12:00 noon in Jump City, and so far I had accomplished nothing productive. That was probably because my mind wouldn't shut up. Ever since my awkward and painful greeting with Raven and her friends, I'd been pacing back and forth in an abandoned warehouse thinking. First there was Doctor Light, a villain from Jump City who traveled all the way to Anchorage just to obtain my powers. Even for a villain that seemed odd.
Was there really no other way to get this "ultimate power" he seeks? And why target me? From what I could tell Raven's powers alone rivals mine, and from what I've gathered they're recurring enemies from the same town. What, am I a weaker target? Oh, my God, did I just say that? Next time I see that doctor he'd better watch his back, 'cause I'm gonna be chewing on it.
And then there's Starfire. She's held this grudge for six years against me. How long has she been living here on Earth? Is she after my brother, too? And what of the people on her home planet? And what happened to Blackfire? I couldn't have corrupted her, could I?
And finally, Raven. What's her story? What makes her tick? Wait a second, why do I care? Why am I concerned about who she is? I mean it's not like she brought me here, she didn't attack me, and she's not the one who drained my powers. I'm not here for her, I'm here because….. oh, shit! I forgot! It was then I had realized that after all that time I had failed to contact anybody back home since my battle with Doctor Light. Upon realizing this I summoned my aura and tried to light up the sky with my aurora just as I did to summon Taiyo before, but nothing happened. My powers were still damaged from the battle, and lighting the sky was apparently out of the question at that point in time. With no way of calling the other Elementals from across the globe, I would have to settle for just dialing home. I quickly Changed back to my human form and ran out of the warehouse to find the nearest payphone.
It took about 30 minutes for me to find a payphone. All that time I spent just thinking, I should've spent on getting to know the city. I walked to the phone and looked down at the coin slots. It charged $0.75 for a single call, and it was safe to assume there was a time limit. I checked my wallet in my back pocket. Nothing but a $5 bill. I checked my other pockets to see if I had any spare change.
Let's see here, gum, some pocket lint, Mallory's…. I paused at the sight of Mallory's blindfold. I had been holding onto it for so long I would've thought I'd moved on by now. Apparently I didn't. I shook my head as if to snap myself out of a trance and continued. More lint, wadded up gum wrappers, and three pennies, lovely. The payphone didn't accept $5 bills so now I had to go get change. Fortunately, there was a pizza joint across the street from the payphone.
The streets had very little traffic, so when the street had cleared I started to jaywalk. With no cars around, and no detection of any nearby cars, it felt safe to walk across. About halfway across I heard the revving of an engine, but the sound came from what appeared to be about three blocks away. I pick up the pace a little bit, not that I felt I needed to, there was no way they would be able to drive three blocks before I walked to the other side. I was wrong. Out of the corner of my eye I saw a flash of red, and my nose caught a whiff of something smelling of ash. And then I blacked out.
When I came to I was on my back, lying on top of something lumpy and made of plastic. I try to lean forward, but my abdomen had other ideas. It screamed in discomfort, causing me to fall back to my original position. Whatever it was that hit me did quite a number on me. I shifted my position to try to roll over and something snagged on my belt and ripped. I immediately felt something wet on my thighs, and the smell that followed was gnarly. Having no idea what it was I was kneeling in I shoot up to stand and hit my head on something metal. I rub my head in an attempt to reduce the pain with one hand, while I search through the dark with the other. My body was weak, and I was back in human form so I couldn't see in the dark and my eyes had not yet adjusted. Plus that blow to the head didn't help matters much either. With my free hand extended I felt more metal, this time it was a wall. I take my other hand from my head and reach again. Another metal wall. I move one hand along the wall and I step in something else. This time it was my left knee, and what I stepped in smelt like rotten eggs. Considering I was already covered in filth, in an act of bravery I took my right index and middle fingers and rubbed some of the substance off of my knee and held it to my nose. I did step in some rotten eggs. At this point I knew exactly where I was, and I was ticked off. I reached for my back pocket, and just as I expected, my wallet was missing, which only ticked me off even more. I tucked in my right shoulder and rammed the wall to my right. The rusty dumpster creaked as I did so. I rammed it again, same result. The dumpster was absorbing the blows I was inflicting to it, and it showed no signs of capsizing.
After being blasted, electrocuted, tackled, kicked, and almost drowning, I refuse to lose to a frigging dumpster! I punched the dumpster wall. It left a dent, and the dumpster creaked again, but this time the sound came from above, towards the opening. When that happened I improvised an idea. I punched at the wall repeatedly, making the dents bigger and deeper each time. Eventually I punched the wall enough to make a small crack in the opening above. When the crack was big enough, I Changed my hands into paws and slipped them through it, pried open the dumpster, and stuck my head out. I looked around to see that the dumpster had a metal pipe over the top of it to act as a lock, and from there I looked down to see the damage I made to the wall from the outside. That looks like enough damage for one day, I thought as I Changed yet again, this time I thought smaller. I could feel my brown eyes turning green as I underwent the Change from human to serpent. Slowly as I Changed, I slithered my way across the top of the dumpster and down one of the undamaged walls. I shivered as the cold, and extremely rusty metal scraped against my black scales. Once that unpleasantness was over I started my way out of the alley when I heard voices.
"Check it out, guys. Got stuck in a dumpster." His comment was followed by the snickering of two others. I didn't even need to look to see where the voices were coming from. Although I was a snake, I could still hear quite well. They were standing on the fire escape right above me, and the scent that my tongue picked up as I flicked it told me that they were rats. I ignored their comments and continued my way to the end of the alley. I paused for a moment when the talker of the group spoke again. "Fellas, I'm telling' ya, that has got to be the biggest earthworm I've ever seen." More laughter followed. I was already ticked off. I had been mugged and thrown in a dumpster, I'd been ambushed several times within the past 48 hours, and on top of all of that, I'd been called a dog while in my wolf form, so the last thing I was willing to tolerate was being called a worm while in my snake form by a pack of rats. Plus, now that I was thinking about it, I hadn't eaten in a while, and it'd been even longer since I'd hunted. I rattled my tail as a warning. "Oh ho ho, I think he's getting mad. Whatcha gonna do, about it? We're up here, and you're down there." I lifted my head and turned to face them. "What, did I hurt your feelings? You got something to say, Wormy?"
"Two thingssss. One, if you ratssss had any ssssensssse, you would've sssseen that I can become sssseveral animalssss. And two, I'm in the mood for a ssssnack. The rats looked at one another with slightly worried looks. With lightning speed and werewolf strength I swung my tail and struck the wall that the fire escape was built on. The wall cracked a little bit as I did so and the fire escape shook, causing one of the rats to lose his balance and fall off the railing. And much to my delight, it was the one that talked too much for his own good. Giving him no chance to hit the ground first, I leapt into the air and sunk my fangs into his neck while simultaneously wrapping my body around him. I could hear his two friends scampering away up the fire escape as I hit the ground with my prey still in my grasp. I hungrily watched him below me as he struggled to free himself, but only tightening my grip as he did so. To add insult to injury, I became curious about what he was thinking. "Penny for your thoughtssss", I asked as if I expected him to respond, which I didn't. I could feel my eyes turning purple as I entered the rat's mind.
Just then I was pinned to the ground and above me was a giant rattlesnake with black scales and purple eyes. I couldn't move and I couldn't breathe. It was then that I heard another heartbeat which once again wasn't my own. It wasn't Raven's either, it was the rat's. His thoughts echoed through my head as if I were listening to music.
Help! Somebody help me! I don't wanna die! I'm scared! Monster! That last comment, "monster", made me pause for a moment to reflect. I was about to kill this rat, why? Was it simply because I was hungry and needed to hunt? Or was it to get revenge? Or was it both? Any one of the rats could've fallen, but the one that insulted me did, and I enjoyed the fact that he did.
Being an animagus, that is a mutant with the power to turn into animals, I was both blessed and cursed with the best of both worlds. I had the knowledge and ability to live in both the animal and human worlds as freely as I chose, and sometimes living between both worlds creates inner conflicts. For an animal to kill, it's a way of life. It's just how the world worked. For a human to kill, it was a matter of good versus evil. However, I was neither an animal nor a human, but a mutant living among both. Plus I was the Prince of Darkness, gifted with dark powers that have been associated with evil over thousands of years.
I'm not truly evil, am I, I thought as I looked up at myself through the rat's eyes. It was then I noticed a seagull. It had made its perch on the same fire escape and thought nothing of the squabble that was happening down below, in fact she pretty much ignored us. As I looked up at her, I remembered why it was that people like me hunted and what our role in this world is. I also remembered something my father once told me, about the difference between killing and murder. He would always tell me, "fear not the fact that one kills, fear the reasons why he kills". It made no difference whether I chose to eat the rat or the seagull, I was hunting because I needed to eat. Regardless of who my prey is, the "law of the jungle" as I call it would've called me to kill an innocent soul. I was hunting to eat and survive, not for pleasure.
I must've loosened my grip on the rat during my inner monologing because at one point he managed to muster up enough strength to bite me. I hissed in shock and immediately tightened my grip once again.
I jusssst remembered why I shouldn't play with my food, makessss it harder to eat, I thought as I broke the rat's spine in half. Once he had gone limp I swallowed him whole. To avoid having to slither around with a giant lump in my stomach, I Changed back into my human form and continued to the end of the alley.
"As far as he was concerned", I began as I patted my stomach indicating the meal I had just consumed. "I am a killer….today."