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Transformed into a Bull

Part one of three

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Written by Arian Mabe (Amethyst Mare)

Commissioned by Thebodyswapeur

_ _

_ _

Leo cursed under his breath, tipping in closer to his computer screen, even though that wasn't going to help him win his League of Legends Bout any more than anything else. His fingers mashed the custom controller that he'd had designed with his choice of artwork, ergonomically designed for his grip, but it still didn't do any good. His blond hair, streaked with darker highlights, flopped down over his eyes and he muttered more and more loudly in the otherwise dark bedroom as he tried his best.

“Come on, Jinx, damn it!"

But it was no good, not even as the wildcard of a character danced about the screen, swapping from one gun to the other. He just couldn't get past the bull's brute force! Alistar… Even the name in his mind left a sour taste in the back of his mouth as if Leo had said it aloud, twisting his lips together as he clenched his jaw.

“Bloody bull… Damn it!"

He swore, tossing the controller aside, though he was not the kind of gamer to destroy things, even in a fit of frustration. Jinx sprawled out on the screen, KO'd, and he shook his head, eyeing up the final power poses of Alistar with a distinct sense of distaste, lips twisted as if there was a foul smell in front of his nose.

Who could even like the champion, Alistar? He was such a useless character! Totally overpowered in a way that didn't even make him fun to play against, the kind of champion that players that weren't any good at their game chose. He could have played with him too, of course, and chosen him as his playable champion for his matches, but the character was just so heavy to control, too big and too clumsy for him. It was like manoeuvring a sack of spuds around the screen, wanting to force the issue with the joysticks.

“What a stupid mountain of muscle…" He grunted under his breath, shaking his head. “So dumb… I mean, it even looks like a fucking beast!"

He tried again. And again. And again. But, every time, even when he swapped his champion for another, he still failed. One KO after the other plagued him, as if he was nothing more than a newbie at the game, even though he would have more than said he was an old hand at it. The bedroom was cast into darkness with blackout blinds, even though the hour was late, soft lighting around the computer screens for atmosphere, though it did not soothe him at all, not even with the familiar clasp of the headset in place around his ears.

“Damn it… God fucking damn it!"

One too many times of being killed by Alistar and his ADC had him biting his tongue, swearing, though it was not enough. Any other character would have been fine, but Alistar? Really?

“You're nothing more than a big, dumb animal!" He snapped, insulting the support. “Damn it! Why can't you play as a proper champion, huh? Instead of this useless lump… Oh, what do you think shouting stampede, stampede, stampede is going to do anything? Come on, this game is freaking rigged!"

He hissed through his teeth, though he didn't expect an answer. Whether or not something was signed into the same voice channel as him wasn't something he'd considered, he'd just spouted off without thinking about it. He didn't want to insult anyone in particular, except maybe whoever it was that had created Alistar in the first place, but he just couldn't help himself, needing to get the heated, unprecedented rage out of him, one way or the other. It was all he could do, slumping back in his chair, striving to calm himself again.

It's not worth it, he told himself. Not for a dumb purple bull, a freaking beast. It's just a game.

_ _

“If that is what you think, boy," a voice came through the headphones, startling him to attention, “then perhaps you should change your point of view. There's more to being a champion than being a dumb, muscled beast, as you say. If you grab the bull then you should expect the horns!"

What the hell? That was Alistar's voice! He fumbled for his keyboard and controller, but there wasn't a match on screen, nothing he was engaged in. But where the hell had that voice come from, was someone screwing with him? Someone had to be screwing with him!

But he didn't get the chance to truly find out what was going on as his head rolled back, blackness enveloping him, unconsciousness overcoming. The controller dropped from his hand and, in the world that he had known, Leo was no more.

*

“Urrrggghhh… What the…hell?"

He groaned, waking slowly, blinking, though it did nothing to ease the splitting headache from his skull. What on earth had happened? Even his voice, rasping thickly from his mouth as if it was filled with mush, sounded different.

But that had to be whatever had happened to him talking. Yes… Yes, of course. But what had happened to him? His head hurt so badly as he blinked, a forest canopy above him. That wasn't his room. And the grass he was lying on was soft but by no means his bed.

He tried to roll over onto his side, though everything was strange, his sense of his body different, so very different, so much heavier than before. He moved his hand too quickly, smacking it into the ground, but that didn't help, only sent a thrum of pain through the heel of his hand.

“Ugh…"

He felt as if he was moving through quicksand, so dull, so slow, so heavy. Since when had lifting his hand meant that he had to think everything through so much?

Leo grunted, moving his tongue around his mouth. Maybe he had drunk a bit too much the night before, for it didn't make sense why his mouth felt like that otherwise. Every movement was…lumbering. Even as he managed to just about roll himself onto his side, an arm trapped under him.

Wait…

_ _

He blinked, vision clearly. But there was something there, attached to him? That didn't make sense, not as he tried to pull back from it and it followed right along with him!

“Ugh!"

He groaned as he brought a shaking hand to his face, still with the impression that he was moving through thick sludge, that something was weighing him down, half-closing his eyes as he groped at the weird protrusions.

“Ow!"

Wait… The protrusion was his nose. He groped blindly, closing his eyes against the might of the pounding headache, feeling out the edges of nostrils that no longer, for some reason, felt at all like his. Nothing was right, nothing was the same, nothing was as it used to be.

Though Leo did not yet know how true that was to be.

He blinked again, trying to tilt his head, but it felt as if it was being dragged down, his head resting heavily to one side.

“Gggnnnnggghhh..."

His groan… No, that wasn't his voice, it was definitely different. The first fluttering of panic stirred in his chest, sniping and darting back and forth, need in the depths of him to know, to see what had come of him. Yet Leo's mind was not coming to a sense of reality at all quickly, not as he clenched his hand, his palm and heel feeling thick, meaty, not at all normal.

He licked his lips, finding a different shape, though they were dry, too dry, a crack in the front of the bottom one. His tongue felt larger too, though the pounding of his heart was what claimed his attention the most, drumming away in his chest, as if it was beating against his ribcage. It was almost uncomfortable, just how hard it was beating.

He didn't dare talk again, the world around him clearing, spotting the ground dappled with sunshine through the canopy of leaves. His nostrils puckered and blew out as he breathed, something moving behind him, though he didn't pay that much mind. Why could he smell so much more? From the peaty floor of the forest to the sharp crispness of fresh grass, pine needles further away and even the lightness of swiftly flowing fresh water. He'd never been able to smell things like that before, not with such richness and clarity, and, for a moment, he relished in it, even though it was not something that Leo could ever have imagined possibly deriving such pleasure from.

“Unnnggghhhh… Hello? Hello? Is this…my voice?"

He felt himself to be rather foolish, talking to no one but himself, but at least he knew that to be him talking, even if it did not sound like him at all. No, the voice that came from his lips was deeper and more guttural, as if it had been dredged up from somewhere. His throat was dry, but it was probably a false hope to imagine that his change in voice was purely down to that. There was even a rough sort of growl to his voice and he rubbed the front of his throat, trying to soothe whatever it was that could have been stuck there. Of course, there wasn't anything, but he still had to try. Maybe a part of Leo, even then, knew that things had changed irrevocably, all in a way that could never be turned back.

“Ugh…"

He slumped back to his back, no longer able to hold himself on his side as he had, the thick, chunky protrusions on his head holding him down like lead weights, pinning his skull to the ground. Leo squirmed, twisting roughly from one side to the other, something between his back and the ground, hard like metal. Was that stuck into him too? He shuddered at the thought, but at least there wasn't any pain to be had there, only a lingering sense of discomfort, as if he constantly was not able to get comfortable. The lump was something that came along with him, stuck into his back, which didn't help much in that regard.

The smell of an animal, however, was what he noticed the most, even as he rounded forward a little. Had he had an accident and become a hunchback? No, no… No, that couldn't be it.

What's wrong with me? Leo thought. I need to get up, but everything's so hard and heavy…

_ _

Even his thoughts… He tried again, thinking of random words and numbers, but the voice in his head, his thinking voice, was still the same, a rough, gravelly, coarse voice that rolled on and on and on. It grated on his nerves for some reason, though what reason that was eluded him even as he tried to work it out.

Slowly, thinking carefully about what he was doing, Leo raised his hand, more steadily than before, to hold his head, bringing his fingers into his line of vision for the first time. But…they weren't his fingers – it wasn't his hand! If he had had his eyes open before, he would have realised it, but the throbbing, splitting headache still coursed through, pounding between his eyes and around the line of his skull.

“Ugh… No… What?"

The words, so familiar and so strange to him at the same time. He turned his hand over slowly, examining it, though the dull roar of his heart beating too quickly for comfort pounded through his skull, almost more overwhelming than the headache. His hand looked thick, meaty, as if it belonged to someone with a dull brain, a slow brain, though he didn't even realise what had happened, not even then.

Who would have? It was hardly something normal, after all, even if it had happened… But Leo did not know yet, no. Not yet.

His skin was rough with a purple hue and a heavy, metal bracelet weighed it down. He snorted and yanked back from it as if he could separate his mind from whatever the hell it was that his body had become, but his hand followed him, the churning weight of his skull something that could not be set aside.

It's not me! It's not my hand! Get the hell off me!

_ _

He thrashed dully, but couldn't get away from the big purple hand with chunky nails, the hand mirroring any movements that he made. His breath raked through his lungs and down his windpipe, lungs filling with more air than ever before, swelling and heaving, though it didn't feel as if he was relieving any of the tension in his chest at all. Breath rolled heavily from his mouth and he groaned, head jerking up clumsily as a sound that should never have come from his lips poured forth.

“Ggggnnnnoooooohhhhhh!"

What the hell was that? A bellow? Yet it came again and again as he fought to breathe slowly and evenly, even if something like that seemed to be entirely out of the realm of any possibility. Why was he bellowing? Oh, it all didn't make sense, none of it made sense, not as he tried to look down at his body, but even that was difficult. His neck just felt so thick and so meaty that it was like trying to move a bowling ball on top of a weighted cushion, pinning him down and in place.

It even felt like his head was not in the same position as before, though that was so far out of the realm of what Leo had been expecting that he couldn't comprehend it in the moment, shoving the grappling thought to the back of his mind. If it was there, perhaps he wouldn't have to deal with it…

Okay, okay, okay… Calm down.

_ _

It wasn't very calming, however, to know that he was in another body, that something terrible had happened. Or else he was trapped in a nightmare that, for unknown reasons, he was struggling to wake up from. That would have been, by far, the most preferable option for him, though if he could wake up from any presumed nightmare that would have also been much appreciated. He was very much done already being horrified by his own thick, weirdly muscled body.

I've got to get up, got to get help. There's got to be something I can do to either wake up… Or work out what the heck has happened.

_ _

Even if it was not much of one, it gave him a goal and a focus, drawing his attention down to his legs. Just like those meditation tapes that drew the listener's attention to different parts of one's body, all he could suddenly think about was his legs, as if his mind had travelled down within both at once.

They were heavy, just like the rest of him, trying to wiggle his toes and not finding that he had either that sensation or that dexterity anymore. Gulping hard, he shook under the force of too many changes, tensing and contracting muscles that had not been there before. He knew some of the names of them, the quads and the hamstrings, the calves…but not all. Not that something like that had ever mattered to him. Muscles and the details of them were for physiotherapists and doctors and…people like that, yes?

He couldn't even get his thoughts in order, even word dragged through his mind as if it was sludge. He'd been a quick thinker before – even in gaming, he had to have quick reaction times to get through bouts like that. No one ever considered that about gamers, how swift and sharp their reaction time had to be if they were competing seriously in games or even just taking their hobby to quite a high level. And yet it was as if, in that moment, he had been dredged up from the bottom of a deep, dark, dank lake, the weight of the water bearing him down as he was borne, again and again, into the wet bottom of the lake. There must have been light above, somewhere, where his thoughts could, once again, run clearly, but Leo could barely see it, could barely feel it.

He tried again to twitch his toes, but his head was pinned back and lifting them was not possible, so he had to sink into the feeling of his body, to try to work out what his body was even as he had to lie there. He was too panicked to feel frustrated, fear gripping him with an iron fist, something moving under him. Leo shuddered. It had to be a bug or something, or a rodent, something really gross… But the mysterious sensation of something moving at the base of his spine, right at the top of his glutes, faded as quickly as it had appeared. Besides, there were more pressing things for his mind to focus on.

Trying to breathe deeply and evenly to contain himself in some manner, he tried to come to terms with the sensations in his muscles, how much thicker his legs felt. When he tried to wriggle his toes something else moved, as if the joint there was missing, but he was still controlling something. His brow furrowed. Were his feet twisted? They didn't feel numb or anything, but there was more sensation coming up from the bottom, as he did manage to flip them down so that the underside pressed to the ground. And yet the grass tickling him no longer felt as if it was brushing against skin…

Leo gulped. He could have been injured. Yet, even if that was not the case, at least he was not in pain. There was a weird sensation of his feet being heavy and almost like one big solid lump (that wasn't the most eloquent way of putting it, but it was all Leo had in him), but he reassured himself at there being no pain, at the very least, which would have made everything a lot worse.

“Okay…" He said slowly, his voice thick and gravelly. “I've got to get up. I've got to…make sense of this."

It was as if there were other words too pushing into his mind, but Leo clung resolutely to what he knew to be his words, his thoughts, even if the thick, rough voice was most certainly not his own. Getting up, on the other hand, was even more difficult than he could have expected.

First, he had to heave and rock himself back and forth, as if he was a beached whale – even worse, a beached whale that had been stuck on their back. Getting onto his side, even if only kind of halfway, the first time around had been a lot easier than hefting himself about with the intention of standing upright. He just didn't know how to move, so dull and weighted, his centre of balance thrown off by a heaviness that laid over him.

Maybe he'd been buried, he thought, swinging one arm over, panting as he rolled, with great effort, onto his left side, the hand with the bracelet thing digging its fingers into the ground with some semblance of triumph. Maybe everything that was happening to him was, quite literally, what his mind had to go through as it shut down. The meaning of that, however, was not something that Leo was all that keen to dig into.

Fortunately for him, he didn't have to worry about it all being the end for him, for it was only a new kind of beginning, even if one that he would not be at all happy about.

Getting up… It was easier, in a way, when he managed to get his hand under him, bent at the elbow, more on his front than his side as he kicked his legs around. The muscle to control and move them was there, but it still took a lot more deliberation and effort as he heaved and grunted, a knee digging into the ground. He was aware of the indent that his body had left in it, obviously shown under him, though he felt more comfortable swinging his head back and forth to look, his neck not aching even though he didn't feel at all prepared for the additional heavy weight that was to be found there.

He groaned, licking his lips, his mouth dry, so dry. He'd have to find some water soon, work out where he was: there weren't any forests or even any smaller woods around his house, not that he knew of. And with the tenor of birdsong lightly lifting the air, it did not seem that he was anywhere at all near the city either.

“Come on… Up! Get up!"

But it wasn't that easy as he stumbled and came back down on his knees when he tried to stand, his body simply not obeying him. To Leo, it felt as if he had all the right parts, hands and legs and a torso and everything that came along with a body that he was used to, but that nothing went in the right place. Everything required a different movement and he grunted heavily as he slammed sideways into a tree, hardly feeling the impact even as the mere slam of his body against it split a deep crack into the trunk.

“Fuck!" He shuddered, anger billowing inside him like smoke, even though that was very abnormal for him, even when he got so heated up at games, he was never like that. “Now, you've made me mad!"

He didn't know where those words had come from, only that they felt like they were the right ones as he struggled to use the tree for leverage, hauling himself up onto two feet and then losing control again. He swore loudly, not caring who might be there to hear him, as he crashed back into the ground, brow furrowing, his headache more painful than ever. It was as if it was splitting his skull open, just like the tree, though he could only hope that the pounding dulled a bit over time. He had to have his right head and mind on his shoulders, after all, if he was going to have to work something that could be quite terrible out.

But maybe things would be okay too and Leo clung with an iron grip to that thought, even as he stumbled and caught himself, scraping up his bare leg with a tree branch that had fallen. He bellowed and slammed his fist into it, shattering it into splinters with nothing more than a thought, but he was stuck in the moment, heaving and grunting and panting, only thinking of one thing and one thing alone.

Get up. You've got to get up.

_ _

If he only thought about that, maybe it would make all of it easier, in a small sort of way, though he didn't worry, panic seeping from him. It didn't feel like it was possible for his mind, in a strange sort of way, to think about more than one thing at a time anymore, even though he, frankly, didn't understand that. It was just impossible to concentrate on more than one thing at a time and even thinking about that, alone, meant that he had to stop trying to get up.

So, he only focused on getting up, huffing and puffing, grunting thickly. The scrape on his leg didn't bother him that much, not as he rose, staggering, pressing up and up and up with his arms. Maybe that was the key, using his arms to lift the majority of his body before the rest, though one thing that Leo did notice was that it didn't take as much effort as usual, for his arms did not shake. He seemed to easily be able to push up his body, if only he could get all the components of it and limbs in the right place at the right time.

Huh… That's really weird…

He grunted thickly as he heaved and, somehow, managed to get his legs in the right place at the right time to stand, though the weight of his head instantly had him tipping off to the right and staggering.

“Whoa!"

He flailed, meaty hands waving around, managing to right himself just in time, though Leo was not left at all stable. The forest around him seemed to be a lot lower down than it should have been – from a standing position and not a lying one – and he snorted, trying to swallow down the threat of a bellow threatening to swell from his throat all over again. He didn't want to make that sound! It was too beast-like for him, yes, by far…

It was strange being so tall and yet it was obvious that he was a lot taller, his legs bent a little, though he felt as if he was up on his toes. With his head wanting to fall forward and down, set further forward as if he was running or straining for something, it was easy, for once, to look down the length of his body at his feet.

Only… His feet weren't there anymore, but were firm and hard. He didn't quite trust himself to lift a foot even as he gawped in horror, but it was…not a foot. That was one way of putting it, yes, but the more accurate way was in confirming, just to himself, that he didn't have feet anymore but big, chunky, hard hooves! They came at the end of long, strong, purple legs, not smooth like skin but clad in a short, tight layer of hair, as if he had suddenly grown hairy overnight, even though the covering of it was not shiny at all. On the contrary, it was in part dulled and dirtied from all the staggering and lurching about that he'd had to do to get up, though that, most likely, was not the fault of any body.

Dreaming… He thought dimly, spreading out his arms for balance, trying to lift his head again, nose wrinkling, feeling as if it was crinkling a lot more than it usually would. I've got to be dreaming. This is…not my body.

_ _

He had to accept that, one way or the other, grunting and trying to rub the back of his neck, though he didn't like swinging his hand about like that: it made him feel as if he was losing his balance again. But he wanted to try to walk, the hard, driving pounding thud of his heart pressing him on.

It was a mistake, of course, even in the seclusion and privacy of the forest. He was barely even upright and there he was thinking that he could just strut about like it was nobody's business? He groaned, pressing his tongue back in his mouth for fear of biting it accidentally, but tipped forward as he staggered, swinging one leg out awkwardly before him and then the other, as if he was about to trip over his own body at any moment. He was more lumbering, even then, than a newly born calf, still wet with its mother's tongue, though Leo did not register that that was a strange thought to have in his head at all, one that, very much, did not belong there.

It was not easy. But he had to move and, in a way, it gave him purpose, forward movement, something to focus on. All Leo held in mind as he lumbered, one staggering, flailing, wobbling step after the other, was the notion of moving, of keeping going, of getting to wherever it was that he needed to be so that he could find out…something. He wasn't at all sure what he was going to find out, but it had to come one way or another, even though he reeled in horror from his body.

It was genuinely as if he had woken up in a nightmare or had become the protagonist in a horror flick, all when they had woken up to find their body twisted and distorted, entirely out of their control. He didn't know what that meant for him and everything that he wanted, but he had to keep going, cursing as he tripped over his own clumsy hoof.

“Ack! Damn it!"

Again, he was struck by the urge to say aloud how mad he was, but that wasn't something, not truly, that deserved to be on his lips at that moment. He wasn't mad, no, he wasn't like that, even if the churning bubble of simmering, roiling anger curled deep in the pit of his stomach. He panted more heavily, giving out a deep moo, though didn't even bother, not that time, clapping his hand back over his mouth. There didn't seem to be a point in it anymore, if he was going to keep on making those weird noises one way or the other.

The way that his muscles pulled and contracted in his new body… That was different. Very different, in fact, coming down with a heavy thud every time he dared set a hoof down, though just going in a straight line was harder than anything else. He had not realised how destructive he had been when he was just engaged in the act of getting up, but turning was so much slower than what he was used to that he got to see in clear definition how he crashed into the trees.

SMASH!

_ _

“Oof!"

CRUNCH!

_ _

“Ow!"

CRASH!

“Mmmnnnnmmmooooooo!"

He grunted and stomped, though having a fit about it, smashing trunks and felling trees as he ploughed his shoulders into them (without meaning to), was not going to get him anywhere. Still, Leo clenched his jaw and chewed as if he had something in his mouth, hands balled up into angry, tight fists with the hard nails cutting into his palm.

He tried to avoid what looked to be an exceedingly old oak tree, from the height on it that he could gather, but something on his head hooked onto it and he snarled and stomped and grunted like an animal. No matter how hard he shook, getting free was not all that easy as a shower of green leaves with rounded edges fell around him.

“Gggnnnpphhhh!"

He growled, finally wrenching as the bough of the tree pulled free with an almighty crack, separating from the main body. It was left raw and bare, but he did not stop, even if there was an additional weight on top of his head. For the branch had not just gotten stuck there temporarily but had been pulled right along with him, leaving him grunting and stomping and trying to tilt his head to get it free.

“Stupid…tree…"

He fumbled, pausing briefly, hands up and groping blindly around his head, for he didn't know what was where anymore, finding something hard, something smooth, something that curved out from his head. Without being able to see what was there, however, he was no closer to working out what had happened, though no more was he able to wrench or twist the branch free without assistance.

Water…or a mirror of some kind, yes. That was what he needed, all so he could get to see his body and work out what had happened.

If it was a dream, it was turning out to be an exceedingly long one.

He tried not to think too much about that, not as he got used to walking a little more, wrecking fewer trees, though he could not help but stomp over lesser vegetation, through brambles and small foliage. It was all crushed under his hooves, though Leo did not stick around to see whether it popped back up again, for he knew some plants were more resilient than others.

However, he did get used to walking, which he wasn't all that sure about being a good thing. He kept striding out and forward, one leg after the other, finding a deep smoothness to the gait, even if it felt like his hoof was going to crash down through the forest floor with every stride.

A road too… Yes, that helped, even if it was rudimentary and winding, at least it was flat (roughly). A hard-packed dirt road that had been cleared of grass and other debris stretched out before him, allowing him to pick up his pace a little, though he felt that he was not quite alone there. Glancing into the forest, he shook his head slowly, wondering at the life he felt out there. It was as if he could hear people talking and yet couldn't see them. Even then, his hearing was sharper than how it had been before, and Leo would only later uncover that it had been his sense of hearing that had improved.

For he heard the village, technically, before he came upon it, the trees fanning out and thinning to reveal a village with thatched roofs, a little cobbled bridge that stretched over a river. He eyed the bridge dubiously before heading for the river itself, which was shallow enough for him to splash across, grunting and muttering under his breath.

“Unbelievable… Someone must be playing a…unff…prank…on me…"

Continued in part two of three…