Hwan wasn't feeling any better about her situation the next day. Her little sister carrying her to bed last night, cuddling her mercilessly and squeezing the not-technically-alive life out of her, holding her tightly in those giant arms until they both reluctantly fell asleep, had all been terrible enough. She thought it would be a great relief when she woke up in the morning and learned that Sumin had a playdate and was leaving her behind. But it wasn't much of an improvement to be left alone. She was stranded in the middle of a giant bed, her only form of company being a handful of other plushies - most of them bigger than her, and none of them alive in any way - strewn around on top of the neatly made covers.
She could try to escape... but where would she go? Everyone thought that she'd always been this way, and she couldn't speak up and even try to convince them otherwise. Even if she could get out of the house and run all over town until she ended up at the house of one of her friends - Amber was the first that came to mind - they would probably just politely deliver her right back here, never even realizing that she was begging for their help.
She had just started to lose hope when she heard a faint, high-pitched whine that made her ears involuntarily perk up. The computer monitor in Sumin's bedroom had just suddenly turned itself on, and the modem sitting underneath it was busy making a series of buzzing, beeping noises that suggested it was downloading something. She watched the screen intently, and her tail started to wag behind her when she realized what was happening. The familiar figure of Natasha popped up onto the computer's desktop and began to wave in Hwan's general direction.
"Hey, Hwan!" she called out. "I was just thinking that you were probably getting pretty bored all day while the rest of us are all at school. And then I remembered: I can go anywhere instantly now! So I thought I'd drop in on you. I mean, it took me a few milliseconds to find the right device, which was annoying, but I think I'm really starting to get the hang of this digital thing!"
Hwan yipped happily in response, and stumbled across the surface of the comforter, trying to get closer to the computer on the desk. With a flying leap, she hopped onto the back of the chair and used that as a springboard to jump the rest of the way to the desk. One thing about foxes, even in a stuffed form - they certainly are agile.
"Wait a second," Natasha suddenly said as Hwan came closer to the monitor, looking up and sniffing the air inside the screen like an old grizzled sea captain sensing a storm about to come. "I'm detecting something else that must be connected to this computer. What is that?", she finished, pointing to the side where a small plastic dongle was plugged into a USB port.
Hwan knew exactly what that was. Mom had gotten it as a present for Sumin's last birthday. She remembered that a lot of her sister's stuffed animals, the ones that were now her equals on this bedspread, had come along with it. It was a scanner, and it detected the plush toys that were put up next to it, so that you could play with them in the digital realm as well as in real life. She was immediately intrigued by it. Would it work on her now? Could she go inside of the Internet just like Natasha had? Was this her ticket to escaping a lifetime of mindless cuddles?
"Oh, I get it," Natasha said, although Hwan couldn't say out loud any of what she'd just been thinking. "Sorry, it took me a second to remember that I could just Google it in my head. It's a NetPets chip reader, model number E560. Connects directly to the IP address for netpets.net, which..." She cocked her head for a second, as if thinking. "...yeah, the website promises to 'bring your beloved toys to life right on your computer screen!'"
Natasha's eyes lit up with realization. Well, her eyes, and the rest of her new form, were already made up entirely of colored LED lights. But the phosphors glowed a little brighter as her pixelated face grew excited. "Oh my god!", she shouted. "Hwan, I bet we can use this to take you to school with us! I guess you'd have to come in the back way - through an Ethernet cable - but it's better than nothing, right? I know you've always wanted to see for yourself what high school is like!"
Hwan was tempted to roll her eyes, hearing Natasha come to a distorted version of the same realization she'd already had. But she was very relieved to finally have someone who was on the same page as her, when she couldn't just explain what she was thinking to anyone. And her little beady plastic eyes didn't have it in them to roll, anyway. She padded over to the scanner as quickly as her little cotton-filled paws could carry her. "Yip!", she said as she ran. She rubbed her artificial fur right up against the plastic, until she was about to start involuntarily purring. But nothing happened.
"Oh, wait, duh," Natasha said. "Of course it won't work. You're not a NetPet toy, so you don't have the little chip inside that the scanner is looking for. Sorry, I asked ChatPQD if other brands of stuffed animals would be compatible and it said yes. I have got to stop trusting that thing. But don't worry, I think I can fix it..."
Hwan sat there and watched as Natasha pulled open a settings window, and started to rummage around in it like a mechanic looking for the right car part. A few pixels of sweat flew off her brow as she worked, disappearing the moment they passed outside of her sprite box.
"Okay... there," she said, closing the window and dusting off her hands. "I just switched it into the backup optical mode, where it uses the built-in infrared camera to try and detect the toy in front of it. See if it works now."
Approaching the hunk of plastic again, she saw a faintly visible laser beam shoot out of it and examine her plush body up and down. Then, in a flash of light, her whole surroundings changed. Behind her was the image of a lush, rolling green hill under a bright blue sky. She was no longer on the desktop, she was in the desktop! If she peered in the opposite direction from the backdrop, she could see her little sister's bedroom outside. And there, slumped over against the scanner, was her fluffy little physical form, which had apparently now been discarded.
Hwan looked up and saw Natasha looming over her - although from this side view angle, all she could really see was a two-dimensional tower of pixels. Hwan realized that, by comparison, she was a little icon, only a few pixels tall. "Yip!", she complained, and then she realized how few of her problems had actually been eliminated by getting digitized. "Yip," she growled at the thought.
"Wait, I think I can fix that, too," Natasha offered. She reached down and clicked on Hwan with a finger, causing her whole little body to turn blue under the highlighted rectangle. Another settings window appeared above her, with a whole bunch of different traits that could be altered. "Age", "Gender"... okay, not what she was looking for help with. "Size", "Species"... that sounded more useful, but Natasha kept scrolling until she got to "Language".
There were a lot of options in the list that came up next. "Finnish, Finno-Ugric, Fox (Meskwaki), ✔ Fox (animal), French, Frisian..." Natasha scrolled up a bit until she got to "English", then confidently tapped her finger on it.
"Yi- wai- hey, it worked!", Hwan said. But she didn't want to spend much time celebrating. "Natasha, you need to listen to me! I actually did get changed when we were down in Florida. But the Fruit guy, he must have altered reality so that everyone thinks I've always been a stuffed animal!"
Natasha blinked. "But you have always been a stu-" She stopped herself, realizing that in a world where people could get sucked into computers and transformed by magical fruits, this didn't seem all that far-fetched. She was still a little skeptical, because she clearly remembered Amber bringing the plush on the plane with the rest of the girls. But she figured that maybe Hwan was just a little confused about when and where her transformation happened. It must have been before they'd ever met, obviously.
"Okay," she eventually said. "We've got to go find Amber. Passing time is almost over back at school - I think her next class is in the computer lab, so that's perfect." Natasha clicked on an envelope icon in the corner of the screen. "Grab on to my hand," she told Hwan, who did the best she could to curl up her little body into it. "This is going to be a bumpy ride." Then the both of them disappeared, and the computer in Sumin's bedroom shut itself off.