They ran back to where they had last seen the monster, hoping that clues to lead them in the right direction would present themselves. Luckily it had left a large trail of scared innocents going noticeably in one direction. It was going toward the water... Strange. He hadn't expected that it would go further from escaping. Perhaps it had sighted one of his 'friends' and gone to chase them. He crossed his fingers, hoping it was the green-obsessed one that had caught the creature's eye.
They both followed the long line of people, all still shocked from seeing the creature. Eventually it led them to the docks.
Shit! There it is! Hammond grabbed Ari's hand, pulling her behind a building and out of sight of the wolf-type creature. "Look," he whispered, "we're only gonna get one chance at this, okay? And if we screw up it's probably going to go insane, so let's make this count," he drew his beam sword, not letting it flicker to life just yet.
"Get to it." He patted Ari on the arm before taking off in the other direction around the building, leaving her to sneak up from behind the creature. As it was Hammond would be able to take a side-on approach and Ari would be coming in to plant one of those chips from behind. It made perfect sense... in his mind, at least. If she failed, he could come in with a flanking maneuver.
He looked out from the darkened alley, expecting to see the wolf alone. But no, Em was there... Em? But... the monster... And she isn't getting attacked?
This made no sense. Monsters attacked people. It was in their very nature to do so. Monster + Person = Death, surely? The only people that monsters didn't attack were... Well... there was no-one that monsters didn't attack.
So why in the hell was Em befriending this one?
Three explanations presented themselves. 1) This creature is huge and beastly with massive claws, but inexplicably not a monster, so he should be completely fine with it. 2) Em was in league with this monster, and she was also a reason it was running around killing everything, so he should go over there and kill both beast and beastmaster. Or 3) The creature exuded some kind of mind control aura... Which meant he might have to kill the monster and hope that freed Em as well, or be forced to kill her in mercy.
He hoped it was explanation number 1. It made the most sense. Em was treating the lupine as a master would treat their pet... But anything including Em that made even a sliver of sense was probably bad news for someone, most likely for the closest other people in the area.
