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[b][u][center]The Striped Contract

For Zohaku

By Draconicon[/center][/u][/b]

Leroy groaned as he lifted his head from the patch of grass beneath it. That, in and of itself, was enough to tell him that something wasn’t right: he never slept outside, nor had he gone camping, as far as he was aware. Though, he had had a dream about running through a forest…

The young man shook his head as he sat up, holding one hand to his temples as he looked around. He was…outside? Yes and no, he realized as he turned around and saw a long, high wall behind him. He kept turning, and he found himself staring at a glass fence, one that looked almost like…like…

A guardsman walked past the glass wall, and he recognized the outfit. It was the same tan-yellow shirt that the guards at the zoo wore. Leroy got to his feet, his hands shaking as he took a step towards the glass wall. The grassy ground ahead of him fell away, dropping down to a pool filled with unmoving water.

It was familiar alright. This was the tiger exhibit at the city zoo.

[i]How…when…[/i]

He stumbled back, falling flat on his ass as he realized where he was. It seemed utterly impossible that someone would just throw him in here, so how had he gotten here? There had to be some answer that would make sense, because from the feeling of the stones under his ass, this wasn’t a dream. No way was this a dream.

Leroy held his hands to his head, feeling the ache that burned just behind his eyes. Something had happened. He’d come to the zoo at some point earlier that day, he remembered that. But why…

Something about a volunteer program? Yes, yes, that was it. A tiger-rescue volunteer program, something to help the tigers that were getting more endangered by the day. He’d always been at least somewhat concerned about that, and now that he had the time and money to throw at it, he wanted to see if he could be part of the solution.

But how was…

[i]Think. Think.[/i]

He remembered coming to the back rooms of the zoo and being offered a contract. He’d skimmed it after they said that it was for the program, but maybe that had been a stupid idea. In hindsight, it probably was. He rubbed his forehead, feeling that headache getting worse as the daylight faded. The night was coming on, which meant that he’d been out cold for…how many hours? Three? Six? Probably six, at least, if they were coming up to sunset.

Well, regardless, he couldn’t just stay here. There had to be a way, something that the zookeepers used to get in and out of the enclosure. Sure, tigers wouldn’t be able to operate those things, but he imagined that humans with workable thumbs could.

Getting to his feet, he wandered around the interior of the enclosure, keeping his hand to the wall to see if he could find whatever secret door might be there. There had to be something; there was no way that they just threw down a ladder and then climbed over that every time. They’d need something to let the tigers in and out, not to mention a place to check them for medicine inside rather than always going outside.

But if there was any secret door, he wasn’t finding it by running his fingers along the wall. The light was fading, so he couldn’t tell if the little spots he did find were cracks in the rock or actual gaps for the door, and there was no light to search by. No chance of using his phone, either; it had gone missing from his pockets and was nowhere to be found.

Even his scant hopes that it might be by the water pool were dashed as he checked over the side. No matter where he looked, there were no gaps to suggest a hidden door or panel. However the zookeepers got in and out of this enclosure, they left nothing for anyone else to find.

[i]But why did they put me in here to begin with?[/i]

That was the part that presented the greatest puzzle. There was no reason to put a person here. No matter how fascinated someone might be with an animal, they were still a human being, and –

He froze as he felt an odd tingle running up the bottom of his hand, almost like he had touched poison ivy or something like that. It itched, almost burning along the bottom of his hand, and it was already running up through his wrist, wriggling up through his arm in the process.

“What the –”

Even as he stumbled backwards, worried that he’d stabbed his hand on something, he could feel the same sensation running up his other hand. He grabbed himself by the wrists, hoping that it was something that was being transferred up his veins and that he could slow it down with pressure, but no such luck. The wriggling feeling continued, moving up the bottoms of his arms and –

“What…how…”

Leroy’s eyes widened as the tingling, burning feeling on his hands transitioned to something else, something rougher and a bit warmer, in a way. He turned his hands over, watching with shock and awe as his palms pushed out, forming pads along the center of his hands, and between and around them, fur began to sprout, white and black with hints of orange further out. The further it grew, the more fluffy his hands became.

His fingers turned wide and meaty, stiffening up bit by bit, losing their dexterity as the transformation continued up his arms. He realized belatedly that it was already starting to rob him of his dexterity, his ability to move and grip, and if this was going all the way around his body –

[i]Clothes. Clothes![/i]

If he was transforming – and while he wanted to think that this was just a dream, he didn’t have any proof that it was – then he was going to lose his clothes if he didn’t get them off [i]now[/i]. While he still had some manual dexterity, he undid the button and zipper of his jeans, wiggling out of them as he dragged his shirt up and over his head. He barely managed it as his arms thickened further, getting broader and stronger in the biceps, so much so that his shirt didn’t want to slide down his arms at first.

Then he was out of them. He only had his underwear and socks left, since he’d managed to kick his shoes off as well as his pants, but that was going to have to stay. Even as he looked down at his hands again, he could see that his fingers had already lost any ability to flex the way that they used to, and his thumb had moved up, becoming more and more that of a paw-finger, a paw-toe of a cat.

“Impossible…just…impossible…”

And yet, it so clearly wasn’t, as it was happening despite his every protest. Leroy panted, his breath coming in short bursts and gasps as he watched his fingers becoming ever-more useless, ever less flexible. He could barely bend it properly anymore, staring as his finger turned into more of a claw.

He tried to stand, but his legs were already going wonky, leaving him more and more off-balance. He wobbled to a rock, leaning against it as his legs almost went out from under him. His ankles cracked, something rising, pushing up. For a moment, he felt taller, and then he lost his balance completely. He knew that the moment he stopped leaning on the rocks he would fall to all fours, and he didn’t know if he’d be able to get up again.

“Ha…ha…”

Leroy groaned, lifting one of his hands up. No, no longer a hand. It was clearly, completely a paw now, and there was no other way of looking at it. His fingers had completely stiffened into the limitations of feline biology, more like toes than anything else, and there was nothing even resembling a thumb anymore. If he had at least been becoming some sort of cat-person, he might have had a chance to get out, but there was nothing. He was becoming a pure cat.

He panted for breath as he felt his feet flattening, widening until his socks ripped around them. Looking down, he saw the same sort of paws that his hands had become, and knew that it was already spreading, already taking him down.

Trying to turn and grip the wall with his new claws, he failed and fell on his side. He pushed himself up again, getting to all fours, but that was as far as he could get. Even shoving his paws down against the ground, trying to shove himself upright didn’t work. His body wasn’t built for staying on two legs anymore.

As he pushed himself to all fours, he was all too aware of the other changes that had gone through his legs and lower body. It wasn’t just that his ankles were lifted up and that his knees were weird, but that they were in completely different places. He could feel just how off everything was, and trying to crawl just didn’t work. His hips –

Pop.

Crack.

Snap.

Pop.

They adjusted, changing positions, rotating around so that they could serve his legs properly. He could feel the difference, but more than that –

Crack.

Crick.

Pop.

He arched his back, feeling the popping and expanding sensation of so many cracks going off at once, his spine getting longer as his shoulders pushed forward. Even as his arms thickened and his shoulders expanded, he could feel his back stretching. If he’d been standing, he would have thought that he was getting taller. Instead, he just getting longer, his body pushing back, back, back until it was as long as –

As long as a tiger.

He really was becoming a feline.

Even as he acknowledge that simple fact, he could feel the fur that had started down at his hands and fingers spreading across his back, getting thicker and more luscious like a proper pelt. Soon enough, none of his skin showed any longer, and his underwear began to rip just like his socks had, hinds of the little remaining bit of unfurred flesh showing down there.

He groaned, feeling his face pushing forward, slowly taking on a more animalistic shape. The feeling…the feeling should have been painful, something that he dreaded, something that he winced from or screamed from, but it was just…odd. Odd and weird, and perhaps a little disturbing, but the pain that he expected was nowhere to be found. All he felt was the crick-crack of his cheeks slowly pushing into different shapes, of his jaws getting longer and pushing forward, of the odd melting sensation of his mouth and nose coming far closer together and pressed nearer to one another.

The odd feeling came again as his ears started rolling around the sides of his head, slowly migrating from the sides to the top. The pulling feeling continued at the tips as well as the base, getting stronger and stronger until he had proper feline ears, and he could feel them dragging this way and that, pulling at his head until his skin and muscles grew and stretched to match them. The feeling was…really disorienting, but it was the constant new noises that held his attention after that really got to him.

Rippling water.

Wind in the grass.

Chirping birds out of sight.

The rustle of the bark on trees.

The click-click of falling gravel.

It was so intense and so ear-catching that he almost didn’t notice that his back was popping still, or that his arms were getting thicker, or that his legs were popping and pushing out with thicker and thicker muscles.

RIIIIIP!

But he did notice when his underwear finally ripped to pieces. As the white cloth hit the ground, he looked back and saw the remnants of a human shaft slowly sliding into a fur-covered sheath between his legs. He would have been a little bit more disturbed by that if he hadn’t expected it at that point, but at least he remained male. There was no sudden shift of it disappearing, just the general feline genital traits…like barbs.

Barbs were weird.

As his furry balls dangled down just a bit lower than he was used to, he took a deep breath and turned around. He could feel the various other bits and pieces of the transformation finishing up, from the new length of his body to the new muscles rippling in along his back, from the thick fur that made everything feel so much warmer to the odd feeling of his ears twitching and his eyes feeling under pressure as they grew inside his sockets.

The thing that he feared was a sudden drop in his intelligence. He had gone so far to becoming a tiger, so far towards leaving his humanity behind, that he half-expected to lose it mentally, too. If that happened…

But it didn’t.

Instead, he felt like…well, no smarter, but no stupider, either. The only other thing in his head was a better set of instincts of how to move on all fours, how to get around his enclosure, how to clean himself, and more. He felt like he was a tiger, that he had always been a tiger, just a very smart one.

It was a nice feeling.

No, it was a great feeling.

He smiled in the way that only a cat could, stalking forward and feeling the raw power in his front legs and shoulders. The sense of movement and grace was far better than anything that his human form had ever been able to summon, and he found himself rolling his shoulders more, experimenting with the different movement.

He sped up, running before leaping for the rock walls. He almost reached the top, but rather than falling, he kicked off it, landing on all fours as if it had been completely intentional.

It was so easy. Easier than anything that he had ever done, as a matter of fact, and it was so strange to think of it that way. He could move with greater power, speed, and balance than he ever had as a human, and it was as if he had never actually been anything else. He could remember that he had been a human, of course – that hadn’t been taken from him – but it was like, why would he want to remember?

This was better. This was so much better.

The tiger that had been Leroy looked back at the pool, and a grin that was almost childish crossed the feline’s face. He narrowed his eyes at the water as if it was his prey, and then took a running leap for it.

The splash that went up was downright ridiculous.

#

After an hour’s swimming, he both smelled and heard the keepers coming. Some part of him was curious where they could come through, but the rest of him knew that it probably didn’t matter. Even if he had proof that he had never been a tiger before this night, he knew that there was no way for him to show that to them. This was a magical trap, something to pull others in to help supplement zoo numbers or something like that, and he [i]had[/i] signed a contract to volunteer to help.

Of course, if they’d told him that this was the result, and that this was even possible, they might not have needed to trap him. He would have walked right into it with this result, and he would have done it happily.

Still, he was curious as only a cat could be curious, and he dragged himself from the water and made his way up to the enclosure proper. The zookeepers were still doling out the food that they had prepped for him, and they looked up as he approached. One of them started to turn, ready to get out of the way, but the other, more experienced zookeeper chuckled and shook his head.

“Don’t worry. This one’s harmless. Aren’t you, boy?”

Leroy didn’t have a voice to answer with, but he could ‘smile,’ lifting his lips slightly before he sat down three paces away from the food pile. The other keeper went wide-eyed at the sight of a tiger sitting like a dog, but the older, more experienced one just smiled and winked.

“Good boy. You know what you want.”

Leroy did, indeed. Food, shelter, and water, and that meant being good. Even if he did harbor some resentment – and he supposed he did, a little, just for the fact that he wouldn’t be able to get his affairs in order properly – he would need to stay on the good side of the zookeepers to make sure that he got what he needed to survive. The last thing that he wanted was to have all the bliss of being a tiger, and then lose it.

The zookeeper patted his head, and he indulged the human until the food was properly prepared for him. The humans left, and he sat down to eat, ripping through the raw meat. Even then, the old human part of him expected to have some trouble with it, but no such thing happened. Something in him had become accustomed to all this, and he just went for it with all the gusto of a cat that had been completely starved.

Considering the energy that he had probably expected to transform, he might very well have been starved. The meat settled in his stomach quickly enough, and he found himself sleepy. Deciding to nap, the tiger went back to the rocks and curled up.

Leroy felt that he was finally starting to understand cats…and it wasn’t such a bad life, he thought. Not bad at all.

[b][u][center]The End[/center][/u][/b]

Summary: Leroy becomes a tiger.

Tags: M/solo, Human, Tiger, Transformation, Human to Feral, No Intelligence Drain, Nudity, Transformation and Just Transformation, Zoo Enclosure,