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Paws. Jason had fucking paws. And was that a tail??
"Neal?" The voice sounded strange to his new ears. Also, he could smell a weird mixture of cues. Was that… fear? Could he smell fear?!?
Fuck. Why couldn't it have been Dick's turn to be Neal? He knew for a fact that the jerk had been transformed into an animal before. Especially when he'd been off playing with the Teen Titans. Dick probably would have taken it in stride after a few moments of disorientation.
"Test successful. I hope you're taking notes." Someone, different from the someone who had said his alias earlier noted.
"What did you do to him???" The familiar voice exclaimed. Oh. That was probably Peter. Peter had been with him, right?
Peter, Jason as Neal was going to just assume it was Peter until proven otherwise, was ignored. Jason wiggled his body, trying to get a sense of it. He was small, and everything was a bit blurry. He could still blink, thankfully. His feet felt overlong, just like his ears. His nose twitched as more smells from the surrounding room entered it. They were not as recognizable to him as they had been beforehand, likely due to the change in biology. Instead, he was recognizing things as "danger, familiar, healing, etc." Was this how Cass saw the world? She said emotions were easier to understand…
"Take the specimen to storage. We'll list it for sale, and it can stay there until it's bought."
Jason saw feet approaching him from the side and managed to move so that he was on his new feet. New paws. Fuck.
Jason leapt, and went much farther than expected and crashed into something he couldn't quite make out. A squeak escaped. Aw crap. He sounded adorable. He shook his head and climbed to his… paws… again. Now that he had a better of idea of the distance, he could aim better.
The footsteps approached again, alongside a cacophony, and a set of gloved hands caught Jason when he leapt away. Jason sneezed. That sounded cute too. He wiggled in the hands and opened his mouth to bite down on the thumb. A howl sounded when he succeeded and Jason went flying as the human shook him off by reflex. Someone lunged for him but another leap let him clear them. He tried to get a sense of his surroundings with his new senses so he could find the exit, but the brief pause was enough to see something come down on top of him. A box? A bucket? It was plastic. He could somehow smell that. Undeterred, Jason backed up and did a flying leap against the side to try to flip his trap. A weight slammed down on the box before he could slip out.
Curses came out as squeaky hisses as well, unfortunately. What the fuck had they turned him into? The box was muffling sounds, but not enough.
"-should be a dose of the tranquilizer along with a dose to weight chart. I'd estimate it at about 4 to 5 pounds. Not the smallest but not the largest either. We can get a more exact weight once it's out." One of the strangers was saying.
"Leave him alone, you psychos!" Peter yelled.
Peter was ignored. Again.
"Don't forget to take the after photos. The buyers will want both those and the before pictures so they know what they're getting into."
"Found it! Right where you said it would be."
Jason tried knocking into the box again, even with the weight. It didn't budge. Granted, if he really was only four pounds, he shouldn't have expected otherwise. He screamed his frustration. Oh good. He could scream.
The weight on top of the box shifted and Jason readied another leap, lowering his head to try to use that as a battering ram. This would probably hurt, but he might just bounce off of it. He leapt as the box was unexpectedly lifted, clipping the edge of the trap on his way out. The hit knocked him off course and off balance and he was grabbed before he could recover or even land fully. Jason's new form was lifted off the ground and clutched painfully tight. He hissed and struggled. He stilled when he saw a dripping needle coming before shifting into full struggle gear.
It was no use. The needle pierced his skin and moving just saw it making the wound larger. What felt like a lot of liquid flowed into him even as Jason knew it was only a little liquid. The injection saw it kicking in fast, his struggles slowing until he couldn't move much at all. He wasn't unconscious though. At least not fully. His captors weren't that kind. A paralytic. Scarier honestly. His whole body felt numb and his heart felt much faster than his human one.
The strangers weighed Jason. He was now 4 lbs and 3.5 ounces. His fur, because he had fur instead of hair now, was a dark brown, nearly black. His eyes had remained the same color, a teal that leaned towards blue on good days and green on bad days. They exclaimed surprise about the streaks of white and red he had throughout his fur. They pulled his limp body into a stretch that measured at 15 and 3/8 inches. Then, they fastened a collar around Jason's neck. As if that wasn't enough, they placed him in a small area surrounded by lights and filled with things that were way too large now, like grass and stuffed animals, before taking a bunch of pictures. When finished, Jason was shoved into a cage that felt both too big and too small. He couldn't move, so was forced to stay in the position he was left in. Then, the cage was picked up and carried out of the room, Peter calling after them.
The new room Jason's cage was carried to was filled with similar cages filled with various pets ranging from birds with strings tied to their legs and around their beaks, to cats, to dogs, to even one iguana. That was all he was able to identify in the journey to a spot on a shelf. The lights in the room must have been motion activated, as no switch had been flipped, and the lights turned off not long after the human left.
Well… hopefully the Harvard Crew or his family could figure out what happened and save him. This was just plain embarrassing. Seriously, why couldn't it have been Dick's shift?