Chapter 7: Monstrous Disguises
--- Gregory Thompson, Before The Event ---
Once upon a time, he thought he was a Deviant. Not the lowercase kind that people associated with breaking rules or taboo, but rather one of the capital D Deviants. One of those people who somehow ‘Deviated’ from the human norm and became something different.
When he was younger he hadn’t quite believed the stories he’d heard about the things going bump in the night of Heywood City, but after the riots back in the nineties and early two thousands. Well, he’d seen things that made him believe.
And with belief came a desire to understand, and admittedly a sort of envy that he could only remember with embarrassment.
Back when he was a kid, before the riots, he’d known he was a little different from the people around him. Not to the extent that Deviants were, but teenage him had wanted some reason for why he was different from others, for why whenever he was himself people would look at him and be repulsed despite him just trying to fit in.
Eventually after pouring through various rumors, he’d come to the conclusion that despite his teenage wishes he was not a Deviant.
He’ll admit he hadn’t taken that well at first, but with a depressed habit of investigating Deviant rumors he eventually discovered the gang war going on in the city’s underground. A gang war that he honestly couldn’t care less about, at least until he realized that the participants of that war were feeding on the innocents of the city.
Sure some claimed that they didn’t need to kill to survive, or that they paid for the blood they took, or that they only drank from blood bags. And others claimed that they didn’t actually eat hearts like the rumors said, despite bodies being found all over the city that looked like animal attacks.
It was at that point that he realized he could use the thing that made him an outcast that made him shunned to actually make the city a better place.
After all, who cares if you want to hear a monster scream before you gut them?
This led him to becoming one of the city’s best Hunters in his humble opinion, admittedly nowhere near the level of Hendrickson or Kennedy, but those two dove into the darkest parts of the masquerade and it showed in the fact that Hendrickson was bat shit insane while Kennedy was dead and his partner a monster now.
He knew those were the risks of the job, but he had no intention of becoming a hero like those two. He’d stick to the New Bloods, Pups, and newborn Creeps. The things that while perhaps not glamorous to hunt, could one day become the next King of Blood or Lunar Fang.
But that didn’t stop him from doing the heroes a solid every now and then, even if they didn’t realize it. Which is how he found himself walking through these back alleys in Hendrickson’s territory searching for a monster that while it hadn’t killed anyone yet had been growing bolder the last few days. (Likely just some Arcane’s escaped experiment, but still something that could waste the old man’s time. Time better spent keeping the Deadland kings dead, all the Demons in hell, or Zeus’s pants on.)
He wasn’t actually sure if that last story was true, but given how the Greek myths went and what Hendrickson was capable of, he’d believe it if the old man admitted it and thank him for his service.
A scrabbling sound drew him from his thoughts as he raised his guard higher than it had been and pulled out the gun he’d kept stowed in case he came across a Civie.
The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
Slowly he crept through the alley, his eyes drifting around before the sound of clattering metal drew his eyes to a manhole cover, forcing him to grimace. “Of course this thing is hiding in the sewers…”
It was more common than he’d like and meant he couldn’t use his gun without risking hitting a gas line or some such. “This is going to be fun…”
He bent down to open the cover and follow his prey before pausing as he noticed a faint sizzling coming from the cover. “The hell?”
Another spot popped and sizzled as he inspected the first, telling him exactly what was wrong.
Feeling his pulse spike he steadied his grip on his gun before looking up to see a massive rat clinging to the wall of the alley, tentacles pulsing out of its back and digging into the bricks to help steady its weight.
He had just enough time to get off two shots before the beast was upon him.
--- ???, Before The Event ---
He -or it thought it was a he now given its current anatomy- continued to test out its latest form, something that would blend in far easier with the local Sapients than the mega rat it had been using previously. He’d partially based it on the muscular human he’d consumed, but felt it was a good idea to mix up some of the details so that the human’s packmates wouldn’t discover its deception and force it to act like it was one of them before he could find a secluded place to eat them.
Well that, and the fact that he couldn’t actually figure out this whole pigmentation thing humans had going with their eyes, hair, and skin. Which was probably a side effect of his main body being innately blind, and his differing nervous system being incompatible with both sets of photoreceptors he’d discovered templates for.
But getting back on topic…
(This human Template isn’t as agile as my rodent form, but I am liking the bipedal legs. Frees up my arms and hands for other things.) Not that he actually needed arms and hands to do things given how he could just sprout tendrils to take care of that stuff, (but human hands are a lot more dexterous than a flailing tendril. Plus I don’t need to adjust how many appendages I’m grabbing with on the fly, I can just use the ones this body comes with.)
Admittedly having a second form Template to work with made him start wondering how many other useful Templates he could find out there to work with.
The faint chirping of an avian drew his attention towards a bird above him, and while he couldn’t actually see it, though he could still feel it moving through the air via some weak vibrations and echo location that were innate to its original form.
Which is how he fired a tendril straight through its chest before dragging the bird into his body and dissolving it with the mass of internal tendrils he was using in place of all the boring human parts that would serve him no purpose. (Like this bladder thing, why do humans need to expel fluids? I mean, what’s the point of being made of so many liquids if you’re just going to expel them via a urethra and these sweat gland things? If you’re going to expel a fluid, spit out some acid or something.)
Shaking his head at the weirdness of this inferior mammalian evolution, he moved his thoughts back to the bird template his tendrils had finished consuming before shifting into his third Template. Figuring that while the Human Template would help it blend in easier, a form that could fly could prove valuable even if the lack of ground would cost it half its vibrational awareness.
After shrinking down and compressing its form into that of a(n actually bigger than I wanted) bird, it discovered that a bird form would be completely useless to it as its body was far too dense for the bird’s wings to carry it. Even with its superior tendrils replacing all of said Template’s muscles for several dozen times the power, which allowed it to get several seconds of air… before promptly cratering the ground beneath it.
Shifting back into his human form he couldn’t help but frown with this Template’s facial muscles. (Huh, I know my old body could fly through space so… why can’t I remember how they did that?)
He wondered if he should be concerned that he couldn’t, before deciding that it didn’t matter. (Probably one of several failsafes to keep us from overpowering it should we go rogue. I’ll just have to figure out a way around that, but I’ve got centuries to get on that. So… whatever.)
That said, all of this thinking was making him hungry. (Let’s see if we can’t find another human… maybe a female so I have both templates at my disposal.)