Episode 13 (3-23-01)

"Sir!" The lieutenant Silverbullet has put to task as of late burst into Captain Rancor's office and barreled past the freakishly large white werewolf, Fritz, who didn't mind, since the succulent smell of Nikolai Brown's fresh corpse was just that distracting. "The metallic Negress! She's protecting my quarry, the Latin woman! I believe they're homosexual, sir! I spied on them from afar in gaseous form and saw she can change shape, like the German doppelganger!"

"Did you just compare a Negress to something Aryan, boy?" Rancor fumed. "That's even worse than you running in here rambling in some stream of consciousness and calling it a report --without having completed your hunt first!"

"Sir!" Another vampire lieutenant, also clearly young when he was bitten, quickly poked his head into the door of the office. "A woman made of metal is killing our men!"

At this point, the first lieutenant made the mistake of turning to and facing Rancor with a toothy grin that practically beamed, "See, I told you so." Infuriated, Captain Rancor shot a hand toward the lieutenant's fanged mouth and, in one fell stroke, tore the entire denture line from his face, leaving him a bloody mess. Dropping the impudent lieutenant's teeth onto the floor, Rancor growled as he stormed out of the office with Fritz in tow. "Heal from that, you smug, cheeky bastard!"

They had doubled back for the car, still parked within walking distance from the small Irish pub where this story began. Right where Rose DeVega had no choice but to leave it when the werewolves mistook her for Aryan and spirited her off to the Sin City Arena to be recruited -- and later hunted. Now, on the outskirts of the arena's parking lot, that car was being slowly parked as indiscreetly as possible. Rose was at the wheel and Silverbullet oozed through the crack in the seam along the locked car door. Remembering a story of a bull that walked down a hill to impregnate all a valley's cows as opposed to running down said hill and scaring all but one within reach, Silverbullet covertly flowed on the pavement like mercury up a thermometer at the pace of a brisk walk, heading directly for the pack of werewolves guarding and surrounding the arena.

Before their acute senses could smell the silver in the air, Silverbullet had found an unnoticeable spot ironically in plain view of the guards, stopped her liquefied movement and quickly molded herself back into full, fighting bipedal form.

And yes, she was killing a great many of the Vampire Empire's wolf pack. The comic-conscious strategy Rose imparted upon her, plus the element of surprise, made for a very one-sided fight -- initially. The first man-beast went down soon enough. Taking humanoid shape so close to his position allowed her to stab him fairly easily. The wound wasn't even fatal, she thought, it seems to simply be severely bled by something silver is enough (for a werewolf) to cause death.

However, it obviously wasn't long before word spread that they were under attack. Sooner than Silverbullet would've liked, several werewolves began to converge on her position. The wolf pack members lunged at her one or a couple at a time from all directions and Silverbullet couldn't match their wild animal speed or reflexes in order to catch them before they'd back off to let some other wolfman try from another angle.

Then Silverbullet remembered she could stretch, at least to some extent. Rather than just reaching, she started to literally elongate her arm with every thrust that came with a thrown blow. She had to make sure to consciously retract her forearm after each stretched punch (to prevent an arm from spilling onto the ground in the form of liquid pewter) but the effect caught the werewolves by surprise even more so. It was as though the punches were being flung by someone with limbs as long as stilts. Or as if her fists were harpoons or grappling hooks being launched by her shoulders and biceps like fired cannons. In fact, at some points, Silverbullet's fists did open up like multi-pronged grappling hooks, with spiked tips protruding from within the wolfmen, wherever they were hit.

The werewolves were always meant to be servile, with the vampires being the real decision makers. Those white supremacists with some degree of intellect (but evidently not enough to refrain from white supremacy) were slated to become vampires whereas the ones who were only smart enough to follow simple orders (the wolf pack) were now being ordered out of the arena en masse as cannon fodder by Captain Rancor, who actually had a method to his madness (at least, madness from the werewolves' point of view). Rancor knew he had only precious moments to study "the metallic Negress" (dismissed by him as a myth until this point) in action before his Vampire Empire would have to deal with her personally. "Different parts of her appear to be solid and liquid simultaneously," Captain Rancor's military mind analyzed. "If we could keep her all solid, long enough to --" Then he had it -- the way in which to beat her.

TO BE CONTINUED