"Like what great ideas?" sighed 16 year old Tony.
"Well, how 'bout this one?" began his 14 year old brother, Mark. "You guys have that rule about never doing anything to anyone against their will"
"Yup"
"Well, what if something was done on a temporary basis, the person who has it done to them returns to their normal self, but they remember being a dog or-or a gorilla or super fat and-"
"We're trying to take the power crazed impulse out of this, Mark"
"Let me finish. And if you want to teach somebody a lesson using the chronivac, you've got to run it by the other guys and accept them playing a trick on you, in turn."
Hmmmm. Tony considered Mark's plan. It wasn't bad. No permanent physical changes. No playing god with this stuff. You get a prank back at you if you teach some jerk a lesson with it.
"What do you think?" asked Mark enthusiastically. He was encouraged that intellectual Tony hadn't simply dismissed the idea.
"Well, it's not bad. There might be some rough edges to it, but we could present it to the other guys and see what they think"
They did just that a couple nights later when Jeff, Jack and Eric dropped by the St. Martins' house. There was a lot of debate back and forth. Jack worried that they'd all be too tempted to play god and insisted that if any of them intended on doing this that they'd have to spell out their intentions in great detail, would have to get a 3-1 or better vote to approve it from the others and that the others would be allowed to deal a transformation to that person that was even tougher than the one being used to teach a lesson. Finally, they voted on it and the vote was 5-0.
"Okay" chuckled Tony looking at Mark standing by the door to his room "you must have something in mind to have come up with this"
"Wellllll" Mark smirked and looked down at his shoes sheepishly "there, um, there is a kid who's been bullying me and my friends really bad"
"That psycho Selkirk" laughed Eric.
"Yeah. The kid's nuts. He just completely gets off on chasing us down and trash canning us and shit. He calls me 'pretty girl' every time he sees me and knocks me down. It's just insane"
"He couldn't hack the football team" Eric laughed again "He thought he could just go off on people all the time. He didn't want to learn his assignments and do them. He acted like it was gonna be pro wrestling and it's not. Coach had to kick him off after he almost cost us a game trying to rush the passer every time instead of staying home like he was supposed to"
"Well, he broke two of Billy's teeth last week. It's just out of control"
"What do you want to do?" asked Tony.
"Well, I thought I'd either make him incredibly fat or incredibly weak. I wanted to have him meet somebody who'd threaten him that that's what would happen to him if he kept bullying kids and then have it happen to him"
"Well, pick one" said Jack. "Fat or weak"
"Um, fat"
"And when will you do this?" demanded Jack.
"Um, If you guys don't mind I'll keep the laptop with me and the next time I see him I'll do it. It'll probably be no more than a couple days"
The others agreed to this and then had Mark leave the room while they worked out what transformation he would receive in turn.
The next day at school was uneventful for Mark. He only even saw Selkirk in the distance in the hallways once, though his computer fixated friend Dexter reported being shoved into a wall and looking up from the floor to see Selkirk hysterically laughing while no one else was.
The boringly unremarkable school day had brought Mark's defenses down so much that, after getting a couple books from his locker before leaving for the day, he was completely taken by surprise by 240 pound Selkirk who grabbed 5'8" 118 pound Mark in a bear hug outside the school entrance, knocking Mark's backpack to the ground.
"Hey, pretty girl!"
"Let go of me you fat bastard!" Mark groaned. He could see where Selkirk was carrying him, the 3 foot high trash basket by the end of the walk into the school. Mark struggled to free himself, but couldn't and found Selkirk swinging him up into the air so that Mark's butt came down over the top of the trash can.
"Bingo!" laughed Selkirk and then, with both hands, he pushed down on the front of Mark's waist till Mark's rear was deep in the trash can and only the top of his head and his feet showed above the rim of the can.
"Hehehehe! Good thing you're so flexible, huh ballet boy! Hey, I think you put your foot in your mouth calling me a bastard" laughed Selkirk and he pushed Mark's foot so that the toe almost went into Mark's mouth. Mark wanted to scream epithets at him but composed himself enough to think of what he would do.
"You're a big man, huh, Selkirk?" shouted Mark.
But Selkirk never responded. He laughed and shot a couple pieces of trash, basketball style, at the basket, bouncing them off Mark's partly exposed head before laughing some more and heading down the street.
Almost the moment he was gone, Mark's friend Dexter, 100 pounds of braces, glasses and acne, showed up.
"Wow, that doesn't hurt to be bent like that?"
"No, it doesn't" sighed Mark. "Now get me out of here"
"Wow, it must be that ballet stuff you do" said Dexter circling the trashcan and staring at Mark. "These are really your feet?" he said twisting one foot part way around.
"Ow! Yes, that's my foot. Get me out of this thing!"
"Oh, sure" said Dexter turning over the trash can before pulling Mark out. "That ballet stuff makes you like Mr. Fantastic"
"Whatever" said Mark dusting himself off before going back to pick up his backpack, inside of which was the chronivac.
"Gotta go, Dexter. Thanks for the help. I'll see you later" said Mark and he ran off in the direction Selkirk had gone. It was easy enough to catch up to him. But Mark had to get ahead of him. He ran till his lungs were bursting but managed to get a couple hundred yards ahead of where he knew Selkirk was walking.
Mark gasped for breath as he started up the laptop behind some trees and went through the chronivac menus. He pointed the emitter at himself and immediately felt his body start to shrivel up into the weak form of an old gypsy woman. He was less than 100 pounds and just barely 5 feet tall wrapped in a bright paisley skirt and purple blouse with a garish bandana over his stringy gray hair. He saw his reflection in a car window when he emerged into the road.
"Perfect" Mark warbled in his old gypsy woman voice.
There he waited for Selkirk and a few minutes later, the bully was approaching him. Mark made a theatric gesture of putting one hand to his head and pointing at him.
"Youuuuuuuu . . you have been very cruel to other boys, haven't you, Brian Selkirk?"
Taken aback at this strange woman knowing his name, Selkirk slowed to a stop before her.
"You must change your ways, Brian Selkirk, or you will suffer the consequences"
"What're you talking about you crazy old bitch"
Mark went for another dramatic gesture, one arm straight out to the side, the other to his forehead, he let out a high pitched shriek.
"Youuuuuuu! Youuuuuuuu Brian Selkirk will pay for that and for all your mistreatment of boys smaller than you-"
"Leave me alone you crazy old bag" said Selkirk pushing past old crone Mark knocking her to the side.
"You have gotten away with your mistreatment of others by being bigger than them. My curse on you is that you shall become too big for your own good and the curse shall only be lifted when you make amends to the others you have mistreated"
"Yeah, okay crazy lady" muttered Selkirk not even looking back but walking more briskly. He glanced back over his shoulder at the corner 50 feet ahead, but the old lady was gone. Selkirk stopped and looked around. Where could she have gone? Oh well. He walked onward.
As he was walking past a house 3 down from the corner, he felt a weird electric shock for no reason that he could see. Just a second later, Mark St. Martin came running around the street corner toward him.
"Look what you did to my pants, you stupid jackass!" shouted Mark and turning to show the stains on his pants from being pressed into the trash can. Selkirk just smirked.
"You're gonna pay some time for mistreating me and other people!" Mark shouted without getting any closer. "You're gonna pay!"
But Selkirk just laughed and waved for him to go away and finished walking home. He went to his room and looked at some internet porn for a while till a friend came and picked him up. They went to a pool hall and flirted with some girls and played some pool. One girl particularly interested him but as he was coming back from the bathroom he overheard her make a crack about "Mr. Disco jeans" and a little while later, he realized she was referring to him. He looked at himself in the mirror. What the hell?! His loose fit jeans were like sausage casings around his thighs. He got his friend to drive him home at the first opportunity and made his way straight to the bathroom where he took off his clothes.
"What the fuck?!" Selkirk pawed at the doughy rolls of fat at his midsection and stared at the width of his hips. He had never been skinny, but he'd been a pretty solid 240. He pulled the scale out and stepped atop it. The dial finally settled with the red line over 280.
"Two Eighty! How the fuck can I weigh 280? I was 240 this mor-"
He remembered the old gypsy lady. What was it she'd said? You'll become too big for your own good. He looked at himself in the mirror.
"Naaaahhh. That's impossible. I just wasn't paying attention" That's what Selkirk told himself. He must've been gaining some weight before and didn't pay attention.
But the next morning he woke up with his briefs up the crack of his ass like a thong. He had to rock back and forth just to get off his bed. And when he went into the bathroom to piss, he looked down and couldn't even see his penis. He had to paw past a suddenly huge gut to reach it and take a whiz. In a panic, he looked into the mirror and saw the round puffy pie face of a fatso. He looked in terror at the scale but didn't dare to set foot on it.
He was frozen in panic and might have just stayed there if not for his mother hectoring from outside the door and prodding him to go to school. Selkirk only found one pair of pants that he could still wear, a pair of giant fit jeans that was no skin tight. He pulled on a suddenly snug, once oversized sweater and found himself half waddling to school.
He really felt like giving it to those little freshman shits, but he tried to grab Mark St. Martin and fell over as Mark got away. At lunch, he found that even after two school meals, 3 desserts and 3 milks, he was still hungry. He could barely squeeze into his desk, now. As he was leaving school, he got dropkicked in the ass by Mark St. Martin who demanded "Say you're sorry for mistreating me and my friends! Say you're sorry, fatso!" But Selkirk only grunted and tried to grab him. He couldn't catch Mark before, but now, Mark laughed and ran in circles around him as he struggled to change direction with his massive weight.
Selkirk waddled home and stared at the scale in the bathroom. He went into another room but couldn't stop thinking of it. He went to the bathroom again and first stared then stepped atop it. The dial spun crazily trying to wind up enough to register his weight. Finally, the dial slowed and the line stopped at 350.
"Three fifty! I weigh three hundred and fifty pounds! How can that-". He stopped himself. He knew how. The gypsy woman. The curse. The next day, he went to school wearing a pair of his overweight mother's loosest pants. He spent each class half on and half off his desk. He couldn't fit his entire huge gut within it. Kids laughed and made fun of him all day long. A series of different kids kicked his huge ass and he didn't even try to chase them or do anything about it because he knew he couldn't. He wouldn't even have gone except that it was the only place he knew he could find Mark, Billy and Dexter. He tried to approach Dexter in the hallway to apologize, but Dexter ran off at the sight of him and Selkirk was out of breath after just 3 steps chasing him.
Finally, the day ended and Selkirk, feeling fatter than ever if that was possible, waddled out the school door and saw the three freshmen waiting for him and staring. He waddled up to them in tears.
"I'm sorry! I'm sorry! I should have left you guys alone. I'm sorry". Mark let the others tell him it was okay but made sure to tell Selkirk. "Don't do it again, who knows what could happen to you" before watching Selkirk waddle off laboriously.
Mark left Billy and Dexter and followed Selkirk. It wasn't hard. He must've weighed almost 400 pounds. Mark set the return to his old shape to happen much faster and as Selkirk waddled past a split level ranch he suddenly felt an electric shock run through him. By the next day, Selkirk was under 300 pounds. Two days later, he was his previous weight. And he never bothered Mark, Dexter or Billy again.