It was finally time for Jess to take the plunge. She looked over the vials to find one that could get her and Mary on the same level. Squirrels were pretty cute. Why not try that one? She pulled off the cork and took a whiff. It smelled like acorns. She drank a good three quarters of the vial and put it back with the others on the table.
She didn't have to wait long for the changes to begin. The first thing she noticed was the tingling sensation all across her body as brown fur erupted from her skin. Feeling very itchy, and realizing that it was going to get very spacious inside of her clothes, she quickly pulled off her tank top, revealing a pink bra underneath. She attempted to untie her shoes, but her fingers had begun to twist and shorten. Long, thick black claws grew from her fingertips, which made manipulating the shoelaces a lot more difficult.
Finally kicking off her shoes, she found her feet were growing longer. As they stretched to alarming proportions, her toes scrunched up and thickened into paws. Her hips expanded slightly, and she was now standing digitigrade on her new, larger toes.
A lumpy feeling in her pants alerted her to the next stage of her transformation. She fumbled with her long claws to unbutton her pants, and when she finally pushed them off her wide hips, a short, bushy tail emerged. It was brown with black stripes running the length of it, and it was growing longer and longer.
While her tail was increasing, Jess felt a pushing in her face. She felt her nose pull out an inch or two, making a very slight muzzle out of her jaw. Her nose turned black while her front teeth grew larger. They were so big she had a bit of difficulty keeping them inside her mouth.
Then she began to notice the room changing. She watched as the box of vials down on the table came closer and closer.
Her ears itched as they grew slightly larger and became covered in brown fur. They moved up closer to the top of her head, poking out of her black hair in a cute fashion.
She was now eye-level with the table, and suddenly realized that both she and Mary were going to be too short to reach the vials without a great degree of difficulty. As she shrank beyond the height of the table, she threw up her arms to grab the box of vials. Her claws made contact, and as she continued to lose precious height, she pulled the box closer to the edge. Her feet lifted off the ground as she shrank further. Now hanging onto the box of vials, she felt her grip begin to give way. While squirming, she barely paid attention to the underwear and the bra that had just slipped off of her privates and fell silently to the rug below. She brought a clawed hand up to grab a few of the vials, but by now its size was so small she could only grab two. She tightened her grip, hoped they were good ones, and let go of the box.
Though she had dropped less than a foot, it felt like a yard. She hit the rug with her paws and curled under the impact. Her new hind legs absorbed the fall pretty well, and the rug took care of the rest. She dropped the vials on the ground as she ran her paws over her body.
Her black hair had once hung down half her back, but now it was a scant few inches long. At least, relatively sized, it felt like a few inches to Jess. Her squirrel tail had finished growing. It was quite wide, equaled her body in length, sticking mostly straight up and curling over at the top. Her eyes had darkened completely into little black beads. Her face was covered by the same brown fur that dominated her body, and was lined by thin black streaks that ran from her forehead to her nose. Those streaks continued through her hair, down her back and connected to those on her tail.
Jess looked up at the table, and a corner of the vial box that she had managed to drag over the side. It was a good two feet above her head now.
"Well, look who's the shorty now," came Mary's half-mew, half-squeak. Jess turned around to see her walking closer. She was huge! Twice Jess' height. Maybe they weren't hopeless after all.
Mary held the yardstick in her paws. Much like Jess had minutes before, she placed the stick next to Jess to size her up. "Twelve inches. One foot. Welcome to the lower atmosphere."
"Har har," Jess chittered. She was surprised to hear the highness of her squirrelly voice. "Unless you can reach that box, we're not going to be having much more fun. Her tail twitched in annoyance.
Mary reached her arm up to the table, but she was still a good six inches shy. "If I still had my cat legs, I could probably make a decent jump. Which two vials do you have there?"
Jess examined the two vials she had grabbed on the way down. "Well, one of them is the shrink vial, and the other is a slug. It's hopeless."
Mary squeaked impatiently and tapped the yardstick. Jess finally realized what she was trying to say, and hit herself on the forehead that she hadn't thought of it before. She could climb the yardstick, which was definitely long enough to reach the table.
Using her new squirrel instincts, agility and claws, Jess dug into the wood and easily climbed the stick while Mary held it firmly at the bottom. It was pretty fun, using her claws, climbing high. Well, relatively high, anyway. When she reached the top, she called down to Mary. She took a running start and, with all of her small body's weight, pushed the box over the edge. Mary caught it in her cat-like paws and set it down gently on the rug. Fearing nothing, Jess then lept off the table herself, hitting the grass with four paws. Her tiny muscles knew just how to move to absorb the shock, so she felt almost nothing at all.
"A perfect ten on the landing," Mary applauded. "So, we're short, we're naked, and we have the vials again. Now what?"