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Jasmine sighed and ran her free hand through her hair, biting at her lower lip in order to squash the growl that was rising in her chest. Angel was in the examination room, with Zoe for both support and protection. No matter how much she wanted to hover protectively over the pregnant girl, there was no way she'd be able to avoid having either the nurse or doctor notice that she was a mutant.
So, she paced - ignoring Cat when the teen rolled her eyes at her - and continued circling the waiting room. It was a good thing that there was only one other couple there, otherwise the cramped confines of the room would have driven her insane.
She was halfway through another circle when a large hand lightly closed around her good wrist, and she frowned as she turned to look down into Eddie's blue eyes.
"You're making us dizzy," he told her before gesturing to the couple who were sitting on the other side of the small room. "And you're scaring them."
Now that he had mentioned it, she could smell the fear coming off of the couple, and the realization pulled a low grumble from her as she let him tug her down onto a chair beside him. Sighing, she slid her backpack off her shoulder and tucked it under her chair, closing her eyes as she lightly banged her head back against the wall, listening as Eddie spoke to Cat, who was teaching him the basics in sign language.
Frowning, she concentrated a bit more, just barely managing to make out the murmurs that were coming from the room Angel and Zoe were in. The tones were still calm, comforting, with no hint of any sort of stress or fear, and a deep inhale through her nose allowed her to dissect the scents of the office, confirming what her ears had already told her.
But her sense of smell was a double-edged sword. As soon as her mind confirmed that her friends were still alright, Eddie's odd scent hit her head on, and since she had nothing better to do, she automatically picked it apart. If she hadn't known that he was bonded to an alien symbiote, she would have thought him a mutant. True, while he wasn't quite human anymore, he still had some human masculinity in his scent, but most of it was overwhelmed or intertwined with a cool, very alien, and almost predatory tinge.
"...ine? Jasmine!"
She yelped, a very canine sound, and snapped her eyes open, jolting back in surprise and cursing when she slammed her head back against the wall. "Ow! What?!"
Eddie hesitated at the shadow in her eyes. "Are you alright?"
Cat took the opportunity to lean past him. -We've been trying to wake you for almost a minute! What's wrong?-
"I'm just tired. No worries, pup."
As Cat shrugged and sat back, Eddie frowned at her and reached up to tilt her sunglasses down so he could look into her green eyes, pitching his voice low so Cat wouldn't overhear. "You don't lie very well."
A growl bubbled up in her chest, but she firmly squashed it down. "I don't do it very often. Let go."
The symbiote's interest perked up in the back of his mind as he briefly considered not letting go. In the end though, he carefully resettled her sunglasses and leaned back into his chair.
*click*
The sound sent Jasmine to her feet, a low snarl escaping through already lengthening fangs as she turned towards it's source, eyes turning predatory gold when a series of thumps and curses came from the back of the office. The scent of too-familiar blood propelled her forward, a taloned hand shoving the nurse out of the way as she bolted behind the reception desk. She hit the exam room door with enough force that it splintered at the impact, startling the gunman who was trying to get a hold of a bleeding, struggling, biting and kicking, Zoe.
Without hesitation, she leapt at the intruder, talons ripping through the material of his shirt and deep into his flesh. As he staggered backwards in shock and pain, she swept his feet out from under him and took him out of the fight with a well aimed kick to his head, the sound of the solid hit making the wolf in her snarl in satisfaction that the threat he posed was permanently removed.
A second thug grabbed Zoe and used her as a shield, nuzzling a knife against her throat to keep her still as he used his other hand to rise his own handgun that had previously hidden under his jacket. Jaz saw it a fraction of a second too late. The first bullet tore through her right shoulder, ripping a howl of pain from her throat that was cut short when something huge tackled her to the floor, it's weight pressing her to the tiles as the rest of the gun's clip emptied into it.
Growling, Venom pinned her to the floor as the symbiote caught and expelled bullets as fast as they hit him, shielding her from the onslaught until a telltale click informed him that the soon to be dead gunman had run out of ammo. Mere seconds after the sound, he shot an arm up and fired a line of webbing, the steel strong fibers wrapping around the thugs legs; enabling him to yank the fools feet out from under him before a second web wrapped around the gunman's head and neck, effectively cutting off his air supply and leaving him to suffocate.
Before he could check on Jasmine, he found himself roughly shoved aside as the woman scrambled out from under him and darted to Zoe's side. He didn't bother to stop the low snarl that escaped him when he moved to get to his feet and caught sight of the freely bleeding gunshot wound in the mutants right shoulder.
"Zoe!" Jaz grabbed a bed-sheet from the counter with her left hand and used her fangs to help her rip a strip of cloth from it, reaching out to hold it against the deep gash that the flame haired teen had on her forehead. "Where's Angel?!"
Shaking from both fright and adrenaline, Zoe weakly gestured to the heavy examination table that had been shoved closer to the corner of the room, the overturned ultrasound machine that was toppled over it partially obscuring the hiding spot behind the bed.
Following Zoe's pointing finger, Venom crossed the room in two steps and effortlessly hauled the table away from the wall, the symbiote extending a tendril to toss the ultrasound machine out of his way as he reached out to gently scoop a pale Angel into his arms. "Did they hurt you? The baby..."
"I-I'm alright." Still shaken, Angel sagged into his hold, both of her hands covering her belly protectively. "T-they came out of nowhere. The nurse had just left and they barged- Oh God! Zoe!"
"Jasmine's looking after her," Venom rumbled, cradling her in his arms as he turned so that she could see her friends, his own narrowed gaze moving to Jaz's right arm where it hung at her side. Blood trickled down her arm from her shoulder, collecting at her fingertips for a brief moment before dripping to the floor.
"Lovely," Angel sighed upon seeing the state of the mutant's shoulder. "Who's looking after Jasmine?"
Despite his growing concern and the urge to see if the kidnapper that Jaz had incapacitated was alive enough to interrogate, a snicker left him at Angel's sarcastic remark.
A series of crashes and a high pitched scream came from the direction of the waiting room, and Angel sent a panicked look over at Jasmine and Zoe. "Ohmigod! Where's Cat?!"
With a horrified cry, Jasmine launched herself out of the small office, howling Catalina's name as she vaulted the reception desk and landed amid a mess of chairs and tables. The couple that she had frightened before were huddled in a corner, the man having thrown himself over his pregnant wife to protect her. The waiting room was a mess of new scents, and it was almost a full three seconds before Jasmine managed to filter through them and find Cat's more familiar aura. It was laced with fear and panic, along with a tinge of blood that pulled a low threatening growl from her throat.
"Jaz!" Worried, Zoe darted over to the raven haired woman, skidding to a stop when she realized that Jasmine was literally shaking with rage, her hands fisted at her sides as her breath hissed out from between clenched teeth. It was the sight of Cat's backpack, where it lay under an overturned chair, that clued Zoe in to what must have happened. "Oh. Oh, shit."
"They knocked her out and took her! We've called the police-"
The snarl that left Jasmine made the nurse faint dead away and actually made Zoe step away from her.
"We hope that wasn't because of us," Venom muttered as he eyed the unconscious nurse. He was still carrying Angel. While neither the symbiote or Eddie knew much about pregnancy, Eddie's knowledge of first aid was enough to let him know that the nasty bump on Angel's head, along with her still rapid heartbeat couldn't be good for the baby or the expectant mother. And he didn't know if the teen would be comfortable with the symbiote trying to sense if the baby was well or not.
"Zoe!" Angel had already tried to get Venom to put her down, and, once she found that he was apparently more stubborn than Jasmine, had instead ordered him to bring her out to the others. "Zoe, where's Cat?"
Swallowing around the lump in her throat, Zoe glanced at Angel and shook her head.
Another snarl rumbled out of Jasmine's throat, and the mutant let her rage wipe away the pain of the bullet wound in her shoulder as she spun and let her now gold wolf eyes settle onto Venom. "Get Zoe and Angel out of here!" she snapped, ignoring his baffled look as she yanked her jacket and tee shirt off and threw them towards Cat's backpack. "Bring them back to the motel!"
"We are not leaving you-"
"Go!" Her voice deepened, gaining a permanent feral growl to it. Her mouth felt too small for her growing fangs as she reached for her wolf, her senses sharpening with every heartbeat as she turned towards the office door. "You promised to protect them and I'm holding you to it!"
When he reached out with a symbiote tendril to stop her, Angel whacked him on the chest. "Don't! Don't touch her while she's Shifting!"
"Shifting?" The sound of a snarl accompanied by tearing cloth jerked his attention back to Jasmine, and he felt his jaw drop when he found himself staring at a six foot tall bipedal wolf. It stood on digitigrade legs with the aid of a bushy tail for balance, toe talons curling a little into the laminated floor as it finished ripping a cast off of it's left arm. "...and we thought we had seen everything."
She - he was oddly certain that it was female as he took note of her furred chest - had the sleek, graceful, musculature of a runner, though he was certain that, like her human form, her looks belied the strength that was hidden away.
Rich, black, fur seemed to shimmer under the lights. Most of the wolf's pelt was an inky black, with a few silver strands interspersed throughout, but, as he studied her, Venom found that her fur had an odd iridescence to it. The florescent lights accented the red highlights in her pelt, the out of place colour seemingly limited to certain patches - her ears, the top of her muscled shoulders, and the line of her spine.
Black fur shimmered, glimpses of silver and red catching the light as she gave herself a shake, tail lashing, before her ears twitched, her head turning towards him. Jaws parted, lips pulling back to show a muzzle full of fangs, eyes a predatory gold; and Venom had the absurd feeling that she was laughing at him. Tricky, puppy.
Jasmine stretched, reveling in the temporary euphoria that the Shift always gave her as she shook her fur into place, tail swaying in order to help her keep her balance as she turned to look at Zoe, Angel and Venom. The sight of blood on Zoe's face instantly reminded her why she had Shifted in the first place, and Jaz frowned as she rose a furred hand to wipe at the blood on Zoe's temple. Growling now, she turned her golden gaze onto Venom, slightly disturbed by the approving look he was giving her.
-Keep your promise,- she signed, rumbling at Zoe in thanks when the fiery-haired woman translated the sign language. Jaz paused to give Angel a worried nuzzle, then dropped to all fours and bolted out the door.
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