Alright...

Chapter Two is now up!

Disclaimers: Everything is not mine even though I really wish that I had a Moomba.

Or Final Fantasy VIII. Either would work.

Leon twitches ever so slightly in his semi-unconscious state, shivering violently at the loud noises that would occasionally filter through his ears.

"Cloud, if you so much lay a finger on-"

"Aw, but he's so-!"

"Dang… poor little guy…"

"Shhh, he's waking up! Cloud, go get something for him to drink!" Someone shouts in a forceful voice that quickly sent Leon back to wincing at the loud noises.

"Yuffie, if I cared about Leon's wellbeing, I'd do go it. But since I don't…. Here ya go, Leonhart!" An all too familiar voice says as a freezing cold splash of something wet smacks into Leon's face.

He sits up abruptly, curses already on his tongue as he screams at Cloud:

"MRAOOOOOOW!"

Leon stares at his friends' concerned faces and touches his own now very furry one with one sharp claw; the prick of the sharp point made the smallest nick in his skin, ensuring him that this strange situation was real.

That he hadn't had a very bad dream caused by food poisoning or some kind of hallucination or stress.

Leon somehow had turned into the Final Fantasy VIII exclusive creature known as the Moomba.

He says nothing, afraid that his new vocal cords were going to make him say something embarrassing.

Cloud grins and puts down his cup. He cups one hand around his ear and smiles wickedly.

"What was that, Leon? I can't understand… cat!" Cloud howls in laughter as Leon looks at his oversized paws and wiggles what should have been his fingers but were in fact now his toes.

Cid, Aerith and Yuffie look at Cloud with disgust before Aerith turns back to Leon with obvious concern.

"Are you alright, Leon?" She asks in a soft voice as if she was afraid of scaring the newly Moomba-fied Leon.

Leon only stares at her numbly before retracting his claws out at her and wiggling his paws.

'What the heck do you think?' He thinks miserably to himself, looking at her with a furious expression.

Cid smacks him in the head.

"Now you listen here, Leon! Just cause you got turned into a… whatever the hell ya are, don't mean that you get ta disrespect Aerith like that! Now, someone go get that quack Merlin over here, STAT!"Cid barks in a commanding voice, instantly sending both Yuffie and Cloud scattering for the door in their hurry to obey.

As the front door slams somewhere in the background, Aerith smiles in an encouraging way to Leon as if she was trying to reassure him that everything was going to be alright.

Leon instantly feels better at the sight of that motherly smile and he allows Aerith to pick him up from the couch and put him on the coffee table.

"Well, as big as he is, he sure ain't no fuckin' cat." Cid comments as he pokes Leon in the head with a toothpick.

Leon makes a hissing noise in annoyance.

'Cid! Stop!' He snarls in his head but Cid just keeps examining him in that critical way, moving around the table where Leon was sitting to look at him from different angles.

"Maybe he's a kind of lion. He does look like one." Aerith observes quietly.

'Moomba. I'm a Moomba! Geez, I'm surrounded by idiots…. Except Aerith. Aerith is nice.' Leon thinks to himself, furrowing his brow at just how defensive he had suddenly gotten over Aerith.

Maybe being a lion like creature was getting to him.

"Right this way, Marlin!" Yuffie's voice says suddenly from the hallway.

"Merlin, it's Merlin, Yuffie." Cloud's voice corrects with a laugh.

"Hmmm…. And what did you say that our dear Leon has turned into? A tiger?" A third voice questions calmly. Merlin, the owner of one of the voices, was yet another resident of Radiant Gardens and an extremely powerful sorcerer to boot.

Leon immediately perks up, getting his hopes up; if there was anyone could turn him back to normal, he would put his munny on Merlin.

Or maybe Cid.

He could work with either one.

Within a minute or so, the blue robed wizard walks in with his magic carpetbag in hand and immediately looks around.

"Well, where is Leon?" Merlin asks curiously, blinking rapidly behind his tiny spectacles and shaking his huge blue cone of a wizard's cap back on his head.

'Right here! So can you fix me, Merlin?' Leon pleads him mentally even as his traitorous new vocal cords sound out a series of loud meows.

Merlin takes one look at him and flinches.

"Oh my. I didn't expect this." The wizard says in an embarrassed voice, turning slightly pink and as he quickly adjusts his spectacles back onto his nose.

"Please tell me this is going to last at least a week." Cloud says in a high voice, smiling in a way that showed he was thinking only the meanest of private thoughts at the idea of his unofficial rival being a cute fluffy creature.

"Miaow!" Leon snarls angrily at him, jumping from the coffee table and landing lightly on the floor, getting ready to swipe Cloud's new pants into a bunch of tattered rags.

"Ahem." Aerith coughs, gives him a scolding look. Leon shrivels from the look and looks pleading up at Merlin.

'Please, Merlin. I'm begging you now. You can't hear me but I'm begging. Say that you can turn me back.' Leon tells Merlin mentally, hoping against hope that his request would somehow enter Merlin's mind and be heard.

Instead, Merlin turns to Aerith and shakes his head solemnly at her before turning back to Leon.

"Alright my boy, would you mind letting me examine you?" He asks in an extremely polite voice as he hands over his staff to the waiting Yuffie who takes it and hugs it to her chest as if the magical instrument would bring her some comfort.

Leon nods eagerly and allows the wizard to grab him by the scruff of the neck to put him on the table.

"Open your mouth." Merlin commands quietly and Leon shows off his sparkling white fangs to the group.

Merlin makes a "hmmm" noise as he circles around Leon and examines him thoroughly from head to toe, marveling at the complexity of Leon's Moomba anatomy.

After about three or four minutes of this, Merlin holds his hand out to Yuffie.

"Yuffie, if you wouldn't mind?" He asks as Yuffie hands back the staff silently, her dark eyes focused completely on the waiting Leon.

Everyone watches in a mixture of excitement and hope as Merlin takes his glasses off and stashes them somewhere in his robes. He then takes his staff and waves it over Leon.

A sudden flash of energy flows from the somewhat tiny wizard as he murmurs a few garbled words and a bright red spark shoots out of the tip of the wand.

In what seemed like an instant, Leon is sent flying across the room and smack dab into the living room cabinet.

As Leon's body connects with the glass and then the hard wood of the cabinet, he can only think randomly about Aerith's and Yuffie's collections of many porcelain figures being totaled.

'Great… something else to fix.' He thinks vaguely as someone (probably Aerith from the sound of the voice) lets out a startled noise and quickly comes to his rescue.

"Are you alright?" Aerith asks him as she deftly brushes off a few bits of glass off of his fur.

Leon squeaks the closest equivalent of a 'yes' he could give and glares balefully at Merlin, fully ignoring the hysterical laughter coming from one Cloud Strife in the background.

'That better not have been on purpose!' Leon warns Merlin, his more than a little sharp canines already out and ready to bite viciously.

The elderly man coughs nervously and rubs his forehead.

"Oh dear. Let's try another go, shall we? Now, I promise you that this will not sent you flying, Leon." Merlin promises him solemnly and he waves his staff over Leon one more time.

And true to the wizard's word, he was right. The spell doesn't send the Moomba flying across the room again.

Instead, it makes Leon's fur stand on end and ends up making him look like a some of demented Pomeranian.

'OH COME ON! What happened to being one of the greatest wizards in all of the worlds?' Leon demands furiously, his loud hiss of anger drowned out by everyone's laughter.

Even Aerith was struggling to keep a composed face and Yuffie and Cloud were on the floor. Laughing hysterically.

"Well, then! Looks like your "magic" can't handle this kinda thing, huh, Merlin?" Cid demands in a smug voice, looking as if he had just won a victory.

Merlin scowls at him and looks as if he wants nothing better than to clobber Cid over the head with his staff.

"Miaooooooow!" Leon butts in quickly, looking up at Cid and Merlin, glaring at them.

'Behave you two! It's bad enough that you fight all the time… but this is concerning ME!' Leon snarls, getting the two to shut up and stare at him.

"So, can you do anything, Merlin?" Aerith asks in concern, bending down and picking up Leon before he could get into a fight with either Cid or Merlin.

Merlin shakes his head solemnly.

"I'm afraid that I can't help, my dear. This sort of magic would be easy enough to reverse… if I only knew what Leon actually was!" Merlin states in an embarrassed voice, turning faintly pink as he looks at Leon who was currently struggling to get out of Aerith's arms.

"Wait, you're sayin' you can't change 'im back? You can't be serious!" Yuffie demands, stamping her foot angrily.

"The good news is that this kind of spell is usually one with a time limit. However, I can't say when it'll wear off. It could be within an hour, a day, a week, a month, or even in a few years!" Merlin says in an attempt at a helpful tone.

From the reactions on everyone's faces, they were all shocked at the idea of Leon being trapped in his new form for possibly such a long time.

'So you can't help? You really can't?' Leon questions and Merlin shakes his head.

"I'm sorry, Leon." Merlin says in a sad voice as he picks up his carpet bag. Without another word, the wizard vanishes in a poof of white smoke that sends everyone into a coughing frenzy.

As everyone coughs violently, Leon could only look at the floorboards in absolute misery.

It had just been proven.

He was stuck as a Moomba.

Hm.

Well, let's explain a few things, shall we?

Now, in Kingdom Hearts, there was actually a scene between Cid and Merlin where the two obviously don't like each other (Science and magic don't mix apparently) so I added to that here.

That, and it's an ongoing joke throughout this story that no one has any idea what the hell a Moomba is.

It only appear in that one Final Fantasy game, so it would make sense.

And no, this story isn't just about bashing how Leon's a fuzzy cat monster now.

We're gonna have some more fun with it.