Turek Ray Gun 2 (Patreon)

@ArcadeDragon requested that I continue the ridiculous story about a lio and his mysa test subject. He'd accidentally stepped in front of the ray gun and begun to shrink, so what will happen next?

———

Mai stared at the researcher, stunned—too stunned to speak, actually. All she could do was point at him and hop frantically in place.

He looked at her for several long seconds, continuing to visibly shrink a few centimeters at time. Finally, he opened his muzzle and in a quiet voice, asked, “What?”

“You’re shrinking!” she screeched at the tops of her tiny lungs.

“What?” he gasped, louder this time. He looked down at himself. He looked at the captured ray gun. He looked down at himself once more and then in a panic, dove away from the front of the machine into a furry heap on the laboratory floor.

Mai stared at the unmoving lio for a few seconds before she found her voice once more. “Karkachan?” she said. “Hon? Are you okay?”

The tawny lio laid there a long while before he slowly opened his eyes and looked up at the mysa on the counter’s edge. He smiled. “Oh, Mai! You really had me going there for a moment. I suppose I deserve that.” He climbed back up to his paws. “I’m sorry about saying ‘your little friends’. I didn’t mean that… Well, I suppose I did mean it literally, I just didn’t mean it in a derogatory manner.”

Mai stared at him, wondering if she had imagined it. Was he actually smaller than he had been earlier? All the lio were huge, so telling if one of them was a little less huge than he had been was … tricky. “No, I’m sure I saw you shrinking,” she said, more to herself than anyone else.

“Good one,” he said. He bent at the waist and snatched his lab coat up off the floor. He ran a paw over it to brush away any dust and threaded his arms back into the jacket’s sleeves.

And paused.

Then he fiddled with his coat, apparently displeased with how it fit him across the shoulders. He yanked at the cuffs, seemingly surprised that each now stopped at his knuckles. He paused once more, then looked back up at Mai with a grin. “Heh. Now, my mind is making me doubt reality, making me imagine that my coat used to be more snug than it really was.”

“I’m not so sure, Karkachan,” whispered Mai, her voice trembling. “I swear I saw you shrinking. I like jokes as much as anyone else, but I swear I wouldn’t pull that sort of thing on you.”

He shook his head. “Always the trickster. It’s in your nature, I think. Comes as natural as running the wrong way through a maze.”

Mai stuck her tongue out at him. “Oh, har har, but seriously, how tall were you?”

“How tall was I?” he laughed. “I was exactly the same height as I am!” He held his paw flat, so it was even with the top of his head. “This tall…” But his words sounded less confident now, and his golden eyes stared only at the white cloth sleeve that reached all the way to his fingertips.

“What the…?” he whispered.

“Um, hon?” she asked quietly. “Are you absolutely certain you didn’t shrink?”

“What?” he gasped. “No! No, definitely not.” He paced back and forth a moment before snapping his fingers. “There’s a tape measure in the toolbox. That’ll prove that I’m just imagining this…”

He turned to leave, but when he grabbed the doorknob, he paused once more, clearly surprised that it wasn’t positioned where it should be—where all doorknobs always were, and that he was reaching up a little higher than he should have been to grasp it.

“Hang on a sec,” he whispered to no one. Then starting to hyperventilate, he took a seat.

Mai stared, eyes wide as the lio’s paws swung back and forth, almost but not quite touching the floor.

Karkachan leapt up, sending the chair rolling away across the lab and he backed off in the opposite direction. “What the…? If this is some sort of elaborate practical joke,” he announced in random directions, “I’m not finding it the least bit funny!”

“Oh, Karkachan,” said the Mysa, “I think you really did shrink!”

“What?” He stripped the oversized coat from his shoulders and held it up by the shoulders. The cloth nearly touched the floor. “Oh, no!” he shouted, throwing the coat on the bench. “No, no, no, no!” He dashed this way and that, changing directions constantly but never actually going anywhere.

“Well, um,” Mai asked. “Can you … reverse it? Can you set this thing for … big, and try it again?”

“What? Uh?” The lio hurried behind the controls and frantically pressed some buttons before crying out, “I don’t know! I don’t know how this thing works!”

The lab bench circled the edges of the room, so Mai scurried across them until she was standing beside him. “Well, perhaps one of the other techs knows? Call them in here. Maybe they can reverse it!”

“What? No!” he shouted. “If they see that I’ve shrunk, they’re not going to try to fix me. They’re going to start running tests on me!”

The mysa’s violet eyes glared silently at him.

“What?” he gasped.

“You don’t want to be a test subject, huh?”

“Hey!” he whined. “I went to college. I studied for years to become a scientist. I want to use my brain to solve problems, not just be a warm body for experimentation because I was unfortunate enough to step in front of the stupid ray gun!”

“Unfortunate?” she asked. “You mean like being born a mysa and having no other career prospects?”

Now he glared back at her. “That’s not my fault!”

“Okay, okay,” she sighed. “Perhaps you can take a guess how to set it for ‘undo’ and try again?”

“What if it shrinks me even more?” panic clear in his voice.

“Honestly,” she said, stretching out the sound, “tall is kind’a cute, I guess, but short is sexy. It really wouldn’t hurt you to lose another meter or so.”

“Mai!” he shrieked in a register that was just a little too high to be right for an adult male. “I’m serious!”

“Oh, me too, hon,” she sighed, “me too.”

“Imagine if it shrinks me down to mysa-size,” he pleaded. “They’ll never let me do any science ever again!”

Karkachan stared at the mysa on the counter, but she was standing there with her eyes closed, her oversized front teeth pressed into her lower lip. He whispered, “What?”

“Shh,” she whispered back, “I’m imagining it.”

“Mai!”

“Not done yet, shh.”

“Please!” he begged. He grabbed the bench with both paws, so she was bracketed between.

Mai let out an exaggerated sigh. “Okay, fine. But I’m totally coming back to that one tonight,” she added with a grin.

The lio pouted.

“Okay, look at it this way, hon,” she said. “Whether you do nothing, or it shrinks you more, you’re still pretty screwed, right? You’re going to be doing the test circuit for life.”

The tawny lio nodded.

“So, unless it works, you’re really no worse off, are you? Whether small or just medium sized, your career is pretty shot. And I know it must seem scary, but there’s really nothing wrong with being small.”

Karkachan considered this a very long time before he finally nodded. “Okay, so what do we do?”

“Um, I guess you take your best guess on the controls to reverse it. Take a seat in front, and I’ll push the button,” she said. “If it works, you get your life back.”

“And if it shrinks me further?”

“I’m dragging you back to my bedroom,” she said with a grin.

“Mai…” he said with a warning tone.

“Teasing! Teasing,” she laughed. “Carrying you over my shoulder would be faster.”

The lio refused to look at her and the smug expression she wore on her ears. Instead, he spent the next half an hour poking at buttons, adjusting levers, and referring to the heavily redacted notes on his tablet. At last, he sighed and leaned back against the counter. “Well, that’s my best guess. If that doesn’t fix it, then I’ll have no choice but to call in other researchers.”

Mai nodded solemnly. She reached out for him and he put out his paw for her. “I’m sorry about hassling you before,” she whispered. “It’s just my way of dealing with stress.”

“I understand,” he said. He ran a pad against her cheek.

“But I’m confident this is going to work. You’ll be back to your way-too-big size soon. I just know it.”

“Thanks, Mai.”

“But if it does shrink you down to mysa size,” she said with a grin, “my bed back at the dorm is super comfy and will totally sleep two.”

At last, he smiled. “Just push this button when I tell you to, okay Mai?”

“The blue one?”

“Yes, the blue one.”

“Okey-doke,” she said before scrambling onto and across the gigantic device. She clung to a cable with her tail and vent cap with one paw. Her palm hovered over the blue button. “Ready when you are.”

Karkachan rolled his chair across the laboratory and positioned it in front of the gun, then he disappeared from view as he took his seat.

Mai waited and the seconds dragged by. “Ready?” she asked at last.

“Hang on,” he mumbled. “Trying to get the nerve up.”

“Take your time,” she sighed, “just hanging on by my tail to help you out.”

“Okay, okay! Push it.”

“Y’know,” she said slowly, “this red button looks awful tempting. Are you certain it’s not the red one?”

“No! The blue one, please,” he whined. “The blue one is my best guess. Push the blue one.”

“You sure?”

“Yes! Push it!”

She pushed the button and the machine clicked and whirred for a moment. It dinged and then silence.

Followed by more silence and even more silence.

“Um, Karkachan?” she called out, around the machine’s bulk. “Did it … work?”

More silence. Had it killed him? Was the lio dead?

“Hey Mai?” called back a squeakier version of Karkachan’s normally baritone voice. “How comfy did you say your bed back at the dorm was?”

———

Reviewer's link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1HKQ3tUsFy0EB0Iodo5Jnb4JyWT6yXPdGCAFrhzyzMXw/edit?usp=sharing

Thoughts?