Good "Dog"

The dog held its gaze, not reacting until the other spoke. He lowered his head and growled threateningly, backpedaling slightly into the darkness of the alleyway. He didn’t trust this. “Tanmur… not Tanmur… can’t be…” The thing that smelled like him, that… Karnus… had said Tanmur was in the area. But this… couldn’t be him. It seemed so wrong. He couldn’t admit this was his friend he’d known so long ago.

“Urua…” The creature let out a pleased noise. “She was… strong… stronger than most.” He laughed for a bit. “Old… old as… as…” He switched to English for a moment, borrowing an old, gruff movie voice he’d heard before. “Old as balls.”

The beast sniffed the air. Inner City was indeed an interesting place, especially if you could move around freely in a disguise. In all of his wandering in all of his years, not once had he had this many different and interesting sights, sounds, and tastes. But one scent caught his attention. Something that he had believed impossible. And there was the perpetrator, standing calmly at the mouth of the alley. He looked nothing like the creature he befriended all those millennia ago. The one he owed his life to. He had half a mind to pounce from the shadows he was hiding in and kill him! But… what if it was? What if it was… was…

“Tanmur?” The creature clicked.

Stan was leaning against the corner of the building, taking his smoke break, having paused from one of his impromptu patrols of the city at night as he usually did. The man turns instinctively when he hears his name, having been caught in his thoughts to really realize that someone had called him by his true name. Violet eyes glance to the black German shepherd that was staring back at him. Quite intently. His brows furrow with confusion and behind the smoke he could have sworn he was catching whiff of something old and familiar.  He brings the cigarette down, dropping it, shoe putting it out. He half expected it to attack him. But wait. Had it…clicked at him? 

“I did not know he could… use “guises”… was not aware.” He looked down as they walked. “It was so long ago… years. So many years. I was… rejected by my… kin. He found me. Helped me. Him and his mother.”

He blinked. Tanmur walked around as a human now? He could do that too? He’d been out of the loop for a while. “Tanmur did not explain everything, it seems. But things were… different then. As stated.” He made a face as they walked. “Stan? Really?”

He  was mostly interested in his prey, latching on immediately after getting its scent. Shep softly padded through the forest and into one of his favorite hiding places: bushes. Granted, they weren’t as thick as they would be in winter, but… cover nonetheless. His black coat stood out amongst the snow, so he needed to stack the deck a little.Granted, he could always drop the disguise, but it added a challenge.

Following the scent and once again getting into the habit of trusting that sense of his, Shadow just followed it for as long as he felt good, stopping just a little before he walked out from cover, laying down and inching forward slightly and looking around.

He could smell that whatever it was around, it was closer now then before, and he could bet that it was after the same deer that he had been chasing.

He nodded slightly and followed Karnus. He was silent for a while, contemplating everything. After a block or two, he spoke up again. “You… you said Tanmur is your father?” If it were true, it would be a surprise. The idea of Tanmur mating was… an interesting one.

He tried to control his breathing, but that only went so far. “Please… please…” He nodded vigorously. “Thought Tanmur… was dead. Came home from hunt… he was gone.” He paused, taking the time to sniff a little. “We… best friends… he said so.”

Recruits? Shooting range? He didn’t understand. Tanmur was alive, having children, and taking recruits? For what?! The creature began to violently shake. “Must find Tanmur… must… find…” He made a noise halfway between a growl and a whimper.

He was frozen in place for several moments, attempting to process all the information the small exchange just gave him. His breathing became harder and he lowered his head. “Tanmur… alive? So long… we were… children…” He closed his eyes for a second before his head snapped back to look at Karnus. “Where is he? Where is Tanmur?!”

All six of his eyes shot open at once and he staggered backwards. It was a language he hadn’t heard since… He regained his composure and took a confident step forwards. It had been literal millennia since he’d actually had a conversation like this, but he remembered. All those lessons did not go to waste. “You… You speak like this? Do you know Tanmur?” He was rusty with his clicks, but if his friend was alive… well, there wasn’t anything he wouldn’t do or remember to see him again.

Shep had left Inner City behind a while back. He was going to return, but sometimes you had to move around, ya know? As it was, he was moving through a snowy forest in… somewhere. He kind of lost track. But that was the fun of exploring! What wasn’t fun was finding food. He sniffed the air, hoping to find something nearby. Something tasty.

Shadow had been tracking some kind of wild animal for a while not, he thought it was a deer, though he had not been out hunting for a while, having to have helped Viper with some jobs, so his nose led him astray just slightly.