“What do you mean, you’re Barry’s pet?” asked Steve as he scrambled to his feet.

Kelly jumped up as well, and grabbed Steve’s arm.  “Careful.  Once you move away from the portal, reality rewrites you to something that fits.  At this size, something like a mouse.”

Steve rubbed his chin as he digested that, then his eyes lit up.  “Oh!  So that’s where the rabbit came from.  And why you still have fur and floppy ears.”

“Yep.  Still cute?”  Kelly wiggled her nose at him.

“Very much so, yes.”  To emphasize his point, Steve kissed Kelly on that cute mostly-human nose, which led to kisses elsewhere and increasing distraction until the ground literally moved under their feet.

Both stared up through the plexiglass roof to see a distorted view of Steve’s roommate, Barry.   He wasn’t looking at them, but they could see his hands on an enormous metal handle.  It took a moment for Steve to recognize it as the dolly that they’d used to move their props.  The rumbling they were feeling was the loose wheel chattering against the floor.

“Do you think he saw us?” whispered Kelly.

“He’s the one that put us in here!” hissed Steve.  “Of course he knows we’re here.  I’d rather not be here when he loads the van.  Where does that other portal go?”

“The hutch.  I’ll explain later.  First, and most important... think really hard about being a talking mouse.”  Kelly pulled Steve forward, her hand in his.  She closed her eyes as she felt the change ripple through her body, felt their linked hands become paws.  Once the changes had stopped, she looked over at Steve and started to giggle.  He had pale pink fur, an oversized head with a long blonde hair and a broad smile.  Most improbable was his lavender overalls, covering a curvy, feminine body.

“What the heck?” squeaked Kelly.

Steve peered down at himself, and his comically large eyes went even wider.  “You said to think of a talking mouse!  Gadget’s the only one that came to mind.”  His voice was high-pitched and distinctly feminine.

Kelly giggled again.  “Well, at least you can talk.  C’mon.”  She pulled him through the portal to the rabbit hutch.  The ground no longer rumbled beneath their feet, and no giant was watching over them.  Kelly sighed with relief.  “Okay.  Now we can talk.  Stay close to the portal for now, so you don’t change again.”

Steve nodded, his enormous ears bobbling with the motion.  “God, this feels so strange.”

“No kidding!  You’re a girl.  I didn’t know it could do that.”

“You turned into a rabbit, and girl seems improbable?  We’re way past improbable here.  What’s going on?”  Steve’s tail lashed back and forth, and he grabbed it between his paws.

“Beats me,” shrugged Kelly.  “The first time I moved away from a portal while tiny, I started going dizzy, like I couldn’t breathe.  Then I turned into a rabbit, and could.”

“Oxygen’s the wrong size, I guess,” mused Steve.  “So... the universe fixed it.  But why am I a cartoon?”

Kelly brushed her hand along Steve’s arm.  “Feels like fur and flesh to me.  Not a cartoon.”

Steve wrung his tail between his paws.  “You know what I mean!  I didn’t change into a normal mouse.”

“You would have if I didn’t get you to visualize something else.  I don’t know why it works, but it’s like we can make suggestions when we’re being adapted.  My first time as a bunny, I got caught up in its instincts.  The second time, the bunny had a patch of blonde fur on its head.  I practiced, got some control, and learned how to become a talking bunny.  Talked Barry into using me in the act.  Did you see?” she asked, eyes alight with eagerness.

Steve giggled and nodded.  “I thought the bunny was the best part of the show.  Especially the big bunny.”

“Do I look like Barry’s girlfriend now?” asked Kelly, moving in closer.

Steve shook his head.  “You look like a mouse.  A vaguely familiar one, what with that red cape.  Mrs. Brisby?”

Kelly nodded.  “I didn’t know that something more human was possible.  Let’s see how this works.”  She scampered a few steps away from Steve, then turned to face him.  He smiled as her ears grew bigger and her face cuter, and he applauded when she was done.

Kelly hopped up close to him on long lapine feet, her cape still trailing from her shoulders.  “Your turn.  Just... visualize a humanoid bunny.”

Steve fidgeted with his tail uncertainly.  “I’m pretty sure what’s going to happen...”

“You’ll be fine!” urged Kelly, tugging him away from the portal.  In her arms, he changed... into her identical twin, save for the overalls, and a substantial difference in height.  She tilted her head up to look at his worried face.   “Oh.”

“You made an impression.  How could I not think of you?”

Kelly snuggled up against him, rubbing her cheek against the fur exposed above his overalls.  “I guess that makes sense.  Do you mind being a bunnygirl instead of a bunnyboy?”

“Not so long as I’m with you.  Though...”  He looked out of the cage, into Barry’s room.  “Think you can manage the doorknob, if I lift you up?”

“I don’t think we’re anywhere near that tall.  Besides, the cage is locked.”  Kelly hopped over to one of the wire doors, and gave it a tug.  “See?”

Steve struggled with the latch for a minute, but couldn’t get enough purchase.  “Dang.  Designed for much bigger hands.  If I had some tools...”  He looked around the hutch, taking in the details of the three loft-like shelves and the giant silver disc taking up most of the back wall of the cage.  “Hey, is that another portal?”

“It leads to the hat.  At least, it probably still does...”  Kelly hopped over to it, and Steve followed.  They jumped through together, and found themselves in a dark, fabric-lined space.  While it was soon obvious that they couldn’t force their way out, being so close together was cozy enough that they stayed and snuggled.

Their idyll was interrupted by Barry once more.  He muttered about finding a conquest in the audience just before the van doors rumbled and slammed shut.  The bunnies tumbled back out of the portal a moment later.

“So.  No rescue any time soon,” mused Steve.

“He’s not going to rescue us,” said Kelly.  “He liked the idea of me as a pet rabbit, and now he has two.”

“No he does not,” growled Steve.  “I am not his pet.  Do you want to be his pet?”

“Depends on the alternative,” replied Kelly softly, searching Steve’s expression.  “If you won’t have me as a girlfriend, maybe I could be your pet instead?  You can make me as small as you like, I won’t eat much, or take up much space.”

Steve turned away, blushing brightly enough to be seen through his fur.  “I... can we talk about this later?  Once we’re free?”

“Sure thing, Houdini.  Find a way out, and I’ll be anything you want.”

Steve prowled around the cage, looking for tools.  He didn’t find any, but when he pulled the nesting box away from the side wall he found something even more interesting.  Another shimmering, reflective circle – a portal.  This one was half the size of the portal they’d entered by.  “I wonder where this goes.”

The answer, unfortunately, was nowhere.  There was a wall behind the portal, a handspan away from it.  “Damn it, what’s the point in hiding it if you’re going to block it, Barry?”

Kelly padded up beside Steve, and slipped her arm through the bars.  She put it through the back of the portal, all the way up to her elbow.  “It’s open on this side, think we could turn it around?”

Steve tugged on the portal, then shook his head.  “He’s put wires through it, and twisted them around the bars.  Kind of like with your Impalement top.  Won’t budge.”

“This end won’t,” agreed Kelly.  “Feel around the edge on the other side.”

Steve put his arm through the bars like Kelly had, and soon found what she was referring to.  There was a narrow lip of wood holding the portal in place.  With a speculative look on his face, Steve tested the other two edges of the portal.  “Aha!  Plexiglass.”

“What?”

“There’s a plexiglass roof over the portal.  It’s in the maze!  We could find it and pry it free.”

Steve beat Kelly to the middle-sized portal that they’d arrived by, and soon Gadget and Mrs. Brisby were once again exploring the maze.  “Couldn’t think of another mouse from the Secret of NIMH, like Justin?”

“It didn’t occur to me.  Gadget’s my favourite mouse by far.  That she’s an engineer, to boot...”

Kelly frowned.  “I don’t remember Gadget being that chesty.”

“Depends on which fan-art you see.  Or, um, draw.”

“Why Steve!  I never knew.  Maybe I should try being a humanoid version of her, then you’d surely want to kiss me.”

Steve blushed, and turned to head further into the maze.  “Now we can’t just rely on the right hand rule.  Barry wanted a more complex maze for his mice, so I built a maze with a loop in the middle.”

“You built this?  I suppose I should have guessed.  Hah, now you’re trapped by your own creation.”

“I’d rather be trapped in the Disembodied Princess,” muttered Steve as he pulled a piece of chalk out of his toolbelt and marked the T-junction at the end of the hall of portals.

Kelly followed along as they worked their way through the maze.  At each turning, Steve would mark the wall, crossing off any dead ends.  “Where’d the chalk come from?” asked Kelly after a few.

“I focussed on the contents of Gadget’s toolbelt when I arrived, I knew the maze was tricky.”

Kelly grinned.  “Clever.”  She scampered to catch up to Steve again, and put a paw in his.  They traversed the rest of the maze paw in paw, until they returned to the portals.  “So that’s it?  We’re stuck?”

“Nope.  Now we follow the maze once more, and look for an unmarked opening.  It’s not all that far, if I remember correctly.”

Three turns later, they found the goal of the maze, and in it a silvery portal.  Kelly stuck a paw through it, and confirmed that she could feel bars blocking the exit.  “This must be it.”

Steve pulled a crowbar from his toolbelt, and started to work on the wooden post.  It took considerable effort, and a couple of trade-offs between Kelly and himself, but eventually they had enough of the wood chipped away to pry one side of the portal out of its frame.  One final heave on the crowbar flipped the portal free, and sent it spinning across the maze.  It landed on top of Kelly, making her disappear.

Steve squeaked in dismay, but a moment later the portal lifted up and Kelly’s head poked out.  “C’mon, it leads back to the hutch.”

The return to the hutch found it much more imposing.  “OK.  Now we’re baby bunny sized.  Can you get out now?”

Kelly tried to wriggle through the bars of the cage, and growled at her failure.  Steve shrugged.  “We can loop around again and again, until we’re mouse-sized here.  Mrs. Brisby and Gadget will have no trouble with the bars.”

Kelly considered that.  “It’ll be a long trek to the portal.  And if we’re mouse sized here, how small will we be in the maze?  Too small to survive as mice, I’d bet.  Then what?”

“Insects, probably.”

Kelly made a face.  “I don’t want to be an ugly ant.”

“Then be a pretty ladybug.”

Kelly pondered that for a moment, then shook her head.  “I’d rather just bring the two portals together, and save the trek.”

Steve agreed that was a much better idea, so the two of them popped back through the portal and rolled it back to the corridor with the original portals.  Steve leaned it up against the wall right beside the other portal to the hutch, then hopped back through.  A moment later, Kelly windmilled as she emerged upside-down from the top of the portal, and landed in a heap with Steve.  She started giggling.  “Did we put it upside down?”

Steve hugged her tight, then headed across the expanse of the hutch to the mid-size portal.  “I’ll go fix it.”

Kelly tagged along, and as soon as Steve pronounced the portal right-side up, she hopped through.  Steve followed a moment later, to find her struggling with the cage bars.  “Still not small enough?”

“Not quite.  One more go-round.”

The figures that emerged from the portal this time were tiny.  Mrs. Frisby stood barely an inch and a half tall, and Gadget just shy of two.  Both squeezed through the bars with ease, then hopped down to the floor.  “Freedom!” sang Kelly.

“Not yet,” said Steve, determinedly.  “We have to make it past the bedroom door.”

“We could hide under the bed and wait,” suggested Kelly, but Steve was already scampering his way to the enormous portal.  At the base, it towered over them like a skyscraper.  There was a gap underneath, barely noticeable when they were human.  On the mice, it came up to their knees.  

Kelly laid down against gap the and wriggled as best she could.  “I think I can make it!”

Steve, however, had a cartoonish head and couldn’t fit no matter how he tried.  “Go ahead.  Find the box with the middle size portal ends, and pick any of those.  They’ll get you close to normal.”

Kelly shook her head.  “We go together.  We can go back through, and shrink once more.  I won’t be too tiny to be a mouse... um, I hope.”

Steve shook his head.  “You stay out here.  I’ll hop through and then we’ll give it another try.”

Kelly followed Steve to the cage, and waited outside the bars for his return.  And waited.  She started to worry when a minute had gone by with no sign of Steve, and scrambled up into the cage once more.  She hopped through the small portal, and was immediately slammed onto her side by an unexpected shift in gravity.  The floor was shaking like an earthquake.

Kelly sat up to examine her situation.  The portal was leaning against the wall at a precarious angle, having rolled most of the way back to the T-junction.  There was no sign of Steve, but the sight of an enormous ladybug rounding a corner of the maze made her squeak with fright.   It scuttled out of sight as Kelly caught her breath.  “What was that?  There weren’t any bugs before.”  Her eyes went wide.  “Steve!  Wait, Steve, come back!”

Kelly chased after the ladybug, and only when her breath ran short did she realize her mistake.  Her body was twisting in much more vigorous ways than a change from mammal to mammal had caused.  She could feel her skeleton melting, and her skin hardening.  Worse, her vision wasn’t clearing, and she could no longer close her eyes as a kaleidoscope view of the passage assaulted her brain.  New appendages started to grow.  Legs.  Wings.  Antennae.  Kelly cowered on the floor until it was over, then started scuttling off.

She tried to control her body, but it was so alien that any attempt to take direct control left her stumbling and falling.  A flash of red in her vision told her she was still chasing Steve.  She tried to remember why that was a bad idea, her mind slipping into darkness and confusion with only a tiny insect brain to support it.  The last coherent thought she had was that she needed to find the portal.  She focussed her mind on the impression of shiny silver, held on to that and little else while the world twisted and rocked around her.

Some impossible time later, Kelly tumbled into a pile of wood chips.  She stared around at her surroundings.  Chips.  Platforms.  Bars.  She was back in the cage, and no longer an insect.  She hugged her mousy body, so thankful to be the right phylum once more that the minor details of fur and a tail barely registered.  She was free, clear of mind, and in control of her limbs.

She was also alone in the cage.  Returning to the maze was the last thing she wanted to do, but Steve was stuck there, probably even more lost in his insect body than she had been.  Kelly squared her shoulders and ducked part-way back through the portal.  The vibrations had stopped, which was a small blessing.  The portal had rolled out of the main passage, and was now face-up on the floor.  Peering about, she spotted Steve’s chalk marks.  She put her paws to the floor, and slowly dragged the portal – with her still halfway through it – back to the others.

That done, she scampered through the loop until she could enter the maze at mouse-size.  She took a careful step away from the portal, and breathed a sigh of relief when she remained mammalian.  A quick traverse of the maze turned up a sleeping ladybug, which she carried out through the larger portal.

Holding the bug in her arms, she willed Steve to wake, to be Gadget once more.  Soon her prayers were answered, and he sat up in her arms.  “Where am I?”

“Back in the cage.  You’ve spent a while as a bug.  Not sure how long, I got caught too.”

“Right.  Back to the plan?”

“Steve!  We can’t go back to being insects.”

“Wasn’t planning to.  Did you get the portal back?”

Kelly nodded, and reluctantly looped through the portals once more to reduce herself to a size that would let them escape.  This time, she imagined a slimmer mouse body, and suggested that Steve do the same.  Gadget’s ridiculous curves vanished, leaving Steve looking like Kelly’s twin once more.

“Ready?” she asked.

Steve squeaked an affirmative, and they scrambled through the bars, across the floor, and under the door.  

The apartment arched over them, an immense vault that would have been imposing if they’d not already spent time in Barry’s room.  The joy of freedom, of scampering unimpeded across the floor was far more distracting.

Moments later they were at the base of an enormous wooden pillar, one leg of the dining room table.  Kelly tested her claws on it, and found they dug in well enough that she could climb with ease.  Halfway up she called encouragement to Steve, who cheeped a reply and started after her.  

Climbing the leg was easy enough.  The hard part was the overhang of the table top.  Kelly made an acrobatic leap and snagged the edge, then scrambled up on top.  When Steve tried to replicate her stunt, his grip failed and he was left dangling over the precipice by a single paw.  He squeaked in fear, but just as his remaining paw was about to lose grip, Kelly got hold of him and hauled him up onto the tabletop.

“There.  Are you okay?”

Steve squeaked softly, then nodded.  

“Can you talk?”

Steve shook his head, then shrugged.  He darted to one of the storage boxes on the table, and then stopped abruptly, ears drooping.  He’d forgotten that the storage boxes had latches, and he’d very carefully closed them all after picking out the portals needed for the performance.

Kelly snuggled beside him.  “Hey, don’t look down.  We made a good run of it.  I’ll talk Barry into helping out later.”

Steve snarled, and despite his tiny size managed to stomp away from the box and over to the small pile of tools he’d left out while working on the props.  Kelly followed along, and helped him drag a screwdriver back to the box.  It took both of them working together to insert the blade of the screwdriver behind the latch, but soon it was wedged in tight.  Steve tried to lever the latch open, and it moved a little, but not nearly enough.  He threw his entire weight at the screwdriver, but all that accomplished was to get the latch halfway open before it snapped back and sent the tool tumbling.

Determinedly, he set it up once more, and gestured Kelly to run at it with him.  They had to try four times, but finally the latch popped open.  The screwdriver let them wedge the box open just enough to wriggle inside and then suddenly two enormous mice tumbled through one of the big portals standing against the wall.  

Kelly gave Steve a hug as they both started changing, becoming human once more.  “You did it!” she cheered, then kissed him full on the lips.

This time he didn’t pull back, and there were no giants shaking the floor to disturb them.  Instead, it was their stomachs that broke the kiss, growling in unison.

“I’m starving,” said Steve.  “How long has it been?”

Kelly glanced at the clock in the kitchen.  “We’ve missed lunch and dinner, no wonder.  I’ll whip something up real quick.”

Unfortunately, there wasn’t much left of the supplies Kelly had brought in earlier, and she figured she could only make enough for one person.  Steve dolefully offered to wait, but she grinned up at him.  “Or we could both shrink to half size, and have plenty to eat.”

Steve looked around, then chuckled.  “We definitely need to shrink.  I think I’m almost tall enough to clock myself going through doorways.”

While Kelly cooked, Steve checked on the portal inventory.  He found that there was a portal right next to the one they’d emerged from that would have made them within a whisker of their original size.  He paired their small ends, and set the large ones against the walls in the corner of the dining room, close enough to hop easily from one to the other.

Stepping through the portal, Steve was suddenly eight and a half inches shorter.  He measured to confirm that he was finally his right height again, and showed Kelly what he’d done.

Kelly pouted.  “You’re too small.  I like it when you’re bigger than me.”

Steve stood beside her.  “I’m still taller than you, just... not by as much as normal.  Wait a minute, we should be about the same size now.  You’re only a couple inches taller than normal.”

“I shrunk coming over here, and again for the appear on stage,” said Kelly with a grin.  “Made you nice and big.  I’ll just hop through your new setup, and all will be right with the world once more.”

Kelly finished cooking at the reduced size she’d started to think should become her normal size.  When she brought it to the table, she started to giggle.  Steve was standing at the table, and it came up to the middle of his chest.  “How small did you get?”

“Three foot eight.  I figured much smaller and I’d turn into a kid.”

“You do look a little younger,” mused Kelly.  She set out two small plates, and darted off to the portal pair.  She hopped through a few times, but when she returned she found she was still taller than Steve.  “How many times did you go through?”

“Four.  It’s only eleven percent per cycle, so there’s diminishing returns.”

“Hm.  Too much smaller and it’ll be hard to reach the table.  Will you grow after we eat?”

Steve nodded his agreement, and they both attacked the plate of spaghetti with gusto.  Despite Kelly’s best efforts and laughing cooperation from Steve, they didn’t manage to slurp up the same noodle from both ends.

Once they were done, Kelly chased Steve through the portals to get him to regrow.  She took a few hops through herself, ending up well short of Steve’s height when they were done.  “Ah, there we go.  Much better.”

“I don’t know,” said Steve with a teasing tone.  “Kissing you when you’re so short is giving me a crick in my neck.”

“I know how to fix that!” cheered Kelly, and she darted towards Steve’s bedroom.  She flung the door open then yelped, “What happened in here?”

Steve shrugged.  “Remember the incident with the impalement spike?  Destroyed my bedroom, and my bed.  I’ve been meaning to replace it...”  He turned to face her and grinned.  “And I believe you promised you’d be anything ‘Houdini’ asked if I could get us out of the hutch, yes?”

“You want to turn me into a bed?  I don’t think that’s safe.”

Steve glanced down at Kelly’s chest with a grin.  “Not all of you you.  Just... one breast.  I think I have just the thing.”

He rushed off and was back soon with a special pair of portals.  The small end of the portal was about three inches across, one of the few big ones they had.  The other portal was four feet wide.

“First, we need to tidy up,” said Steve.  He set the big portal against his dresser, then reached through the little one.  An enormous hand flicked the duvet and pillows off the nest he’d made of his ruined bed, then more delicately removed the sheets.  Once they were clear, he scooped up the rubble and pulled it back through the portal.  A handful of scraps got dumped into a wastebasket.  “There.  Done.”

Kelly picked up an armful of the remaining scraps, and tossed them through the big portal.  “Now we’re done.  So what’s the plan?”

Steve handed her the small end of the portal.  “Pop this in your bra.”

Kelly giggled as she did so.  Once it was there, she pouted down at herself.  “I look all flat.”

“On the other hand,” called Steven, from where he’d laid the bigger portal on the floor, “the bed looks like fun.”

Kelly turned to gape at what was taking the place of Steve’s old bed.  In the middle of the floor, projecting up through the portal was a familiar swell of pink flesh, topped by an enormous nipple.  “That’s my boob!”

“Make sure it’s snugged tight against your chest,” said Steve with a grin.  He carefully sat down on the bed-boob.  “Mmm.  It’s warm.”

“Oh!  I can feel you.  Tiny and... hm. You’re a bit big to sleep on a four foot bed.  What’s the plan?”

“I shrink down to about your size, and we cuddle.”

Kelly grinned.  “You go do that.  I’ll get the bed ready.”

By the time Steve had returned, Kelly was perched atop her own breast, naked except for her bra.  “This is your idea of getting the bed ready?”

“Complaints?”

Steve shook his head, and snuggled up against her.  “None whatsoever.”

Soon the only item of clothing being worn was Kelly’s bra.  As kissing and licking progressed to rather more, Steve stifled a huge yawn, one that was moments later echoed by Kelly.

“No!  Not sleepy time,” Kelly protested weakly.  “I want to make you mine.”

Steve chuckled softly as his eyes drooped.  “Already have.”  He yawned again, and shook his head dazedly.  “Sorry, it’s just been such a week.  And today...  Now that the adrenaline has worn off, I...”  He didn’t finish the sentence, and started snoring softly.

Kelly sighed, and pulled up the duvet to cover them both.  She kissed him softly, and put a hand to her chest where she could feel two tiny forms snuggled up against her breast.  “So cool.  I hope he never buys a new bed.”