Samuel didn't immediately go out as he tried to think things over. He knew his generator was failing, mostly just running out of power as he had disconnected it from Franklin's main power supply under the theory that once the baby furs got control of it, that whatever magic they used would go along it and alter things in his home. And while the touch of a baby fur might give his generator the ability to function without any additional power and thus keep his lullaby zone functioning, but the whole purpose of it was to prevent them from transforming him. If he were to become like them, even if he retained much, if not all, of who he was, the generator would have lost its purpose. At the same time, he also knew that his food supplies were running out. When the infection first came to Franklin he was able to get some food supplies, but that been a while ago, and his food situation had other problems.
While he had several packets of food and supplies, nearly all of them had to be cooked before they could be eaten, which created a major problem. Samuel had always been something of a city boy. Franklin wasn't a big city and was close enough to more rural areas that seeing a black bear on occasion wasn't unheard of, but that didn't mean that Samuel was much of an outdoors enthusiast. He'd made his living providing music services for major parties, weddings, and other major events, and he'd made a good living that way, but in doing so he didn't know how to really live without modern amenities. He didn't have portable propane powered grills/ovens which would have enabled him to cook most of the food that he had. The fact that he didn't have that now meant that with his home cut off from the city's main power supply, he had food he couldn't eat and much of the food that he didn't need to cook to eat was running out. It wouldn't be long before he'd be forced to barter and trade with the baby furs for food, which they could surely alter or empower and thus force his own transformation.
"I'm damned if I do and damned if I don't," Samuel thought to himself as he looked at a half eaten bowl of cereal on his table.
His only real option to keep himself human would be to get an evacuation from the outside. A helicopter or something like that, but from what he'd heard on his radio that that sort of thing wasn't likely. A part of him wondered why no one from the outside was coming to his rescue and neither was he getting much information on whether or not they were actually using what he had found out. From what he'd found on the news, much of the reaction that came about when it was found out that these baby furs were infectious, regardless of whether or not the vector was magical or scientific, was that they had rapidly turned to try and killing them to stop the spread of the infection. That had proven to be completely ineffective as weapons either turned into something harmless or the weapon malfunctioned to the point that they did no harm or damage. He remembered one incident caught on the news from Florida where a panicked police officer caught by a group of baby furs drew his pistol and fired at one at point blank range. In all reality, the baby fur should have had its head blown off. Instead, the bullet left the barrel, went a few inches toward the baby fur and then turned ninety degrees and flew harmlessly off into the distance. What then followed was the fairly typical transformation and the policeman's side arm becoming a water pistol.
At the same time he was conflicted over how would all these baby furs be dealt with in the end. They certainly seemed happy, but that didn't necessarily mean that was how they were supposed to be. From their point of view, changing Jessica back into an adult human would "force" them back, but that didn't change the fact that she had been forced to become a baby fur in the first place, even if it was unintentional. Her want to be a raccoon baby fur now was nothing more than an odd case of Stockholm's syndrome. Even if her "captors" didn't have any hatred or vile tendencies, that didn't mean that what was done to them was right.
Of course killing them wasn't necessarily the right answer either. The baby furs were all victims of something, and there was simply too much that wasn't known about their powers or how they operated. Samuel figured it was magic, but that could be a rather limited diagnosis. Magic could be real, but if so, countering what was done would probably mean having more than just a hunch to do so. That would mean finding the first baby fur that had appeared in Florida and was still in that same area according to the "news" that the baby furs were now somehow running on their own. If how the condition worked, perhaps a way to stop its uncontrolled spread could be devised. That might get things to stop being so out of control and would thus allow for a more measured response rather than turning the world into baby furs or killing the victims to stop its spread.
That still left Samuel with the fact that doing this would require interacting with the baby furs beyond cellphone calls and keeping himself fed, which would mean his own transformation and potentially losing everything, including the plan to try and stop this uncontrolled spread. He cursed his situation as damned if he did and damned if he didn't. He was running out of options. No one was coming out to get him out and he was running out of food. He sighed again and then heard his phone ringing again, which meant that it was probably time for the daily call from Jessica asking to play. He returned to his front window and picked up his cellphone. Sure enough he could see the raccoon girl standing just outside the range of the lullaby zone holding her pink toy phone. She waved to him.
"Hey, Sammy!" Jessica called to them through the phone.
"Hey, Jess," Samuel answered calmly.
"Do you wanna play today?" Jessica asked, "I promise we'll have lots of fun."
Samuel looked back to his kitchen where the food he could eat was running out and thought over what he'd figured would be the only way to set things right. A part of him thought over his friendship with Jessica and all that the infection had taken from him in that regard.
"Damned if I do, damned if I don't," Samuel thought to himself and straightened himself out, as if preparing for an execution, "Sure... if it's just you and me."
"Just me and you?" Jessica asked.
"As a favor of one friend to another," Samuel replied.
"But everyone wants to be friends with you, too," Jessica answered.
"Please, Jess," Samuel managed.
There was a pause for a moment. Samuel watched as Jessica talked with the other baby furs with her. She had one hand over her phone so that he could not hear. Eventually she lifted up the phone again and spoke.
"Okay," Jessica said calmly, "turn off the sleepy music, please."
Samuel nodded and went over to a nearby CD player from which he was playing the lullabies from. Normally its speakers were attached directly to the CD player, but he'd jerry-rigged the wiring to the speakers outside. He pressed the pause button on it and immediately the sound of the lullabies playing outside ceased. When it did, he saw Jessica come running forward, a smile plastered across her muzzle as if she were going to Disneyland. He then heard a banging on the door.
"Come on, Sammy! Open up!" Jessica called through the door.
Samuel sighed and walked over to the door and opened it. Jessica looked up to him and smiled and hopped in through the door. Samuel quietly shut the door as Jessica walked into his living room She looked around with her arms behind her back while Samuel walked in and hit the play button again on the CD player. Outside, the soft lullabies came back on again, though inside the house, they had no effect on Jessica, who only looked up at him.
"Why did you do that?" she asked.
"So if I am to be changed," Samuel said slowly as he approached her and then lifted her up into the air. He found her fur very soft to the touch, which surprised him, though he also had to admit that he'd never felt a real raccoon's fur so he couldn't compare how Jessica's fur felt versus how a normal raccoon's felt. "That the only one who does it... is someone who is there with me... who is a friend..."
"Oh... Sammy," Jessica giggled, "you're so silly."
Her giggle had an immediate effect. It started with some itching which made him look from Jessica's eyes to his hands which were beginning to grow dark brown fur. It grew out to a moderately short length as his fingernails pushed out into short and stubby claws. They wouldn't be able to really hurt anyone or anything, but to an outside observer they might look adorable... on a child. Jessica only smiled at him, beaming with delight and glee.
"If only you could see you now!" Jessica laughed again with a wide smile.
The laughter accelerated his transformation. Red-orange fur began to grow on his arms. At the same time he felt himself beginning to shrink. He was getting smaller, which he guessed was the beginning of his age beginning to regress. At the same time he felt his feet begin to stretch forward. He looked down to see that his shoes had vanished and that two dark brown furred paws were in the place of his feet and were already lengthening out to force him into a more digitgrade stance.
"I... I... I have paws!" Samuel exclaimed as he felt Jessica beginning to grow rather heavy in his arms. His voice sounded higher.
"Cute little fox paws, I think!" Jessica giggled.
His pants suddenly shifted into a pair of over-sized shorts and he gave a heavy shudder as he felt his cotton underwear shift into the harder and crinkling synthetic material of a diaper as his body continued to shrink down. This made him drop Jessica and turn around only see the long red-orange colored brush-like tail of a fox grow out behind him, complete with its white tip.
"You're getting soooooooo cute, Sammy!" Jessica continued to giggle to him as his body continued to shrink down.
He looked over to see Jessica and to his surprise the two of them were now about equal in height. His ears began to wiggle and stretch and he brought his arms up to feel them. They were now triangular and on the top of his head. He could feel muscles that could now control them and he felt himself moving each ear to try and control them, which made him seemingly smile.
"Do ya like your ears?" Jessica asked with a smile.
"What? Of course I do," Samuel laughed back, and began to laugh as well. He then began to raise and lower each one at time, "Look!"
As he laughed in response to Jessica's own laugh, his face began to push forward. It became the long pointed muzzle of a fox with mostly red-orange fur but white fur along his lower jaw and going down his neck and onto his chest, though he couldn't see beyond his shirt. His teeth also began to change. They sharpened into the needle sharp teeth of a fox, though they were all scaled down. It was like he had his baby teeth again. He soon smiled.
"You look good, Sammy," Jessica smiled back at him.
Samuel only smiled back as he looked to her. She was Jessica... Jessy... his best friend. She was a baby fur, like he was now, and she looked happy to see him with bright eyes and a wide smile. He then sprang forward and gave her the biggest hug that he could manage.
"Thanks, Jessy," Samuel... Sammy... said to her, "thanks for being my friend."
"Anything for you, Sammy," Jessica hugged him back.
The two hugged quietly for a few moments. He found that his mind was surprisingly clear. It wasn't replaced by any zombie like disease that had him a trance. He didn't suddenly want to conquer the world or anything like that. In fact he found himself thinking in much the same way as he had before. He still didn't like the fact that baby furs were forcing the change on others, even if they didn't realize it. Neither did he really like the attempts the government had taken to deal with the baby furs which tended to be ineffective. Though the way he went about his thoughts was different. In its own way it was more child-like. Surely the first baby fur would know how he was created and with his help they could stop the forcing of the change on others and then everyone could just sit and talk things through. The humans were only fearful about being forced to become what they didn't know. Sammy figured that once that was out of the way, they could all be friends and there would be no need to fear or fight one another...
However, for the moment, he felt glad to be with his friend again.