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[Tsuchigumo550]

Panic. Ask the shadow beast if it would like a sandwich before RUNNING FOR YOUR LIFE

[misko27]

Throw sandwich at him, hope for best.

[Zecro_The_Scourge]

No, the sandwich is a crucial supply! Shut the door and run outside, paranoia ho!

[Phantom of The Library]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Oh balls.

Slam the door shut, then run outside!

Panic. Ask the shadow beast if it would like a sandwich before RUNNING FOR YOUR LIFE

Throw sandwich at him, hope for best.

No, the sandwich is a crucial supply! Shut the door and run outside, paranoia ho!

"Heeey theeeere little guy." You say as you slowly back up; holding the remains of the sandwich out in front of you. "You look... hungry...  Would you like something to eat?" The creature bends down even lower, slight variations in the thickness of the transparent parts remind you of muscles tensing, making it very clear that it's you that it wants to eat, not some measly scrap of pig meat sandwich. 

You decide that now would be an excellent time to make your exit, so you fling the remains of the sandwich at the shadow creature, distracting it for a moment, and slam the door shut. You manage to close the door, but before you can lock it again the beast slams into it, nearly launching you off of it. Immediately it sticks a hand between the door and frame, preventing you from closing it again. You attempt to stab at it with the chisel, but the rapid movement of the door makes it impossible to land a hit. Even more unfortunately: The time you took away from holding back the door to take aim gives the creature a chance to push forward.

It wastes no time in taking advantage of the opening to shove another hand in between the door and frame.  Slowly, it begins to force it open despite your best efforts to try to keep it closed.  With few options available to you, you try to stab at it again with the chisel.  This time the improvised weapon makes contact and the chisel sinks into the creature, feeling rather like a knife being stabbed into the middle of a warm stick of butter.  From the other side of the door you hear the creature hiss and draw its hand back, allowing you to slam it onto the other with extreme prejudice. 

HSSSSSHHHHH!!!

The creature lets loose another, louder, hiss and pulls its hand back before you can slam the door down on it a second time. As quickly as possible, you close the door and lock it, slumping to the ground. 

You breath out heavily, resting for a moment.  Then the door shakes as if being hit by a battering ram making you wince as the hinges creak and groan.  They weren't exactly designed to hold back murderous shadow beasts, so it's probably only a matter of time before they break.

You proceed to do the only logical thing that a person in this type of situation can do:



Run like hell.



Grateful that you had the foresight to see that you would be attacked by something, you make a beeline through the house to the front door, grabbing one of the sandwiches off of the table as you pass by.  Can't go out without rations you know. Once you reach the front door, you stop and listen.  From he back of the house you can still hear a loud repetitive thumping sound, so the door must still be holding up. 

Spoiler: Map (click to show/hide)

The police station is to the south, as is Sera's house, but she shouldn't be home at the moment. 

Further south is the sea and airship docks.  To the north is just more houses and eventually the edge of town, which turns into plains. 

There's a shortcut you could take through one of your neighbor's yards (the one directly in front of you), doing so would land you on Kehmy Lane which is on the edge of the warehouse district/poor side of town where you could probably find plenty of places to hide in alleyways and warehouses.

The west contains more residential area.

Where should you go?

Spoiler: Status (click to show/hide)

HP: 10
Experience: 1/?

Inventory:
Work clothes
15 copper coins
Gear necklace
A wrapped up bacon sandwich (Held in hand)
Stonecutter's chisel (Held in hand)

Spoiler: Long Term Goals (click to show/hide)

-Acquire Fumes of Humorous Disposition.

Spoiler: Author's Note (click to show/hide)

My browser puts little dotted lines under the alt text words, so I've caught them all. However, I've always felt that invisible text is much more fun.

Dangit!

Ah, well, my fault for not checking on multiple browsers.
I considered using transparent text, but I thought that the alt-text was closer to the feel I was going for.  Of course, I was also under the impression that it didn't have a beacon pointing to each on Firefox  d:
EDIT: updated update number.
That's it, no more late night updates for me.

[monk12]

Hm. Let's head south, toward the police station. Stick to open, populated areas- hopefully the shadow beast won't attack if we're in a crowd. Assuming we aren't assaulted on the way to the station, tell the police that we think our home was broken into- keep the bit about the horrible shadow gargoyle to ourselves until/unless other witnesses pop up.


Incidentally, anything of note to the East?

[Phantom of The Library]

Incidentally, anything of note to the East?

The poor/warehouse district, Ankh's house (which is on the opposite side of that), and the odd church/warehouse that Ankh mentioned; which is roughly half-way between the your current location and his house. 

And the lawn that one of your neighbors keeps precisely cut to a millimeter and treated with the best fertilizer available.  It's quite impressive.

[Zecro_The_Scourge]

Unless there is the equivalent of a Ordo Hereticus around here I agree with the police station.

[Phantom of The Library]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Hm. Let's head south, toward the police station. Stick to open, populated areas- hopefully the shadow beast won't attack if we're in a crowd. Assuming we aren't assaulted on the way to the station, tell the police that we think our home was broken into- keep the bit about the horrible shadow gargoyle to ourselves until/unless other witnesses pop up.

Unless there is the equivalent of a Ordo Hereticus around here I agree with the police station.

Immediately you take off towards the police station at full speed, making sure to keep where people can see you. Rushing along, you draw a few odd looks, but luckily no one tries to stop or hinder you as you hurtle along. You can't quite place it, but something seems to be off about the way the air feels. It could just be from stress or adrenaline, but you could swear the air feels almost like it's holding an electric charge.

As you turn the final corner the police station enters you sight. It's a simple, small, brick building with POLICE written in all caps and a clock set over it. You estimate that it'll take another five seconds at full speed before you reach it, but you're not sure that you'll be able to keep up the pace you've been going at though, so you slow down for a moment to catch your breath.

The moment that you do however, there comes a yell from behind and a small crowd of people come scattering onto the street like so many pool balls. A fraction of a second later a streak of black, too fast for your eyes to track, flies straight past the corner and skids to a stop while turning around.

The shadow creature looks at you and narrows its eyes. Your blood seems to freeze as it looks at you and you feel a shock travel through your body. Slowly, it begins to accelerate again on all fours, heading straight for you.
^{_{"GIRL. Stop running. It'll make it easier on the both of us. You get a free ride instead of walking or running and I don't have to keep this thing here any longer than I have ta."}}
The creature is a good thirty or so feet away still, the police station isn't too far away and the thing is accelerating fairly slowly, so you think you can make it, but you can't say for sure. There's an alleyway off to your right you could duck into and you could of course try to yell for help or fight the thing, assuming you can actually do any damage to it.



What should you do?

Spoiler: Status (click to show/hide)

HP: 10
Experience: 1/?

Inventory:
Work clothes
15 copper coins
Gear necklace
A wrapped up bacon sandwich (Held in hand)
Stonecutter's chisel (Held in hand)

Spoiler: Long Term Goals (click to show/hide)

-Acquire Fumes of Humorous Disposition.

Spoiler: Author's Note (click to show/hide)

Hiatus? What is this hiatus you speak of?
<_<
>_>

[monk12]

Hooray this thing is back!

And oh no we're screwed. I don't think we can escape it at this point, so if we're going to be captured/eaten I'd rather go down fighting. Chisel Attack, Forward the Gear, Charge!

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

And my rather metagamey reasons are that I don't think we're going to die this early in the game, and if we ARE going to die hopefully Phantom will grant us a "revert to last save" or something so the story can go on. The hints I've been catching suggest we're just going to be kidnapped, though, which leads back to the aforementioned in-character reasons.

[Gamerboy4life]

Make a beeline for the police station.

Run in a sort of zig-zag, if the creature is going fast enough, it won't recover in time to apprehend you as you turn.

[scapheap]

Turn and wait, when it get close, jump and go over it, then run

[Zecro_The_Scourge]

Make a beeline for the police station.

Run in a sort of zig-zag, if the creature is going fast enough, it won't recover in time to apprehend you as you turn.

We won't be able to damage the Shadow Creature nor do athletic maneuvres of such finese, I find this most practical.

[Phantom of The Library]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

And oh no we're screwed. I don't think we can escape it at this point, so if we're going to be captured/eaten I'd rather go down fighting. Chisel Attack, Forward the Gear, Charge!

Make a beeline for the police station.

Run in a sort of zig-zag, if the creature is going fast enough, it won't recover in time to apprehend you as you turn.

Turn and wait, when it get close, jump and go over it, then run

You jerk your eyes away from the creature and begin to run for the station.  From behind you hear more screams and the quickly approaching sound of the creature’s claws on the street cutting through them.

Just as it seems that the clack of the shadow gargoyles claws are coming from directly behind you, you make a sharp turn to the right, practically diving.  The creature is unable to change its course to match and skids past you, its momentum carrying it into the station with a loud THWUMP. The impact knocks several bricks loose,

The creature slowly climbs to its feet as you back away unsure of where to go.  Before it can fully recover, however, a policeman exits the building to investigate and upon seeing the creature his face turns white. He pulls out his pistol, firing off several shots into the creature. In response the creature raises a disproportionately-sized hand to shield itself.  Three bullets slam into the hand and a fourth misses, hitting the ground. The shadow making up the creature’s hand explodes out as the bullets strike it as if it were being held under pressure. The shadow flies out it separates into strands and slivers which hang in the air around where the hand was for a moment.

Almost immediately the shadows swirl back together as if in a vortex and reform into back into the large clawed hand that they had made up a moment before. The shadow creature flexes the hand as if testing it and the officer freezes, unsure of what he is seeing. The officer's paralyzation only lasts for a moment, however, and within a moment he is trying to fire off another shot, but the creature is faster and knocks the pistol out of his hands with one gigantic hand and then sends him flying with the other, newly reformed, one.  Before the man even hits the ground, the shadow creature turns around to face you once again and wastes no time in bounding forward.

You prepare to run again as...

No. You have had enough of this crap, and you aren't going to take it any longer, you are going to show this thing what's what. No more running, except in its direction. 

You charge towards the creature, chisel raised, and sink it into its shoulder as you leap up off of the ground and attempt to vault over it using its shoulders.  Unfortunately, you aren’t quite coordinated enough to pull off a stunt like that, so you end up falling into a heap as you flip over its arm. You quickly try to untangle yourself, but you’re too slow at doing so. The creature puts both arms around you as if embracing you in a gigantic bear hug and squeezes tightly.  It stops just short of crushing your ribs and leaves just enough room to breathe though doing so is like trying to suck air through a straw. Its body feels surprisingly corporeal, though you do seem to sink into it a little bit.
   
With you now trapped within its grasp, the creature slowly unfolds its diminutive wings and bends over before launching itself into the sky.   Barely moving its wings as it flies; the creature seems to be propelled by something other than its own physical strength.  You’re amazed that it can even generate enough lift to get itself off the ground, much less you.

^{_{"Good, now don't make a fuss. I'd hate ta have ta clean up th' mes, see?."}}

You don’t seem to have many options right now, you suppose you could try to wriggle free, but you’re pretty high up already and the thought of becoming a pancake doesn’t sound too appealing to you.

Spoiler: Status (click to show/hide)

HP: 9/10
Experience: 2/?

Inventory:
Work clothes
15 copper coins
Gear necklace
A wrapped up bacon sandwich (Held in hand)
Stonecutter's chisel (Held in hand)

Spoiler: Long Term Goals (click to show/hide)

-Acquire Fumes of Humorous Disposition.

Spoiler: Author's Note (click to show/hide)

Yeah, update speed isn't really going to be moving any faster than a snail's crawl so long as I'm taking two math courses at the same time.

[scapheap]

Glare at it, wait.

[monk12]

Scold the creature! At the very least, try to make breathing more comfortable