[shadow=black,left]VANDAL ROUX[/shadow]

As the sun began its gradual ascent to herald a new day, its golden curtain cast itself upon a peculiar sight on the barren shores. For a moment, the thing might have looked like a discarded black rug, lopsided in its folding and moth-bitten in places, but as the morning rays grew stronger, it became clear that the ragged lump was less of a what and more of a who. Instead, there was a shape to it, bent in unsightly angles but certainly familiar. The corpse was only blackened fur and half-decayed... until it wasn't.

With every passing minute, the body began to reform itself, its hole-riddled flesh weaving into itself to form an unbroken layer. Fur grew where it had previously stopped, thickening around the head and neck before growing sparser, denser—scales covered the rest of the body from behind the shoulder and onwards, as black as night and perfectly unmarred. The broken horns found perched on the creatures head became unbroken, undamaged, and the tattered wings that were spread across either side where made whole again. When the reconstruction was complete, a beat of silence gripped the figure, followed by a flickering of light.

Its horns and its gills both sputtered to life in a vibrant, glowing green, the shade ever so subtly brightening and dimming as the creature found its first few breaths in two long, grueling, dead years. It refused to come to, not yet, but it remained sleeping on the familiar shores of the Typhoon, a sight so painfully familiar. The water left its body, lastly, draining from within her and tracing an unusual path back to the ocean, meeting the tides' gentle embrace. It seemed satisfied that it had returned the creature to the shore.

Vandal slept through the morning peacefully, awaiting the next poor, unfortunate soul to stumble upon her. She looked like she hadn't aged a day from when she'd last been seen, her sickly body drawn into the storm as it sought to reclaim its warrior, however it was evident that she'd been through hell—quite literally—from the soggy, drenched fur to the thin, almost starved frame that had fed on nothing but perhaps spirit sludge in the past two years. Quite certainly, she looked worse for wear, but she was alive again, and that was more than enough.

[shadow=black,left]VANDAL ROUX[/shadow]

At the nudge on her shoulder, the figure stirred only slightly, letting out a whined groan and moving a paw in the air to shoo them away. "Five more minu'es, Pinchy..." Her words trailed into a soft, muted sigh, caught a second time by a heavy curtain of sleep, but the words were enough to ascertain the identity of the mutated black maned wolf sprawled haphazardly across the Typhoon's shore. It was none other than Vandal.

At the continued verbal assault, the creature's sleepiness finally slipped away from its grasp. Slowly, its outer lids peeled open, followed by the nictitating membranes that many Rouxes had carried in their blood. When they parted, vibrant green eyes shone beneath, carrying a subtle glow as its eyes moved around before landing on Michael.

"You're no' Pincher," she commented slowly, eyes continuing to watch him. Despite the confused tone in her voice, her gaze seemed delighted enough, and the melanistic maned wolf offered Michael a sleepy grin from the ground. "But you're melanistic and a canine like me, we're probably related." With that, Vandal slowly pushed herself off the ground and into a seated position, unfurling her long, leathered wings and giving them a satisfied stretch. Her jaws parted wide, revealing an equally green and glowing tongue, and she yawned loudly before settling again, licking her lips to drive away their numbness.

A green feather dangled from one of her heavily pierced ears, and a necklace hung from around her neck. After a beat, she made a gesture with her talons and summoned a small satchel from elsewhere in the world, reappearing it close to her long tail. "Sorry for passin' ou' on your border like tha'—travellin' from th'deep takes a ton of energy, apparently." She gave her black pelt a shake, bending the last droplets of water from it and returning it to the ocean. Finally, Vandal stretched out a talon-armed paw towards Michael, offering him a grin in greeting, as if she had not been dead less than an hour ago. "Vandal Roux, nice tah meetcha. No need tah fuss over me. M'just back to be with my family an' avoid anythin' god-related for th' next millenia." The maned wolf offered a wolfish chuckle. "Wha's your name?"