Deciding that this would be easier if he actually looked like an officer, John inventoried the clothes he had just put on and shifted his form to that of officer Jacobs as he was in his apartment. He pushed the buzzers for several of the apartments with no answer, so he levelled his pistol at where the lock on the door was fired several times and put his full weight into a shoulder check on the door. It flew open, sending wood splintering off in all directions as he stepped into a small atrium with a set of stairs and an elevator. Decidedly not wanting to be stuck in one of those things if the power went off he set off up the stairs. Picking the second floor because he figured if something attacked he'd get some warning from the screams coming from the first floor. He approached one of the rooms.

*BANG* *BANG* *BANG*

"This is the police open up!"

*BANG* *BANG* *BANG*

He saw a shadow pass across the peephole.

"I know you're in there, you aren't in trouble we just need to talk to you about what's happening"

*BANG* *BANG* *BANG*

This time, the door cracked open, still on the chain and a man, maybe about 25 with short brown hair, light olive skin and a pair of thick glasses stood behind it.

"H-how can I help you o-officer?" the guy squeaked out clearly nervous about having a police officer banging on his door.

"Hello sir, my name is Officer Jacobs," John said indicating his badge "and I'm the officer that has been attached to this building, we're going building to building trying to explain the situation and get some insight from people if they've managed to figure anything out we haven't. Would it be ok if I come in? Do you live here by yourself?"

"s-sure gimme a sec and no, I live here with my roommate Austin, I'm Steve by the way"

The door closed and there was the sound of metal clinking as he took the chain off the latch. Reopening the door Steve gestured for him to come inside. Walking into the apartment he looked around, empty takeout containers littered the small kitchen they walked past and the living room was pretty sparse but a small dog lay on the couch.

"My roomate is just in his room, he took this whole thing pretty hard and hasn't left it since it happened, give me a sec and I'll just go grab him."

As the guy turned around John lunged, once more in his tried and true method he covered his mouth and nose with one hand and jerked his neck to the side, catching him he dragged his body over to the couch and lay him there. The dog let out a slight growl as he approached but clearly didn't really understand what was going on. He walked over in the direction that Steve had started walking and heard a voice coming from inside, whoever was in there, presumably Austin was talking to someone but it must have been on the phone because there was no-one replying.

John waited for a while to see if the conversation would end. He needed to wait for his HP to come back anyway so he saw no reason to rush in and potentially alert whoever was on the other end of the call. It seems whatever he was doing he was also playing the newest World of Witchcraft expansion, which was exceedingly dull to listen to. After about 45 minutes his HP was up to about 80 and the guy seemingly ended the call and he heard him get up from his chair. He stood outside the door and waited for him to come out. The door suddenly flew open and all he saw was a blur as he dashed across the hall into what appeared to be the bathroom not even seeming to notice John's presence. Another 10 minutes later the door opened again, however, John had already slipped inside the room. The guy entered the room and closed the door absently behind him and John got a good look at him. 6'3 and covered in a layer of grey fur. Whoever this was, was not human. A long, canine head protruded from between two wide shoulders, though somehow his speech from earlier had seemed very human if a bit like he had a cold. His body was not muscular, he appeared to be rather underweight which could be seen clearly as he was not wearing any clothes, though his fur did a good job of hiding everything. A meter long grey bushy tail protruded from the base of his spine and was gently swishing from side to side.

Skill Gained NAME: Stealth You have shown you are capable of hiding from the sight of others Effects- you will be 1% more difficult to detect and will move 1% quieter/skill level MP cost- NA Activation Time- Passive Level 1

John needed a second to register what he was looking at, this person had clearly also been turned into a monster, perhaps werewolf of some sort so was probably fairly tough. It, fortunately, didn't have any claws so although he wasn't sure if his neck snap technique would work he figured he probably wouldn't be in danger if he could avoid those teeth. Jumping out from behind the door he snaked his arm around the throat of the beast, squeezed with all his might and threw himself backwards, to the floor, putting the wolfman on top of him so he could put as much of his body weight into the act as he possibly could, expecting heavy resistance. Oddly the resistance coming from the man seemed rather more feeble than he had thought would come from a werewolf and he was easily able to maintain that position for several minutes after he had past out, waiting until he felt the heartbeat of the wolf stop. He then went over to the computer and found that the guy had been streaming on Twinge.tv, not exactly what John would have been doing after all the shit that had gone down but each to their own, people probably wanted some form of normalcy to help them deal with the crazy. Closing down all the windows and making sure none of that had been streamed John returned to the corpse.

Deciding to try something John tried using inspect on the body.

Item Name: Beastkin- Wolf varient (lvl 1) Type: Corpse Durability: 60 / 65 Quality: Normal The body of a Beastkin

"huh, neat" John mumbled to himself, seems the reason they had been so weak was that it was not, in fact, a wearwolf but a beastkin. Whatever that was. John used Assimilate on both bodies and the dog, which had tried to bite him when he tried to approach the body on the couch and was quickly silenced.

Skill activated [Assimilate]

Prolonged contact with a recently made corpse has activated this skill

Your skill [Assimilate] successfully activated. A portion of the targets recent memories and skills have been absorbed. Effect weakened due to deterioration of the target.

Skill Gained NAME: Growl You growl at your enemy causing them to become afraid Effects- target has a 5% chance to become afraid of you for 5s. Duration, the chance of success and strength of this skil rises with skill level MP cost- 15 Activation Time- 1s Level 1 Skill activated [Assimilate]

Prolonged contact with a recently made corpse has activated this skill

Your skill [Assimilate] successfully activated. A portion of the targets recent memories and skills have been absorbed. Effect weakened due to deterioration of the target.

Skill Gained NAME: Bite You use your teeth to deal damage to your target Effects- Perform a bite attack that does 1% more damage than a regular bite/ skill level MP cost- 5 Activation Time- 1s Level 1 Skill activated [Assimilate]

Prolonged contact with a recently made corpse has activated this skill

Your skill [Assimilate] failed.

The skill activated for both the dog and the beastkin. The memories of the dog mainly consisted of sleeping in the living room all day, it was not able to read the words on the blue screens so after barking and growling at them it went back to sleep. The beastkin didn't teach it anything particularly useful other than the skill, though it now knew way more than it ever needed to about that game and was now aware of the light grey wolf suit in a box under the bed. It seemed that whatever this system was, it didn't just change people into monsters. Apparently, a section of a community had changed into their "fursonas" when the system arrived and was rather pleased, if a little freaked out, by the new development. John wasn't sure what this meant about his own situation. Had the system determined he was somehow suited to being a doppleganger and that was why it changed him?

He didn't really know but at least now he had somewhere he could rest for a little while whilst he figures things out. He still had a cat leg in his inventory and if he ran out of food he could just rinse and repeat what he had just done on a few more appartments. Hopefully, they wouldn't catch on too quick. Crawling onto the couch, for some reason sleeping in someone else's bed felt uncomfortable, even if they were dead now, he closed his eyes and passed out.