Tipping Scales

by GreyAcumane

Relative Difficulty

I grabbed my phone and checked the time. 7:15 put me comfortably under the two hour minimum notice I was supposed to give for my job. It would still be a hassle for my manager to find someone to replace me, since we were so short-staffed, but I wasn't about to spend my first 12 hours as an entirely new species, a mythical one at that, working a register. I skimmed through my call history for my work number, and punched it to start dialing.

It wouldn't go through. I tugged on the cable, noticing that the other end wasn't attached to anything. It was that moment I recalled that it was Halloween.

"Gasp! Rubeus!" I hissed, "The line has been severed! Someone doesn't want us calling!"

Rubeus rolled onto his back and batted at the USB end of the power cord that I had left connected to my phone.

"Hah, that's right, you smart kitty; Cell phones don't need to be plugged in."

I rubbed his belly. He curled up around my arm, well, more my whole upper body, and chomped lightly. Even with skin he never bit hard enough to hurt, but with the scales, it barely tickled.

Still, I just couldn't get a signal. In my room, there are all of 2 cubic feet that get any reception, and I would need to be standing at my full 6 foot height to hold my phone inside of those areas. Normally when I tried to imagine the difficulties of being short, I would think of getting lost in a crowd, or getting carded for cigarettes more often, even not being able to reach the pedals on a car. It had never occurred to me that basic cell phone use would qualify for that list.

I looked around my room while Rubeus kicked with his back legs to no avail. I would need to head next door to my parent's house to get a reasonable signal. We had fixed the place up together after inheriting it when my grandma died, but it was a smaller place that really could only manage two bedrooms, so my aunt had offered me the spare room that I currently used at her place while my sister stayed with our parents. It was really nice of my aunt, but it still didn't change that she was incredibly prone to freaking out over trivial things. I was pretty sure finding a small fire-breathing reptile in her house might just help her set a new record. I was fairly confident that my parents would be supportive of my recent transformation, so that part didn't concern me nearly as badly as my aunt, but I still needed to get that far.

"Okay, think man. Tonight will consist of Calling Off Work, Trick or Treating, Breaking News to Family, and Figuring out this Body- oh hey, I used my fingers up already." I wiggled my three fingers and thumb.

Counting in base eight was going to take some getting used to, though that set me to wondering if ponies started out doing math in binary, since they only have two front digits to count with.

"I'll need to bring my phone to make the call..." I slid the phone down my leg and barely kept from dropping it, "Okay, nevermind, I need POCKETS first."

I rummaged through my dressers and closet trying to hunt down something I could use at this size. Pants were a complete no go, and even my shorts came down past my toes. That wasn't even getting into how my tail got in the way. All of my shirts fit like trying to wear a small tent and most of them didn't even have pockets. After exhausting every other option, I finally managed to dig up a small fanny pack that I could wear across my shoulder. I tossed my phone and a spare battery into it, along with my wallet, making a quick mental prayer of thanks that I hadn't been wearing them when this weird body swapping event had occurred.

"Okay, pockets and phone procured, what was next? Trick or Treating. I'm going to need a BIG bag for this one."

It was easy to decide on the large wheeled suitcase I had used for one of the trips I had taken to visit my fiance. What was far more difficult was climbing up to the top of my closet where it had been stowed away. I lost about half an hour in the process, but eventually I managed to push it down to floor level, along with numerous other bits of clutter. I could deal with cleanup later, for now I needed to get moving. As a final afterthought, I dug up a cloth sack that the sheets for my bed came packaged in to use as my actual trick or treat bag. It was normally barely big enough to fit over my head, but at my current size it was equivalent to the size of a pillowcase. I tossed it in the suitcase.

It took more work than I expected to get the suitcase out of my room, partially complicated by the suitcase itself, being large enough for me to fit in 3 or 4 times over, but mostly due to the fact that my cats kept poking around at the door, looking for a chance to get out. Personally I would have liked to just let them wander, but they didn't really get along well with the other cats in the house.

"No! Rubeus! Get back here!"

I pulled Rubeus back to the room in a fireman's carry, ignoring his whines and grumbles. My only saving grace was that my other cats were not quite so brave as he was, and only peered out of my open door while I was busy chasing him down. For the third time.

By this point, Rubeus had gotten the hint that he would not be leaving my room, and settled for sulking by the window while I got my suitcase out of my room. I flipped the strap of the fanny pack up to catch the doorknob and used that to pull the door closed behind me.

I wheeled the suitcase to the stairs that led down to the main entry and stared at them. Each individual stair came up to my belly and there was an entire flight to get down, and I'd have to do it all while carrying a (admittedly empty) giant suitcase along with me? Time for more intelligent and creative thinking to formulate a plan to get down quickly and safely.

Or I could toss safety out the window, and do something I hadn't done since I was ten.

"Stair sled! Whoohoo!"

I placed the suitcase flat at the top of the stairs with the wheels pointing down and hung on, rocking my weight to tip the suitcase over and slide all the way to the bottom. Most of the way to the bottom anyway. The corner of the suitcase dug into the carpet on the bottom step and flipped over, sending me flying through the air to land in a heap.

"Worth... it- oof!" My assessment was cut off by the suitcase landing on top of me.

"What the heck was all that racket?" I heard my aunt call out from her bedroom, "Oh, I hope nothing is broken."

I head the doorknob to her room rattle as she opened it, I needed to act fast. I could hear the footsteps getting closer and with what seemed like nanoseconds to spare, I zipped up the zipper to the suitcase.

"Glasny?" My aunt called out to me, "What is your suitcase doing at the bottom of the steps? Glasny?"

I kept quiet, hoping that she wouldn't be nosy enough to look inside the suitcase where I was currently hidden.

"Why can't he hear me? He shouldn't be leaving his suitcase out where it can fall down the steps."

I felt the suitcase tip upright and I clung to the inside to keep from falling to the bottom. I was shaken around inside by my aunt struggling with the suitcase, but I managed to keep my grip. After that came and odd set of regular thumps against the bottom of the bag. Dangit! She was taking me back upstairs! That was the last thing I needed, yet I couldn't think of any way to prevent the inevitable, and then I'd have to bring the suitcase BACK down, most likely resulting in her just taking the suitcase back up again. I silently cursed, trying to come up with a new plan for getting downstairs. Maybe I could just push the suitcase out my bedroom window and then get it once I was outside.

My new course of action would never be realized. When we were only about 3 steps up, I lost my grip on the inside of the suitcase and fell harshly to the bottom. The sudden change in weight broke my aunt's grip on it and I was treated to another fun trip down the steps, this time on the inside of the tumbling suitcase and I definitely did not think it was "worth it" on this trip down.

"Oh drat. I hope nothing broke."

Just then came the worst sound I could possibly think of. The sound of a zipper. The suitcase zipper. Being unzipped. I froze in place having absolutely no plan at all ready for this scenario The light streamed in as the suitcase lid opened, revealing my new secret to the world.

"What on earth? Is it a doll?"

I held myself stiff as a board, not daring to breath or blink. My aunt reached in and pulled me out of the suitcase, holding me under my armpits. I panicked, and grasped at the only straws I could find.

"Hi, I'm Spike!" I said, without moving my clenched grin or unfocused eyes, "I love to eat gems!"

Sure, it was a Hail Mary play if there ever was one. Even I internally cringed at the blatant bluff. There was no way she wouldn't notice the weight, or at least the organic feel that no toy or stuffed animal ever could mimic.

"This is so amazing! You look so real," She cooed as she spun me around to look at different angles. It was all I could do to keep rigid enough to maintain the ruse, but for now it seemed to be holding. "Oh, I just love it. I have to ask Glasny where he got it, it's so adorable!"

That's right. Now that I thought about it, my aunt had a huge thing for fairies and silly looking gnomes and dragons, she had various statues and figurines all over the lawn and scattered around the house. Spike would probably be right up her alley if she had a bit of warning to brace herself.

She lowered me back into the suitcase and zipped it back up; "I'd better leave this here so it doesn't fall down again. I don't want this guy getting damaged."

I silently let out a breath once the suitcase was closed and I could hear her walking away. Crisis, ever so narrowly, averted.

"Now where did I put that bubblewrap? Once we get him wrapped up, he should be completely safe."

Or not; "Oh hell no."

Abandoning all pretenses of subtlety, I stuck a finger up through the zipper and pushed it open, quickly squirming out of the hole and running for the door with it. I swung the door open, pushed the suitcase out onto the patio, and slammed the door behind me. I held the suitcase by its handle and kept it angled towards the house as I ran. If my aunt saw anything, it would just be the suitcase moving by itself. She'd just have to get over her confusion, maybe the wind was blowing it or even a raccoon grabbed it or something.

Once I was far enough across the driveway, I risked a peek over the top edge of my suitcase, trying to see if I could spot her in the windows. She had her curtains open, so I could see her looking under her bed, presumably still searching for that bubblewrap she had mentioned. I looked up above to the second floor and saw Rubeus and my other kitties staring out the window at me. Okay that was adorable. I waved at them, and Rubeus perked up at attention. He often was watching in the window when I came home from work in the morning, and would meow at me any time I noticed him on my way inside. I swear at times he was more like a dog than a cat.

I really should have either stopped walking at this point, or at least paid better attention to where I was going. It was while I was watching my cats that my sister came down the walkway that led up to my parents house, fiddling with the DS that she used as her MP3 player, and by the time either of us had noticed each other, she had already tripped over me.

I might have attempted to continue the ruse of being a toy, except for one minor issue that was interfering with that: My sister was HEAVY.

"Gah! Get off!" I struggled and squirmed under her butt, and she scrambled off of me in surprise. Okay, she wasn't overweight or anything, but she still had to have had six to ten times the mass Spike has.

"What the hell?!"

I slowly pushed myself to my feet and dusted off my scales before looking up at her. The fact I needed to look up at her was a bit vexing, considering that she was still sitting on the ground in front of me.

"Uh, yeah, you remember that news article about people becoming ponies that mom and dad asked me about? Apparently it's not a hoax."

My sister stared at me with a look that mixed awe and disgust; "Glasny?"

"Yeah... uh, don't scream, okay?"

She inhaled deeply.

I had the strong suspicion that she was going to scream.

Author's Note:

If any of you are following this story, then you're probably already following other stories in the PonyEarthVerse group that this one is meant to be part of. Back when I had just finished the first two chapters, there had been some restructuring that resulted in the old group getting deleted and replaced with a new one which you can find at http://www.fimfiction.net/group/199509/ponyearthverse

If you were part of the old group at any point, you should probably switch over to the new group, as there seems to be heavier focus on getting the stories to work together, creating an overarching plot, and generally putting more emphasis on the themes that got me interested in this group to begin with.

Comments

[SuperPinkBrony12]

I had the strong suspicion that she was going to scream.

She probably is. I mean this isn't the sort of thing that happens on a daily basis.

[Joural]

dat ending.

all that needs to be said.

[Red Bomber]

Either she really does scream or she squeals. Okay I thought this story might be an alternate universe version, but I guess not, so your story really is going to be a part of this group. I hope your contribution will be helpful in this story as a whole.

[GreyAcumane]

3868645
Those are my hopes as well. Thanks for the encouragement. With everything on my plate lately it's been difficult to focus and make the progress I want.

[Red Bomber]

3869838
I know what you mean and you're welcome. So much stuff has been happening lately. ^^;

[StraferElite]

As long as you dont put cancled. I gots my hope.