Ginny smiled as she looked at the blue liquid in the syringe. It had taken a long time, but her work was finally complete and ready for testing.
It seemed like it had taken forever to gather the necessary supplies. Getting the equipment wasn't too hard. Because she volunteered as a lab assistant at the local University, her superiors were more than happy to give her their old outdated machines when they purchased the newer models. It was better than tossing the equipment in the trash - why not donate it to a young student eager to learn from their own experiments? The chemical reagents were a little more difficult to procure. She had to patiently siphon off minuscule amounts - amounts too small to be missed - to avoid detection. It had taken months to accumulate enough of the chemicals for even a rudimentary test.
But a little over a week ago, Ginny had a stroke of luck. One of the professors had abruptly left the University to conduct research in the private sector for a pharmaceutical company. Ginny was assigned to clean up his lab. But rather then toss away all of the valuable reagents he had left behind, Ginny smuggled them home for use in the small lab she had set up in her basement.
With this windfall the pace of Ginny's research had increased dramatically. She had moved passed the preliminary stages and was ready to begin human studies.
Well, a human study.
Ginny planned to test her little concoction on herself. She had done all the work. Why shouldn't she benefit from the fruits of her labor? This was why she began her research project, after all.
Ever since Ginny had first seen a kangaroo, she had been obsessed with them. She found the creatures not just adorable, but fascinating. She spent long hours reading every book she could find about them, watched every nature documentary that even mentioned them. Her walls were plastered with large posters of kangaroos and her notebooks were filled with her crude drawings of them. Her family thought she was crazy, but they tolerated her odd behavior. She was a good student, excelling in all her classes and never getting into any trouble. So, her parents allowed Ginny to continue to enjoy her odd hobby.
But what no one knew was that Ginny didn't want to just study kangaroos - she wanted to be one! She wanted frolic and play with them, hopping and jumping through the plains, not as an outsider but as one of their herd. And now, after an agonizingly long time, the answer to her prayers lay in that syringe.
At least she hoped.
The initial tests on inert tissue in a Petri tissue had been successful. But she had not tried the compound on living tissue, much less a human. In theory the results should be the same.
In theory.
Oh well, she thought. Fortune favors the bold. Here goes nothing.
Ginny felt a slight pinch as she injected the chemical directly into a vein on her arm. She hoped that was the worst pain she would feel. In truth, she had no idea what the transformation would be like. The retrovirus was supposed to add kangaroo genes to the genome of all her cells. Then the other chemicals would activate these new kangaroo genes while simultaneously silencing some of her human genes. She didn't know if the process would take weeks to complete or just minutes. The tissue had reacted to the mixture almost instantaneously, but her body was much larger and more complicated than a small collection of cells on a Petri dish.
Ginny got her answer shortly. Her whole body started to tingle as brown and white fur began to sprout all across her body. She had always imagined it would itch, but she found the feeling to be more ticklish than anything else. She felt a pain in her feet and quickly removed her shoes. She cursed her stupidity. She realized too late she should have disrobed before she began her experiment. But in her defense Ginny had no idea that the process would be so quick. Her enlarging toes thanked her for freeing them from their confining prison. She wiggled them as they got longer and bigger.
Ginny hesitated just a moment before removing the rest of her clothes. Even though she was alone in her lab, she still felt a little uncomfortable getting nude. But if everything worked according to plan, she would no longer need clothes. A healthy fur coat would be all the protection she ever needed. As if response to her thoughts, her fur grew thicker and longer, a nice white patch on her belly and inner thighs contrasting with the brown fur covering the rest of her body. Her hands and forearms as well as her legs and feet were also white, making it look like she was wearing long white gloves and socks. But the short thick black claws replacing her fingernails did not look like they belonged on any fine lady's garment.
Ginny winced as she felt as well as heard a loud crack coming from her feet. The bones were stretching longer and thicker. Her outer toes were merging together, forming a single clawed digit, while her middle toe expanded and stretched past the other two. Her thighs bulked up, packing on pounds of growing muscle, but she still had to hold onto the table to balance herself as she adjusted her stance.
Then she felt the pain in her back. She winced, closing her eyes tightly. The pain was intense, but she couldn't help but smile as she anticipated the next change. A small tail erupted from her spine, flicking back and forth as it grew longer and thicker. The pain ebbed a little. Ginny's new tail began to wag happily as it continued to grow, helping her maintain her balance.
Now that the pain was over in her back, she could focus on the pain that had slowly been building in her jaw. She reached up to touch her twitching ears. She hadn't even noticed as they grew larger and rounder, stretching out at the top to a narrow-tipped peak. Her nose was soft and wet. But the pain in her jaw overruled them all. She grunted and gritted her teeth as her mouth stretched into a long fuzzy snout.
Ginny panted with relief as the changes finally stopped. She turned and hopped over to a mirror to examine the results of her work. She felt a mixture of pride and disappointment. She had hoped to change completely into a kangaroo, but the mirror revealed that she had retained some of her human features. Her long blonde hair still sat atop her head, stretching down behind her neck. Her hands, although covered in white fur and ending in short, black claws, still looked human. And she still had breasts, although they were covered by fur that obscured her nipples.
Oh, well, she thought. I'll do better with the next batch. Still, I think this might work in the interim. I don't think the other kangaroos would reject me like this.
Ginny noticed an odd line in the center of her belly. She teased it open, finding a small hole that led to....
A pouch! I have a pouch! It really worked! thought Ginny with excitement.
She was so excited with her discovery that she did not hear the door to her lab open, as someone made their way down into the basement.