Martin's body is undergoing a whole buffet of reactions to this sight. Let's break it down piece by piece:
His tail is raised, slow-moving and curled slightly forward, doing its best impression of a periscope.
His face is twisted into a toothy threat display; his mouth is opened just wide enough that the tips of his upper and lower fangs seem to be touching, while his whiskers are fanned out and spread to maximum deflection. There's also a trickle of saliva running from the left side and dripping down onto the ground, but whether that makes it look less or more disturbing is left as an exercise to the reader.
His claws are digging into the marshy ground beneath, seeking the purchase necessary to launch forward at maximum speed and start chomping down on some necks.
His pants, having endured much already, are now bursting towards the cuffs and knees from the tension building in Martin's calves for maximum pounce action. But aren't we all glad he's still wearing pants?
His stomach is growling just a bit louder than his hissing breath.
With all that in mind, Martin's look to Lucius says three things: 1) There's going to be a fight, the only question is whether Lucius is fast enough to get the rest of the team here before said fight is over, 2) These coyote-men are going to advance the state of fashion by carrying their spears in their kidneys and 3) Olivier is kind of a silly way to spell "Dinner".
Well, nobody can say that there were no warning signs. Really, doing the nasty with the Rakast-y and the immediately outcome of that should have sent Martin running screaming back into the next Order sanctuary, to be locked away and treated with concentrated healing magic until this left his system. But no. Martin just had to "go with it". Had to wildshape and go chase frogs and smell his way around the mansion and now sneak through the swamp brush low enough to pick up leeches with his chest. And then, looking at a dozen armed coyote-men and a ten-foot tall bestial nightmare, he just had to lean into it even more, try to push it more, all because he was tired, angry and hungry.
Really, Martin? Really? What were you expecting?
His paws widen, his back arches further, and the few places on his body that weren't already furry, well, they get a visit from the orange-white-black fairy. His rear claws leave long tracks in the mud as his body lengthens and swells into something that, for all intents and purposes, is a full-grown tiger. A pissed-off full-grown tiger whose sudden growth just made reality wonder how to balance itself again. If you guessed that this means "make Martin really hungry", give yourself a pat on the back.
Unable to contain his bestial form, Martin leaps toward his first prospective kill. He's no longer wearing pants.
With a deafening roar that's loud even back with the rest of the group, Martin pounces forward at the closest pair of coyote-men. More than 600 pounds of enraged orange wild animal knocks both of them flat with a yelp. Bones crack under the weight of Martin's assault, but they're drowned out by an even louder ripping and cracking as Martin's jaws, already locked onto the first coyote-man's neck, nearly decapitate him as he bites down and tears up and away. The other one, stunned silly by the impact, flails and kicks about in panic, but only for a moment before Martin pounces on his back and rips his trachea out - from behind.
"Fuck," Lucius hisses, and leaps into action himself.
Lucius stands up and uses what little space he has to build up speed. One, two, three vaulting steps carries him up the stack of boxes while his other hand slips naturally through his cloak for his other dagger. One last step flings the assassin into the air, bringing him down on top of the two coyote-men guards closest to him - blades first. With two wet shunks, the blades drive deep into their skulls, ending both their lives.
"Ozzy! Time to get in the fight!" Lucius bellows as he stands up. Four other coyote-men emerge from the shack, spears at the ready. They take one look at the blood-soaked tiger, another at Lucius, and all four fan out in front of the assassin. Lucius smirks, and raises his blades in a defensive stance. "Try me."
The tension back with the rest of the group is running high as they lurk and wait for the report from Martin and Lucius' scouting. Anton leans in, listening for the signs of the their return or something going wrong, but he's not really sure what he's listening for in the breeze and swamp creatures (frogs? is that what frogs sound like?) the way he would be listening to the cart rattles and sounds of the City. Until, that is, the silence is shattered by the most awe-inspiring roar he's ever heard. Anton's not really familiar enough with the sounds of forest to know the meaning of a lot of the background noise, but that's probably not good, nor is the far-off butcher shop sounds of battle. Even before Lucius shouts back to them, Anton's pulling out Kneecapper and rushing along the way to the work site. Those are sounds he knows how to deal with. The sight he finds there is a shock, though--boar-men, a tiger, and coyotes, oh my!
"Where'd Martin go?" he shouts to Lucius as he piles into the fray, readying an attack on the nearest spear-wielding coyote.
Ana has kept quiet for most of the trudge through the swamp, primarily focusing on her own discomfort and the growing sensation of being hopelessly lost. To her, one part of this swamp looked very much like another, dominated by a virulent, overgrown green and a cloying humidity, the smell of growth warring with decay.
The duelist's gaze shot up at the sound of violence though, and in a single smooth motion her sword and dagger were in her hand, and she was running in the direction of the camp, like Anton content for the moment simply to carve a path into the guards to try to make her way toward Martin.
Ozzy bursts through the brush a moment later, shaking a vine from one leg, only to stand stock-still at the mayhem before him.
Then, he grins. Ozzy grins because they're not lost in the swamp anymore, and he grins because there's a fight. He looks up at the boarmonger and says, "Yer a big fucker, ain't ye?"
Red's face looks concussed as he looks over the scene before him. "Don't hurt the-oh, you have GOT to be fuckin' kidding me..."
Red doesn't emerge from the brush. This is where he's most comfortable, after all, using brush as concealment and shooting the unwary. He starts with some of the coyote-hybrids, since Ozzy's busy talking with the Boar's-head the way one talks to his lunch.
Martin quickly rises up from his brutally dispatched prey and snarls as he looks at the boar-man. His ears pin back as he charges full-speed at the beast-man leader and then pounces, landing claws-first on his right side. Slashing kicks with his rear paws fail to penetrate much of the boar-man's thick hide, but the tearing bite to his shoulder is much more effective. A hunk of flesh is torn off and quickly swallowed as Martin drops off before the boar-man can grab ahold of him.
Red looses an arrow at the two remaining coyote-men guards near to Martin's position, the well-aimed shot passing straight through the beast-man's skull and dropping him to the ground.
The boar-man snorts as he lowers his head and charges at Martin, giving a loud squeal as his head makes contact with Martin's side. The tiger roars with the impact - but simply rolls with it, absorbing the blow without damage.
"'Ey! Watch it!" Ozzy shouts, and barrels towards the boar-man. A solid upper-cut definitely gets his attention and knocks the beast-man for a loop, but a shake of his head later clears most of the fog from his big brown eyes.
The four remaining coyote-men wisely decide to leave the scary tiger well-enough alone and pick on someone a little closer to their size - namely, Lucius. However, size isn't everything, and as they dance around and take turns trying to stab at the assassin with their spears, he dodges each one easily in turn.
This seems terribly unfair to Anton, who rushes Lucius' way. The thudding of the enforcer's steps on the ground draws the attention of one of the coyote-men just in time for him to turn and see Kneecapper come down on his skull just between his eyes. With a loud crack, the coyote-man hits the ground dead.
"Oi! I've punched bread 'arder than you!" Ozzy shouts at the boar-man, dancing back and to the side to keep the boss between him and Martiger. If Martin gets the guy, Ozzy'll back off. If the boss moves for Martin, then Ozzy'll dart in with another haymaker. In the back of his mind, though, Ozzy's brain is in overdrive trying to think how the hell he's going to choke out a tiger without doing anything permanent.
Martin takes advantage of the distraction provided by Ozzy's entrance and face-pummeling, and pounces onto the boar-man's back. Sharp claws dig into his back as the boar-man squeals in panic and flails about, trying to shake Martin off, but his massive bulk prevents him from reaching his back to knock Martin off. His powerful jaws latch on and rip, tearing out another chunk of flesh from his back, and the shock drops the boar-man to his knees. A last, desperate squeal of "Please, Mistress -" is interrupted by a second bite - and a loud crunch as Martin's jaws sever the boar-man's spine. The lights go out instantly, and the boar-man goes slack.
At the sight of their boss dropping dead, the surviving coyote-men drop their spears. "Gods, we surrender!" one of them yelps. "Holy fuck, you killed Olivier Descoteaux!"
Ozzy has other things to worry about at the moment, though. Namely, the bigass tiger that is(? Used to be?) his friend. There's a tense moment where Ozzy nervously circles to put the dead boar-Descoteaux hybrid's bulk between Martin and himself as the tiger climbs off the body's enormous hump, tail flicking and whiskers twitching. Martin turns around, looks right at Ozzy (and there's one fucking scary moment where Ozzy swears he can see the tiger's pupils go wide)...
And then Martin makes a puffing sound a few times and shakes his head, then lays down and starts digging in on the boar-man's body, tearing out big hunks of flesh and swallowing them whole. I keep forgetting to bring the brown robes, Ozzy thinks. Hard to tell if eating Descoteaux is going to reinforce the tiger, sate the hunger and let the man through, or just poison Martin with Asenath-tainted meat. Best let Martin eat, though. And eat he does. After a minute, one of the boar-man's arms is stripped pretty clean of flesh, and Martin moves around to Ozzy's side. There's another moment of panic as the tiger approaches, but instead of attacking, he chuffs a few more times and rubs his head against Ozzy's hip before laying into the other side.
Red emerges from the brush a few tense moments after Tiger-Martin starts tucking in to his meal, his bow still nocked and aimed at the coyote-men.
"Alright, down on the ground," he says. "Lucius, pat them down, see if you can't find the keys. We need to let those, uh...miners out. Maybe even slip those fancy collars on the fine gentlemen, here," he says with a curt nod towards the coyote-guards, before he shakes his head a second later. "Nah, fuck it. Just...get the miners freed."
Red places the arrow in his quiver and trudges over to Ozzy, trying his best to focus his gaze on the tiger and not the person-I-used-to-know-maybe-before-he-became-lunchmeat. There's some silence for a moment as Red runs his free hand through his hair. "What the fuck, Ozzy. What the fuck."
"You said it, Red. What I do know is Descoteaux ain't givin' us any answers, and there's still the stink o' Asenath all over this. I reckon we need someone who can give us somethin'."
"We got the guards and the miners, not to mention Boar--Mean, uh, Olivier's tent. Might be able to scare up something. We sent Lucius ahead too, maybe he heard something we can use. Or we can keep watching him dig into Olivier and hoping he's full after." Red looks both a little pale and a little green all at once.
Lucius walks up next to Ozzy. "I don't do pat-down duty," he grunts to Red. He watches Martin strip the flesh off the boar-man's body with a dispassionate but attentive silence for a few seconds before speaking up again. "Saw him ready to move before he...changed," he says. "Even when he was still...well, mostly human, he looked ready to rip their heads off and make a snack out of them. Don't entirely blame him, after this asshole broke that poor bastard's neck like he did." He gives the beast-Descoteaux's body a kick. "Were they always vicious assholes, or is this an Asenath thing? Heard him call out for his mistress, figure we all know what that means."
Martin's teeth crunch down on a few of Olivier's ribs and crack them open - that's where the good marrow is, after all. But this is more dessert than dinner; after a few of those, Martin leaves the body be and slinks off, brushing past Ozzy again. With a few grunts, he leaps up onto a large rock and shifts about until he finds a facet big enough for him, upon which he lies down and curls up, resting his massive head on his front paws while his tail flicks towards his face, as if to wipe the blood from his muzzle.
Good hunt. Good meat.
As Martin yawns contentedly, his curled-up body seems to shrink on itself, broad shoulders tighten and narrow while his recede to reveal his hands and feet, albeit still clawed and padded, and his head shrinks and softens its features until he looks like his familiar self again - well, not human familiar, but after the Panthera tigris interlude, it's a rather comforting sight.
Still curled-up, Martin looks down at the shocked faces of his friends, quickly raising a hand in front of his face as he tries to muffle the sound of a little burp. "Pardon me," he says, with a bit of a residual growl seeming to remain in his voice. "Does anyone have a spare pair of pants?"
Ana undoes the clasp of her cloak and tosses it to Martin.
"Fashion yourself a skirt. Less likely to tear itself apart the next time you do that."
Oddly, the noblewoman doesn't look all that shocked. Perhaps its that she was aware Martin was growing to have more control over her powers. Or perhaps this whole affair has simply traipsed so far over the line into "disgusting" that one more act doesn't particularly phase her. Whatever it is, the duelist cleans her sword off and returns it to its place, looking over the massacred bodies. "It seems we're on the right trail. And from the looks of him," she nods down to the corpse of the rabbit-person who was already dead when she arrived and noticeably missing the characteristic wounds of a kill by either Lucius or Marin, "violence was the inevitable outcome of all this."
She fixes Martin with an expression that suggests that if he doesn't come to talk to her when the immediate crisis resolves, she's going to come find him instead.
Martin slings the cloak around his waist and clambers down from the rock in his new ankle skirt.
Clearly, it is way past time that somebody invent photography.
"Much obliged," Martin comments, then turns to the terrified miners cowering in their respective holes. "Breathe easy. We mean you no harm and have come to free you from the machinations of the Descoteaux clan. Anything you were witness to that might help us, we would love to hear. The sooner we put an end to this, the sooner we can work to restore you."
That was Nice Guy Martin. He takes his leave, and Rakasta On The Edge Martin takes over as the tiger/man/tiger-man turns his gaze to the surviving coyote-men guards.
"You, too, will be restored, but your freedom is forfeit," he says. "How convenient that there is such an ample supply of chains around here, so that we can take the lot of you back to the City and deliver you to the Valorous Sword. Give us a good reason to make the journey comfortable, or bow to your fate in silence - the choice is yours."
The way Martin says 'your fate' is in no way, shape or form reassuring.
Red's eyes narrow, and he fixes Martin with a stare that says he just bought ticket #2 for a long talk later.
All he says, however, is "Whatever their eventual fate, they need to be held someplace where they can do no harm - and where no harm is done to them. I say we drop them off at Auberry- Cia's place," he says in response to his compatriot's blank stares. "The miners will need a place to stay as well. I figure they can guard their erstwhile jailers while we continue digging." Red frowns. "No pun intended, of course."
He turns back to Lucius. "I'll get the keys off of 'em, then, but I could use an extra hand undoing the chains."
"Martin," Ozzy says, walking up to the only member of their group with worse clothes than himself. "When you changed, did you know us from them? I reckon there was somethin' in there that was you, either whole or part, but you tell me."
