BURN
BRIGHT

When she wakes from her regular noon nap, alone and angry, Ninazu stays curled in the blanket for a long moment. She stares at her paw, clenching and unclenching her claws. It is a game she plays with herself, a rhythm she taps out. Can she remember all the faces she’s tortured? Can she remember all the faces of those that hurt her?

The lioness stirs only once the rage tears itself out of cold apathy. Flames lick down her face, taking substance where a male lion’s mane would be. If she were born male, perhaps she wouldn’t have suffered as much as she had. Her tail flicks the floor, the tip igniting and sparking.

Rage is an illusion, Ninazu knows all too well. All forms of anger are energy in its purest form, with no easy outlet.

She breathes, noticing the bubbling frustration. Rising. As it so often does, these days. Everything the lioness suffered flashes through her mind’s eye; she is used to the mental pain. But the dreams don’t stop. She sees them, over and over, stuffed in the hours where her body relaxes enough to close her eyes.

She rises to her paws. The blankets and skins fall off her shoulders, Stryker’s smell with them. He loves her. She doesn’t know why. Ninazu’s silent mind contemplates, but she doesn’t understand why many of these things others care about… matter. How jaded she is! How much brutality can one person inhale before growing bored of it all? She hit that number long ago.

The lioness pauses before leaving their makeshift home, glancing at the serval body in the corner. Her birth body. A thing. Why has she bothered with it, for this long? Keeping it around. Her claws poke out, she imagines killing and eating the damned thing, get rid of every trace of it. Turn the skin into a soft blanket.

She turns away and leaves it alone, flame-tipped tail flicking, flicking, flicking.

She saunters onto the beach. Her earth manipulation powers activate with each step, collecting the sand underneath her to keep her paws from sinking in. When her paws rise from the sand, not a single grain sticks to her pawpads or fur. This looks strange, on the beach, when she leaves a trail of impossibly perfect pawprints behind her.

But she will not stay on the beach for long. Like clockwork, Ninazu rises from her noon nap and walks into the surviving forestry of the island. She will pick a tree, appearing at random, to sit under. There she will remain, for hours until sunset begins, meditating. Occasionally, she will forage for a psychedelic mushroom before selecting the evening's tree.

Today, she considers… not meditating. Yet she will meditate, anyway; the days when she shouldn’t are the days when she needs it the most. If someone doesn’t interrupt her, that is.

© MADI

BURN
BRIGHT

“I am doing nothing,” Ninazu says, eyes closed. She hates dealing with Caesar. The fire on her tail burns brighter, and she attempts to slap him across the shoulders with it. Her aim is poor; her eyes are still closed, but she smells Caesar’s stink well enough to strike.

Her rage bubbles and boils again, clouding the tranquility of nothingness from her mind. She is a powderkeg ready to explode, more weapon than person. The lioness’s golden eyes open, brows already narrowed, the heat rolling off her mane in waves. The gold in her irises glint.

“Long-term results are difficult to quantify, aren’t they?” she growls, eyes scanning for Caesar. She doesn’t find him, until she remembers how short he is, and she looks down. “But I suppose you wouldn’t know anything about that. You’re more of an ass-on-fire improvisor than a strategist, aren’t you?”

The lioness exhales. As satisfying as chewing out Caesar is, releasing the anger only feeds the underlying frustration. She cannot lash out at anyone responsible for their group’s current plight. Ninazu prefers punching her way out of bad situations; this served her well in the Pitt, but nowhere else. She grits her jaw against further violence, verbal or physical, against Caesar.

She grins at Stryker, a lopsided smirk with too much fangs. But the heat fades from her fire. “Thanks for defending me,” she says, almost sarcastically.

Ninazu stands, flexing her shoulders and sinking her claws into the burned husk of a tree. After a quick stretch, spine popping all the way down, she steps off the burned bark and turns back to them. “Well, my meditation’s been interrupted. I suppose I should do something other than nothing.” She paws at her satchel and levels a nasty grin at Caesar, “If you have any wounds, perhaps I should throw moonshine on them?”

© MADI

"[glow=grey,2,300]what an interesting healing method,[/glow]" The dragon's coo would normally awash in it's own sarcasm, but call the beast nostalgic, she remembered meditating herself when she had the time to spare. it were more common before she joined the coalition, but now any spare time was taken and used towards the reconstruction if she had the energy, and rest otherwise. The entire group were still building up their reserves; their power. Building slowly into the powerhouse they would soon attain. Argus was still waiting on the scouting mission she was told to help aid in- the arrangements for that were still pending.

"[glow=grey,2,300] a waste, if you ask me[/glow]", she didn't comment on the fact it would be either a waste of a soldier or a resource. Both where in limited stock as of late for the group, and while she would find the amusement in it, she doubted that the results would prove anything but a drain in the end: still there were some credit for the anger that boiled under the lioness' gaze, dark and dangerous: Argus took note of it.

"[glow=grey,2,300]Try next time within one of the tree's if you truly need a peace for quiet: it is rare that anyone were to look up these days.[/glow]" She remembers a time far long ago, clawing up a palm tree to a hammock perched higher than most could reach- stealing it from who had built it but, ah. such times when she had a smaller form to hide.

BURN
BRIGHT

Ninazu snorts, upper lip curling. “You may be right, Argus.”

The lioness’s paw drops off her satchel. She drags her claws over the dirt, scratching overlapping circles subconsciously. Those gold eyes of hers drift from Argus to Caesar, narrowing. It is not satisfying enough to gift a little burn. Her tongue slides across her fangs.

As usual, once she feeds the need, it grows. Her lip twitches higher, until she grimaces and flicks her wrist dismissively. “It’s no fun if you want it. If you get off on pain, I’d rather watch your wounds fester, your sense of touch rotting away with the flesh. Exquisitely slow, too.”

Her scowl becomes a smirk. “Is that the ultimate way to deny a masochist? Rob them of their ability to feel anything. There’s nothing so pathetic as a creature begging for any touch at all. But a fucked up shit like you might enjoy humiliation.” Tail lashing behind her, the need crawls up her throat and sits in her mouth, saliva dripping down her fangs at the daydream.

Sighing, Ninazu rubs the back of a paw down her muzzle. If only the violence produced anything useful, she’d be the most productive animal in the group. “Thanks for the suggestion,” she adds, glancing back at the dragon. Ninazu thinks of the serval, her birth body, and thinks of all the nooks she could hide in with that small form.

© MADI