Melkor

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Bagpipes

The Promised Children : Eat, or Be Eaten

Tokyo, Japan
Evening // January 24

She didn’t understand. This handler of Five’s simply couldn’t understand. She was human. A well built and really rather strong human, but a human nonetheless. She craved normal things, exercise, familial connection, entertainment, money. Five desired none of these things. From Five’s perspective, he was cursed to chase an ever-fleeting pleasure. He had the constant urge to feed. The pleasure diminished each time he fed. By now, as he ate he used the derived pleasure to draw foggy memories of the first time he fed.

He could hardly see it now, he vaguely remembered the pleasure he experienced as the irony blood rushed over his tongue and fed his pleasure centers. Now it was a slow creep by comparison as the pleasure coalesced. It was evanescent at best but it filled Five in an otherwise empty and hollow existence.

More than my siblings? Five couldn’t help but think that the others weren’t living up to their potential. He had grown to despise certain humans. He wasn’t sure if Father had built this hunger into him but it was the one thing he detested in an otherwise perfect man. If his father had made him to desire human flesh but had put him in a world where these humans, these cattle, had such a visceral reaction to him feeding, then that was cruel.

After some fifty metres or so, Five had began to properly use his feet again. The pain had dissipated to a dull and barely noticeable throb in the back of his head. Manageable. The had pushed through the growing crowd. The density increased as people realized that whatever the threat was, it was gone. Eyelids parted in the back of Five’s neck and a small eye took rapid glances around. Spotting carnage and tens of dead, if not more. More and more police arrived and seemed to be shifting into a rescue operation. Some military types were getting into their vehicles and were on their way out, letting the police do their thing.

“The monster that appeared suddenly plowed its way through the evening crowd with three hundred and seven confirmed dead.” The woman on the side of a building was saying to the crowd, describing the disaster they had all just experienced. As she spoke her image was moved to a corner and shrunk as a playback of the event was shown.

The clip began showing the large evening crowd. Hundreds, if not thousands, of people were eagerly making their way home or to work. All bumping into each other, the classic Japanese politeness had died when the cities became so ridiculously overcrowded that it was simply impractical. Then, a small gap formed somewhere in the center of the crowd and in seconds the gap was filled with this shadowy mass of unmatter. It rapidly grew into an amorphous blob with several legs holding it up and it began running through the crowd, large tendrils lashing out and tearing into the crowd as they tried to run away.

The clip went on for another few minutes and Five couldn't help but wonder what had happened. His mind had gone blank and his body experienced so much sudden pain in every receptor that he shut down for several minutes. Now seeing the result, Five couldn’t help but feel fear. Father would be furious. If it hadn’t been for the handler, he might have been captured. Five would need to control himself in the future. Perhaps the handler was right.

His view of the video was cut off as they passed into an alley and Five was sat against a wall. He wasn’t sure what their next move would be but he knew that he wasn’t going like his immediate future. He had lost contact with the handler and he had just killed hundreds, not counting the tens of people he’d eaten in the last few days. Humans were so irrational when it came to other members of their species.

The Promised Children : Eat, or Be Eaten

Tokyo, Japan
Evening // January 24

The precipitous and splitting agony ensnared every inch of Five’s skin, of which he had plenty. All rational thought blocked by the persistent and withering pain. The only other thing that he could think of; the screams of the populace. He was vaguely aware that the national police were beginning to arrive on the scene, their vehicles making slow progress through the crowd - but they were always nearby. He didn’t know what to do about it and he certainly couldn’t focus on anything long enough to try to think of a solution. Instinctually, Five’s long dark legs dragged his misshapen form to the water. Japan was a small island country and water was always close-by, especially after the sea levels rose.

Countless people had been torn apart in the seconds since the monster had appeared. Human lives, snuffed out in an instant. Children were in the majority; the day session of school had just got out. Their corpses littered the path which had been haphazardly carved out. Many were inexplicably in half or were missing arms or legs, the severed segments were nowhere to be found. Not that anyone was trying very hard.

The dead continued to pile as Five’s destructive path remained unfettered. But then… there was a voice. It sliced through the tumultuous uproar. It soothed Five’s nerves. The splitting pain remained but his mind was his for the moment and plenty of thoughts rushed in all at once. He was ashamed that father would be upset with him, perhaps even furious. He also considered what must have happened to him. With the pain… but he wasn’t able to decide what it must’ve been. He knew that he probably didn't have time to bother with it.

Before Five's next step touched the ground he shifted almost all of his mass to the shape of one of the people he'd just crushed. Five still loomed over the crowd, but they couldn't tell that most of the shadowy amorphous creature had nearly no mass. Then abruptly, the creature vanished. Five had moved the remaining mass to himself and the rest of the form didn't have enough matter to maintain opacity.

Afterward, he remained on the ground screaming. His voice couldn't be heard over the crowd and they wouldn't have heard him anyway, the corpse his face was nestled in absorbed the sound waves sufficiently. Those around him and first responders would probably think the woman he'd turned into had just lost a loved one. Not an uncommon sight just then.

The Promised Children : Eat, or Be Eaten

Tokyo, Japan
Evening // January 24

The savoury flavour lingered on his tongues. All but one of his mouths zipped shut, concealed beneath the skin, Five appeared passable as human. The woman’s face, who used to be the girl’s mother, felt much more familiar on Five than his neighbor had earlier. The slimmer physique was more manageable and he could more convincingly imitate the more graceful movements.

The taste fleeting and his desire to replace it growing, Five found himself in another housing district. This one seemed more upscale than the one the girl and her family had lived, before he ate them. The memory brought back the experience but just a wisp of what it was. Five moaned softly, remembering the sensation. The screams. He was forced to vanish when the neighbors rapped on the door, evidently worried about the noise.

When the door had been broken down by law enforcement the small, plain, room of an apartment had been exactly as it had when Five entered. The thin grey carpet still lined the floor, unblemished. The minimal wall decorations were still in place; the small television, the small love seat and coffee table, all untouched… with one exception. Their apartment had a new table. Nondescript, in the corner, with nothing on it. The same colour as their coffee table but with longer legs. If the police had been more observant, they would have noticed that the carpet underneath each leg was fully depressed and the floor occasionally creaked slightly.

They were too focused on finding the disappeared family. The neighbor gave a description and they left. After another hour, Five transformed into the woman and left. But this left Five in a dilemma. He was forced to cover his face in public, until he could find somewhere to transform again.

He was in the residential district to find another face. And he thought he had found one that would work. The only hitch was that they were in a building and he very well couldn't enter without giving himself away. He spent a few minutes contemplating how he would do it.

But other plans were in the works… out of the blue Five’s vision became blurry and an incessant ich hit him like nothing he’d ever experienced and it was all at once all over his body! He collapsed in the middle of the perpetual crowd. The land of the rising sun erupted into bloodcurdling shrieks and howls as his body took on a mind of its own. He had lost control with his already growing hunger and the sudden onset of pain and mental opacity.

The collapsed woman's body began to wriggle and change colour and it began to melt into an amorphous mass where her slim form was. She was replaced with disproportioned globs of dark material in a lazily assembled pile. It writhed and changed several times into unobjects - nearly fully formed cars or animals or people. But none of them were quite what they may have been intended. After a moment the mass began to grow. The crowd had long since began to flee, but they were so densely packed that those closest to it were trapped between a wall of people and what they couldn’t accurately describe.

Long dark tentacles shot out from the mass and smacked several city-goers away. Loud snaps marked the shattering of bones as long fissures raced away from where it was. The crowd had packed itself so tightly that no one would move without getting closer to the beast. The monster lifted itself up, several long legs raising the jolting and thrashing mass. It quickly began running toward the nearest source of water, the ground quaked with the impact of each long step. Great dark shadows were cast over the wriggling mass of people. Those who were unlucky enough to find themselves in it's path were simply crushed. Most, if not all of the bones in their bodies were shattered to dust and their innards were squished out creating unrecognizable splatters on the pavement.

Paragon

That's probably fair.

The Promised Children : Eat, or Be Eaten

I feel silly xD I didn't notice there was a GM post to reply to until Haruharara pointed it out.

The Promised Children : Eat, or Be Eaten

Tokyo, Japan
Daybreak // January 24

The face of Five’s neighbor felt odd. It had all of the structure and musculature and was very different from the female faces of his victim's parent which he had grown used to over the last few days. The teeth ground as he clenched the jaw muscles and tried, in a hushed whisper, to say a few words and get used to the new facial geometry. This was all a part of the ritual he had learned before Five stepped into this country.

The extremities were particularly different and moved in odd ways, each more muscular and more voluminous than the others. These thoughts seemed to always cross Five’s mind when he donned a male form. Father had called him male, but this seemed off. Perhaps Five was female… but that didn’t make sense… Father could not be wrong. Father knew every and all things. So, therefore, Five must be male. But then why was this form so alien to him? He did not think he could know that. And frankly, his interest was growing faint as his hunger filled him.

His borrowed mouth began to water as he thought of the meatsacks around him. All of these people… their bodies devoid of fat… the tender flavour as the meat parted in his mouth and the bitter crimson juices running over his tongue… the satisfying snap of the bone and the delectable marrow inside… His body's pleasureful undulating ripple only lasted a second before Five noticed and fell out of his stupor. The night crows were fleeing to their cages and the morning birds began entering the city, reforming the crowds and getting to work. Five would have to work to keep up the form. He hadn’t eaten in several hours.

But as a problem arises, a solution presents itself. A troop of teenagers, perhaps thirty-strong, pushed through the growing crowds. Their backpacks swayed slightly as they walked and their tired expressions made it plain that they were ready for sleep. The people around them tried to make room as an understanding passed around that the students were on their way home after a long night of education.

Five made a u-turn to pursue, getting mistakenly jabbed and shoved as he pushed his way through the crowd. He didn’t even notice those he pushed, his attention was focused wholeheartedly on the students. The riotous noise fell away and all his senses were focused on what was important... The stomach pangs began setting in. Five never liked those. The memory of the man he’d ripped in twain came back to him from the first time he’d felt a hunger pang. The forceful lessons in control he had endured after that incident did not elude him now.

Each step after the teens was agony. With each one his salivating became more of a problem forcing him to clear his mouth of saliva every few seconds. Hunger grew. Grateful for the concealing crowds, Five maintained his pursuit. Once one broke off for their home, he would pounce. He felt positively feline, stalking his prey as a large cat might. His fur was his neighbor’s skin, hiding him in plain sight. His claws were his teeth and he would pounce when an opportunity arose. His tongue twitched in anticipation and he couldn’t help but feel almost giddy. His excitement only overshadowed by his ravenous hunger.

When the first female broke from the group, Five’s body moved of its own volition in pursuit. His natural camouflage did it's due and kept him hidden as, well, a human in a crowd. Just then, the sun crested the horizon and golden crepuscular rays streaked across the sky, meeting again on the other side of the world.

Ban the Person above you

Banned for not being confrontational.

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Buttocks