The Morphing AU

== 01 ==
Sunny woke to the distant sounds of dragons fighting.
Battle training with Kestrel again, Sunny thought. It's always that.
Not Tsunami, she thought. Or there would be two dragons yelling. Not Starflight or Glory, because there would be more yelling from Kestrel than usual. It's Clay.
The sounds abruptly stopped, and Sunny silently inched closer to see what was going on.
Kestrel was glaring at Tsunami, who had a flaming-red scale at her feet. Clay was panting, his chest heaving from every breath he took.
Sunny was glad that today it wasn't her turn for battle training today, because Kestrel was in a really bad mood. Not that she ever had a good mood. She always was in a bad or really bad one. Either way, Sunny was glad it wasn't her.
"Stop picking on Clay. Or I'll bite you again." Tsunami growled, raising her head defiantly. The SeaWing's frill flopped over one of her eyes and she brushed it away with a claw. Kestrel's furious expression did nothing to sway her confident composure. 
Sunny wished she could be that sure of herself to stand up to the guardians. She flinched back, knowing what would happen. This was a really bad time to eavesdrop. Kestrel would leave the cave in a rage and if she was caught, she would have things to answer for. She looked behind her, then back to the cave.
She took off as silently and as fast as she could to their sleeping cave.
Starflight was there, and she nearly jumped out of her scales. He looked up from his scroll, and frowned. She shrugged and he went back to reading.
He sighed suddenly, and a little puff of fire escaped his nostrils. "It's so boring."
"What?" Sunny asked, confused.
"There's never anything new to read!" he said, sounding exasperated. "Nothing! When will Webs bring in another scroll that the other guardians don't burn for being 'unacceptable'? I'm just..." he worried at the rock ledge he was lying on. "I'm sick of it, Sunny. I know I shouldn't say this because it's still another two years away, but I'd rather be out in the world right now."
Sunny leapt up onto the ledge next to him and sat down. She grinned reassuringly, "Well we've been in here for longer than that. The guardians know what they're doing. We'll be out there faster than you can blink, trust me. Do you want to read your favorite scroll again? Read me a story or two about the brilliance of NightWings again." she said 'brilliance' slightly sarcastically, but wasn't sure if that came across. It was Starflight's favourite scroll, so she was almost glad when he nodded reluctantly. She wasn't sure if any tribe could be that brilliant, like Starflight said the NightWings were.
She frowned, suddenly becoming aware of hearing Tsunami and Clay bolt past the entrance. Tsunami called what sounded like "Dinner's ready!" as she ran past, but it was obscureded by the clattering of talons and general muffled tone she always seemed to develop whenever she said something while running.
"We'll go see what that's about," Sunny shrugged and leapt off the platform, onto the floor. She landed slightly awkwardly, but managed to regain her balance. She was still a little groggy after her nap, after all.
Starflight nodded hesitantly, and followed after. There was a yelp, and suddenly he tripped. He landed on his face, slightly sprawled.
"GLORY." he huffed, pushing himself back up. "How long have you been there?"
"Long enough to listen to your conversation complaining about scrolls." Glory said, materializing slowly into an amused pinkish shade of her usual scales. "Which is honestly something I thought you'd never do. Anyways, I wonder what we have for dinner today..."
"Maybe cow again," Sunny said making a slightly disgusted face, much to the amusement of the other two dragonets.
== 02 ==
As Dune dropped the cows onto the floor for the dragonets to take what they wanted, Sunny couldn't help feeling that something was up. The atmosphere didn't feel right. Everyone was too serious.
She thought for a while, picking up a lizard and chewing on it thoughtfully. Then, she had an idea. Everyone here thought she was the innocent sweet younger sister (something she really hated, sometimes the other dragonets - especially Tsunami - would treat her like a baby and explain things to her as if she was stupid).
She could maybe use that to her advantage. Why not take this opportunity to perfect my hunting cry?
Clay looked especially serious, so why not try to cheer him up?
She watched him finish his cow, and then sweep the bones into the underground river. They vanished with a ploosh and a burst of bubbles. "AHA!" she cried, as loud as possible. Whoops, that wasn't the noise I was planning for. Ah, well, it's fine.
His reaction was quick and unexpected. He yelped and threw his wings over his head, and she smothered a laugh.
"What did I do? I'm sorry!" he cried. "It was an accident! If it's about that extra cow, Dune said-"
"Calm down, silly," she laughed, wrinkling her snout. "I wasn't aha-ing at you."
"Oh." he said, looking slightly embarrassed. He spun around, smiling, as she finished her lizard.
"That was my fierce hunting cry! Was it scary?" She grinned up at him.
He smiled, and patted her on the head. "Well it was certainly surprising."
Usually she would hate this, but she felt anything she got was deserved because of what she just did.
She supposed she didn't mind being 'sweet'. It was more if everyone else treated her like she was a baby. Which did happen a lot, so in hindsight she maybe shouldn't have said that. Clay tipped his head, as she went to get another lizard. "Lizards again? What's wrong with cows?"
She pulled a face, "Blech. Too heavy." She looked around at the empty cave where the other dragonets had been a few minutes ago. They'd left when she wasn't paying attention, while she was talking to Clay. She met his gaze again. "You look all serious."
He shrugged simply, "Just thinking." Lifting one of his wings, he let her nestle in by his side. She liked this, this solid siblingship. It made her feel like maybe the world wasn't so big, the guardians weren't so harsh after all. She remembered the many times that Kestrel had shouted at her, or one of the others. She remembered the many times she'd cried, and hidden away, until Clay found her and comforted her.
That reminded her - they had to study. "Dune says we should go study for an hour before bed. The others are probably in the study cave." She said.
He looked so thoughtful, and she wondered again what was nagging on his mind so much. His eyes sort of wandered over her, and fixated on her barb-less tail for a few heartbeats, before drifting down the corridor that lead to the study cave. His brow furrowed and he looked sad. Her breath caught in her throat, and she decided to break the trance he seemed to be in. "Come on." she said, flicking his side with her tail. My barb-less tail. she thought sadly. It always made her feel a sort of sadness, but then she also felt that she wouldn't be Sunny with a venomous tail barb. She stood up to lead the way out, and he got to his feet as well.
Time for some boring study on stuff we've already learned. It's probably going to be the War of SandWing Succession or something again.
She sighed quietly to herself as they entered the cave.
== 03 ==
It wasn't quite as boring as she thought it would be. Instead of proper studying, they acted out the beginning of the war. She got to be Queen Oasis, because she was an actual SandWing, missing tail barb or no. Although, when they neared the end of their roleplay, Kestrel stormed in.
Sunny suddenly felt regret and fear envelop her as Kestrel burst into the cave, roaring: "WHAT is going on here?"
She shrank back, trying to get out of her furious glare. The SkyWing continued, snorting fire, "This doesn't look like studying." Sunny felt she had to say something to protect her friends, but her lips were trembling and she couldn't think of much to say. "We're s-s-s-sorry..." she stammered, and then she wanted to kick herself. That wasn't good enough, was it? She saw Tsunami stand up and shoot a glare at her. "No, we're not. We were studying. We were acting out the death of the queen that started the whole war."
Sunny covered her ears with her wings, and curled up. She didn't like this, not one bit. Kestrel was going to shout and get really mad, like she always did. After some time, she uncovered her ears a little, so she could hear what they were saying. She almost wished she hadn't, but then she heard Clay speak up. "That's not fair. We were all doing the same thing. We should all be punished."
At his words, Sunny nodded. In the corner of her eye, she saw Glory scowl slightly and shake her head, but Sunny agreed with Clay. They were equally guilty - no wait - they weren't even guilty of anything. They didn't do anything wrong.
They were just studying, like Dune told them to. She wanted to stand up to Kestrel really badly, but she didn't have the courage.
She hated being watched, being defiant. It made her feel uncomfortable. It was better if she let others do the speaking. Besides, when she did try to contribute opinions, she was often talked over and ignored. It didn't stop her from trying, but it always happened anyway.
Kestrel gave Clay such a withering glare that Sunny shivered. "I know who the ringleader was. Cut off the head, and the problem goes away."
Panic raced through her. They couldn't kill Tsunami! She was part of the prophecy! "You're going to cut off her head?" Sunny squeaked, her anxiety showing more than she would have liked.
Glory rolled her eyes, sighing, "It's a metaphor, featherbrain."
Sunny felt a stab of indignation. But then again, this was Glory. She wasn't afraid to be sassy. It still made her feel irritated. How was she supposed to know? It wasn't beyond Kestrel to do something like that.
"Now go to bed." Kestrel said with finality. Her tail knocked over a shelf of Starflight's scrolls. She didn't even look back as they all rattled to the floor. Sunny watched Starflight's expression sink to despair at his precious scrolls scattered on the floor, as Clay said, "Sorry. We tried."
Tsunami responded simply with, "I know, thanks."
Sunny began to pick them up and as she did, Tsunami called over to her "Hey, Sunny, would you mind taking those scrolls back to our sleeping cave?"
Sunny perked up. "Sure, I can do that!" She grabbed the rest, and then carried them off towards the sleeping cave. Luckily, there weren't too many.
As she left, she heard Tsunami start to speak again. She assumed it wasn't directed at her, and kept going - making sure not to drop anything. When she reached the cave, she placed them all down on the floor. "Whew." she said to herself.
She felt out of breath. They were relatively light scrolls, but she figured that it hurt her back carrying them all at once. She should have made multiple trips.
Well, hindsight's wonderful. Now, where to put these...
She scoured the scroll racks for any empty slots, spotting a few in different racks. She didn't have to put them all in the same place anyway - after all, didn't Starflight want them ordered alphabetically?
For some reason she didn't quite want to put the effort in to order them, but this was Starflight. If it was Tsunami or Glory maybe she'd feel less inclined to... No. She shoved that thought away and began to counting the gaps in one of the racks. There were enough - so quickly sifting through the titles, she grabbed the scrolls that matched and placed them up in their individual slots.
She tidied them away quite quickly, apart from the last one which refused to go into its slot - possibly due to her hastiness. She made several attempts to push the other scrolls aside so she could wedge it in, but she didn't have enough talons. After multiple attempts and nearly tearing the paper, she felt frustration building.
She growled under her breath as she tried again, "You've always fitted on the rack before! Why aren't you fitting now?"
She looked inside the slot, and the back of the slot seemed to be loose, like a stone slab was cut out of the back.
She removed it, and behind it was a secret compartment with unknown berries of several colors.
She held her breath as she took some in her talons.
What are these?
== 04 ==
Her mind whirled with adrenaline, terror and excitement. She stared down at her talons, still holding the berries.
They came in seven colors: brown, pale yellow, red, blue, green, cyan, and black.
I swear these weren't here before, but what do they do? It's probably best not to find out... but oh, the curiosity is killing me...
Hesitantly, she ate one of them-the red one, and yelped as she saw her own talons shifting before her very eyes.
Her scales turned red, and she noticed her wings were getting a lot larger.
Frantically, she ate the pale yellow one, in an attempt to undo it. She breathed a sigh of relief as she went back to normal. That was weird.
Oh, wait a second...I was a SkyWing, right? So the seven colors might mean the seven tribes.
Let's test that theory.
She tried another color-cyan. Her scales turned ice-blue, and her claws grew longer and more serrated.
Yep, just as I expected. Cyan is IceWing. Red is SkyWing, and I think yellow is SandWing, black is NightWing, blue is SeaWing, brown is MudWing, and green is RainWing.
She tried the pale yellow one, and she watched with satisfaction as she shifted back to her normal SandWing self.
Suddenly, a huge crash echoed through the corridors. Her ears flattened and she instinctively crouched, trying to make herself smaller. What was that? She ran over to the nearest scroll rack, casually scrabbling about, pretending to order scrolls to seem busy so if Kestrel wasn't mad she wouldn't shout at her too much.
But as she re-ordered the scrolls somewhat pointlessly, she realized that Kestrel wasn't mad at any of them. She could hear her shouting at what sounded like the other guardians. So... my friends aren't in trouble. That's a relief. She snuck up to the wall that bordered the room that the shouting seemed to be happening and pressed her ear against it.
"I'm not sure what he knows or why he cares." said a voice that sounded like Webs. "The message just said 'Morrowseer is coming.' I'm supposed to meet him and bring him here tomorrow."
Morrowseer... that sounds like a NightWing name. she wracked her brain. It sounded familiar. Wait. It's the dragon who wrote the prophecy. The entire reason we're all here in the first place. But why does Webs have to take him to this cave? Surely if he can see the future then he'll know where we are? Something didn't add up to her, but then she had no clue how the power of foresight worked so she couldn't criticize.
Maybe she could use the magic berries-the black one, perhaps-to find out, and give herself those powers to see. Mind reading and prophecy would be cool to have. And then... why stop there? If she could give herself that, then why couldn't she do more?
She shook her head, no. She would not use the berries. She didn't know the risks of using them yet. She had to research more to know what effect they could have on her.
Wait.
What if Morrowseer found out about the berries from reading it in her mind?
She didn't know what sort of a dragon Morrowseer was.
She should just wait and see how he was when he came.
But for now, she would continue to eavesdrop to see if she could learn anything more. She pressed her ear against the wall, and heard nothing. The conversation had ended.
== 05 ==
WIP
Category:Alternate Universes
Category:Work in Progress
Category:Fanfictions (Incomplete)
Category:Fanfictions (Semi-Canon)
Category:Content (Shadowblaster99)