Ta-da! Second chapter of 'From Boys to Cats', typed out due to sudden flow of love for cats. Hopefully the plot will continue smoothly out of my head, as I have a vague sort of storyline but I will have to work on it of course. Due to a dream (which was partly a nightmare, bleh) I have a sudden inspiration plot for Fullmetal Alchemist but will not work on it until I have gotten most or half of this done. I have jotted down the ideas, however. All I have are creative inspirations that turn to flops when written down, anyway. I simply do not have the skill to do this kind of writing...haha. (So what am I doing here??)

Enough of the lengthy A/N!! Onwards!! (I seem to say that a lot.)

"What do you mean you can't turn them back at once?" Tezuka's voice was dangerously low.

Inui flipped through his green notebook, furiously scanning for the recipe he might have noted down while making the highly unusual juice. "Well…maybe not at once." Inui admitted.

The shock that had ensued after finding out that four members of their highly acclaimed tennis team had turned into cats had been frantic to the point of panic. It was easy to tell that their four friends had been turned into cats, actually. The felines were very distinctly similar to their human selves - the cat that was Ryoma had deep glossy green fur, much like Ryoma himself. The second cat was jet black and its fur was short and rather spiky: Momoshiro, no doubt. It even hissed when the third cat, also a sable coloured one but with odd green markings (Kaidoh's bandanna, surely) got too close. And the last brown cat was sitting with its tail curled around itself, looking immensely proud and oddly satisfied. Everyone kept a slight distance from the last one, feeling rather unnerved that a cat could actually grin so widely while projecting a very sinister feeling.

"Inui's juices never backfired this badly." Oishi said worriedly. Ryoma, or rather, the cat that used to be the human version of Ryoma, was sitting in his lap, with his back ramrod straight and glaring at Inui. His whiskers were twitching furiously.

"Nyaaa….it's not fair…" Oishi glanced sideways to see Eiji pouting. "Iwant to be a cat too, nya!"

But luckily for all of them, Tezuka had seized Inui's jug of juice once they had found out about their team members' condition, and emptied the whole jug into the ground. It was uncharacteristically Tezuka to act so hastily, but seeing the dire situation at hand, it was probably a clever move. Inui privately mourned the loss of what possibly could be the greatest invention since he was born, but intelligently decided to keep quiet about it when he saw the look on Tezuka's face.

"Tell me this isn't a permanent situation." Tezuka started pacing the length of his room. They had decided to smuggle the cats into his house while they tried to find a way to undo the disaster that had occurred. "They still have school tomorrow, and tennis practice, and - oh heavens - the tennis match against Hyoutei next week. I can't possibly go to Ryuzaki-sensei and say, 'Ano, Ryuzaki-sensei, some of the team members have been turned into cats, and could you please postpone the match?'!"

There was a silence in which Momoshiro and Kaidoh decided to attack each other, pouncing with their claws unsheathed and tiny fangs bared. One of them had apparently annoyed the other in some cat taboo, and Oishi leaped up in alarm, unseating a disgruntled Ryoma, and wrestled the two cats apart, giving a displeased Kaidoh to Kawamura while keeping a firm hold on Momoshiro.

"I'll have to do more research on this." Inui said after a while. "I have to try and recall what sort of ingredients I put in the juice, and find out which one of them is causing the reaction. Maybe then I can figure out something that can negate the effect."

"You'll have to do it by next week." Tezuka said shortly. "Before the match with Hyoutei."

"What do we do with them in the meantime?" Oishi asked. He motioned towards Ryoma, who had chosen to sit right in the middle of Tezuka's room, his back still stiffly erect and his tail angrily swishing the floor about him. His dark gold eyes were following Inui's every move, and Inui had an uneasiness that the vindictive little cat might very well put four sets of claws into him for putting him in this predicament.

"My dad won't want a cat in the restaurant." Kawamura said apologetically.

"My sister is allergic to cats." Oishi added.

"I'm going to be busy." Inui shifted his gaze.

"I wouldn't mind but my sister…" Eiji trailed off.

Tezuka forced himself not to sigh. It looked like he was going to be stuck with four furry felines (two at each other's throats the whole day, one who looked like it wanted nothing better than to bite Inui, and the last…Tezuka didn't even want to think about it) for the next few days…until Inui found a cure to this whole mess, that is.

"The toilet - " Tezuka gave in and pointed firmly, "is out there."

Four pairs of cat eyes blinked, and Tezuka could sense a headache waiting for him in the next few days or so.

--

Ryoma was prepared for the worst when he was forced to drink one of Inui-sempai's concoction, but he certainly never expected to turn into an animal. Now, he sat, stiffly dignified, as his sempais (those that still retained their human forms) discussed what to do with them. Once or twice, he wondered whether he was fast enough to dart across the floor, nip Inui-sempai's ankle hard, then dash back before anyone caught him. He found himself entertaining the idea, but abandoned it. He wanted Inui-sempai well and healthy to concentrate on solving the problem of turning them back into humans.

His ears pricked up as his sempais came to a decision about them above him. That was one thing he hated: he was already short as a human, but as a cat, he practically had to crane his neck to look up into Eiji's face, or Oishi's. the one consolation was that Momoshiro was now about the same height as him (if not the same width) and could no longer hook an arm around his neck, something Ryoma disliked very much.

"…is out there." He dimly heard someone say, and he looked up at Tezuka expectantly. Apparently, his buchou was going to take care of them. Interesting.

"Ne, Ryoma, what's going on?" Momoshiro complained, plopping himself down on the floor beside Ryoma. He began washing an ear quite vigorously.

"Tezuka-buchou's going to take care of us until Inui-sempai finds a way to turn us back." Ryoma told him absent-mindedly.

"It's not bad, being a cat." Momoshiro observed lazily as he rolled over on his back. He wriggled a bit more, trying to get at an itchy spot on his lower back. "No school, no tennis practice, no homework."

"No burgers." Fuji said blandly from behind them and Momoshiro yowled, leaping up.

"I'd forgotten." He said sheepishly when Tezuka gave him a cuff around the head to shut him up. "Ow! Buchou!"

"We'd get milk, though." Fuji added, glancing sideways at Ryoma. "Who's going to take care of your cat, Ryoma-kun?"

Now it was Ryoma's turn to leap up, eyes wide. "Karupin! I can't leave her for goodness knows how long until Inui-sempai cures us!"

"You'd better let them know." Fuji tossed his head lightly towards their team members, who were preparing to leave. "Or they'll be gone."

Desperately, Ryoma raced across the floor, crashing into Oishi's legs in a most undignified manner. He pawed at the shoes, hoping that the sensitive Vice-Captain would know what he meant. Karupin. He tried to say, knowing that he was mewing plaintively (to his human-sempai's ears anyway) and he hated the shrill tone of it.

Oishi paused. "Ryoma has a cat, doesn't he?"

Thank goodness. Ryoma knew that if anyone could understand the gibberish that was coming out of his mouth, Oishi would.

"He must be worried for his cat." Oishi bent to pick Ryoma up so that their eyes were level with each other. "I'll drop by your house and check on your cat, tell your dad to look after her, all right?"

Ryoma nodded. Quickly, with a deeper instinct that was not his, he stuck out a pink tongue and licked Oishi's nose.

Later that night, Ryoma could be seen trying to wash out his tongue with hot running water in the bathroom. Tezuka's parents had been most alarmed at this human characteristic of the cat, and Tezuka had to calm them down by explaining that his friend (to whom the cats apparently belonged to) had trained them to utilize the bathroom freely.

--

"I'mhuuuuungry." Momoshiro whined as he scratched reflexively at his belly. The black, stiff-haired cat was lying on his back, paws straight up in the air, and his deep violet eyes were now staring at the ceiling. "I haven't eaten a burger since yesterday."

The four cats were lying in various spots in Tezuka's room. The lawful occupant of the room was now currently at school, where he was probably explaining to Ryuzaki-sensei about the suspicious absenties of four of their key players, since a glance at the solemn and dull-looking clock on the desk told Ryoma that it was time for tennis practice. Their buchou wasn't just solemn and strict at school - even his personal bedroom reflected that with its sombre colours. It was a boring room, Ryoma decided, without even a single poster of some sort of tennis star adorning the wall, like he had in his own room.

"We could always go out for a walk."

Momoshiro leapt up with a strangled yowl, Ryoma's fur stood on end, and Kaidoh bristled visibly before his feral instincts realized that it wasn't a threat. Fuji had ghosted silently among them without making so much as a sound. Ryoma reflected sourly that being turned into a cat had probably given the tensai several extra skills that he'd rather not his sempai have. Still, Fuji had lost the advantage of height, right? So that should even the scales a little…

"Go out where for a walk?" Momoshiro replied irritably once he'd resettled back in his position after being scared out of it by his senior. "Tezuka-buchou locked the door behind him, if you hadn't noticed."

"Oh, that's easy to unlock." Fuji said affably. "I've observed Saeki's cat do it all the time."

"But once we get out where do we go?" Kaidoh asked. His voice had an odd lilting hiss to it, rather like the way he sounded when he still retained his human form. It sounded normal on his human self, but rather peculiar in the form of a cat.

"For a walk." Fuji was coolly unperturbed by the mysterious answers he was giving. "Shall we go?"

Ryoma perked up in interest as Fuji leapt delicately up onto the chair closest to the study table that Tezuka made use of to study. He used this to hop up to the table itself. His tail swishing from side to side as he walked down the length of the table, Fuji finally reached the doorknob that was conveniently positioned just a few centimetres above the table, and just off the side. Reaching out with one velvety soft paw (which no doubt contained four or five very sharp claws) Fuji coaxed the lock open. There was an audible click, then with a satisfied purr from Fuji, the door swung noiselessly open.

"Let's go." Fuji leapt down from the edge of the table and pattered out calmly. After a moment's hesitation, everyone else followed suit, partly because they didn't know what else to do, partly because they didn't want to let Fuji out of their sight. Goodness knows what the sadistic little cat might try if they didn't at least keep an eye on him.

…At least, that was what they reasoned.

The house was impressively empty as they padded their way through to the front door. Tezuka's parents were presumably at work, for which they were thankful for as it made their 'escape' relatively easier. Momoshiro paused in the kitchen to try and rummage up some sort of edible food, but failed to get into the pantry and the refrigerator. Ryoma had to barrage into him at full run to get him to turn his attention away, at least for a minute. Fuji's claws did the trick in convincing the hungry cat to follow them, and not to raid the kitchen of their host.

Again at the front door, Fuji admirably unlocked the door with amazing ease. He did make sure the front door was closed behind them, though. As he'd explained, he wouldn't like his host's house being burgled while they were 'on a walk'.

The streets and sidewalks of the city were largely different, to a cat's perspective. Ryoma found himself confused about roads that should have been familiar, and noticed tiny little details around him that weren't quite so clear before. When he mentioned this to Momoshiro, the black cat shrugged and commented that it was probably because Ryoma himself was even tinier than before. Being a little sensitive about his height, (or lack of it) Ryoma promptly pounced on Momoshiro and the two cats began yowling enough to attract the attention of passerbys. Fuji and Kaidoh had to hustle the pair behind a tree and silence them before any of the passerbys could come close enough to notice that none of the cats had collars or name tags on them.

"For goodness sake, surely you don't want to end up in some sort of animal shelter home while they try to figure out who you belong to, do you?" Fuji asked mildly, positioning himself right in the middle of Ryoma and Momoshiro. "Just try and make yourself inconspicuous, and I'll get us some lunch."

Momoshiro perked up at the word 'lunch'. "Where are we going? What are we going to eat? Burgers?"

Fuji gave a smile that Ryoma didn't quite like.

"We're going to Hyoutei, of course."

TBC

Again, any typos, please tell me and I will try to fix them ASAP.

Reviews are extremely welcome (duh..)