After watching how slow Richie was getting back to the house, still crawling and dragging his tail for five more minutes, Cody said: „Well, do you want to keep him like this or change him further?“
Jeff thought about it for a few seconds before responding. „Yeah, let’s make another change to him, but what?“
Grinning, Cody suggested: „Well, he can only crawl right now. But what if we change that? We could take his limbs away, so he had to slither like a snake.“
“No, that would be a bit much. Maybe shorten his limbs, but not completely taken away. A snake would be boring to watch, anyway.” Jeff answered, by now also grinning.
Cody thought about it. “You are right, snakes are boring. And by only shortening his limbs, he comes nearer to be an iguana for real. Maybe something else edited?”
„Jeff, please change me back.“ was heard from outside as Richie tried to get Jeff's attention. By now he had crawled only a third of the garden and was already tired.
But Jeff was already at the chronivac, working on their ideas for Richie´s new form. Under the header legs, Jeff could change different things. He skipped the species setting, Richie could keep his legs human for now. But, seeing as it would be funnier to watch, he changed “Legs” to “Arms”, so they would be bending the other way.
Next to that options were sliders for the width and length of the “Arms”, as well as an unmarked box for separate changes for upper and lower arm, or a difference between the left and the right one. Not wanting to change them individually, he selected the slider for length and, after a grin towards Cody, slid it back towards the shorter end, making them only a fourth of their old length.
After viewing the same overview for Richie´s arms, Jeff reduced them to the same length as the original legs had been changed. After a bit of thinking, Jeff decided to widen both sets of arms to around double the size Richie´s legs had been at the start, which would make them rather plump.
Seeing how on such short arms hands would be rather useless, Jeff next changed Richie´s “Hands” into “Feet”, while his original feet had stayed the same. Wanting something else to laugh at, and with Cody´s words in his mind, he made all four feet from “Human” to “Lizard”, keeping the specific species out.
Thinking about other changes, Jeff looked over the changes made so far.
Head „Human“ +
Body „Human“ +
Body „Extra“ -
- Tail „Iguana“
Arms „Human“, Length ¼ Legs, Width double former legs -
- “Hands” replaced by “Feet”, see Feet
“Legs” replaced by “Arms”, see Arms -
- Feet „Lizard“
Laughing at a short idea he had, Jeff added under body another three sets of arms with lizard feet, positioning them along Richie´s tail so he would be able to lift it easier.
When he heard Richie scream for him again, he opened the “Head” tap, opened the “Mouth” tap beneath that, and changed Richie´s option under “Voice” from “Human” to “Snake”, seeing that hissing would be quieter, but also reduced the “Volume” slider to half, making him even quieter.
“Anything else you would do, Cody?” Jeff asked his friend, who had watched the input confused. “I want him quieter, and don´t want to deal with his whining. It´s not as bad as taking his mouth or voice completely from him.”
Cody nodded. “Yeah, I can see that. But it will be boring if he can´t complain, right? And no, I wouldn´t change more for now.”
“I sequenced the changes, his voice will be last to change. I will even give it half a minute pause after he gains his extra arms. He will think it´s over, even better.” Jeff said, and after putting that in, saved the changes. It asked to adjust the clothes, and he selected to simply remove his brother’s shirt, jeans, and footwear, which left only his underwear behind.
Meanwhile outside Richie made a short break to gain his breath again, shouting while also crawling was exhausting. Just as he wanted to continue crawling, he felt odd again, as a sudden itch crawled over his arms and legs. „What now? Ants on my body?“ he thought. Pulling himself forward again he got slower forward.
Only when he got nearly not forward anymore, he looked down to see why he was getting slower and screamed. By now his arms had lost more than half their length, and were still be pulled back into his shoulders. „Jeff stop please. That isn´t funny.“ Then his hands vanish into his shirt sleeves.
At the same time, he felt a scraping under his tail, and looking back showed him his shortening legs. But when the itching stopped, he could still feel something inside his sleeves and jeans-legs, just rather short. In another blink of his eyes, his clothes vanished, leaving him only his boxers. As he could see his arms again, he screamed in horror. More so over his deforming hands than his arms itself.
Before his eyes, his fingers shortened away like his arms had, while his palms grew slimmer, and a tad longer. Also, his little fingers seemed to merge into their neighbor, while his thumbs vanished completely into his palms, leaving him with only three short stumps for fingers in them. From said stumps then grew short claws, and a view back showed him that his feet looked exactly the same.
He could see his arms were wider, and with a sickening, but not painful crack, his knees bend around, and he would swear they looked more like his arms than legs now.
“Jeff, please. I´m sorry. Change me back, it is hard enough to get forward with that tail.” Richie whined loudly, trying, and failing to move further. He felt like a beetle on its back right now.
Seconds later, a new itch formed on a couple of spots along his tail, and Richie couldn´t believe his eyes as there were growing limbs from his tail, lifting it up from the ground more than his original limbs could. Only the last foot of it still was on the ground when his additional limbs finished forming, but he had a few problems coordinating so many limbs, stumbling onto his belly in seconds.
“Jeff, please stop this.” he screamed frustrated from the ground. He could by now hear both Jeff and Cody laughing at the window above him. He still would need to get about two-thirds of the garden behind him to get inside. And he didn´t know if he would be able to climb stairs like this, let alone open a door.
“JEFF, THIS ISN´T FUNNY. HELP ME. I CAN´T MOVE LIKE THISssss” he finished in a hiss, and looked confused towards his brother at the window, who doubled over laughing. He tried to scream more, but only hissed even more, and far quieter than he was before. Noting that Jeff had taken his voice from him, Richie hissed angry while he wiggled to get up, thrashing would be more accurate.
Jeff and Cody were both nearly suffocating from their laughing, as it had been rather funny to watch Richie changing, and his now angry hisses made it even better. „That's really good entertainment, Jeff. Any more ideas?“
„Ah, let him trash a bit more, and then we decide if we change him even more, or back or something else.“ Jeff answered while watching Richie roll around on the grass, trying to get onto his many feet. While he had them now, he had no idea how to use them like he had with his original limbs. Too many inputs in his head to control them.