HAND ME MY SHOVEL, I'M GOING IN || RETURN

[QUIET]

[align=center][div style="text-align:justify;width:55%;font-family:verdana;"]The town, in all its ruin, had become a suitable home for the photosynth. It did not seem to bother her that there were others, stumbling around in the debris and attempting to make use of the destruction; they were like squirrels and strays, easily ignored and just as easy to pick off if she so chose. But she hadn't chosen the latter, not yet. There was always the chance that they could chase her off, bar her from seeping life out of this perfect environment. She was certain that no other place was as humid, as air-thick and rotting - no other place as conducive to her survival. In a sense, Snarl appeared one and the same, though her reliance on the marsh ruins took on... A different form.

Scent brings her out from the waters, air laden with ethanol. The atmosphere hums with it and she considers the past, less than voluntarily: the world igniting, hair burning off her skin, the scent of rubbing alcohol and searing flesh overtaking any sense of life and normalcy she could expect after such an injury. And now, nothing. Only the hum of parasitic movement under her skin remained, scar-like in their remembering.

A hiss leaks out from her teeth. Then, the song. She closes her lips and sings it soft, tongue pressed to the roof of her mouth to quell the violent buzz that had taken over her chest at such a brutal memory. Her humble tune rings out long before the pair can catch sight of her low and sneaking body; she follows the scent of alcohol, creeping towards the voices that would remind her all too much of seasons past and lives once lived.

She considers killing it. The other woman, that is - her violence seeps out into the air, an ache in the bones that can only be quelled with thrown fists in the same way she could only hum to silence the creature under her skin. Too alike, they were, and she wants her dead for it. That, or she was only eager to taste blood in her mouth that was not her own.

The parasites dance around her form, a shimmer in the dark that mimics Octane's own entrance. She calls him a cop. The creature wants to laugh at that, the mere thought that anyone in this town held some form of governance over the mighty wild. If they knew how to handle themselves, organize a force to be reckoned with, she wouldn't be standing here like the primal and bitter animal that she was. But in a show of unity, perhaps an olive branch of her own, the creature falls into position behind Octane, to watch through narrow eyes and wait. Strength stood in numbers, after all.