James hesitantly lifted a hand and pointed to himself. His wings nervously twitched. “James,” he clarified - namely since the last person who had his face was Maahes.
Tasha let out a shocked yelp-turned-yowl as her form abruptly shrunk to the size of a small dik-dik, scrambling back as James made the opposite shift into a much taller individual. With wings. And talons.
She tripped over her soft feet and landed on her now-feline behind, turning to see a sand-colored tail and looking down to realize she had pale fur with a few very distinctive stripes on her forelegs. She put a paw to her face and felt her head to find two protruding ears and a flat face.
Oh no. No, no, no, no, no, no. She could not be a cat. And of all cats...
By the stars, please say she wasn't a sand cat, please, please, please...
She turned her head to look at her reflection in the shining metal of the floor to see what was very obviously a sand cat looking back at her.
Ari found himself experiencing quite a different transformation, if a feline one. One moment he was a puppy yapping at the chaos and the next a full-bodied roar was coming out of his maw, golden fur shining in the bright lights of the spaceship. Where the small canid once stood was now a full-fledged male lion with a dark mane and yellow eyes. He was bigger than most lions. In fact, he rivaled the size of any record-breaking feline, with massive paws and long teeth to match.
"All that is gold does not glitter, Not all those who wander are lost; The old that is strong does not wither, Deep roots are not reached by the frost."
"Hi, 'I'm in a wall', it's nice to meet you!" Raiden said, still scrabbling with the mask. "For Christ's sake," he muttered, giving up on getting the mask off and instead turned around to where he heard the voices from. He gave a small wave.
I'm cool as a cucumber Even if I'm in a pickle
Two possibilities exist: Either we are alone in the universe, or we are not. Both are equally terrifying.
Maahes and Sune exchanged a look when they realized that transformations that had occurred to Ari and the dog that James had been hanging around.
"I think the lion's Ari," Sune hesitantly guessed. Something told him he was adjusting to this particular change better than Maahes. While Maahes may have never been stuck as the colonel before, there had been surprisingly more than one occasion where he and Arin had been stuck in the same body. It was always weird, and he didn't like how he didn't have her constant chatter in his head right now, but he could probably get used to this fairly quickly.
"Then who's the sand cat?" Maahes asked. "I know they have to be the dog from earlier, but I never learned who that was."
He sent an imploring look in James's direction.
xXx
A short distance away, Runi had wandered over to where Denebola was standing. She tapped her on the shoulder, only regretting it moments later when she realized the feeling might freak her out. "You're not in the wall," Runi said. She didn't appreciate getting scratched in the face earlier, but she'd let it slide. "You're standing right next to it. Maybe your perception's a little off? I'm not sure by how much, but it would explain what's going on."
Denebola shivered when she felt the touch on her shoulder. At first, she assumed it was the wooden bookcase that she was trapped in, but the muffled voice behind her told her otherwise.
"Then what do I do?" Denebola said, throwing her arms up. "How do I know I'm not invisible and being chased by a copy of me?"
"Move to the left," Jaron said. His voice was so deep it caught him off guard, leading to his bookcase crashing to the floor.
Taking a couple quick breaths, the lionness did so. Nothing happened. Her breathing grew more ragged.
"Your other left," Taber wheezed.
Eugh, of course. She was freaking out. This whole clone situation was insane. She couldn't even look it in the face. How on Fayne was she supposed to know which body was-
She exited the bookcase and immediately darted across the library on seeing her clone. It followed, matching her pace and steps. How?
S'io credesse che mia risposta fosse a persona che mai tornasse al mondo, questa fiamma staria senza piu scosse. Ma per ciò che giammai di questo fondo non tornò vivo alcun, s'i' odo il vero, senza tema d'infamia ti rispondo.
When Runi realized that letting Denebola wander around the library without fully grasping her current situation was probably a bad idea, she rushed after her and grabbed onto her shoulder again. That was probably a bad idea as well, but she had to-
Wait.
"Denebola," Runi called out, still having trouble adjusting to Prince Lotor's voice. "I'm holding onto you right now. You can feel it, right? There's something touching your shoulder. But if you look back in my direction, you should see me grabbing onto you."
That was a surprising amount of force; Denebola stopped almost immediately, jerked back by a strangely-dressed human.
Or, as she noticed when she finally mustered the courage to turn her head and see the human holding onto her clone's body.
"But," Denebola said, watching her clone's mouth move at the same time, "How does that work? How don't you know that, for whatever reason, the both of us can just feel the same things at the same time?"
S'io credesse che mia risposta fosse a persona che mai tornasse al mondo, questa fiamma staria senza piu scosse. Ma per ciò che giammai di questo fondo non tornò vivo alcun, s'i' odo il vero, senza tema d'infamia ti rispondo.
James ignored the chaos that was going on with Denebola, or whoever she was, and looked around him, trying to figure out which, between Ari and Tasha, were the lion and the cat. Seeing as Tasha had been the closest to him, he quickly deduced that she was the smaller of the felines, and he couldn't help but grin in self-satisfied amusement now that she was the one trapped as a cat, instead of him. He slowly bent down towards her, but his large wings fluttered up slightly, taking him by surprise and throwing off his balance. He caught himself with his hands.
"The cat is Tasha," he explained. "The lion's Ari. Unfortunately, I don't think I can understand them anymore."
"How the f*** do we stop this godsd***ed, stars-cursed, s****y-a** m*****f***ing trans-f***ing-mations?!" Tasha demanded, though it just came out as a very loud, frustrated, but undeniably adorable mew despite the numerous cusses.
"I'M A LION!" Ari roared excitedly, bouncing around in a very undignified manner to look at himself.
"All that is gold does not glitter, Not all those who wander are lost; The old that is strong does not wither, Deep roots are not reached by the frost."
"I'm sorry, Tasha. I wish I could understand you, but I understand your frustration," James replied with a smirk he didn't bother hiding as he leaned back on his heels, squatting as his wings rested on the floor. "Hopefully the transformation will only last a few minutes like the last one."
"You're not even trying to make it look like you aren't enjoying this," she complained, sitting down next to his ankle with a fluffy, adorable cat scowl and tail twitch.
"All that is gold does not glitter, Not all those who wander are lost; The old that is strong does not wither, Deep roots are not reached by the frost."
“Who knows what the next bout of chaos holds,” James went on, talking to Tasha though all he heard were cute meows. “Maybe we’ll go back to normal. Maybe something weirder will happen.” He sat down, trying to figure out how to cross his legs with the talons. “But for now you make a nice cat.”
"I don't know," Runi admitted, looking Denebola over. "But I've been around for probably longer than you have, and a lot of times, the simpler explanation is the true one. I'm sure Magic's abilities are capable of something like what you described, but no one else has really had that sort of change. All of bodies have changed - none of us have gotten a clone, or something extra tied to us. If that makes any sense?"
xXx
There was something really cute about the way that Ari was jumping around in his excitement about becoming a lion, but Maahes couldn't really focus on it for that long when Sune suddenly plopped down on the ground next to Tasha and James and stared into the former's face.
"Sune, what are you doing?"
"Listening," he said.
"...They're having a private conversation..."
Sune glanced back at him. "But James can't hear what Tasha is saying. Arin's abilities aren't the strongest, but if I focus enough, I can kind of understand what Tasha is saying." He turned his attention back to the woman-turned-cat. "I think she's...I think she's frustrated that James isn't trying to pretend that he's not enjoying seeing her as a cat."
Sune looked right into her eyes, going as far as laying down on his stomach so they were on eye level. "Was that what you just tried saying? Or something like it?"
The lionness paused. She didn't quite trust this purple-colored person, but she also hadn't paid attention to anyone else's transformation. Raising a arm, she watched her body copy her gesture. It also mimicked the wiggling of her claws. When she reached out and tapped her body's shoulder, she felt something on that same shoulder.
"Fine," she said. It really was a simpler explanation.
******
Denebola had run off some time ago. Taber was kind of used to that - she didn't like hanging around people much - but, given whatever strange thing had happened to her, he didn't like the idea of her being alone.
"Hey, Jaron?" he wheezed. "Can you help me out?"
Jaron shot a few anxious glances at the rest of the group, but walked over. Each of his footsteps shook the ground, which didn't do wonders for Taber's frail body. Neither did Jaron's scooping up Taber and cradling him in his arms. But Taber could deal with the pain; it wasn't nearly the worst he'd ever felt.
"Take me to Denebola!" he said, pointing in the direction she'd run off.
Jaron hesitated, but started walking that way, bumping into bookcases as he went.
S'io credesse che mia risposta fosse a persona che mai tornasse al mondo, questa fiamma staria senza piu scosse. Ma per ciò che giammai di questo fondo non tornò vivo alcun, s'i' odo il vero, senza tema d'infamia ti rispondo.
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