((OOC:  All-righty then.  It's been a few days, a few people have joined up.  Time to get this bad boy started.  Nobody's taken Alhanda yet, so I'll RP as her until somebody steps up.  Here goes nothing!))<br/><br/>-----<br/><br/>Hidden from the northern winds by the Sama Mountains, caressed by the dry desert breeze from the Calor Desert to the east, and nestled beneath a glittering starlit sky, the city of Kazmer slumbered.  Though its massive smokestacks and vents continued to pour smoke and steam into the air, dimming the rays of the stars above, the city was quiet - subdued under the pall of night.  The moon was a barely visible crescent hanging low over the desert sands.<br/><br/>All of the citizens were asleep, save for the night guardsmen, the insomniacs, and many of the city's slaves - the human population of Kazmer.  This night was theirs.  This night was to become their dawn.<br/><br/>Quickly and silently, dark figures appeared in the streets, slinking from shadow to shadow with practiced movements.  On any one street at any moment, as the night guardsmen of the city had their backs turned, these silent figures would shift and slide, careful not to raise the alarm.  All across the city, thousands of these careful shadows would find a manhole, a fire escape, anything to get themselves off the litter-strewn streets and away from the gaze of their masters - the city's video surveillance cameras were scanning every intersection from the corners of the buildings they were perched upon.  Soon, the sewers and rooftops were crawling with activity, all of the silhouetted figures converging on one building - a run-down factory on the eastern edge of the city limits, devoid of any light, its great chimneys inactive and hollow.<br/><br/>Within that factory, the first motions of nearly decades of clandestine planning had been executed.  Within that factory, watching as group after group of noiseless people were ushered into the damp, cobweb-ridden factory floor, Eric Lentan sat curled up on a dormant conveyor belt.  His close-cut brown hair and piercing blue eyes were shaded in a black headwrap.  On his body he wore a plain tunic and pants, colored deep blue and shrouded in a black overcoat.  He sat with his knees tucked up under his chin, as inconspicuous to the crowd as the dead machinery strewn about the cathedral-like room.  Beside him, standing on the proper floor with a delicate hand resting on his foot, a lithe female figure cloaked entirely in black also watched as the crowd grew larger and larger.  She was Jessica Fallon, Lentan's mate and partner.  Underneath the skin-tight black clothing, the greasepaint, and the scent neutralizer, she was a handsome blonde whose smile and glittering brown eyes would draw any man's gaze.  But tonight, and from now on, she would be a killer.  She was the leader of the Shadows, the Resistance's special ops group, and she had an important mission to carry out tonight.<br/><br/>And Lentan?  He was the leader.  He was young and charismatic, but also grim and angry.  The Resistance had called many people its leader in years gone by, but tonight and forevermore in Kazmer, Lentan would be in charge.  Not four weeks before, the previous leader had been taken on the street by the Midnight Guard, Lady Alhanda's werewolf force, and never seen again.  No doubt he had been tortured and then devoured, but since his disappearance Lentan had risen to become the leader.  His technical expertise and natural flair for leadership quickly vaulted him to the top of the Resistance.  Tonight was also his night.<br/><br/>The room was full.  Still more people stood in wait on the roof or in the sewers beneath, packed as close together as they could be.  Silence was the key to maintaining surprise, but every last human assembled here was a soldier who needed inspiration.  They had their orders and their organization.  Everything had been put together so that all that was needed was the final word.  The seemingly disorganized mass of humanity before Lentan were the officers and sergeants of the Resistance army, awaiting his final command to take their men and begin the revolution.<br/><br/>Lentan stood, the aged rubber beneath him creaking as he moved.  Jessica took out her flashlight and shone it on him.  The room's air hissed with the sound of thousands of flashlights being removed from pockets and swtiching on as Lentan was suddenly illuminated by everyone else's lights.  He stood, awaiting total silence.  Then he clenched his hands into fists and drew his left arm across his chest, moving the right's elbow into position above his left fist and holding his right fist beside his face.  In one quick motion he swung his right fist downward to his left elbow.  The move was like an arm-wrestling motion, and it was the last word.  It was sign-language for the words "vanquish" or "defeat."<br/><br/>"Humanity rises," Lentan whispered.  Like a wave, the whooshing sound of his message being passed from person to person across the crowd, up staircases, and down ladders, resembled the gust of wind that rustled through the trees before the arrival of the storm.<br/><br/>Silently the flashlights were doused and the crowd dispersed.  Lentan slid lightly off the conveyor belt and embraced his lover before she also vanished.  As the room drained and the Gothic scene ended, Lentan slid aside a panel in a large machine near the back of the room.  The darkness within was empty, and he reached down to lift up a concealed hatch in the floor that the machine had been positioned over.  Warm yellow lighting streamed up from the hole.  Lentan shut the machine's panel behind him and lowered himself into the hole on a rope ladder, pulling the hatch shut above him as he emerged into the room beneath.<br/><br/>This was formerly the factory's basement, but had since been converted into a bunker.  All of its entrances had been sealed off and disguised save for the one Lentan had just used.  Within the many rooms of the bunker, about 100 human men and women were going about the final preparations for the dawn of freedom.  There were rooms dedicated to espionage, radio communication, and weapon deployment, but many were given over to the brilliant team of scientists that had armed Kazmer's humans with their remarkable potions and devices.  Stores of food and weapons had been stashed away here as well.  The bunker was the product of years of secret construction and stockpiling.<br/><br/>Here in the main foyer, the assembled command staff watched him remove his headwrap and smile at them.  "It has started," he said.  "Take your positions."<br/><br/>The command staff dispersed and Lentan strode quickly to his own, personal chamber, whisking the door open and shrugging out of his overcoat.  Two human guards immediately took up residence on either side of the door as he shut it behind him.  Arrayed on the wall at the back of the small room were dozens of television monitors, all of them sizzling with white noise.  Three large computer monitors sat in front of them on a desk.  Tossing his coat to the side, Lentan sat at the desk, punching in a rapid-fire sequence of commands.  He had practiced these motions dozens of times before when he was the head of the Resistance's technical division.  Within moments he had every television screen in the room displaying an image, each one a video signal siphoned off of a camera in the city somewhere.  From here, Lentan could see the movements of everything on the streets of the city.  He carefully tuned a nearby television to the premiere news network of the city, K5.  A rerun of the evening news was playing, the well-groomed fox newscaster blathering about Lady Alhanda and her "greatness."<br/><br/>"Bitch," muttered Lentan.  He turned to his computer and logged into the Resistance's underground Internet radio network.  Dead silence was streaming to him from wherever the gutsy DJ was located - in respect of the momentous night.<br/><br/>Out on the streets above, the humans who had journeyed to the factory were dispersing into the street again, gathering up their soldiers.  Slowly, over a period of minutes, Kazmer began to awaken.  Noises of clashing blades, screams, sirens... humanity was rising up.<br/><br/>A bewildered vixen shambled out of her apartment building wrapped in a bathrobe.  A fire had started in a nearby alley, illuminating the street with its flickering yellow glimmer.  Shadows played on the wall of the building across the street, resembling humanoid figures.  The vixen inched to the alley's edge and looked around the corner to see the cause.<br/><br/>In the alley, three humans had finished beating up a member of the night guardsmen.  The unconscious wolf lay on the pavement before a burning garbage can.  One of the humans was injecting himself with a strange red fluid.  He threw the syringe into the fire and grabbed the wolf by the shoulders, heaving him up as the other two humans kept lookout.  To the vixen's shock, the human's mouth suddenly stretched over the wolf's head.  With a series of tentative gulps, the human swallowed up the wolf's head and shoulders.  His eyes were bulging with delight and surprise as he continued to gulp, drawing the wolf's body in with each swallow.  The vixen gasped - the humans had discovered the secret to vore!<br/><br/>As his stomach enlarged with each successful intake of the wolf, the man's shirt stretched and tore.  Finally it could take no more and it burst, allowing the man to swallow more quickly and finish the wolf off.  He fell back against the wall of the alley and belched, rubbing his bare belly.  Before she could turn to run, the vixen was spotted by one of the other humans.  He called to his fellow and they both rushed at her, their hands reaching out to seize her...<br/><br/>Lentan watched grimly on his television monitors as men and women across Kazmer began to attack furs in the street, taking out night guards, witnesses, and later soldiers as they were awakened and sent out.  They had achieved surprise.  But the furs would fight back now, and they would not stop until the Resistance was eradicated.  In other realms across the planet, this was the story as well.  Humanity had achieved surprise, but from here on it was an even contest.  Territory would have to be taken and held in order for humanity to have the slightest chance.  A guerrilla war was not favorable to victory.<br/><br/>But this was the first night.  There would be others.  Lentan reached below his desk into a cage of rabbits he kept there.  He snatched one out by the ears and swallowed it down, delighting in the sensations of its kicking and squirming in his stomach.  The Vore Juice was humanity's secret weapon, but Lentan did not need any.  A few generations back in his ancestry, a wildcat fur had mixed his blood with Lentan's family, granting each succeeding generation some furry attributes.  Lentan had only inherited the ability to swallow meals whole, but he didn't abhor the trait.  Rather, he loved it.  On one level, it was glorious to possess the furs' secret weapon.  But on another, quieter level, Lentan was sad that revolution was necessary.  Though the furs would never let humanity be free in reality, he wished that they could have been negotiated with.  But that would never happen.<br/><br/>Lentan reclined in his chair, observing as the chaos unfolded, listening in on his headset to the orders his troops were relaying to each other.  This would be a long war.  But it would lead to freedom.  Lentan was prepared to do all he can up to death to ensure that.