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“WAH!” Puqi heard the yell of alarm from all the way across the base, in the potions center. They couldn’t get over there fast enough, needing to help, especially if there was an attack. When they made it there, however, it turned out that there wasn’t a fight at all. Nezo was just standing there in the middle of the room, next to a counter and holding a… cat? He held it at arms length, with good reason presumably, Puqi could hear it growling from all the way over where she stood in the doorway. It was pure black and pretty small, though it was definitely still bigger than a kitten. It had one white eye with a scratch through it, reminiscent of one of their other teammates. She wonders if it belonged to him.
That’s not the question she asks though. “Nezo, why are you holding a cat?”
“Well, uh…” Nezo looks directly into the cat’s eye a bit wearily, and it growls at him again, though it doesn’t look very threatening to Puqi right now. It is currently dangling from his arms, after all. “Alright fine, I’ll tell them.” He says to it, and turns his attention back to Puqi. “So, this isn’t supposed to be a cat. A potion went wrong and kinda did this to him, so… uh.”
“Well if it’s not supposed to be a cat what’s it supposed to be?” They ask, crossing their arms at their monochrome friend. He seemed to not want to answer, but the cat glares at him with such intense pressure he caves anyway.
“Mugm.” He mutters, looking away from both her and the cat.
“What was that?”
He answers louder this time, turning back to look her in the eye again. “It’s Mugm. It’s supposed to be Mugm.” Oh. Well that’s a twist.
“Guess that explains why he’s so angry.” Puqi comments, looking at what was apparently Mugm, the void’s new tail swishing in what is so obviously annoyance.
“If I put you down, do you promise not to jump on my face again?” Nezo asks him, addressing their cat-ified friend. Mugm narrows his eye, but he relents, not wanting to be airborne anymore. He twists away from Nezo as soon as they set his paws on the counter next to them and settles down a little ways out of reach. Puqi moves up to the counter to get a closer look at him. He’s still very obviously a voidling, though his skin has changed to fur. His paws are more petite than she would’ve expected, though she suspects they hold some of the sharpest claws ever belonging to a cat. Surprisingly, she can see his mouth, which glows ivory like his eye. His little nose blends in with his fur, and his horns have been replaced with fluffy cat ears. He looks thoroughly pissed. Though, with his resting bitch face it was hard to tell sometimes if that was actually how he felt -at least this time she could be pretty sure it was, with how he’d been growling at Nezo.
“Can you still talk, Mugm?” She asks suddenly, kneeling down a little to be eye level with the void cat. She raises her hand as if to touch him, and she gets a hiss in response when she comes too close, his tail whipping violently. She drops her hand. “Guess not.” Then, turning back to Nezo, she asks, “what do we do with him?”
The monochrome creature next to her thinks for a moment, shrugging after a bit. “I’m not sure. We can’t exactly leave him alone though, he’s more vulnerable in this form.” Mugm’s ear twitches back whilst he glares at Nezo for that comment, as if he’s saying ‘Bitch, I can handle myself’. Nezo does not look amused.
“We could stick him in something so we know where he is?” Puqi suggests with a shrug. Mugm actually meows at that for the first time, loudly. She thinks he’s offended by that idea.
“I think I have a pet carrier somewhere that I got for Pip. He never needed it. It should be big enough to plop that one in.” Nezo responds, ignoring Mugm’s yelling, which only increases as they actually consider this.
“Do you know where it is?” Puqi asks, joining in ignoring Mugm’s protests.
“It should be somewhere in my room, I think I can find it if I tried hard enough.” Okay, the persistent meowing was getting annoying now.
“Shut up, Mugm.” Puqi comments before responding to Nezo. She boops him on the nose when she says it without thinking, and continues talking. “I think I can probably get a blanket or something to cushion it if it needs that.” She says, and then realizes Nezo is actively trying to refrain from laughter. “What’s so funny?”
“I think you broke him.” Nezo says with a smile in his voice, pointing to the cat on the counter. Puqi looks over, and finds that Mugm looks the most surprised she thinks a cat can get. He honestly does look like a windows error has occurred in his brain. She can’t help but giggle a little at his expression.
“Mugm?” She taps his ear, which is astonishingly soft considering he’s made out of literally nothing. He seems to come back to himself after that, growling at her for touching him.
“Also, yes.” Nezo says then, continuing their conversation. “Blankets would be good.” With that decision made, Nezo goes to their room to find the carrier he was talking about, and Puqi stares directly at Mugm for a moment before she leaves too, her gaze threatening him not to move. His ears went back when she did that, and they stared at each other for a moment before he -probably very begrudgingly- curled his paws under his body, settling down to show her he wouldn’t move.
When the two of them get back, he’s still loafed, his eye closed in what very well might be contentment, but probably isn’t.
His eye opens again when they set down the carrier Nezo had grabbed, a pretty boxy thing that was actually not as bulky as you would expect for a pet carrier. They arrange the blankets inside to cover the bottom of the case -which is clear, so they can see what they’re doing relatively well- but when it comes time to get the cat himself, he begins to growl again. Puqi takes it upon herself to brave his floofy wrath, trying to grab him even as he wriggles away. She ends up chasing him all around the room with Nezo, and they’re both glad he can’t reach the button for the door. “Got him!” Nezo eventually shouts, coming out of the storage area with a scruffed and angry cat in their arms.
Mugm mrows pitifully when they shove him into the carrier and close the door of it, and he shakes himself off as soon as he’s free of being scruffed. His fur is ruffled, and he flattens himself as close to the bottom of the case as he can, still whining about being stuck inside it. He doesn’t shut up as Puqi and Nezo clean up the remnants of the chase, his plaintive meows almost enough to make them feel bad about stuffing him in there. Almost. Puqi knew if he was able to run around, they would lose him in about five seconds.
“Well, now that that’s taken care of,” Puqi says when the she and Nezo come back together by the counter. Mugm’s complaints at being in the case have died down a little, and even if they hadn’t they’d been happening for at least five minutes straight. They’d become background noise at this point. “We need to find some way to fix him. I don’t think he wants to be a cat, and though he’s cute I don’t think it’s a good idea to keep him like this either.”
“Yeah,” Nezo responds, “but I don’t know who would have any idea how to change him back. Maybe an admin would, but I’m not even sure about that! I don’t even know what went wrong with the potion.”
“We can start with what happened. Cmon, I’ll make some tea or something.” Puqi grabs the carrier they’d put their friend in and heads to the main room, setting him down on the couch and heading off to make some tea as she said she would. It takes a moment for her to realize Mugm had given up the meowing. His voice probably hurt from the nonstop yelling, especially since he was normally pretty quiet. When she looked at him in the carrier, he actually looked kind of depressed, obviously hating every moment of being cooped up in the glorified cage. She did feel a little bad, but again, it was for his own good. If they didn’t know where he was they couldn’t make sure he was safe. He was still entirely black, and he was much smaller and easier to lose now. Plus he couldn’t talk or type on his communicator, especially since they didn’t even know where it was.
It didn’t really matter now, they had to find some way to turn him back to normal. He could be mad at them for this all he wanted after that. Puqi only hoped that fixing him was possible to achieve.
-~-
It turned out that Pro had heard a bit about some witch that knew about this kind of thing, and Nezo had gone out to see if he could find out more about her. Silva had come home a bit before they had left, and the two of them had explained what happened to him. He’d gone with Nezo as protection. So now it was just Puqi and their cat-ified friend, who hadn’t moved much at all since being shoved in the carrier. In fact, he’d done so little that she actually forgot he was right next to her.
That’s why it was such a surprise when she heard a loud but short meow from her right. When she turned to look at him, Mugm was sitting up in the case, his paws pressed against the clear plastic. He was looking at her with something akin to a pleading gaze. He meowed again, still sounding just as pathetic as he had been before. “What?” Puqi asked him, even though she knows he can’t actually tell her what’s wrong. He certainly tries though.
He meows twice more, pawing at the hard plastic between them, trying to convey something. “I’m not letting you out.” She says, knowing he probably still wants to be free. He only continues to meow at her, as though she’ll relent if he yells his head off. She sighs. “It’s for your own good that you’re in there, Mugm. Just accept it.” She goes back to what she was doing, researching potions as thoroughly as possible. Nezo had told her what happened, they were brewing strength and speed potions for the team’s stock, and something went wrong -Nezo thought something accidentally got knocked into the brewing stand- because a batch came out violet instead of orange or cyan like they were supposed to. And then he said he’d accidentally knocked one of the messed up potions off the table and it broke at Mugm’s feet. It was a splash potion, so it affected him. And that’s how he got turned into a cat. So, she was looking at anything that might be helpful to figure out what went wrong, looking through ingredients and how they reacted with different potions, among other things. She tuned out Mugm as she got back to it, trying to focus on finding what had happened.
Mugm, on the other hand, kept yelling, trying to get her to realize what he was asking for. When he’d been changed into a cat, for some reason he’d lost access to his inventory. And he was stuck inside this carrier she and Nezo had stuffed him in. It was frustrating that he couldn’t tell her what was wrong. His vocal chords couldn’t get out actual english in this form. He couldn’t tell her he was hungry. He couldn’t tell her his neck still ached from being grabbed earlier. She just thought he wanted to run away. He didn’t! He knew he was hard to find on a normal day, and if he hurt himself as a cat and couldn’t be found, he could lose one of his lives for it! It would be stupid to run away! But he couldn’t possibly tell her that, and even if he could he wasn’t sure if she’d believe him. People often would say anything to get out of doing something they didn’t want to do.
But he was hungry. He hadn’t actually eaten anything all day, and the stress of being a cat on top of that, with everything so much bigger to him now, didn’t help! He was starving, and he couldn’t access any of what he’d had on hand. He didn’t know if he could physically cry as a cat, but he felt like he was very close to doing so, feline or not. And Puqi not listening to him only heightened that feeling, the sensation of helplessness. He couldn’t get out of the carrier on his own, that was the point of it. Even if he could, he doesn’t think he could reach anything in the kitchen.
His meowing was to no avail, Puqi didn’t so much as look back in his direction. She was ignoring him. After realizing it was futile, he simply gave up, not knowing what to do. Whimpering a little, he curls back on the floor of the stupid case, covering his face with his fluffy tail. There’s no point in using his voice if he’s not understood. He’d learned that lesson long before he lost the ability to speak.
Puqi finds nothing of use in the book she’d been looking through, and she puts her head in her hands, defeated. Why is this so hard? It wasn’t fun to feel like she could do nothing of use. She can’t help Mugm with any of this. She’s not good at pvp, she’s apparently not good at figuring out what to do in bad situations like she thought she was. She’s a failure. She feels useless.
Puqi looks over at the voidling cat stuck in the case, thinking of all his heartbreaking yowling. It can’t be comfortable to be thrust into being something you’re not like he has. She feels bad. She knows she can’t help him. Not truly. But she can make him more comfortable.
Before she can really think about how potentially dangerous it is to do what she’s doing now, she’s turned the carrier so the door of it faces her and unlatched the bars. “Mugm.” She says, attempting to get his attention. His tail covers his face, so she can’t tell if he’s awake or not, but the door to the case is open now. She’s got to apologize for the inconvenience of its walls. She was the one who had the idea to put him in there, after all.
Mugm lifts his tail a little to reveal part of his eye, gazing at her warily from behind his fluff. He doesn’t seem to realize the door is open. “Come here.” She tells him, “it’s open.” Hearing that, he does straighten up a little, but he doesn’t actually move any closer. Maybe he doesn’t believe her. “Come on.” Puqi holds a hand out, trying to coax him out. He looks at the open door of the carrier, and back at her, a question in his visible eye. She gestures for him to come closer again. Hesitantly, he gets up and slinks over, stopping just inside the case. Puqi doesn’t think he believes she’s not going to stuff him right back inside. He makes a sound of surprise when she does the exact opposite, carefully dragging him in all his fluffy glory out of the pet carrier and plopping him on her lap instead. “I’m sorry.” She says, petting his disturbed fur back down. “For all of this. You don’t deserve to be cooped up in there all the time. That was a bad idea, I’m sorry.” She averts her eyes, but she can feel his gaze still on her. She only looks back at him when she feels him headbutt her hand. He’s forgiving her. Huh.
Much to her surprise, he settles down right there on her lap, letting her pet his soft pitch-black fur. She moves the carrier off the couch to make room for him, but he doesn’t get off her lap. He re-hides his face, with his paw this time, and presumably goes to sleep.
Or so she thinks. She doesn’t think that for long though, as he shifts position multiple times. At first she believes he’s just getting comfortable, but that’s thrown out the window when he starts to paw at her arm. “Yes?” She asks, getting a meow in response. It’s still pitiful, and his persistent pawing doesn’t bode well either. What could he want if he hadn’t been doing that for her to let him out? She realizes then that she’s never seen if Mugm eats or drinks anything outside of fights. She doesn’t even know if he has to. She was about to ask when the last time he ate was, before realizing he can’t talk. Instead she asks an easier question. “Have you eaten today, Mugm?” He shakes his head in response, his pawing dying down as if she’s found the problem. She doesn’t question why he hasn’t eaten from his inventory yet, only checking her own to see what she has. She has apples, but she doubts he could eat those right now. The only other edible thing she had was golden carrots, which she also doesn’t think would be suitable.
So, with nothing good enough with her presently, she simply scoops him off her lap, bringing him with her to the kitchen and setting him down on the counter when she got there. He watches curiously as she gets out some ingredients: a bowl, a couple mushrooms, and a flower. In a few minutes, she’s whipped up a saturation-filled suspicious stew and sets it in front of him. He sniffs it experimentally before inching forward, tasting the contents of the bowl. He looks at her, and Puqi pretends to look away, not wanting him to refuse to eat just because she was watching. Out of the corner of her eye, she sees him attempt to eat it and fail a couple times before he figures out how to use his tongue and begins to actually lap it up. She knows he’s done when a meow calls her attention back to him. He hops off the counter, looking back at her to make sure she follows before he starts off back to the common room. He looks back to make sure she’s still there multiple times along the way, and as she sits back down on the couch he uses the carrier as a stepping stool so he doesn’t have to jump as high. He settles back in her lap, loafing on her as any other cat would do. He certainly seems happier now, and Puqi realizes that this entire time he was never going to run off. He was careful not to lose her the entire walk back over here. She had worried and put him in that stupid case for nothing. She considers apologizing for that again, but considering he’s already nestled himself in her lap, she figures she doesn’t need to. The important thing is to get him back to normal, and to take care of him in the meantime.
So, Puqi vows to herself that she will be a better friend, and do her best to help him with what she had until they could fix whatever had done this to him. She hopes the other two will promise the same. Maybe this wouldn’t be so bad after all.
And of course, they technically had a cat now. That was good for team morale, wasn’t it?