"Are you as concerned with the idea of being watched as I am? It is a very ominous prospect and one I am not keen to."The Frenchman was not wrong to feel that subtle, uncomfortable rake across his subconscious; it was that primal element, that ambient and arcane, really unknowable if one was to best summarize it, experience for being watched without any eyes seeming to be on them. In some ways it was likely the same sort of mechanism that gave people the perceptions of hauntings, that pervasive discomfort. Also the very same kind that pulled the ears of the lurking tiger forward, as if attracted by the conversation, then snapped them back until they were flush with the rest of the sizable animal.
Those idling paws that sat at the lip of the rooftop overlook tensed their toes, each fleshy pad gripping more firmly the brick. The Predator at this point could not help its sizable curiosity and was confident that with one less potential foe, assuming this went so wrong, its odds of escape were better. Evasion was one of many talents it possessed, both innately and through mighty thought, but overconfidence would be potentially dangerous. It knew it needed to know, so it found itself down the face of the wall, rear legs kicking it off like a medalist swimmer.
As though an animal decidedly longer than a man was tall hadn't just sailed through the air, the tiger landed mere feet away at the depths of the alley. The only thing that stirred was a puddle, which gave a faint splash. As its shallow pool rocked with little waves, a strange phenomena began to manifest. What first was clear was that something left... tracks? Perhaps that was the most adequate description, no less ones that were coming closer, ones that at in this same time stirred the puddle once again ever so slightly. Then they stopped.
The abruptness of the stop quite plausibly was tugging on those previously present notes of ambient horror; that somehow in the daylight overcast only by the buildings, the sensation of being watched had metamorphized into the presence of something unseen being right there. Not only was the foreigner right, they were
terribly right. Chance would have it that it was not some sort of inebriated daydream warping perception and reality either, so even such a hopeful fantasy was sailed clear off the face of the earth.
There after came the seeming suddenness of a tiger, standing right in the very place the closest steps had been. How, why, when the tiger had appeared was not even within real registration, other than the fact it was suddenly there; all five-hundred pounds of orange, black, and white feline. Upon its face was perhaps one of the more animated looks a cat could offer, let alone one of that size and so uncomfortably human. It looked upon Eclater for a disquietingly long period, as short as it realistically was, before on to the heavily costumed Faultline wherein the expression became less severe.
"Well, you weren't wrong to be." It replied, without so much as a slight twitch of its muzzle, not even down to the whisker.