Carces

Creature Feature breathed heavily. This had turned into one crazy night. In one fell swoop, everything had changed. One minute, he was a young boy, working at a video store and watching movies in the basement. The next minute, he's on a crazy adventure, monstering up, fighting off crazed turrets and following mysterious non-ninjas. What would his parents think? Vance's mind began to wander before noticing that his new friend was getting away from him. "Wait up!" He ran towards her, wondering how the rest of the night could possibly go.

Creature Feature listened with wide eyes. Silhouette made a lot of sense, and this could be a dangerous situation. Worst, if they really were after the VCR... Is what happened to Ms. Lights my fault? Vance swallowed hard. The next course of action was clear, however: He had to get that VCR to someone he knew. "...Alright. I left the device at home. I'll go get..." Creature Feature's mind clicked, remembering the excited situation he left his neighborhood in. "Ah... a-actually, my neighbors might not be happy to see a werewolf."

"But... I didn't... and..." Vance tried his hardest to come up with excuses - each one falling flat. He sighed and tried to hush his voice. "Alright. You got me. Please don't tell my parents." Vance pleaded with the woman. "I was there when those ninja laser guys attacked. When I was runnin' away, I got a machine - some sorta VCR from the basement. But the bad guys were chasin' me, an' I didn' know what to do an' I was scared an'... well, I grabbed some sorta car from that basement and I... sorta kinda... drove it into the river." Vance shook off the memories of that frightening night. What if something bad did happen to poor Ms. Lights? She was the nicest lady and she didn't do anything to deserve an attack! Vance continued his story. "That VCR-thing I brought home... I thought it was a 3D movie player or something, so I plugged it in. After I, uh, 'used' it, things haven't been the same. I can change into stuff I can see in videos now - it just happens. Like the Wolfguy here." Vance slumped down on a broken wall and looked back at Silhouette. "I thought I'd try to help Ms. Lights, y'know? And a werewolf was a pretty scary thing for beatin' up ninjas. But... I dunno... I dunno where she could have gone. I just..." Vance noticed a tear welling up in his eye. Hoping it was too dark to make something like that out, Vance turned his head away and nonchalantly wiped the side of his face, all the while trying to force himself not to cry.

"Well, it's kind of new to..." Vance caught himself in mid sentence, his jaw dropping open in shock. "What the? How did... Vance who?" Catching himself giving away his secret identity (which apparently was not terribly secret), he dropped his voice in a rather clumsy attempt to mask it, despite the werewolf's voice sounding nothing like Vance's normal voice to begin with. He gently picked up Silhouette and leapt through the hole in the ceiling, landing outside. "I don't know anyone by that name. I happen to be a common garden-variety werewolf. Yep." Even as the words were escaping his muzzle, he knew there was no way she would buy any of this. He rubbed the back of his head as he thought to himself: How did she know?

In the dark of the night, strange things lurk where few dare to tread. The trains throw mysterious shadows, covering what ever nightmares might lurk beneath. In a place of mysterious meetings, fateful exchanges, and entirely too many victims, even the wind itself knows to still itself, wary of the forces that may be watching. Needless to say, Vance wasn't that wary. Not noticing that he had an audience, Creature Feature emulated one. "Aaaaaand the winner of the super-train foot race - The one! The Only! Facegrabberrrrrrrrrrr!" The tiny creature's voice was shrill, with a hint of a bizarre, alien echo. It raised two of its leg appendages as it made a crowd-roaring noise, assuming the crowd was made up of chipmunks with a cold. It's spiney tail wagged and twitched excitedly.

"Ah..." Creature Feature was rendered speechless by Silhouette's Not A Ninja speech. Deflated, he stared in a melancholy, awkward silence until she asked him another question. "Oh. Phone? I..." Vance reached down for his pocket before realizing he neither had a pocket, nor the emergency phone that goes in the pocket. "Ah... sorry. I guess not. Oh! But there's a phone booth outside! I saw people calling taxis from it." Creature Feature looked up at the hole that they had both entered. The ceiling was a fair distance away, but his leap could more than cover the range. He offered his hand to Silhouette as he spoke: "Want a lift?"

Vance liked the shadows. After receiving a rather unfortunate amount of attention in his first outing, it was nice to run around in a form much less likely to be noticed. The Facegrabber, a white, alien-looking crab-thing, would be no larger than a cat if it weren't for its long, prehensile tail. It was still more than small enough to escape the notice of most people. This place was perfect for practicing a new, smaller form. Vance had seen no one on his travels here, and if someone did manage to find him there were more than enough places to hide. Vance looked down the side of the abandoned train car as he gripped to the wall with new wall-crawling ability. To avoid detection, Vance had approached the train yard slowly. It was time to see just how fast the Facegrabber was. Running as fast as he could, Vance hopped from train to train without a second thought to stealth. "WOOOOOOOOHOOOOOOOOOOO!"

"Right. Uh, I'm really, really sorry about that." Creature Feature dropped his claws down to his side carefully, as he surveyed the devices, both in displays and in the goopy mess. He scratched his head lightly with a claw as he thought to himself. "So... do we just... uh... call the police about this?" Creature Feature thought about the evidence room his dad showed him when he visited the police station. Sure, the dangerous evidence was locked up tight, but it didn't have chemical-spewing turrets for protection. Creature Feature brightened as he had an idea. "Oh! Do you have a secret ninja base? Like, in the mountains or something? Maybe you could take the stuff and hide it!"

"Right! I'm on it!" Creature Feature dashed over to the other side of the room as the turret got distracted by Silhouette. I'll put everything I've got into this one! With one mighty leap, Creature Feature raised up a claw, ready to strike. The devastating attack cleaved right through the turret, dropping the machine from its resting place on the wall and completely shattering it. The remaining parts fizzled and sparked as the machine's components died. Whoa... Creature Feature looked down at his claws in wide-eyed bewilderment. The werewolf form seemed powerful, certainly, but even Wolfguy wasn't able to claw through solid steel. He definitely had to figure out how to be careful around people, as he'd never want to hurt anyone.

"I guess that's a resounding 'Yes'." Creature Feature muttered to no one in particular. Two turrets were down, and one of them was completely focused on the shadowy warrior. With a turret opposite remaining, he could probably kill two birds with one stone by destroying one and causing enough ruckus to make the other focus on him. With a leap, Creature Feature grabbed on to the turret, clawing away at it. It sparked and fizzled as the outer layer got scratched up. While he held on, he yelled loudly at the other turret, in an attempt to get its attention. "Hey Camera Face! You couldn't hit the broad side of a storm trooper, you panzy turret!" Urgh. I sure hope it registers lame insults. Yelling loudly enough, the turret turned and fired at Creature Feature. Its shot went wild, gooping up the other turret, trapping it in a thick foam that the turret could only make thicker. "Yessss!" Creature Feature celebrated his highly improbable maneuver with a fist pump.

Creature Feature fell behind the cover of a podium as the foamy chemicals sprayed across the room. He looked through the volley of sticky foam for any sign of Silhouette, but she was long gone by the time he looked. "Silhouette? Are you okay?" The chemical turrets homed in on the noise, covering the podium further in goop, anchoring it in place. That junk is gluing the podium to the floor. I probably won't be able to use it as a shield. Looks like I'll have to go with the direct approach. Vance took a quick note where the next podium he could hide behind could be. After finding a decent goal to jump to, he leapt up, slashing at the turret with his claws. With a jolt of electricity, half of the turret fell off, leaving the gun useless. With no other assailants visible, the three other guns pointed at Creature Feature, firing a volley of chemicals at him. While two of the guns were more than accurate enough to hit the fleeing werewolf, Creature Feature used his claws to scrape off the gunk onto the walls before hiding behind the podium, leaving only gunky residue.

Creature Feature blinked hard as the lights turned on, the blinding darkvision turning off on its own after a few seconds. "OW! Geeze!" Vance rubbed the back of his head as he was suddenly slapped. "I thought finding clues would be easier with light!" One by one, the room's multiple displays lit up in a remarkably well-made showcase. Many showcases were devices of an electrical nature, while the others that were locked firmly behind much more secure containment units appeared to have more sinister applications. A number of these sinister applications contained the symbol of a black lightning bolt going through a gray circle. "H-hey! That's the symbol those ninjas had on their chest!" Creature Feature pointed excitedly to one particularly large specimen of a sinister device, rotating behind a forcefield. The werewolf grinned a goofy grin as he discovered his first "clue" in the basement, thanks to the lights he restored with the generator. "INTRUDER ALERT. SECURITY MEASURES ENGAGED" Vance's ears drooped as an automated lady's voice announcement. Within moments, 4 automated turrets, filled with a chemical solution that glued to its targets, expanded, and hardened, appeared on the ceiling. ((Defense System - PL 7, Rank 7 Snare, Attack +7, Toughness +10, Defense Bonus -1 [stationary]))

Creature Feature fell down the hole too, although was not nearly as prudent at looking where he was leaping. Still, he avoided touching anything as he landed softly, his legs hardly making a noise on the concrete floor. That did not stop him from breaking his own silence when, as Silhouette had suggested, his eyes naturally pierced through the dark, allowing him to see the entire basement in black and white. "Whoa..." There had been very little light when he had first fallen down to the basement. His new senses revealed, in intricate detail, a veritable shrine of gizmos and gadgets. "Look at all that cool stuff!" Creature Feature wandered in a little, looking about. There were definitely a great deal of odd devices here, with exception to where the TESLAmobile had been before its "liberation". Creature Feature folded his arms for a moment as he thought to himself. Even with the adrenaline rush caused by the attack, he distinctly remembered that the ninja-blaster guys had been down here too. "Why didn't they take any of this stuff?" Vance mused, looking around again. Something he recognized finally caught his attention. An old-style generator from the 60's, like the ones they used in the old movies that would always get shorted out before the monster struck. Maybe there was no light because there was no power? "Hang on! I think I see a generator. Maybe I can get the lights to work!" Vance walked over to the generator. While it was a simple enough machine, Vance wasn't very good at general electronics, and would probably take a little while.

The crowd and the police watched in horror as the van turned down the declining road. Vance was stunned and speechless, still holding up his arms, and caught between the impending accident rolling away from him and the arresting officer behind him. The van started to change course as the uncontrolled wheels swayed in whatever path the road dictated. The van was heading straight for a little girl, playing with a flower in a front yard. With no time to lose, Vance ran and leapt in the air, prompting another "I said FREEZE!" from Carl the policeman. As the senior officer insisted Carl put down the gun, Vance had cleared the van, and braced himself to receive the impact. *Clunk* Despite Vance's best efforts, the van wasn't stopping. Vance's feet slid forward as the van kept pushing forward. Behind him, a mother came out to shield her daughter, as there was no time to get her out of the way. "*Urrrgh*. What's being delivered today? Lead bars?" With all of his might, Vance pushed against the van. And then Vance tripped. He was simply too unused to the new form. As his foot hit the curb, Vance flipped backwards and under the tires of the van, still clinging on to the bumper in any amount of effort to slow the vehicle down. Vance shut his eyes tight, ignoring the pain of having a van on top of him. Pleeeeeeease... The van stopped! In front of the van, an unpowered mother pushed against the van, with the help of the curb and a roadkill-esque werewolf. The little girl gripped her mother's leg as tightly as she could, with tears running down her face. Vance breathed a sigh of relief. Even having been dragged along the street and the curb while having a van on top of him, Vance was in surprisingly good condition. While he was a bit clumsy, despite the form's inherent agility, it was pretty hard to injure. With a groan, Vance pushed up on the van to get himself out. Only lifting half the van, the werewolf's strength was more than enough to unpin himself from the tire. Rolling out from under the van. Vance stayed down on the sidewalk, tired from the excessive and surprising amount of effort needed to stop a runaway vehicle. Concerned members of the crowd and the police officers ran down the declining road to ensure the shocked mother and little girl were alright. Vance opened his eyes to see the older officer above him, holding out his hand. "My name's Bruce. Are you okay?" Bruce gave a kindly smile as he used both arms to hoist Vance up to his feet as Vance nodded. "Do you have a name?" "Yeah, I'm Va... Creature Feature." Vance blurted out. Mental note: Watch the secret identity-thing. "Well, 'Creature Feature', even if you are a giant wolf-thing, that was a mighty brave thing to do." Bruce nodded in approval, shaking Vance's large, clawed hand as he did. "Thank you!" Vance grinned an awkward, bizarre looking grin on the wolf face. It quickly faded as he asked, "Are you still gonna arrest me?" Bruce chuckled and shook his head. "I think we can let you off with a warning this time. Try not to scare too many folks, you hear?" Vance's eyes lit up. "Thank you, Bruce!" As Vance parted ways with Bruce, he could still hear police officer Carl's loud protests in the background. His first disaster, admittedly caused by him, had been boldly stopped! Admittedly, he needed a mom's help, the curb, and all the strength he could muster, but a runaway van was no laughing matter! It was time to fight crime and be a real hero. And that started with rescuing Ms. Lights!

Creature Feature rubbed the back of his head. The Video Head was simply too trashed by the bad guys. Secrecy didn't matter anymore. What did matter was getting to the bottom of this attack and rescuing Ms. Lights before something bad could happen to her! And the basement was the best place to look for clues. "There's a basement... cave-thing." Vance admitted. "It was a storage place for... weird things. Science things. There might be a clue down there, but it's probably pretty dangerous." With the help of his enlarged strength, Vance cleared out the rubble around the opening, allowing for a much easier descent into the dark. Vance felt around his unadorned form, realizing he didn't bring any equipment with him. "Nuts! I don't have my flashlight." Vance exclaimed out loud.

Creature Feature's current bluff check is in error. Could it be changed to +3 total, please? Done by Sandman XI

"You don't know? But I thought you were...?" Vance's overactive imagination had already explained the presence of the heroine - a lone ninja in a desperate time where evil ninjas attack video stores in order to kidnap and ransom off old ladies to fuel their evil ways. Only one lone ninja could hear the muffled cries of VHS lovers left bereft of a video-tape sanctuary - their tears like tears of blood that could only be cured by ninja-based vengeance. Honor has a name - and that name is Silhouette. Vance sighed a little, letting a little disappointment sink in before realizing he hadn't answered the question. "Oh, ah... Ninjas attacked. Guys in black masks with laser guns. They blew up the Video Head store, I'm sure. And I think they might have taken Ms. Lights." And they must have been after that basement-thing, for some reason! That car was kinda cool, and there were other gadgets down there too. Vance caught himself almost looking in the direction of the basement. Wait! She could be a bad guy. Don't let her know about the basement yet until you know you can trust her. It was time to break out a monstrous poker face. Good job, Vance. She'll never know you're hiding something!

"Uh... thanks?" Vance's voice betrayed his obvious confusion to the scenario. As he got back to his feet with a little help from the suspicious stranger, he ran the facts through his head again. A lady. She's in a black cloth mask too. A ninja mask. How do they see out of that, anyway? Oh, and she can appear out of thin air and she's not afraid of my snarling wolf-face either. Not afraid? She's not even remotely *impressed*. She's the real deal. And she helped me up. I got helped up by a *ninja*. This is so... "Cool..." Vance blurted out his conclusion in a confused, dream-like daze. Realizing his folly, he shook his head to regain his senses. "Uh, what I mean is... uh, thanks. You're not scared of the whole...?" Vance motioned to his face with a free hand. "Uh, nevermind." Vance shrugged off his question, diminished by the piercing gaze of the alleged ninja. Instead, he extended his large, be-clawed hand to the mysterious visitor. "I'm V... Er, Creature Feature."

((I believe that's accurate.)) "ACK!" With the sudden appearance of a person from behind, the shocked Creature simultaneously backed up, flipped around, and tried to cover his head with his hands. The overall result made Vance's giant wolf paws stumble over each other, causing unceremonious crash to the ground on his back. Peeking from behind his claws, Vance still couldn't get a good look at his alleged assailant. He pointed a clawed finger at the silhouette of a figure. "What have you done with Mrs. Lights, villain?" Creature Feature demanded with as much authority as he could muster. Flat on the ground, covering his face from attack and felled by someone half his size, that amount of authority wasn't much.

"This is all a big misunderstanding. I'm a superhero! A new one!" The large wolf-creature standing on a beaten up mail van with a frantically fleeing mail man yelling hysterically for help. Vance rubbed the back of his head, furrowing his brow while fumbling for the right words to win the hearts of the public. Not surprisingly, the words didn't come up. This crowd-winning thing is hard. How do other superheroes do it? Vance wondered to himself. As he did, a lone police car zoomed to the scene, spinning around to create a barrier on the road. Two police officers, a young, shaky looking fellow and the larger, older driver stepped out of the vehicle. Immediately, the younger officer used his door as cover and threw out his gun at Vance, who held up his hands as high as he could. "FREEZE!" the younger one spewed out, his gun-hand quivering as he drew a bead on Vance. The older one scratched his head as he calmly exited the vehicle. "Huh. I don't think think the "large dog" description dispatch gave us was too accurate on this one." Vance breathed a sigh of relief when he did not recognize either of the officers. At least his father wasn't here to witness this fiasco. His relief soon faded when the shorter officer started yelling again. "It ain't no dog, for sure! And it better COME DOWN QUIETLY and stop its MURDEROUS RAMPAGE on top of that there mail car!" The older one sighed. "Calm down, Carl. You're gonna scare the animal and then we might have real trouble on our hands." "I'm coming down." Vance yelled, trying to disguise his already-changed voice. The result was a mess of gruff tones. "Just don't shoot!" The cop aimed his shaking gun at the werewolf as it did its best to climb down the van gracefully. The senior officer took out some handcuffs. "It talks too? We're gonna have to take this one down to the station." "Y'hear THAT?" the excitable officer yelled. "You're goin' DOWNTOWN! Put your hands... uh... paws on the van and don't make any sudden moves!" "But I didn't DO anything!" Vance pleaded. Despite the protest, Vance did as he was told and put his hands on the Van and leaned forward, waiting for the police to handcuff him. "First day as a super hero and I'm already gonna get arrested. This sucks." The idea of getting arrested was quickly replaced in his mind when the van wheeled forward from Vance's touch. He realized, in horror, that the mailman had not placed the van in park in his haste to leave the vehicle. Worst yet, ahead of the van were a series of downhill ramps, where the van could pick up a dangerous amount of speed. "Oh no..."

"Who said that?!" Vance jumped up as fast as he could, raising his arms in a make-shift kung-fu defensive stance that was common in bad action movies. He looked around for the source of the hushed female voice. In his flustered state, even his newly-acquired darkvision helped little to pinpoint anything out of the ordinary. "I-I'm warning you! If you're another ninja I... uh, eat ninjas! For breakfast!" Vance stammered as his eyes darted in every direction, trying in desperation to cover all of the vast number of ambush points available in the vicinity. For Breakfast? Gads, that's lame. Remember the snarly face! Do the snarly face! The wolf-creature contorted his face into a snarling figure, trying his best to conjure the old horror magic. "Grrrr!"

The rooftops had been a poor choice. Creature Feature knew how important it was to stay out of sight, and few people ever look up when they're minding their own business. With the Wolfguy's natural affinity for jumping and the shorter apartment buildings and shacks in the Fens, the high ground seemed like a natural place to practice moving around in a new form. Unfortunately, those same rooftops were often in a poor state of disrepair. Landing hard on the rooftop adjacent to the ruins of Video Head, Vance let out a yelp of surprise as his leg sunk down into a newly-made hole. He quickly dragged his leg out, stumbling back towards the video store in order to survey the damage he caused. Much to Feature's relief, the building appeared to be dark and empty. While backing up, Vance also discovered that the rooftop ended sooner than he expected. "ACK!" Mustering remarkable grace, the wolf creature twisted himself around in mid air in an attempt to catch himself falling. Slapping the ground to absorb some of the impact, Creature Feature landed belly-first. "Ugh... That didn't go so well..."

The werewolf quickly unhinged the gate, doing his best on his new legs out of the backyard. While the sheer size of the new form was an obstacle in itself, the remarkable agility helped quite a bit. Between concentrating on how to run and imagining sirens in the distance that were not yet there, Vance had trouble noticing the humble mail van coming down the street he ran out to. *SCREEEEEECH* The van came to a sudden stop as the driver looked for the black figure he had almost hit. The van hadn't struck anything, nor were there any signs of movement on the left or the right. A brief second later, the back of the van's roof sunk in as Vance landed on a knee. "Holy smokes!" Vance looked down to see how high he had jumped. He had easily cleared not only the van, but the roofs of the second story houses as well. More than that, he had managed to avoid becoming roadkill. The euphoria of the moment wore off quickly, however, when Vance remembered the poor driver inside. "Gee. I'm real sorry, mister. Are you okay?" "MONSTER!" The mailman screamed as he forced upon the van's door. Vance held out his hand as the mailman ran as quickly as he could. The young shapeshifter did not get off the van, however, when he noticed the increasing number of people watching him through windows and doors, due to the previous ruckus he made. In the distance, the imaginary sounds of sirens running through Vance's head had become real. Super powers or not, today was not Vance's day.

Creature Feature False Start Nightmare on 70th Street Working on the Railroad Reputation Posting

Vance opened the door and looked outside. The sun had almost set as night was starting to fall on the neighborhood. The days had been getting cooler as the summer days had begun to drift away. With a hasty look about, Vance made his way to the backyard of his house, closing the flimsy white fence's gate behind him for as much privacy as he could muster. Vance knelt down on his hands and needs and craned his neck to see the televisions. Sure enough, both televisions were playing: one with the vacation video and the other rolling the starting credits of "Revenge of the Wolfman." With patience, the young man waited until the end of the credits - a flashing image of the werewolf appeared to scare the audience. Even the small flash of picture was enough when Vance knew what he was looking for. An intense energy built up inside of him, as if his blood were beginning to shift and boil - an uncomfortable sensation. His body exploded into its new shape with reckless abandon, structuring and re-structuring itself faster and faster, growing bit by bit and reshaping itself perfectly. Within seconds, the feeling of intense vertigo had come and gone. Vance shook his head and opened his eyes to get his bearings. Underneath him was the familiar, neatly-trimmed grass of his home, but in the grass where his hands should be, large, black-and-white claws remained. "Whoa." Vance brought a claw up to his throat. His voice had changed from the higher-pitched tenor to the scruffy, muted tones of a monstrous wolf. Vance looked back at the window, where the light of the diminishing sun cast his reflection back at him. There was no trace of a teenage boy staring back at him, but the full embodiment of Wolfguy. The transformation was complete. Vance grinned, but stopped when he saw how goofy a smile on a werewolf looked. "That's not gonna cut it! Wolfguy's gotta be scary!" Vance picked himself up off the ground, stumbling about on his powerful, but somewhat awkward double-jointed legs. When he managed to find his balance, he walked off to the house's ground-floor kitchen window to have a better look at his full reflection. To his amazement, he even had to crouch down to see his face in the full kitchen window. Vance practiced shifting his mouth for a while to get a better look at his frightening teeth. He tapped on a tooth with one of his claws, noting how hard the teeth were. This was certainly not a costume or cosmetic effect - the teeth were just as real as they looked. Satisfied, he struck a pose and snarled in the most terrifying way he could manage. This was far better than any movie! Surely Vance looked as frightening and dangerous as anything Freedom City could dish out! With a scary look in his arsenal, he was ready to take on whatever crooks or thieves might still be lingering near the Video Head. It was time to be Creature Feature! Still keeping his face in the same snarl, in order to try and commit the scary face to his new form's muscle memory, Vance turned around, looking for an inconspicuous way to leave. Instead, in the lot beside him, he saw a seven-year-old little girl poking her head out over the fence. There was a single instance of silence before the little girl screamed and ran into the house. "Aw geeze..."