Kinkkori

Mother - Andressaa

Father - Atrocity

Midform - generally scrambling about four-footed, but always has thumbs. And plenty of them. Around 4' at shoulder when in his most relaxed semi-cheetah-like form; stands 6'7" tall in humanoid shape; can shape to much smaller shiny-cheetah that is around 3' at shoulder but he doesn't lose any length in that tail - which is where his name, "long tail" comes from.

Shapeshifting - to not-quite cheetah, never gains a full coat of fur, because his father isn't actually that breed of Sanger; midform as shown above, and humanoidish, slightly less wild and gangly and never, ever has soft skin.

Personality - spastic, generally into everything. Kinkkori was raised by Ivo, not Atrocity.

Kinkkori was his name right at the start, because the moment he burst out of the (we won't talk about where it came from) cheetah-kin's stomach he almost didn't stop coming out. He was entangled in the guts, mostly eaten, and his tail bit clung to the inside of the chest cavity.

Mengusikaa laughed, pulling on the little Xeno until he squirmed free of her gentle grasp, and he sat there on the floor, eyeless and with a fringe of weirdly black hair around his oblong head.

"Oh father, you've definitely got to see this one," the female Xeno commented, calling Atrocity in from his library. Well, 'library' was too generous a word for his horrifying lab, but that's what they called it. He spent some time here, and some in Paragon's underground sewer system, rooting around with Rikti technology and keeping other less dangerous criminals away from his hard-won sanctuary.

Kinkkori swung his shiny head around toward his father, his sire - hissed gleefully and darted between his long legs. Right into the library, where he found something sweetly meaty to eat.

"That... was mine," Mengusikaa groaned.

"I think I know just where to send this little monster," chuckled Atrocity.

***

Fairly shortly, Baeris decided that it couldn't be all bad having yet another scampering shifter-thing running around, when Kinkkori devoured a spare hydra-spawn that had crept up from outside the Den. If anything, he was more ravenous than any of Ivo's kids, and that was saying a lot. He was quiet, but he could speak, a bit difficult to understand at times.

Because he'd hatched from a kin-type, he definitely took its features. But because he was surrounded by several other furrier versions of that same type, Kinkkori developed a pattern of shapeshifting into their colorations. He was brightly colored anyway, his shell-like skin was glossy orange-yellow, but he concentrated on adding dark spots and shading to some parts.

He didn't seem quite as clever as his sire, nor as inclined to intellectual pursuits as his brother Kedok. But he was still young-feeling, hanging out with ten year olds would do that.

He made it through the Spring celebration and probably had a feast of some of the eggs that Kalkin found, helping his dopplefather hunt easter eggs was lots of fun actually. The mushroom things were of little interest to Kinkkori, however the ones that jumped or tried to fly... those were awesome. He could entertain so many different instincts with those.

But then came a time when the Healing Den grew darker, more spooky. Baeris even seemed more at ease during these times, but who could say why. Probably, that she'd hosted plenty of Halloween parties in her time, and the Den knew she enjoyed dressing up in slinkier outfits than typical Healers wore.

Naughty nurse, indeed.

It was her son with Kalkin - the most recent one anyway - that changed the most under these conditions. While his sister Kali enjoyed her froofy Spring gigglygirl stuff, Baelin was one to dress in black and wear eyeliner. (Well, that would be the one thing that he and his sister could actively share... their makeup. Though truth be told, Baelin's would always run toward violets and blacks and blood reds, while his sister's were pinky peachy things...) (Yeah, they're like that.) He was approachable in the same way that Kalkin might be - with care.

They and Ivo's kids often hung out, they went to schools (different ones, sometimes - sometimes it was House Domina, sometimes Carramba's sister school Shore Elementary, and sometimes even one tucked away in Ablan's Zekiran grasslands) and learned.

Yavin, Baelin and Kinkkori - three of a kind. Sons of doppleSangers, varied as they came, and yet all eerily the same. They were actually all about the same "age" in maturity if not in physical presence in the multiverse, Kinkkori had grown reasonably quickly over a year, but hadn't matured as fast as Kedok before him.

And thus, enjoyed the treatment he got as a 'kid', instead of insisting he be treated like an adult.

Who wanted to grow up, anyway?

Not him. Definitely not Yavin, and probably only Baelin cared that he'd have to act like a grownup if he wanted to become a "mad scientist". And it was to Baelin that both Yavin and Kinkkori looked for leadership in general. That was a natural side effect of being Baeris's son.

So the "lost boys" of the Den prowled about trying to scare people, spooking the staff and providing entertainment for some of the coarser dragons. If they started hanging out with Booyath too much, Dulath would march right in and drag them off, by the ear or tail whichever seemed to be appropriate, and give them a stern lecture before Baeris even got ahold of them.

Yes, it'd happened more than once.

The trio knew the ins and outs of the Healing Den as intimately as any group of expedition-prone boys and a back yard. That this back yard was enclosed, had areas which were magically alterable, drifted through the Outside between times and spaces and was over three million square feet in size didn't deter them. In fact, it probably made them work all the harder to explore it all.

***

Yavin, Baelin and Kinkkori discovered a place was holding more or less spooky dragons... Well, there was a hatching going to occur and it was coincidentally a Halloween-timed event. If they didn't find dragons at that event they didn't know quite what would happen with them. The Healing Den would spit out a dragon or two now and then but they knew it wasn't to be expected that they'd bond here.

"How we gonna get there?" Yavin asked, "I mean... we don't have dragons."

"There are plenty to take us," Baelin asserted, as he led them down to the darks again. If Baelin had problems seeing in the dark as well as Yavin, or sensing his way around as Kinkkori did, he didn't show it at all. In fact he probably sensed as keenly as either of them even without being a shapeshifter.

They arrived to a dimly lit, phosphorescent-lichen-filled cavern. Several of Kedok's glowing bond's offspring scampered around in here, and it was all Yavin and Kinkkori could do to stop themselves from chasing after them. But it was here that some of the smaller dragons, abandoned ones, lived and snuck around after hours.

It wasn't Booyath, but instead Pierth and his newfound mate Ishekoreth that came into the cavern. The strange pale grey-green and yellow-white glow from the rocks and lichen bounced off their collective piercings and bling.

I understand you want to go somewhere, Pierth bespoke, his faint British accent coming through even in his mind. It'll cost you.

"What's your price?" Baelin asked, confident he already knew the answer.

"Two tickets to the Rammstein concert," Ishekoreth blurted out, butting her black head down toward the boys, "and a hundred dollars in Hot Topic gift certs."

"Done," Baelin said, "well half done, I'll have to ask dad for the tickets, they won't sell anyone my age tickets to a show."

Within two days, the dragons had their ransom and the boys were ready, so ready, to head anywhere and everywhere to get what they wanted.

They didn't even really know what to expect, being at the whim of the pair of blingified dragons and taken off the Den into the great Nexus beyond...