Another shifter bear Robby Robinavitch, rabbit Jack Abbot, and mouse Dennis Whitaker idea.
When shifters get run down, their bodies will sometimes go into animal mode and pass out without them intending to.
For a mouse and a rabbit, the big issue is accidentally getting stepped on, there are usually signs, a pile of scrubs suddenly appearing to the side of the floor, a quick look around will usually find a smaller shifter curled up under a nearby desk or table or in a pot plant to stay out from underfoot until they can be picked up and placed in a pocket or hood or other carrying apparatus.
It's... A little different for... Large shifters.
Robbear tries VERY hard not to pass out in the ED, because he is Heavy, dense, big enough to block the majority of the corridor making passage difficult... And his sudden size increase... Tears his scrubs... So he is very naked when he wakes back up.
He knows Dana still has the video of Jesse, Donnie, Matthias and several other nurses using ALL their strength to shove him to one side when he had filled an ENTIRE corridor one day after a double gone wrong.
This one continuing in the adventures of rabbit Jack (rabbit Abbot? Jack rabbit? There's a lot of good options here, maybe he needs his own tag).
Again, finding out you're a shifter in your 50s is really not fun at first and kind of screws Jack over for a while b/c it's so frustrating and weird and he basically has to learn how to manage two separate bodies and how to control changing between forms and all the fun stuff that comes with that (that like 90% of shifters figure out as kids, so he's really behind).
But once he does, he's an absolute menace.
He turns out to be really good at quick shifts, and will use them to basically bound across the ER at top speed, which does result in various paitents being somewhat freaked out that a rabbit is apparently loose in the ER (and also when this one random doctor seemingly pops out of nowhere).
It also means he is kind of hard to keep tabs on, and he doesn't exactly have a top rate self preservation instinct (rabbit or not, his "hobby" is still being shot at for fun), so there have been a few near misses with him and gurneys/carts/large moving objects in general.
He's almost gotten stepped on too many times to count, which massively freaks Robby out (when your animal form is tiny, you tend to develop a healthy skepticism of shifting in busy places where people are rushing around and not paying much attention to where they step).
One time, Jack shifts to get around a gurney and just barely misses getting rolled over, and Robby is immediately like, "Nope, absolutely not," and grabs him out of the way and is about to give him shit for it...except that Jack is still pretty big for a rabbit and manages to use his good leg to buck out of the hold and continue on his way while Robby yells after him.
(Honestly, Robby has Some Feelings about the fact that Jack seems to be a better shifter than him, but that's a post for another day).
Another rabbit Jack post, because I have been doing too much rabbit/hare research lately and I need an outlet.
As mentioned many, many times previously, Jack had no idea he was a shifter until one day when he thought he was dying but turned into a rabbit instead.
How shifting is passed on from one generation to the next is still not fully understood. Some families are full of shifters, others have maybe one or two in their family tree, but otherwise are regular humans.
The majority of shifters "activate" so to speak, when they're around a year old, but a later in life activation, or "geriatric polymorphic manifestation" has been known to occur.
(If you want more info on this, check out the Misc Info post, which gets into it a bit).
No one really knows why or how it gets activated later in life for some. One theory in shifter studies is that the ability first manifests when the person feels safest, which for most, is when they are an infant.
(So maybe the reason Jack activated so late in life is that he had never felt safe enough for the ability to manifest before? Or maybe it's something entirely different. Look, just because I am the one writing this doesn't mean I have all the answers. The narrative does what it wants and I just try to keep up).
But yeah, there weren't any shifters in Jack's immediate family and he had absolutely no reason to think he might be one.
So of course his first thought when his entire body suddenly started to make him feel as if he was burning alive was not "Guess I must be shifitng for the first time," it was "Oh my god, I am dying."
He'd already been feeling terrible for most of the day (well, night). He'd woken up sore and stiff, but figured that had more to do with being in his 50s than anything particularly nefarious. Then there was the migrane that had been slowly unfurling in his temple over the course of his shift. It had been managable at first, but by handoff time, there were squiggles of weird shapes at the edge of his vision and he had sworn a personal vendetta against fluorescent lights of all kind.
Robby had noticed, because of course he did. He had always been frighteningly good at picking up when Jack was in pain, to the point that he'd once spent a night (well, day) researching if hedgehogs have some kind of weird empathy powers.
(They do not, but he did learn a lot about the different powers mutants can have in X-men after getting kind of sidetracked).
"Have you taken Tylenol or anything?" Robby had asked, because, again, he knows Jack and his tenancy to put his own pain on the backburner so that he can take care of others.
"Not yet," What Jack doesn't say is that he had tried to take some painkillers earlier, but he's also been feeling nauseous since hour 3 and didn't trust himself to keep them down. "I was gonna take some at home."
Robby is not impressed, but decides to show some mercy to his sick partner and not harp on it any longer. He lets Jack escape, but just before he is out the door, Robby grabs his shoulder, pulling him close. "Call me if you need me, okay?"
It's about as affectionate as he'll get while they're at work, and Jack manages a smile and promises that he will.
(Robby knows Jack will only actually call if he is actively dying, and even then still try to downplay it, but maybe if he keeps saying it, it'll eventually get through to him that help doesn't have to only come in catastrophic moments).
Jack manages to get back to his place, which feels like some kind of miracle. By the time he gets through the door and collapses onto the couch, he's sweating and heaving like he's run a marathon. His prosthetic has been on way too long and is rubbing his stump raw, but he's got no strength left and can only manage to toss his phone and keys onto the coffee table as he lies there.
He does think about calling Robby, but decides against it. Sure, he feels awful now, but he also just worked a 12 hour shift while already feeling like a corpse. Odds are he just needs some time to rest, it's not worth pulling Robby away from the ER. He just needs to take a shower and maybe sleep for, like, fifteen hours or so.
One things for sure though, sleeping on the couch is not going to help him feel any better, so he fights off the desperate heaviness of his eyelids and sits back up. He moves to roll up his pant leg so he can start to take off his prosthetic—
And that's when it happens.
It's like every ache and pain and discomfort he's been fighting for the last 12 hours just realized, "hey, if we all team up, we can take this guy down no problem!" His skin feels too hot and his fingers spasm, unable to grip the prosthetics release. His heartbeat is suddenly way too fast in his tightening chest. His muscles lock-up, forcing him to curl forwards, hands grabbing at his midsection just so they can cling to something.
Tiny, bright dots of light begin to pepper his vision, distracting but not disrupting. He manages to lift his head slightly and sees his phone on the table. Okay, sure, Robby said to call him, but Jack is sure he'll understand if he opts for 911 now considering that he is, in his best guess, experiencing cardiac arrest.
He leans forward to try and grab the phone, but his hands don't uncurl and his arms hug tighter, resulting in him toppling over onto the floor. His good leg kicks out in what is likely another spasm and bangs on the table, which isn't the worst of his problem right now, but still really fucking hurts. He wants to yell or scream or do something, maybe get a neighbour's attention to call for help, but forcing his own jaw open takes a herculean effort, and even after all that, all he can manage is some kind of pathetic wheeze with the faintest trace of a voice on it.
It's at this point that in the back of his mind, under all the pain and confusion, the reality of what is happening settles in, "Oh my god," he thinks "I'm dying."
It is not the first time this thought has come to Jack. He has lived the kind of life where he's had to reckon with his own mortality on several occasions. Granted, he technically turned out to be wrong about it all the previous times, but that just meant that his luck was due to run out sooner rather than later.
He wants to keep fighting, to hold on for a potential miracle that someone will just suddenly walk in here and see him writhing on the floor and that help will come. But the pain is burning so bright that he knows the only thing that can follow is an eternal exhaustion.
Jack doesn't really believe in, well, anything. He's seen too much death and destruction to find peace in the idea of a better place. He's not sure he'd be allowed in if there is one. There's blood on his hands, from those he's saved and those he's lost and those whose lives he took, directly and indirectly. The idea that one human life balances out another feels disrespectful, saving one person doesn't mean forgiveness for losing another.
So, in his last moments, he just tries to think. About who he has been, what he has done, and the people he has loved most. He thinks about Nora and the too brief time they got together. About how they had seen each other at their absolute worst and still said, "I want to do this with you," every single time. About how she had kept trying to make him laugh, even when they both knew the end was creeping ever closer. And he thinks about Robby, about the day he realized he was in love with his best friend. About the fact that, despite all odds, they'd somehow carved out a life together.
About how it was probably going to be him who found his corpse and how fucking unfair that was–
Out of nowhere, a weird and uneven pressure enveloped Jack's whole body, bearing down from all sides. He began to choke, feeling like all the air had just been squeezed out of his lungs. He tried to breathe deep, to get some oxygen back, but he could only manage half a breath before his chest felt like it was about to burst.
The pressure grew, and he felt like every bone in his body should have shattered under it, but they remained whole as they seemed to shift. He lost sensation in his fingers and felt the muscles in his arms crap up and spasm again. The headache blew through the front of his skull and he managed to make a yelping sound as his jaw ached and split open. He heaved, worried that the pressure was about to push out every single thing inside his body, but nothing came out.
His body crumpled up, seemingly sinking into the floor as the couch and coffee table stretched above him. He tried to reach up and grab at one of them in an attempt to anchor himself, but his vision split in two and he felt like he was looking in two completely different directions.
There was a deafening thunk that rung through his skull, almost like a bomb had just gone off. The floor didn't quite shake, but he felt it tremor from whatever had made that sound seemingly hitting it. Things were suddenly so much sharper, like something sliced through the fog of his mind and plugged it into an electrical socket. In an instant, his senses were completely overwhelmed. He could hear every little noise around him, everything seemed to now have a scent, and his eyes caught the tiniest movements of the inexplicable fun house mirror the world had become.
Jack shut his eyes and tried to push down the rising panic in his chest. There was too much happening, he couldn't focus with all these new sights and sounds and smells.
He tried his best to breath, but it felt so alien and shallow. He felt like he was going to be sick, and moved to reach up and cover his ears so that at least one thing wouldn't be so overwhelming. But his arms could barely get past his head and something tugged painfully as he tried to stretch beyond their new limit. He ducked his head down, thinking maybe he could manage it if they were more on the level. He reached up again, but became startled as his hand brushed...somehting? It was part of him, he could feel it bend, but had absolutely no clue what it was.
He opened his eyes again, vision still weird and split, but did his best to focus on what was in front of him and get some kind of clue about what the hell had happened to him.
There was a weird metal...thing lying on the floor in front of him that definetly hadn't been there before all of...this.
He tried to move forwards and stumbled, his good leg bent at some odd angle that he couldn't seem to unfold.
Jack had no idea what compelled him to, but he sniffed at the thing, like that was going to help identify it. It smelled weird, like metal (duh) and sweat and...
He moved forward again. Or, to be more accurate, he hopped.
His prosthetic lay useless on the floor, enormous and alien.
Jack reached out to touch it, just to confirm it was real, and nearly jumped back when instead of a human hand, he saw...a weird, fur-covered nubby limb. He tried to flex his fingers, and instead felt the goddamn paw move, extending its claws slightly in an attempt to find an equivilant for his intended action.
Oh.
"You have got to be fucking kidding me." he thought.
Adding to The Pitt shifter Hucklerabbot ideas... Bear Robby, where everyone is struggling to see where his two partners are because they can smell them but not see them.
Until little Abbot Rabbit ears and a tiny Dennis mouse nose both snuffle and poke their way out of the thick fur on his back and hop down to skitter and hop into the change rooms to well, change back into humans and get dressed for work.
An addition to the Robby Bear, Abbot bunny and Dennis mouse shifters idea.
Everyone thinks Trinity is a cat, or a fox or a medium sized carnivore shifter.
But per the being small, a little more scared than you appear and still willing to scream at larger creatures if your lettuce is too wilty meme...
Trinity is A Guinea Pig Shifter.
She felt safe taking Whitaker into her home because he was smoller than her in his mouse form.
But she's also brave enough that even when Robbear is fully shifted and she's in her Trinea Pig form, she will still one hundred percent stance up right in Robbear's snout if Robby hurts Dennis...
She's still a little nervous around Rabbit Abbot because he's small enough to bite her without risking giving her a serious injury if she pisses him off too much, unlike Robby.
Continuation of the last rabbit Jack post for my Pitt shapeshifter AU that's kind of getting out of hand.
So, good news: Jack was not in fact dying, which meant his streak was safe with an amended score of Abbot - 3 and Death - 0.
Bad news: He was a fucking rabbit.
Okay, he didn't have 100% confirmation that that's what he was, but he can put two and two together. He can only move by hopping, his senses are jacked up to 1000, but hearing especially. More prodding at his head with his weird, shortened limbs allowed him to bend whatever was up there over somewhat. He couldn't get an entirely good look at it, but it was furry, with an oddly shaped tip, and most telling, his hearing dimmed a bit when he bent it, as if it was blocking his ears. Then there's the fact that he apparently has fucking paws now, because he can at least manage to get those in front of his weird, misshapen face. He can feel his nose twitching every few seconds, which is an extremely weird sensation, seeing as human noses aren't known for their mobility. His tounge sits weirdly in his mouth, which feels elongated (which makes sense with the nose thing) and his teeth, still aching from that whole "body flipped itself inside out to become a completely different creature" incident, feel disjointed, like they've moved deeper in his jaw, and he can't quite reach them anymore. Well, except for the front teeth, which he is very aware of considering how big they are.
Oh, and there was also the apparent fact that he'd shrunk, seeing as the surrounding furniture now had a good few feet on him. Not to mention the fact that his abandoned prosthetic was now bigger than he was, which was pretty goddamn surreal.
(And yes, he can definitely feel a tiny, trembling tail at the base of his spine, but he is not fucking dealing with that right now).
While the pain wasn't nearly as bad as befoe, Jack still ached all over. Probably from the fact that his body had just compressed and rearranged itself into an entirely new shape that was so much smaller and weirder. It felt like there was too much inside him, like the rabbit body would just burst open any second and his regular old human self would be sprawled on the floor.
That didn't seem like how shifting worked though, not that he would know anything about it. Sure, he understood the basics, couldn't really practice emergency medicine if he didn't. And after Robby's accident last year, he'd essentially gotten a crash course in some of the weirder aspects of shifter physiology.
But the actual way it worked, how to figure out your shift cycle, what to do if you were form locked? He had no clue about any of that because he's not a shifter.
Well, okay, he wasn't, or at least didn't know he was, until a few hours ago.
This wasn't a completely impossible situaiton. Geriatric polymorphic manifestation is rare, but it is a known condition. Dr. Mohan was even working on a research study about it, as they had discussed a few times when she'd taken the odd night shift here and there.
He just could not believe it was happening to him. There aren't any shifters in his immediate family, which, while not a prerequisite, did lower the odds. And how had he gone until now without it being triggered?
God, how was he even supposed to change back? How the hell did he change in the first place?
He'd sat in on a couple of Robby's physio sessions when he'd been working to rehab his shift reflex, but he hadn't exactly been listening too closely. Not because he didn't care or anything, far from it. It was just that the topic was so unfamiliar to him that he could barely follow along and thought his energy was better spent encouraging Robby when he got too frustrated by his fluctuating from and would ball himself up (usually while a hedgehog, but he had somehow managed it a few times while human too).
Okay, he had to focus. There had to be a way to shift back, it was literally in the name. He couldn't stay a rabbit forever, right?
(some unhelpful part of his mind decided to chime in, "if anyone got stuck in form lock after shifitng for the first time, it would probably be you," which was not what he needed to hear right now).
Shifting was easy, it was near instantaneous and left you no worse for wear.
At least, that's how it was supposed to work. Of course, there were exceptions, a forced shift was deeply unpleasant at best and carried the risk of escalating into catastrophic shift collapse. Was that what had happened to him? Obviously, Jack hadn't chosen to shift, seeing as he didn't know he could until a few hours ago, so something had had to have forced him.
("Is this what Robby went through?" Jack felt sick at the thought, but knew dwelling on it would do his current situation no good. Last year had already happened and he couldn't change that. Here, in the present, Robby was okay and healing and safe. Jack had to focus on whatever the hell was wrong with him right now. He could get soppy about everything else later).
Or maybe geriatric polymorphic manifestation just made a first shift more painful? Fuck, he really should have spent more time talking to Mohan about her study. He remembered thinking that it had sounded interesting when she explained it to him, but since was such a rare occurrence, it didnt seem like a practical use of his own time.
It was a good thing he hasn't quite figured out how the rabbit leg worked yet, otherwise he would have been kicking himself.
It couldn't be that complicated, whatever it was he had to do to change back. He had to have seen people shift at least a million times over by this point in his life, and it didn't seem like it needed any complex stratagy.
(He had asked Robby about it once, while he was still recovering. His shift reflex had improved enough that he was able to stay human for several hours, but any kind of heightened emotion would result in a snapback.
"Do you have to consciously focus on being human?" Jack said as they lay together on the couch, making the most of the time they had him like this. "Or can you just change and forget about it?"
"It's really hard to explain," Robby had muttered, clearly not interested in the topic. "A little bit, I guess. Right now, especially. But normally it's..." he leaned his head back from his position of lying on Jack's chest. Looking at him upside down, Jack couldn't quite tell if he was annoyed or sad. "Can we not talk about this right now? 90% of my life has just been stupid shifter shit lately. I am sick of it, and I don't want to waste the time that I can talk to you on it."
"Okay." Jack replied, leaning forwards to kiss his partner's head in a small gesture of apology).
Maybe he just had to think about it? Not that he hadn't been this whole time, but like, really focus on being human.
Jack closed his eyes and tried to picture himself. It made him feel a bit weird, dwelling on all the little details of his body like this, but not in the "un-turning into a rabbit" way of weird. More like "Should I be talking to my therapist about this?" weird. But then again, that was a very human thought to have. And what was the self if not the physical manifestation of the mind? Or something like that, anyway.
He opened his eyes. Nope, still a rabbit. Fuck.
Maybe it needed a physical trigger? He'd never really noticed any of the shifters in his life doing any kind of movement to change, but maybe it was just a really subtle thing. So Jack lifted one front paw, then the other, then the back paw, then his stump. He twitched his tail (that he was still not quite ready to deal with), his ears, his nose, and took a small, exploratory hop forwards.
Nothing.
He left out a huff, and was impressed with how annoyed it managed to sound, even though it was coming from his little fluffy mouth. At least he could make his displeasure known, that was nice.
Okay, maybe shifitng back was not the name of the game right now. Changing in the first place had been absolutely brutal (granted, not the most brutal thing he'd ever experienced, that had stiff competition, but still not really an experience he was keen to repeat), he wasn't sure he could handle going through it again so soon.
No, okay, this was not something he was going to be able to solve on his own. Not right now, at least.
What he needed was help. Someone who actually might be able to explain what the hell had happened to him and how to make it un-happen.
Jack looked up. The coffee table continued to loom large over his now tiny form, which was very impolite, if you asked him. From his current position, he could just see the corner of his phone and keys, still sitting where he'd tossed them when he'd first sat down.
He leaned back, testing the muscles in his good leg. They seemed strong enough, which made sense, what with being a rabbit and all.
Very quick Pitt shapeshifter AU post b/c I haven't done one in a while and I miss it
And it's a rabbit Jack post too
I think Belgian hares are cute, but they do look A Particular Way b/c they are bred to look more like hares and that can come off as unsettling for some people.
Anyway, as previously mentioned, after Abbot's shifting abilities activate, he has some trouble controlling them at first and tends to randomly shift/get stuck in his rabbit form
What I'm trying to say is, please just imagine Robby waking up and this thing is 2ft from his face
Jack isn't exactly happy he's stuck as a rabbit, but the sounds Robby makes when he gets jumpscared by him like that are extremely funny
Omg for the shifters, when it's melting season big bear mean big pile of bear fur and they keep panicking and loosing Dennis cause lil mouse asleep in huge pile of fur chase soft and smells like mate, they have to tidy up verry carefully to not accidentally put Dennis in da bin
They Accidentally did it once... ONCE... And Dennis Meticulously wrapped and gifted them both the rankiest, stinkiest pieces of trash for a month afterwards as revenge... It has not happened since.
