Storwan Industries:

Chapter 1:

This is the story of Cecil Simon. Like most creatures, Cecil was a product of the world that he was born into. Cecil’s world happened to be called Earth and was very much like the world of man in the 21st century.

However, the creatures known as humans had never populated Cecil’s world. Instead, Cecil’s world had been populated by anthropomorphic animals that simply referred to themselves as Anthros to distinguish themselves from their nonsentient kin. These Anthros had created a relatively successful society, but like any civilization, it was not without its’ own set of prejudices.

One of the most dogged of these prejudices was the union of two Anthros from different species. Mating within one’s species was simply viewed as the most natural thing, and the idea of deviating from that practice generally was viewed as aberrant.

This stigma was intensified by the fact that the rare children that had managed to be produced from cross-species unions tended to be malformed either physically or mentally, with most not even surviving into adulthood.

Cecil Simon happened to the product of one of these rare cross-species unions. His father had been a Skunk, while his mother had been a Tigress. Both of Cecil’s parents had been the rebels of their respective families and had mated simply as a means of experimentation.

Neither had expected anything to be produced from one night of carnal passion, but some months later Cecil came into the world. After his birth, Cecil’s mother traveled to his father’s home, where said father lived with his own mother, and unceremoniously dumped him there, absolving all responsibilities over him. His father wanted no part of raising Cecil, but Cecil’s grandmother was adamant that her son take responsibility for his cub.

Cecil’s appearance was mostly that of a Skunk, including the characteristic black fur, with longer white fur covering the top of his head. He also had white fur extending down his back to the end of his long, luxurious tail, and a patch that covered his abdomen and went all the way down to between his legs.

Despite this, he also possessed a few traits that hinted at his tiger heritage. The most prominent of these was the fact that he had white stripes across his arms, legs, and torso. Next was the fact he had had retractable, sharp claws within both his upper and lower paws. His teeth were distinct in that they had the characteristic length and sharpness of a predator. Lastly was the fact that Cecil’s musk gland seemed to be linked to his excretory system.

This linkage had rendered Cecil completely incontinent and also caused him to release his musk along with his waste. This incontinence made Cecil entirely diaper dependent, which also required frequent changes so that the foul odor of his musk would not linger.

It was almost ironic how Cecil’s Tiger-inherited traits actually led him to need other infantile attire besides just his diapers. Cecil had constant urges as a cub to scratch things with the claws on his upper and lower paws to keep them trim, but his grandmother was able to handle the problem by having him wear booties and cubby mittens, and then filing his claws every night.

The mittens presented their own challenges in that they made things very difficult for Cecil to grasp, but once again his grandmother came up with the solution having him drink from a bottle, which was much easier to grasp and less likely to spill if he dropped it.

Cecil had a particular liking for milk, which his grandmother theorized came from his feline side, and thus he would always have multiple bottles throughout the day. Occasionally while slurping some milk would dribble from his mouth, thus his grandmother often kept a bib around his neck.

The booties and diaper also hampered Cecil’s ability to walk squarely, so Cecil usually crawled upon his paws and knees, resorting to a cubbish waddle when walking upright was necessary.

Similarly to his claws, Cecil’s sharp teeth caused him to constantly need to chew upon something, which in his earliest days tended to be the sofa’s cushions. His grandmother had seen how well he had taken to his bottle, and thus when he was not drinking, he usually had a pacifier within his mouth to soothe his urge to chew.

Despite all of these necessary precautions, Cecil was content for a good portion of his early years, but Cecil’s father only seemed to resent him more every day. He constantly complained about Cecil’s infantile ways and vast appetite.

Cecil seemed to always be hungry and grew rather quickly compared to the average Skunk child, thus making him always seem older than he actually was. Cecil’s frequent diaper usage and constant hunger did put a sizable dent in his family’s income, but his father was more concerned about his own financial losses than anything else. Cecil’s father also deeply resented the attention that his mother showered upon his son, due to the fact that she had doted upon him before Cecil’s arrival.

At the end of Cecil’s early childhood, his father had had enough of his home situation and he approached his mother with a solution. He would reenter the workforce and get his life back together if his mother agreed to relinquish Cecil to cub services. Cecil’s grandmother was upset upon hearing this, but her son assuaged her that Cecil would be better off with a family that could truly appreciate him and that they could get their lives back onto a decent path.

Cecil’s grandmother had always known of her son’s dislike of his own cub, and she honestly considered that Cecil might be happier with a family that could love him wholly. In a moment of weakness, she relented, and Cecil’s father wasted no time in removing his son from his life.

The years that followed for Cecil could only be described as an emotional rollercoaster. Cecil was placed in a wide variety of foster homes, with some decent, while others were awful. However, his stays always ended up being temporary because the government checks that came with his custody were never enough to cover the cost of his vast appetite and diaper usage.

Cecil also became incredibly self-conscious, as he grew older, especially as he became aware of the mockery and ridicule both his diapers and Hybrid status afforded him. In an attempt to hide his stripes and diapers, Cecil took to wearing very baggy clothes, and he rarely spoke so that no one would notice his sharp teeth.

He was able to cope with infantile needs by filing his claws every night before bed, chewing on gum rather than a pacifier, and drinking bottled water instead of milk, though this still resulted in him having to visit the school nurses for changes regularly.

Surprisingly, despite his incontinence Cecil grew into a rather robust young Anthro, with a well-defined musculature that was probably based in no small part on his mother’s Tiger genes.

Towards the middle of his high school years, other young Anthros took notice of their quiet yet intimidating classmate and began to gossip. These random assertions at Cecil’s true nature were further fueled when a particularly chatty freshman Shrew noticed Cecil’s stripes when he was changing in the locker room.

The possibility of an actual Hybrid being among them was too fantastical for even the tiny, suburban community Cecil was living in at the time, thus a rumor spread that quiet Cecil was, in fact, a dangerous rebel who had dyed white tiger stripes into his fur.

The rumor took off like wildfire and was further embellished as students assumed that his repeated lateness to classes was delinquency rather than his actual frequent diaper changes at the nurse’s office. Even on the rare instance that Cecil opened his mouth wide enough for a fellow student to see within, another rumor emerged that Cecil had filed his teeth in order to achieve their unusual predatory effect.

Cecil was well aware of the rampant spread of these wild rumors, but rather than attempt to correct his fellow students Cecil realized that a punk reputation would be the perfect cover to keep any of his fellow students from discovering the shameful truth.

Cecil adopted a punk look consisting of a leather jacket accented with a metal studs, a sweat-stained wife-beater underneath, a pair of faded camo-pants, and a pair of black Doc Martens. To complete the illusion, he had both his ears pierced and adorned them with simple metal rings while his hair grew out, bangs covering his forehead while the back ended just past his shoulders.

While these changes were successful in keeping anyone from getting too close to Cecil, they had their own negative ramifications as well. One such case arose when Cecil was once again assigned to a new foster home due to his vast appetite and diaper usage.

Upon seeing Cecil’s punk look from the picture in his profile, most of the potential families passed over him for fear of bringing a troublemaker into their home. This reduced Cecil spending the last two years of high school being shuttled between the worst of the foster care system.

Cecil’s misery was further compounded by the fact that many of Cecil’s teachers were quite intimidated by the fierce combination of his natural looks and his punk aesthetic. Cecil was judged more harshly than his peers when it came to his academics and any attempts to explain the difficulty of his living situation were met with disinterest or disbelief.

The one class where Cecil found any sense of peace ended up being Woodworking Workshop. The class was intended to be a throwaway elective that introduced students to the very fundamentals of woodworking and engineering. You could essentially receive a passing grade if you managed not to drill a hole through your hand by the end of the term, which still proved to be a difficult feat for a surprisingly large percentage of the class.

Unlike his peers, Cecil thoroughly enjoyed the focus and intricacy crafting various implements required from him. It was what Cecil imagined an artist felt upon painting or sculpting, but his creations actually proved to be practical. He also used the process of creation to forget all about the unhappiness of his uncaring home life or the relative disdain he felt from his peers and teachers.

Cecil’s Workshop teacher, an old Woodchuck named Mr. Campton, incidentally turned out to be the one exception in this regard. While he was used to the cacophony that generally accompanied a room full of teenagers wielding power tools, he was immediately taken with the dedication and skill Cecil threw into his assignments.

One day in what could only be described as a school first, Mr. Campton found Cecil in the workshop afterschool, putting in extra hours to perfect his already A+ worthy bed frame. Mr. Campton chuckled and said, “Don’t worry kid, you could honestly not show up for the rest of the semester, and I would still let you ace this class.”

Cecil raised his eyes and spoke in a voice that Mr. Campton was quite surprised to find rather soft yet stoic in tone, “I think I would actually find that to be a punishment, sir. I really like this class. I’d hate to not come back again.”

“You might just be the first to feel that way, big guy. So why are you so focused on that bed frame?”

Cecil blushed as he muttered in a steeled tone, “I don’t have one at home, sir. I sleep on a mattress on the floor. I figure if I’m going to have a bed frame I should make it as nice as possible.”

Mr. Campton’s heart immediately went out to the embarrassed teen before him. He had heard his colleagues about Cecil’s tardiness and how his general appearance was a blight upon the student body, but all that the Woodchuck saw before him was a shy boy that no one had really taken the opportunity to befriend.

Mr. Campton approached Cecil and placed his paw gently upon the boy’s shoulder as he said, “So you really like building stuff, kid?” Cecil slowly nodded his head but remained quiet. “Well, then you aren’t going to learn much about that here. I can show a place where you can put that talent to some good use!”

Mr. Campton ended up taking Cecil to a garage that was owned by one of his old college buddies, a Muskrat named Jeb. There was some carpentry equipment in the back that Jeb still used for personal projects but the garage was Jeb’s key source of income due to his ability to get a car or motorcycle back on the road in jiffy at a dirt-cheap rate.

Mr. Campton spoke to Jeb about Cecil’s talents, which eventually culminated into a part-time job for Cecil where he could both develop his skills as a mechanic while continuing his carving in his free time.

Soon enough Cecil managed to graduate from high school and he finally left the foster care system by renting a room from Jeb above the garage. Jeb and Mr. Campton, who Cecil now affectionately referred to as Earl since his graduation, became as close as family to Cecil. Nevertheless, it was after a lengthy period of deliberation that Cecil finally opened up about his parentage and his incontinence.

Jeb let out a low whistle while Earl sighed as he shook his head before saying, “Well who’d have thunk it.”

Cecil lowered his head and felt his heart aching as he continued, “I… I understand if you want me to leave. I can have my things ready by the morning.”

Jeb looked startled as he asked, “Leave? Landsakes, what would make you think that I’d want that?”

Cecil still couldn’t raise his eyes to meet Jeb’s as he responded, “It’s been this way since I was a cub. Nobody wants a Hybrid around. Even when they were given money to take care of me they always decided that I wasn’t worth it in the end.”

“Now wait just a second!” cried Earl. Cecil raised his head in pure shock, for he had never heard his former teacher take this tone before.

“Do you think just because I know this now that I will forget the talent I saw when I first met you or the growth you have shown ever since? I am disappointed in you Cecil, though not because you are a Hybrid. I am disappointed that you think that the friendship we share could be affected by something so insignificant!”

For the first time in years, Cecil felt tears well up within his eyes as he rushed forward and embraced his two mentors. Unfortunately, Cecil had forgotten his own strength and almost inadvertently ended up fracturing a few of Jeb and Earl’s ribs. After he finally released them and apologized profusely for about an hour Jeb mused, “Huh, a Hybrid actually ending up in these parts. Have you ever met another Hybrid, Cecil?”

“I don’t think so. Hybrids are pretty rare to begin with and it’s not exactly something we advertise about ourselves, so I’m not sure if I encountered any others along the way. Besides that, I started moving around because of the foster care system from a very young age, so sometimes my memories of the old homes get mixed up. I know I’m not from these parts, but I’m not even exactly sure where I was born.”

“What about your parents?” Earl ventured, “Any info on them?”

“None. Apparently, they chose to withhold any information. That probably means that they didn’t want me going back to find them anyway. I mean, sometimes I remember this old lady singing to me though it mostly just feels like a dream.”

“Golly, I mean I’ve seen news reports on some of the cubs produced from cross-species couples but those poor things usually just look awful,” shuttered Jeb.

He then noticed Cecil withdrawing into himself slightly, and he rapidly continued, “Oh, but not like you Cecil! Heck, any sensible Anthro would think you’re just a tall Skunk with a little meat on him.”

Cecil smiled at this and said, “Thank you. You both don’t know how much it means to me to talk about all this. I could not have asked for better friends, yet I can’t help but sometimes wonder if I will ever receive any answers about who I am… what I am. Or even if anyone even has an answer.

Jeb and Earl sympathetically patted Cecil’s shoulders, while none of them could have guessed that someone would be entering Cecil’s life very soon, someone who would offer him the chance to discover as much about himself as he was willing to pursue.

~END~

For more info about Cecil click here: https://www.furaffinity.net/view/34741042/

Link to the Prologue: http://www.furaffinity.net/view/35005195/

Thumbnail art by  MaridiaMarius