Novels2Search

Chapter 14 - Leonine

Fluffy’s Bizarre Adventure would have been what the crew’s resident mouser and head-scratch receiver described his caper as, assuming he had the mental capacity to think of such a thing. See, before he was adopted by his family of insane mechanics, literature-loving swordsmen, elven cooks and an ambiguously-gendered catsith, Fluffy was a street cat. His earliest memory was that of being in a warm, padded box that contained what any human would see as low-grade furs, scraps of whatever a tanner deemed unfit for use. Without any mother figure, Fluffy was lucky enough to come across various corpses of vermin until he was mature enough to do it himself. From a young age, he was able to alter his body, although it was easier to control and maintain the form of a somewhat feline organism. Before long, he was eating and killing large animals and livestock, and then sharing it with his fellow cats below him in his gang’s hierarchy. The point was, he knew how to be an alley cat and would gladly do it again.

In fact, this was what he was doing currently. Compass Island was famous for it’s clockwork steam-powered organisms, which somehow used brains from the central factor of Compass island. It was considered lost by the people of the Archipelago, but legends of it still resounded throughout the corners of that region. This bit of history was particularly relevant to the current events because a couple of those mechanical beasts of copper were their equivalent of alley cats, and one of those wass currently clacking at Fluffy menacingly in warning. Apparently, he was interloping upon it’s territory. Fluffy remained unfazed, and merely changed his shape slightly, his muscles ballooning and rippling as he transformed from fairly small house cat to a beefy panther. Growling, he batted the mechanical rival on the nose with a clunking boop on the thing’s snout, sending it cowering in deference to a clearly stronger threat. It’s head rattled with the force, and it rolled over and showed it’s stomach to it. Fluffy then decided that he would spend some time here, possibly getting some more food and maybe give some sort of shiny trinket to one of it’s two-legged servants as a reward for their loyalty. The one that made the small boat liked those kinds of things, and giving scraps to your underlings was what a good leader did.

Deciding on this course of action, the shape-shifting kitty sauntered over to the slums, an area omnipresent in almost any place. Due to the congregation of various vermin and birds to the area with the least amount of cautious humans cleaning up scraps, this was also a prime area for predators that feasted upon such wildlife to inhabit. Fluffy, with the cat-automaton hissing with released steam behind him, limped after him, it’s gears clicking and clacking as evidence of the mighty slap that Fluffy had unleashed upon it’s steampunk face. The clanking and obviously damaged machine was looking for any spare parts that it could use to replace itself, the mechanical beings being able to “eat” and swap out parts as part of it’s advanced machinery.

Fluffy, on the other hand, didn’t honestly care about that. Currently, Fluffy had been strolling along when he saw two tiny organic kittens being assaulted by what were presumably underlings of whatever cat was in charge of this area. Out of instinct, the furball barreled into them just as they were going to lower their serrated jaws on the mewling critters, turning into a massive sabertooth and rending them limb from artificial limb. He then inspected the kittens, noticing that they apparently were part mechanical, with at least a limb or a tail being made out of some tightly interlocking plates that seemed foreign to Compass Island’s aesthetics. In fact, there were no hints of the signature steam pipes and emissions common to the machinery, as if the blending between machine and muscle was done at a perfectly smooth transition. A more careful and trained eye would have noticed that the mechanical parts showed no signs of impeding or altering the growth of the organic parts, indicating they either didn’t grow or that they grew with the user. Fluffy, however, cared for none of this. He merely picked them up by the scruff as all cats did and walked about, taking it upon himself for now to defend these helpless creatures.

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

As he sauntered away, the mechanical cat looked disdainfully at the broken pieces of the former mechanical alleycats and walked away, walking behind Fluffy as they both strode towards an area that no one but the cats dared enter, lest they get the worst clawing imaginable at the hands of those who truly ruled the alley.

The feline density of the area increased as he went on, several of them attempting to guard their territory and hunting grounds. In fact, several dropped what appeared to be mechanical wind-up mice in surprise before leaping at him. Currently, Fluffy was busy avoiding all five of a group of feral tomcats outside of a dilapidated pub, the sign long having been rusted to illegibility. Ducking under an approaching brass paw, Fluffy was struggling to fend off these robotic rampagers. Finally, after one had scored a clean slice on his chest, Fluffy decided he had been pushed to his limit. Gently laying the two kitties down, he ballooned into a massive blob that seemed to shift with various features, before compacting into a sleek angular form incorporating everything he had ever eaten. Fierce wings went out from his sides, while black chitinous armor glimmered menacingly in faceted plates covering his body. A tail that looked more like a snake head with blades on the sides flicked out, and six paws that had retractable and massive claws clacked on the ground. Leaping at them, Fluffy went all out and brawled with no thought of technique or form. Atop an old broken-down steam fountain, a large cat slid down and growled, her underlings who were previously lounging about like lions springing into position as Fluffy’s savage brawl drew closer to them.

Ripping and tearing, Fluffy was taking cuts left and right without consequence. However, it was clear that he could not keep up with the dozens of felines swarming after him. Just when it seemed that all hope was lost, Fluffy began swallowing down pieces of the mechanical beasts. After ingesting the gears and engines that made them move from the fallen corpses, Fluffy began shifting and warping, his skin and claws taking on a distinct metallic look. Furthermore, his wings beefed up, his broken bones re-forming into their normal shapes as his aerial appendages took on a size several times that of his body. Causing shadows to be cast over the normally sunny and glinting slums of the city, Fluffy proceeded to eviscerate the remaining ones who didn’t surrender to his overwhelming might.

Fluffy’s new form was far more durable, his bones now having a more metallic structure and lacking the hollowness needed for flight. In addition to this, his new integrated form also had more bladelike claws, a more resonant voice box, and even added some spring-based muscles for higher bursts of strength. Much like the kittens, his form’s extra armor platings around the joints (which his previous chitinous armor form lacked) were made of slightly curved interlocking plates that provided flexibility while blocking any oncoming attacks. This power boost was exactly what was needed in order to attack, as his claws screeched while piercing the brass workings of a mangy tomcat. Gears whirred and crashed as he batted, bit, and ripped through his enemies until all that remained was scrap metal and submissive survivors. Fluffy then let out a series of roars that he thought was a majestic call of victory and strength that cemented his ruling of this area. To an outside perspective, it sounded more like this:

“Mrew. Mrow. Mew maw mraw meow.”

After reverting to his “normal” form of a fuzzy housecat, Fluffy went over to the part-machine kittens and groomed them, acting like the very image of a doting mother hen. He even batted one of the few organic mice and brough over it’s corpse to them as a meal, watching over them as they stumbled about. As he sauntered over to where the previous leader of the cats was, he lay down in the typical cat-loaf formation with the other remaining survivors clanking back into their lounging positions, with their new leader on the very top of the ruined structure, in exactly the same spots that they were in before the whole mess. However, there were some missing spots, a testament to the literal catfight that had just taken place. And thus, Fluffy’s Bizarre adventure had concluded, with him somehow becoming the feline equivalent of a godfather and being a literal godfather to two young cyborg kittens.