Chapter 1
"Oh, stop whining, I don't like this any more than you do. I just need this money so I can get my degree." Blake snaps as she holds the fluffy white cat down, pressing a syringe against the inside of one of its back legs. The cat growls, squirming underneath her arm, but Blake just plunges the needle swiftly into its leg, withdrawing it once the syringe is full of blood.
She doesn't care for Doctor Merlot, nor for his shady, definitely illegal experiments, but being his lab assistant pays far too well for her to get hung up on the ethics of it all.
Besides, they're just animals, it's not like they're people or something.
"Ugh, you're the worst." Blake grumbles, setting the syringe down on a nearby table and trying to wrestle the cat back into its cage. It seems to be in a particularly uncooperative mood today, however, and continues to thrash around in Blake's grasp, hissing and spitting and desperately trying to escape from her hold.
Fortunately, Blake is wearing a pair of thick, elbow length gloves that prevent the cat's teeth and claws from doing any damage.
Unfortunately, they don't protect from everything.
Blake lets out a yelp as the cat begins to pee onto the front of her lab coat, causing her to quickly drop it and stumble backwards.
Instantly, the cat bolts across the room and scrambles straight up the wall, worming its way through a small window Blake opened halfway for ventilation and disappearing into the night.
As Blake stumbles, she loses her balance and falls back onto the table behind her, knocking all of the delicate scientific equipment to the floor. There's a loud crash as everything shatters, thick, multicolored steam rising into the air as more than a half dozen different chemicals mix together.
Blake coughs, struggling to breathe as she's enveloped by chemical fumes, throat burning as the noxious mixture fills her lungs. She coughs again, choking and hacking, tears streaming down her cheeks as her vision swims.
"Fuck." Is all she manages to utter out before falling face first into the pool of chemicals. Her head impacts the floor with a loud crack, and everything goes dark.
Blake awakes feeling very warm, surrounded by soft, fluffy blankets and plush pillows. She squints blearily at the bright light streaming into her bedroom through the open window, yawning loudly as she sits up and rubs the sleep from her eyes.
Blake freezes.
The thing in front of her eyes isn't her hand, it's a paw. A black, furry, cat's paw, with little pink toes.
She screams, but the sound that comes out of her mouth sounds nothing like a human voice at all. It's a high-pitched screech, a feline yowl that only serves to further elevate her level of panic.
Blake suddenly realizes just how small she is compared to everything around her, looking herself over with a feeling of complete and utter horror.
She's a cat.
A rather small one, too, with short black fur and stubby little legs, she probably only weighs six or seven pounds.
Blake whimpers, curling up into a ball and screwing her eyes shut, hoping, praying that this is all some sort of horrible dream.
After a while, she tentatively cracks an eye open, but nothing's changed, she's still a cat.
How did this happen? The last thing she remembers before now is... is...
She passed out in Merlot's lab and fell right into the chemicals, that's the last thing she remembers. Blake has no idea how she got back home, but she supposes that she must have woken up at some point and stumbled back here on her own, then turned into a cat after falling asleep.
It must have been the chemicals, there's no other way this could've happened. That's the only explanation she can come up with right now.
There's the sound of loud banging on her front door, and the voice of her landlord yelling from the other side. Blake can't understand a word he's saying, which she supposes only makes sense since she's a cat now.
Oh right, she's being evicted, she had to be out by ten this morning.
Fuck.
Terror fills Blake as her landlord continues hammering on the door, realizing just what might happen if he finds her like this.
He hates pets, and doesn't allow any kind of animals in his building, even service animals. The idea of ending up in the hands of animal control instils a sick feeling in Blake's stomach, and she suddenly feels as though she might throw up.
She leaps up onto the window ledge as she hears the front door opening, staring apprehensively out the open window. It's a twenty foot drop to the ground below, a jump she wouldn't ever risk as a human, but as a cat...
Her landlord storms into the bedroom just at that moment, and that solidifies her decision.
Blake jumps.
She plummets downward, stomach lurching and ears going flat against her skull as wind whistles past them. Blake lands on her feet in the alley below, gasping as the impact sends little shocks of pain through her legs.
It seems her short legs aren't all that suited for taking falls, judging by how they're throbbing and stinging right now. Or maybe she's just bad at landing, either way, that hurt.
Blake spares her apartment one last, quick glance before turning and running down the alley. She runs and runs, panic fueling her movements, not thinking about where she's going or what she'll do when she inevitably runs out of energy.
A sharp, stabbing pain in Blake's right front paw makes her lose her footing. She scrabbles at the wet asphalt for grip, claws scraping uselessly against its surface, and slides headfirst into a trash can.
Blake whimpers at the pain in her paw and her head, rolling onto her side and raising her paw to inspect it. There's a piece of glass embedded in her paw pad, blood seeping steadily from the wound.
She attempts to dig it out with her teeth, but all she manages to do is accidentally cut her tongue in the process.
Head pounding, paw aching, and feeling generally defeated by the situation she finds herself in, Blake curls up next to the trash can and closes her eyes.
She's in a sketchy, shadier part of town, the kind of neighborhood she'd never walk through alone as a human. It's probably not any safer for her to be here as a cat, especially considering her small size, but she needs a few minutes to rest.
She'll just rest for a bit to get her stamina back and to recover from hitting her head, she'll only rest for a moment.
"Hey, you okay?"
Blake slowly blinks open her eyes, immediately hit by a wave of dizziness and a stinging pain radiating from her injured paw.
Right, she's a cat.
Fuck, she's a cat.
Blake looks up to see quite possibly the biggest non-wild cat she's ever seen in her life standing before her. The marks of years of fighting litter its body, powerful muscles clearly visible even beneath its thick, tawny fur, and its violet eyes are filled with concern.
A quick sniff has Blake's brain telling her this is a female cat, because apparently she can tell that much from just scent now.
Oh, this is so bizarre.
"You okay?" The female cat repeats, walking closer, and Blake can't help but feel a little intimidated by the fact that this cat is easily three times her size.
Blake backs away, frantically scanning her surroundings, trying to figure out where she is. She appears to be inside the living room of a house, though it's in quite a state of disrepair, with old, worn furniture, cracked windows, and dust everywhere. The place looks like it hasn't been lived in in years.
"What's going on? Where am I?" Blake asks nervously, her voice a quiet squeak, far smaller and higher-pitched than the other cat's.
"I found you out in the alley." The cat replies, nodding. "It was beginning to rain so I brought you inside, not good to sleep in the rain."
Blake stares blankly at her for a moment, confused. "You... brought me inside?"
A frown appears on the other cat's features. "Oh, you're hurt." She murmurs, taking a few steps forward and crouching down in front of Blake. "Can I take a look at your paw?"
Blake hesitates for a moment, feeling nervous and confused and so, so very overwhelmed. But, eventually, she nods, figuring that this cat wouldn't bring her to shelter if she intended her harm.
Slowly, Blake raises her paw for the other cat to see, wincing as her wound throbs. The large cat examines her injury, frown deepening with each passing second.
"You've got some glass stuck in there, pretty deep. Can you hold your paw still for me?"
Desperate to lessen the pain, Blake nods again, holding still and bracing herself as the other cat dips her head and leans in close, breath hot against her paw.
"Hold still."
Blake feels the other cat's long, sharp teeth graze the skin of her paw pad gently, one of them catching on the piece of glass. In a single swift motion, the cat closes her teeth around the glass and tugs.
A loud yelp escapes Blake as the glass is wrenched free from her paw, a gush of blood following. She begins licking furiously at the wound, trying to clean and soothe it, watching as the other cat walks over to a small hole in the floorboards and spits the glass out into it.
"I'm Yang." She says as she returns, sitting down a short distance away from Blake.
"Blake." Blake replies, lowering her paw and testing to see how much weight she can put on it. Unfortunately, the pain is still pretty bad, she's definitely not going to be able to walk with this leg for a while. "Thanks a lot, Yang."
Yang just gives a dismissive shrug. "No problem." Then, frowning again, she adds. "Hey, can I ask you something?"
"Uh... sure?" Blake responds with a curious tilt of her head.
"So I'm a little confused about what exactly you are." Yang begins, gesturing to Blake with a flick of her tail. "You seem to be a tom, I saw enough to tell me that much when I was moving you, but..." She pauses to sniff the air, brown nose twitching in a way that Blake finds very cute. "You definitely don't smell like one, you smell like a queen."
Tom? Queen?
Blake takes a minute to digest this information, trying to figure out what Yang is even talking about.
And then it hits her.
She takes a deep inhale of her own scent, her brain instantly registering it as female. Interesting, up until now she's been operating under the assumption that this cat body of hers was fully male.
It seems her being transgender has somehow had an impact on the way her cat form turned out. For some strange reason that makes her feel a bit better about this whole situation, just a little.
She supposes that a queen must be a female cat, then, because she knows a tom is a male one.
"Queen!" Blake answers hastily, definitely not wanting to be seen as male, even by some random stray cat. "I... developed weird." She finishes lamely.
Yang nods, seemingly satisfied with that explanation. "Well, Blake, you're probably feeling pretty hungry-"
"You don't have to feed me." Blake cuts Yang off, shaking her head as she starts to walk forward. "Thanks for helping me out, Yang, but I really should be-"
Forgetting about her injury in that moment, Blake puts far too much pressure on her bad paw, immediately crumpling to the ground with a pained whimper.
"Fuck, are you okay?" Yang quickly rushes over to her side, Blake finding it kind of funny that her brain can translate cat language into human swearing.
"I-I'm fine." Blake assures her, letting out a quiet hiss through clenched teeth as her paw aches more than ever.
"You wait right here, get some rest." Yang says in a gentle tone, turning and beginning to walk away. "I'm gonna catch you something to eat."
Blake opens her mouth to protest, but Yang's already dissappeared out a hole in one of the windows. She huffs, limping her way over to the couch in the corner of the room and jumping up onto it, settling down on a raggedy blanket.
Only minutes after lying down, Blake hears the sound of footsteps coming closer, lifting her head to see a cat approaching her.
A cat that is most certainly not Yang.
"What are you doing in here?" The cat growls, and as they get close Blake realizes that they're a queen. This cat is far more wiry than Yang, with russet colored fur and black spots all over her body, piercing silver eyes narrowed dangerously at Blake.
Blake swallows hard, sitting up and scooting backward, away from her. "I-I... Yang-"
"Yang?" The queen interrupts, looking skeptical. "Yang let you in here?"
Blake nods, greatly disliking how small she is right now. Even this cat, average sized as she is, is big compared to her.
"Oh, Ruby, you're back." Yang say as she pops back in through the window, voice muffled by the dead mouse hanging from her mouth. She makes her way over to the couch, hopping up beside Blake and dropping the dead rodent at her paws. "This is Blake, she-"
"Why have you brought a random cat into our home?" Ruby hisses, turning to Yang with a scowl.
Yang frowns. "She's hurt, see?" She replies, pointing to Blake's injured paw. "There was glass stuck in her paw and I got it out for her."
Ruby shakes her head and lets out an exasperated sigh. "You're always doing stuff like this." She mutters under her breath.
"C'mon, Ruby, she's hurt!" Yang protests, giving her a pleading look. "Just let her stay a few days, please?"
Blake blinks, surprised. She was expecting Yang's kindness to end at a little food and a place to rest for a couple hours, not for Yang to be offering her shelter until she's healed.
"Fine." Ruby finally relents, grumbling quietly to herself as she turns and heads for the stairs leading to the upper floor of the house. "But as soon as she's better, she leaves."
Yang turns to Blake with an apologetic smile. "Sorry about that." She says softly. "Ruby's not usually so harsh, normally she's a lot more chill. Our housemate went missing last week and it's had a real effect on her.
"Missing?" Blake echoes, staring hesitantly down at the dead mouse.
"Yeah, Weiss went out on a hunt alone and never came back." Yang explains, a worried expression appearing on her face. "She's occasionally been gone a couple days at a time, but never this long, and never without telling us beforehand."
Blake extends a paw in Yang's direction, placing it over the larger cat's own. "Hey, I'm sure Weiss is okay." She tries to reassure her. "What does she look like? Maybe I've seen her around?"
"She's pure white and real fluffy, used to be the housecat of some rich folks." Yang tells her. "And she's got these super pretty blue eyes, though one's a little scarred up, she's blind in it, see?"
That description is uncannily similar to the appearance of the white cat Merlot picked up last week, the cat Blake has been taking blood samples from, the cat that caused her to get into this whole mess in the first place.
If Weiss is indeed that cat, then she really needs to get out of here the instant her injury heals. She really doesn't want to end up on the receiving end of that cat's wrath.
"No, uh, I'm not familiar." Blake mutters, retracting her paw and shaking her head. "Sorry."
"You know, you're doing a whole lot of staring at that mouse, and not a lot of eating." Yang comments, smirking amusedly. "Not hungry?"
Blake's stomach takes that moment to growl loudly, and Yang's smirk only widens. She glances back down at the dead mouse, unsure of how to explain to Yang that she really doesn't want to eat such a thing. "I, uh..."
"Wait... are you a housecat?" Yang questions, raising an eyebrow.
"I-"
"You've never eaten any kind of prey before, have you?" Yang continues, her smirk becoming a full blown grin. "Just that garbage humans give you?"
Blake doesn't know why, but for some reason she feels embarrassed now, her ears going flat and her cheeks growing warm. She decides to play along, though, it'll be easier to explain why she's inexperienced with certain cat things if Yang thinks she's a pet.
So she nods.
Yang laughs loudly and pushes the mouse toward her. "You really gotta try it." She insists, still grinning. "You haven't lived if you've never tasted a fresh kill."
Blake reaches out a tentative paw and drags the mouse closer, her stomach aching with hunger now. She really doesn't want to do this, but if she's going to be stuck as a cat for the indeterminate future, she's going to have to learn to suck it up and learn to live like one.
Grimacing and shutting her eyes tightly, Blake lowers her head and sinks her teeth into the mouse, unwilling to look at the thing as she tears a piece of meat from its flank.
She chews slowly, waiting for disgust to set in.
It's... good?
The mouse is warm and tender and surprisingly juicy, and before Blake knows it she's swallowing her mouthful of meat and taking another bite.
She's not supposed to enjoy this, she shouldn't be enjoying this at all, but she is. It shouldn't be so surprising considering she's a cat now, but the fact that she's eating a raw, dead mouse and finding it tasty is beyond absurd to Blake.
Within minutes, she's cleaned every scrap of meat off the mouse's bones, licking her chops clean and feeling very satisfied.
"Told you." Yang chuckles, reminding Blake that the other cat is still there. "You enjoy that?"
Blake nods quickly. "Yeah, that was good." She mumbles, again feeling a little embarrassed. "I didn't expect to like that."
"That's what they all say." Yang purrs, looking very smug. "You housecats are always so picky about what you eat, but as soon as you taste your first prey you're hooked."
"Mhm." Blake hums, yawning widely as she leans forward, resting her chin on top of her paws. "I'm gonna take a nap."
"Alright, well, if you wake up and need anything to eat, just holler. I'll be upstairs." Yang says, giving her a kind smile before turning and jumping off the couch.
"Thanks, Yang." Blake mumbles, closing her eyes. She's so exhausted by everything that's happened today that she falls asleep almost instantly.