[center][img]https://i.imgur.com/yJyGNTq.png[/img][/center]
[i][color=f7941d][center]Los Angeles, California
Obscure Alley
[@Prosaic][@Count Cuddles][/center][/color][/i]

Despite the calls to question, initially the athletic cat replied only with the least obvious of body language. Little more than the tip of the elegant sleek tail flexed with a curl, a gentle flick from side to side. The rest of it was relatively rigid, as though frozen in place, aside from the two pools of gold that made up its eyes, which seemed all the more content to drink in the details. It wasn't as though the costumed man had done all that much aside from make himself ready to fight, but the tiger had replied. The casual pace of the tail twitch became a bit more erratic before it eased before it so silently sneered, slender whiskers splayed like fingers from open hands.

The stress of ambiguity was dispelled the moment Éclater, with the caress of alcohol working at his demeanor, asked its name. Like a switch had been flicked, less concerned about Faultline's visual challenge, the supple animal blinked and appeared distant for a moment. It fumbled through what to call itself really, no one had ever asked it. Reasonably so of course, when they did see the tiger, not a small Bengal tiger at that, the reaction was typically chaotic with panic and concern the first and foremost. The Predator almost went to name itself but remembered that was not what it was called anymore.

When it returned from its brief adventure through the mind, the stare lingered from the still tense figure to the woefully loose one. Again it spoke without moving a muscle, either one of the most convincing illusions or one of the greatest shared delusions to-date.

[i]"I am a tiger, I am a predator."[/i] It began in a surreal sort of way, adding to the wordless but still oddly deep inner voice, [i]"That is what they call me."[/i]

It then [i]smiled[/i], in a sort of way that showed the points of its teeth and perhaps added a bit of discomfort that called back to some sort of now long gone primate ancestors of the superpowered humans. The devious smile it shared, was accompanied by another telling motion of its tail and the slight draw of one of its paws as it took a step at an angle. It stopped as it had before, at last no longer looking directly at them. If they knew anything about big carnivores, that was honestly for the better. Not that the Predator would have had the same reactions as they might, the staring earlier was never good.

[i]"I came to see people like me. But I am not people, as you see, I am tiger."[/i] 

The answer to more well known of the two heroes' questions was less abstract in answer, although the tiger's slow plodding along might have distracted more from it. Each still damp step left an ever evaporating print on the blacktop of the alley, the tiger a bit more comfortable now in positioning; facing them head on wasn't ideal, not for long. The slow pacing was a way to compensate for the situation, even if on the surface it made little sense to an observer. By the time it turned around, walking now in the other direction and seemingly divided by an invisible barrier between the two camps, it narrowed down the results.

Adding after in the mental voice, [i]"You can guess what I do then."[/i]

Now it looked back to them from the corner of an eye, most of its elaborately decorated body visible than the mere head-on encounter when they first started the conversation. It seemed almost as though it was courteously noting it had moved into the area and now considered this its territory. Which was, in fact, true. It was no longer the "The Conroe Predator", it had evolved beyond that. Los Angeles was its new hunting ground and it had enough wherewithal to announce itself to them and study them in turn. For example, it was fairly confident in this moment it could handle a skirmish, as one of the two men drifted in a pleasant haze of booze not high enough to crash down when it wore off or low enough to be as keen as he really was, but knew that if the both of them were even remotely familiar partners it probably could not edge in on their ground.

Then again, people didn't really have claims like that. But for the Predator, that would be news.