In Too Deep 3 - Transformation

Tuesday night, Kelly bounced into her apartment cheerfully.  She was looking forward to going over to Barry and Steve’s place to make dinner for Steve and hear about his progress on the Disembodied Princess prop he was making.  She hesitated in front of the large silver disc in the back of her closet.  The last time she’d popped in unannounced, Barry hadn’t been too happy to see her.

Barry didn’t sound terribly happy when she called, either.  He grudgingly accepted that she wanted to come over, but asked for half an hour to ‘set some stuff up’ first.

When Kelly finally got the all clear, she bounced through the portal and asked Barry what he’d been setting up... then looked around her at the white painted walls and the long corridor stretching off to her right and realized he probably couldn’t hear her.  She looked back at where she’d come from, and was relieved to see the reflective silver disc of the portal back to her place.

Kelly hesitated by the portal to safety, and looked around.  Wall to her left, far wall of the corridor about five steps away.  A little bit further along was a rough wooden post glued crudely to the wall.  When she looked back at her portal, she realized that similar structures were holding it in place.

Kelly darted down the corridor, and grinned when she saw that her guess was right.  Barry had put the other portal nearby.  But when she hopped through this one, it didn’t reveal the living room in their apartment, either.  Her eyes were first assaulted by the bright pink floor, which merged with a knee-high wall all the way around.  It was what was above that plastic wall that shocked her.  White horizontal bars made up the rest of the walls, and her eyes followed them up to a roof low over her head made of the same bars.  The ‘room’ was barely wider than her outstretched arms, and the far wall was about twice that distance away.  Attached to that far wall was a giant bottle of water, with a bent arm leading into the...

“A rabbit cage?” yelled Kelly.  “I’m in a rabbit cage?”

Barry called from outside the room, “Hey Kelly.  How do you like your new digs?”

Kelly stared in the direction that booming voice had come from.  The room outside the cage came into focus, a familiar room at an unfamiliar scale.  It was Barry’s bedroom, five times a large as it should have been, and her cage was perched on his dresser.  So she was far from surprised to see Barry walk in, looking as tall as a house.  At that moment, Kelly was very happy to have sturdy metal bars between her and this giant.  He wasn’t as terrifyingly huge as he had been when she was under an inch tall, and when he crouched down to look at her a remote part of her mind noted that his head was a bit shorter than she was.

“Seriously, Barry?  A rabbit cage?  What were you thinking?”

Barry grinned down at her.  “You’re cute when you’re angry.  Or when you’re a foot tall.  Or both.  Maybe I should pull the portal out of the maze and keep you like this for a while.”

“You’d keep me like this?  Like a pet?”  Kelly sounded more surprised than dismayed.

“I had a pet bunny when I was little.  I miss having a pet around, to cuddle when I’m lonely.  Oh right, mostly I have girls around to do that with now.”  He grinned down at her possessively.  “Best of both worlds.”

“Ohhh...”  Kelly’s knees wobbled then gave out as she stared up into Barry’s face.

Barry’s face grew concerned.  “Are you OK?  Being that small doesn’t cause... problems?”

Kelly shook her head weakly.  “Not so far.  I just... were you serious?”

“About?”

“Wanting to keep me as a...” Kelly looked up at Barry, shuddered, and lowered her head again.  “A pet.”

“I was just...”

“Please?”

“WHAT?”  Kelly winced at Barry’s shout, and he lowered his voice.  “Are you serious?”

“Yes.  You’ve made it clear girlfriend isn’t an option.  And Steve won’t have me because of you.  So... yeah.  Pet sounds good.  Leave the portals, so I can come and go.”

“You’re... that’s just weird.  You’d be OK hanging out in the cage when I bring someone home?”

Kelly imagined seeing two giants going at it on Barry’s bed, and blushed.  She also nodded.

“Having a shrunken ex in a cage watching as I...  Huh.”  Barry cracked a slow grin.  “I think I could deal with that.  You’re on.”

Kelly bounced to her feet again, and grinned.  “Yay!  I’ll be a good little bunny, you’ll see.  I’ll be quiet, and drink my water...”  She ran over to where the water bottle was hanging, on the far end of the cage from the portal.  She poked at the ball in the nozzle experimentally, and a drop of water splashed over her hands.  The increased water tension made it feel like a balloon at first.

“Oh...”  Kelly moaned, and fell to her knees once more.

Barry stared at her in wonder.  “Now you’re getting off on a water bottle?”

“No,” came Kelly’s tiny voice, sounding smaller and higher-pitched than before.  “I feel woozy.  Air’s... wrong.”  She fell to her side.

“Crap!  You have to get back to the portal.”  Barry struggled with the latches on the cage until he finally managed to lift it free.  Then he stared down at where Kelly had been.  There was a form there, with rather more fur than should be present.  The shape wasn’t human, either, but was shifting, limbs and ears rearranging.  He watched in confusion until the changes stopped, leaving behind an odd looking rabbit, one with Kelly’s blue eyes and a patch of blonde fur on its head.  “Kelly?”

The rabbit took one look at him and darted for safety, fleeing across the top of his dresser then leaping to the floor.  Barry had the presence of mind to slam his bedroom door so Kelly couldn’t get out into the rest of the apartment.  She led him a merry chase all over the floor of his bedroom, darting here and there, her claws scrabbling for traction on the hardwood floor.  Eventually she holed up under the middle of his bed, cowering where he couldn’t reach.

Barry crouched on the floor, panting, and considered the problem.  If he tried to lift the bed, she’d bolt.  A broomstick wouldn’t work, either.  He retreated from the room, closing the door behind him, and soon returned with lettuce, carrots, a cherry tomato and some parsley.  He set the cage’s pink plastic base on the floor near the bed, and put the veggies inside.  The rabbit soon hopped out to explore, and took some experimental bites of the lettuce.  Barry thought he saw her grin, and she started eating with gusto.  

Kelly didn’t even flinch when the wire top of the cage came down and was latched into place.
Instead she waved a paw at Barry, then hopped through the portal and was gone.  He turned to the mouse maze on the other side of the room, but couldn’t see her inside it through the plexiglass cover, either.  While he was still wondering what just happened, his phone rang, showing Kelly’s number.

“Kelly?  Are you OK?” asked Barry as he answered.

“I’m human again, yeah.  That was weird.”

“No kidding.  You were a rabbit!  And a pretty damn slippery one, too.  My pets were never that hard to catch.”

Kelly chuckled.  “Yeah, well.  The rabbit got away from me when you scared her.  Once she relaxed, I was in control again.  Leave the cage top on, this time.  She feels safe in there.”

“What?  You’re not serious...”  Barry was talking to dead air, and a moment later a foot tall Kelly stepped out of the portal and into the rabbit cage.  “Seriously?”

Kelly grinned up at him from between the bars.  “I want to understand this.  And... being a rabbit was kind of fun.”

Kelly slowly moved toward the far end of the cage, waiting to see what would happen.  Just past the halfway point, she started to get dizzy once more.  “Here we go...”

Memories of her own pet rabbit from years gone by went through Kelly’s head as she felt her body change once more.  She also paid attention to the sensations involved.  It wasn’t painful, as such, just somewhat disturbing to feel her body sliding between forms so easily.  There was a sense of rightness, too, especially once she took her first breath in her new body and the air was the right texture once more.

Barry stared down at the rabbit in the hutch.  What had moments ago been a tiny woman was now indistinguishable from a normal rabbit.  “You’re different this time,” he mused.  “Last time you had a little blonde patch, and blue eyes.  Now you look just like a rabbit.  Can you even understand me?”

Kelly nodded, then hopped over to the water bottle and after her first attempt dampened her wiggly nose, she managed to get a drink.  She then proceeded to nibble on the lettuce and carrots Barry had used to lure her to the cage.  She looked perfectly content.  Barry was mesmerized.  Once she’d eaten her fill, he put a finger through the bars of the cage, and she came close, bunting her head against it to get skritches between her ears.  Her foot tapped a tattoo against the bottom of the cage.

“Oh, so you like that, hmm?  My pet.”

Kelly’s eyes closed in pleasure.

They stayed like that for some time.  Barry offered to let Kelly out, but she shook her head, unwilling to risk her internal bunny taking over.  It felt if anything stronger than the last time.

“I better put the other portal in the maze, so you can turn human to make dinner.  I don’t think Steve would like the idea of you as a pet.”

Kelly watched Barry open up a flat white box, and fiddle with some bits of wood and a familiar looking silver disc.  When he declared it finished, she hopped through the portal in her cage.  There was a new portal directly across from the bunny hutch portal, and when she hopped through that she emerged in Steve and Barry’s living room.  Barry stared in wonder at the human-sized rabbit sitting there.  It hopped towards him twice, then started to change, blending smoothly from rabbit back to human once more.  Kelly danced forward two more steps and gave Barry a big hug, which he reluctantly returned.

“Thanks, that was so much fun!  I’ll be back tomorrow night.”

Barry chuckled and shook his head.  “Why?”

Kelly started working on dinner, getting out a saucepan and a cutting board.  She started chopping vegetables, and Barry turned away figuring he wasn’t going to get an answer.

“I liked being petted the most,” said Kelly softly, musingly.  “It’s just... undemanding being a rabbit.  Simpler.”

Barry snorted, and went back to his room.

When Steve finally arrived from his after-work prop fabrication, he had a small victory to show off.  He handed a small metal block to Kelly.  “This will solve the impalement problem.”

“But it’s so tiny... how can it stop the gargantuan pin from doing damage?”

After they’d eaten, Steve showed how.  He popped it through one of the larger portals, turning it into a huge metal funnel.  The tooling marks looked like gouges, making it appear as if it had been crafted with an axe, rather than a precision lathe.  Still, it held the two portals easily, with a handful of magnets bracing the portals in their appropriate positions.

This time when Barry slid the enlarged pin through Kelly’s top, it worked like a charm.  The only problem was that the weight of the pin made it pull at the front of Kelly’s top, making the tip droop.  She had to hold it in place, otherwise it looked quite silly.  And threatened to take her top off.

Steve crashed into sleep soon after, and Kelly hopped through the portal to the maze.  She looked over at the bunny portal for a moment, then shook her head and headed home.

Wednesday, Kelly called in sick.  She hadn’t played hooky in forever, but really wanted to test out something Barry had said when she’d changed into a bunny the second time.  She skipped through the maze and into the bunny hutch, then concentrated on a black-furred rabbit.  Before she’d even taken two steps, she felt her body shift and slide.  She took the time to savour the sensation of her body painlessly rearranging itself.  When it had stopped some twenty seconds later, she turned on long lapine feet, and stared into the mirror surface of the portal.  She’d done it!  She was the rabbit she’d envisioned.

Kelly went back and forth through the portal dozens of times.  Just going through and back again wasn’t enough to trigger a change, she had to change on the other side, too.  At first she only changed back to human, but after a few iterations she tried exploring further into the maze to see what it would make of her.  Being a mouse felt different than being a rabbit.  Her mind felt smaller, and it was too easy to get distracted by the smells of the maze’s previous inhabitants.  When she focussed her mind on becoming an intelligent mouse, she found it much easier to manage.  Still, being a mouse felt too vulnerable, so Kelly mostly experimented in the hutch.  She made herself into a half dozen different fur patterns of rabbit, a kitten, and a snake.  Being a snake felt even stranger than a mouse had, its mind was slow and far more foreign, so she went back to basic bunny.

When Barry got home that night, he found Kelly already in the hutch, in her blonde-patched blue eyed bunny shape.  He chuckled, and waved.  “Hi Kelly.”

He was very surprised when she answered back.  “Hi Barry!”  Her voice was high and chirpy, but easily recognizable.

“You can... talk?”

“Surprise!  And I have another idea for the magic act...  Want to do a bunny out of the hat trick?”

Barry nodded slowly as he considered it.  “I think that could be a lot of fun.  Then when we’re done, I put you back in the hat, and you go through a different portal... and emerge as my assistant?”

“Exactly!  Think of the fun you could have with an intelligent rabbit playing off your tricks.  Or handing you the wrong prop out of the hat...”

Barry laughed then, and his grin made Kelly feel warm inside.  Then he frowned at a thought, “Wait, am I going to have to wear purple to match the hat?  I don’t look good in purple.”

Kelly’s ears flopped back and forth as she shook her head.  “Just use it as a prop.  I’ll wear it when I get on stage.  I have an outfit that’d look so cute with it!”

“Why am I not surprised.  OK, let’s see if we can make this work.”

Kelly emerged from the human-sized portal to help out.  The first order of business was to find a portal that could be stacked with the one in the hat.  If Kelly went into the hat as a rabbit, she was pretty sure she’d turn into a mouse once in the storage box.  There was a mid-sized portal in Steve’s notes that was close to the one in the hat – passing to it from the hat would only only grow Kelly by just under three percent.  It was a foot and a half across on the other end, too big to put in the hutch.  Barry found that it fit fairly well in the box they’d used as a ‘Sword Basket’ prop earlier.  He piled the box with all his close-up props, and looked around for Kelly.  She’d disappeared while he was loading the box, and he had one guess as to where she’d gone.

Kelly grinned up at him from inside the hutch.  When he asked if she had her flight reflexes under control, she nodded.  Barry opened the cage and lifted her out, marvelling at how complacent she was.

“You really do like this, don’t you?” he mused as he carried her into the main room of the apartment.

“Yep!” squeaked her reply.  “You have big strong hands, especially when I’m this small.”

Barry petted Kelly approvingly, which made her wriggle with pleasure.  He shook his head but had a wry grin on his face.  “You are way too keen on this.  OK, here we are.  Props department.”  He lowered the rabbit into the box with a collection of scarves, juggling balls, wands of various sizes, and several colours of plush rabbits.

“Where’d the bunnies come from?” asked Kelly in her soft, squeaky voice.

“Steve’s room, or what’s left of it.  That stunt with the spike made a mess.”

Kelly bunted up against the purple bunny, and laughed.  “It’s sweet that he still has these from when he was a kid.”

Barry snickered, then picked up the hat.  “OK, let’s get started.  Pass me a wand, will you?”

Kelly lined up one of the juggling balls and gave it a good kick.  It flew up out of the purple hat, and narrowly missed Barry’s head.  With surprising dexterity, he lunged for it and managed to catch it before it hit the floor.  He dropped it back in the hat, and mock-growled, “That’s not a...”  Before he could finish, it was flying back out of the hat.  This time it did clip him in the forehead.

They kept improvising for half an hour, and only when Barry finally dropped a baby carrot into the hat did he get the prop he was asking for.  

“Is it all going to be like this?  We can’t do half an hour of stupid hat tricks.”

Kelly nibbled on the carrot, and shot Barry her best innocent look.

“Fine.  I’ll have a few carrots on hand, I think that works.”

He reached into the hat, and scooped the still-nibbling Kelly out.  He showed it off to the imaginary audience in the kitchen with a flourish.  “My assistant, Kelly!  No, wait, that’s not right...”  He set her back in the hat.

“OK, now you need to hop through the portal and come out as my assistant...”

Kelly gave him such a look from inside that box of props.  She pointed to the portal with a paw.

“Right.  We need another portal.  The one in the bunny hutch, I guess.”  Barry fetched it, and leaned it up against the other side of the box.  Kelly hopped through it, then reappeared in the living room as a giant rabbit.

Barry watched her slide from one shape to another, still finding it hard to believe what he was seeing.  “OK.  There is no way we can get away with that on stage.  You need to appear back-stage, I’ll cover for a bit, then we can do the appear.”

Kelly tugged her outfit to make sure it had settled right after her change.  Instead of the simple dress she’d been wearing earlier, she was now dressed in a sparkly purple low-cut assistant’s outfit.

Barry tried not to stare at it, and only partially succeeded.  “Where’d the outfit come from?”

Kelly posed artfully, distracting Barry further.  “Changing from rabbit to woman leaves me some options open.  It’s not fast enough to do a quick-change stunt, sadly.”

“You’re going to distract the crowd so much I could pull off just about anything.  This is going to be great!”

Barry found a set of portals that would work for the appear, close enough in ratio to work and small enough that the portal on the stage would only be two feet across, a plausible size for an appearance hoop.  Kelly used the portals to pop back to her place and grab some shimmery blue fabric.  Looping it through the portal, then around the edges of its mate, she was able to bring the hem back around, and quickly stitched it in place.  It wouldn’t last long without a proper job, but it would do for a couple performances.

Kelly tried the appear a few times, losing two percent of her height each time, until even Barry realized what she was up to.

“How small were you figuring on getting before Steve shows up?”

Kelly giggled.  “I dunno.  Small enough that he feels nice and big.”

“You won’t fit the impale top right if you’re shrunk for that part.”

Kelly pouted at that but agreed.  She would need to disappear through the appear hoop, then emerge from back-stage pushing Steve’s prop.  But she talked Barry into letting her do the Sword Basket while she was still smaller.  They’d picked a really small portal for the basket, only fourteen inches across, and an extra two percent shrink would make it easier for her to fit.

Kelly stayed extra-petite until after dinner was prepared and Steve had come home.  He was even more tired than last time, and barely noticed Kelly’s change in stature.  She dimpled when he called it ‘cute’.  He had no energy to follow up on that, and went to bed soon after.  He did promise that he’d be home earlier the next night, as the prop was almost ready.

Thursday night Kelly was even more excited.  Barry had brought home the basket prop, and some careful work with heavy cord had secured the portal in place.  They ran through the beginning of the routine twice, getting the hat-play settled, doing the Sword Basket after the appear, then having Kelly vanish in a puff of smoke by diving through the ‘appear’ hoop.  The trick was leaving the hoop the right way over on stage.  The first time she tried to jump into it she’d just bounced off the clamp holding the small ends of the two portals together.

When Steve arrived carrying just a four foot wide portal, Kelly was visibly disappointed.  “No prop?  I thought you were done.”

“Oh ye of little faith,” grinned Steve as he reached into the portal.  He tugged, and the rounded top of the prop started to appear, seven curved metal bars that met in the center.  The further it came out of the portal the heavier it got, and Barry had to help lift it the last bit of the way.  Kelly clapped her hands excitedly when they lifted it clear and set it on its casters.  The entire thing looked like an oversized birdcage.  There was a band of metal holding the bars together about 6 feet off the ground, where the dome started.  The bottom was a similar open metal hoop, with four bars criss-crossing the bottom for strength.  Two partial hoops added strength part-way up, with a gap where the eight vertical was missing, leaving a sort of ‘door’ where Kelly could enter.  She promptly did so.

“It doesn’t work...” Kelly pouted, as she failed to disappear.

Steve pointed out that he couldn’t have transported the Disembodied Princess so easily with the portals in place, so he still had to install them.  That task took most of ten minutes, involving some fiddly work with cables, pulleys, and clever mechanical bits that slid up and down a narrow track on the inside edge of the verticals.  Once they were working, sliding them up and down moved the matching portals in a miniature copy of the prop.

Kelly squealed when Steve finally pronounced the prop ready, and hopped into it.  She lifted up the upper ring, disappearing her legs in front of both the guys.  In the salt-shaker sized copy, a tiny pair of legs appeared.  Kelly got Steve to bring it closer, so she could stick a leg out through the bars and ever so gently touch it with what felt like a giant finger.

“Wow.”

“I know!” said Steve.  “You’re half vanished, and even knowing how it works it looks awesome from up close.”

Kelly grinned.  “Then try this...”  She slid the upper ring up to the top of the Disembodied Princess, vanishing entirely right in front of his eyes.  Steve stared down at the miniature girl in the prop in his hand, amazement written across his expression. “You’re so tiny...” he breathed, softly as possible.

Kelly was once again glad she had sturdy bars protecting her tiny body.  The hand surrounding her was such an immediate presence it was difficult to look at anything other than the enormous fingers surrounding her.  His thumb was bigger than she was.

Kelly tore her gaze from his massive thumb, then looked up at Steve’s face.  She grinned at his stunned expression, and waved with one hand.  She kept the other part-way into the portal so she wouldn’t change.  The wonder in his gaze as he stared at her made Kelly’s heart flutter.

Barry rolled his eyes.  “Come on, we should try to get one full run-through done before dinner arrives.”  He pushed the Disembodied Princess portal back down to the bottom of the prop, returning Kelly to full size.

Kelly pouted as she stepped out of the prop.  “It was cool being palm-sized without...”  Barry shook his head.  “Right.  Let the show begin!”

Steve laughed at the antics with the hat, leaned forward with anticipation as the curtained ring started to rise, and applauded Kelly’s appearance.  He shuddered at her apparent impalement in the sword basket, and again inside the Disembodied Princess.  That part was fumbled a little, Kelly had to take three tries to get the spike aligned with its matching slot on the frame.  Then she was offstage for one more outfit change before getting progressively disappeared and reappeared in Steve’s laboriously-built prop.  He applauded the ending, with Kelly reappearing from the Disembodied Princess in a puff of smoke to take her bows with Barry.

“OK, I have a couple of comments.  First, I could see the portal in the bottom of the hat.  Second, I think we need a curtain around the Princess to hide the impale and the moving of the portals.”

Barry nodded.  “Yeah, I figured.  But Kelly really wanted to put on the show.”

“Can you blame me?”  Kelly added with a huge grin.

Steve grinned back at her.  “Not at all.  But I have one more question.  Where the heck did that rabbit come from?”

Kelly shot Barry an impish grin. “Should I tell him?”

Barry just shook his head.  “Let him figure it out.  He likes that.”