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They say most of your brain shuts down in cryo-sleep. The higher thoughts, the things they call reason, it all just sort of shuts off. All that's left is the base instincts, the primal needs. The animal side.

The Furyan couldn't remember how he wound up in that little cryo-capsule escape pod. Didn't know how long he'd been floating out there, drifting aimlessly until someone or something picked him up. Or until they didn't. There wasn't enough conscious recognition left to realize when he fell into the gravity well of a black hole. Just the knowledge that suddenly the starlight disappeared and everything seemed to compress.

And then he woke up on a grassy hillside on a nice sunny day, staring up at a bird in a tree that was staring down at him. What, was he dead now? Was this supposed to be heaven? He doubted it. Heaven wasn't supposed to leave you feeling bruised and aching.

He rolled to his feet, his mind already registering things on that primal level that his reasonable mind either hadn't or wouldn't catch on to yet. A grunt, a groan, some gritted teeth and he managed to push himself up into a crouch. It was when he tried to stand, or at least to stand the way he was used to, that it finally registered that something was seriously different.

It was too bright. His body was sending his mind a lot of strange signals, and while there was a vague idea forming of what had happened, his brain needed an image to attribute everything to before it would settle. He still felt too dazed to think in anything but simple terms. One limb felt around on the grass where he'd been laying and finally, there, there were his goggles.

He noted the lack of thumbs pretty fast when he tried to slip them on, but he adjusted quickly enough. Then there was shade to sooth the burning brightness in his retina and he took a look at himself. Fur. It was the same color as his skin had been, but it was definitely fur. Tail...s? Three tails? He couldn't imagine what he'd ever need three for, but he had 'em and he supposed he'd better find some use for them. Muzzle. Long ears. Paws.

He'd been through a lot of weird s**t, but this took the cake.

The enhanced hearing was new, as was the sense of smell. Not something he couldn't get used to; he'd used those sensory organs to their extreme limits when he was human. Had to when the entire universe was after you. He could get used to a lot of things; assess, adapt, move on. Story of his life. This wasn't any different.

Well, all right, it was a little different.

Whatever had happened, where ever he was, Riddick wondered if the people who'd chased him across so many worlds would bother following him here. If they even knew how. Beyond the bizarre shift in body structure he knew, on that primal level, that here was far beyond anything those people could reach. He eyed the rather serene surroundings and uttered a barely imperceptible sound that was somewhere between a derisive snort and a resigned sigh. "Guess I better look around..."

Well the sound and sight of wood exploding into a shower of splinters was pretty damned hard to miss, especially since it was straight in front of him down the path he'd found. His first instinct was to slip into the shadows underneath the trees until he could assess the situation. He never went against his instincts without a good reason.

He slipped into the brush at the side of the path and drifted quietly closer. Without his thoughts getting into the way of his body it slipped into the silent predatory rhythm it had always known. It was an animal thing.

Once he'd gotten closer he watched for a moment as Alcyone sparred with the trees. Several thoughts crossed his mind; one was a question of whether all the natives were this strong and... colorful. She was the first other person he'd encountered, so it wasn't like he had anything to base any assumptions off of. At least he could tell she was a person; masks and protective leather wraps weren't something you really attributed to wild beasts. And were all the people here these little furry creatures? He wasn't sure if that made him feel better about the change or not.

One thing he actually didn't have to wonder about was how he could tell so easily that she was female; his nose never lied to him about a girl. The long hair helped, too, though in his experience that wasn't in any way a dead indication of gender.

He finally slipped out of the brush then and finished walking up the path, stopping to stand a few feet away. "Smug bastards, trees." His voice wasn't exactly monotone, just a bit gravelly to give it some flavor without making it unpleasant. But there was no real indication of emotion in his posture or his goggle-covered eyes, except perhaps a vague sense of muted amusement at her activity. If he was at all uncomfortable with her looks or her power, there was absolutely no sign.

Instinct. Some shunned it, saying it was obsolete, that civilized people didn't need it. But instinct kept you alive, and not many people would think to refer to Riddick as "civilized". The sort of people Riddick got along with definitely weren't the high society types. And any wolves or coyotes that ran into Riddick... well since he was still new to this body they might stand a chance. Maybe.

He gave an amused smirk at her reply to his comment. What do you know, someone with a sense of humor. "Everyone says what goes around comes around." He grinned a little bit. "Kinda wonder what it is that's going around sometimes, though."

Her looks were... different. It was hard not to notice the avian flare behind the way she moved, which colored the way she looked into something different than what looks alone might bring to mind. Though what her looks brought to mind for him was the hell-hounds on Crematoria; they were actually more feline in nature than canine, and in spite of the name they were just animals. Animals adapted to life on a planet that was always either so cold normal creatures would freeze in the night or vaporize during the day. They were vicious, territorial creatures; but they were just animals. They had an understanding during his brief stay in the cellblock there when the guards let them out to hunt down the weakest and slowest convicts. He liked them better than most people.

"Am I all right? That's probably a good question, "honey". I guess you could say I'm new here." There was nothing aggressive or suggestive in his tone when he mimicked her friendly term. It was, at most, a sort of playful challenge. "I was in deep space about an hour ago, so I'd have to say I don't know what's going on." No point beating around the bush. Either she'd know enough to figure out what he was talking about and possibly help him, or she wouldn't know and might not be of much use in figuring out why he was like this. But if nothing else maybe he'd get some useful information on the inhabitants and a place to stay. If he decided to stay anywhere. He never was very good at staying in one place for long.

The way she said "space" told him one thing for sure. Apparently the natives weren't familiar with space exploration. In answer he simply pointed up toward the sky. "Out there."

And as far as Riddick was concerned, she had every right to that confident saunter. She could make trees explode by punching them. That had to be worth bragging about. It wasn't like he wanted to take her out anyway; she hadn't given him a reason. And attacking someone based on looks, especially the first person you met in a new place, well that was just bad manners, wasn't it?

"Them huh?" This must happen often enough, then, whether it was really common. "Believe me, lady, this is pretty weird. But with the life I've had weird isn't all that strange." He flexed his muscular shoulders and rolled his neck to try and get it to pop. "Aside from the new body, this has actually been pretty mild."

Realm of the Kitsusagi. Was kitsusagi the name of the form he now had? Hmm. Her second question actually made him think for a minute though. "No idea. Haven't tried to eat anything since I got here." He grinned again, full of a confidence of his own. "But I like living life on the edge."

Special powers? Riddick didn't know about that, unless you counted his eyes. But that was just genetic. It wasn't something non-Furyans had, but the only reason it seemed unusual was because there weren't hardly any Furyans left after... Well, he supposed he might qualify for the "drama" part.

He let Alcyone check him over all she wanted. Aside from a few aches that were already starting to fade he wasn't hurt, in so far as he could tell. He was standing in a pose that seemed relaxed, maybe even lazy, but a real fighter would be able to tell that he was still ready just in case someone decided to jump from pretty much any angle. Unless they came up out of the dirt under his feet, he was pretty much covered.

"Well, I ain't gonna play lackey for anybody, and I sure as hell ain't gonna fight someone else's war." He shifted, stretched, and settled. "It's not my problem if they want to kill each other." He had nothing to do with it. Though if they tried to drag him into it, he'd sure as hell finish what they started. And they wouldn't like it. Her final words on the matter seemed to put the nail in the coffin, but when he thought about it maybe that wasn't so bad. "I don't know that I had much worth going back for." No home, and the only two people he'd ever really given a s**t about were dead. An entire universe after the bounty on his head. No, not much.

As for a destination... it might be handy to know where the buildings were. It never hurt to have a back up plan. But he preferred the outdoors; there was always an exit, and it was a lot harder to set up an ambush when there was no way someone could pinpoint where he'd be. Sure, maybe he wouldn't need to worry about that kind of thing here... but Riddick never was able to believe in "happily ever after". He grinned as Alcy examined her claws, one predator to another. "Riddick. And I'm not one for sitting around." He bowed, one paw lifted to indicate she should preceed him. "After you." It was no mockery, not really. The move looked as incongruous coming from him as it was for her to be recieving it.

Riddick followed after Alcyone, not making any real commitment to feeling glad or peeved at the pace she set. He knew why she was doing it, and he couldn't quite say yet that it wasn't necessary. He seemed to have found a rythym and walked along quite smoothly, as long as he didn't let himself get distracted with thinking about where to put which foot when. But he really wasn't the sort to overcomplicate things by thinking about them too much. Not to say he didn't think before jumping into a situation; he just didn't let himself get so distracted by the "what if"s that it made him hesitate. When he decided, he'd decided, and he was gonna follow through with it and face the consequences when he got there.

"They usually shot at me from as far away as they could manage. People who tried to slice me up had to get in my range. Didn't work out well for them." His little smirk and the way he said it were, admittedly, a little bit cocky. But he'd damn well earned that confidence. His expression shifted back into nuetral fairly quickly though, his senses turned more toward monitoring the surroundings. Yeah... he'd been ambushed too many times to drop his guard, especially in a situation this strange.

The trees did take him a few more minutes than he'd have liked. He was going to have to practice climbing in this new form. Things simply wouldn't fly as they stood now. The creek bed was pleasant enough, if a little more complicated as far as a fight went; you could see them coming better, and there was more room to maneuver, but it meant the enemy could move more easily too. But it was give and take like that with any terrain.

"They wanna waste time, that's their problem. As long as they're not wasting mine." Like war veterans ranting about past glories or families fueding over reasons they don't even remember anymore. Stupid waste of energy. But if they wanted to b***h and moan and posture at eachother Riddick didn't really care, as long as they didn't drag him and his into it. Not that were hardly ever any of "his" to get dragged into something. Having people to care about never really seemed to work out for him for very long.

Alycone's sudden change in momentum set off Riddick's mental warning alarms and caused him to shift backward himself. Just far enough to be out of her immediate reach. Far enough to give him room to react. His posture shifted too, though it would have looked lazy to an observer uninitiated in the way of fighters. It was only relaxed enough to allow him to shift in pretty much any direction. If you let yourself get too stiff it limited your range of movement and made it a lot easier for the opponent to read your movements.

Riddick cocked his head and lifted an ear when Alcy made her proposal. Well then. "Interesting." He rolled his shoulders. Yeah. She wasn't hostile toward him, and while he was sure he could handle himself well enough in this body if something came up (it basically made everything a ground fight, and as long as he didn't let himself get knocked down she had a point about not having to worry about his belly as much) it would be better to see what adjustments he'd need to make now, in a situation where he wasn't in actual danger. "Why not."

He was going to wait for her to make the first move, though. He rarely made the first move unless he was at least 90% certain it would also be the one that ended the fight.

Riddick could tell, maybe by some subtle trick of posture that translated easily from human opponents to kitsusagi ones, that in spite of Alcyone's otherwise unsubtle personality that this attack wasn't as straight forward as it appeared. Besides, that would be too easy. He could tell she was no novice. Neither was he... he just had a bit of a handicap at the moment.

The dust made him cough a bit at first, but he had one up in that the goggles kept the stuff out of his eyes. It was difficult to see through, but he didn't have to close his eyes and lose all visibility. He couldn't see much during the moments the dust flitted wildly in the air before starting to settle again in a rain of gravel and the slow filtering of the cloud down through the air, but he thought he saw movement off to the side near the ravine wall. Instict called for him to move away from it.

Well. He didn't ignore his instincts without a good reason, after all.

He sprinted forward, heading farther down the way she'd been leading him. It would make sense given the tactic for Alcyone to try and circle behind him and get the drop on him, so he was going to head the other way while the dust was still clouding the air a bit. If his hunch was wrong, well... he'd deal with that when he got there. But he wasn't going to play sitting target.