Back in his room at the St. Martin house, Tony St. Martin, still dressed in his ballet performance tights and top continued to dance. He couldn't stop himself. He had one hand on his bookcase as he did slow plies, bending at the knees like doing a squat only with both his ballet slippered toes pointing straight to the side and with his free arm tracing a flowery arc beside him.
"Alright" said Tony sternly to the ballet tights, dance belt, belt and top he wore, actually his brother Mark, girlfriend Claire, friend Felix and best friend Jack, respectively. "Did any of you say anything about the chronivac to Emma Chase?"
~~No!~~ answered Jack the snug gold and white, quilted velvet top.
~~No!~~ answered Claire, now the spandex dance belt Tony wore beneath his tights.
~~No!~~ answered Mark, Tony's younger brother and now his ballet tights
Tony waited for a fourth voice to be heard in his head. He could communicate with his transformed friends when they were in contact.
"Felix?"
~~Um, I'm not sure~~
"What? What do you mean not sure? Felix! I don't have my original body because that bitch ERASED it! She tried to leave me as a jackass for life! She tried to leave Jack, Jeff and Eric as dachsunds. She turned another boy into a german shepherd. She's a psycho, almost literally. Did you tell her about the chronivac?"
~~I'm-I'm not sure. I-I was at a party. I-I never used to get invited to parties . . ~~
"And!"
~~Well, I-I might have mentioned it to this one girl there who-~~
"You blabbed about the chronivac at a frigging party?!"
~~I-I might've said something about it to this sour faced blond girl~~
"That's her" Tony grumbled. "You're a belt wrapped inside the top of a pair of tights that I'm wearing because you blabbed to her! Everyone else is stuck because you blabbed to her! I can't stop dancing because you blabbed to her!"
~~I'm-I'm sorry. She seemed so unhappy. I told her I had friends who might be able to help her. I . . I just hated to see how unhappy she was~~
"That's what she does. She's an unhappy person and she delights in making other people unhappy. How much did you tell her?"
~~I, um, I don't really remember. I'd had a few beers. Even with 40 more pounds, I still don't have much resistance to beer. I-I just don't know~~
Tony let out a long slow sigh. He tried again, to stop himself from dancing but, to his great exasperation, couldn't.
"Alright, well we've got to do something because I'm like some kind of windup toy here. I can't stop doing this stuff no matter how hard I try. I may be in great shape but I can't do this stuff forever"
~~Try lying down to sleep~~ suggested Claire.
Tony tried to lie down on his bed but could not lie still. He tried lying on his side and found himself kicking his legs front and back again and again. He tried to lie on his back but found himself doing a series of toe pointing exercises and theatric arm gestures. No matter how he tried to lie still, he continued to do one sort of ballet move or another.
"I'm already getting tired, not sleepy tired, but physically exhausted. I danced the ballet program and I've done all this extra stuff before and after. At this rate, I'll die from exhaustion from compulsive ballet dancing in 24 hours" he said getting up and then doing a series of spins in place at the end of which he patted his own drum tight buttock. "I don't have stores of fat, you know"
~~He's right~~ Claire chuckled ~~I like him this way but he hasn't got an ounce of pudge on him to carry him through something like this~~
"So, what should we do?" asked tony looking for suggestions
~~We?~~ Jack snickered ~~You're in the driver's seat here. You've still got a body even if you can't completely control it. I'm just a ballet dancer's version of a shirt~~
"Whatever. What should I do? Is going to Emma Chase's place too obvious?"
~~What do you mean?~~ asked Jack
"Well, she knows I saw her. So, isn't the obvious move to go there? Wouldn't she be waiting?"
~~Yeah . . ~~
"If you were Emma Chase, would you leave the Chronivac there?"
~~No. I guess not~~
"What about Jeff's sister? She blabbed and tipped Emma off before. Maybe she did it again. Maybe she's Emma's ally in this again. How else would Emma get the machine? It was at Jeff's. If she really was Emma's secret ally, that would be a great place for Emma to stash the chronivac for safekeeping"
~~And meanwhile, Jeff is one of your two ballet slippers, along with Eric~~
"Yeah, the ballet slippers that seem to be somehow compelling me to keep dancing without ever stopping whether I want to or not"
That was the plan that was settled on. Tony waited a couple more hours till after midnight, leaping and spinning and doing special toe pointing exercises all the while. At one point, his sister poked her head into the room and saw him speaking to his dance belt and tights.
"Oh my god. You're nuts" Cindy giggled.
"You . . you just don't understand a thing about the dance! You-you little peasant girl" snapped Tony dismissing her.
~~The dance? Oh my god~~ laughed Claire
It was just after 1 am when Tony leaped and spun his way through the residential streets between his house and Jeff's house. Tony remembered that slider at the back of the house was accidentally unlocked about half the time and spun and kicked his way around the side of the house to the back. He did plies with one hand on the latch and gave it a push. Bingo. Unlocked. Tony jumped inside swirling his toes left and right in midair and jumped again making the same foot movements as he closed the door. Tony could, at least, control which ballet movement he made even if he was strangely compelled to never stop. He grabbed an ottoman from off the floor in front of a chair and lifted it over his head as he walked in imitation of carrying a ballerina. This way, his walk could be relatively quiet rather than a series of bounds or leaps that would make enough noise to attract attention.
With the ottoman still over his head, Tony ascended the stairway to the second floor where he put down the ottoman and immediately started doing barre exercises against the doorway to Jeff's room. Looking inside as he pointed his toes this way and that, Tony could see that the room was a mess. Jeff wasn't a slob. His room never looked like that. His sister and/or Emma must have thrown everything about looking for the laptop with the chronivac. Tony spun into the room and lunged forward with his hands over his head, the same gesture with which he'd finished the performance, so that he could look, up close, at the area of Jeff's desk. Sure enough, the compartment where the laptop was hidden was exposed and empty.
Tony spun with his arms over his head all the way out of the room and into the hallway. He stopped at the entrance to Jeff's sister's room and peaked inside.
No sooner did he do so than he felt the familiar electric pulse pass through him.
"Oh no!" he snapped and rushed toward the bed. The covers were tented in the shape of an opened laptop with bluish light illuminating the sheets.
"Hahahahaha! We guessed that you might try coming here!" said Jeff's sister in a delicious whisper. "We were ready for you!"
Tony heard all this while rushing forward. Just a couple strides and a balletic leap and he should be on top of her and able to snatch the chronivac powered laptop out of her hands.
It seemed to Tony that he'd just miscalculated. "What the hell. . ?" The second stride of his long ballet tight covered legs left him not practically on top of her but just over halfway there. Another running stride and he was barely closer. What's more, he felt disoriented. His surroundings were growing. Even the carpet beneath his ballet slippered feet seemed to shoot upward as it became the thickest, deepest shag he'd ever seen.
"What kind of funhouse setup is this? A growing carpet and a bed set up to rise on springs? I must be on some kind of conveyor belt going the other way or something. too"
But slowly, Tony realized. The carpet wasn't changing. The room was the same size it had been. The side of the bed to his right was not really high as a canyon wall. He'd been shrunk. As he looked around frantically, trying to get his bearings, he realized that this change had somehow taken away the maddening compulsion he'd been under to never stop dancing ballet. But before he could act on this recognition, he heard steps and saw a colossus of rhodes standing over him. A giant hand, the size of a bulldozer blade, wrapped around his torso, pinning his arms to his sides and effortlessly lifting him up.
Tony found himself just over 7 inches tall, the size of a doll or action figure and locked in an unbreakable grip in front of the laughing face of Emma Chase. Jeff's sister reached over and pushed her index finger over one still impressively proportioned but now grape sized buttock under white spandex and reacted with a giggle. "His little buns are still so fantastic!" she chortled and fell back on the bed laughing.
"Hey there tiny dancer" Emma laughed.