Chapter Text
One fine morning at the Scouting Legion headquarters, Jean woke all his neighbors when he screamed from having his bed collapse right under him. The crash and the obscenities were enough to bring everyone to the hall where they converged on Jean’s door, sleepily demanding to know what his problem was now.
Instead of screaming at them through the door, Jean reacted rather strangely to being discovered. That is, he went silent for about a whole 5 minutes. Slowly, most of his comrades sobered up enough to realize that something was terribly, awfully wrong. They knocked with increasing urgency, trying to coax him to answer or open the door.
More silence.
Eventually, Reiner threatened to find a battering ram, so help him Maria, unless Jean showed his face this instant. Someone snidely suggested that Reiner just use his head.
“Alright...but you have to promise. Not. To. Freak. Out.” Jean finally answered in a reedy voice.
“We promise.” Eren intoned flatly with a roll of his eyes.
Jean made his way to the door, accompanied by the sound of hoofbeats as he walked across the cold, stone tiles.
...Hoofbeats?
The door squeaked open, and Jean appeared, face first, then followed by his torso.
“Geez, you look fine!” Reiner sighed, scratching the back of his head, “What the hell did you have to wake the rest of us….up...for…?” He trailed off and his eyes bulged as Jean opened the door the rest of the way.
Everyone’s eyes bulged.
From the waist down, Jean was a horse. A chestnut, hot-blood racer of some kind, vaguely resembling the Scouting Legion’s prized mounts. But most importantly and definitely, a horse.
“I...uh…” Reiner struggled for coherency.
Jean didn’t answer, but his tail swished irritably.
“God, Jean. Did you...eat something funny?” Connie managed to do better, but not by much.
Jean didn’t answer, but he did look even more pained.
“Jean…” Eren said breathlessly.
Jean locked eyes with him. He was a good foot taller than Eren now - what with the extra leg (legs) and all - and everyone watched with bated breath as the two sized each other up anew.
“Jean…” Eren’s eyes flashed, “Your body finally matches your face!”
Jean reared and kicked Eren into the opposite wall.
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“A centaur.” Armin stated definitively.
Jean thought it was a bullshit answer. “Am not.”
“Yes. You are. At least, you are one now.”
“Be glad you’re not a unicorn,” Reiner smirked. Behind him, Bertolt entertained a series a silent chuckles.
“A unicorn!” Sasha’s eyes went big.
“You can’t eat those.” Connie chided.
Jean stamped the ground, then remembered himself and drew his legs back, trying his best to stand like a human, with his hands on his...hips. Withers? No, hips. Definitely hips. “How do I turn back?”
Armin frowned, putting his books away. “That’s the mystery. We don’t even know how this happened in the first place. It’s like...magic.”
Jean grit his teeth, and massaged his temples furiously. “You’re seriously telling me. That I’m….under a spell?”
“I...I have absolutely no idea.” Armin conceded, dropping his shoulders.
Jean groaned and only barely stifled it from becoming a wail of despair.
Meanwhile, Mikasa opened the door to the storage room where they were currently huddled, dragging a disheveled looking Eren in behind her. Seeing Jean, she immediately froze, assessing him from head to hoof with unreadable soldiers’ eyes. “So it’s true.”
Eren huffed, “See.”
Jean scowled. He had sent Eren to the hospital wing, unconscious and steaming, but apparently, titan shifters healed so fast that not even a kick to the gut was enough to put them down for long. Eren’s little trip to the medics hadn’t even lasted half an hour.
Good, Jean thought viciously. That just meant he didn’t have to hold back.
“Well, until you turn back, we’ll have quite a few things to work out.” Armin continued.
Jean raised an eyebrow dubiously.
“For instance, we probably wouldn’t want all of the Scouting Legion to know about your…current state. It would just cause too much of an uproar. But it’s impossible not to let Commander Erwin know, and along with him, there’s a few other officials who will need to know as well.”
Eren cracked an ominous little grin, “Yeah, I bet Hange will have a field day.”
Jean didn’t like the sound of that at all, but Armin cut him off before he could speak.
“ We’ll also have to make up an excuse as for why you’re not turning up in the mess hall or drills anymore. Furthermore, it’s uncertain whether you’ll be able to perform missions with us.”
“What?” Jean stopped glaring at Eren to glare at Armin instead.
Armin blinked, taking his hand away from his chin, “Well, there’s no way you can use the maneuver gear this way.”
Yes. That should have been obvious. But that had also, understandably, been rather far from Jean’s mind. Hearing it, however, was like a pronouncement of doom.
He was going to be useless.
He wouldn’t be able to live up to Marco’s expectations -
“Can I get a ride?”
Jean turned to stare at the speaker in absolute, flabbergasted horror.
“HUH?!”
Sasha leaned forward on her toes, begging him with puppy eyes, “Please, Jean? Just a short one? I’m not heavy at all, I promise!”
She advanced on him, forcing him to back up into the wall.
Jean tried to wave her off, “Whoa! Listen here! I’m not giving anyone any rides! You got that?”
Connie slapped his fist into his palm. “Oh! I have an idea! What if we hitched you to a wagon? Then you could give all of us rides!”
“Are you even listening to me!?”
Bertolt couldn’t hold it any more and burst into dry heaves of laughter. Reiner thumped him heartily on the back, “Whoa, Bertl, you okay there? You’re not catching a cold are you?”
“SHUT UP!” Jean jabbed his finger in their direction while he stomped his hooves and swished his tail furiously, “I am no carriage horse! I’m not a horse at all!”
“Right, you’re a centaur,” nodded Armin with a placating smile.
Eren shook his head, voiced laced with nonchalant appraisal, “Nah, he’s just a horse.”
Everyone laughed.
Jean didn’t know who to murder first.
And that was the day Jean Kirstein turned into a horse a centaur.