"Excuse me, sir, spare some change?"

The man walked right past the dirty-dressed girl, seeming not to hear her. Penny scrunched up her brow in a scowl, then tried again.

"Excuse me... miss... spare some change?  I've no home and I'm starving."

This time the woman looked, but shrugged her shoulders helplessly and continued to walk. This was not going well and Penny Brice was hungry. How cruel was this world that grown adults could walk right past a starving child without even considering offering help.  Or throwing the poor beggar a few coins, at least.  In spite of the lack of success though, deep down she was thoroughly enjoying herself. It was all like a fascinating experiment.  In Penny's vast experience, she had come to conclude that it was other poor people who were the most charitable.  After that, it was the low working class.  And from there, the richer they were, the stingier they were.  It was a rather odd scale, at face value, but then, those who had learned to acquire wealth would obviously hold it fast.  People didn't usually get rich by being nice.

There weren't many people in New York who were willing to hire a teenager for work.  And Penny was determined to start this phase of her life with nothing, and become something.  So right now, she was homeless and begging.  If she didn't get some donations soon, she'd be going without dinner tonight.  She decided to be a little more aggressive next time.

"Sir," she called out, tottering meekly up to another passer-by and tugging his coat. "Sir, spare some change? I'm..."

"Get off me you little rat," the man wrenched away from Penny, shot her a glare of contempt and then was on his way.

Penny growled low in her throat. Ignorance was one thing, but insults. Penny did not like to be called names. She had recent memories in her mind of bullies in school, and the insult lit a fire of disquiet in the pit of her stomach. She began to march after him in her dirty black shoes. The rest of her attire was an unwashed, flowery dress with a red cardigan over the top. Her face might be considered cute if it was cleaner and she didn't have that angry, vengeful look in her eyes. Through the light crowd, she followed the oblivious man, her fists balled at her sides as her kept up with her quarry. The evening was here and she fancied settling down on the subway with a nice Big Mac and Fries.

[i]Ah well,[/i] she thought. [i]A proper meal will have to do.[/i]

The man turned down an alley and Penny followed. Judging by his suit, he looked like a man with a decent job. Penny wondered he did for a living. What insane, pointless job (or career) in this day and age, did he have? What did he think and feel? What did he know? It was not until he heard Penny's voice again that he turned around.

"How dare you..." He turned about to see Penny stood with her feet planted shoulder width apart. "...you ignore the pleas of a starving fourteen year old girl. Have you no heart?" She walked forward slowly and the man backed away a step, more in confusion than anything else. He wasn't scared at first, with the seeming lack of physical threat, but then outright terror struck him when Penny's eyes - even the whites of her eyes - become blood-red.

"What the hell...!"

Penny convulsed and her form grew, black fur sprouted quickly all over body and her nose elongated. The child's clothes began to melt away into nothingness as she grew, and within seconds, Penny Brice was no longer Penny Brice. In her place, standing six feet tall and weighing a dense and muscular 280lbs, was [i]Baroness Aurora: The Malevolent - First of her kind and mother of all Lycanthropes.[/i] Saliva dripped from her razor-sharp teeth, her fiery gaze burning holes into the poor man who was statue-like in fear and disbelief.

Aurora lunged at the shrieking man..............