Chapter Text
It felt like nothing.
So insignificant he hardly noticed it. A single pinprick in the side of his neck delivered mid flash step.
At the time Uryū didn’t even register it, more occupied by finding himself once again facing Kurotsuchi. Glaring daggers at the monster that was so apparent, hating the way the slimy smile spread across his face.
“I would continue the banter, but I feel no need,” he said casually, holding up his hand with the grotesquely long fingernail to examine it.
“I’m going to make you pay for what you did,” he growled back, bow firmly in his grasp. Revenge was presenting itself on a platter, which meant the fact that Kurotsuchi was a fully-fledged shinigami captain had eluded Uryū’s mind, red with rage as it was. Only notions of pride and revenge and his own ego that had suddenly doubled in size remained.
He gathered as much reishi as he could into an arrow, dense and shimmering with explosive power. Maybe I should take off my glove. If not against him, who else? The thought was tempting, but he wanted to test the waters first with a normal arrow before taking the dive.
He raised the bow and pulled the drawstring back to his cheek, making absolute certain that Kurotsuchi was within his cite. In his determination the odd fact that Kurotsuchi wasn’t moving an inch didn’t register. There was only him, and the arrow, and he let fire with a sense of fulfilled satisfaction.
The instant the arrow left his bow, Uryū felt an odd sensation in its wake. It was a strange mixture between exhaustion and heaviness, as if someone had thrown a weighted blanket over him. It took all he had in him to watch the arrow fly true to its target. Or, rather, wobble and dissolve into reishi two meters from Kurotsuchi’s face.
“Aren’t you adorable? You’re the cutest of all the quincies I’ve met. So innocent and sweet.” Uryū trembled with rage at the words, and took a step forward with his bow still in hand. There was still time to turn the shinigami into a pincushion, after all. Quickly he gathered a second arrow and let it fly, only this one didn’t even make it halfway.
A buzzing feeling began to creep into Uryū’s head after letting it loose, making it difficult to think straight. He felt tired, yet at the same time adrenaline was keeping him as far from tired as he’d ever been.
“How are you feeling, little quincy?” Kurotsuchi was pinning him with a gaze that made him feel like he was under a microscope. “Have you perhaps lost your aim?”
“My aim is fine,” Uryū growled, fighting against the rising static inside himself. A third arrow…he tried to pull a third arrow from the air but all that met his fingertips was blue sparks.
“I’m afraid it won’t be for long,” Kurotsuchi sing-songed. “As a matter of fact, it’s a miracle you’re still holding your bow at all.”
“What…did you do to me?” Spitting the question out through gritted teeth, he tried again to form a third arrow. There was far from a shortage of reishi, but none of it seemed to want to respond. It felt like desperate clawing to form the third arrow, but Uryū had to fire it. Kurotsuchi was just standing there, taunting him, not even bothering to fight back as if he wasn’t even worth the effort. He needed an arrow directly in that insufferable face of his, and Uryū was determined to be the one to amend that need.
The third arrow fizzled out as soon as it left his bow, and it felt as if it took a part of him with it.
“Three arrows, hmm? I must admit I expected better. But no matter. I supposed that just means that the serum is taking effect. As such, I have no more reason left to worry. I will watch, of course. Nemu! Bring me my journal so I can document the process.”
With a quick nod his lieutenant skittered off, leaving the words rolling around inside Uryū’s head.
“What…process,” he said slowly, feeling the strange heaviness in his body intensify. “What did you…do to me?”
“Oh, well it’s no fun to spoil things, now is it? You’ll just have to wait and see. I’ll simply say that I’ve been waiting for a long time to find just the right quincy to try this particular serum on.”
Serum…Uryū’s mind would have been racing if it didn’t feel like it was filled with sawdust. He was still thinking normally, only the process of thoughts had slowed down to half speed.
“So…are you going to attack me?”
“Attack you? Dear boy, don’t be so foolish. There’s no need to attack you. You’re an experiment, now, and I couldn’t bear to damage you. I shall simply watch.”
As much as he knew it was unwise, Uryū lowered his bow down to his side. He let his left fingers wander up to where he had felt the tiny pinch, feeling a hard unyielding lump having taken up residence. He wasn’t sure exactly what it was he’d been injected with but from look of glee on Kurotsuchi’s face he knew it wasn’t good. Something lethal, perhaps, or something that would erode away all his reiatsu until there was nothing left but a dull, soulless shell.
The cloud in his head had cleared slightly, allowing him to at least attempt to process what was going on. What little he knew about it. Two steps backward, not daring to take his eyes off Kurotsuchi. Three. There had to be a way out. Maybe all the serum was supposed to do was knock him out for a little while. Or dull his instincts.
The first thing, aside from the fog that had now completely dissipated for some reason unknown to him, that Uryū noticed being wrong was the itching, burning sensation at the point of entry. His hand went up to meet it again, wondering if the swelling had gotten worse. It had, but what was rather more pressing was what was covering the lump. Not just skin, but a strange coarse hair that seemed confined just to the single patch. The hair on his head was thick, to be certain, but it didn’t feel like this. It took him a bit to realize that it wasn’t hair at all, but fur.
His heart began pounding in his chest. “What have you done to me?”
Kurotsuchi didn’t answer, except to clap his hands together in glee. “Ah, has it started? How delightful. Come closer, let me see.”
Uryū took two more steps backward instead, trying to ignore how his legs felt like jelly. Why is there fur on my neck? It made no sense.
Kurotsuchi was taking it upon himself to close the distance, long curious strides in Uryū’s direction. “Come on now, little one. I’m not going to hurt you. I just want to watch you transform.” He smiled, flashing yellowed teeth in the midst of jet-black face makeup.
“You stay away from me, you creep,” he panted, pulling his hand away from his arm and hoisting up his bow again. It had begun to flicker, a bad sign to be certain, but that didn’t matter to him right then. All that did matter was that he formed an arrow and sent it through the man’s skull as fast as possible.
“You’re not going to get very far with that,” he sang. “You couldn’t even fire a proper arrow before the transformation had taken hold. Now, well, it’s an absolute wonder that you’re even managing to hold it. I must make note of that.”
“I’m not transforming,” Uryū said through gritted teeth as he felt his cheeks begin to prickle like someone had begun to use them as a pincushion. With a fleeting feeling of guilt towards his own pincushions back in the living world, he made to fire another arrow only to stop as his bow suddenly flickered out of existence.
Uryū let out a yelp of surprise and frantically grabbed at his cross again and again in hopes of being able to resummon his weapon, but to no avail.
“No shame in that, sweeting. You held out a long time, but transformations and active quincy powers do not mix! I had to make sure they faded before the actual changes begun. Ah, and they’re here, aren’t they? So fascinating.”
With no bow to focus on, Uryū was now left painfully aware of the prickling in his cheeks. It had mostly subsided, but there was still an unmistakeable presence of something that did not belong there. Out of focus underneath the lenses of his glasses, he thought he saw strange, long hairs move and twitch slightly in the bottom of his peripheral vision. Uncertainly he raised his hands up to his face and got hit with double sensations, both from his fingertips and from the hairs that had grown from his cheeks.
None of the rebuttals that came to his mind left his mouth. There was only shock and confusion, the inability to understand why he suddenly had a host of soft and sensitive whiskers growing from his cheeks. The surprise was so great that it almost distracted him from the itching sensation coming from the injection site that slowly begun to spread downwards to his shoulder and torso.
“Ahh, is your fur spreading, now? Let me see. Come on, now.” Kurotsuchi walked closer, clicking his tongue in the fashion of one trying to coax out a scared animal, and it was the last straw. Uryū turned and bolted, forcing every one of the aching and sore bones in his body to press onwards, anywhere so long as it meant he was far away from the psychotic shinigami.
At the end of the street he’d been running down he hung a left, noticing that the walls seemed higher than he remembered but quickly shoving the thought out of his mind. The burning feeling he now recognized as fur covered his entire left shoulder and had spread down the front of his chest, now rubbing against the cloth of his white uniform. He knew it was foolish, but he told himself that if he couldn’t see the fur that meant it wasn’t there, even if the feeling was all too crisp and the sound of fur-against-cotton was audible to his suddenly sensitive ears.
Running hurt more than usual. While Uryū was far from a particularly athletic individual, regular hollow-hunting had kept his stamina respectable. Yet somehow this run felt like it was taking everything out of him, more tiring than the aftermath of any battle he had ever fought. His bones were aching and doing something else that felt eerily like compressing, the next turn Uryū made making the walls seem even higher again. Had he possessed even a shred less will he would have stopped right there, given up the chase and let Kurotsuchi keep up with him as he felt the fur slowly creep across his torso and his tailbone begin to burn like hot irons had been applied directly to it. But the pain didn’t let up, and by the time he made the next turn down a small dim alleyway he gave in and leaned against the wall, letting himself catch his breath as he took stock of the situation.
While his whole body was aching, the biggest center of the pain at the moment was his spine, which felt like it was being stretched out on some sort of mediæval European torture rack. He let himself massage his tailbone, hoping to relieve at least some of the tension. The back and forth motion of his hand along his spine was made strange by the unmistakeable feeling of shaggy fur that was there, shifting and moving with his touch. His other hand held him steady up against the wall, and he couldn’t help but notice that his shirt cuff was now dwarfing his hand. Feeling himself fill with panic at the sudden idea he’d been prancing around Seireitei in an ill-fitting tunic (even though he was certain the measurements had been perfect) he looked down and saw the white fabric was now hanging sloppily off a frame that was now the size he had been five years ago.
Not wanting to look any more at how much his previously stately and proud look had fallen apart, Uryū leaned further into the wall, taking deep breaths and trying to ignore how his whiskers brushed up against its surface and told him how it felt.
His rest didn’t last for long, however. The presence of Kurotsuchi’s reiatsu flared into proximity, reminding him of the urgency of the situation. He turned and ran back down the main street as fast as he could while his spine was stretching and lengthening and starting to brush against the seat of his nice, crisp homemade white quincy pants.
Another fork was in sight as he felt Kurotsuchi turn onto the same street, a presence of urgency urging Uryū onwards. The hems of his pants had gotten too long and his boots were starting to flop off his feet, so he kicked them off with only a minimal pang of regret. (They were his favourite pair of boots, and he should have known better than to wear them here. It wasn’t as if any shinigami would appreciate the fashion choice.) He didn’t have time to roll up his pants, though, so he kicked out his legs mid-run in a way that he hoped meant the fabric wouldn’t catch on his toes. The cold stone felt strange against his feet but he didn’t have time to analyze the way his toes felt like they were shrinking. There was no time, really.
Not even when he rounded the corner and his pants promptly fell down, his form too slight to hold them up any longer. Uryū looked down, afraid of the sudden exposure, only to see that his tunic now fell down to his knees. His bare toes had shrunk into nubs just sticking out of his foot, which had also narrowed significantly. Slight tufts of long black-tipped white fur had begun to sprout from the remnants of his toes and as he watched tiny black claws slipped their way free and scritched against the stone.
He may have been accustomed to sights that others would consider astonishing, but Uryū drew the line somewhere: and that line was apparently at seeing his feet transform into paws. Shock had frozen his mind as he reached backwards again to find a fluffy tail meet his grasp, soft and feathery and very much connected to the end of his spine. Despite his burgeoning horror at its appearance, the fur was rather nice to comb his fingers through.
Even though they’d never been allowed in the Ishida mansion, Uryū had always been fond of cats and their expressiveness. That didn’t mean he appreciated a mad scientist shinigami injecting him with a serum to turn him into one, of course, but the way things had gone he no longer had a say in the matter.
Leaving his tail be Uryū lifted his hand back up, watching as his palm shrank and darkened. The change was both nauseating and eerily fascinating, his dominant hand withering away into a paw, fingers retreating to complete the process. The same black-tipped white fur began to grow from the back of his hand, and rising panic at losing his ability to fight back (even if he’d really lost it the instant Kurotsuchi had injected him with whatever it had been) crashed over his mind.
“Here, little kitten. Don’t run away from me so much next time, hmm? I just want to see how the process ends up. Scientific interest. You wouldn’t deny a scholar his research, now would you, kitten?”
Fear overrode everything Uryū was feeling, even the agonizing snapping and stretching feeling in his heels. No longer concerned about anything but running he took off down the left fork, feeling Kurotsuchi’s reiatsu gaining on him with his new tinier stride. At some point his heel had travelled up his leg and he’d begun running on his toes, claws he didn’t have time to try and sheathe clicking on the stone. His bones were hurting too much, hips screaming and creaking and making snapping noises he could hear, but he couldn’t let up. He had to keep running. He couldn’t let Kurotsuchi reach him.
Only he was, reiatsu so close now it was overwhelming.
In his haste and pain Uryū tripped and only just caught himself. One hand, one paw.
Kurotsuchi—he’s so close. I need to get up. Mustering his remaining strength Uryū pushed himself back up onto his legs, only to find that he fell immediately back again onto all fours.
No! No, no—this can’t be right. He tried a second time before he came to the horrifying realization that his hips had changed position so that he couldn’t walk upright again. Uryū was left there, half quincy half feline, on all fours: panting and his heart pounding in his chest as he was cornered.
“There you are, little kitten,” Mayuri said with his warped voice. Fear had temporarily frozen Uryū still, but his mind was still working on ways to escape. He’d shrunk more, now, to the point where he was hardly much larger than an actual cat. His ears had begun burning, tugging slightly upwards, but that was nothing compared to the horror of being forced into a seemingly permanent quadrupedal stance.
“You’re moving fast, aren’t you? I hadn’t known how quickly the transformation would have worked. It was supposed to trigger a response in one’s individual reiatsu stores and change them…and it seems that you, little quincy, are rather more feline than you might have expected. However to me it makes you a delightful—”
Not wanting to hear how Kurotsuchi intended on ending that sentence Uryū backed out of his tunic and took off, stumbling on all fours with one hand still untransformed and scraping against the hard stone. The only thing keeping him upright was his tail, arched behind him in a desperate attempt at balance that came alarmingly naturally to him. His left arm was now completely covered in fur, as was the entirety of his torso and back legs. In his hurry, and the changing of his ears, he’d left his glasses somewhere back behind the pile of clothes, but the initial blurriness was rapidly diminishing as the shapes around him shifted, allowing him to stumble his way into another alley and cling to the shadows, whiskers rubbing up against the wall as his mouth began to protrude into a small muzzle, changing to accomodate his newly sharpening teeth.
As painful as that was, the forming of his final paw was what forced him to stop. His right arm—foreleg—was now the only part of him that wasn’t covered in fur, and he looked down with a sinking feeling and watched in a foreign yet eerily comfortable sitting position as his fingers broke and shrank, fur beginning to grow in tufts along the bare skin.
Look at me now. Ryūken wouldn’t even let me in the house, he couldn’t help but think wryly. To think that the strict no-animals policy at his house would apply to him was strange, but there was little chance that anyone could look past this long coat of fur and see his true identity underneath, let alone his distant father.
A sad, pathetic mewl escaped Uryū’s mouth, and if he was still able to he would have cringed. Kurotsuchi seemed to have left him alone, satisfied with whatever it was he had seen. All that was left of his old self was, inexplicably, his quincy cross, which had been caught on the growing fur on his shoulder. Gently, with his claws and teeth nudging it free, he unstuck it and put his head through it like a collar. He considered crying for help, and even tried, but his vocal cords had been ruined. All that came out was pathetic mewling.