. The downed man pulls the trigger of the pistol he wields within his quivering hands, the snap of Askaree's jaws nearly lost within the explosion heralded by the gunshot.

The crocodilian woman shifts a moment, rudder-like tail saturating the deck with a spray of sea water as she seems to curl in upon herself, callous scales receding into the exotic caramel of her human flesh. Askaree rises from her knees moments later, a horrific smile pulled across otherwise admittedly breathtaking features. Her lips part then, only just so, to reveal the metal head of the wasted bullet clasped betwixt her teeth. It clinks happily against the smooth metal of the ship's deck as she spits it in the direction of her almost-assailant, though its tittering is all but ignored as the firearm flies from his hands into hers with practiced ease. "That was fucking rude," she delivers flatly, squeezing the trigger once more. Askaree lands her mark, as she nearly always does, a spray of crimson forfeited by the gored man's body before he succombs to the rigid stillness that is typical of the no longer living. A leisurely moment passes between the remaining trio where there is naught but a pregnant silence before dark eyes turn to the spared man. "You heard him."