June 22nd, 2312
10:14am
Adrian

Math was a bore, but then again, so were most things in college. But that was exactly what Adrian wanted - a boring, normal life with nothing exciting going on whatsoever. For a therianthrope who wanted to pass as a human, normalcy and a completely mundane life were imperative. Adrian had grown up that way; it was really all he'd ever known. So, sitting in this stuffy classroom in Seattle's college with about one hundred other students was just an average day for him.

Or, it was, under normal circumstances. There was something off about this day, however. After they'd brought that other therianthrope girl in for the biology class to look at - who Adrian felt bad for, though there was nothing really that he could do for her - he had headed for his math class. Which would have been normal, if not for the empty seat beside him.

Jovie was about two, maybe three, years older than Adrian - she was a senior. They'd become hesitant friends during the spring semester, and occasionally even went out for coffee together. It was quite a rare occurrence for Adrian to actually go somewhere with someone else, these days, but he was actually perfectly content to do so with Jovie. She was an odd woman, but an interesting one, and she never seemed to mind that Adrian was often so quiet. He'd thought that she might have had a crush on him for a while, before learning that she was asexual.

"I'm not interested in your dangly bits," had been her uninterested words.

Yes, Jovie was a talker, and Adrian was perfectly content to just sit there and enjoy the conversation. She actually usually talked through the entirety of math class.

But she was late.

Now, this wouldn't be a problem, if she was someone else in the class. Fifteen minutes late was pushing it for anyone, but Jovie was almost always early to class, even if she despised it. So, the fact that she was not there was bothering Adrian. Something about it just felt wrong.

A bit lost in thought, he was caught off-guard when Jovie, panting, with snow clinging to her jacket and jeans, trotted up and hopped into the seat beside him.

"Where have you been?" Adrian whispered, lowering his head just a bit to make eye contact with the out-of-breath young woman.

Her face was oddly pale, and she had the strangest smile on her lips as she replied - with no hesitation, - "I just went outside to get that therianthrope out of the cage. She ran off - she didn't even try and hurt me. Isn't that insane? I felt like she'd at least try."

It took a few moments for Adrian to comprehend the information, but when he did, his eyes flew open wide. "What the hell, Jovie?" he demanded, quickly understanding the full weight of the situation. "They'll kill you for something like that. It's basically treasonous."

"I know," she responded, placing one hand on her chest to help still her heart. "I just... felt something when I touched her earlier. It's hard to describe. All the teachers say therianthropes aren't sentient beings. That - y'know - they're almost like fruits, or vegetables. That they don't have any thoughts or soul or feelings. But I think they're wrong."

Adrian scrubbed one hand down his face in exasperation. "You just risked your life on an impulse?" Obviously, all the teachers were wrong. Adrian knew, for a fact, that he himself was very sentient. He'd heard all his life that therianthropes weren't like humans - that they were soulless.

Yet, here he - a therianthrope - was, in college with thousands of other totally human students.

"I guess I did." Jovie shrugged, as though it really didn't matter. "But I did the right thing, Adrian."

She did, Adrian had to admit. He'd wanted to run down there and get that poor little therianthrope out of the cage the very moment Dr. Price had brought her in. Adrian just hadn't had the guts, but Jovie did. And that was really admirable. However, instead of voicing his real thoughts, Adrian snorted. "You're insane. You know that, don't you?"

"I might be," she told him confidently, then dropped a wink. "But now that you know what I did, you're officially my accomplice. What do you think about that, huh?"

Jovie meant for her jab to be funny, but the realization hit Adrian like a ton of bricks and made his blood run cold.

Crap.

That certainly threw a wrench into his "totally normal life" plan.

([ To Be Human ])

June 23rd, 2312
8:56pm
Casey

As it would happen, Casey had not been able to get out of the city the day prior. Seattle was huge, with winding streets and more people than Casey could've pictured. Her travelling had been slow-going, as she was trying hard to get through the city without being seen. She'd been sticking to the shadows and back alleys, and hadn't even started to really move about until nightfall. She couldn't even imagine what would happen if any of the citizens spotted her; it would be chaotic, to say the least.

Currently, she was lost. Hopelessly lost, in fact. She was lost, and hungry, and thirsty, and she couldn't get this freaking muzzle off of her face. She'd spent a good two hours just trying to push and pull and tug on the muzzle, but nothing she did would work. It was really starting to stress her out.

She was about ninety-five percent sure she'd been down this alley before, but then, everything looked the same here. It was terrifying, and she had no idea what to do.

Panting heavily, Casey pressed her flank into the wall to her right and shivered slightly from the chill in the air. She needed a rest, she needed to get out of this snow, and she needed to be able to open her mouth.

Steeling herself, she forced her paws to work and continued down the alley, crouched low to the ground and trembling a bit from the cold and fear that she couldn't quite shake. Every now and again, she'd see a human walking up ahead, or hear talking through the walls of the buildings to either side of her, and it did nothing to help her calm down.

A car's panic alarm went off across the street, both distracting Casey and preventing her from being able to hear around the corner ahead. She went around the bend and bumped her nose into something soft and warm.

Casey turned her gaze upward and... didn't have to look very far. In front of her was a very tiny human child, about six or seven years old, with a shock of curly blond hair and sweet brown eyes. The child's mouth was open in surprise, and Casey squeezed her eyes shut and tensed, ready to run if he were about to scream for someone to come help him.

But he didn't. Instead of screaming, the child instead began to laugh. Casey's eyes flew open when two tiny hands found their way behind her ears and started scratching - a little roughly, to be honest. But still, it was so much better than what she'd been expecting.

"Doggy!" the boy squealed happily, and Casey tipped her head in confusion, wondering how the kid even knew that word. The boy's hands traveled around to her muzzle and he frowned angrily. "Somebody mean got you. That's okay; we can fix it. My daddy loves animals," he chirped and turned before heading back down the alley the way he'd come. When Casey didn't move, he turned and put his hands on his little hips. "C'mon, doggy!" he commanded sternly.

This time, Casey followed. It was probably a bad idea, but she was never accused of being super great with ideas, anyway.

It didn't take long for them to reach their destination - a tall, gothic-looking building with boards nailed across the windows and a cracked wooden door. The boy opened it and let Casey inside the house. The instant warmth was wonderful.

"Let's get that nasty thingy offa' you," the boy stated, heading into the small kitchen area and fiddling around in a drawer until he pulled out a huge butcher's knife.

Casey swallowed hard as the kid approached her, but allowed him to slide the knife in between the leather of the muzzle and the base of her skull.

The boy carved at the contraption meticulously until it snapped and Casey felt instantaneous relief. When the muzzle fell to the floor, she transformed into her human form immediately - she really didn't care about the consequences. It felt so good to be able to switch back.

"Ooh!" the boy chirped, his brown eyes round in awe. "You're not an animal, hunh? Daddy loves ther-i-en-throats, too!"

Casey raised an eyebrow skeptically. "Does he?" she croaked, her mouth and throat unbelievably dry.

The boy nodded with great enthusiasm. "Mhm! He takes good care of a whole buncha' you guys down-the-stairs, so that the gov-ament peoples can't find you."

"Huh," she responded, and blinked in surprise when the boy ran to one of the cupboards to get her a glass. He filled it up with water from the tap and brought it back to her. She took it and drank the entire thing greedily, soothing her dry throat. "Thank you."

The boy gave her an award-winning smile. "My name's Alaric," he told her and extended one small hand for her to shake. Casey smiled in return and reciprocated the handshake. "What's your name, ther-i-en-throat lady?"

"Casey," she told him. "You said your daddy keeps a bunch of other therianthropes downstairs?"

"He sure does!" Alaric informed her. "He keeps 'em nice and safe and warm and gives them food and places to go to sleep. Daddy loves ther-i-en-throats. I bet he'd take care of you, too!"

Casey relaxed fractionally and took a deep breath. "Can you take me to meet the other therianthropes, Alaric?" she inquired, and Alaric nodded eagerly.

"Sure I can! Come on," he told her before taking off at a run around the corner. Casey trotted after him, and was surprised to find the boy pulling an oriental rug up off the dusty hardwood floor.

She was even more surprised to see a circular metal object - what looked like a manhole cover - underneath it.

Alaric pulled and tugged at the metal thing until it came loose, and it opened into a gaping, dark abyss. It really did look like a manhole now - there were even tiny, metal steps leading down into the darkness.

The little blond boy started to clamber down the little footholds. Casey once again followed.

"We can't tell anybodies about this place," Alaric told her very seriously as they reached the bottom of the pit. Casey's feet landed on hard concrete, and she was suddenly very aware that the scents of several dozen other individuals was present all around them. "Gotta keep it a secret."

"My lips are sealed," Casey informed him, just as seriously.

Alaric seemed pleased with her response, and began to lead her down the tunnel.

As they walked, Casey found that she could hear noises coming from up ahead - it sounded like cheering, coupled with shouting, and then with roaring.

Casey felt apprehension creep up her spine.

They had to walk for a minute or so before Casey could see anyone else, but suddenly, they turned a corner and there was a massive crowd at the end of the tunnel, all gathered with their backs to Casey and Alaric. It seemed that their attention was totally captured by something else.

The roaring grew louder, and Casey could smell blood.

She bolted forward, slipped her way through the crowd, and slammed her hands against a metal bar set at the top of a thigh-high wall, which was set there in order to keep the onlookers from falling into the deep pit with the creatures below.

Casey had never seen anything like this.

Down in the pit, which was illuminated and filled with sand at the bottom, a pair of large animals prowled around one another. One, a wild boar, was larger and more terrifying, and the smaller was a jaguar. Both animals were bleeding and battered, but the jaguar looked worse for wear. Casey was shocked to see that the big cat only had three legs; its right hind leg was missing, and it looked like that was where the boar was focusing most of its attacks.

Casey could see the prosthetic leg laying halfway across the pit.

Suddenly, the boar snarled and sprinted in at the jaguar, ramming its head into the feline's side and sending him sprawling across the sand, leaving a smear of blood in his wake.

The jaguar got to his feet and shook his head, but he was off-balance and the boar advanced again. It bit down hard on the jaguar's shoulder, and the large cat made a distressed, low-pitched noise of pain.

The onlookers cheered feverishly.

At that point, Alaric had reached Casey's side and smiled up at her. "See the ther-i-en-throats? They fight for Daddy and Daddy lets 'em stay down here." He giggled. "You can stay here, too, if you wanna."

Casey felt violently ill. Those are therianthropes.

The boar released the jaguar's shoulder and the jaguar took a swipe at it, but missed. The pig squealed and bowled the cat over once more before approaching the jaguar as he struggled to get to his three feet.

"He's going to die!" Casey snapped at Alaric, her heart racing. "They've got to stop it!"

Alaric gave her a weird look. "That's the point, silly. One of 'em's gotta die. That way, everybody can make money and there'll always be room in the cages afterwards."

In truth, Casey had known that from the moment she'd ran up to the pit, but hearing it aloud - from the mouth of a small, innocent child, no less - brought a whole different type of horror to the situation. It was sick, twisted, evil...

Somebody had to do something, and it sure as heck wasn't going to be any of the depraved men and women gathered around them.

Casey did the only thing that she could think of, in the heat of the moment.

She jumped in.

([ To Be Human ])

June 23rd, 2312
11:23pm
Quentin

This was not the way he had expected to die.

In a world like the one they lived in, death was inevitable. Heck, most humans nowadays didn't even live to see forty.

Most therianthropes were lucky to see twenty.

Q hadn't reached twenty just yet, and he wasn't quite sure he was ready to go. Especially not like this, in a pit with some repulsive boar, and a crowd of even more repulsive pigs cheering from the sidelines. It was just so undignified, so horrific and disgusting and demeaning. He'd rather be shot, or be poisoned, or starve, or drown...

Almost anything would be better than this.

What was worse was the fact that his body would just be dumped out like trash, or fed to the actual animals that the humans running this establishment kept alongside the therianthropes.

He didn't want to die in such a pointless, useless way.

The only bright side to the situation was that Quentin's mother wasn't around to witness this. He hoped that she would be able to live the rest of her life in blissful ignorance, unknowing of the fate of her son. A fate that she had tried so hard to protect him from.

Quentin felt the boar's breath on his neck as it prepared to bite down. It was rancid.

Yes, he was about to die, laying in a useless heap of sand and his own blood, with a pig's jaws around his throat.

He closed his eyes and waited for death; whatever that would bring.

Suddenly, the breath vanished and the crowd started to scream, half in delight and the other half in dismay. Something snarled, the boar squealed, and Quentin's eyes shot open again. The sight that greeted him was... a bit odd, to say the least.

There, placed firmly between himself and the boar, was a small orange-and-tan dog, with her hackles raised and tail in the air. Her lips were pulled back in a vicious snarl, and her ears were pressed back against her head. The boar was looming over her; it was obviously much bigger than she was. Heck, it was bigger than Quentin, and he was more than three times that dog's size.

The boar swung its head and nearly caught the dog's shoulder with its tusk, but the dog had the advantage of speed and agility. She ducked, dodged, and darted in between the boar's front legs. She weaved around underneath it and set it off balance a bit, and the boar shifted and tilted as it tried to reach her.

Quentin watched as the dog nipped at the boar's back legs and received a sharp kick to the flank for it. The dog yelped and tumbled to one side, her paws scrabbling on the sand to try and slow herself down. She failed and ended up rolling hard toward the middle of the ring.

The boar huffed and shook its now-bleeding leg. Scarlet splashed onto the sand beneath it as it limped toward the dog. Quentin had actually done some good damage on the boar, he noticed - his claw marks were scored down the brown creature's sides and shoulders, and nearly as much of the congealing red liquid on the sand was the boar's.

It really didn't have much fight left in it.

Forcing himself to his three remaining legs - of course, it was his luck that the jerry-rigged prosthetic that the people here had given him had fallen off early on in the fight - Quentin lunged at the boar before it could sink its teeth into the dog's stomach.

His front claws met the boar's haunches and it squealed in pain, bucking to try and get him off.

Unfortunately, he did not have a good enough grip on the creature, and he found himself on the sandy floor of the pit once again.

This time, though, the boar did not even have time to move before the dog was on it again, nipping and barking as she tried to bring its attention off of Quentin and onto herself.

Why she would want to do that, Q would never know, but she was certainly doing it.

The dog's teeth met the boar's weakest leg, and the massive brown creature hit the floor with a moaning bellow.

Not five seconds later, it morphed into its human form - a huge, pudgy man with gray-brown hair and ripped jeans. He tried to sit up, but he could not - Quentin could see from his position that the man was clearly dying.

Apparently, so could the dog. She had switched to her human form and dropped to her knees beside the massive man - he still dwarfed her, even in human form.

"I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, I didn't mean to," the girl babbled, her golden-brown eyes wide and tears streaking down her dirty cheeks. Her hands hovered hesitantly over the boar therianthrope's body, trying to find a way that she could assist him. "I just wanted to get you to stop fighting; I couldn't just stand there. I-I-" she stammered, and the boar man attempted to offer her a smile.

"Don't do that. You didn't put us in here, kid," he grunted, voice gruff and gritty. He was breathing hard between each word, but he was no longer fighting for breath. "You did what you could. Hell, you did more than you should've."

Then, his eyes clouded and his chest stilled, and he was gone.

There was a resounding silence, and then the crowd was booing hysterically, demanding for more gore and bloodshed.

"That's enough; that's enough!" called the voice over the loudspeaker. "Shut up, you bastards! Fight's over! Go home!"

Reluctantly, the onlookers silenced and began to disperse at a snail's pace. Quentin transformed back into his human form and grunted in pain, feeling the extent of his injuries now that his adrenaline was no longer pumping through his veins.

The younger therianthrope either heard him or saw him move, because she hastily wiped at her freckled cheeks to rid them of tears before getting to her feet and stumbling over to him.

"Y-you're really hurt," she stuttered, her small body shaking so hard that Q was surprised she was still on her feet. "Please don't move."

Quentin looked away and set his jaw stubbornly. "I'm fine," he grunted, though not as rudely as he might have if she had not just saved his life. Still, he did not want her pity, and it set that familiar spark of pride aflame in his chest. "You should take care of yourself instead. You're bleeding, in case you hadn't noticed."

The ginger looked down and placed a hand on her side, where blood was seeping through her sweater. She pulled her shirt up and hissed through gritted teeth when she saw the bruised and split skin from where the boar had kicked her.

There were scars decorating the pale skin on her stomach.

Quentin jumped slightly when the door at the opposite end of the pit opened and a few men stepped in, armed with guns and prepared to escort him - and the dog therianthrope, more than likely - to their cages.

One was carrying the prosthetic leg for his human form - the better one that had been designed by an actual doctor.

The girl jumped and growled at the people, but she was shaking and her body language gave off fear rather than aggression. She wasn't going to hurt these humans.

"Chill out," he informed her, rolling his eyes. "They're not going to hurt you. Just don't fight them."

Surprisingly, she obeyed, and went willingly with them. Quentin fastened his prosthetic leg on and followed, and soon, they were in the cages that were set up in the back room.

Cages was actually the wrong term. These were more like jail cells. There was a small mattress on the floor, and a toilet and sink in the corners. Each cell was blocked off with iron bars.

Quentin settled himself down on his mattress and the medic headed in to patch him up. They did the same thing for the dog therianthrope and put her in the cell between Quentin's and a very reclusive thylacine therianthrope.

The small, red-haired girl limped over and curled up on her mattress, on her stomach.

A few moments passed by before the girl sniffled and spoke up.

"My name's Casey."

Figuring that the words were directed at him, and though the question was not asked, Quentin decided to answer her.

"Quentin. I'm Quentin."

([ To Be Human ])

An - Hey, guys! I didn't expect to have this chapter done tonight, but here it is! It's a decent length, I think - almost four thousand words.

I hope I did well with Quentin and Adrian! I love these two. In fact, I love all the characters I've received.

Don't panic if your character doesn't show up for a while - I've got a whole bunch of 'em to introduce, and they'll all have their chance to shine.

I'm sorry for closing the SYOC to main characters a couple of days early. The response I got for this fic was so much more than I expected, and I got so many amazing characters from so many amazing people, so please don't take it personally if I don't use your character as a main. I plan on using a lot of them for side characters and some for recurring roles.

So, let me know what you think! Also, if I haven't PMed you back yet, please be patient with me. You can PM me again to remind me to reply to you, because I get overwhelmed sometimes and forget to respond.

Anyway, I think that's it c: Tell me if I did something wrong, or something right, or if you have any story ideas, etc.

Oh, and if anyone has the ability to make a cover for this story, please let me know! I think we need a good cover c:

God bless you guys!

Love,

Snowy