“Come here you little snot,” Gemma Polson said, already substantial tail flared to twice its normal size in anger, and snatched little Ryan’s spray can, grabbing him by the back of his collar with her free hand, and yanking him along. There was a jagged red line across her federalist black suit where Ryan had sprayed her as he was apprehended, “You want to spend the night in jail, fur ball?” 
“Who are you calling furball, fluffy?” Ryan spat, sensitive to any criticism of his size, and tried to pull away from Gemma, snapping his jaws and threatening to bite, “Let me go!” 
“Hush up,” the squirrel said, and not all too gently pulled him along behind her, the little bear, face burning red, crossed his arms like a spited two year old and followed. Close behind them came Rerim, the welsh corgi, who’s nerves seemed ready to give at any moment. His eyes kept darting around and examining the scenery. The main frontal staircase had ended soon after it had begun, and opened up into a corridor full of corroded brass busts, green with age, their commissioners’ depicted wishes now reduced to a sooty mess of wasted features.
Rerim gradually waded back from Gemma and Ryan, the squirrel pulling the little bear along, the two butting heads at every offered opportunity. The busts were aligned perfectly, mathematically, and seemed to stare out with unseeing eyes, doubly blind, and deep into the corgi’s soul... or something. At any rate, they were cool to look at, and Rerim did, frequently stopping to look into their blank metal eyes. 
One of them caught his attention.
This statue, not like the others, had soft features, less tarnished by age, they were those of a child. A dog of some kind... a corgi?
Nahh, Rerim thought, and turned away, ready to bolt after his group, who had gone far enough ahead to be out of sight. 
Don’t go that way. The statue said, or, rather, Rerim heard the statue said. All the fur on his body stood on end, and he dashed around, looking at the blank eyed statue of the dog... no longer so blank.
That way’s not safe. Don’t go that way. The statue of Rerim said to the real thing, You’re far too young. You’ll never get out of here in one piece, not alone. The corgi was bedazzled. The bronze lips didn’t move, it didn’t do anything at all. The voice seemed to come from nowhere, everywhere at once, from inside and outside and around, but it was absolutely, indescribably coming from the statue, the one that so much looked like him.
“Buh... but I’m not alone,” Rerim said, rationally. The statue shot him down.
Your friends are gone. Long, long gone. You need to go, leave this place now. Before it’s too late. The corgi’s short muzzle hung open. He was being told to get out of the house by a statue of himself. Finally, his nerve broke, and he started to back away. NO! It shouted, That way is even worse! It’s aware of you, now. Aware and ready. 
“H-how do I get out... out of this place?” Rerim said, and reached out to touch the cool bronze.
The question answered itself as his paw contacted the metal. The pedestal started to sink into the marble floors. The corgi, gasping and hopping back, watched the whole floor descend into a secret passageway, a small staircase leading into darkness.
This way. It said, and Rerim followed its lead.
“Sometimes, it’s just that easy,” Rakka said off to the side of the mystic orb which he had been speaking into, and rubbed his forehead with a fin, “these children make it too easy.”
Ever so slowly, Rerim crept down the stairs. They were made of stone, and very cold on his paw pads, but they grew warmer as he neared the bottom, a warm light filtering in through a door at the end of the stairs. As he reached the bottom, he pushed them open. What he saw inside was impossible.
***
“Listen, squirrely, you are not the boss of me!” Ryan said, pouting fiercely, and kicked Gemma in the leg. 
“I am too the boss of you, stumpy,” Gemma replied, and firmly dragged Ryan over to a nearby doorway, one of many in the winding, cascading hallways of the manorhouse, “Listen here. If you don’t get your chubby arse in gear, I’ll lock you in one of these rooms and come back for you later, see if I don’t.”
“You wouldn’t dare!” Ryan spat, literally, at Gemma, who, flaring in frustration, barges shoulder first against the door, knocking it off its age old lock, and swinging it inward. The two of them tumbled forward, and rose to their feet, dusting themselves off. Ryan pulled a flashlight from his baggy pants and shined it around the room. It was very large, and had painted over windows along one side, the wire frames calling back to the interior design of an industrial revolution era factory. 
Ryan shivered all over, and started to back away towards the hall.
“What’s got you so worked up, eh?” Gemma asked, prodding Ryan forward, who turned, a look of growing terror on his face, “Come on, it’s just an old shell press or something. What’s you problem?”
“I, uh...” Ryan said, youthful eloquence in full command, “I don’t like factories.”
“You don’t?” Gemma said with a laugh, “Really?”
Ryan shook his head, but Gemma pressed him on, “Grow up. We’ll open one of those windows and get our baring straight, alright? Or are you too much of a sissy to walk through a room with some conveyer belts?”
Ryan puffed up his chest, but was inwardly extremely hesitant. The last time he had broken into a factory... bad things had happened. Very bad things. When he had agreed to cross the room with Gemma, it had been under the pretence that they were only there to open the windows and figure out where they were, but Gemma clearly had other plans. He had also promised himself not to go near any machinery, but that proved impossible. Large pieces of equipment dominated the room. Long conveyer belts trailed through all the machines, like a capitalist dot-number puzzle. Crossing the room wasn’t easy, but it was doable, and, sighing, Ryan happily reached the other side without touching so much as the carpenter’s tile underfoot. They had, however, encountered a problem.
“Huh, well looks like you’re up, cubby,” Gemma said, and prodded Ryan with a claw. The windows weren’t that big, but they just happened to be situated right above the start of the conveyer belt that ran through the room. Ryan waved his hands, and Gemma shook her head, “Seriously? What are you, six? This crap’s been lying here for decades. It’s useless. Look, if you’re that much of a bloody coward, I’ll do it,” she said, though the belt was clearly too close to the celing for her to climb. Ryan shuddered, then bit his tongue.
“Help me up there,” Gemma nodded, and lifted him up under his arms like a toddler up most of the way to the top. He crawled from there onto the belt, hard leather under his pads, and started working with the badly corroded lock. In short order, he simply pulled his trusty screwdriver from his pocket and broke the lock, stepping aside and pulling the ancient, aged glass pane window inwards a few feet, enough to look out of. 
“GAH!” Gemma shouted as nearly a hundred years of dust and dirt and grime poured down on her from above. She flailed, stepping backward hurriedly out of the torrent. She tripped on her feet, and clutched a bar to balance herself. The bar had a ball at the end. It was a lever. 
“GAH!” Ryan shouted as he was thrown from his feet and onto his rear with a grunt as the leather belt burst into furious motion, the ancient bulbs of the room starting to click to life. He had been here before. The first machine rushed towards him, faster than Gemma could snatch him off the belt. “The lever!” Ryan shouted, quick to think, right as he was swept down a chute which tumbled him around, inside, something fierce. So much so that his baggy pants and sweater had been lost in the journey. “N-NOT AGAIN!” Ryan gasped as he groped at his naked fur, knowing exactly what the fates had in store for him.
Gemma stood, and grabbed the metal lever which stuck at an odd angle out of the steel plate terminal. She grasped it, and yanked upward, not noticing the corrosion at the base. It bent, cracked, and shattered under her strength, sending her backwards with the remnants of the lever still in her paws, the second station rushing towards Ryan.
“N-no!” Ryan loosed with a blood curdling scream as he plopped down onto an unnecessarily thick diaper, right in his size. Stunned for the moment, and unable to squirm, the old kind of talcum powder was applied to his loins, and mechanical arms taped the huge disposable around his waist, stabling him in the mouth with a nursing bottle as a parting gift. 
The following station came shortly after the first. It was a little windowed chamber with a round indentation. Ryan’s hands grasped around the nursing bottle, full to the brim with warm, fresh milk, and, arms grasping his wrists and ankles, bullied his limbs into nursing position, his natural suckle reflex forcing him to drink. It was horrible, awful torture, and Gemma could see every moment of it. The little bear’s cheeks burned cherry red as the squirrel banged on the glass portal into his tiny chamber. He whimpered, but suckled down every last drop.
Whatever had been in the bottle, Gemma didn’t know, but, whatever it was, it had nearly silenced the little bear. He had adopted the fetal position on the belt, facing away from the squirrel, and was hurriedly being transported to a second station, wherein yet worse horrors awaited little Ryan. 
Ryan had had bladder problems for most of his life. His growth had been stunted from near birth, and he had suffered the humiliation of having his younger sister outgrow him, and, embarrassingly, stop needing diapers earlier, as well. It was pathetic, and Ryan knew it. He had adopted the bad-boy personal to combat this, and, in the world of both his real and imagined selves, being regressed to the status of a baby was beyond anything in terms of horror. As a result of this, Ryan felt his quivering bladder, barely controlled under the best of circumstances, fail at the sight of what was to come. 
The machine had, as if sensing his fear of regression, produced an outfit fit for an infant of the 1950s. By the speed of the belt, he was dashed right into his first item of torture: a pink diaper cover, little more than fluffy, two inch thick undergarments with an elastic waistband, and silk fluff flowing out all over. This snapped snugly around his belly, completely engulfing his little brown tail in its mass, that, however, was the least of his worries. The bear’s hands were grappled by robotic arms and pulled over his head, followed by the swift descent of a short, poke-dotted dress, precisely long enough to cover all his proud brown fur, but not obscure so much as an inch of the soft, pink frills that adorned his butt. He was manoeuvred again, like a product on a line, this time onto his back, all four limbs straight up in the air.  Each was held there as first pink, prissy plastic shoes, complete with a little white bow that was glued to the toe, was pulled over one of his few masculine features: his claws. His forepaws fared little better as they, too, were restrained, a pair of heavily padded mittens with locking straps being forced onto him. 
Almost as an afterthought, he was pinned to the table, helpless, as no fewer than a half dozen arms grappled for his face wielding brushes, sticks, combs and makeup, lots and lots of makeup. His lips were painted a pearly white, cheeks puffed up with a dash of blush, his eyes were lined, quite uncomfortably with a black marker, and, finally, a great big blue bonnet, easily as big as his head, was lowered from en-high like a crown to mark him queen of the babies. His face burned red with shame, and, for all the struggling he could do, it was hopeless. He was bonneted, and carried along to the next station, right back by the door. 
“Hell...” she said, reaching for him, but, too afraid that he might actually be delicate as a baby, hesitating and pulling back. 
“Well, don’t just stand there; get me out of this crap!” The borderline little girl’s sissy teddy bear ordered, wiggling around in his very limited range of motion in an attempt to escape. Gemma nodded, but was cut off as yet another of the oddly gloved hands came out of a wall, grabbed Ryan by the back of his collar, eliciting a scream from the little guy, and punching a tag through the neckline of his dress. 
Ryan squirmed and struggled, but he couldn’t grasp the tag through the mitts. At last he gave up, “what does it say?” 
Gemma, with no sense of the little bear’s comfort, turned him around, and read the tag aloud, “Precious baby loves m...”
“Noooooo!” Ryan wailed, immediately curling up into a ball.
Gemma rolled her eyes and ignored him, reading on, “baby’s favourite doll... five pounds?” she giggled, “five pounds for your diapered butt? Not a chance.” There was more on the back. Ryan was wriggling to make her life hard, so she flicked his ear to get him to settle down, “Ahem... property of... Rakka? Throw fee out window, any attempt at theft will be punished.” 
“Who the heck’s Rakka?” Ryan pouted, “I’m gonna kick his face in for this...”
“Oh hush up, I had dolls as a girl more threatening than you,” Gemma replied, getting some slight pleasure out of making the vandal bugger squirm a bit .
“Get me out of here!” Ryan whined, and the squirrel finally acquiesced, picking him up under her arm like a package, much to the aforementioned package’s discomfiture, and walking out the door, or, rather, walking flat into the locked, barred door wherein the open entry had been moments before. 
Gemma dropped Ryan, who gave a start, and, hilariously, couldn’t get back up again. Legs too precarious to carry him far, the little bear was forced to roll over and crawl away on his hands and knees. 
“There are thieves in the house,” the puppet master in the tower said into the crystal ball.
“You use way too much metaphor,” the other figure, the owl, said, interest peaked, “and what’s with all age regression. Isn’t that a little silly?” 
“And you need to stop hijacking Halloween. I’m having fun here.” Turning back to the orb, Rakka ignored the owl as he rolled his eyes, and waved a fin, watching and waiting for the inevitable climax of the evening.  
A cold sweat broke out on the back of Gemma’s neck. The hints were starting to pile up, and the squirrel knew how to see the writing on the wall, “cover your ears, I’m going to blast this door,” she said between her incisors, and, pulling the pistol, lightly modified with a precision sight, from its holster and, after a moment’s careful aim, fired it. A short stream of soapy water sprayed out of the end of the colt 44, and dripped from the cold, hard, very much intact brass doorknob. The squirrel then proceeded to gasp in surprise, drop the clip, find it full of nothing but water, and back away from the door, muttering every curse in every language she could think of.
“Such naughty words, and in front of a baby, too,” Rakka giggled, a throaty baritone, and watched the proceedings. Gemma looked down at her hand to see the metal and carbon fibre turn to pink plastic in her hand, a deadly firearm transforming itself into a useless children’s toy. She cursed some more, and smashed the water gun underfoot, grabbing up Ryan and attempting to drag him over to the windows on the other side. 
“Can you climb? We’re climbing down,” the squirrel said, hoping her long suppressed natural obsession with climbing would hold out at least until she reached the bottom of the wall. Gemma’s clothing felt tight and hot around her. She cursed some more, heart starting to pound, and tugged at an elastic collar that shouldn’t have been an elastic collar, “What in the...”
“Uh oh...” Ryan said, looking up as, even before their very eyes, the individual fabric strands in the squirrel’s expensive black coat disintegrated around her, falling as ash to the floor and sinking into the boards, but worse, far worse, was what was happening to Gemma’s dress shirt. 
  The federal agent screamed, not a very common sound, and, too caught up in the horrific moment to care what was thought of her, tore at the pink, skin tight fabric that was starting to morph as a wave across her outfit. It stuck like liquid rubber, clinging to her claws as she dug into it and pulled them out again. Clenching her teeth with anger and desperation, the squirrel took two handfuls of the stuff, one in each hand, but, helpless as she had never been before, Gemma found the stuff impossible to tear, springy and flexible beneath her palms. It stuck to her hands, and, unable to stop it, she watched as the fabric slowly crept down her arms and around her hands before meeting to construct an impregnable barrier around her upper body. 
As much as she fought, the struggle was lost before it had even begun. As soon as the pink synthetic fabric of the garment, crimson all over with white trim, reached its full extent, things started to get bigger, or at least that’s how it seemed to Gemma. Her pants felt loose around her waist despite the tightened belt, there was the sudden sensation of falling, falling rapidly towards the floor, hardwood boards coming up to meet her. The dress pants between her legs came down around her ankles as if to provide a cushion for her fall, all they did, however, was reveal that her one remaining garment, the pink and living thing that had engulfed her, spread down and around her crotch before meeting in the middle, and leaving no visible means of removal.
“Ghheet me owwta dis ting!” Gemma hollered into Ryan’s face, the horror stricken bear only inches away, backing for safety as though the inexplicable garment might jump out and bite him. He had just bore witness of an adult woman shrink down to his proportions, and, while one part of him knew she deserved it, the other felt, for the first time in a very long time, empathy. The squirrel shrunk and shrunk, her careening voice getting more and more incomprehensible by the moment, limbs flailing, helpless. Eventually the changes stopped, and Gemma, still fully conscious inside of her body as it would have been decades before, was overcome by a crashing wave of emotion. She cried.
“Oh, oh crap... this is bad,” Ryan muttered, crawling over to what amounted to a six week old squirrel, careening and dressed only in a pink and white onesie. Even as the little bear watched on, the area around Gemma’s nethers started to swell, ballooning out on a plane and in all directions to form a neatly fitted bulge. Anyone else would have had to guess at what was causing it, Ryan knew it too well to have to. 
Crawling over to the near helpless squeaker, unintentionally wrapping herself in the black fabric of her pants, Ryan did what he could to comfort her. Gemma, on the other hand, was having none of it. If there was anything that her conscious mind and the overwhelming emotions agreed upon it was that neither liked what was happening, and they wanted it to stop. Growing irate as he often did under pressure, Ryan scooped up the horrifically shrunk squirrel, almost impossible to imagine that, mere moments ago, she had been an agent of the federal government, and pressed her into his heavily padded lap, cooing clumsily, stumbling over words as he tried to calm her.
Unlikely as it was, the treatment seemed to work, and Gemma slowly, ever so slowly started to regain a measure of composure. She looked up, teary eyed, and reached her hands up to the little bear, who could only stare down, knowing himself powerless at any rate to help her, or himself, get out of this wretched place.
***
Rerim blinked to clear the bright light from his eyes, and shook his head. What in the hell... He thought, looking around him. He was in a room. A brightly lit room with windows on all sides, including the one behind him, where the door had been only seconds before, behind which was the glow of a mesmerising sunset, beyond anything in beauty, the gorgeous rays of light bouncing off the great towering walls of cloud to travel hundreds of miles and meet his eye through this, the window of a nursery. The floor of the room was littered, absolutely covered with cubs. He knew those cubs... There, in one corner, cuddling up to a stuffy of some kind made of green and yellow circles, was a little baby squirrel, so small that only one tooth could be seen behind the shield of her pacifier. That fed girl... Rerim thought, mouth falling open. The corgi took a step towards her, nearly trampling two small toddlers, raccoons, he realized, both diapered and chasing eachother across the nursery. One of them could have been any raccoon in the world, but the other had the unique aesthetic quality of being half purple. 
“Holly shit...” the corgi said, his head darting around the room as his eyes took in as much information as they could. They’re all... here! He realized, the cop, that bear kid, everyone! 
“Hey, you watch your language, there’s cubs in here!” Rakka said, firmly, from where he sat, or, rather, floated, in the center of the room, looking for all the world like a cross between a fish of some kind and an ancient Chinese dragon. 
Rerim took a quick step back, “Wha... what the hell are you?!” he said, starting to breathe heavily at the sight of such an odd, odd creature.
“Did you not hear me, young man? I said watch your language, or else!” The fish dragon’s rough of tendrils perked up as he floated up and towards Rerim as aggressively as a fish dragon can. 
“I- I...” Rerim started, his lip starting to quiver as he backed up against the wall, “I’m sorry, okay! Ijuswannagetoutofhere!” The corgi slid down the wall onto his behind, and realized he was sitting on some sort of rubberized mat. He was quivering, terrified and overcome by emotions in quantities that were unique in their force and sharpness. The tears started to roll down his cheeks and he felt the floor move under him, until, when he opened his blurry eyes again, he realized that he was on his back, legs spread, clothes, nowhere to be found.
“N-NO!” Rerim squealed, “I NAH A BAYBEE!” The words got harder and harder to form in his mouth with every word. He thrashed, but his thrashing did nothing to alter his circumstances. The carp monster never actually touched the diaper, but only waved a taut and surprisingly sturdy fin at the changing table, and all the necessary ingredients simply presented themselves magically. The diaper, rather thick and printed with a puppy patter, unfolded itself in front of the uncooperative corgi, his mind gradually clouding over, complex thoughts growing more and more fuzzy, more distant, eventually disappearing entirely. 
Rerim still whimpered a bit as his behind was lifted up by the ankles, and the diaper slid underneath him, but it was a simpler whimper, not built up with the emotions and thoughts of an eighteen year old boy, but those of a simple infant, a child. At Rakka’s command, the bottle of powder tipped over Rerim’s naked loins, and, without another word, the diaper folded its way up around his waist, unremovable.
“Baawwagaga?” the corgi started, lips and tongue feeling fat and unresponsive. A few of the cubs had come over to help, or hinder, whichever. Rerim didn’t know how long he was sitting on the mat, time had lost its meaning for him, but, within that indefinable period, something or other, the corgi didn’t notice, had pulled a pair of bottle green mittens over his paws, and booties of similar color over his feet. They were strapped snugly in place, irremovable, but also safe... yes, that’s it. He felt safe, cared for. He nearly rumbled with satisfaction, and batted his neon green hands and toes up into the air.
“There you are, now go play with the others, little one. I have three more cubs to catch,” Rakka said, turning back to the orb as Rerim crawled away.