Tricia waited impatiently for Samantha to program the remote. She continued to look herself over in Sam's mirror. Her hair was heavy, and very unmanageable. She pushed the thick pigtails aside and finally saw the bushy black skunk's tail that was growing out of her back. She playfully twitched it around, watching it sway. Even though the form wasn't ideal, she enjoyed how it felt to have fur and a tail.
Her new ears picked up a subtle, exasperated huff from behind her. Trish turned toward Samantha.
"I can't decide what I want!" Samantha said. "There's so many possibilities, it's impossible to narrow them down to just one."
"Well, if you really want...," Trish said, sitting next to Sam on her bed. "I can make the choice for you. I won't even go too crazy."
Sam considered the offer, knowing she'd be handing control of her body back to Trish. "You can't make me a mouse again."
"Fine."
"And...you can go a LITTLE crazy if you want. I just don't want to be an animal I don't like."
"Okay. But first, could you please do something about my hair? It's so heavy it's killing my neck."
"What do you want? Just a shorter cut?"
"Whatever you want, as long as it's not so long and thick."
Sam pushed a few buttons in the remote's hair menu and then stood up. She motioned for Trish to do the same.
"You were sitting on some of it," she said. "I didn't want this to hurt." She then pointed the remote at Trish and zapped her.
Trish felt her hair loosen as the scrunchies disappeared. Her vision was obscured briefly, but her hair's volume thinned out just enough that she could see her friend through some of the locks. She felt it pulling back into her scalp, although the feeling didn't last long.
Trish turned to the mirror to see the changes happening. Her hair had shortened to knee-length, and it definitely wasn't as thick as before, although it was still more voluminous than how it was when she woke up that morning. The black strands turned a bright red, but the white locks in the front and sides stayed white.
Trish watched as most of her hair gathered itself into clumps and started weaving around each other. Instead of regular pigtails, she was getting braided pigtails. Two instead of four this time, each with a band of white hair weaving among the red. They became tied off with small black bands, each braid as thick as a braid Trish would normally see on a full head of hair. The only part of her hair not in braids were the new white bangs on her black-furred forehead. The row of bangs going toward her temples became progressively longer. The bangs just in front of her round ears fell almost the entire length of her face and framed it in a cute way.
The weight had lessened considerably, and Trish liked the look of her new hairstyle.
"I thought you could use a little more color," Sam remarked.
"Thanks, Sam. I love it now."
Sam handed Trish the remote, and without thinking Trish went to grab it. Her skunk paws prodded the remote but were unable to grab onto it.
"Oh, whoops," Sam said. "I forgot. Sorry."
"No problem. Just give me my thumbs back and we'll be all set."
Sam hesitated. She still suspected that Trish would use the remote in an unfavorable way, even though they had a deal. She looked at the remote, searching its wide variety of buttons.
"Hey, check this out! We might not have to." Sam pointed to a button near the bottom of the remote that said "Vocal Interface." She pressed it.
The LCD screen displayed "YOU HAVE CHOSEN VOCAL INTERFACE MODE. PLEASE POINT THE REMOTE AT THE INSTRUCTING INDIVIDUAL AND PRESS VOCAL INTERFACE AGAIN."
"I guess that means you," Sam said. She pointed the remote at Trish and pressed the button again. There was no flash of light this time.
"You can't just give me my hands back?" Trish whined.
"This is safer for me, I think," Sam said. "If I don't like your ideas, I can just press stop. Not that I don't trust you...but...I don't trust you."
Trish smirked. "Clever like a fox, you are."
Sam felt a little embarrassed to admit that she didn't believe Trish would give her a good transformation, but she'd already been the victim of one remote prank in the past hour.
Her train of thought derailed at that point. She suddenly realized that her body was itching like fur was growing on it again. Sure enough, she saw her skin quickly becoming covered in dark orange fur. "Trish?"
"I didn't say anything yet!" Trish said, bewildered.
Sam felt her mouth start pushing into a muzzle. "Yes you did! Yorrr...you said...'Cleverrrr rrrike arrr...FFFOX!' Grrrahhh..." Her gums hurt with the growth of canine teeth as her jaw warped beyond the ability to speak clearly. She felt her body contorting into a creature that couldn't stand upright. "Rrop! Rrrrrop!"
"Stop! Stop!" Trish shouted. That seemed to be enough of a command to halt Sam's change halfway into a fox. "Okay, change all the way back into a human."
Sam quickly reverted to her original state and collapsed on her bed. "Trish?" she panted.
"Yeah?" Trish replied apologetically.
"Watch your metaphors."
"Right. Let's try again."