Cryptids & Confrontations

"Just like you, on occasion I can… see strange text boxes. I've seen many more than just one though, and one… of the ones I've seen has told me about the car in the distance." I begin, finally gaining meaningful control over my voice even as I point in the direction of the headlights. My "Shadow Servant" listens to me attentively.

"There are multiple people in that car. I suspect, though I'm not sure, that one of them is supernatural. Like me, though probably only in a general sense as opposed to actually having many powers in common with me. I want to eat everyone in that car, but I definitely want to eat the supernatural person the most." I explain, and this time I can say everything I want to say without needing to pause!

"I want you to go and get the attention of the people in the car and then get them to split up. When they are split up I'll attack the smaller group and hopefully devour at least one person. If I do that then we could gain more allies while depriving them of theirs." I state, a devilish smirk on my face as I contemplate turning the humans against each other. My servant considers my words for a few moments before I notice an array of small physiological changes in him indicating that he plans to speak such as a shift in how he stands and a subtle twitch of lips before he opens his mouth to speak.

"Master, if my group has mundane humans in it should I kill them? Humans are not difficult to kill, and I am stronger than Nathan was. If we split them up and I have a chance to end one of them… Do I take it?" The creature asks me, thoughtfully. His question is a good one and I take a beat to consider it.

Humans, at least ones lacking in personal powers, ARE easy to kill. I only killed Nathan so quickly because he was caught off guard but it's not like him being aware of my presence would have mattered given the circumstances of his death. My servant could make my job easier by killing some of the humans, but… there's a risk involved with that.

I've killed several creatures today and each time I've gained their memories and abilities after I've killed and eaten them. I don't have a full understanding of my own nature, or of every single property of mine, so I don't know the ins and outs of the process by which I steal things from what I kill. All I know, now, is that I don't gain things the instant that I kill something. So far, in every case, I've killed and then almost immediately eaten something, before any of the supernatural stuff I can do has happened.

Even the notification I received earlier did not explain the totality of my abilities to me. It actually explicitly warned me that some of my greater abilities are not due to "Perks" but are due to something else within me, something which grows with every kill. The alert told me I possess an

"Essence" that is growing in the depths of my being, and that that is one of my greatest strengths.

If I let Nathan's shadow kill… I don't know if I'll still be able to steal the knowledge and memories of my victims. And given the fact that one of the men in the group might well have superpowers, I should choose to be cautious here. That caution is what guides me to say what I say next. And what inspires me to use one of my powers.

"Don't kill. Even if you have a clear shot at one of them, don't kill them. In fact… give me your hand." I command, which causes my servant to do as I ask without hesitation. I squeeze the hand and I shut my eyes as I willfully activate one of my powers.

I possess many abilities, most of which are only so powerful on their own. The one I am activating right now is named "Mark" and with it I can unerringly know where someone is independent of the distance between us. It does take me touching them and intending to mark them for it to work but once it's on it won't come off through natural means and I elect to make the thing a circle that will forever be invisible to anyone other than myself or anyone else who is marked but only if Nathan's shadow wants them to see his mark.

The symbol is burned into the lower part of the man's thumb and as it burns his skin I can sense myself gaining a supernatural awareness of his current location. That makes me smile.

"With what I've just done I can always track you. I can do more with it," I say, cryptically. In actuality I am referring to the list of combos I know that allows me to know that I can use "Mark" in an array of clever ways such as to teleport to wherever someone I marked is located or communicate with a marked person telepathically.

"But the big thing I can do, given our circumstances, is always track you. So if in the chaos of the moment it looks like one of the people in the van is about to escape somehow…" I tell my servant as I begin to grin evilly.

"Go with them. When I assault the group of people you've managed to trick away from the rest of their friends, I'll pretend you and I aren't on the same team. You do the same thing. The only thing I want you to do if any of you get away is to make sure that no one reports anything to any authorities. They probably won't, they'd sound insane, but if they try… just stop them. At most in a few hours or days I'll go to where you are, and we can finish off anyone who escapes." I order, causing my servant to also smile wickedly.

This is not a complex plan, but making things overly complex wouldn't change any end goals of mine or get me anything else I want. My goals aren't complex. All I want is to devour the people in the van. There is no reason to make a labyrinthian scheme to achieve that.

My servant looks at me and waits for me to say anything else. When I don't the creature turns in the direction of the headlights and begins to walk towards them. After a few moments the man is a bit of a distance from me and I slink off the road leading to and from the cabin and into the more densely packed area of trees that help obscure the lance-like headlights that pierce the darkness of the forest at night.

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As the van slinks through the dark forest the only sounds that fill it are the sounds of the engine, Anthony quietly humming, and the metallic sounds of the newest member of the group fiddling with a hefty-looking pistol. The man with the gun is the one adult in the group who really looks like an adult, a post middle-aged man with an unkempt beard in an outfit that vaguely resembles something an infantryman might wear.

The man, one of Marcus's neighbors who insisted on coming along with the sleuths and Marcus when he heard they were going to the park, focuses on the gun to the exclusion of everything else as the van travels down a road not far from the one Nathan and Peggy took hours ago. He is skillfully dissembling and reassembling the thing over and over, and Marcus unsubtly admires his skill with the device.

Marcus is not a gun nut, but as a jumper who endured the ordeal that is the "Generic First Jump" one of the year-long simulations he endured was a generic military one. For a year he worked as a basic grunt in some version of America's military and during that time he taught himself basic trigger discipline and how to care for modern weapons. He can tell the man in front of him is an expert when it comes to gun maintenance.

Much like Marcus, Anthony and Mary, who are seated up front, are unbothered by the sounds of the old man's fixation. On the other hand, the other inhabitants, the two other members of the group of sleuths, of the car are weirded out by the sight of the man obsessively checking and rechecking his weapon. Nevertheless, they obey the vague and often unspoken rules of politeness many people are taught to obey and don't say anything as the van continues to be driven deeper and deeper into the forest.

The relative silence continues for several minutes. It is only meaningfully shattered when Mary screams for Anthony to stop the van the second she sees movement just outside of the range of light produced by the headlights of the car. The figure Mary saw moving steps out in front of the van, waving for them to stop. Anthony lets out a stunned sound but manages to put his feet on the van's break pedal and the machine abruptly skids before coming to a stop in front of the man Mary saw.

"Dude, what the hell?!" Anthony roars, causing the man's facial expression to fall and for him to look at the ground apologetically, but that's not enough to stop him from walking to the side of the driver's door.

Mary and Anthony look at him with cautious curiosity, and neither of them note that the man in their van has finally stopped dissembling and reassembling his handy weapon repeatedly, as they are too distracted by their racing heart rates in the wake of the near crash the van just had with the stranger to pay anything else much mind. Marcus notices this, however, and he has his eyes glued firmly to the man.

"Hey, by any chance are you park rangers? My friend and I got lost and we've been wandering the forest for hours. Our cellphones died and we've been hoping someone would drive close enough that we could see them." The stranger, a handsome middle-aged man with a disarming grin he reveals as he speaks, asks them. Anthony, calming down now that he's heard the stranger out, sighs.

"We're not park rangers. But… if you're in need of help, we can offer it. Get in and tell us where your friend is. We'll drive to them and pick them up." The youthful teen offers, without a hint of caution. This offer causes both Marcus and the armed gentleman in the car to turn in Anthony's

direction and look at him with annoyance etched onto their faces.

Anthony was being unreasonably naïve, and while Marcus could hear low huffs of annoyance from the other members of the teen's team, no one put in any actual words edgewise. Marcus opened his mouth to say something but before he could the man being offered a place in the van spoke up.

"Actually, there's a hill nearby and that's where my friend is. I'm really sorry but the trees there are too tightly packed for a car to get anywhere close. There's another road, so we split up. Could one or two of you come with me while I go to get my friend? These woods are slippery and dangerous during the day… At night it's a lot worse. I took a big risk and dashed towards you when I saw your headlights but going back in the dark… It'd be tough. Alone at least." Nathan's shadow asks. Roger, the other male teen sleuth, sighs and opens his door.

"I'll go with you. I have my cellphone so we can use it as a flashlight. Dakota, wanna come with me?" He asks, even as he slips out of the van. He is eager to get away from the quiet gun nut who invited himself to join the adventurers and he's not alone.

Dakota, the other girl in the group, takes one last look at the old man and tells Roger she'll join him as she slips out behind Roger. Nathan's shadow smiles dazzlingly at them and he nods at the two.

"Alright, excellent! Thank you so much." The creature says, showcasing impressive acting skills as he performs this deception. Internally the shadow is grateful that most of the humans in the group are naïve teenagers, and he quickly turns as he begins to walk back towards a dense group of trees where the van can't follow them. Marcus grunts in annoyance and glares at Anthony, annoyed that a detective would be so trusting. Nevertheless, Marcus doesn't want to make a scene and so he lets it happen without articulating his irritation.

When the group is fully split up, the other creature that's been watching them grins. The hungry cryptid is nearby, using a subtle and passive anti-detection perk to avoid notice while lurking between a pair of massive trees. He decides to begin his attack on the group in a way that'll get their hearts racing.

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In the wake of my servant's successful deception, I decide to keep my opponents terrified. I sneak out of my hiding place and walk towards the back of the van even as I activate a pair of perks in tandem.

One of my perk combinations is a handy thing wherever technology is abundant. By making use of two perks designed to allow me to either corrupt technology or to prevent it from being a tool used against me, I can turn technology into another tool in my arsenal. I activate "Disruption Field" and "Glitch" at the same time and I sense my mind track down the one valuable piece of close-by technology. It immediately fall under my control: the van my unaware enemies value so much.

With the same mental exertion as a college graduate might feel when doing simple addition, I shut the door that Roger opened and got out of the moment that he fell for my version of Nathan's deception. This action causes the people in the van to yell in terror and turn to face the door.

They look for an explanation for a few moments before I mentally will the van to move, causing the thing to begin to drive itself. It picks up speed with every passing moment as it begins to drive itself, moving chaotically down the dirt road it's on.

This causes the creatures to panic even more, which is good for me. I want them off guard and afraid.

I will the van to turn and drive off road, towards close by trees. The thing obeys my mental command immediately and lightly exits the dirt road, now barreling towards a group of nearby trees.

I am both annoyed and mildly impressed when I hear one of the men in the car regain his wits. The man ignores the motion of the van and he kicks open one of the doors before shouting for the others to jump out of the vehicle. Him kicking the door of the van away is the second sign he is different from the others, though the other man, not teen, in the group is extremely calm and I am unsure of if my actions even scared him. I can hear him, and his heartbeat has been constant this whole time. That's almost a little intimidating.

The figure who kicked the door open is the first one out of the car, and he hits the grass inelegantly but he manages to do so without being injured in any meaningful sense. A few moments later the rest of the group jump one by one until the young man in the driver's seat leaps out and is the last to hit the cushion-like grass. A half a second later the fast-moving van inelegantly collides with a tree, wrapping around it almost lovingly and thus being completely totaled. If nothing else I appear to have taken out their method of escape…

"Damn." I mutter, unsurprised that my efforts didn't easily and immediately kill this group of people but still a little annoyed that all I could do was take out their van. I focus on the humans and as I do I feel "Demograph" activate in full on the humans who didn't leave the van earlier. I put faces to the names of the ones who didn't go with Nathan's shadow, and I smirk as the information I learn about Anthony, Mary, Marcus, and Alexander allows me to realize that either Marcus or Alexander is who I know as "The Jumper".

Marcus is the first to get up and as he gets off the floor he reaches into his pocket and pulls out a key. The metal of the thing is bright enough that I can recognize it at a glance even though hundreds of feet separate the two of us, and it's pitch black out. I am, however, surprised when the key begins to glow and elongate in his hands until it has taken on the rough shape of a short sword but retains its bright color.

"What the hell?" I mutter, as Marcus looks around and finds that he can't see me or any other thing that he can assign blame to. This far away, in the dark, my "Tall Shadow" perk is a powerful anti-detection skill that I can use without eating up my own reserves of energy, which a stronger perk like "Stranger", a more powerful anti-detection perk I possess, would need me too if I were to try and use it against this many people at once. I watch as Marcus backs up and gets close to his friends and Alexander.

"Hey… Something attacked us. But I can't see it." He says, his voice a quiet growl. His words prompt Alexander to lift and point his gun in my general direction and for the man's stormy eyes to narrow.

"A monster…" Anthony and Mary mutter in unison. From the almost robotic way they say it I wonder if that's their default response to weird events but Marcus's eyes narrow when he hears them. I watch as Mary demonstrates the impressive presence of mind needed to try and put her cellphone to her ear.

I don't give her the chance and I use "ESP", a perk which grants me "Psychic Powers" to yank her cellphone out of her hand and hurl the thing in the opposite direction of where Nathan's shadow is currently distracting Roger and Dakota. The sensation of doing that is just like how it feels for me to remotely control the van… Mary lets out a soft cry as I flick her phone far from here, sending it sailing into the air far from the fighting and I notice that no one else tries to do what she just did. Smart.

Marcus, showcasing enough courage that I can recognize that if this were a story he'd likely be a protagonist, steps forward and looks in my general direction. I know he can't see me, and he knows he can't see me, but we can both tell where his head is at.

"Alright, come on out. Show yourself!" He commands, his voice low and powerful. There's something about it that registers as older than it should and I can instinctively tell that Marcus is not someone to take lightly. I don't move or otherwise obey the command of the figure, and he frowns.

"If you're gonna attack me… I'll at least lay my eyes on you." He says, his voice carrying farther than I'd think it could before he raises his empty hand and I watch something unlike anything I've ever seen occur. Light fills the air around Marcus and he smirks. For a few moments it looks like Marcus's skin is glowing but it quickly becomes clear that he is actually producing some sort of bioluminescent energy that coalesces in the form of a sphere the size of a volleyball.

His companions, other than Alexander, all gawk at the display he is putting on. I watch, a smile on my face, as I allow myself to be confident that he is who I seek to eat. Marcus lobs the ball in my general direction, and I howl in delight as I fling myself in the direction of the group.

The ball of light moves fast, quickly sailing high into the air and illuminating the area I am heading towards as I push myself to move as fast as I can. I move at speeds that handily exceed the speed of sound, which causes the air around me to violently ripple as I cause a sonic boom. I am mildly impressed when Alexander, the gun-toting member of the group, spots me.

The eagle-eyed man is the first member of his group to actually see me, and right before his finger squeezes the trigger of his gun I use the same power I used on Mary's cellphone to push the gun upward. This makes the device point to the sky. The bullet is successfully fired a moment later, moving incredibly fast but also completely missing me. My eyes are trained fully on Marcus, and I will not allow any distractions to prevent me from getting him.

I am fast and determined, but even I can be caught off guard. Marcus's eyes narrow when I close in on him and as I extend one of my hands in the direction of his neck he smirks. When I get close enough to him that he can meaningfully react to me he lashes out at a speed that is blindingly fast and I watch blood shoot upward between myself and him. A moment later numbness begins to creep up my arm.

"I see you." Marcus utters, even as I realize that the human has, in a literal sense, disarmed me. I scramble backward, moving with the sort of control over my momentum and motion that normal humans can only dream of. Marcus does not chase after me, and even as pain begins to wrack the edges of my mind I silently make use of my shapeshifting power to regrow my hand. His ability to make me feel pain is curious, and in a sense exciting, since I possess a perk that should make me immune to pain. If nothing else, if I eat him I could gain his power to make painless beings feel pain which could be an excellent ability to wield against other beings like us.

While Anthony and Mary are stunned by my sudden proximity to them, Alexander valiantly tries to point his gun at me again but I dismiss the man by quietly flicking my wrist at him and hitting him with a wave of telekinetic force that separates him from his pistol. The man is sent sailing backwards and as he is forcibly moved through the air I point one of the fingers on the same hand I used to dismiss the shooter at his gun. I will the thing to me and in doing so pull it to my hand.

This makes Marcus smile at me, and I point the weapon at the man with a dark grin on my own face. I don't say a word and I squeeze the trigger while aiming the weapon at Marcus's chest.