"The starring role in a video game!"
If you were having trouble staying in character, the mention of games put an end to it. "Really? I'm going to be IN a video game? Like, as a character?" Your hand-paws are clasped together in a praying gesture. "Let me see! Please, please, please!"
The shopkeep pats you on the head and scratches behind your enormous ears. It feels... way better than you expected it to. "It's a big responsibility, kid," she says in a soft voice. "It's going to be a long job and there won't be much of a chance to back out once you're in. Are you sure you're up to the task?
"Uh-huh! I can do anything now that I'm this cute!" You give her a close-lipped smile with your front teeth sticking out. You were going to say you were "cool", but "cute" just flowed better somehow. No sense in fighting it. "What do I gotta do?"
She chuckles to herself. "You'll see. Come on down to our basement. The servers just rebooted and they're not even warm yet, we have plenty of time to get ready."
"It's all here? Not even in an office somewhere? Wow!" You try stomping along behind her like a mundane human kid at first, but your stubby legs are barely able to keep up with an adult's stride when they aren't slowing down for you. Stopping to think for a moment, you bounce on your feet again and feel how springy you are; you switch to a perky, skipping gait and it's much faster, not to mention a heck of a lot more fun!
The scent of sawdust and freshly-glued carpet hits your nose like a wheelbarrow full of bricks as the basement door opens. Your hand claps over your nose as you hold back a sneeze. As cute as your sneezes might sound, you figure they're trying to keep their equipment clean down here. The shopkeeper turns around and watches you tiptoe down the steps on your own for a moment, then offers you her hand so you have something to balance with. You graciously grasp her gesturing hand and slink down the stairs safely.
"I bet we're going to do mo-cap with a bunch of ping pong balls hanging on my body! Or some voice acting in a soundproof room! Or, uh, a photoshoot? How are we gonna do it first?" Skipping past a server rack when you're barely one meter tall is an unusual sensation. The black plastic monoliths tower over you, humming with solemn potential. A battery rack of fans are cooling the whole room, leaving the right side of your body refreshingly chill under what is getting harder to remember is "just a costume" with every passing moment. Even the ceiling is a mosaic of plastic tiles instead of the dusty drop ceiling you were expecting. It feels like you're entering another world...
"We can do better than any of those. Look at this, kid." Without asking permission or even saying anything, the shopkeep picks you up! You squeak in surprise, first at her invasion of your personal space, then at what she has hiding down here. Behind a metal door with a window reinforced by steel wire, there is a circle of lights and projectors surrounding what looks like a human-sized wireless charging pad. An ordinary computer running an unfamiliar series of DOS lines sits off to one side, groaning under the weight of whatever it's doing. Your legs futilely dangle as you look up at the shopkeep, waiting for an explanation.
"See all this? We're going to literally transport you INTO a computer game we're been developing. Do well enough, and copies of your adventure are going to be all over the internet. Fail, and we try to eject you early."
"WOAH! This is scary, but also kinda cool!" It isn't until you squirm out of her grasp and land on all fours that you think a bit harder about what she's saying. "What do you mean by 'try to'? Can I get stuck in there? Forever?"
The shopkeep shakes her head, seemingly in shock at the idea. "Oh, no no, that hasn't happened since early animal testing trials. If we don't have a detailed address for a subject to be tagged with, their avatar is too heavily altered by the code to be extracted. Trying to do this with something as complex as an organic body takes up far too much space, and we get lossy compression." She can sense the confused child next to her. "Don't- don't think about it, bunny. Just know that when we have you completely encased in inorganic materials like you are now, our instruments can extract you with a 99.7 percent success rate."
"What about the other point three-"
"Don't think about it, bunny." She gently pushes you onto the platform, then types at the computer. Patterns of light flash over you as your bunny body is scanned. If your vision wasn't being filtered through a camera right now, you'd probably be dazzled or blinded by all of this; the dizzy cartoon spirals which briefly replace your pupils seem to agree with this. She has you strike a few poses and make a few different faces so that the server has data for every last part of your body. It occurs to you that you're technically "naked" right now, even if everything inappropriate is smoothed over. The adult somewhere inside you wonders if this data is going to be sold off as creepshots for the kinds of people who need to get outside more, but in Kid Mode you just think science is awesome.
"Okay, ma'am, I'm ready!" You strike as heroic a pose as you can manage in your current state. Right above you is a hollow cylinder which looks and sounds something like an MRI scanner with no clear power source. The whole lab vibrates as motors whirr to life and the cylinder descends around you. You're plunged into darkness, with only a series of LED lights shining in front of you.
"Relax into a neutral pose, hands at your sides," says the shopkeep. "Take a deep breath, counts to three, then exhale. Now look between the red and blue lights, there should be a chromatic aberration if your eyes are focused correctly."
"Um, why are-"
Whatever you were about to ask is interrupted with a sensation not unlike being a stretchy sticky hand toy pulled to its limit in every direction at the same time without tearing. For several seconds, you exist in a state of oneness with the code, an alien state with limbs and senses you are barely able to control.
A bit-crushed voice interrupts your state of panic. "And we've found the new kid. Hey, this is Doctor Saul Vargas, I'll be walking you through the basics while your avatar gets assigned." You're starting to regain human faculties; you have enough vision to see a void like a television tuned to a dead channel, enough tactile sense to feel gravity under your foot-paws along with the chill of a blank planet, and a sense of taste which tells you how sterile the void truly is. "Hello? Saul to rabbit? Are you hurt?"
"No, I'm not hurt, just really scared." You look... up? It's hard to tell where the audio is coming from. "Did you say your name is 'Saw-Wool'? I thought it was pronounced 'Saawl'."
"That's what my mama named me, if that's what you mean. Anyways, your avatar should be solid by now. Can you move?"
You look down at your body and see your beautiful ivory-furred self, just like you put on this morning. Your hands flex... you can't feel the costume resisting you anymore. You take a step... forward? There's no human flesh and bone impacting the floor, only soft bunny paws. Hit by a spark of curiosity, you open your mouth and feel at your teeth and tongue. Your paw-fingers slide deeper inside and... nothing. Past your palate, there's no throat or uvula, no gag reflex warning that you've gone too far. You reach further up, and wiggle your fingers in the hollow spot your brain would be in. It's really happening- you really became a digital 3-D model.
"This is freaky, doctor. I'm just the costume?"
"That's not a costume anymore, that's your full avatar. It's much less uncanny than a one-to-one replica of a human body, at least according to prior studies... which weren't in cyberspace, but that's besides the point. I'll need you to look up." Dr. Vargas calls up some untextured gray spheres which move around in the corners of your vision. "Eye tracking and focus are more than acceptable. Hand-eye coordination is next. Walk forward, please."
"I mean, there's no 'forward' here, but okay." You don't feel much like skipping right now, so you simply walk slowly. Despite your apparently hollow frame, you still have the full weight and density of your original self instead of being floppy pile of laundry. When one of your ears sways into view, you grab it and rub it between your thumb and pointer finger. Something about the act is calming, even though it's a completely foreign sensation compared to your old life.
As you continue walking, you see something on the horizon; an attic hatch in the sky, attached to nothing. It gets closer you to at a rapid pace implying you're standing on a very tiny planet indeed. You hop up and yank the handle on the hatch, then deploy a wooden-looking ladder. The ladder's rungs are thankfully bunny-sized, so you climb them with little trouble.
Through the hatch you find a clinic waiting room, which isn't exactly what you were expecting. "Am I filling out paperwork now or something?"
The doctor suppresses a laugh. "Not necessary. There's a suitcase on the receptionist's desk. Open it, your costume for the game is inside. We can start once you're wearing the whole set."
It takes you some effort to get the case off of the desk with your small frame, but this digital avatar doesn't seem to get winded or wear out like a living being with organs would. A sticky note pinned to the top of the suitcase tells you the combination for the case's lock, which you have no trouble operating even with tiny paw hands. Inside, there are articles of clothing you weren't expecting...