there's always time for work and play }} Open

[Zoe Aves]

Zoe Aves

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She enjoyed coming over to the island. It was nice to get away from the high school drama as newbies showed up and tried to grasp what the heck was happening to them. Zoe had just been given her class schedule and new room. So far, she didn't have any roomies to chat with, so she had taken the chance to hitch a ride out to the Island. Filled with humans. Mostly. It was hard to tell if that random person on the street was just another normal teenager, or a unique shifter like her. The Island was bustling with kids of all ages, the sun drawing them to the outdoors like moths to a lightbulb. Zoe wished she could just morph into her eagle and fly straight toward the warm ball of fire that spread its calming rays along her body.

She dodged a group of pubescent, gangling boys by turning into the nearest door. She had no patience to hang around and try to slip out of a very boring conversation about their many sexual escapades with girls who may or may not have HIVs or STDs. She was surprised to find that the metal handle on the glass door was cool to the touch, expecting a searing heat to flash through her palms because of the sun. "Air conditioning!" she muttered, excited, now. The June air was almost too much, but she was sort of used to too-high temperatures--she'd grown up in southern California, after all.

As she pushed the door open, Zoe noticed that the cafe was just as busy as the boardwalk outside. Stepping into line--six or seven people long, at least--she tried to see past the multitude of heads to the board above the counter. She was craving something cold with tons of chocolate. Her blue eyes locked on an item that said: "Double chocolate Mint Chip Frappuccino". "Yes!" she cheered, elated to find her favorite drink on the overhead menu. By the time she was up to the counter, she was feeling a little impatient, eager to suck down the cold beverage. The lady behind the counter paused and studied her, like she was trying to prolong getting her desired drink.

"Hi!" Zoe chirped, all smiles. "I'd like a Double Choco-Mint Frappe," she hesitated, then added, "with whipped cream." The woman chuckled to herself, maybe sensing her craving for something sweet and filled with sugar. But Zoe didn't care what she thought, or anyone else for that matter. Not right now. She just wanted her (hoover) damn frappuccino. The time seemed to drag as she watched the worker throw ice in the blender, add a crap-ton of chocolate, mint chips, powder, and liquid from a box whose name she couldn't decipher. All she could see was the contents of that blender being mixed together into one delicious concoction.

When the server finally turned around and presented her with her frappe, Zoe couldn't hardly keep still. She fumbled with her clutch, pulled out three bucks, and grabbed the ice-cold plastic cup, filled with heaven and topped with chocolate-drizzled bliss. She lifted the frappe to her lips and found out that, for all her anticipation, it wasn't what she ordered. It was close enough to the frappe she was able to buy at her hometown Starbucks, but not the same. Although, it was chocolate. She put on a smile, still a little excited. She wouldn't let a tiny disappointment ruin her day. And the longer she drank it, the better it tasted.

Her eyes roamed the cafe, both inside, then out, looking for a free seat. There were a few by the window, and one outside. She didn't want to present herself to those crazies out there and give them a chance to make fools out of themselves, so... window seat it is. Her mind's eye noticed everyone who was near her, and placed them in different categories. Those who she needed to watch out for, those who might be friends, stuff like that. An older couple, probably close to her parent's age, sat in the booth ahead of her drinking iced tea and black coffee. Zoe shuttered, thinking of the nasty, too bitter taste of black coffee. She preferred Capp- or Frappuccinos herself.

She sat down and took another sip of her drink, grabbing for the case at her side. From it, she took out her portable laptop, setting it on the table a fair distance away from the potentially disastrous cup of coffee. The machine buzzed when she pushed the power button and wiggled the mousepad, waking it from Hibernation mode. It was easier to leave it on, as it didn't take as long for it to load than if she would have had to put it to sleep every time, then turn it on again and wait for every program and anti-spyware thing to load. Opening a document, she began to type the essay due in her English III class. Four out of a required six pages were left to do, but she had all day.

Tagged: Anyone ;; Damon Salvatore
Word Count: 800-something

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[damon]

The large senior stalked through the campus, shoving aggressively past other seniors and lower classmen. Soon enough, they learned and make a clear path for him. Smiling with satisfaction, Damon walked smoothly out of the dorm building.

Making his way across the court yard, Damon huffed as he walked past a few other seniors playing football. Thump! The ball slammed into the side of his head and Damon turned immediately, his face a faded red with anger.

The seniors huddled away for a moment as one walked up to him and picked up the ball. "Sorry man, didn't mean to hit you with the ball." he said gently. "Do it again, and you'll be six feet under ground in a casket." Damon growled and started to walk away.

"Whatever, asshole." the senior muttered. Damon stopped and his arms stiffened. He spun around in the shape of a large gorilla and snorted. The guy turned around and trembled at the sight of such a large beast.

Trembling for a moment, the senior turned into his form as a cougar. It crouched low and snarled, obviously working up its courage. Damon bared his gorilla teeth and growled as only a gorilla could.

The cat screeched and zig-zagged, slamming into Damon's chest and forcing him to fall back. Outraged, Damon roared and grabbed the cat's swinging tail and squeezed, pulling the cat away from his chest and throat.

Screaming, the cougar instinctively grabbed at the beast's chest, hoping to grab on and stay put. It's claws dug into the fleshy chest and tore cuts into it as Damon bellowed with pain at the cuts.

However, Damon was able to pull the senior away. Soon, a crowd was surrounding the fighting animals. Damon tore after the fleeing cougar. Snagging its tail once again, Damon pulled the screaming predator closer.

The cougar turned and leaped, biting into Damon's face with it's powerful jaws. Falling back on his back, Damon's gorilla hands scrambled for the cougar. His fingers curled around the throat of the fighting cat.

Ripping the cat away from his face, Damon grabbed the scruff of the animal and threw him across the grass. The crowd was eager to move out of the path of the flying cat.

Shatter! The glass of the cafe shattered as the cat flew by a rather beautiful girl, it's claws flailing for something to grab onto. Finally, it hit the floor and slid.

The floor screeched as the large predator came to a stop and roared, dashing, jumping off the girl's table, and attempting to slam into the gorilla again. However, Damon was ready. He threw his arms out and grabbed the loose skin on the cougar's back and spun quickly, throwing it into a nearby tree.

Thud! The cougar's spine hit the tree and bent to an ugly angle, but was unbroken. Damon snarled and stalked toward the cougar on his knuckles. The predator trembled with fear as Damon stood over the cat, anger flaring in his eyes like fire.

[Zoe Aves]

Zoe Aves

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Her hands flew over the keyboard, working fast to finish the report. It didn't take long until the sixth page was filled. For extra measure, she restated her thesis, rewrote the components, and added a closing sentence. Smiling with satisfaction, she saved the last page of her paper with a click of the touchpad. She put the laptop into Hibernation mode, closed the lid, and returned it to her holder. She bent to her left, putting the case beside her, safely on the ground. When she lifted her head, a crowd outside caught her eye. She'd seen that a football game had been started earlier, and assumed that a relatively harmless scuffle had broken out. Zoe chuckled at their immaturity, reaching for another drink of her delish frappe.

The sound of shattered glass and flying shards forced her to dive sideways off the booth, the smooth linoleum of the cafe slick and hard on her hands. The pieces of glass preceded a large, feline shape busting through the window. Its claws grabbed at thin air, grazed her table top, then skidded across the floor in front of her. The cougar stood, pride and hide wounded, but it seemed reluctant to loose face. He took a running leap, using its hind paws to push off of her booth's table towards the waiting mitts of a large gorilla. She thought, for a second, of the movie Tarzan where the female gorilla had thrown a menacing cheetah around baby Tarzan's tree-house home.

It wasn't until a few seconds after the shock of the sudden gorilla vs. cheetah moment that Zoe noticed the scattered slivers of glass. Her breath caught in her throat as she stifled a scream. Her hands trembled as she frantically scrambled to retrieve her laptop case from amid the shards. It took all her will-power to not freak like a nut-job. Other people in the cafe were starting to shuffle around, a little dazed, some scared, but not many were too concerned about the glass. Most just picked their way around it and exited through the convenient hole in the wall, or through the actual door itself. She picked herself up off the floor, shaking, and started to scoot her way to the front of the cafe and out the door.

Once outside, her panic attack lessened and she was able to assess the situation. Something needed to be done right quick. Irrationally--which is nothing normal for her--Zoe shifted into her golden eagle form. The process was still painful. Her bones shrunk, popped, and twisted into different positions, changing from marrow-filled to lightweight and hollow. Her shoulder blades extended, meshing with her outstretched arms to make a full eight feet of wings to part the sky. Hardly had she a second to breathe with her modified air-sacs than she took off. Circling, she dived at the black and grey gorilla, trying to beat it back with her wings, forgetting that the thing could tear her apart. But there was a human inside there somewhere, so they wouldn't. Hopefully.

A loud shriek left her beak as she tried to shout to the cheetah or over-sized monkey, realizing just after that they couldn't understand her. Sighing with frustration, she perched on the sidewalk, leaning forward to make the re-shifting process easier on her human figure. When she stood, now fully human, Zoe sprinted up to the gorilla, her hand out-held in a universal sign to "freaken stop!". If it was needed, she was ready to try to push the huge animal away. Knock it off, you idiot! she glared at the ape, her lips set in a firm line, her brow furrowed furiously. You two dumb-butts destroyed the cafe over a game of push-and-shove.

Tagged: Anyone ;; Damon Salvatore
Word Count: 638

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[damon]

Just as Damon raised on his back legs, hands folded into fists, and threw his arms down toward the animal, a girl got in his way and Damon threw his arms to the side to avoid hitting her. His knucles hit the ground and Damon snorted. Why did she just endanger her life by getting between an angry gorilla and it's opponent?

Then she called him an idiot. Big mistake. Damon was in his human form in a flash. "He threw a football at my head and then insulted me. He deserves a good beating so he'll learn a little respect." Damon said through clentched teeth.

He looked back at the senior, but he had disappeared. Damon couldn't help but to smirk. How could he not? He had won yet another fight. As it came to his mind, Damon did a quick look over himself.

His shirt looked like it went through a shredder, his perfectly chiseled chest and perfect abs were now all cut up and bleeding. He had a bite mark on either side of his face below his eyes, and several scratches around his face.

He looked rather repulsive at the moment. There was even a large cut from the far left side of his forehead. It dipped down over his left eye, tracing the top of his lip for a centimeter and then dipped down toward the right side of his chin.

It was going to scar, like a lot of the cuts on his stomach and chest. The bite wounds probably would heal into little scars. Damon sighed then looked tentively back at the girl. She was amazingly beautiful, he couldn't help but notice that. He sighed again.

"Look, it's in my nature to fight and be aggressive and rude. However," he smiled, then flintched and grabbed his face by his mouth. "Dammit." he muttered, looking down, still holding his mouth. It caused him great pain to smile.

The healing process was not going to be an easy one, Damon could already tell. He took his hand away and examined it, his hand was covered with blood from his wound. Easy and unpleasant.

At that moment, Damon realized the worst of this situation. "Shit!" he muttered. How was he going to woo the ladies with scars and cuts and bite marks all over his face!? Oh, it was definitely going to be hard.

[Zoe Aves]

Zoe Aves

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When she put her hand outward, she was glad to see that the ape lowered his arms. She really hadn't wanted to get hit, or mauled. That very well might be the case, though, seeing as the dang monkey started turning into his human form. A pretty bad-boy -looking human form, albeit. But she couldn't think about that now. He was obviously peeved--duh!--and clenching his jaw, talking to her slowly as he tried to control his anger. "He threw a football at my head and then insulted me. He deserves a good beating so he'll learn a little respect." He said, looking around for something or -one.

The boy grinned as if he'd won some great victory. Looking about her, Zoe couldn't figure out what until she realized the absence of the cougar, and most of his friends. The crowd that'd surrounded the fight--made mostly of older high-schoolers--had dispersed as well. The fun was over, apparently. When she turned back, she had to bite her lip. He was staring down at himself, looking a bit upset. And no wonder! The dang guy was torn to shreds. "Respect?" she stated, wondering how chucking the other shifter through a highly-expensive cafe window would gain anyones' respect. A bit of fear, yeah. But maybe that's what this male's version of 'respect' was.

Her ears caught a muted sigh before he began speaking again. Look, it's in my nature to fight and be aggressive and rude. However,

[/s] He stopped and clutched at his jaw, obviously in pain. A few choice swear words escaped his mouth, which weren't exactly her favorite thing to hear. Zoe was always side-stepping the cuss words, preferring to insert her own array of fake-swears like 'hoover damn' and 'carp' in place of the actual ones. She just didn't see the point of profanities. She uttered her own sigh, then reached for his arm. "You'd best get those cleaned up." She said, thinking about hauling him off to the infirmary.

Her eyes surveyed and accounted for the multitude of cuts and bites the cougar-shift had inflicted--noting his nice "bod'" in the process. Zoe was not the kind of girl who'd swoon at the sight of blood. Or carcasses. She liked to work around stuff like that, as odd as it may seem to others. She was majoring in Forensic Anthropology, hoping to get a job at a high-end institute where she'd be allowed to autopsy victims of crimes and follow their history through their bones. i should take him to see a nurse. her thoughts redirected themselves away from her future occupation, back to the random stranger she was trying to tow behind her.

no, i've got a lot of the stuff in my room. antiseptic, sterile bandages... she grinned, then thought: needles and stitching thread. Guys were allowed in the girls' dorm, so long as "nothing happened". But Zoe had heard her fair amount of coupling through the walls over her last year at Shifter Academy--the Senior in the room beside her's had been, well, a floozy, to be nice. Zoe herself hadn't ever done the nasty with anyone, and highly, highly doubted it would be with anyone here at SA--she had too high of a self-respect for herself and her body to let things go that far. Maybe. The girl chuckled, unconsciously starting to walk in the direction of the dorms.

Tagged: Anyone ;; Damon Salvatore
Word Count: 594[/blockquote][/size]

[damon]

Damon raised a brow, listening to her ramble about the infirmary. His eyes widened to the size of silver dollars. "No way in fucking hell am I going to that damn torture chamber. Those bitches don't even know what the hell they're doing." he growled. Then she went on rambling about her dorm.

Hmm, a dorm? I could easily woo her there. He kept a smile from spreading across his face, both from the pain and the chance of blowing his plan. Then she started to walk away, still murmering about stupid stuff. He looked above her head, glancing over the tops of some trees to see the dorm section of the school. She was headed right for it.

He followed after her at a quick pace. "Your dorm?" he asked. "Do you got the right stuff in there?" he asked, keeping his voice smooth and calm, kind. But in his head, he had it all planned out, he would let her treat him. Then he would start a conversation. After he had done that, Damon would start to woo her. Only then would he really get her busy.

Holding back a smirk, Damon knew how to do this. He had done it twice yesterday with two different girls. Too bad he broke the truth to them, he could've done the same thing to them both today. His brows furrowed and he looked ahead. Fresh meat was always good though, right? Every girl was a different flavor. Their own person, different personalities. That's what made chicks such a challenge. That's what made chicks so fun.

[Sorry, I've been extremely low on muse lately. But I'm working on raising my word count. Again, please forgive me.]

[Zoe Aves]

Zoe Aves

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They were no less than halfway to the girl's dormitories when he started to protest. Zoe had no doubt that if she pushed him too hard toward the nurse's office, he would freak and run in the opposite direction. "Well, unless you want your wounds to get infected, you have to get them tended to." His mind had jumped straight from her comment of You'd best get those cleaned up.

[/s] to I'm gonna bring you to the ladies who like to torture you and make your owies feel like carp.[/s] She didn't actually say that, but, well, guys' minds seem to work that way, twisting what she really said into something that fit into their image. Did he want the cuts and gouges to fill up with puss, to burn like fire whenever his shirt rubbed them the wrong way? Did he want to be in constant pain and risk a multitude of ailments all because he didn't like nurses. "Besides, they have all gone through training, and I'm pretty sure that the Academy wouldn't hire incompetant nurses."

When she looked back, the guy didn't even seem to be paying any attention, he was following her, sure, but his mind was in another dimension altogether. By the time he spoke, he baffled Zoe with the direction his thoughts were going. "Your dorm? Do you got the right stuff in there?" She cringed at the bad grammar, but looked past it. Can some shifters develope telepathy? The freakin' guy was reading her mind! Unless he noticed the direction she was heading--the dormitories. The latter was a much more acceptable and admissible answer, so she went with that. She lost her words for a second before saying: "Umm...yes, I do." She felt the soft grass underfoot change to rock-hard concrete, which let her know that they'd found the pathways that wound through the campus. Zoe had spent too much time looking back to stay on top of where they were. It shouldn't have surprised her that they'd reached the sidewalk so fast, but talking with this Senior had distracted her. He was such a baby! There was absolutely nothing wrong with the school's nurses. A couple of them smoked, but that wasn't enough to proove their possible inadequecy.

She could feel his pace increase. It was easier to walk on concrete, something solid, than to plod through grass and dirt. Far easier than to slip and slide across mud in the rainy season. It'd taken them only two hand's worth of minutes to cross the grounds from the campus's cafe to the dorms. She let go of his arm to push against the door handle. The door was heavy, and she not a muscle builder. "Oh, I'm Zoe, by the way. I never introduced myself before, 'cause of the...situation." Her words weren't loud, more of an inside voice kind of sound. Holding the door open for him, the girl back up to make room. She hoped he wouldn't bolt since she wasn't there to guide him--or keep him from escaping. Her room was up on the next level. She was very happy with the location. She had a glimpse of the forest, and could take off out her window when she shifted, which made "sneaking out" extremely easy. So far as she knew, even if a student was caught, they wouldn't be punished. SA was mostly about letting the kid find themself out, to push their limits and become comfortable with the changes happening to them. Of course, if anything too horrible happened, there had to be punishment.

Tagged: Anyone ;; Damon Salvatore
Word Count: 623
Notes: Okay, I'm sorry! I forgot to post the legend to the different colors I use! Maroon is Zoe talking, Black is Zoe thinking, and Maroon/Strike is someone else talking, or "fake" talking, as I've done in this post. I said that Damon acted like he 'read her mind', like it was a coincidence, since I goofed up. And just be careful to not post under 400 too often, 'cause the dang mods or admins will get'cha! lol[/blockquote][/size]