It had been a L-O-N-G day that unfortunately turned into an even longer night as his boss dumped a ton of work on him before taking off for the weekend that was upon them.
Other than restroom breaks and raiding the vending machines in the employee break room for what passed for "dinner", Lance Chaplin worked until almost 10 to get everything done.
Some weekend. Most exciting thing I'm doing is laundry and grocery shopping, he thought, thinking over his things to do list since he lived alone in a one bedroom apartment.
But the end was in sight now as he finished the last task.
Lance was about to log off for the night when he heard a low rumble of thunder in the distant background.
After going to the local news site to check the weather (it was just passing showers, nothing major to worry about), he was about to log off when a pop up ad caught his attention.
Moonlight Rhapsody? Hmmm... as he clicked the link to go to the game site.
There he looked over the game and before long started making a character.
In the end, he created a weretiger persona for himself, complete with a background story.
Lance didn't want any "downside", so only worked within the assigned 100 starting points. In the end he chose the basic tiger instincts (strength, sense of smell and hearing, cunning, night vision, etc) and picked "Inherited" for his origin, which automatically activated the "Genetic" option, which meant his future children would also be like him.
There was always a chance to sire in the game, but it had been so long since his last girlfriend, Lance had a hard time remembering what sex was like.
The one characteristic Lance wanted more than anything else was to be Anthropomorphic, but could not find anything specific in relation to that, so hoped it was included in the character since he choose the most benign of the Origin options.
However, when all that was completed and Lance pressed "Begin Game"...
Nothing happened!
Lance leaned back in his chair, wondering what went wrong and how he could fix it, then remembered exactly where he was.
Upset with himself as much as the game for wasting his time, he got up and prepared to go home.
His was the only car still in the parking lot. Thankfully, he had gotten into the habit of parking under lights because of dirty tricks like the one his boss pulled on him tonight.
As he walked to his car, Lance felt uneasy.
He looked around, but there was no one there.
While it wasn't raining at the moment, a quick glance at the sky revealed it to be such a cloudy night at the moment he couldn't even see the moon, despite the fact that it was supposed to be full.
Weather report said this would clear by midnight, remembered Lance, looking at his watch and seeing it was just now a little after 11. Guess I'm just tired and overworked, he complained to himself yet again.
With that he got in his car, tossing his briefcase on the front passenger seat next to him.
After securing his seat belt, Lance Chaplin drove off into the night hoping to get home soon, unaware of what laid in store for him once the clouds cleared and the moon had a chance to truly shine...