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It was like two children creeping through a power outage with a flashlight. Who knew which coward was more chicken, but they were pretty scared alright and moving as such. Jordan had the advantage and had been placing distance between them, not purposely, but out of adrenaline-fueled fear. Jordan wanted to get back to the village and hadn’t realized he was leaving Alec in the dust till he picked up the sound of his voice, fearing something had happened. Jordan turned and ran back towards him quickly wide-eyed. “Are you alright??” he asked in frantic concern. It was becoming more unnerving by the moment as he continued thinking of the possibility of a Frankenstein-type monster experiment on the loose. Could they, would they create a subject comprised of DNA samples from various islanders. For some reason, Jordan thought way back to his childhood to an episode of GI Joe where they used genetic samples from deceased tyrants to create Serpentor and that only served to escalate his fears ten fold. What if they were using deceased subjects to create a super subject! The creepy factor made him tremble all over as if an arctic breeze had chilled him to the bone. “Calm down, Jordan… calm down, Jordan…” he chanted as a mantra and without thinking he blurted out what he was thinking “…there’s no mega-monster made from our genetic samples…” his paws trembled fiercely as they fidgeted and fumbled to keep the other steady without success. “..Franken-beast isn’t gonna find us…” He kept in line with Alec as he hadn’t realized, looking to and fro in a most paranoid fashion “..I hope…”

Oh how ironic for Jordan to state what he had. The dog-taur had no idea just how real the danger was for those who wandered the jungle without real weaponry and he was about to find out. As the two men stumbled through the relative darkness beneath the canopy, they had drawn the attention of one very dangerous predator. Jamal.

Jamal lifted his head, the fur mottled with fresh, sticky rabbit blood, and inhaled sharply, catching the mingled scents of human, dog, and something he couldn't recall encountering. The rabbit carcass at his feet was completely torn apart, the head the only part giving away it's identity with it's wide, clouded eyes and broken, gaping jaw. Even though it had been caught with intentions that did not involve eating, it still made him hungry...and it still made him extremely wary. Now, as he listened to movement his way, he was even more wary. Strangers, in his territory, meant only one thing to the tiger instincts. These were enemies and they shouldn't be here.

He moved swiftly, leaving the carcass behind for now as he loped in the four limbed run he had adopted and nearly mastered, slipping through the underbrush towards the sounds of these invaders. He was careful to keep himself as silent as possible, but for one so large, it was impossible to be perfectly undetectable. It wouldn't take much for either Alec or Jordan to detect movement in the bushes.

It was likely the growl that soon followed, rumbling deep from the unknown's chest, didn't put either at ease.

Before Alec could do any more flailing his chair started on auto-pilot with a hard jerk, sending the sharkboy clutching for balance. "Wheh'ye ge' this "monsteh" idea frum wha monsteh wha'dye talkin abou?!" At this point the teen was frantic, turning himself around in jerky twists of his torso to try and look back at Jordan, who was now shoving both of them into rapid motion. He realized he probably wasn't making any sense at this point but he didn't really care either.

"WAIT." He finally exclaimed and swung an arm over his head to try and get Jordan to stop for a moment. A pause followed before the youngster tentatively gripped an armrest of his chair to look to the side of him. ".... wha's tha' theh?" What he was referring to seemed to be nothing more than a few swaying branches until a clear sound affirmed that something definetly was not right.

Jordan thought he’d heard something and it made him even edgier, propelling their mutual movement along the trail and towards the ever-distant village. He was running, almost without any thought put into it, fleeing for their lives from the boogey man. “There’s no monster! There’s no monster!” he was actually shrieking now, like a coward, until Alec had shouted for him to wait and he jerked the wheelchair unintentionally as their descent from speed could have been more graceful. It resulted with Jordan using his feet-paws to grind into the ground, coming to an abrupt halt.

The noises coming from the foliage made him cower more after the shriek that followed the threatening growls. He didn’t let go of the wheelchair. He wasn’t going to leave Alec alone if something was out there- and unfortunately, it seemed there was, causing him to look all around in a most frantic, horror movie style. They were far from home, in no man’s land, and there really was something out there. Te thought that rushed through his head was ‘we’re gonna die!’. He’d hoped to god it wasn’t who he thought it was, literally pissing himself as the trail ran down his trimmed-back fur. “Oh god, Alec… I think there really is a monster out there!” he shrieked in a display of anti-bravery.

Confident that he could take either down at this point, Jamal launched himself through the brush, landing on all fours with a heavy thump a couple dozen yards down the path that the two had made. He was completely exposed to both Alec and Jordan now, but he had no need to remain concealed; both looked positively petrified.

He bared his elongated sabers, issuing a hissing threat before he moved forward, still on all fours. The gait lacked the perfect grace of a full tiger with how he did more of a lurch than a smooth glide, but it didn't seem to matter much. He was still moving with distinct purpose, although slow considering the circumstances, his gaze sliding from Alec to Jordan in a calculating manner. If neither had known any better, they might have though the tigerman was simply curious to judge how he was approaching. Alec, apparently, knew better.

As Alec began to shout, Jamal grew more irritable. Too much attention could be drawn here. Even so, he didn't utter a single human word to either, only another snarl.

Alec grunted as his body was lurched around with Jordan's attempt at fleeing the scene, jaw hung open in a perpetual look of horrified shock. They weren't going to escape. This all wasn't happening.

In reality everything was happening so fast that he could barely register a thing. They were flying at the speed of light back the way they came. Yes, the lake! The water was sanctuary, he'd be safe if he could just get to the wat-

A violent jar sent through his spine and the youngster was colliding hard with the ground, giving him just enough time to wonder why a soft bed of grass was never as soft as it seemed after you've fallen on it. His jaw hit the ground first but thankfully nothing was knocked loose, the rest of his body falling suit into a scattered pile of grey flesh lying on his stomach, dorsal fins pointing like sails of a boat. He could hear his wheelchair clatter feet away from him, Jordan yelled something, he couldn't see straight at all.

Everything was indeed a blur. They were supposed to flee to the safety of open area at the lake, where Alec could have returned to the water and Jordan could have at least taken refuge for as long as that would have lasted. Nothing ever goes according to plan when you’re a clumsy half-beast pushing a sharkboy in a wheelchair on a dirt trail while fleeing for your life from a vicious predator. And with that, that’s how they crashed and Alec lay on the trail, Jordan in so much pain he couldn’t move, despite the attempts to pull himself to his feet with the chair as leverage.

“Hang on…” he grunted, struggling to get off his knees, but his left leg gave out from underneath and his chin smacked into the metal chair as his head banged into the ground. He didn’t even have the chance to attempt a second time, holding his head in pain while one paw struggled to keep hold on that chair. If only he could flip the chair and somehow pick up Alec… but his thoughts were interrupted.

He happened to look back in utter and complete horror, screaming in the sort of fear that’s elicited from the messenger of death looming overhead. There had been no time to move, not on a bum leg, not while in such pain, even with the adrenaline rush, there was no hope of getting out of this unscathed. And at that last thought, he stared wide-eyed in terror as Jamal was descending.