Kit packed up his carry on suitcase with all the essentials: clothes, laptop, tablet, and multiple copies of the same flame print shirt. He was part toon after all. Once a toon found a style, they tended to stick to it. Besides, the blue look good against fox fur. “Two, three, four, that should be enough for a weekend” He thought as he pulled the suitcase closed. He paused, staring at it for a moment before throwing another two shirts in the pile and zipping it closed. Better safe than sorry with Firr. A trip to Firr’s was eventful. He always made sure of it. Living alone with his weird workshop of stuff didn’t do anything to help with his social skills, but it did help him build his collection of gadgets and toys that may or may not have caused some natural disasters. This time, however, Firr wasn’t talking about any trips to the lab at Applied Synergetics, or a weekend gig at the parade in town. In fact, it was kinda weird how quiet he had been since picking Kit up from the airport. He even told kit to leave his zapper at home, which was probably the most surprising thing out of the whole trip so far. Kit’s zapper was the same thing you’d find hooked up to a living room television in the early ‘90s, but he made some modifications to the internals that could affect localized macroscopic molecule clusters and cause various adjustments to their parameters such as mass, volume, configuration, or chemical makeup. Or, as Firr says “Aim it, zap it, and watch your target get all kinds of weird”. Kit was always more than happy to play mad scientist and Firr was just as happy to be a test subject. Normally a trip like this would start with Kit trying out a new mode on his zapper, and Firr trying to cope with suddenly becoming a tree for a week. Even as they chatted about his flight, then the weather, Kit couldn’t quite shake that Firr had some massive big surprise. But right now, on the surface, it seemed like all Kit was visiting was just to get out of his house for a week and work remotely for a while. Honestly, kit wouldn’t mind a nice low key week. Although his gig as a mad scientist was his passion, his day job was making art, and even though he could do that at home it was always nice to get away for a bit. Call it a working vacation. “So”, Firr said once they got to his front door, “I kinda have been working on a little thing you might wanna check out. It isn’t nearly finished, but you might like what I’ve done so far...” Kit could hear the excitement in Firr’s voice. Aaand there it is. Kit knew it. He sighed and shook his head, but a smile creeped up from his lips. Whatever it was, he was actually a little excited to see what he had planned. “Just let me get my laptop set up first” “Ta da” Firr said, pulling the sheet off of the top of the table. It looked almost like Kit’s zapper he left at home, if someone decided that it needed to look more like a futuristic b movie prop. Multicolored led lights of all shapes and sizes littered the top and side of it, some held in place with hot glue. Where the cable would have connected to a Nintendo, there was a mess of colored wire running to Firr’s laptop. Instead of the bright orange that accented Kits zapper, this one was a solid dark grey. “Where the heck did you find an ‘85 model?” “Would you believe in my old toy closet? I thought we were a playstation family growing up” He trailed off as he pressed a couple buttons on the laptop, and the word “SAFE” appeared in large letter on the screen, followed a moment by “Size change algorithm disabled.” Firr picked it up and handed it to Kit. “The handle feels a little off, too light compared to mine” Kit said, tossing the zapper back and forth in his paws. “Yeah, you can’t find any of the sturdy metal bases anymore, so I had to go with plastic. You can’t really tell a difference without knowing what the original felt like” Firr took it back, opening a little panel in the bottom of the handle, and pressed a button. All the multicolored lights synced up in unison, starting a deep red then brightening to a purple, then blue, then finally green. Something on the inside of the zapper started to whirr to life, making a high pitch noise. The computer screen started to print out all kinds of number and letters, scrolling way too fast for any chance of being read. “Obviously I gotta work on the software bit, but that should be pretty quick to get that going. The user interface work a bit different than your model, you can put in suggestions but sometimes it doesn’t follow em. “Sounds like a pretty big bug” “Pfft, that's a feature!” “You really gotta learn how the market works before you start to make these products, seriously.” Kit turned the zapper over and looked at the side. There were a couple nice features to this thing, at least. Like the convenient button on the side to open the battery compartment. “Wait Kit don’t touch that!” Both Kit and Firr were blinded by the huge white flash that filled the room and were tossed back by the energy that the zapper blew out. Kit felt himself lifted up and out of his shoes from the blast. He flew through the air and hit the back wall of Firr’s shop, taking down a couple of tools on the wall from the impact as he landed on the floor. Thank goodness he put carpet in here. As soon as the sound of falling power tools stopped, Kit took a minute to do a self check. The biggest thing was that his tail hurt. That must have hit that first against the wall. There was a dull throb running from the base of his back all the way down to the end of his tail beyond the bottom of his feet. Wait. His tail only went down to his knees… And last time he checked it didn’t have a pointy brown tip… Time for a quick self check. He reached up above his face and instead of the perky ears that sat on top of his head a pair of large, round ears drooped behind his head. He wrapped his paws around his muzzle. At least he still had one, although it was shorter and more rounded than he was used to. He pulled his paws away form his muzzle and saw his fingers were a fair bit longer than they used to be, with dark splotches from his palm up. His middle was longer than before, but that was made up with his shorter leg and hips. He definitely had a haunchy body going on now. Today had gotten more interesting. He puled himself up to his (longer) feet and dusted himself off. He’d be more unsteady, but he knew how to handle this kind of body. He’d been it a few times before. “Firr,” he asked, using all of his self control to not scream, “Just when were you planning on turning me into a meerkat this week?” “Well, uh.” he stammered to his feet. Somehow, he survived unscathed. “I swear I was gonna ask first!” Kit rolled his eyes and sighed, walking over to the well charred zapper sitting in the middle of the floor. The grey plastic now had a swirl of black on it, and the lights all sat totally dark. One of the AA batteries from the handle was leaking and there was still a somewhat concerning high pitch buzz emanating from some circuit board in the thing. Firr picked up the zapper gingerly, treating it not unlike a bomb. It very well could be. He placed it on the table in the middle of the room. “Well, uh, I should start with an apology.” “That’s a good start” Kit replied. Firr walked over to Kit, getting down to one knee so he only had to look down a bit to meet Kit’s gaze. “I promise I’ll get you back to normal, just, uh, give me a bit. It’ll take a bit of work to get you back to your normal size… I didn’t quite have the mass transfer algorithm quite figured out...” “But it said it disabled the size change thingie!” Kit yelled. “Yeah, it lies a lot.” Firr said in stride. Things like warning lights and caution signs stopped meaning much to him years ago. There’s been more than one occasion where he was surprised by the arrival of the fire department, despite the alarm blaring for minutes beforehand after a failed test. “It isn’t that hard to fix, I swear.” Firr continued, “This happened last week. I just need two capacitors, a handful of resistors, and a diode” The zapper shot off a bright colored spark from it’s backside with a loud crack, a long wisp of smoke trailing out from it. “two diodes.” Kit’s glare didn’t relax any, and the new markings around his eyes made sure that Firr was aware of that fact. “look, I’ll be back in like twenty minutes, thirty tops. Maybe an hour if the new model scope came in, They said this one is gonna have twice the resolution of the curre-” “FIRR” Kit squeaked “Right, right, sorry. You’ll be fine, I promise. I’ll uh, let me help out ya there.” He carefully picked up the couple pound meerkat in his paws and gently set him down on the table. “You’re really really lucky I have this.” Kit said, rummaging through his bag until he pulled out a half size tablet pen, perfectly sized for his new paws. Kit was a professional and something as minor as being turned into a two foot tall meerkat wasn’t gonna stop him from taking care of his art queue. He sighed and pressed a few buttons on his laptop, and he was staring at a blank canvas, a red icon in the top left of his screen proclaimed that he was connected and streaming to his audience. He throw on some music and started to tackle the first picture of the day. Kit was really in the zone. It took a few moments to get used to the added dexterity his longer meerkat fingers gave him, but once he got the hang of it, the art seemed to just fly off the tablet. The music changed to an upbeat tune, and kit actually caught himself nodding along and wagging his tail in beat with the track. Maybe when Firr got back he wouldn’t be so quick to ask to get changed back. Being this small was kinda nice now that he had a moment to think about it. His tablet was huge so he could get so much more detail into his pictures. And honestly, he kinda liked the feeling of being so small. Something about it felt right. He was much more compact, like there was all of his energy bundled up in a smaller form factor. He definitely felt more powerful. So powerful, in fact, he didn’t even realize how hard he hit the zapper with his wagging tail. The light plastic of the zapper slid across the table by the tie he got to his feet to chase it and just as quickly fell off the table and hit the floor with a clack. The walls of the room glowed green from the reflection of the zapper cracking in half, and a thick puff of smoke drifted upwards. Kit opened his eyes and could only watch as that smoke drifted up, around, and over the table he was sitting on. His vision went blurry as the thick smoke obscured his vision and he waved his hands in front of his face to clear it. The tingle started right in his middle and tarted to spread down. He knew the feeling well and his subconscious anticipated it faster than he did, sitting down before he even realized what was going on. His paws were splayed out in front of him as the tingle over took there. Each toe involuntarily flexed before growing to twice their size with an audible pop. Today had gotten much more interesting. Both of his footpaws creaked as they puffed out, his toes merging together into one large digit as the rest of his legs inflated and seemed to lose definition. His knees disappeared all together and his legs were just one smooth shape now. He could feel a seam cut its way up the ides of his legs, then up his hips, and all the way to his middle. Creases formed where parts of his body met up. His body kept the same general form, but the shape was much simpler. Where he had a meerkat tummy and hips, now he just sported a big smooth curve of shiny material. The natural variation of his fur color was simplified out to a single hue, his belly lighter than his sides with some painted spots on the side. Kit pressed at the swelling that reached up to his chest. Now that it was closer to his eyes, he could see that as his body stretched and ballooned out his fur gave way to a much more shiny and almost translucent material. “okay,” he said to himself, “I’m just a pooltoy. Nothing weird, thank goodness.” He thought about just how weird of a sentience that that was and how much he’d been thorough for that to not even phase him anymore. He turned himself around so he was lying on his belly, inflated tail hiked up in the air and positioned himself back in front of the tablet. If he timed it right, he could finish the ink layer before he lost function in his hands, and that would be enough for today’s stream anyways. His tail had other ideas. He didn’t even get back to drawing before he felt his rump being pulled off the table. Something lighter than air filled his tail and now that it was hollow vinyl it started to lift into the air, pulling the rest of his meerkat body along with it. Kit let out a loud sigh and looked back as his footpaws leaving contact with the table. He wiggled them but couldn’t make them come back to earth. Today had gotten much much more interesting. The vinyl hadn’t even reached his head and his tail was already going on full balloon mode. Despite everything, kit had to give it to Firr, the skunk’s zapper worked fast. The creek of the vinyl made its way up to his neck and kits head felt like he was in an airplane taking off. The pressure started to build in his ears and he closed his eyes as it grew to an almost unbearable level. With a loud, ear splitting “pop” the pressure released and his eyes forced themselves open. Right in the middle of his vision was a shiny new vinyl nose on top of a painted muzzle. It was cartoonishly simple, and featured a wide grin on the bottom of the muzzle, which he grabbed with his still flesh and blood paws. His muzzle deformed and flattened as he grabbed it, taking a second to pop back into shape once he let go. His tail and rump continued their rush upwards, and with each passing second there was less and less solid weight in Kit to hold himself down. His torso and arms broke contact with the table and he scrambled to hold onto the edge of the table as the law of gravity applied less and less to Kit. He tried his hardest to keep a grip on the table, but his arms, the only part of him that wasn’t a mess of inflated vinyl, were struggling against the lift that the bottom half of his body was producing. “almost… there...” he thought as he stretched as far as his stubby little meerkat paws could reach, looking like the most ungraceful swimmer trying to get the last pool ring at the bottom of the deep end. He struggled and struggled until his paw just stroked a button on his keyboard. The screen on the keyboard blanked out and the stream went from his work in progress to a “be right back!” title card. He breathed a sigh of relief and let himself float up to the ceiling. His gigantic tail hit the ceiling first, bouncing with a soft plap. His tail and torso held tha majority of the mass inside of his body, so they floated to the top. He couldn’t reach anything in the ceiling to right himself up so he was stuck that way until Firr came back with a stick or something to pull him down . The laptop and tablet on the table a few feet below him but there was no way he could reach it. Even the zapper was directly below him just enough out of arm’s length that all he could do was stare and curse at the thing. It was little more than a pile of parts at this point after the fall off the table but a couple of the lights tried to blink a steady pace and one of the components were still smoking. Looked like the rectifier for the second stage amplifier. Firr must have been trying to compensate for the smaller combobulator with a bigger power supply so his zapper could still get the same range even though it didn’t have nearly the same size circuit to really get those big zaps out of his zapper. It was pretty easy of a mistake to make, but if you really wanna be able to use your zapper on any size critter you really needed to just get a bigger combobulator generator, even though it was more expensive. Wait, how could he see that? He blinked and shook his head and realized his muzzle was about two feet away from the zapper, and he could see the details of the chat on his stream. He stretched his neck and saw his body hadn’t stopped inflating, his haunches now took up the entirety of the rafters and it didn’t seem to be slowing down. The smoke from the zapper still was drifting upwards and onto kit’s body, feeding it with more and more energy causing his body to continue to swell. His nose made it all the way to the floor and he used his hands to right himself and brace for impact. Kit’s nose pressed against the window and his muzzle folded back against it, collapsing against the smooth glass. The rest of his body squished against the rest of Firr’s workshop, he could feel his feet pressing against the door and his tail starting to bunch up against the rafters in the ceiling. He was very aware that there was less and less room for his body to take up, and feeling all four walls against his body wile his tail touched the ceiling wasn’t inspiring any kinds of confidence the house was going to hold him for much longer. As if on cue, the wall nearest his right footpaw creaked and strained in protest from the pressure and with one final creak gave way and Kit’s foot found itself in Firr’s driveway. Not to be outdone, the entire side of the house nearest his left side blew into the neighbor’s lawn. As if that was all the permission they needed the other walls burst open in unison. The roof, at this point completely supported by his rump, slid down his haunches and crashed to the ground. With no more weight to hold himself down, kit’s tail quickly took to the sky. Kit surveyed the damage to the house. He could see bits of roofing shingles scattered around the lawn and the entire house was soaked in sunlight pouring in from the hole he just made. He tried to flip himself upright but the bulk of his helium filled rump and tail was too much to overcome, so he continued to float up, seeing more and more of the surrounding earth. At the very least he felt himself stop growing, the zapper now was sitting under a pile of rubble a hundred or so feet below him. So that problem as solved. Now he just had the minor problem that he was lighter than air and nothing was keeping him to earth. The sounds of the earth grew quieter and quieter until only the occasional creak of his inflated vinyl body broke the silence. He had gotten used to it when he heard a loud woosh to his sides. His imagination immediately went to the sound of a dragon breathing fire or a jet engine about to slam into him. He looked to his sides, and to his surprise he saw he had some company. Surrounding him were about half a dozen brightly colored hot air balloons of all shapes and sizes. From the ground, you would just assume that Kit was another one of the balloons floating up above the wreckage that used to be Firr’s house. Kit’s tail and backside were much more swollen with air than his chest and floated up above the rest of him, making a smooth round taper from his rump down. His arms and legs didn’t well out nearly as much as the rest of his body, leaving the giant upside down pear that used to be a meerkat that used to be a fox to fit in with a wild herd of hot air balloons. The one closest to him was painted bright blue and purple, the colors matching the raccoon operator in the basket underneath it. He had a pair of aviator goggles and a large scarf on his neck. He and Kit made eye contact and the balloon pilot pulled on the rope in the middle of the basket, shooting a jet of flame into the balloon and raising him up to meet Kit’s gaze. “Let me guess, Firr?” The raccoon yelled out to Kit. The meerkat tried to speak but he discovered the painted on grin wasn’t actually functional. Instead, he just nodded. “I’ll let him know you’re up here” The raccoon said as kit floated up faster than he could keep up. He couldn’t say thank you, but he managed to wrangle a couple of digits on his paw into an “ok” sign as he drifted up past the cloud cover. The clouds proved to be quite a nuisance. Below them, he could see the earth and at least make an attempt to guess how high up he was. But when he was surrounded by puffs of vapor, he couldn’t even tell which way was up. He couldn’t even see down to his chest anymore, the cover was so thick. The clouds were a solid grey around him, the sun’s light was perfectly diffused. He felt like he was floating in a shadow-less void. The world around him went from a dim grey to a brighter and brighter shade until he was surrounded by almost pure white. He had to shut his eyes from the brightness until he finally cut through the top of the clouds. He opened his eyes, blinked a few times, and instinctively rubbed them. Or at least he tried to. His arms stopped about halfway to his face, held in place by some unknown force. He looked down to his chest and instead of a fox body, or a meerkat body, or even a pear shaped pooltoy body, he saw a giant stretched mass of vinyl slowly expanding. The atmosphere was thinner up here, and the air in his torso was gleefully using that to expand his body outward, slowly engulfing his arms and legs in the process. Kit had to admit to himself, he was out of his element. He had been a meerkat before. He had been inflatable before. But a swollen, translucent balloon quickly reaching the upper stratosphere? That was new. It was starting to get cold and every second that pressure pressed from within him more. The tops of the cloud drifted further and further down and he could see the earth’s curvature as his body started to even out, his chest inflating to match up with his rump, rounding out from a pear to more of an oval. His arms and legs started to swell out with pressure, but his now gigantic middle quickly overtook them, creeping down his upper arms and legs. The world around him started to go from the bright blue of a summer day to a deep blue that felt like it was a half hour after sunset. It started to feel like that too. Less atmosphere meant less light and less heat. As if the science lesson in pressure equilibrium currently being conducted on his body wasn’t enough. A shiver raced down his spine, taking much much much longer than he expected. He tried as hard as he could to watch his torso lose any kind of shape that it once had. Any bit of definition his arms and legs had were now totally gone, just the tips of his fingers and toes made dents in the almost perfect sphere that his body made. The pressure had been uncomfortable, but now that he was starting to reach the limit of what his body could do he thought about all those scenes of weather balloon ripping apart after floating too high. His head was forced outwards, neck completely taken over by the swell of his translucent torso. He could only look down at the earth, so far away at this point. Not even wiggling was possible anymore. He thought he could see the exact spot where he took off, and as if to acknowledge that a glimmer of some kind of reflection shone for a brief moment. Huh. Looked kinda green. Wait. Looks. That glimmer was still there. It shone a bright lime green and had the aura of a bolt of lighting. A bolt of lighting that was very very quickly getting larger. Kit really wished that he could rub his eyes to clear out this mirage. Maybe he was just finally going, and his giant eyes were tarting to see things. But the bolt of lighting or whatever took up more and more of his vision, and he couldn’t even turn his head to look away. The brilliant green crested over the tops of the clouds that looked so far away now. He closed his eyes, the only thing he could do to brace for impact. He felt a huge warmth surround him, and the pressure inside of him was met with an equal pressure on his outside. He thought he had a good idea of what a water balloon getting squeezed felt like now. The cold from the lack of air surrounding him lowly started to return as the pressure from the outside let off but he noticed two things that felt different. The first was the pressure on the inside of his body was gone, replaced with a feeling of weight that was both foreign and still familiar. The second was, although it was cold, it wasn’t quite as sharp and cutting as before. When he opened his eyes he realized why. A thick layer of meerkat fur carpeted over his arms and legs and torso and tail and well… everywhere. He wrapped his arms all over his body, feeling the fur brush against his paws. He didn’t realize how good it felt to have wind blowing through his fur again. Wait... His eyes shot open and he looked around. While a balloon might be perfectly content to float around in the sky, gravity had other ideas for a meerkat. He looked down to the very, very quickly approaching layer of clouds. The couple of pound meerkat very quickly reached terminal velocity as he reached the top of the cloud cover he so lazily rifted up though moments ago. Kit closed his eyes, covered his head with his arms and braced for impact. Somewhere in the back of his head he wondered if he’d make a crater or just a big stain. He made contact with the earth. Moving at what felt like a thousand miles per hour he sank in deeper and deeper, his body slowing down and slowing down until he stopped. The friction of his body against the earth warmed him up and he felt like he was enveloped in an incredibly warm blanket. Then the earth started to push back. Slowly, then faster and faster until he felt himself thrown back into the sky, air rushing around him. Unsure if doing so would wake him up from this crazy dream, Kit slowly opened one eye and looked down to see a massive pink and purple landscape. The top of his bounce crested and he fell back down towards it, landing with a soft thud as the hot air balloon absorbed the impact, enveloping the meerkat again. He bounced again, but this time much less and when he finally settled he made a tiny dent in the top of the balloon. When the balloon finally landed in the street outside of Firr’s house, the fire department, police department, and most importantly insurance adjuster were already taking inventory of Firr’s house. Kit slipped off the top of the balloon as it deflated, landing on solid earth for the fist time in what felt like years. He made his way back into the house and through to the workshop. Firr was holding the remnants of his zapper in one hand and his phone to his ear with the other. “Look, I told you, I swear I didn’t do it this time! How was I supposed to know that shrink serum causes growth when it’s vaporized? If anything you should be thanking me for this important research! Hello? Hellllllooo?” Firr sighed and put away his phone. Kit coughed into his hand. It was small and quiet, Firr didn’t notice it at all. Kit drew in a deep breath and kicked firr in the shin while coughing hard to get his attention. “What th- Kit! You survived! I assumed that blob in the sky was you did you ha-” Kit kicked him again. “That was for stranding me in basically outer space.” He kicked his other shin “That was for almost turning me into a meteor.” He leaned back on his thick tail and kicked both of his paws hard into his legs. “And THAT was for putting me behind my stream schedule!” “Look, I swear I only had it programmed to do meerkat TF. I didn’t have time to work on anything else! That’s all this thing is good for right now, honest!” Kit stared at Firr. He thought he had a good idea of when Firr was exaggerating, but the tone of his voice had an honesty about it. Kit just grinned. “So, you’re saying I’m stuck like this until you can get the reversal beam figured out? “If you promise you won’t be mad… yes.” Kit sighed and sat back down at the laptop, pulling out the tablet pen. The brb sign went away and he started work on his next piece while Firr began sweeping up the debris around his workshop. “Oh hey Kit?” “Yeah?” “You know how I said it only turns things into meerkats?” “...yeah?” Firr lifted the zapper, aimed it at him, and pulled the trigger. What was left of the house was surrounded in a bright white flash as two large, pear shaped shadows stretched across the ground.