Long time coming (open)

[ahriman]

It'd been a pretty long walk from New York, he managed to catch a couple of buses to ease the distance but it'd still taken a lot longer than he would have liked. Stretching with the aches of a man who'd walked a great deal further than he'd been planning to, it gave Jimmy a small surge of pleasure to acknowledge that he'd managed to cover the distance while staying human. He'd spent a little too much time lying low in his opinion but he'd had a scare a while back, accidentally scaring some people near a military base.

They'd done a good job getting after him in all fairness, he wasn't exactly the easiest of targets. Faster than anything they had on land and capable of dealing with just about any kind of attack, they'd pushed him pretty damn hard to escape. It made it harder and harder to hold back and not kill anyone. Every time he rounded a corner and found what looked like two or three platoons all stationed around him with weapons drawn, to just blast them with telekinesis rather than gut them like so many fish...

Hell, they'd almost managed to get him when one guy started praying with his crucifix out of sheer fear.

Still, all in the past now. He was in racoon city and that was about as secular as you could get. They seemed to have a pretty good idea what they expected to happen after you died.

He was wandering through the forest to get to the city, hopping over fallen trees and slipping between branches as he paced towards the city. It seemed better to go in off the radar, he didn't think he was wanted yet but every time he transformed he was worried someone would notice. He looked different enough as Ahriman that no-one ever made the connection but the last thing he wanted was to get rumbled, it might even bring trouble down on Anya.

He was still wandering when he heard the rustle of leaves behind him and stopped. It could just be the wind of course? The wind sometimes sounded like a deadman moaning. Jimmy turned to see what it was that was making all the racket and saw the shambling corpse walking towards him. Lips were gone, bitten off and spattered with dried blood, one glazed white eye had slipped free of the socket, clothes were old, shirt and jacket like a suit. One of the few zombies still kicking around after racoon city got rebuilt (something he needed to investigate)

Well, best take some caution
"Help! Zombie! Oh god, it's coming closer!" He shouted as loud as he could. His voice lacked some elements of sincerity but it wasn't because he was scared that he was shouting. If nobody came running then he was in the clear to investigate the way he needed to. The zombie groaned but no other sounds came across, it looked like he was all alone out here in the woods. Which was perfect.

It was like a shimmer of flesh as Jimmy's entire body melted away and seemed to shrink into the smaller, paler form of Ahriman, jet-black eyes staring out at the zombie and a faint grin along his sharpened teeth. For a moment the zombie seemed to hesitate, unsure of itself, and in that time it lost a hand. Groaning, it's reaction time even slower than a usual victims before it felt the sharp flash of blades as Ahriman's claws scythed through, dismembering the poor ghoul first before finally piercing the brain.

Vicious, almost feral, it might even cover his tracks better.

Letting the head drop, Ahriman's form swelled back into that of Jimmy's, wiping his hands through the leaves of a bush to get the congealed zombie blood off. Frowning, he picked up the zombie's hand and rummaged in his bag for a T-shirt. He found the dirtiest one he had and wrapped the hand in it, no sense spoiling a good shirt was his reasoning, and stuffed it to the bottom of his bag after a liberal spraying of deoderant.

He had a sample, now to see if he could find anywhere in town he could hole up and work out a means to compare his blood with whatever it was animating the zombies.

Popping out of the treeline to wander into town, Jimmy took a moment to glance around. It looked like any other city in the state, but most importantly, no sign of obvious FBI agents. Always a good start. He started to walk through the town with a cheery wave to anyone he happened to pass, he smiled at the same people who (in slightly modified circumstances) would be trying very hard to kill him. Always a good bargaining chip...

[Ruby]

((PPFFFFT Like Jimmy needs more demons thrown at him xD. But I thought I'd give this thread a boost!))

So in Ruby's opinion, there weren't many things that were more disgusting than zombies. Humans were bad enough when they were alive - when they were dead and rotting, they weren't even fit for demonic possession. That, and they smelled considerably worse. Raccoon City was rumored to have a bit of a...problem with the creatures, though, and that was what had drawn her here. Not that she was particularly curious; nor did she have any misguidedly heroic urges to keep the people around here safe, but...word on the rather shady grapevine she frequented was that these particular zombie-like beings stemmed from some sort of virus. The effects reminded her a bit of the Croatoan virus, but that had been demonic in nature - this...wasn't. And the whole thing was enough to make Ruby a bit wary. As far as she knew, the recent zombie trouble in the past year had died down somewhat, but some of the creatures still seemed to exist - and if they proved to be a big enough disturbance, well...there was every possibility that they (or the force responsible for their creation) would...get in the way.

The infected beings stank bad enough to be detected by any demon with properly enhanced senses from miles away. This particular critter seemed to be lurking somewhere in the woodland nearby - and currently, Ruby was tracking it. This would be the first creature of its kind that the demoness would be taking on, and she was sure it would prove to be...interesting, at the very least. A learning experience. Joy. She stepped carefully over a thick tangling of tree roots that stretched out onto the path before her, and then suddenly froze. Someone...was nearby. Someone distinctively human-sounding. And they were calling out something about needing help...and zombies. Slowly, Ruby turned, attempting to pinpoint the location which the shouts had sounded from. Sounded like whoever it was wasn't too far away...but rather than immediately spring to his aid the way some goody-two-shoes monster hunter would have, the demoness instead decided to circle round the clearing and get a better view of what was going on. If the human ended up getting killed, well, that was tough. But at least it allowed her the chance to see what these 'zombies' were capable of.

What she hadn't expected as she quietly slunk up to the scene, however, was to see the creature locked in combat - not with a human, but with a tall, pale-skinned...something. Definitely not human. In fact, judging by the aura it was giving off alone, it was downright...demonic. Ruby froze, her dark gaze locked on the scene before her. The demon-creature seemed to be making quick work of the zombie-creature, and...what she found extremely intriguing was what it did after it had finished. It seemed to morph somehow - right back into human form. Well if that wasn't completely bizarre, she didn't know what was. But she did know one thing: who or whatever this man was, he was now significantly more interesting than the zombie-problem she'd originally ventured here to investigate. The two issues seemed intermingled now anyway, seeing as he'd stowed away the zombie's hand in his bag (presumably for sampling purposes, she guessed). Now what could he want with something like that...? Well, there was really only one way to find out.

If there was one thing Ruby was good at, that she'd always been good at, it was following people without being detected. She kept some distance behind the man until he headed out into town, her footsteps silent, not even breathing as she trailed after him. Breathing was really more of a luxury than a necessity anyway when you were possessing someone else's body. As she continued to watch the man, however, the demoness grew faintly...confused? He seemed very friendly for someone so demonic. Waving and smiling to people as he walked, looking generally cheerful despite the fact that he'd just sliced up a zombie. It was more than likely all an act anyway...but a surprisingly good one.

So she started to weigh her options here. Approach him as a friendly civilian, pull him into an alleyway and demand to know what he was, or something in between? The former wasn't a very good way of getting his attention, and the latter seemed a bit reckless seeing as she still didn't really know what he was capable of - so Ruby decided to just improvise. Quickening her pace, she crossed the street, coming up behind the demon-man and 'accidentally' nudging him with her shoulder. "Oh, sorry!" she apologized an instant later, blinking up at him. "I really need to learn to be more careful. You never know who - or what - you might be bumping into around here." The words were spoken quietly and innocently enough as she flashed him a smile that was...really more of a smirk, and her gaze darted pointedly to the backpack he was carrying.