To the twenty-nine-year-old office worker Keith J. Calloway, the morning couldn't have been any more unremarkable. A staunch believer in carpooling, he had just picked up his colleague Thomas Cooper and was midway through the usual route before he encountered a most unusual obstacle.
"What the hell..." he and Thomas uttered almost simultaneously. It looked like some sort of military roadblock...if all the equipment had been designed for toddlers. Tiny toy barricades with flashing orange lights blocked their path. "SEKURIDY CHEKPOINT," read the marker-scrawled text on a small sign by the roadside. There was even a little plastic guard booth.
Keith and Thomas exchanged dumbfounded glances as what looked like a miniature military truck slowly trundled up to them. Their jaws dropped when they saw the truck's occupants pile out: a squad of baby anthropomorphic animals wearing toy helmets and diapers. They marched up to the car in a mockery of military precision, their faces set in comically stern expressions and brandishing brightly-colored waterguns.
It would've been utterly adorable if it had been a scene in a cartoon rather than playing out before Keith and Thomas's eyes.
"Civilian!" shouted their leader, a small wolf boy in a helmet that kept slipping over his eyes. "You have entered a secure zone! Show me some ID or face the consequences!"
Keith was in such shock that he simply didn't know what to do. The wolf toddler sneered (or more accurately, pouted) and stormed up to the driver's side window. "You have five seconds to comply!" he barked, shouldering his pink water gun.
There are some people who can put aside their fear and take whatever action they need to survive. Unfortunately, Keith was not such a person. While his friend yelled at him ineffectually to pull the car into reverse and drive away, Keith was wondering when his bizarre dream would end. He was still pondering the issue up until the moment the wolf sprayed him in the face with the water gun.
He sputtered and cursed just before he noticed fur spreading across his body. His frame rapidly shrunk, turning his well-tailored suit into an expensive tent. His friend Thomas gasped in shock as he watched his friend's face grow smaller and more childlike before sprouting a cute muzzle. Unbeknownst to either of them, Keith's boxers were thickening and reshaping into a thick white plastic diaper. And even more mortifying, Keith's plumbing was undergoing some serious reworking: eventually, the two would discover that Keith wasn't a "he" anymore. A gray, fluffy tail sprouted out from underneath Keith's baggy shirt, heralding the soon-to-be-ex-human's new species: a gray wolf, much like the lupine sergeant standing outside.
While Thomas had been watching his friend of fifteen years transform, a pint-sized cheetah cub soldier had snuck around to the passenger's side and was pointing a water pistol at him.
"What should I do with the other guy, Sarge?" he squeaked. Meanwhile, Keith's transformation had come to a complete finish, leaving "him" a sniffling wolf girl not much older than two years.
"Wait!" cried the little wolf as he climbed up onto the window ledge and looked at Keith's whimpering form. "Don't shoot. This one's a special case...might need a caretaker."