As night descended upon the forest, the nocturnal animals emerged from their hiding places to begin their search for food. On the eastern side of the forest, a peculiar figure could be seen jogging through the trees. This humanoid figure possessed a powerful build and had crimson hair, while animal fur covered his lower body. Although his upper body was exposed, one could observe skin that resembled white marble or even crystal, which could make it difficult for him to remain stealthy.
"Hmm, what should I do first... Well checking place of Saba's rampage will be a good start."
Sandro moved through the forest with agility of well trained athlete, well if that athlete ran with record speed all time.
"Damn still have hard time getting used to this speed. This body is awesome!!!"
After few minutes of 'jog', he arrived near the site. One might expect the charred ground with burnt hollow trees, but for some reason there was minimal damage.
"Hmm, this is suspicious. I'm pretty sure there was big fire here last time, how come there is so little damage." - Sandro scaled relatively tall tree and observed surroundings. There were traces of fire of course, but it shouldn't be so limited damage, as if something or someone put it out quite quickly.
'This doesn't make sense. How is this even p... Wait, I shouldn't think like my old self. If we add magic, which I have no idea how it works, it shouldn't be out of possibility.' - inwardly thought Sandro - 'Now main question is... Is this done by forest or something different?'
"None of the possibilities seems good for us" - He whispered while intently observing surroundings.
He changed position few times to cover more ground and conclusion was always same - "How the fuck did this happen".
'Okay let's change thought process, it's irrelevant what did it, I should try to understand how was it done.' - Sandro thought and moved a bit closer. He couldn't get anything from just observation so maybe other senses could help. He started to sniff, listen or 'feel' whatever he could and lo and behold there was something.
'It smells weird as if air is different. Also it 'feels' as if something is mixed there... I think it somewhat, partly feels like when Saba lost control of his magic.' - Sandro changed positions few times to confirm his initial thoughts.
"Well I don't think I can get any more info like this without getting too close." - Muttered Sandro - "Okay time to get some food and maybe few new live specimen" - after small pause he added - "Nah too lazy to drag living thing back to the base"
Sandro moved on different direction and started his hunt. Forest was full of strange creatures further you went from the base. He unfolded his senses and located his first, punching bag, prey. Sandro moved as quiet as he could to ambush fox like creature. Creature looked like fox, but there were some differences, for example it had really unusual color of fur, it was orange for most part like foxes he knew, but it also had small crystal on forehead and few stripes of bright red and brown fur.
Sandro moved even closer, but as soon as he got 8-10 meter range fox somehow noticed his approach and ran away.
"What the? I thought I was quite... Well there are plenty of similar beasts. I'll try again"
He changed location and approached another fox, hiding inside the bushes, this time it had stripes of different color, blue and red. After slow approach when only few meters were left Sandro jumped from bushes, quickly caught fox and with simple twist broke it's neck. With his powerful body few meter jump was nothing special.
"Well this was easy.. Curious thing is this is also same type of fox, but I wasn't detected this time." - Sandro voiced his thoughts - 'There was some difference of course, but I should check better to be sure.'
After this Sandro targeted more foxes to find any kind of pattern for his earlier observation and he found something interesting. Foxes which had brown stripes almost always found his location around 10 meter radius, because of that he had to chase them a bit and some even escaped him through the burrows. On the other hand foxes with different color stripes were easy to hunt, well except those with green stripe, those foxes could find him lot earlier and he only managed to kill one with stone, result of which wasn't exactly pretty.
"Okay, I have some samples for this weird foxes" - Said Sandro while packing bodies into makeshift bag - "Unfortunately as a meat source they are shit, so I better go hunt some big things and all this stealth bores me, plus it's really hard to be stealthy with body like this.. Hell if my skin or scales were a bit more polished I would look like walking disco ball"
So he moved, not bothering with stealth, and started finding bigger animals like deer, horned rabbit or anything with similar size. Soon forest was in chaos, unusual laughter and songs could be heard from different places.
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"Aand that's how it went. After that I found this cat" - Concluded Sandro with satisfied look.
"Haaah, so that's the voices I heard through the night?"
"$I thought it was some kind of mating call$" - Orochimaru chimed in, hearing voice from seemingly nowhere cat (Tiger), now with mind clear, turned her head around searching for source of voice.
"#Or some big fight between beasts for territory. Well technically fight did happen#"
"Anyway, that's not that important, first of all what we should we call this cat?" - Sandro quickly changed the topic.
Saba looked at the tiger with thoughtful expression - "Hmm I don't know, Blackie? I mean you don't even know if she will stay around. Anyway name her how you want"
"Hey do you like Blackie?" - Sandro suddenly asked the cat and interestingly she started hissing in his direction as if she was insulted. - "Okay okay I'll think of something better" - Sandro relented.
'#Curious!?#' - Snaky, seeing all of this, thought to himself.
"Let's get going and prepare some food I'm starving and after that I'll show those interesting foxes."
Brothers moved towards Mukha and started preparing the food. Thanks to their collective work they quickly skinned and cut apart meat. After that everything was hanged above fireplace to dry and smoke.
Meanwhile tiger followed them and watched their actions with curiosity, not understanding why they where doing all of this and not eating it right away.
Sandro noticed this and after looking around got an idea, he took medium sized stone and with practiced movements carved something like plate. He put cut meat on it and placed in front of the tiger.
Tiger seen this looked at him with suspicion and bared her fangs. Sandro seen this chuckled.
"This is my way to say sorry for hitting you too hard" - He held hand up and moved back a bit.
Tiger looked at him, then at the food then again at him.
"Go eat, don't be shy" - Sandro urged and moved backwards even more.
Tiger slowly approached plate and smelled the meat, not finding anything off she started to eat. While she was eating smell of cooked meat released and this unusual smell attracted her attention. Looking up she saw those two strange creatures holding reddish/brownish meat and eating it with glee.
"Hoh this is lot better than yesterdays, Saba you really improved your control"
"Of course, do you think I laze around all day?" - Saba snorted - "#and your little friend wants some too#" - Snaky added.
"Hmm, you like the smell don't ya? Okay take this" - Sandro took some piece of cooked meat and went to place it on tiger's plate. She again distanced herself, but when she saw he backed away, quickly moved over and tasted this weird looking thing. After the first bite she was amazed, maybe not ground braking, but this was better than normal meat she usually ate. Tiger immediately started to devour the cooked food, but alas it was too small portion to satisfy her hunger. With almost pleading look she looked up.
"Hahaha would you look at this, you liked it? Want more?" - Sandro asked while holding cooked piece in front of himself.
Tiger groaned as if to signal her desire.
"Well bring the plate and I'll cook it for you" - He said and pointed at stone plate, then the fire.
Interestingly tiger somehow understood what to do and took stone plate with her mouth and brought it to Sandro.
"Wow looks like this on is still child" - Saba mentioned - "$Yeah, really naïve$"
Thus Sandro, Saba and yet to named cat sat before fire and cooked and ate some meat.