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Daily uploads start up again on September 6th 2022.
Daily upload heading
Title: Grown & Changed
Genre: fluff, humor
World: Shifters AU
Context: Just a bunch of shifters lazing around while Kuroshiro reflects on the past of one of his partners
Characters: Argo trio focused (Kuroshiro, Caylee, Argo), Rika & Shino, Kirito & Asuna
Age Range: Teenagers - seniors and juniors in high school.
Tags: feline shifters have varying reactions to catnip, Caylee's transgender (it's not public), Argo's a complete energy ball on catnip, all characters are prodigies like in "Understanding".
World Summary (Only writing this once...)
Shifters is a world centered around the rare human ability to take on a secondary form of a genetically passed on category of animals. All of the cast are shifters and go to this intense school for prodigies as shifting manifestations (the emergence of a secondary form at 10) is usually linked to intelligence or skill. The animal represents part of their personality and those traits are heightened within them.
Animal form List:
- Asuna & Argo - cheetah, Kirito & Shino - timber wolves, Rika - grizzly bear, Keiko - baby black bear (is Rika's younger sister), Alice - lion, Eugeo - Koala, Caylee - bengal tiger, Kuroshiro - red fox.
All characters are referred to their IRL names
Blue eyes the color of cobalt and a stormy sea stared startled at his outstretched hand, but Kuroshiro wasn't afraid. He wasn't like other kids, the ones who ignored the young boy who didn't talk and liked computers and sports. Unlike them, he had paid attention to the boy, had seen how skilled they were with a soccer ball and watched them awkwardly trott up to the front of the class and sit in the teacher's chair to silently repair their teacher's computer regardless of how they were just seven years old.
This kid, Caleb Mitsuko, someone who didn't speak, didn't fit in and seemed to feel very awkward and clumsy about themselves, was so much cooler than the other kids in their class.
The brunette's curly hair was getting in his face, his long bangs and fringe partially hiding one of those striking blue eyes as he lifted his gaze from Kuroshiro's hand to the platinum blonde himself. Looking silently at him behind those glasses a little tentatively, almost… uncertain on why the popular jokester of their class was holding a hand out to him.
Kuroshiro would've explained himself were it not for the sudden surprise of a golden blonde in their class, a particularly chatting troublemaker who was always in trouble till this new kid transferred into their class, practically appearing out of nowhere and threw her arms around the boy's neck from behind.
"E's 'ust curious, total 'ofty~" the blonde told the curly haired boy with a silly nuzzle of her nose against their cheek. Before she was giving Kuroshiro a cheeky grin and holding a hand out for him to shake. "Ya like music like Ki-kun?"
"Akira!" For the time time ever,Kuroishiro heard Caleb speak, even if it was just the girl's name. The boy had been part of Kuroshiro's class for four months and the kid never spoke, not once. He was always paired up with Akira for group projects.
"He's always watchin'ya," Akira, the golden blonde with messy curly hair giggled and the brunette boy looked away from both of them, their cheeks turning red in embarrassment, "and yer both in da music room…"
Caleb grunted but didn't speak.
Huh, so maybe he didn't speak to people he didn't trust?
Kuroshiro smiled and shook the girl's outstretched hand, "Heck yeah, I play bass and a bunch of other stuff at home. Cause I like trying to make music!"
At the mention of instruments and making music, Caleb's blue eyes flickered toward him, seemingly keenly interested in the fact that Kuroshiro played instruments. And with a bit of effort that usually was much higher without the small blonde casually hanging out with her arms around the boy's neck, they spoke.
"Music's pretty cool… Er," they blinked and looked like they were going to stop talking, but with a little nudge from the blonde behind him, they finished their sentence. "I, uh, play guitar…"
Kuroshiro's eyes brightened and he offered Caleb a hand, "no way! Do you want to play together?"
"...Sure."
Watching her change, change from that silent and selectively mute awkward boy who according to Argo, hated who they were, into the beautiful, quiet and very confident girl in front of him was something Kuroshiro would never forget.
Caylee, who used to be called Caleb when she was little, a young selectively mute boy who hated people and himself too, was so wildly different now that it was hard to believe that she had been that boy when she was a child. Where it not for the fact that Kuroshiro had been there the entire time alongside Argo, who used to go by her first name Akira.
So he had seen the way that thick, impenetrable shell slowly cracked with webs of thin cracks that over time as she transitioned and developed, till now, ten years later, it was gone. Leaving just a slightly lazy, very laid back smartass with cobalt blue eyes, long curly hair, a perfected unamused glare that rivaled Shino's, and the alternate form of a beautiful white tiger.
Who was what he was looking at right now in fact.
The large feline was carefully batting at Argo's ears, batting at the small cheetah who had a mouthful of the tiger's fur and was playfully growling, tugging and whipping her head back and forth in a gesture of heavy play. Which didn't really faze the much, much bigger, like one-hundred seventy-pounds more with Argo's small size.
Caylee seemed more concerned with rubbing her cheek against the ground, namely the catnip Rika had playfully brought with her for the hangout this week. Caylee and Asuna had had the strongest reactions to it. With Kuroshiro taking pity on the female cheetah and spreading some out in another area since his and Argo's big fluffy two hundred and fifty pound white tiger of a girlfriend had hogged the first spot in her almost… sleepy reaction to the catnip.
Not that this was the first time Kuroshiro had seen this, since he had been part of the prank that involved wolfsbane which had originally been confused for catnip.
But still… he could appreciate how happy the fluffy tiger looked right now, surrounded by their friends, probably rather high on catnip, and with the smaller, more chaotic and energetic member of their trio playfully messing with her.
Didn't mean he had expected to see Rika get up, the big grizzly bear getting to her paws at Argo's yip and lumbering over toward her. Much to the irritation of the now wide awake Shino who growled idly at Kirito, thrashing her tail.
To the male's credit, he obediently got up and put more distance between him and her, no doubt aware that the last thing Asuna would want was him and Shino fighting.
However, Kuroshiro was distracted by Argo jumping neatly off of their tiger girlfriend before bouncing a little with as much of a smirk on her furry face as a cheetah could have.
Rika then carefully got her jaws around the tiger's scruff and promptly lifted the large animal, being the only creature big enough to lift the heavy tiger away from the catnip.
Caylee whined a complaint, front paws sleepily churning uselessly in her complaint about being dragged away from the catnip so Argo could roll on it. If only for a moment since she promptly chased after Rika and Caylee. As the six hundred pound bear dropped Caylee at Kuroshiro's feet with a silly wag of her tiny little tail. A behavior that came from her being around Shino so much in the past.
"Hiya, my fluffy tiger cub~" Kuroshiro snorted and greeted his sulking girlfriend while his other girlfriend put on the breaks from her thirty mile an hour sprint and collided goofily directly into Caylee's face. And Rika lumbered away at a goofy run with her sister Keiko following at her heels.
Caylee flicked her ear in a gesture of dismissiveness at the nickname before she was rolling over toward him, silently asking him for attention. The edges of her fluffy coat tickled his toes and reminded him with a bit of a wince how little she was going to enjoy being all but dragged into the bathtub later to rinse the sand and grass out of her coat. Since she liked water but she hated soap in this form.
"Hey, if I was allowed to shift, you know I would~" Kuroshiro hummed as he leaned down and ran his fingers over one of his two feline mates' sandy coats. Even if he could see how Argo had about three times the amount of sand in hers since unlike Caylee, she hadn't been interested in going into the lake with everyone.
Well, she was a cheetah.
Maybe if someone hadn't broken their wrist again, they'd be able to shift with us, Caylee's voice, a low lightly melodic voice, tickled his mind with the shifter unique ability to communicate telepathically as animals to those in their human forms.
Kuroshiro grinned sheepishly and awkwardly rubbed at the back of his neck. To be fair, it wasn't like he had intended to break a forelimb, thereby his wrist, the other day.
Though… at least he wasn't Shino and didn't have a scar across her muzzle and face from needing stitches last summer…
"I didn't mean to, I was just too busy paying attention to both of you~"
Ya 'ould've been lookin' where ya were goin' Ku-tan, Argo snorted while she was playfully nibbling on Caylee's long whiskers and the tiger was blinking sand out of her blue eyes.
Really? Wow, figures they were going to tag team him…
