Okay I had another one hit me. Yes I know I have unfinished ones, and blame the blockage monster - and a few real world blockages - at least the creative juices are flowing in some direction.

Summary: We all know that the most successful hunters, serial killers, and psychopaths hide in plain sight, successfully blending in with normal society. Logically, Sabretooth should follow that trend. I've written him in a normal environment before, but not like this. 25 years after Origins, Origins Sabretooth/Victor CreedXOC. (Yes that puts him 'working' during X1, I am assuming the events of X1 took place over spring break, and that Creed has some control of how to alter his appearance so he is not 'recognized' in his 'day job.')

Disclaimer: I don't own them, no really I don't. I swear I make nothing off of this except the satisfaction to get some sick stuff out of my head safely. Typed this on my Blackberry so excuse any typos, my fingers are just NOT that small.

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She glared at the page in front of her, hoping the squiggles and letters and numbers would suddenly make sense. She had ear plugs in, that seemed to help with the hearing problem, she could hear when people were talking without hearing what they were saying down the street. She'd discovered a whole new realm of music, if you can call it that. At night while most everyone was asleep she sat at the window of her dorm room and listened to the wind in the grass and trees. It was better than any man made sound.

The headache was still pounding and she only had the weekend left to get this or fail the mid term. She'd spent the last week either in the Math Lab or in her room studying. She'd started wearing gloves to hide the strange claws that replaced her fingernails, and refused to smile, the elongated teeth made her look like some kind of monster.

She nearly gagged at a sudden and horrible smell in the room.

"What is thay God awful smell?"

"Air freshener, you bought it." Val said, her tone sharp.

"Sorry, must have developed an allergy or something." Kathy muttered. Val opened the window and Kathy cringed as the television blared to life, loud even through the ear plugs.

"...other news, a strange turn in the gang war in New York City, 9 members of the Ochora Gang with ties to the Humans First movement were found dead in Central Park. All the victims had the same cause of death, they had been mauled by a large animal. What is strange is that all the bodies were laid out in a distinctive pattern." Kathy turned to look at the screen the aerial shot showed police around a group of bodies laid out in the letters K G. She felt a chill down her spine, and looked at the long talons on the end of her fingers. She shook her head, it couldn't have anything to do with her.

"Freaky...I'm staying at Frank's tonight, unless you need anything. Kathy just shook her head. There was something wrong with her nose, Val was starting to smell like a really good steak or pork chop and it made Kathy hungry just to be around her. The problem was she hadn't been able to eat for days, the cafeteria food smelled rotten and it turned her stomach to try to eat there. On Tuesday she'd gone to vacuum her dad's house and found a thawed steak in the fridge. She'd been so hungry she'd cut bites off it in the skillet as she'd cooked it, pulling it just as it got warm and ate it almost raw. It still tasted half rotten but she'd eaten it anyway. She hadn't been able to eat anything else since.

Val scuttled out of the room, a small bag in her hand, and Kathy finally breathed a sigh of relief. She turned the TV down to a bearable level and looked longingly at her bed. She needed sleep almost as much as she needed something to eat, but she had to pass this exam. She pulled the plugs out of her ears and adjusted the TV volume one more time. They were still talking about the gang killing in New York. Her headache suddenly stopped.

It took her a second to realize her head wasn't pounding anymore. That frightened her almost more than all the changes combined. She glanced down at the problem on the page, and her attempts to solve it, and something clicked. She erased half the solution and tried something else. She flipped to the back of the book and shocked herself by having the right answer.

Ten problems later she pushed the book away from her, fear coursing through her veins. She'd even tried things they hadn't covered yet, advanced formulas, and those were right too. She decided a shower might be a good idea.

She stood under the hot water, her skin turning a dark red as she washed her hair over and over. She put unscented body wash on a mesh scrubbing ball and started to scour her skin. As she was running the lather over her arm she noticed it turning pink, the a dark red as the shower filled with a copper and iron scent. She put her arm under the water and gasped at the long scratches on her arm, not that they were there, but as they closed before her eyes and the last of the blood rinsed away leaving no sign of the injury. She could feel the water cooling as she ran her nails over her skin again, hissing at the pain, but watching, fascinated as the skin healed over. She dropped to the floor of the shower stall and cried as she sliced across her wrist diagonally, watching the blood pump out for a few seconds, then heal again. She didn't feel the moisture on her face as the cooling water poured down on her head.

XxxXxxxxxxx

He couldn't believe how stupid the stunt in New York had been. Spelling her initials in bodies and blood. She was just a fucking student. He could feel the animal raging against him at that thought. He pushed it back into its cage and tried to clear the thoughts of having her on all fours in front of him, head hanging down, her light brown hair hanging off one shoulder as he pounded into her, leaning over and sinking his fangs into the curve of her neck, claiming her as his mate.

He shook his head. It wasn't going to happen. The repercussions to his career would be detrimental to say the least. He walked past the dorm buildings on his way to his faculty apartment when he caught the smell of blood - and lots of it.

He ducked behind a bush and thanked his lucky stars this side of the building was in shadow. He dug his claws into the mortar between the bricks and climbed up until the scent was over powering. The window to the room was open and he casually noticed the calculus book open on the desk. Someone had sprayed one of those chemical air fresheners and it was playing havoc with his nose. He could smell the blood, but the scents of those who lived in the room were eluding him. He followed the blood scent to the bathroom.

She was curled into a ball, the streaming shower running cold on her body. He lifted her out of the six inch pool of blood that flowed over the lip of the shower and onto the bathroom floor. Her hair had partially blocked the drain and as soon as she was on her feet, leaning against him it started to drain. He pushed her under the shower stream, rinsing the blood off of her body and looked for any open wounds. He pushed her hair out of her face and realized who he was supporting. The first thought was that his animal had a good imagination, all the details were anatomically correct. The next thing he noticed were her eyes, looking at him hungrily, as if he were a steak on a platter. She was leaning dangerously over one arm and he shifted her support to his side, without thinking. That put her head on his shoulder, and her mouth against his throat. Later he would kick himself for a fool, but as he reached to turn off the water she moved slightly, and he felt a sudden piercing pain in the juncture between his throat and chest. He let out a roar, and his vision flooded red. The animal took control.

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It was scent that woke her up, or the lack of it. The first scent she noticed was the scent of leather, but over that something was missing. Everything smelled clean, nothing reeked of bad gym socks or stale beer and sex. The air smelled like a pine forest, it was overwhelming, but a nice change from the dorm.

She slowly sat up, expecting her head to start pounding as soon as she did, another pleasant surprise when it didn't. She heard movement and opened her eyes. She was in the back seat of a large black SUV. The door next to her feet was yanked open by Professor Creed. She glared at him for a moment until she realized he was holding his hand out to help her out of the car.

The suddenness of sound assaulting her unplugged ears made her realize that the car was soundproof. She could hear birds, the chirping of squirrels and other small rodents, and somewhere she heard a strange scraping noise.

"If you concentrate on just one sound the others fade to a dull white noise." He said, offering no other explanation. She climbed slowly out of the car. She picked out a different scent, one that caused her heart to race. The coppery-iron scent of blood. It was on his shirt, and it was then she realized she wasn't wearing anything but a blanket.

"What...?" She started, but he just helped her out of the car and wrap the blanket around her before easing her down onto a rock.

"What do you remember about this evening?" He asked softly, as if trying not to scare her. Too late for that, she thought.

"I went to take a shower..." She started. "...and every thing else is blank."

"Is it?" He growled, actually growled, and she noticed his teeth were elongated like hers. She closed her eyes. She got in the shower and was scrubbing herself when she cut herself and her arm healed.

"I cut myself with these damned new fingernails and it stopped bleeding and healed right in front of my eyes. I just kept cutting my arm and watching it heal, then everything is blank." She said, just as softly, something was wrong.

He nodded. "So you weren't trying to kill yourself, not that you could, trust me."

She shook her head. "No, I just couldn't stop watching it."

"Good, then all we are dealing with is blood loss, not a suicide attempt." He sat on another rock. "I don't deal with all that depression crap, most people who pull that on me end up dead."

"You just don't care enough to stop them?" She asked.

"No they annoy the shit out of me and - usually - I rip their throat out." He glared at her. She gulped.

"Nope no suicide." She said.

"You'll get used to the healing, its one of the nicer parts of this." He waved his hand as if encompassing the world. "The senses you learn to control, touch and taste are the two hardest to get used to. Natural fiber, washed several times before you wear it helps with the skin, and no polyester or rayon it will cut you like glass."

She just stared at him. Why was he telling her this, how did he know?

"They call it a feral mutation, and from your reactions at least a class four or five. You have heightened senses, all of them, the external characteristics help identify which subclass of feral you are, I'd say feline, just by lookin'." He looked at the hand holding the blanket tight around her. He stood and walked over to kneel in front of her. He took her hand roughly and pulled it out into the open and pressed her palm to his. She watched in horrified fascination as his fingernails extended almost six inches from the tips of his fingers. She looked at her own hand and watched hers extend as well, and almost as long. Suddenly she understood. He knew because he was one and somehow decided to help her understand as well.

"So why'd I black out?" She asked.

"One of two reasons, either a, your animal took complete control of your body which I doubt, you'd remember what you did, just wouldn't have any control over it; or, b, you lost too much blood and your body went into shut down survival mode." He went back to his rock and she noticed him pulling on the collar of his shirt.

"So if I healed up, where'd that blood come from?" She pointed to his shirt.

"You bit me." He said simply.

"Oh." She huddled deeper in the blanket. She was distracted by a scent, like someone just dropping a nice thick steak on a grill. Not after it had cooked a minute but that first smell of heated blood on metal. Her nose wrinkled as she tried to figure out where the scent was coming from.

"You smell it? That's prey. You hunt it, kill it, eat it." She looked at him stunned. He wanted her to hunt like this. Her growling stomach and something that roared to life in the back of her head pushed her out of the way in her own body...it was like he'd said, she was aware of what her body was doing but she had no conscious control.

She watched in amazement as she threw off the blanket and dropped to all fours and took off running through the woods. She was following her nose, looking for that delicious smell. She somehow found herself in the top of a tree looking down on a clearing with a cluster of deer. She felt her body let go of the tree and drop down on one of the animals, her hand under the jaw of the animal as she leaned in and, with her teeth, ripped the animal's neck open, its life-blood flowing onto the ground as her weight forced it down.

He came up, on all fours, but with a long knife in his hand. He snarled and growled at her until she backed away from her kill and he quickly took the head and skin from the carcass, then left her to go back to his own kill. She snarled, then leaned in and with her sharp claws cut the ribcage of the animal open and reached in to pull out the still pulsing heart.