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Slef-mutilation was not something that made sense to Kikue. Just as she was digesting what had, apparently, actually taken place -- another person walked in through the double doors, causing her to stare something awful. The bottom half of his jaw stuck out far beyond the rest, laced with needle-sharp teeth. Kikue thought, for a second, that she had to be imagining it. What animal had a jaw like that?

Yet her fur had begun to stand on end, seeing the newcomer. The shouting man's standing up and sitting down, his constant movement, was making Kikue's whiskers twitch. Quickly she grabbed some of the stray napkins scattered across the lunch table near him, and kneeled down near the man's leg. "What'd you do this for?" she asked, almost sharply, as she held the wad of napkins over the growing red stain. No, it was no good, she couldn't help stop it with his pants soaked already.

Almost on instinct, Kikue's claws shot out and she easily tore off the top layer of the man's pants that looked to be above his cut. Flicking the soaked fabric from her fingers, she stared at the gash in the man's leg. Blood was still seaping sluggishly outward. She stared at it, numb. Holding the napkins above it, but not yet pushing down to help clot the blood. Maybe she shouldn't use napkins, she should...use...

Her rough, cat tongue passed out of her mouth again, she she licked her lips. The scent of blood was almost painful. Her stomach rumbled.

Snapping her gaze up, she saw the newcomer into the mess hall clearly still. He had teeth. He would definitely be a threat. If...no. There was no threat, except this man's loss of blood! Do something!

She went to press down on the wound again, then had second thoughts about using napkins, then -- it suddenly seemed like the man was about to move. The other two people in the room -- the overpowering stench of blood -- and Kikue's head jerked forward, sinking her cat teeth right into the man's leg.

Blood filled her mouth. It was warm. It was good. And then, her eyes grew very wide.

"What the hell are ya doin', ya overgrown pussycat?!" Anatoli squawked with dismay, balling his hand into a fist and pounding on the feline's skull the moment she put her face within inches of his leg. The hitting continued with both hands once she clamped her jaws onto his thigh. "Get offa me! Scram!"

The hitting was probably to no avail, but what else could the guy do?

Just as the man whose leg Kikue had sunk her teeth into began to beat her mercilessly over the head, whatever instinct had prompted her to go for him in the first place took over. She lashed out immediately at him, claws going wild as she slashed at him between his poudings on her skull. Fight! Fight!!

She chomped down harder on his leg, grabbing it with her bloodied paws out of pure primal anger at being attacked. Just as the blood was running down her mouth, warming her tongue, blurring her vision between the tears of pain from the thumping overhead --

-- something from the nape of her neck burned, shutting her down from the inside out. With a burst of darkness, her vision was gone, and there was a distant, content kind of feeling at the taste of blood in her mouth. Her body went limp. She hunched over, unconscious -- gone.

If there was any good time to start reciting the Shema again, this would be it. Saying it before when he was in minimal harm was insulting compared to this. A hand full of razor-sharp claws lashed out and dragged across his chest, tearing into his flesh and letting more blood spill from the already-injured man.

"Shema yisrael adonai elohainu..." This was it. It was over for him. He was going to be cat food, and... suddenly, the beast stops. Anatoli trails off mid-prayer, his hands shaking wildly as Sid fell back and pried the feline off him. He slumped into his chair, peeling off the shredded undershirt and clumsily tying it around the affected leg. It was hard to get the knot very tight, with how badly he was shaking.

"I deserved that."

The death grip Sid had on his cane hadn't helped him any, so for the time being he laid it aside. One arm went around Kikue, just to make sure he didn't make things worse by letting her head smack the tile. He reached back with the other arm and felt his tail. It didn't feel broken, thankfully.

"Yeh," he said. "Ah'm okeh."

He'd all but forgotten about the bloodied man sitting there, and once he confirmed nothing of his own was hurt in the fall he was able to focus on the cat girl. Maybe a little fur wasn't so bad after all, and in any case there was fabric between that and his webbed hand. He didn't exactly make a conscious decision to move his hand up a few inches, it just happened.

He moved it away just as quickly, hoping no one noticed. You couldn't call it improper if she was still fully clothed and unconscious of the little slip. Then again, maybe you could.

He got up again, trying his hardest to keep his bloody fingers away from most everything. Zach failed to spot Sid doing anything unusual, too busy going to retrieve more napkins. Not that he wasn't used to bloody meals making a mess, but he was still self-conscious about looking like he'd just murdered something.

Zach glanced at the still-nameless man leaving with the first aid kit. "Good luck with that!" he shouted in the man's direction, half-amused. Whatever had just happened was the first of much to come for that guy. Zach would have bet on it, if he had anything to bet. There were a few predictable things on this island, and getting mauled was one of them.

After wandering back feeling somehow a little cleaner, he looked back down at the older man, trying not to get too weirded out by the jaw thing. A thumb was cocked in the direction of the furry, evidently unconscious psychopath. "What about the girl?"

Zach took a minute to decipher what Sid said, blinked, and got back down on his knees next to the two fallen people. "You can't? Oh, yeah. Well, I guesss I could carry her."

"I don't know. I've never ssseen her before." He offered Sid a hand up, getting ready to pull himself to his feet in the process. He had yet to notice Sid's webbing, or he likely wouldn't have reached out in the first place. He couldn't help but pity the girl - he'd been so close to doing the same thing she'd gone through with. "I guesss I could alwaysss take her back to my duplexss or sssomething. I mean, it'sss sssomewhere, at leassst. She hasss to wake up sssoon-ish..."

Zach immediately regretted his decision to help. The texture of Sid's fingers was disturbing, like loose cartilage. Older peoples' hands never usually felt like that. He snuck a glance and saw that they were webbed. It was pretty bizarre-looking. Zach never had managed to get over the shock of seeing people between changes.

When the swamp thing had dislodged from his arm, he went back down on the floor to pick up the fallen girl. He slid his hands underneath her neck and knees (claws pointed away from her as best they could be) and counted to three in his head. It was a struggled back once again to his feet, grunting as he was this time towing an extra body. He spread his wings while his tail waved around, steadying himself as best he could. People were always heavier than they looked, even small people like this girl.

The slurping sound was not pleasant. He glanced over at Sid, feeling a twist of fear at the older man's somewhat badly enunciated point. At the same time, it just wasn't safe to leave her lying in a public place. She could hate him for what he was doing all she wanted, but at least she'd have her organs on the inside. He shrugged his shoulders a little, grunting a little more as he coaxed her weight back into a more easily juggled spot for his arms. "Let her. If we leave her here, sssomeone elssse will probably attack her."