When the light clears, there's a gray rat standing where your friend Sarah had been a moment before. The rat looks up at you and gives what sounds like a confused squeak, then looks down at itself and gives a scared squeak. You quickly reach down and pick up the rat in your hand, causing it to wiggle around, trying to escape.
"Sarah. Is that you?"
The rat freezes, then slowly turns to focus on you, eyes slanting.
"God, I'm so sorry. I can explain everything."
There's a moment of silence, the rat moves its paws as if gesturing to "Go on..."
"Sorry, trying to decide where to start. I guess you'll have less trouble believing me considering your...urm...current state." As you loosen your grip on the rat to sit on its haunches, you can't help but be distracted by the fact Sarah appears to be an obviously male rat, but you decide not to bring that up just yet. "Maybe we should take you back to the apartment where no one can run across me talking to a rat. No offense."
Sarah gives a rodent shrug.
"Let me get Stephen and we can go. Would you be OK in riding the in cage, just to be safe?"
Sarah manages to give an expression that you're downright impressed is able to be carried across rodent features that translates to "Hell no."
"Fine. But gonna take it along just in case. Now better get Stephen before..."
You look up just in time to see same gardener as before stepping into the janitor's closet, closing the door behind him. Uh-oh. You debate the possible routes. You couldn't really demand that they exit the closet and you didn't feel confident enough to use the keys again. So all you could do was wait. But you also didn't feel comfortable waiting there holding a rat, even if that rat was one of your best friends.
"Hey, Sarah. Sorry about this, but could we put you in the cage, just until we get back to the apartment? I don't want to freak anyone out."
You don't give Sarah time to respond before you open the cage door and place her (or would it be him?) in the cage next to the wedge of swiss cheese. There's some indignant squeaks that you attempt to ignore for the time being.
Eventually, there's a flush and the door opens. The gardener sees you as he exits and grins at you. "Ah! You told landlord to get toilet paper. Thank you." He nods and heads on his way.
You open the door to find Stephen standing there, red and embarrassed, holding a roll of toilet paper.
You sigh. "Come on, dude. Let's get up to the apartment. We have some things to figure out."
Stephen nods, then notices the cage you're holding. "Oh! Did the experiment work with the rat?"
"Ah, no. That rat is actually Sarah. As I said, stuff to figure out."
Soon, you're all back in the apartment. You carefully take Sarah out of the cage and place them on the kitchen table. The rat looks up at you expectantly.
"Trust me, Sarah. I'm going to try and fix you as soon as possible. I want to be careful though. This..." You take the roll of toilet paper from Stephen. "...is our landlord, Mr. Edwards. Ur. Really sorry about what happened to you by the way, Mr. Edwards."
The roll of toilet paper does not respond.
The rat looks even more confused.
"Long story short, we found this device that can change stuff. The landlord's a roll of toilet paper, Stephen keeps turning into a toilet every time he gets...ur...excited, a cop is currently a Tupperware container, and Keith...well...he was a German shepherd at first, but now he's...urm...dog poop."
None of this makes the rat look any less confused.
"Anyway, I think we should take a breath and figure out what we're gonna do next. I think I'm getting better at controlling how it changes things, but I really need some time to recharge."
Sarah looks down at her rodent paws and takes a closer look at her body, then seems to notice something and looks closer at something, then looks up at you with slanted eyes.
"O-Oh, I was hoping you wouldn't notice you were a boy rat."
From Sarah's expression you wondered if you should try and change him back now before risking some rat bites in sensitive areas.