Shifting Worlds V2 Notes

• Chris, a grizzly shifter and ISP network administrator, takes a 4 day weekend to a small, remote, lake on Mt Hood to get away from it all just before a big competition starts that he's providing the network services for, which have just been setup and tested, ready for the media companies covering the event to plug into.
  • Hickman Lake is surrounded by steep hills and there is only one decent camping area, about 20m across, around the lake
• While swimming in bear form, Chris notices a small human sized osprey (i.e. another shifter) landing in the camping area and beelines back to camp to warn off the intruder
• Xander recently arrived in Portland as a tech for one of the media companies covering the competition, but is taking the weekend to check out the area. Flying around Mt Hood, he spies a small lake with a small clearing that would make a nice spot to camp for the evening. Flying, he can only carry about 5kilos - a small one person tent, light sleeping bag, dry food. As he gets closer, he sees someone has already setup camp, and is probably who is out playing in the lake, but since it's the only area in the vicinity suitable for camping, lands anyhow, shifts back to human form and starts setting up camp on the opposite side of the clearing
• Chris shifts when he gets close to shore and storms out of the water ready to chase off the intruder...until he gets a good look at the gorgeous little guy setting up camp
• Xander hears Chris coming out of the water and turns around to see a gorgeous hunk dripping water as he walks out of the lake
• Both dicks come to attention, making it obvious the attraction is mutual
• Chris introduces himself and they chat a bit getting to know each other; it quickly becomes clear they have chemistry and mutual interests in computers, the outdoors, travel and scifi, but something interrupts them when it comes to the point about saying what their current work is and they never get back to it
• Seeing the tiny tent Xander has setup and that they've both had hard ons the entire time they were talking, Chris invites Xander to share his tent, starting now
• They have sex several times over the weekend along with playing in the lake, Chris using both human and bear forms and Xander uses his osprey form to get fish for dinner
• Xander hikes out with Chris, who gives him a ride home and they exchange contact info, planning to meet for dinner after work the next day
• The next day, Chris is monitoring traffic as the media companies start to setup and test their equipment. One of the monitors he's using is an experimental program he's been working on on the side to detect steganography in a stream. He's running it mostly to see how well it keeps up with the flow, not expecting it to detect anything in this particular content, but it flags a stream. Digging into the source and looking up the contact info for the media company, discovers the technical contact is Xander.
• The sender carelessly left encryption disabled, relying solely on steganography to hide the message, and it turns out to be a message referencing an apparently randomly named Telegram chat group. Curious, Chris uses a Tor connection to try to join the group anonomously and gets asked some disturbing questions about predator vs prey relationships. ... from a covert group, Predator Supremacy Now, who believe the predator shifters have the right to eat the prey shifters when shifted. They plan to ambush prey in the Shift Relay Marathon, where competitors alternate between human and shifted forms. Being cross country, they will wait at a remote location in a segment where the participants are shifted and snatch a lone prey shifter, and eat them leaving little behind - the prey simply disappears. The group infiltrates Shifting Streams, one of the media companies covering the race, and arranges for one of the remote coverage points to be manned entirely by the predators.