#rabbit abbot

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.

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.

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.

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.

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...

Look, biting people is generally frowned upon, no matter what form you're in. It's just one of those things you know is a faux pas.

Or at least, most shifters do anyway, since they've been shifters their whole lives. But someone who's only just discovered that they're a shifter? They're probably not exactly up to date on all the etiquette.

The night shift basically ambush Robby during handover one time to try and get him to do something about Jack's newfound nipping habit.

"He's probably just doing it to get your attention." he tells the amalgamation of slightly annoyed medical staff that's cornered him by the hub.

"There are better ways," Cruis says. "The hems on all my scub pants are getting worn out from him biting at them."

"Look, Abbot's just trying things out right now," Robby replies. "He's still getting used to all of this. Trust me, the novelty of doing stuff as a rabbit is going to wear off eventually, just give him a little time to get it out of his system."

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's least favourite part of being a rabbit is definitely the tail. He intentionally doesn't want others to know what he's feeling, partially for professionalism (because the last thing you want to see in the ER is the main doctor panicking) and partially for mental health/PTSD reasons. So having this random nub that just broadcasts his current emotional state to everyone? A fucking nightmare.