With the biggest event of the Lunar New Year Celebrations coming closer, everyone was getting into the cool-down phase of most celebrations in Animalia. But Valentine's Day was just as important to Animalians, even more so in 2020 because Valentine's Day landed on a Friday, thereby the celebrations would span the entire weekend. There would be those who would be taking advantage of this, and there were those who were very confused about things like this.
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Skippy, as it turned out, was not only an excellent male gymnast, but also good at building muscle tone. Thereby he was often subject to 'pests' (which was the general term for peepers at Claw Coliseum). Ashley was well aware of those who would spray them to remind them to move on, but that didn't mean that she wouldn't (feline) hiss at them from time to time, much to Skippy's confusion. What made it a little more confusing was the fact that Ashley wouldn't explain in detail why she did that.
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Kip, meanwhile, was going to Miss Vivian's for some ideas for Valentine's Day gifts alongside his other friends. All of them were discussing both their acclimations classes and their assigned "mates" for Homosexual Anonymous. But Kip had something new that others didn't really have.
Apparently, his living with six mares in their communal apartment somehow, inevitably, made its way to Hollywood. This apparently got into the hands of a few TV producers who saw "modern" sitcom potential in this kind of relationship. One person representing a well-known television network managed to go to the apartment to discuss a possible contract. It was fortunate that Kip was able to get to the door for part of the discussion, but the discovery that all six mares walked around the apartment only in lingerie at most made the representative respond with a meek "We'll contact you later.", and back away slowly (like Homer Simpson did when he saw Apu cheating on his wife), not really helped by the fact that he had caught sight of Vera wearing only panties and nothing else.
Walter, on the other hand, seemed to get an "assigned" girlfriend, named Penny, who was a female golden retriever whose attention seemed to be on a loose swivel. She was alright once you got to know her, it was just that she seemed to switch between different topics mid-discussion and had trouble focusing on one topic. Dr. Jones had told him that she was suffering from an Animalian Adaptation of ADHD, and Walter was doing some research on that. Fortunately, Penny had been taking medication to help deal with her attention problems, but occasionally she would forget.
Fortunately, they all decided to get all of their "girls" a group 'Valentine's Day' treatment at the Cavern Spa at Worldmeet Glade, which they all liked, especially since it would pay for both the guys and the girls. This was considered a good group thing to both help the guys adapt to their new heterosexuality and introduce everyone to some of Animalia's prime "attractions".
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Jeff, on the other hand, was feeling a little left out of basically everything "cool" in Animalia. While he was a lion Animalian, he was considered "underage" in terms of years since he only got a single dose. While that wasn't as big a deal to some people, it was a big deal to him since he couldn't get into the Meat Market because that was an attraction only available to "adult" or "mature" Animalians, access the coed locker rooms at Claw Coliseum, get a lioness 'assigned' to him, or other things.
Fortunately, Miss Fabina was able to get him a special pass for his dad and stepmother's (he couldn't remember her name because it was a Swahili word, but he was determined to learn it) first time... on stage. While he was surprised that such a thing was done on stage, those who were regulars assured him that it one of the Meat Market's most popular attractions.
The ticket that would grant him access to his stepmother and dad's performance labeled it as The King and his Tribute, and was going to take place over the Valentine's day Weekend. He was glad that he was able to watch it while there was no school because WSA was as far from his old school as possible.
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While preparations for Valentine's Day Weekend were under way, the biggest event was the finals of the Year of the Rat competition and everyone wanted to see what would go down.