Sammy woke up in the morning, only to remember he didn't need to go the bathroom.
One fact that Sammy dimly realized, almost as an after thought, was that bathrooms were kinda pointless now regarding the throne considering every baby fur alive simply wore a self cleaning diaper.
Breakfast was pancakes, waffles, french toast, all done in kid friendly 'my little oven' type playsets that never ran out of raw maternal.
Sammy wondered if Baby Furs would eventually end up just stuffing their faces all day doing nothing, like the movie WALL-E, but . . . that didn't feel right, Sammy didn't know how to explain it except it didn't feel within the SPIRIT of what he had become, of what his millions of friends had become.
Sammy took a look outside the window, seeing the entire capital now a city sized and meant for baby furs was still an awe inspiring sight. "Did you help in making everything fit for baby furs?" He asked Doctor Sammy.
The other fox fur shook her head. "Naw. And it didn't really take as long as you think. Maybe there weren't enough in Franky Town, but the more of us that are together, the farther away and more the stuff we change. You don't think we changed every road one little paw print at a time did you? Every pipeline? Every power line?"
Sammy thought, and maybe that would have gotten a LITTLE boring, but boredom seemed to be an emotion baby furs barely understood.
Sammy wasn't sure, but most don't even seem to realize they were transforming people, just making friends. Doctor Sammy seemed to be an exception rather than a rule. But Sammy felt it would be unsetting to his friends to outright ask somehow. And . . . Sammy knew the concept of people could be friends without transforming, but the concept of transforming without being friends he just couldn't wrap his head around.
"So you two wanna take a flight to Florida?" Doctor Sammy asked, wiping her face off of the wipe cream from her pancakes.
"Flight?" Sammy asked.
"Sure, we have an airport." Allen said, "That's how we got back from Florida to begin with. And we're still taking flights to all over the country, and to some other countries, we all have friends and family elsewhere we like to visit."
Of course they'd have airplanes, why wouldn't they? Why the baby furs still had mayors, governors, police, and possibly ultimately a president, they were no more and no less organized than any other population of people. He wondered if the baby furs out at sea turned into mermaids, that might be fun. Or those at the air port turned into birds or 'angels' with wings. There was so much Sammy didn't know about his own kind still. He understood Doctor Sammy's need to learn as much as possible.
"Doctor Sammy," Jessy the baby raccoon and his bestest best friend said to the other fox fur in the room. "You and yer husband have been really welcoming, thank you."
"You're welcome." She nodded. "But today he's my brothers, not my husband, remember? Jace and Janet and the parents today."
"Oh right, how silly of me." Jessy laughed.
Sammy calmly accepted this, if they wanted to switch around who was the parents and who was the kids, then why not?
"Sammy?" Doctor Sammy asked.
"Yes?"
"I was thinkin' what ya were sayin' yesterday. It's just . . . what if this is what we were always meant to become? What if baby furs is what we were all meant to be? Eve-low-loot-son always has stuff you have to give up."
"But isn't that what bad kids do? Forces others to be friends?"
"But ARE we really 'forcing' anything? What if our laughter isn't making others be our friends, what if it's inviting others to be our friends? You can't make friends your friends, so that would mean we weren't really friends, but I sure feel like we're friends."
Had he been thinking about this all the wrong way? Was the laughter not the transformation, but the invitation to change, and who could really turn down a friendship more pure than anything humanity had experienced?
Sammy remembered a story he read once, where scientists had figured out a way to bring someone back from the dead, only the person was horrified and broken when she was, since she'd gone to heaven.
Sammy wasn't sure why, but the friendships he'd had as a human, tried and true, felt weak somehow, not weak as in bad, like human friendships were fragile in comparison to the friendship he experienced as a baby fur. He KNEW, down to the foundations of his gut, that his fellow baby furs would never judge him, never reject him, always accept him.
"Before we go to the airport, we can see more of the capital please?" Jessy asked slapping her hands together.
"Sure!" Jace and Janet responded, they were the parents after all.
One thing Sammy spotted while they skipped around town was a statue of the thinker, but now was a baby elephant fur with a diaper, and had a jungle gym built around it.
Everything was just so bright and happy, and above everything, friendly. There was also the big TV set up that showed cartoons, and progress of the number of humans had become friends at the bottom, the number was constantly going up with no sign of slowing down.
Sammy did spot a school house and looked inside. It looked like baby furs were taking turns on who was the teacher and who was the student. And the school day seemed to be composed mostly of recess. The plus and minus and equal signs were all there, but the numbers were replaced by apples, trees, planks of woods, tires, and any other number of objects, and of course scribbles that were for higher learning. And every single equation and symbol made a world of sense to Sammy, more so than boring old numbers would have.
Sammy and co made a stop by the universe-city, wanting it to see one more time before they went to the air port to pick up tickets.
when they stepped inside, a baby fur Orca waved his arms around came running on his little legs. "Sammy! Sammy! I've got some super secret stuff I gotta share with you!" He said in a loud voice.
"With me?" Sammy asked.
"No Sammy."
"I am Sammy?"
"Really?" He looked at them both. "Okay, I guess I got secret important stuff to say with both of you."
"What is it Oscar?" Doctor Sammy asked.
"Welllllll, first can you come inside?"
"Can I bring Jessy too?" Sammy asked.
"Can you promise to keep a secret?"
"I pinkie swear." The raccoon girl said and Oscar accepted the sacred oath.
"Okay! Come to my lab." Oscar said, his tail waving behind him as he led the group of friends to one of the universe-city labs. This one had stick figures and smilie faces covered the white boards and lots of wavy lines connecting them.
He wrote down on a sign and hung it outside his door.
'Secret M33ting, no listen 1n.'
Oscar sat down, and offered them apple juice and muffins which they accepted. "Well, when everyone in the capital was made with everyone, I found out that that ladies who have a baby in their tummy don't becomes friends right away."
Sammy and Jessy looked at each other in shock.
"Did you ever see anything like this?" Sammy asked.
"Nobody every mentioned it to me!" Jessy admitted.
Doctor Sammy shrugged her arms. He thought about it, HAD HE seen a single pregnant woman be changed? At all? The news hadn't even spoken about it.
"I didn't hear about that on the boring news at all." Doctor Sammy said.
"Apparently, a group of people paid lots and lots of money to keep that from being said by news people for those-who-aren't-friends-yet because they felt it would be means to the girls not made friends because it would imply the baby in her tummy was someone. That's what they explained when we made friends with one of them."
Sammy stood there . . . well that was a dumb. Then again, why would anyone mention it? And why would any pregnant woman stick around?
"There was one baby fur who had been the brother of one of the ladies with a baby, and she . . . she . . . " Oscar shivered. "Gave him a big spanking when he changed her car into a play-car."
A spanking. Pain. They all shivered. So, they could be spanked.
"She then asked one of the bus drivers to take her outside of where we'd made everyone friends and then go back . . . he wouldn't at first, but then she said please."
Well, Sammy thought, if she didn't say please then it was no wonder no one had done as she asked. It was just the polite thing to do after all.
"But her brother came with her. He said he wanted to be there when his niece was born. He pinkie swore not to laugh while visiting with her."
Of course. Sammy thought, it was so obvious. He felt silly for not nothing of it sooner. If he really pinkie swore not to laugh, then he wouldn't laugh. That was more binding and unbreakable than gravity. Sammy actually felt like slapping himself in the head.
"Why are you telling us all this now?" Doctor Sammy asked.
"Well, I was given the game of recording everything he does while visiting. He wrote 'camera' above one eye, and I wrote 'receiver' using the same pen on the TV and the recorder. The humans keep him in this place away from his sister, but she made him pinkie promise to do what they asked. So of course he's doing that. And he's done his hardest not to laugh, just like he promised. Of course it get washed off every day, so he has to keep drawing it. But he told me in the mirror that there was gonna be something important happening today at . . . oh wow it's almost time! Here are some pillows." Oscar and the other baby furs all gathered around what was apparently the TV connected to the brother's camera.
The screen turned on, showing a baby fur bear looking into a mirror, waving, and shushing. The room was incredibly boring, besides the mirror, (which Sammy was pretty sure was a one-way mirror), the room was white with cameras and nothing to play with. But the bear cub had apparently been drawing on the floor and walls.
He also got a toy camera at last after turning one of the ones in his room into one, the room had plenty, and hide it inside his diapers.
Humans in uniform came, and without any complain, he let his paws be put into a complete set of finger puzzles, and politely allowed himself to be taken along. Sammy was surprised no one noticed the camera was missing, or maybe they did notice, and WANTED Sammy and his friends to see this?
He was led to a large room with lots of chairs and was given a front row seat, and given straps so he wouldn't fall and hurt himself.
Sammy saw the logo of the united nations on one of the walls.
There were men in suits and soldiers uniforms, and men in lab coats, there was also a table at the center of the room with lots of cameras aimed towards it.
A man with a swagger stick and lots of medals in a uniform stood in front of the cameras and people in chairs. "Ladies and gentlemen, with this great threat to our nations, and the world, we have cruelly and unfairly left with no true way to defend ourselves from this perverse and deprived inane plague made real. But today, we strike back, today we take back our homes, because now, we have found the way to fight back! Doctor Zetsubou, and his team have through the miracle of science, uncovered a way to give our brave young men and women a way to defend their homeland."
"Actually," said a Japanese said pushing put on his black glasses, "We scientifically concluded the cause was actually magic, so we fell back ancient alchemy symbolism and-"
"Yes yes, today is not the day for jokes Doctor, today is the day for celebration! Private Redd S. Hurt has volunteered to be the first of many who will fight back against this inane menace. The perfect neutralizing force."
A scrawny thirty year old man in a medical gown, who was sweeting bullets gingerly approached the table.
A minute later he was laid down on the table. The table had several runes etched into it, all with red marker or something filling them in, the symbols were from Africa, China, Scotland, Germany, Native Americas, and countless others.
"Now we bring hope back to the world," The general said smiling.
Doctor Zetsubou took out three vials of red stuff and rubbed one on each of the runes. Then Doctor Zetsubou cut his hand and applied the blood to another of the runes.
Doctor Zetsubou began talking loud and fast in some language Sammy didn't know. The runes began to glow, Redd began to sweet like he was in an inferno, his entire body twitching and convulsion.
Then the table exploded, knocking the doctor and the general back. The pieces of the table melted into nothing. In the center was a pillar of fire that seemed to go through the floor and ceiling. Where Private Redd S. Hurt had been, was now something else.
At first glance she looked like a red skinned little girl, maybe six or eight years, with white hair and yellow eyes. Except for the three black horns sticking out of her head, and she had no nipples or belly button or anything between the legs. And her eyes were a pair of yellow swirling centers like the eyes of hurricanes. She also had a long pointed tail twitch back and forth. And of course there was the fangs and claws on her hands and feet. On her back were a pair of tiny bat wings almost hidden on her back.
She looked down at herself, looking a bit annoyed, then grabbed the medical gown that was somehow completely unharmed, and as she put it around herself, it changed into a bone white two piece swim suit.
Then struck a coy pose and waved at the camera. "Hiiiii, my name is Red'ith. I'm what you wanted. You wanted a neutralizer to those goodie two-shoes brats? I'm your imp!" She said in a confident take charge voice, putting her hands on her hips. "But first . . ."
Moving like lightning she knocked the cameras so they were facing the ceiling, at last, she kicked the chair the baby fur was strapped to all he could see was the ceiling too.
There were screams, panic, people stampeding for the doors, men drawing their weapons and firing, then was no laughter to be heard. A few minutes later, Red'ith came was on screen.
"You didn't think I was gonna show ya how I do it on TV did you? You'll find out for yourself soon enough!" Red'ith grinned like a shark. She pulled the chair violently back into place, and knocked all the cameras to show the room.
The UN logo was now a horn smiling face with a pointy teeth smile.
The room was now full of imps, all little girls, all of them with red skin, white hair, yellow eyes, fangs, claws, black horns, and white clothing, but that was where the similarities ended.
Some had one horn, or two, or five, some looking rams, bulls, antlers, or anything else you could think of. Some had two large wings, some had no wings. One had the body of a snake from the waist down. One had NO EYES but had extra large ears and actually caught in a headlock one imp sneaking up behind her. One had hair so long she wrapped it in a braid that went along her body, and another was bald. One had also had four arms, using them to hold another imp in place as she used her feet to 'tickle' her in the stomach.
But these were the extremes, most of them looked 'normal' enough compared to Red'ith.
One wore a white toga, another wore a one piece swim suit, another wore a white loin cloth, another a white tube top and shorts, changing the clothes the humans they had been created into something more fitting for an imp.
The imps changed objects they touched into equivalents that would fit at home with Skelator or Mumm-ra, or how a first grader would see them as.
The imps rough housed with each other on a level that would make even the most indifferent baby sitter cringe, clearing enjoying themselves. And no matter how much they hurt themselves (or each other), they just healed. Damage piece of equipment fell completely on the head of one, obscuring her head from view, Sammy heard something rolling off camera. Then the imp got up, acting like she had a crank in her neck as she turned her head this way and that.
Two imp sat next to Red'ith, one had almost a buzz cut and wearing only a white poncho, and the other had back length hair wearing a v-shaped white swim suit.
"I'm Zetti'ith, all you dummies are gonna get to join the best and soon to be only club in town! Or any town for that matter."
"I'm Jacci'ith. I'm gonna save the world by conquering it, ha ha!"
Red'ith looked at her new sisters satisfied, but greed screaming from her eyes.
Then Red'ith grinned at the teddy baby fur, showing off her mouth full of pointed teeth. "Now for you, might as well do what I was created to do. There's is truly nothing as delicious as corrupting something innocent and pure into something depraved and dark." She took hold of the baby fur's arm.
The imp yelped in pain, pull her hand back, he palm now had fur on it. She cursed under her breath as she saw it.
"Looks like good thing is better than bad things." The baby fur whisper.
"Bull paddies!" Red'ith snarled and a completely black spear formed in her hands looking like it had been made from darkness itself. She then . . . she sent it right through the bear baby fur. She pulled it out with satisfaction.
"And that's how you fight friendship, indifferent, hate, selfishness." Red'ith said satisfaction.
As his heart beat stopped, the baby fur's body calmly glowed in a way that felt different from Red'ith's magic, was now a life sized plushed bear, the tag on its rear end had today date on it, an one much earlier, the name on it was Jamie O'toole.
"So . . . that's what happens when we go to sleep and don't wake up," Doctor Sammy whispered.
"Geeze, that can't even die in a way isn't G-rated, what a buncha losers." Red'ith said picking up the teddy bear before tossing it over her shoulder.
"Before some idiot thinks they can just wipe me and my friends out with a well placed atomic bomb above our heads, I want to say a few last things. But don't worry, you'll be joining me and my minions, I mean friends soon."
She pointed at the camera.
"We are your deepest selfish desires, and we stand united in our selfishness, just like . . . Atlas Shrugged? That author was an idiot, Atlas held up the sky in the myth. You wanted us world, and here we are."
"NOBODY WANTED YOU!!!" Jessy screamed right at the television.
"Oh yeah?!" Said the imp on the screen IN REPLY TO Jessy. "Well you wait! Nya nya!" She stuck her tongue out and pulled down an eyelid before the feed cut off.