Sheer intuition saved him from pulling the trigger as they faced one another. That and he wasn't entirely sure it wouldn't kill him immediately if he did. He also doubted a single bullet would be enough to down this beast and the odds of him being able to touch it long enough to dust him without being eaten seemed slim.

Ryan's tiger eyes had tracked the wolf on its charge in. Some primal part of him reported that, while this thing was clearly a predator, its approach hadn't resembled that of an animal on the hunt. Despite the speed it had arrived at, the big wolf hadn't appeared to be exerting himself.

Which, strangely enough, didn't make him feel better in the slightest.

"Can… I help you?" Ryan asked cautiously, keeping his voice as even and polite as possible. Courtesy was free, after all.

The wolf looked down at the gun in Ryan's hands. Its teeth came up in a snarl and then it growled while pointing at the ground with one plate-sized hand.

As non-verbal communication went, that was pretty clear.

"Alright, fine. Here. Nice and slow." Ryan carefully reached down and placed the gun on the ground - being sure to keep it out of arm's reach of Renee in case the little nutjob woke up from her nap. The growling died down a bit as he did.

Figuring it probably wouldn't attack while waiting on him, he analyzed the furry man-beast. Though he kept the window to the side of his vision. Just in case.

Name: Lucas Fulmon

Age: 31

Race: Human (Werewolf) - A human granted enhanced capabilities and the ability to assume a hybrid wolf form through lycanthropy stemming from multiple mythos.

Attributes:

Strength: 24 (40)

Dexterity: 22 (44)

Constitution: 21 (46)

Intelligence: 11

Wisdom: 15

Charisma: 14

Superpower(s): None

Physical status: Wolf Form.

Mental status: Confused, Angry

So werewolves count as their own race? The numbers in parenthesis are probably his wolf form stats... Ryan wasn't really familiar with the lore for lycanthropes. He'd never gone in much for the whole vampire on werewolf rivalry that Hollywood had been so obsessed with.

Lucas put a giant paw up, all five claws extending outward in the universal 'wait' gesture. And then the big wolf began to change.

Silver-grey hair fell from Lucas's form in a single, large pile at his feet as his snout retracted into the wolfman's face. Muscles bulged and then shrank as his claws and teeth retracted to more human-looking variants. For a brief moment, Lucas resembled the world's largest naked mole-rat.

The rest of the process was about as graceful as the start had been. Lucas maintained eye contact with him the entire time, which was a little unnerving, but Ryan kept his gaze steady. This wasn't the first transformation he'd seen, after all. When it was over, the former wolf stood from the crouching position his change had forced him into.

Lucas Fulmon was a bald, bearded man of above-average height with cool blue eyes and an athlete's build. He was also as naked as a jaybird. Jay-wolf? He looked at BGM with an appraising gaze, then back to Ryan.

"Nice ride." Lucas commented with approval. He didn't seem overly concerned with his lack of dress. He jerked a thumb towards where Stella's corpse had been in the rubble. "I owe you one. What'd you do with the body? I lost her scent."

"She didn't cooperate, so I absorbed her." Ryan responded simply. He likely would've done it anyway, but her attitude had sped that up. "I took offense to being tortured. What'd she do to you?"

Lucas nodded in understanding as if he'd expected that response. "Forced me to do what she said. Some kind of witch, I think. Once she was in my mind…" He shook his head. "I had to obey. Made me leave my family and be her… guard dog." He spat the title out in disgust.

"Is that what you were--"

Lucas cut him off. "You were gone when I returned, so she told me to 'go find him and bring him back'. Once I found you..." He indicated BGM with a nod of his head and shrugged in mock uncertainty. "You were already 'back'." Lucas's eyes flicked to the still-settling pile of rubble and a helpless, not-at-all sorry grin crossed his face.

"She forgot to give me more orders, so I just sat back and watched the show. Though uhh.." Lucas's eyes landed on the double-barrel side-mounted tanks of gas Ryan hadn't been able to resist adding. "Are those... flamethrowers?"

Ryan reached down and picked the upper half of Renee back up. "They are." He answered proudly. "Give me a hand here?"

***********

While Lucas went in to retrieve his family, Ryan turned his attention to Renee. Before they'd left, he'd discovered he could change her 'unconscious' status to 'sleeping' for relatively few points. Now he wanted something a little more permanent. At least until they got back to the farm.

Cost to change the 'sleeping' status to a reversible 'coma' status: 35 points.

Cheap way to keep someone under… don't even need drugs. I'll have to keep this in mind for later… Ryan pondered as he made the change.

The rise and fall of Renee's chest took on a deeper rhythm than before. Ryan lifted her arm and dropped it on her face. Nothing. A quick slap across the cheek. Nothing.

Satisfied, Ryan waited for Lucas to return. Watching Renee sleep, he wondered again if she had been as unwilling a participant in Stella's gang as Lucas had been. She was kind of cute when she wasn't blinding his mind with pain. Girl-next-door style, maybe.

Lucas came walking out, interrupting that line of thought. Now dressed in jeans and an open red flannel shirt, he looked like a lumberjack model in some middle-aged woman's 'charity' calendar. Except that his expression was almost as intimidating as his wolf form had been.

"You know anything about cameras?" Lucas asked from outside the driver's side door. There was a wildness that seemed almost desperate in his voice. One hand was clenched, tensed so hard it was shaking.

“I’ve used them before, why?” Ryan answered slowly.

"Something... happened. Cameras are busted." Lucas replied tersely.

"Show me. I'll see what I can do." Ryan jumped out of BGM to follow Lucas. The wolfman turned immediately and led Ryan into what had probably been a nice, suburban home not long ago.

The interior was a wreck. Not as bad as what remained of Stella's home, but there had clearly been a fight here. Or several fights. And a mosh pit.

Claw marks half as long as he was tall marked several walls, gouging swathes of drywall out like tissue paper. Holes the size of dinner plates - some undoubtedly human-shaped, as if someone had been literally swung into the wall - dotted the walls wherever claws weren't. Even the attic was visible in places through tears in the ceiling. Insulation foam from above dusted the broken furniture and other minor electronics or toys in each room. Except for the large plasma TV, which was stuck halfway into the master bedroom door.

Ryan had any number of questions he wanted to ask about what had happened here, but since that was what he'd been invited in to solve, he kept them to himself. Lucas brought him over to two small piles of smashed circuit boards, plastic, cord, and lenses he'd collected on what remained of a countertop.

Even a cursory look made it apparent that fixing them was impossible. The manual way, anyway. Lucas must not know much about tech, because one of the metallic chips was more dust than whole.

They hadn't discussed each other's powers on the ride over. Ryan wasn't keen to share and Lucas appeared to only be nosy in his wolf form.

"Can you fix 'em?" Asked the wolfman, defeat in his voice. Apparently Ryan's face had been easy to read.

Ryan activated his power before responding. He was pretty sure he could, just needed to confirm the cost. And that it would be worth it.

Cost to repair four interior cameras and the associated storage device: 25 points.

Cost to restore the internal memory: 5 points.

"Actually… I can. Not by hand though." Ryan responded. Not bad, considering. He thought privately. Hard drive must not be too damaged.

Lucas nodded. "How much?" He asked, reaching for a pocket. "I don't have much but I--"

Ryan held up a hand and met Lucas's eyes with his own. "I don't work like that. I can help. I'm going to. I'll need some food after, but you won't owe me anything more than a burger later."

"Oh." Lucas looked at him in relief. Then a small smile edged its way onto his face. "Yeah. I can do that."

"Awesome." Ryan made the change, tapping the piles and then getting up to look for an outlet that might have survived. The piles immediately began moving of their own accord. Wires, chips, and plastic swirling into place and soldering themselves back into position within seconds.

It didn't take long to find one, thankfully. Lucas's eyebrows were jumped up almost high enough to look like hair on his bald head. Then he gave Ryan the "not bad" expression of praise all men instinctively knew.

"Right?"

***********

Once they'd found the right time, which turned out to be a few days ago, the scene that played out on the monitor was actually pretty straightforward. Until the fighting started. That was harder to follow.

The cameras were cheap and hadn't recorded audio, but it wasn't hard to recognize a home invasion even without it. A few men had shown up and, without even the pretense of a knock, just walked right in. The door was unlocked, an unfortunate habit of Lucas's forgetful wife. She'd heard them coming, gotten their two children behind her, and shifted into a wolf form quite similar to her husband's.

When the men finally got to the bedroom, mama wolf gave them one hell of a run for their money. She was fast enough that she wasn't on any one camera for very long and clearly had no trouble flinging two of them about the house… but she never strayed far from the kids, so she was eventually worn down.

A tall, dark man with an eyepatch seemed not to bleed no matter how viciously her claws tore through him. His body parts just split and then came back together. The shortest of the three was a mustachioed, creepy fellow with blunt features that seemed to be made of a grey metal instead of flesh. His 'skin' resisted even her obvious strength, so she just flung him about instead.

The third one was a blur as soon as the fight began. Ryan had to rewind and freeze frame the camera just to get a good look at him. He was a thin, wiry young man with a long nose and cruel eyes. Ryan did his best to commit all three to memory. Especially after they managed to knock out mama wolf and carried both her and her terrified kids out the front.

All three men had been wearing tactical gear with vests boasting a police badge on the front. Which meant this was either an arrest…

Or Marcus is rounding up people for some reason. Ryan finished the thought with a grimace. He looked over at Lucas once they were done. The wolfman/father who just watched his family get abducted had been surprisingly calm as they sorted through the footage. If you missed the fist gripped so tightly blood dripped out of his palm, that is.

"I have a suggestion." Ryan said as gently as he could after the recording stopped for the last time.

Lucas didn't respond, but he turned his gaze from the screen to Ryan. His eyes were colder than a winter night under the moon.

"Stella was trying to sell me to Marcus, our new mayor. Renee - that girl out cold in the truck - worked with her. If the mayor is collecting people for some reason, she might know something."

Ryan didn't voice the obvious thought. That if Stella was working for Marcus to 'acquire' people… she probably pointed them in the direction of his family for a payout once she had him under control. Might even have forced him to give up the address. Ryan suddenly felt a lot better about his decision to go all demo-derby on her.

"Yeah… you want to bring her in here then?" Lucas asked, unclenching his fist and seeming to notice the blood for the first time.

Ryan hadn't considered that, but he didn't see a reason not to. And it would get them answers a little faster than if he went back to the farm. Plus, he needed people on his side if he was going to fight back against Marcus - a man who had the entire police force under his thumb. An angry werewolf with an axe to grind seemed like a good addition.

"Sure. Where do you want her?"

"The garage. Less of a mess in there."

Ryan nodded and then parked BGM sideways so the neighbors wouldn't see him dragging an unconscious woman into the garage. He had a feeling that would only add to their list of problems.

They got Renee set up on the floor of Lucas's garage. Ryan blindfolded her just to be safe, then shared his thoughts on her power and his suspicion she might also have been under Stella's control with Lucas. The wolfman recalled her scent joining the gang about a day before Ryan had come along, so it was entirely possible she was just as innocent as he was.

And if she wasn't, Ryan already had the upgrades in mind he would buy with her points.

He was becoming a bit cavalier with what was essentially killing another human being… but since all the people he’d absorbed or killed so far had also tried to kill him… it didn’t really register. He believed in doing good. Sometimes that meant balancing out the evil in the world by getting rid of it.

Once they were setup and the garage was closed, he removed the coma status. Renee began to stir shortly after. Her hands went to the concrete floor, then to the blindfold.

Before she could take it off, Ryan tapped a crowbar to the pavement to get her attention. Her head swiveled to the sound, trying to place it.

"Keep that on for now, please. We have a few questions we'd like to ask without your power making things difficult." Ryan kept his voice neutral and calm as he spoke, trying not to let her previous actions affect his own.

Renee froze at that, then stood carefully, her hands bracing against the wall as she went. She was silent for a moment. Her fingers twitched as if she were considering yanking up the blindfold and taking her chances. Nobody moved.

"You're the one that escaped." She said finally. There was none of the wannabe-anime villain arrogance in her voice. Just resignation.

"I am."

"Are you going to kill me?"

Tension hung in the air as Ryan considered his response.

"No. Not unless you attack me again, that is. Lucas here was forced to follow Stella's orders thanks to her power. Now that she's dead, he's free. All I need to know is--"

"She's really dead?" Renee's hands crossed over her waist. Defensive. Ryan noted.

"Yes. I killed her myself." Ryan said it confidently, but he wasn't really sure why he added that last bit. It just felt like she needed to hear it.

Renee sank slowly to the ground. "Oh, thank God. I thought I'd be her little puppet forever."

Well, that answers that. Ryan thought, relieved. He was glad to finally get somewhere without having to fight for it.

"You can take off the blindfold then. Just… no sudden movements. It's been a long day and I'm a bit jumpy." He was, too. Ryan had honestly been ready to just absorb the woman and get it over with just so he could go back to the farm and get some sleep. He was tired. Bone tired.

"Just like that? What were your other questions?" Renee asked as she pulled the blindfold off. Lucas handed her a warm washcloth he'd gotten ready without Ryan noticing. She thanked him, wiped her face off a few times, and then her ocean-blue eyes settled on Ryan.

"He has some for you, I've got some more, and most of them are about our glorious new mayor." Ryan said, nodding at Lucas then standing up. "But first I think we could all use some food. Now, how's about we talk on the way and I treat you both to a country-style breakfast?"

"So, wait. You kidnap me, blindfold me, and now you want to feed me?" Renee arched a disbelieving eyebrow. Was that a hint of a smile?

"Technically I healed you, too. Pulled out of a collapsed house and yet not a scratch on you. I could've left you there." Ryan spread his arms wide in a placating gesture.

"A house you collapsed." Renee pointed out. Then the smile at the corners of her mouth became genuine, even grateful. "Which got me away from her. I'll take you up on your offer for now, Mr…?"

"Ryan. Just Ryan is fine."

"Ryan it is then. I have a few questions of my own, but they can wait for now. Are we taking that?" Renee asked, looking at the relatively beaten up white minivan Lucas was walking towards.

"No, we're taking mine." Ryan responded as Lucas hit the garage door opener on the sidewall.

"Yours? What do you drive?"

Ryan didn't respond, preferring to let the view of the slow-motion garage door opening speak for itself. The sun shone off BGM's steel plating. Bits of wood and construction material wedged here and there.

"That." Ryan answered with just the barest hint of smugness in his voice. He started towards the driver's seat.

"Are those... flamethrowers?" Renee asked carefully as she approached, her eyes falling on the unmistakably obvious weapons.

Ryan paused, his eyes flicking over to Lucas, who shook his head with a small smile. Ryan grinned.

"Yes. Yes, they are."