Chip 'n' Dale
Chip Story

Ever notice how having a “terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day” can lead to something wonderful?  For me, my “Alexander” day led me to meeting the best friends a girl could have.

Heck, they’re more like family if you think about it.  We all live in the same house, take turns doing chores, and fight over little things.  You may be wondering why my friends and I all live together, but that’s an easy question to answer.

I am a therianthrope.

Now before you start freaking, hear me out.  I’ve been changing into an animal for over a third of my life, and no one’s gotten seriously injured by any of us “monsters” unless the really deserve it.  I’m a chipmunk; how much could I really do?  I took the name Chip when I changed, and was given the name Chipotle after I joined the Pack.

But I wasn’t always this way; I used to just be Krystal Sacks: eldest daughter of a Navy veteran and his homemaker wife.  I went to a small Catholic school near our house, and that’s where Chip’s story begins.

I was never popular at school.  Either I was too smart, too plain, or too large for the other girls to like me, but I tried to fit in.  Every thirteen year old girl wants her classmates to be her friends, and I was no exception.

One day, in the spring of 2021, my eighth-grade class got to go on a field trip.  Everyone who ever went to a Catholic school knows that field trips are special days.  Not just because you get out of your regular classes, but also because you don’t have to wear your uniform that day.  Everyone gets to show their individuality by dressing exactly the same way.

I never fit in this pattern.  I knew, just like everyone else, that we were going on a “team building” exercise, so I dressed as if we were going to be out in the woods all day, which we were.  Why would I dress in cute clothes just to get them dirty and messed up?

All morning, the guys in my class and I were all over the course while the teachers and course instructors were having a hard time getting the rest of the girls to even go near it.  By the time lunch rolled around, the adults gave up on the rest of the girls and all of us on the course were exhausted.

“Hey guys,” I walked up to where the girls were sitting trying to find a seat.  They made it clear there was no room.  “Why aren’t you joining in?”  None of them answered; they just sat there, ignoring me and pretending to take interest in whatever was in front of them.

I felt so stupid just standing there with my lunch and being ignored.  I wanted to take a stand.  I wanted to be noticed and liked for once, so I decided to get confident.  I put my sack lunch on the table in front of Laura.

Laura.  She was the epitome of popularity.  Everyone loved her and everyone wanted to be her.  Girl crowded around her like bees to honey and she thrived in the control.  She was tall, blond, perfect.  To top it all off, she was captain of the cheerleading squad and basketball team.  She had the entire school under her fingers.  If you wanted to be seen, you made her see you.

“Go away,” she started examining her nails as if they were the most interesting thing in the world.  Unless she didn’t want to see you.  I started to walk away, facing my defeat.  But Laura wasn’t done.  “Why do you even try?  We make it so clear to you that you are not wanted and you continue to pester us.  Are you an idiot or something?  Why don’t you go make friends with those animals over there, they look more your kind.”  She sneered and turned away before she could see my tears.

This shocked me.  Never before had any of my classmates been that rude to me.  They didn’t like me and I realized that now there was no point, but saying something like that went against everything that we had been taught…it was unthinkable!  “Okay,” I said, even though I could feel more tears threatening to spill.

I couldn’t let them see me.  I turned around and ran towards the course, hoping to find somewhere to hide and cry.  The tears running down my face blurred my vision so badly that I didn’t noticed the world growing bigger around me or the fact that I went several meters above the ground in an oak tree next to the course.

It wasn’t until I looked down and saw a pile of clothing at the bottom of the tree that I realized that something was wrong.  I wasn’t human anymore.

Ever since their inception, theriantropes have been looked down upon by ‘normal’ society.  At first, when a theri transformed, they were locked up in jail, or killed.  They were treated like criminals.  It was a new thing to want to keep them alive in “secure” places.

I climbed down the tree still in form and looked around for a pool of water to find out what exactly I was.  I knew that I was a small woodland creature, but which kind still eluded me.  I found a pond a couple hundred meters from the ropes course, and looked into it and saw…

A chipmunk.  A chipmunk, oh great, I’m going to get picked on by the other theris if they don’t kill and eat me first.

It was a little crazy, right?  I had just learned that I was an animal.  I had heard stories of people like me being killed just for being what they were.  And I was sitting at the edge of a pond worrying that I was too small and the other theris would pick on me.  And then it settled in.

What am I going to do?

I started freaking out.  And when you freak out in form, or feel any other type of strong emotion, apparently, you change forms.  I was changing back, in freak out mode just as my teacher, Ms. Walters, came around the corner looking for me.

Ms. Walters was the strictest teacher at our small school and everyone knew it.  “I’m sorry, Krystal.  I’m going to have to report this.  Go put on your clothes and wait by Mr. Jordan, please.”

Then she turned around and walked back to the picnic area.  Without so much as a blink, she was ready to condemn me to whatever life theris were forced to live.  I think she brought sticking to the rules to a whole new level.

They set me aside, and I had to wait for Therianthrope control to get there.  It only took them an hour to get out to the course site, and then we were off to my new forever home with the rest of the theriantropes.

The local theri compound used to be an old juvenile detention center that the state had abandoned after they got enough funding to create a new one.  There was even enough funding to leave the place fully furnished for us.

Upon arriving at the compound, I found out that they had separated the theris by size and type.  I, as a chipmunk, would be on the third floor where all the classrooms and offices used to be.  There were no beds on that floor.  The administrators thought that since we were all such small animals, that we wouldn’t need beds, just bedding.  As soon as you’re marked theri, it’s like you lose all your rights and sense of being.

The director of the compound made sure that there was running water and electricity in the building.  Theris could not move from floor to floor and deliveries for food were sent every week.  That was about all we were getting under the protection and control category.

I had one nice patrolman who brought me to this place and explained everything.  After that I was treated like the animal I was; no one bothered to speak to me, because who talks to animals?

Three other theris stayed on my floor: a squirrel, gopher, and a robin.  The floor was small, so not that many rooms.  When I arrived, I decided to explore the place I was going to be spending a long time in.  As I walked down the hall way, three heads poked out.  Two guys, maybe seventeen, and a girl, a little younger than them, were there.

I was still young and naïve then.  I thought they were going to welcome me, take me under their wings (literally for the girl; she was the robin).  Boy was I wrong.

The girl stepped forward, with an air of wanting to lay down the rules.  “New Girl, listen up.  If you’re put here, there are a few rules you’ll have to follow.  One: Stay out of our way.  We won’t talk to you, you won’t talk to us.  Two: Every theriantrope for themselves.  If you’re not here when the food comes, you don’t get food.  Do what I say, and we’ll get along fine.”  She walked back into her room and slammed the door.  The two boys also went back into their rooms not saying a thing.

Left alone in the hallway with just the blanket that they issued me, I continued wandering around the hallways peeking into rooms until I found one that I liked.  On the other side of the building, I found it.

It was perfect, there were comfy chairs, well, sort of, and books, lots and lots of books.  I had found the library.  Setting my stuff in a chair beside a window, I leapt up onto the ledge and stared out at the sunset.  I’ve always thought that God was looking out at us through the sun and moon and as such they were his eyes.  Seeing the sun disappearing on me, while there was no moon in the sky made me feel as if I wasn’t important anymore.  Like God saw me the same way everyone else did, as an outcast.

I’ve always loved those old Disney cartoons from the ’90s.  One of my favorites is The Hunchback of Notre Dame.  I always sympathized with the gargoyles.  I mean, they see everything that went on around them, but could never join in.  I felt the same way until I fell into the Pack, literally.  While up on the ledge, the only thing I could think of to keep myself from crying me to sleep was to sing, and the song in the forefront of my mind was God Help the Outcasts from that movie, so I started to sing, improvising as I went.

I don't know if You can hear me Or if You're even there I don't know if You would listen To a theri's prayer Yes, I know I'm just an outcast I shouldn't speak to you Still I see Your face and wonder Were You once an outcast too?  God help the outcasts Lonely from birth Show them the mercy They don't find on earth God help my people We look to You still God help the outcasts Or nobody will Here I had to stop, as the tears were coursing down my face making it difficult to continue.  I jumped off the window ledge back into the room, crawled into a chair and cried myself to sleep.

0OooO0OooO0OooO0OooO0OooO0OooO0OooO0OooO0OooO0OooO0

For almost two years, I was alone in that building.  I read all the books in that library over and over again, until I could probably have recited them back to you.  I also mastered my transforming.  When I wanted to hide, or just observe what was going on around me, it was easiest for me to change.

I think my transforming was triggered by my need to hide from the world, especially after what happened to the others who were living on my floor.  The boys were fighting about something on a Friday and got the girl into it just as the delivery guy came.  He got scared and shot them all.  They turned human again as they died.

The authorities disposed of the bodies, but the hallway smelt of blood for weeks after that.  I learned quickly not to turn into Chip, as I had named my other self after my favorite cartoon chipmunk, unless there wasn’t anyone else around.

Finally the day came when I was to be moved to the Sanctuary.  What is the Sanctuary? you might ask.  The Sanctuary is what they call the preserve where they keep all the theris.  It is this big area of woods with random old houses in between for us to live in.  Our necessities were shipped into the Sanctuary every week.

I sat in the back of the van they were using to transport us there trying to be as small as I could, wondering what everyone else’s forms were.  I knew that they were all larger than me, and that some of them lived in the water.

They all looked like normal teenagers who were wearing government-issue sweat suits.  All but me, that is.  I had figured out how to keep my clothes when I changed and still had the ones that I was wearing the day I came into the compound.  They might be a little short in the leg and tight up top, but they still fit me.  I was surprised I had survived this long.

For two days, we drove across the United States, from Kentucky where we were from, to Colorado where Sanctuary is.  We only stopped when the van needed gas or our keepers were tired, so it was a very uncomfortable ride.

By the time, we arrived inside the gates of Sanctuary, I just wanted to find a tree with a big enough hole in it that I could climb in and fall asleep, and that’s exactly what I did.  My tree was about half a mile into the enclosure, and when I woke up I found a house nearby.  It didn’t look like there were any people living there yet, and it still looked like it might be habitable as I edged my way up to it slowly.

I was cautious, scared of what would meet me inside.  But I knew I would probably be here awhile, longer then I was in the detention center, and I knew I would need shelter.  I walked up the steps carefully and slowly, scared of what I might find inside.  More hostile theris who only cared about being animal?

I knocked on the door and waited…and waited…and waited.  It was obviously empty.  The house was fairly big.  I could tell it had more than enough room for me.  It could probably house more theris than I’ve met.

I stayed in that house for a little more than two years.  It was the most boring time of my life.  I was all alone, completely isolated.  I didn’t know how long I was going to last until the little voices in my head showed up.

Food was delivered everyday to the door step.  I wasn’t sure how it got there, or who brought it, all I knew was that it was barely edible and keeping me alive.

Every so often some others would find themselves at my doorstep.  They never said anything to me and they never stayed long.  They acted as if their animal instincts had taken over and their human part had disappeared.

I was fine with letting them stay at first.  If they did no harm, they could hang out for awhile.  But some were hostile and tried to hurt me, they tried to “mark their territory”.  Somehow, I don’t know how, I pushed them away.  Mostly by getting out of the way until they decided to leave.

One morning, after I finished showering (I couldn’t believe there was an actual shower in here), I came downstairs and saw a panther gracefully walking about the living room.  I panicked; I had no idea what to do.  I’d driven small foxes away before, there was a wolf one time, but a panther was bigger and better at fighting.

I changed forms immediately and crept up to where the panther stood.  I acted before thinking and bit its leg.  It jumped back and changed back into a human again.  It was a girl, she looked maybe a little older than me.  She wasn’t attacking me like I thought she would.  She just stared, as if waiting.  I changed back and looked at her too.

A falcon flew over us and I noticed as he too became human.  A lioness and others stood in the background.  I felt like I was being ambushed.

“Wow, she bit Bastet!  This chipmunk sure is spicy,” falcon boy stated from his seat on the couch.

“Spicy?” the girl who was the lioness asked.  “Don’t you mean feisty?”

He looked at her.  “I said what I said, Lyo.”

“Lyo” and “Bastet” laughed.

I was so confused, and my face must have shown it, because Bastet explained to me that they were just like me.  They were theris trying to retain their human sides.  They didn’t hunt each other, and they just needed a place to stay.  I was so grateful for the companionship that I immediately said yes and told them my name was Chip.

Perry, the falcon, came up with my new theri name on the spot.  Chipotle.  “Because you're spicy, just like the sauce!”

From that day on, I was never lonely again.  The Pack lived in my house, and more and more theris came to join it.  It was kind of ironic that the theris with the most human like qualities called themselves a Pack, as in a Pack of animals.  But that was what we were.

Closer than friends, we were closer to each other than our real families were.  I wouldn’t give them up for the world.