Tipping Scalesby GreyAcumaneChaptersHow does Spike pee?Relative Difficulty4PM - Too Damn EarlyHow does Spike pee?Opening the door to my room so I could leave took some work, but a carefully aimed leap, grabbing my doorknob, and then giving a bit of a twist and push while I hung from it wasn't as hard as I was worried it would be. Well, it was, but only because I was trying not to pee all over my own floor. I didn't even know what dragon urine was like. It might be acidic. I might end up eating through my carpet and into the floor below. THAT would be wonderful to explain to everyone downstairs. I finally managed to get to the bathroom, hopping slightly most of the way. It was then I realized that the lid of the toilet seat was level with my chin; I would have my work cut out for me. First thing first, let's get the lid up. Easy enough. Next step; climb on up on the lid. Don't be a pussy about touching the seat, I'm practically the only one who uses this toilet, and it's flushed and the water's clean, so it doesn't matter if I fall in at this point. Once I got balanced on the front edge of the toilet. I found a new problem. Rather, the problem was that I couldn't find it. Yes, THAT. I felt along the front plates of my belly, then lower, trying to figure out if there was an opening somewhere, heck for all I knew there might be a zipper under one of these scales. I seem to somewhere recall hearing that dragons were rumored to even have dual penises, but would that be one on top of the other, or side by side? Was only one for urinating, and the other for procreation, or did they both do both? I wasn't even sure how reliable those rumors were considering that another one I heard said that dragons had something like seventeen gonads. What the hell is that even about? More importantly; if they have that many more than the norm, WHY CAN'T I EVEN FIND THE ONE!? I gritted my teeth, trying to dredge my memory for any useless piece of information that might actually give me a clue what I was looking for, all while doing my best to keep the floodgates closed. Reptilian biology was not my strong suit. I would have to google that stuff once I got past this initial hurdle. I sighed, finally admitting defeat. I stepped down into the toilet, the water in the bowl coming up past my knees to touch where the base of my tail met my hips, and leaned forward just a bit. then I just relaxed and let it flow. Apparently that was part of the problem. Not relaxing was keeping my body in defense mode, tightening up the scales around the crotch to protect the member from being harmed. Once I relaxed, things parted, everything flowed out in a steady comfortable stream. I straightened up a bit, so my crotch was a bit above water level, allowing me to see how the stream angled out. The tip of the member barely poked out past the scales while this was happening. This was both vexing and a relief. On one hand, there was only one penis to deal with, and it wouldn't be this huge ol' dragon dong flopping around. On the other hand, I was a bit annoyed at the... considerable loss of length and girth. I hardly fancied myself porn star, but I had been comfortably secure in my average size, and this simply did not measure up to that. Still, baby dragon body, can't expect anything impressive from it. Heck, that type of things shouldn't even be getting considered right now, though I have absolutely no idea what sexual maturity is for a Dragon, Usually an extended lifespan meant that the age before puberty was longer too. As I considered this, I wondered if this counted as child molestation, but I was pretty sure that this was a clinical observation. Also, at least for the moment, this was my own body. I considered the oddly colored fluid that filled the bowl of the toilet and swirled around my legs. It didn't seem acidic. At least it wasn't acidic to me, but I had seen the episode where Spike did a belly flop into molten lava, so I couldn't be certain this wasn't just natural resistance from his scales. I grabbed one of the fake plastic flowers that sat on the counter to the sink and swirled it around in the toilet bowl, specifically in the areas that the dragon urine swirled. After pulling it out, the flower seemed unharmed, other than a being fairly saturated in the rather pungent smell. I wrinkled my nose and held the flower back in the water while I flushed the toilet, allowing the rush of water refilling the bowl to rinse off my legs and the flower, before I sat it on the counter of the sink to dry. Once I was satisfied that I no longer had dragon urine clinging to me, I hopped out of the bowl and grabbed a towel to dry off with. Now that the emergency was dealt with, I was better able to concentrate on actually coming up with a plan of action. First of all, I needed to go check all those various stories online about pony transformations. If I just turned into Spike, then this wasn't a hoax. Of course, I'd need to tell my fiance what is going on too. I wasn't too concerned with being in Spike's body, since my mind was still obviously mine, and I still had thumbs so I could use my computer- I'd have to check and make sure I could hold my game controller and mouse right in order to play games. I'm not sure how the smaller hands and lack of pinkie would affect my gaming. Wait, fiance, yeah, I wasn't sure how she'd take this whole situation. Would she believe me, maybe I should hold off on telling her until I know just a LIIIIITTLE bit more. Oh crap, what about Spike? If I'm in his body, then he must be in mine. I sleep naked. He's going to be me, naked, in Equestria. Oh god, I hope they don't air that episode on the Hub. No wait, they'll probably just do one of those gags where contrived circumstances cause things to constantly pop up on screen, covering the naughty bits from the sight of the viewer, until he finally gets some clothes. I chuckled at the skit playing out in my head, similar to a M*A*S*H episode I had seen. Heh, Rarity will probably demand to make his clothes, insisting that he wait, naked, until she's done making him a full gala ready outfit, when he would have settled for a simple kilt or loincloth. She'll probably stick him/me in a dress too. That'll be hilarious. I don't think I'd even mind being the fall guy for that one if it made a half way decent episode. No wait, even if it's just my body, that's still a human in Equestria. Ugh, no thanks. They don't need humans, and I'll be damned if I let my body be the excuse for Hasbro to start screwing the series over with that type of bullcrap. I closed the door to my room after I came back in and used the stairway I had made in my dresser to climb back up to bed. I carefully turned off the video before I came into view of the screen though. I sat down in front of my computer and pulled the headset back over. The lack of proper fit made more sense now, it was shrunk to its smallest size, but my head was still too small for it. As I put on the headset, I could already hear my fiance badgering me for answers. "Hey! Why aren't you answering? What happened? Where did your video go? I'm getting worried!" "It's okay, Angel, I'm here! I'm fine, I just stumbled getting out of bed. I was tangled up in something. I'll check what is going on with my video, but I have a lot of work to do tonight and I need to get moving on that right away. I don't think we're going to have time to talk tonight." I melted as she pouted into the screen. "But I miss you," she mumbled. "I..." I very nearly turned the video back on right then and there, but I didn't want to dump this on her without some sort of explanation, and there wasn't really anything she could do to help, "I miss you too, Angel. So much. I promise, we'll find some time to talk tomorrow, and I'll tell you all about this crap going on. I love you, but I HAVE to get this stuff dealt with now." She sighed in acceptance; "Alright, but you tell me EVERYTHING tomorrow. I hate telling you all about my day, then barely knowing about anything that you did." That was true, I didn't really share much of my own life, but very little of my day was spent not working at a fairly monotonous job, or working on various conceptual projects that didn't really involve any major interaction with other people. I shared everything of note that I could think of, but on an average day of barely interacting with people on any personal level, it didn't require a lot of time to summarize my typical day. "I promise. It should be... pretty interesting to tell you about too. Plus I'll definitely need to show you. I hope we get good video quality." "Me too," she agreed, "Hey. 6S." I smiled, it was our own special term that I had come up with. It stood for 'Stay Safe Sane Strong Smart & Sexy' and we later realized it also sounded like 'success' when said out loud. "Yeah, 6S2U2," I answered, "gonna hang up now. See you tomorrow. love you." "Love you too, oh, and hey. Happy Halloween." "Oh?" "Yeah, the office was all decorated and covered in fake cobwebs and other lame decorations." "Oh, that's right, with the Calendars all goofed up I almost forgot. Yeah, Happy Halloween. You take care." "Yeah, you too." She leaned in closer to the screen and kissed at it. I held the mic a little closer to my mouth and made a smacking sound with my lips that was supposed to sound like a kiss. Having scaly lips made that turn out kinda weird though. I sighed and hung up the call before I could do anything else that would compromise my change in "me"-ness. I had a lot of research that I needed to get done. I needed to find out why this was happening, see what methods there were to reverse it, if any, or how long it was expected to last, see what happened to my old body, find out if there was any way to get in touch with Spike, or anyone from Friendship is Magic for that matter. I needed to watch back over the episodes to relearn anything important there might be to know about Spike... "Halloween..." I mused to myself. I looked down at my small, adorable, purple and green body. Screw that, I needed to call off work; I had some Trick or Treating to do. Relative DifficultyI grabbed my phone and checked the time. 7:15 put me comfortably under the two hour minimum notice I was supposed to give for my job. It would still be a hassle for my manager to find someone to replace me, since we were so short-staffed, but I wasn't about to spend my first 12 hours as an entirely new species, a mythical one at that, working a register. I skimmed through my call history for my work number, and punched it to start dialing. It wouldn't go through. I tugged on the cable, noticing that the other end wasn't attached to anything. It was that moment I recalled that it was Halloween. "Gasp! Rubeus!" I hissed, "The line has been severed! Someone doesn't want us calling!" Rubeus rolled onto his back and batted at the USB end of the power cord that I had left connected to my phone. "Hah, that's right, you smart kitty; Cell phones don't need to be plugged in." I rubbed his belly. He curled up around my arm, well, more my whole upper body, and chomped lightly. Even with skin he never bit hard enough to hurt, but with the scales, it barely tickled. Still, I just couldn't get a signal. In my room, there are all of 2 cubic feet that get any reception, and I would need to be standing at my full 6 foot height to hold my phone inside of those areas. Normally when I tried to imagine the difficulties of being short, I would think of getting lost in a crowd, or getting carded for cigarettes more often, even not being able to reach the pedals on a car. It had never occurred to me that basic cell phone use would qualify for that list. I looked around my room while Rubeus kicked with his back legs to no avail. I would need to head next door to my parent's house to get a reasonable signal. We had fixed the place up together after inheriting it when my grandma died, but it was a smaller place that really could only manage two bedrooms, so my aunt had offered me the spare room that I currently used at her place while my sister stayed with our parents. It was really nice of my aunt, but it still didn't change that she was incredibly prone to freaking out over trivial things. I was pretty sure finding a small fire-breathing reptile in her house might just help her set a new record. I was fairly confident that my parents would be supportive of my recent transformation, so that part didn't concern me nearly as badly as my aunt, but I still needed to get that far. "Okay, think man. Tonight will consist of Calling Off Work, Trick or Treating, Breaking News to Family, and Figuring out this Body- oh hey, I used my fingers up already." I wiggled my three fingers and thumb. Counting in base eight was going to take some getting used to, though that set me to wondering if ponies started out doing math in binary, since they only have two front digits to count with. "I'll need to bring my phone to make the call..." I slid the phone down my leg and barely kept from dropping it, "Okay, nevermind, I need POCKETS first." I rummaged through my dressers and closet trying to hunt down something I could use at this size. Pants were a complete no go, and even my shorts came down past my toes. That wasn't even getting into how my tail got in the way. All of my shirts fit like trying to wear a small tent and most of them didn't even have pockets. After exhausting every other option, I finally managed to dig up a small fanny pack that I could wear across my shoulder. I tossed my phone and a spare battery into it, along with my wallet, making a quick mental prayer of thanks that I hadn't been wearing them when this weird body swapping event had occurred. "Okay, pockets and phone procured, what was next? Trick or Treating. I'm going to need a BIG bag for this one." It was easy to decide on the large wheeled suitcase I had used for one of the trips I had taken to visit my fiance. What was far more difficult was climbing up to the top of my closet where it had been stowed away. I lost about half an hour in the process, but eventually I managed to push it down to floor level, along with numerous other bits of clutter. I could deal with cleanup later, for now I needed to get moving. As a final afterthought, I dug up a cloth sack that the sheets for my bed came packaged in to use as my actual trick or treat bag. It was normally barely big enough to fit over my head, but at my current size it was equivalent to the size of a pillowcase. I tossed it in the suitcase. It took more work than I expected to get the suitcase out of my room, partially complicated by the suitcase itself, being large enough for me to fit in 3 or 4 times over, but mostly due to the fact that my cats kept poking around at the door, looking for a chance to get out. Personally I would have liked to just let them wander, but they didn't really get along well with the other cats in the house. "No! Rubeus! Get back here!" I pulled Rubeus back to the room in a fireman's carry, ignoring his whines and grumbles. My only saving grace was that my other cats were not quite so brave as he was, and only peered out of my open door while I was busy chasing him down. For the third time. By this point, Rubeus had gotten the hint that he would not be leaving my room, and settled for sulking by the window while I got my suitcase out of my room. I flipped the strap of the fanny pack up to catch the doorknob and used that to pull the door closed behind me. I wheeled the suitcase to the stairs that led down to the main entry and stared at them. Each individual stair came up to my belly and there was an entire flight to get down, and I'd have to do it all while carrying a (admittedly empty) giant suitcase along with me? Time for more intelligent and creative thinking to formulate a plan to get down quickly and safely. Or I could toss safety out the window, and do something I hadn't done since I was ten. "Stair sled! Whoohoo!" I placed the suitcase flat at the top of the stairs with the wheels pointing down and hung on, rocking my weight to tip the suitcase over and slide all the way to the bottom. Most of the way to the bottom anyway. The corner of the suitcase dug into the carpet on the bottom step and flipped over, sending me flying through the air to land in a heap. "Worth... it- oof!" My assessment was cut off by the suitcase landing on top of me. "What the heck was all that racket?" I heard my aunt call out from her bedroom, "Oh, I hope nothing is broken." I head the doorknob to her room rattle as she opened it, I needed to act fast. I could hear the footsteps getting closer and with what seemed like nanoseconds to spare, I zipped up the zipper to the suitcase. "Glasny?" My aunt called out to me, "What is your suitcase doing at the bottom of the steps? Glasny?" I kept quiet, hoping that she wouldn't be nosy enough to look inside the suitcase where I was currently hidden. "Why can't he hear me? He shouldn't be leaving his suitcase out where it can fall down the steps." I felt the suitcase tip upright and I clung to the inside to keep from falling to the bottom. I was shaken around inside by my aunt struggling with the suitcase, but I managed to keep my grip. After that came and odd set of regular thumps against the bottom of the bag. Dangit! She was taking me back upstairs! That was the last thing I needed, yet I couldn't think of any way to prevent the inevitable, and then I'd have to bring the suitcase BACK down, most likely resulting in her just taking the suitcase back up again. I silently cursed, trying to come up with a new plan for getting downstairs. Maybe I could just push the suitcase out my bedroom window and then get it once I was outside. My new course of action would never be realized. When we were only about 3 steps up, I lost my grip on the inside of the suitcase and fell harshly to the bottom. The sudden change in weight broke my aunt's grip on it and I was treated to another fun trip down the steps, this time on the inside of the tumbling suitcase and I definitely did not think it was "worth it" on this trip down. "Oh drat. I hope nothing broke." Just then came the worst sound I could possibly think of. The sound of a zipper. The suitcase zipper. Being unzipped. I froze in place having absolutely no plan at all ready for this scenario The light streamed in as the suitcase lid opened, revealing my new secret to the world. "What on earth? Is it a doll?" I held myself stiff as a board, not daring to breath or blink. My aunt reached in and pulled me out of the suitcase, holding me under my armpits. I panicked, and grasped at the only straws I could find. "Hi, I'm Spike!" I said, without moving my clenched grin or unfocused eyes, "I love to eat gems!" Sure, it was a Hail Mary play if there ever was one. Even I internally cringed at the blatant bluff. There was no way she wouldn't notice the weight, or at least the organic feel that no toy or stuffed animal ever could mimic. "This is so amazing! You look so real," She cooed as she spun me around to look at different angles. It was all I could do to keep rigid enough to maintain the ruse, but for now it seemed to be holding. "Oh, I just love it. I have to ask Glasny where he got it, it's so adorable!" That's right. Now that I thought about it, my aunt had a huge thing for fairies and silly looking gnomes and dragons, she had various statues and figurines all over the lawn and scattered around the house. Spike would probably be right up her alley if she had a bit of warning to brace herself. She lowered me back into the suitcase and zipped it back up; "I'd better leave this here so it doesn't fall down again. I don't want this guy getting damaged." I silently let out a breath once the suitcase was closed and I could hear her walking away. Crisis, ever so narrowly, averted. "Now where did I put that bubblewrap? Once we get him wrapped up, he should be completely safe." Or not; "Oh hell no." Abandoning all pretenses of subtlety, I stuck a finger up through the zipper and pushed it open, quickly squirming out of the hole and running for the door with it. I swung the door open, pushed the suitcase out onto the patio, and slammed the door behind me. I held the suitcase by its handle and kept it angled towards the house as I ran. If my aunt saw anything, it would just be the suitcase moving by itself. She'd just have to get over her confusion, maybe the wind was blowing it or even a raccoon grabbed it or something. Once I was far enough across the driveway, I risked a peek over the top edge of my suitcase, trying to see if I could spot her in the windows. She had her curtains open, so I could see her looking under her bed, presumably still searching for that bubblewrap she had mentioned. I looked up above to the second floor and saw Rubeus and my other kitties staring out the window at me. Okay that was adorable. I waved at them, and Rubeus perked up at attention. He often was watching in the window when I came home from work in the morning, and would meow at me any time I noticed him on my way inside. I swear at times he was more like a dog than a cat. I really should have either stopped walking at this point, or at least paid better attention to where I was going. It was while I was watching my cats that my sister came down the walkway that led up to my parents house, fiddling with the DS that she used as her MP3 player, and by the time either of us had noticed each other, she had already tripped over me. I might have attempted to continue the ruse of being a toy, except for one minor issue that was interfering with that: My sister was HEAVY. "Gah! Get off!" I struggled and squirmed under her butt, and she scrambled off of me in surprise. Okay, she wasn't overweight or anything, but she still had to have had six to ten times the mass Spike has. "What the hell?!" I slowly pushed myself to my feet and dusted off my scales before looking up at her. The fact I needed to look up at her was a bit vexing, considering that she was still sitting on the ground in front of me. "Uh, yeah, you remember that news article about people becoming ponies that mom and dad asked me about? Apparently it's not a hoax." My sister stared at me with a look that mixed awe and disgust; "Glasny?" "Yeah... uh, don't scream, okay?" She inhaled deeply. I had the strong suspicion that she was going to scream. Author's Note If any of you are following this story, then you're probably already following other stories in the PonyEarthVerse group that this one is meant to be part of. Back when I had just finished the first two chapters, there had been some restructuring that resulted in the old group getting deleted and replaced with a new one which you can find at http://www.fimfiction.net/group/199509/ponyearthverse If you were part of the old group at any point, you should probably switch over to the new group, as there seems to be heavier focus on getting the stories to work together, creating an overarching plot, and generally putting more emphasis on the themes that got me interested in this group to begin with. 4PM - Too Damn EarlyI woke up with a belch. This alone would have been unusual. Not to assume I never belch in my sleep. I might, but I've never NOTICED it before. Not like this. I've never had a belch so intense that I was actually forced to sit up to do it. Nor have I ever had one so foul smelling that I instinctively ranked it as Toxic. That doesn't even begin to describe the acrid, coppery, rotten egg taste it left in my mouth. This belch was so intense that I heard thumps against the walls from my cats hurling themselves off my bed so fast. In the back of my mind, I wondered why there were four thumps when I only had three cats, but my brain still wasn't ready to be awake, and that thought got shelved. I groaned and panted, trying to clear the taste out of my mouth. I rolled onto my stomach to get a little more comfortable, plus there was light filtering in through a crack in my thick curtains and I wanted to bury my face in my pillow before the light brought me out of that lucid state that meant I still had a chance to fall back asleep. I wasn't sure exactly what time it was, but I had work tonight, and if I didn't get back to sleep now, I'd need to take a nap after my fiance was back from work and online, or risk being so out of it that I wouldn't be safe to drive back home after work. That thought was interrupted by my biggest cat, Rubeus, jumping back up onto the bed. He padded gently up next to me, sniffing around my covers for several minutes before finally climbing up on top of me and sprawling out across the length of my body. Good GOD I never could get over how huge this bastard was. It felt like he had managed to stretch out even taller than I was. He was also purring right into my ear, and I was left debating whether it was comforting enough counter how absolutely noisy it sounded. I stretched my arm out, reaching for where my phone sat next to my computer, fumbling by touch. The light came from that direction, and thus opening eyes was against protocol, at least not until I managed to bring my phone close enough to see what time it was. "4:13pm... good plenty of time going back to sleep." With that, I let my phone slide out of my fingers, not even bothering to put it back in its place, and let the noisy lawnmower engine of my cat's purr sooth me back into sleep. This time, around 7pm, I was awoken properly by my phone. By now I had gotten something close to a decent 6-8 hours sleep, so I didn't feel quite so bad about it. That didn't mean getting up would be any easier; sometime during the last hour or so, my other two cats had decided they would huddle up around me for warmth, which they often did since my room often felt as frigid as the winter air outside. I hated disturbing them when they were like this. I didn't have much of a chance to own pets as a kid, despite generally loving animals, so those times they cuddled up to me while I slept was something I treasured. Fortunately I was able to silence my alarm before it disturbed them. That's when my computer rang. My cats got up and moved off of me on their own for that one, they had long since learned the drill; If my fiance is online, they get out of the way. Just like I made a point that they only get fed after I get home from work, not by waking me up early. I groggily fumbled with my mouse. My laptop was on a breakfast tray stand next to my bed, so I didn't even have to get up to use it, but I still had trouble seeing the pointer on the screen when I first woke up. I squinted, trying to track it down while I clicked a few times. Eventually I managed to hit the button to answer the call. I pulled my headset out and placed it over my head. They were stuck in the expanded size setting, so they weren't sitting on my head properly. I growled in frustration as I tried to get them resized, but I finally gave up. "Hey, Angel. How was work?" I asked into the microphone, laying back on my pillow. I coughed, trying to clear my throat of whatever it was that was making my voice pitch weird and go raspy. Angel was her pet name, but it succinctly summed up everything she was to me. It was because I was doing it for her that anything I did had meaning. Yet still, she was so far out of my reach. "Are you okay?" She asked, "I think there's something wrong with the audio, you sound really weird." "I'm fine, just-" I coughed again, trying to clear whatever it was, but whatever it was, it was stubborn, "-something in my throat." "Oh. Well. It was a rough day, the system needs so much work if it's going to be able to compete with what's already out there. I can't believe they want to be making this a public release before Christmas. The customers are going to freak and if this team doesn't get off their butts, I'm going to be the one having to figure out how to NOT tell our customers that this is a load of garbage... URGH!" I could recognize the pattern, it would take a bit of venting before she would really be ready to discuss anything else. She needed time to wind down from the stress of work. I didn't mind, since knowing how her day was helped me feel like the distance wasn't so far, and it was something I could do for her that no one else seemed to be capable of. I rubbed my eyes, staring up at the ceiling while I prompted her to continue with some noises of confirmation, or a question to clarify I was losing track of her rant. "WHAT THE HELL?" I shouted. There was a big black patch on my ceiling just above the foot of my bed. It looked like it had been burned, and I suddenly realized that there was the faint smell of smoke lingering in the air. "What's wrong?" Angel asked from the other end of the line, "Glasny, your video is still off. Can I see what's going on?" I sat up to get a closer look at the patch, but then switched gears, trying to meet my fiance's request to turn the webcamera to my computer on. While it loaded up, I walked across my bed to peer at the black patch on my ceiling. It definitely looked like it had been burned, though apparently not badly enough to cause a full scale fire, thank god, but still, how had this happened? "I... uh. I'm not sure what's going on..." I told her distractedly, "I- ugh, hold on! Bathroom!" My change to a standing position had shifted things so that gravity acting on my bladder made it no longer possible to ignore. I sat back down next to my computer and hung the headset on the screen, leaving it running so she could hear when I got back. "Be right, back, Angel. Love you!" With that I slid off my bed, putting my feet down to stand up. A few things unexpectedly went wrong with this. For one, my feet didn't seem to reach the floor quite the right way. For another, my butt somehow caught the edge of my bed, causing me to pitch forward out of bed and onto the floor with a resounding thump of impact, that very nearly shook my laptop off of its cooling stand. I managed to catch some of the force on my hands, but for the most part I did a full out bellyflop and faceplant right into my carpet. There wasn't much of a splash, just a dull pain. I could hear my fiance's voice coming out quietly through the speakers in my headphones; "Are you okay? What was that? It sounded like something fell." "Ny'im okay!" I called, prying myself off the floor. When I finally got back to my feet, I had the absolute oddest feeling of disorientation. My laptop was above my head, heck the edge of my bed was taller than my head. I blinked and straightened up, as if I was somehow hunched over to my normal thigh level without realizing it. I gained maybe an inch of height. I stared down at myself. Instead of fleshy colors of five toed feet and five fingered hands, I was seeing a green belly, and purple hands and feet, covered in claws and scales. I wiggled my fingers. The purple clawed hands followed suit. I wiggled my toes. Much the same reaction from the purple clawed feet. I rubbed my belly. As the purple clawed hands moved over the green plated scales of the belly, I could feel a similar sensation of my own hand touching plated scales, and my belly being touched by a clawed, scaly hand. I briefly wondered if I was dreaming, but I've never actually wondered if I was dreaming while I was actually dreaming. Or if I had, it immediately shifted to a lucid dream that I could do whatever I wanted. Plus I never seemed to dream in full sensory before. I tended to dream more conceptually, instead of actually seeing an object and identifying it as a table, I would identify it as a table, and then the details that supported it being a table would sort of fill in generically from there. I also tended to have tunnel vision in my dreams. Or things would be pixely, or colors wouldn't be right, or as soon as my mind wandered my dreams would just be swept up along the ride. Heck, just this line of questioning alone should have shifted my dream to some completely unrelated scene about 5 times over. Colors did seem a little bit off from my usual, but still consistent and everything I looked at had the expected amount of detail in a nice crisp focus. That actually caught my attention. I was anything but blind, but without my glasses, I usually had to strain a bit to get my vision to be as clear as it was now. I looked around the room. Everything seemed twice to three times... maybe four times as large as it would normally be. My doorknob would usually be at belly button level, but now it was firmly out of reach. Rubeus and my other cats slowly poked their heads out to peer at me. They seemed like Mountain Lions now, adorable Mountain Lions, but still; yeesh. I looked back to... "my" hands and flexed my fingers, making fists, then opening and closing my fingers in rippling waves. I was missing a pinky finger, and it threw off the pattern a little, but nothing too problematic. I shifted my weight from foot to foot, then rocked back and forth from my heels to my toes my balance was all sorts of funky on that issue. It was like I had something pulling at my hips every time I moved. I twisted to look behind me and suddenly realized what my problem was, and also why I had tipped out of bed. I had a tail now. Also purple, with green ridgey scales running down its length, and a spade shaped tip to the tail. I was pretty sure I recognized who that tail belonged to. And the hands and feet... and generally everything. I walked over to my dresser, and hopped, scrabbling to grab onto the edge and pull myself up so I could look at the mirror. I winced at the gouges my claws dug into the wood, but right now peace of mind was more important than a chunk of wood. It took a ton more effort to pull myself up than I had expected. I had gained a little weight, but climbing usually was something I was reasonably good at. I've done both rock and tree climbing, and I could always at LEAST handle pulling my own body weight up a couple times over. Now I had barely managed to throw myself up onto the edge of my own dresser, even with putting a thick series of scratches in the front of it with the claws on my toes, and I was STILL panting and out of breath from the effort. I could hear my fiance continuing to call out in concern, but for now I ignored her, intent on finding out enough answers to know what the hell was going on before I got back to her. I pushed myself back up to my feet and turned to look at the mirror... Only to have my foot slip of the edge and come crashing back down to the floor. This time I intelligently opened the drawers in my dresser, forming a simple, easy to climb staircase to get on top of my dresser with. I made a note to mentally berate myself for not having thought of it earlier, but then changed my mind; I hadn't realized it would take any effort to climb my own dresser until after I had started, so it simply hadn't occurred to me to bother thinking of an easier way to get up on top of it. With that thought aside, I stood on top of my dresser and looked into the mirror at myself. "Huh." Yep, I'm Spike now. And I still needed to go to the bathroom.
How does Spike pee?Opening the door to my room so I could leave took some work, but a carefully aimed leap, grabbing my doorknob, and then giving a bit of a twist and push while I hung from it wasn't as hard as I was worried it would be. Well, it was, but only because I was trying not to pee all over my own floor. I didn't even know what dragon urine was like. It might be acidic. I might end up eating through my carpet and into the floor below. THAT would be wonderful to explain to everyone downstairs. I finally managed to get to the bathroom, hopping slightly most of the way. It was then I realized that the lid of the toilet seat was level with my chin; I would have my work cut out for me. First thing first, let's get the lid up. Easy enough. Next step; climb on up on the lid. Don't be a pussy about touching the seat, I'm practically the only one who uses this toilet, and it's flushed and the water's clean, so it doesn't matter if I fall in at this point. Once I got balanced on the front edge of the toilet. I found a new problem. Rather, the problem was that I couldn't find it. Yes, THAT. I felt along the front plates of my belly, then lower, trying to figure out if there was an opening somewhere, heck for all I knew there might be a zipper under one of these scales. I seem to somewhere recall hearing that dragons were rumored to even have dual penises, but would that be one on top of the other, or side by side? Was only one for urinating, and the other for procreation, or did they both do both? I wasn't even sure how reliable those rumors were considering that another one I heard said that dragons had something like seventeen gonads. What the hell is that even about? More importantly; if they have that many more than the norm, WHY CAN'T I EVEN FIND THE ONE!? I gritted my teeth, trying to dredge my memory for any useless piece of information that might actually give me a clue what I was looking for, all while doing my best to keep the floodgates closed. Reptilian biology was not my strong suit. I would have to google that stuff once I got past this initial hurdle. I sighed, finally admitting defeat. I stepped down into the toilet, the water in the bowl coming up past my knees to touch where the base of my tail met my hips, and leaned forward just a bit. then I just relaxed and let it flow. Apparently that was part of the problem. Not relaxing was keeping my body in defense mode, tightening up the scales around the crotch to protect the member from being harmed. Once I relaxed, things parted, everything flowed out in a steady comfortable stream. I straightened up a bit, so my crotch was a bit above water level, allowing me to see how the stream angled out. The tip of the member barely poked out past the scales while this was happening. This was both vexing and a relief. On one hand, there was only one penis to deal with, and it wouldn't be this huge ol' dragon dong flopping around. On the other hand, I was a bit annoyed at the... considerable loss of length and girth. I hardly fancied myself porn star, but I had been comfortably secure in my average size, and this simply did not measure up to that. Still, baby dragon body, can't expect anything impressive from it. Heck, that type of things shouldn't even be getting considered right now, though I have absolutely no idea what sexual maturity is for a Dragon, Usually an extended lifespan meant that the age before puberty was longer too. As I considered this, I wondered if this counted as child molestation, but I was pretty sure that this was a clinical observation. Also, at least for the moment, this was my own body. I considered the oddly colored fluid that filled the bowl of the toilet and swirled around my legs. It didn't seem acidic. At least it wasn't acidic to me, but I had seen the episode where Spike did a belly flop into molten lava, so I couldn't be certain this wasn't just natural resistance from his scales. I grabbed one of the fake plastic flowers that sat on the counter to the sink and swirled it around in the toilet bowl, specifically in the areas that the dragon urine swirled. After pulling it out, the flower seemed unharmed, other than a being fairly saturated in the rather pungent smell. I wrinkled my nose and held the flower back in the water while I flushed the toilet, allowing the rush of water refilling the bowl to rinse off my legs and the flower, before I sat it on the counter of the sink to dry. Once I was satisfied that I no longer had dragon urine clinging to me, I hopped out of the bowl and grabbed a towel to dry off with. Now that the emergency was dealt with, I was better able to concentrate on actually coming up with a plan of action. First of all, I needed to go check all those various stories online about pony transformations. If I just turned into Spike, then this wasn't a hoax. Of course, I'd need to tell my fiance what is going on too. I wasn't too concerned with being in Spike's body, since my mind was still obviously mine, and I still had thumbs so I could use my computer- I'd have to check and make sure I could hold my game controller and mouse right in order to play games. I'm not sure how the smaller hands and lack of pinkie would affect my gaming. Wait, fiance, yeah, I wasn't sure how she'd take this whole situation. Would she believe me, maybe I should hold off on telling her until I know just a LIIIIITTLE bit more. Oh crap, what about Spike? If I'm in his body, then he must be in mine. I sleep naked. He's going to be me, naked, in Equestria. Oh god, I hope they don't air that episode on the Hub. No wait, they'll probably just do one of those gags where contrived circumstances cause things to constantly pop up on screen, covering the naughty bits from the sight of the viewer, until he finally gets some clothes. I chuckled at the skit playing out in my head, similar to a M*A*S*H episode I had seen. Heh, Rarity will probably demand to make his clothes, insisting that he wait, naked, until she's done making him a full gala ready outfit, when he would have settled for a simple kilt or loincloth. She'll probably stick him/me in a dress too. That'll be hilarious. I don't think I'd even mind being the fall guy for that one if it made a half way decent episode. No wait, even if it's just my body, that's still a human in Equestria. Ugh, no thanks. They don't need humans, and I'll be damned if I let my body be the excuse for Hasbro to start screwing the series over with that type of bullcrap. I closed the door to my room after I came back in and used the stairway I had made in my dresser to climb back up to bed. I carefully turned off the video before I came into view of the screen though. I sat down in front of my computer and pulled the headset back over. The lack of proper fit made more sense now, it was shrunk to its smallest size, but my head was still too small for it. As I put on the headset, I could already hear my fiance badgering me for answers. "Hey! Why aren't you answering? What happened? Where did your video go? I'm getting worried!" "It's okay, Angel, I'm here! I'm fine, I just stumbled getting out of bed. I was tangled up in something. I'll check what is going on with my video, but I have a lot of work to do tonight and I need to get moving on that right away. I don't think we're going to have time to talk tonight." I melted as she pouted into the screen. "But I miss you," she mumbled. "I..." I very nearly turned the video back on right then and there, but I didn't want to dump this on her without some sort of explanation, and there wasn't really anything she could do to help, "I miss you too, Angel. So much. I promise, we'll find some time to talk tomorrow, and I'll tell you all about this crap going on. I love you, but I HAVE to get this stuff dealt with now." She sighed in acceptance; "Alright, but you tell me EVERYTHING tomorrow. I hate telling you all about my day, then barely knowing about anything that you did." That was true, I didn't really share much of my own life, but very little of my day was spent not working at a fairly monotonous job, or working on various conceptual projects that didn't really involve any major interaction with other people. I shared everything of note that I could think of, but on an average day of barely interacting with people on any personal level, it didn't require a lot of time to summarize my typical day. "I promise. It should be... pretty interesting to tell you about too. Plus I'll definitely need to show you. I hope we get good video quality." "Me too," she agreed, "Hey. 6S." I smiled, it was our own special term that I had come up with. It stood for 'Stay Safe Sane Strong Smart & Sexy' and we later realized it also sounded like 'success' when said out loud. "Yeah, 6S2U2," I answered, "gonna hang up now. See you tomorrow. love you." "Love you too, oh, and hey. Happy Halloween." "Oh?" "Yeah, the office was all decorated and covered in fake cobwebs and other lame decorations." "Oh, that's right, with the Calendars all goofed up I almost forgot. Yeah, Happy Halloween. You take care." "Yeah, you too." She leaned in closer to the screen and kissed at it. I held the mic a little closer to my mouth and made a smacking sound with my lips that was supposed to sound like a kiss. Having scaly lips made that turn out kinda weird though. I sighed and hung up the call before I could do anything else that would compromise my change in "me"-ness. I had a lot of research that I needed to get done. I needed to find out why this was happening, see what methods there were to reverse it, if any, or how long it was expected to last, see what happened to my old body, find out if there was any way to get in touch with Spike, or anyone from Friendship is Magic for that matter. I needed to watch back over the episodes to relearn anything important there might be to know about Spike... "Halloween..." I mused to myself. I looked down at my small, adorable, purple and green body. Screw that, I needed to call off work; I had some Trick or Treating to do.
Relative DifficultyI grabbed my phone and checked the time. 7:15 put me comfortably under the two hour minimum notice I was supposed to give for my job. It would still be a hassle for my manager to find someone to replace me, since we were so short-staffed, but I wasn't about to spend my first 12 hours as an entirely new species, a mythical one at that, working a register. I skimmed through my call history for my work number, and punched it to start dialing. It wouldn't go through. I tugged on the cable, noticing that the other end wasn't attached to anything. It was that moment I recalled that it was Halloween. "Gasp! Rubeus!" I hissed, "The line has been severed! Someone doesn't want us calling!" Rubeus rolled onto his back and batted at the USB end of the power cord that I had left connected to my phone. "Hah, that's right, you smart kitty; Cell phones don't need to be plugged in." I rubbed his belly. He curled up around my arm, well, more my whole upper body, and chomped lightly. Even with skin he never bit hard enough to hurt, but with the scales, it barely tickled. Still, I just couldn't get a signal. In my room, there are all of 2 cubic feet that get any reception, and I would need to be standing at my full 6 foot height to hold my phone inside of those areas. Normally when I tried to imagine the difficulties of being short, I would think of getting lost in a crowd, or getting carded for cigarettes more often, even not being able to reach the pedals on a car. It had never occurred to me that basic cell phone use would qualify for that list. I looked around my room while Rubeus kicked with his back legs to no avail. I would need to head next door to my parent's house to get a reasonable signal. We had fixed the place up together after inheriting it when my grandma died, but it was a smaller place that really could only manage two bedrooms, so my aunt had offered me the spare room that I currently used at her place while my sister stayed with our parents. It was really nice of my aunt, but it still didn't change that she was incredibly prone to freaking out over trivial things. I was pretty sure finding a small fire-breathing reptile in her house might just help her set a new record. I was fairly confident that my parents would be supportive of my recent transformation, so that part didn't concern me nearly as badly as my aunt, but I still needed to get that far. "Okay, think man. Tonight will consist of Calling Off Work, Trick or Treating, Breaking News to Family, and Figuring out this Body- oh hey, I used my fingers up already." I wiggled my three fingers and thumb. Counting in base eight was going to take some getting used to, though that set me to wondering if ponies started out doing math in binary, since they only have two front digits to count with. "I'll need to bring my phone to make the call..." I slid the phone down my leg and barely kept from dropping it, "Okay, nevermind, I need POCKETS first." I rummaged through my dressers and closet trying to hunt down something I could use at this size. Pants were a complete no go, and even my shorts came down past my toes. That wasn't even getting into how my tail got in the way. All of my shirts fit like trying to wear a small tent and most of them didn't even have pockets. After exhausting every other option, I finally managed to dig up a small fanny pack that I could wear across my shoulder. I tossed my phone and a spare battery into it, along with my wallet, making a quick mental prayer of thanks that I hadn't been wearing them when this weird body swapping event had occurred. "Okay, pockets and phone procured, what was next? Trick or Treating. I'm going to need a BIG bag for this one." It was easy to decide on the large wheeled suitcase I had used for one of the trips I had taken to visit my fiance. What was far more difficult was climbing up to the top of my closet where it had been stowed away. I lost about half an hour in the process, but eventually I managed to push it down to floor level, along with numerous other bits of clutter. I could deal with cleanup later, for now I needed to get moving. As a final afterthought, I dug up a cloth sack that the sheets for my bed came packaged in to use as my actual trick or treat bag. It was normally barely big enough to fit over my head, but at my current size it was equivalent to the size of a pillowcase. I tossed it in the suitcase. It took more work than I expected to get the suitcase out of my room, partially complicated by the suitcase itself, being large enough for me to fit in 3 or 4 times over, but mostly due to the fact that my cats kept poking around at the door, looking for a chance to get out. Personally I would have liked to just let them wander, but they didn't really get along well with the other cats in the house. "No! Rubeus! Get back here!" I pulled Rubeus back to the room in a fireman's carry, ignoring his whines and grumbles. My only saving grace was that my other cats were not quite so brave as he was, and only peered out of my open door while I was busy chasing him down. For the third time. By this point, Rubeus had gotten the hint that he would not be leaving my room, and settled for sulking by the window while I got my suitcase out of my room. I flipped the strap of the fanny pack up to catch the doorknob and used that to pull the door closed behind me. I wheeled the suitcase to the stairs that led down to the main entry and stared at them. Each individual stair came up to my belly and there was an entire flight to get down, and I'd have to do it all while carrying a (admittedly empty) giant suitcase along with me? Time for more intelligent and creative thinking to formulate a plan to get down quickly and safely. Or I could toss safety out the window, and do something I hadn't done since I was ten. "Stair sled! Whoohoo!" I placed the suitcase flat at the top of the stairs with the wheels pointing down and hung on, rocking my weight to tip the suitcase over and slide all the way to the bottom. Most of the way to the bottom anyway. The corner of the suitcase dug into the carpet on the bottom step and flipped over, sending me flying through the air to land in a heap. "Worth... it- oof!" My assessment was cut off by the suitcase landing on top of me. "What the heck was all that racket?" I heard my aunt call out from her bedroom, "Oh, I hope nothing is broken." I head the doorknob to her room rattle as she opened it, I needed to act fast. I could hear the footsteps getting closer and with what seemed like nanoseconds to spare, I zipped up the zipper to the suitcase. "Glasny?" My aunt called out to me, "What is your suitcase doing at the bottom of the steps? Glasny?" I kept quiet, hoping that she wouldn't be nosy enough to look inside the suitcase where I was currently hidden. "Why can't he hear me? He shouldn't be leaving his suitcase out where it can fall down the steps." I felt the suitcase tip upright and I clung to the inside to keep from falling to the bottom. I was shaken around inside by my aunt struggling with the suitcase, but I managed to keep my grip. After that came and odd set of regular thumps against the bottom of the bag. Dangit! She was taking me back upstairs! That was the last thing I needed, yet I couldn't think of any way to prevent the inevitable, and then I'd have to bring the suitcase BACK down, most likely resulting in her just taking the suitcase back up again. I silently cursed, trying to come up with a new plan for getting downstairs. Maybe I could just push the suitcase out my bedroom window and then get it once I was outside. My new course of action would never be realized. When we were only about 3 steps up, I lost my grip on the inside of the suitcase and fell harshly to the bottom. The sudden change in weight broke my aunt's grip on it and I was treated to another fun trip down the steps, this time on the inside of the tumbling suitcase and I definitely did not think it was "worth it" on this trip down. "Oh drat. I hope nothing broke." Just then came the worst sound I could possibly think of. The sound of a zipper. The suitcase zipper. Being unzipped. I froze in place having absolutely no plan at all ready for this scenario The light streamed in as the suitcase lid opened, revealing my new secret to the world. "What on earth? Is it a doll?" I held myself stiff as a board, not daring to breath or blink. My aunt reached in and pulled me out of the suitcase, holding me under my armpits. I panicked, and grasped at the only straws I could find. "Hi, I'm Spike!" I said, without moving my clenched grin or unfocused eyes, "I love to eat gems!" Sure, it was a Hail Mary play if there ever was one. Even I internally cringed at the blatant bluff. There was no way she wouldn't notice the weight, or at least the organic feel that no toy or stuffed animal ever could mimic. "This is so amazing! You look so real," She cooed as she spun me around to look at different angles. It was all I could do to keep rigid enough to maintain the ruse, but for now it seemed to be holding. "Oh, I just love it. I have to ask Glasny where he got it, it's so adorable!" That's right. Now that I thought about it, my aunt had a huge thing for fairies and silly looking gnomes and dragons, she had various statues and figurines all over the lawn and scattered around the house. Spike would probably be right up her alley if she had a bit of warning to brace herself. She lowered me back into the suitcase and zipped it back up; "I'd better leave this here so it doesn't fall down again. I don't want this guy getting damaged." I silently let out a breath once the suitcase was closed and I could hear her walking away. Crisis, ever so narrowly, averted. "Now where did I put that bubblewrap? Once we get him wrapped up, he should be completely safe." Or not; "Oh hell no." Abandoning all pretenses of subtlety, I stuck a finger up through the zipper and pushed it open, quickly squirming out of the hole and running for the door with it. I swung the door open, pushed the suitcase out onto the patio, and slammed the door behind me. I held the suitcase by its handle and kept it angled towards the house as I ran. If my aunt saw anything, it would just be the suitcase moving by itself. She'd just have to get over her confusion, maybe the wind was blowing it or even a raccoon grabbed it or something. Once I was far enough across the driveway, I risked a peek over the top edge of my suitcase, trying to see if I could spot her in the windows. She had her curtains open, so I could see her looking under her bed, presumably still searching for that bubblewrap she had mentioned. I looked up above to the second floor and saw Rubeus and my other kitties staring out the window at me. Okay that was adorable. I waved at them, and Rubeus perked up at attention. He often was watching in the window when I came home from work in the morning, and would meow at me any time I noticed him on my way inside. I swear at times he was more like a dog than a cat. I really should have either stopped walking at this point, or at least paid better attention to where I was going. It was while I was watching my cats that my sister came down the walkway that led up to my parents house, fiddling with the DS that she used as her MP3 player, and by the time either of us had noticed each other, she had already tripped over me. I might have attempted to continue the ruse of being a toy, except for one minor issue that was interfering with that: My sister was HEAVY. "Gah! Get off!" I struggled and squirmed under her butt, and she scrambled off of me in surprise. Okay, she wasn't overweight or anything, but she still had to have had six to ten times the mass Spike has. "What the hell?!" I slowly pushed myself to my feet and dusted off my scales before looking up at her. The fact I needed to look up at her was a bit vexing, considering that she was still sitting on the ground in front of me. "Uh, yeah, you remember that news article about people becoming ponies that mom and dad asked me about? Apparently it's not a hoax." My sister stared at me with a look that mixed awe and disgust; "Glasny?" "Yeah... uh, don't scream, okay?" She inhaled deeply. I had the strong suspicion that she was going to scream. Author's Note If any of you are following this story, then you're probably already following other stories in the PonyEarthVerse group that this one is meant to be part of. Back when I had just finished the first two chapters, there had been some restructuring that resulted in the old group getting deleted and replaced with a new one which you can find at http://www.fimfiction.net/group/199509/ponyearthverse If you were part of the old group at any point, you should probably switch over to the new group, as there seems to be heavier focus on getting the stories to work together, creating an overarching plot, and generally putting more emphasis on the themes that got me interested in this group to begin with.
4PM - Too Damn EarlyI woke up with a belch. This alone would have been unusual. Not to assume I never belch in my sleep. I might, but I've never NOTICED it before. Not like this. I've never had a belch so intense that I was actually forced to sit up to do it. Nor have I ever had one so foul smelling that I instinctively ranked it as Toxic. That doesn't even begin to describe the acrid, coppery, rotten egg taste it left in my mouth. This belch was so intense that I heard thumps against the walls from my cats hurling themselves off my bed so fast. In the back of my mind, I wondered why there were four thumps when I only had three cats, but my brain still wasn't ready to be awake, and that thought got shelved. I groaned and panted, trying to clear the taste out of my mouth. I rolled onto my stomach to get a little more comfortable, plus there was light filtering in through a crack in my thick curtains and I wanted to bury my face in my pillow before the light brought me out of that lucid state that meant I still had a chance to fall back asleep. I wasn't sure exactly what time it was, but I had work tonight, and if I didn't get back to sleep now, I'd need to take a nap after my fiance was back from work and online, or risk being so out of it that I wouldn't be safe to drive back home after work. That thought was interrupted by my biggest cat, Rubeus, jumping back up onto the bed. He padded gently up next to me, sniffing around my covers for several minutes before finally climbing up on top of me and sprawling out across the length of my body. Good GOD I never could get over how huge this bastard was. It felt like he had managed to stretch out even taller than I was. He was also purring right into my ear, and I was left debating whether it was comforting enough counter how absolutely noisy it sounded. I stretched my arm out, reaching for where my phone sat next to my computer, fumbling by touch. The light came from that direction, and thus opening eyes was against protocol, at least not until I managed to bring my phone close enough to see what time it was. "4:13pm... good plenty of time going back to sleep." With that, I let my phone slide out of my fingers, not even bothering to put it back in its place, and let the noisy lawnmower engine of my cat's purr sooth me back into sleep. This time, around 7pm, I was awoken properly by my phone. By now I had gotten something close to a decent 6-8 hours sleep, so I didn't feel quite so bad about it. That didn't mean getting up would be any easier; sometime during the last hour or so, my other two cats had decided they would huddle up around me for warmth, which they often did since my room often felt as frigid as the winter air outside. I hated disturbing them when they were like this. I didn't have much of a chance to own pets as a kid, despite generally loving animals, so those times they cuddled up to me while I slept was something I treasured. Fortunately I was able to silence my alarm before it disturbed them. That's when my computer rang. My cats got up and moved off of me on their own for that one, they had long since learned the drill; If my fiance is online, they get out of the way. Just like I made a point that they only get fed after I get home from work, not by waking me up early. I groggily fumbled with my mouse. My laptop was on a breakfast tray stand next to my bed, so I didn't even have to get up to use it, but I still had trouble seeing the pointer on the screen when I first woke up. I squinted, trying to track it down while I clicked a few times. Eventually I managed to hit the button to answer the call. I pulled my headset out and placed it over my head. They were stuck in the expanded size setting, so they weren't sitting on my head properly. I growled in frustration as I tried to get them resized, but I finally gave up. "Hey, Angel. How was work?" I asked into the microphone, laying back on my pillow. I coughed, trying to clear my throat of whatever it was that was making my voice pitch weird and go raspy. Angel was her pet name, but it succinctly summed up everything she was to me. It was because I was doing it for her that anything I did had meaning. Yet still, she was so far out of my reach. "Are you okay?" She asked, "I think there's something wrong with the audio, you sound really weird." "I'm fine, just-" I coughed again, trying to clear whatever it was, but whatever it was, it was stubborn, "-something in my throat." "Oh. Well. It was a rough day, the system needs so much work if it's going to be able to compete with what's already out there. I can't believe they want to be making this a public release before Christmas. The customers are going to freak and if this team doesn't get off their butts, I'm going to be the one having to figure out how to NOT tell our customers that this is a load of garbage... URGH!" I could recognize the pattern, it would take a bit of venting before she would really be ready to discuss anything else. She needed time to wind down from the stress of work. I didn't mind, since knowing how her day was helped me feel like the distance wasn't so far, and it was something I could do for her that no one else seemed to be capable of. I rubbed my eyes, staring up at the ceiling while I prompted her to continue with some noises of confirmation, or a question to clarify I was losing track of her rant. "WHAT THE HELL?" I shouted. There was a big black patch on my ceiling just above the foot of my bed. It looked like it had been burned, and I suddenly realized that there was the faint smell of smoke lingering in the air. "What's wrong?" Angel asked from the other end of the line, "Glasny, your video is still off. Can I see what's going on?" I sat up to get a closer look at the patch, but then switched gears, trying to meet my fiance's request to turn the webcamera to my computer on. While it loaded up, I walked across my bed to peer at the black patch on my ceiling. It definitely looked like it had been burned, though apparently not badly enough to cause a full scale fire, thank god, but still, how had this happened? "I... uh. I'm not sure what's going on..." I told her distractedly, "I- ugh, hold on! Bathroom!" My change to a standing position had shifted things so that gravity acting on my bladder made it no longer possible to ignore. I sat back down next to my computer and hung the headset on the screen, leaving it running so she could hear when I got back. "Be right, back, Angel. Love you!" With that I slid off my bed, putting my feet down to stand up. A few things unexpectedly went wrong with this. For one, my feet didn't seem to reach the floor quite the right way. For another, my butt somehow caught the edge of my bed, causing me to pitch forward out of bed and onto the floor with a resounding thump of impact, that very nearly shook my laptop off of its cooling stand. I managed to catch some of the force on my hands, but for the most part I did a full out bellyflop and faceplant right into my carpet. There wasn't much of a splash, just a dull pain. I could hear my fiance's voice coming out quietly through the speakers in my headphones; "Are you okay? What was that? It sounded like something fell." "Ny'im okay!" I called, prying myself off the floor. When I finally got back to my feet, I had the absolute oddest feeling of disorientation. My laptop was above my head, heck the edge of my bed was taller than my head. I blinked and straightened up, as if I was somehow hunched over to my normal thigh level without realizing it. I gained maybe an inch of height. I stared down at myself. Instead of fleshy colors of five toed feet and five fingered hands, I was seeing a green belly, and purple hands and feet, covered in claws and scales. I wiggled my fingers. The purple clawed hands followed suit. I wiggled my toes. Much the same reaction from the purple clawed feet. I rubbed my belly. As the purple clawed hands moved over the green plated scales of the belly, I could feel a similar sensation of my own hand touching plated scales, and my belly being touched by a clawed, scaly hand. I briefly wondered if I was dreaming, but I've never actually wondered if I was dreaming while I was actually dreaming. Or if I had, it immediately shifted to a lucid dream that I could do whatever I wanted. Plus I never seemed to dream in full sensory before. I tended to dream more conceptually, instead of actually seeing an object and identifying it as a table, I would identify it as a table, and then the details that supported it being a table would sort of fill in generically from there. I also tended to have tunnel vision in my dreams. Or things would be pixely, or colors wouldn't be right, or as soon as my mind wandered my dreams would just be swept up along the ride. Heck, just this line of questioning alone should have shifted my dream to some completely unrelated scene about 5 times over. Colors did seem a little bit off from my usual, but still consistent and everything I looked at had the expected amount of detail in a nice crisp focus. That actually caught my attention. I was anything but blind, but without my glasses, I usually had to strain a bit to get my vision to be as clear as it was now. I looked around the room. Everything seemed twice to three times... maybe four times as large as it would normally be. My doorknob would usually be at belly button level, but now it was firmly out of reach. Rubeus and my other cats slowly poked their heads out to peer at me. They seemed like Mountain Lions now, adorable Mountain Lions, but still; yeesh. I looked back to... "my" hands and flexed my fingers, making fists, then opening and closing my fingers in rippling waves. I was missing a pinky finger, and it threw off the pattern a little, but nothing too problematic. I shifted my weight from foot to foot, then rocked back and forth from my heels to my toes my balance was all sorts of funky on that issue. It was like I had something pulling at my hips every time I moved. I twisted to look behind me and suddenly realized what my problem was, and also why I had tipped out of bed. I had a tail now. Also purple, with green ridgey scales running down its length, and a spade shaped tip to the tail. I was pretty sure I recognized who that tail belonged to. And the hands and feet... and generally everything. I walked over to my dresser, and hopped, scrabbling to grab onto the edge and pull myself up so I could look at the mirror. I winced at the gouges my claws dug into the wood, but right now peace of mind was more important than a chunk of wood. It took a ton more effort to pull myself up than I had expected. I had gained a little weight, but climbing usually was something I was reasonably good at. I've done both rock and tree climbing, and I could always at LEAST handle pulling my own body weight up a couple times over. Now I had barely managed to throw myself up onto the edge of my own dresser, even with putting a thick series of scratches in the front of it with the claws on my toes, and I was STILL panting and out of breath from the effort. I could hear my fiance continuing to call out in concern, but for now I ignored her, intent on finding out enough answers to know what the hell was going on before I got back to her. I pushed myself back up to my feet and turned to look at the mirror... Only to have my foot slip of the edge and come crashing back down to the floor. This time I intelligently opened the drawers in my dresser, forming a simple, easy to climb staircase to get on top of my dresser with. I made a note to mentally berate myself for not having thought of it earlier, but then changed my mind; I hadn't realized it would take any effort to climb my own dresser until after I had started, so it simply hadn't occurred to me to bother thinking of an easier way to get up on top of it. With that thought aside, I stood on top of my dresser and looked into the mirror at myself. "Huh." Yep, I'm Spike now. And I still needed to go to the bathroom.
