Victoria's talons slowly scratched against the trigger guard of her rifle, drumming out a noiseless, rhythmless, meaningless tune. she could hear the blood pulsing in her head as her nose was filled with the scent of her prey. It was an earthy scent, although difficult to describe, do describe the scent would be to explain a colour to someone unable to see it. although she couldn’t see her quarry, her senses told her that the beast was closer than it had ever been. The place that the beast had decided to call home was a temperate forest in the middle of nowhere, but it was close enough to some hick town that she had been deployed anyway on little notice or consideration for her abilities. The sun was beating down, the prey had better be satisfying otherwise she would be pissed. The beast wasn’t unique; however, she derived no less joy from the prey she hunted. No, the dampener on her mood came from a different beast entirely, boredom. she had been hanging in this position for days, her eye constantly to the scope as she stared at the watering hole, surrounded by lush vegetation, even for her enhanced eyes the strain was beginning to make itself known. This waiting wasn’t what she was made for and her body was beginning to revolt, her body had stopped conserving water as she salivated through bared teeth, her head was throbbing from the strain of holding the position and her legs were beginning to atrophy. While Victoria was a trapper by nature, this was ridiculous, she was suited to single day stakeouts max, there were specialists for missions that went on this long and she was not one of them. Despite this she would complete this mission, there was no way that she was going to lose to this third-rate beast. So there she hung, suspended upside down in a tree, her feathers usually midnight black now mirroring the rest of the foliage to blend in so that she looked like a bottled green cocoon with a gun barrel. If she moved even slightly the jig could be up, most monsters perceptive enough to notice even the slightest movement. Victoria would kill someone for some shelter, a fortified outpost, a tent, hell a roof would be nice. While she needed less food than a human she still needed to eat, and so, with almost imperceptible movements she would swipe up any small creature that dared come close and eat it raw, a fire could alert the beast after all. When it came to her rifle Victoria had been given an anti-tank rifle for piercing armour hide, while powerful in a normal military setting the rifle was far from one of the specialised DAVID railguns that were assigned when dealing with high priority targets, which meant she had to be accurate. She had been given 2 shots. She would only need one.

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Her nostrils flared as the creature drew closer and into view, it was covered in dark grey scales, its body resembling that of a fat lizard, but with a slightly angrier looking head, with spikes and heavy-set eyes it looked almost like a dinosaur from one of those books she had read while growing up. The monster’s spiny tail lashed the air, it was coated in blood and the deep red liquid sprayed everywhere, some landed on Victoria’s face and it took all the self-control she would ever have just to not react to the rousing scent. Slowly the creature lowered its head, she could count the seconds in her state of absolute consciousness, 5 seconds from 1.5 meters from the ground to the water. Its throat began to undulate and even though its eye was closed, she knew that that is where she should strike. Her face contorted violently upward into what could only be called a perversion of the act of smiling as her malleable physiology lifted her limits in her moment of excitement, her finger greedily pulled the trigger.

The shot rang out, birds soared through the sky in a panic and briefly, for only a moment they blotted out the sun. Victoria felt a feral surge of energy cause through her as her already colossal midnight frame swelled and grew, she could feel the beak beginning to slide down over her face as her vision turned red before, just as suddenly as it had come, the energy left her, her body contorted and shrunk as her eyes tried desperately to readjust to her the light. When she could see again she was on the ground, she hadn’t felt herself fall and had no idea how long she had laid there, if she had lost consciousness at all. Gathering herself but leaving her rifle she slowly walked over to the monster on the ground. She walked carefully not because she didn’t trust her aim, or her ability to kill it with her bare hands if she really had to, but because these creatures were unpredictable, and since she had skipped the briefing she had no idea what this one did. A quick examination showed that the creature was, in fact, very dead, its crimson life flowing into the pool, likely contaminating it beyond usability and eventually corrupting the surrounding wildlife, but, that wasn’t part of her job description, someone else would deal with it. For now she had no job, the mission had been completed and she would be picked up in a few days. But for now she was free, free from all the pencil pushing bureaucrats and snivelling scientists that hounded her constantly, here she was the apex predator, and she would have her fun.