If he had been totally unprepared for anything, it would have been suddenly finding himself in the company of an ordinary human being, which reminded him of how far separated his new rodent form kept him from his fellow humans.
Nathan felt the long, wiry whiskers on either side of his snout twitch like mad. He ran across the warm glass of his phone using his four tiny paws. He saw that his parents had ended the call. He felt jumpy and on edge as he let his tiny eyes dart around the room, adjusting to the immense scale of everything. But to see his school friend Brett in his living room looking enormous as he towered over everything, that froze the tiny mouse-boy to the spot.
"Take it easy, little guy," Brett urged. "I won't hurt you."
Nathan twitched and wondered how the hell Brett had even gotten into the house. Has he left a door open? Though, if he had to be found by one of his friends, Nathan could have fared a lot worse than Brett, who was the classic definition of a bleeding heart liberal who felt even venomous snakes and spiders deserved to exist. He would be a lot better than some of Nathan's irresponsible jock friends.
"Just get out of my way, will you?" Nathan squeaked and tried to dodge around Brett's sneakers and reach the device. He had almost reached the truck-sized piece of tech when Brett dropped a Waterford crystal candy bowl atop the tiny mouse.
"Be careful! My mom would freak if she knew you had even touched that..."
The squeaks sounded almost too high-pitched to register and Brett shook his head. "I know you're upset, but calm down. Everything will be OK."
The dark-haired teenager grabbed a magazine from the coffee table, lifted the edge of the bowl, and slid the stiff pages beneath the little mouse. Once successful, he flipped the magazine, and the mouse dropped into the crystal basin.
"The hell!" Nathan squeaked. "It's me! Help!" Why had he ever set up the device to require his input to reverse the change? Why hadn't he simply set up the recommended automatic timer?
Brett watched, somewhat distressed, that the tiny mouse continued to berate him with panicked squeaks. Something else, however, had distracted him.
Brett looked down and saw blinking letters on the device, which he collected in in his hand for a closer look at the message, which turned out to be a blinking query. "Do you wish to retain change?"
A red "NO" and green "YES" blinked below the question. "Better safe than sorry," Brett decided, saving his buddy's work.
Nathan felt a tingle spread through his tiny body. "What was that?"