A/N: I am VERY disappointed about the whole pay debacle and Kono/Chin most likely being written out of the show as a result. But that's neither here nor there; I dislike discussing anything political/antagonistic online so let's just all agree it is incredibly sad and thank the lord that fanfiction exists so we may choose our own adventures (and characters), so to speak!
For lo and behold I have a new story! Love love love shifter and sentinel fics, and I had an interesting idea/twist on what I've read so far. Hope you all enjoy, please feel free to comment with any constructive insights or ideas. This fic takes place somewhere ambiguously within seasons 3/4 as far as character inclusion, and will be very very AU. I am in the process of an international move; if I'm lucky I'll be able to post another chapter within the next few weeks, otherwise it may get pushed out to next month, just a heads up for anyone who obsessively checks stories for updates (like I do).
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"You're an animal."
"Come on Danny, it wasn't that bad."
"Not that bad? You had your MOUTH around the perp's HEAD."
Steve pulled on the shirt Danny held out to him, grinning. "I wasn't gonna bite down. I was just getting him to talk."
"But we didn't know that! For all we knew you were getting ready to crush his head like a grape!" Danny's hands flapped about wildly as he communicated his disapproval, grabbing the Navy SEAL's pants and throwing them at his smug face.
"Hey boss. Got the location for the buy. Warehouse outside of Waianae." Kono wandered up, sharing Steve's grin. "Nice interrogation technique."
"No. You do not encourage this. I have to chase this schmuck around this stupid island every day making sure that at least some aspect of police procedure is maintained."
Kono laughed. "Aww, you're just jealous you can't shift to keep up with him better."
Steve patted him on the shoulder. "Don't worry Danno, we still love you. Anyways, if you did shift, it'd probably be a gorilla or a bear or something, and they can't keep up with a jaguar anyways." he teased.
"A gorilla? What are you imp—I'll show you gorilla...I hate cats. Smug bastards, all of you." Danny growled as he stalked off towards the cars.
Kono and Steve shared a commiserating look, and followed their teammate out.
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Steven McGarrett, commander of the Five-0 task force had hand selected his teammates based on their skills and qualities as law enforcement officers. It just so happened that the majority of them were shifters. Uncommon but not rare, shifters had the ability to change into an animal form at will.
The truth was most non-shifters were actually latent, carrying the genetic material that could have produced the form changing ability but had not activated at birth. About a third of the population were shifters of some sort and of varying strengths. It took a lot of effort and energy to shift, meaning you had to be reasonably fit and healthy to transform seamlessly, without any pain.
Shifters' forms tended to reflect the personality and/or physical characteristics of the individual. Steve was a black jaguar. Kono was a dolphin, while Chin could turn into a local Hawaiian hawk. Danny growled like a bear and snapped like a turtle, but as far as they knew he was a non-shifter. He'd always answered the question of 'do you shift/are you a shifter' with a simple but blunt 'I don't shift.' Danny was happy to stick to that answer. Most shifters liked to show off their status and list the type of animal they became on their permanent records. Danny thought that was egotistical and just asking for trouble. Especially in a career in law enforcement, where that sort of knowledge could be used against the shifter.
Regardless of any personal opinions or paperwork, Steve shifted as he pleased, and Danny made sure the mook didn't get shot six ways to Sunday when he raced in, tail lashing.
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Case in point. The warehouse just outside of Waianae was filled with the sound of gunfire. That was because the men who were trying to pass along stolen weaponry had tried to double cross the men they were selling the guns to, and Five-0 suddenly found itself in the middle of a shootout with both groups.
Danny swore under his breath, "Goddamnit, Steven."
The man had changed, gripping his gun tightly in his jaw before leaping up crates to gain a higher vantage point. Danny tried his best to draw fire away so that they didn't focus on the six foot jaguar scaling boxes like it was a tree in the freaking jungle. Un-freaking-believable.
He caught a blur out of the corner of his eye and looked up to see Steve vanish. In doing so he leaned too far out around the corner. The force of the bullet spun him around, the familiar feeling of fiery pain engulfing his arm.
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"I'm sorry, Danno."
"Excuse me? You're sorry for what, specifically?"
"...do I have to say it?" Steven whined, looking at Danny's scowl as he sat on the edge of the ambulance. "Fine. Fine. I'm sorry I got you shot...again...and I'm just...very, very sorry."
"Thank you. I can feel the sincerity in your tone. You're worse than my twelve year old daughter, you know that?" he snapped, grumpy and wondering when his pain meds would kick in.
"You're free to go, sergeant. Try not to come back to us for at least another week eh?" The paramedic nudged the jersey cop on his uninjured shoulder. Danny grunted, standing up. "No promises. Say hi to Alani at the hospital for me?"
"Will do!"
Steven stood there looking like an sheepish overgrown puppy instead of the lethal black cat he contained inside. Danny sighed.
"Don't look at me like that. Let's just go. You owe me a beer..."
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Sadly there was no opportunity for Danny to relax. The men they had apprehended had admitted to hiding a secondary stash of weapons, and so Chin and Steve had gone off with one of them to retrieve it while Kono and Danny got started on the massive amount of paperwork.
"You know it's been almost three years since we formed Five-0? We should celebrate. Maybe do a barbecue at Steve's place."
Danny looked up. "Really? Well, I suppose another year of surviving this team is worth celebrating...it is quite the achievement."
His sardonic tone was promptly ignored by the cheerful Hawaiian. "Yeah! And you can bring Grace...you have her this weekend, right?"
"This weekend and all of next week. Picking her up tomorrow when she gets out of school. Stan is going to some housing developer's conference in Vegas and Rachel decided to turn it into an extended vacation."
"Great! Wonder when the boss will get back...we can grab beer and some of the sides since he seems to have a never ending supply of steaks in that freezer of his."
"The only good thing about carnivorous shifters..." the Jersey cop agreed, a wry grin on his face. He'd seen the second freezer Steve had kept hidden out of sight amongst the clutter in the garage. As healthy as the man ate most days, he couldn't deny the animal in him, and had actually blushed when Danny had found the freezer packed with various cuts of frozen chicken and steak. McGarrett had mumbled some excuse about buying in bulk being cheaper, which was true, but Danny still teased him mercilessly when he got the chance.
"Should I bring the usual? That fruit salad Grace likes?" Kono asked, clearly done paying attention to the paperwork surrounding them.
Danny nodded with a smile. Kono was quite smitten with his daughter, and loved playing the role of fun auntie to his monkey. When they'd been discussing Kono's initial presentation as a dolphin on a coffee run a few weeks into working together, he'd happily bragged about his little girl's early presentation as a rare golden lion tamarin, courtesy of his ex-wife's bloodline. Shifters tended to have children that were within the same order of species. This was not always the case, however, given procreation between people with different forms or between a shifter and a non-shifter. It seemed to add further complexity to the mix, but in Grace's case she took after the physical characteristics of his ex-wife in both forms.
Scientists had never been able to pin down how the body decided its secondary form or why some carried the ability dormant in their genetic structure. It was common knowledge, however, that the form you shifted in tended to reveal something about your overall personality. Kono was a dolphin, appropriate to her islander heritage and intelligent, charming personality. Her cousin, Chin, was an oddity in his family. Most of the Kalakaua and Kelly clan shifters were sea animals, but bucking tradition, Chin had presented late as a Hawaiian Hawk. There was no doubt that it suited the man, however, and he seemed unruffled and content about the whole thing. Danny couldn't blame him. The ability to fly seemed wonderful, and it had come in handy for the team when they'd needed aerial surveillance. One never knew for sure if an animal was actually an animal or a shifter in their secondary form, but seeing a panther in Hawaii, for instance, was usually a big giveaway. If you were lucky enough to live in the same region as your secondary form's natural habitat, you had some advantages as far as blending in and remaining undetected.
"A tamarin? She sounds adorable! Does she take after you?" Kono had asked curiously, as they had strolled out of the coffee shop towards Danny's Camero.
"Her mother, Rachel, is a monkey shifter." Danny had explained. "She's a marmoset, although sometimes I think she'd have been better as a howler monkey."
"Oh...So it wasn't both of you? I sort of thought you were a shifter."
"The monkey is all Rachel, Gracie gets it directly from her." Danny responded shortly. He'd immediately felt a bit guilty at Kono's surprised reaction to his tone, but had to let the matter go as they were buzzed by McGarrett redirecting them to an urgent crime scene.
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"Steak's not gonna run away, McGarrett. Come have a beer while they cook." Lou said with a chuckle.
Steve had been staring intensely at the grill, forehead crinkled as if the steaks and burgers had somehow wronged his family and were prepared to launch an assault if he turned his back on them.
"Don't bother," Chin said for Steve, who had turned his mild glare onto the large mainlander. "It's Steve's patent-pending grilling technique. He's literally smelling the meat at precise intervals and the amount of blood left to test for doneness. That's why he never bothers touching them."
"I'd prefer them rare, but not all of us agree." Steve grumbled.
The other two men laughed at this. They knew exactly who he was referring to – as a father, Danny was aggressive over properly cooking food to temperatures safe for his little girl to eat, even though shifters who presented and shifted regularly tended to have lower susceptibility to food-borne illnesses. Lou joked that the over-obsession with safety would fade if he ever had to juggle a second or a third child. McGarrett wasn't so sure. Danny was Danny, and the protective instincts the man had rivaled a mother bear. He was as fuzzy as a bear to boot, and if the shoe fits...Steve knew if Danny could hear his thoughts, he'd probably go deaf from the rant that would be sure to follow. Best not to tease the fiery tempered cop too much.
Grace and Kono were happily splashing about in the shallow surf while said Jersey cop was seated on a blanket by the sand castle they'd been building earlier in the day. Catherine had pulled a lounger from the lanai to join him while they both waited for the food to finish grilling. They sat in silence enjoying the sunshine and the afternoon breeze that promised cooler weather later in the evening.
After a while, the hairs on the back of Catherine's head rose, as if a sixth sense was telling her something was off. Instinctively she eyed the other man, keeping her face pointing forward. His pose was casual, but there was a persistent tightening around his eyes and small creases along the corners of his mouth that revealed to a close observer that he was struggling to hide pain. Was it his arm? She wondered.
"Feeling alright there, Danny?"
He twisted his head to glance up at her with a grimace.
"I'm fine...just the pain meds wearing off. Maybe a bit of a headache from the sun too." he admitted.
"The grill master over there probably isn't going to finish for a while...why don't you go take the next round and take a short nap on the lanai? I'll keep an eye on the girls." she offered with a smile. And so Danny pushed himself up with a grunt, brushing off sand and with a bit of an initial wobble made his way back towards the house. Catherine had almost forgotten about him until Steve announced the food was ready, and they moved to set the table and fill their plates.
"Where's Danno?" Grace asked, looking around as Kono plopped a chicken skewer on her plate next to the mountain of fruit salad she'd already added.
"I'll go get him." Steve said, setting down his tongs and apron. "He went inside to nap where it was cooler."
Steve met Danny just as he was exiting the bathroom, wiping a hand over his mouth.
"Ready to eat, Danno?"
"...yeah. Grace already get settled?" Danny asked, his voice a bit rough and gravelly. He cleared it as they both turned to walk back outside.
"Yup, protein, fruits, and vegetables. And there's ice cream and grilled pineapple for dessert!" Steve said with a bounce in his step.
"Of course there's pineapple. At least it's off of pizza today..."