“BLAST!”
Virmir threw the malfunctioning staff against the wall and ducked as a bolt of transformative magic ricocheted off the walls around him. The grey fox dove for cover behind the table that had become his workbench as he had tried to repair the staff, certain he would be changed into something horrifying in the next few moments.
For once, whatever cruel hands of fate turned the universe were on Virmir’s side. Just as the bolt of transformative magic grazed close by his large right ear, someone opened the door across the room, and the bolt escaped through the portal, bouncing down an unseen corridor before finally finding a target and dispersing with a flash.
Cautiously, Virmir crept towards the door, following the gaze of the fox toy that had just opened his door. At the end of the corridor was the Grand Hall, and in that Grand Hall stood one conspicuous form even, among the great variety of shapes and sizes of those that frequented his chat. It was a pile of a vile, white, crystalline substance that Vir could not bring himself to name, shaped roughly into the form of some fox or wolf, although the rough childlike design of the figure made it difficult to tell. Only the bandana, bearing a single white star in a triangular field of blue, gave any clue as to its identity.
“Trees! I KNOW I didn’t order one of those,” he breathed, shivering silently at the thought of being hit by such a beam. The toy fox beside him looked on aghast, and then everyone in the chat suddenly took off running in every direction possible away from the chat’s proprietor. Even the furry-turned-snowfur took off in another direction, finding some way to escape despite its sudden lack of legs.
A tumbleweed rolled around the corner and past Virmir in the corridor, receiving a quick shift of the eyes from the fox. Fed up, he growled and followed it to the door. It was time to give someone a piece of his mind.
*
Virmir stalked out of the chat, grumbling loudly to himself. “That’s the last time they send me the wrong blasted wand!” he declared. He was so furious that he couldn’t even keep his hammer in hammerspace, and he drug the massive mallet behind him as he walked towards the gargantuan building before him.
It rose from the flat landscape like a mountain, smoke rising in puffs and swirls from the chimneys that pierced the sky above it, chugging and churning in a way that only a toon factory could. Giant letters were mounted on a weave of metal girders, streaked with ages of oil and rust and bouncing with the rhythm of the factory’s chugs. They declared this to be the single greatest supplier of all things toonish, the legendary—
ACME CORPORATION ®All rights reserved. ACME Corporation should not be held responsible for the views, actions, or characterizations of any characters, employees, or facilities herein stated to be related to ACME Corp. or any of its subsidiaries. Any information herein referring to the defective quality of any ACME product is fictitious. Any ACME products herein described can be found and/or purchased using the COMPLETE CATALOGUE OF ACME PRODUCTS AND SERVICES. Please see your local ACME representative for questions, comments, or customer service, or in case of a defective product. Please do not attempt to break into the ACME facility, as any such intrusion will be met with extralegal force.
Virmir, who had read none of the above warning statement, went straight for the largest entrance he could find to the facility. Raising his hammer, he brought it down with as much force as he could muster, the various plates of green-highlighted black armor popping onto his body from out of hammerspace as he swung. The plates were lined with magical fire as they emerged, mirroring the blaze of their owner’s anger. The metal, garage-style door dented with every impact of the massive hammer, buckling and bending until it tore like wet paper and was crushed into a flat disk under the final swing.
The grey fox stepped through the hole he had created, a spotlight shining from behind him and forming a glorious halo about him as he raised his hammer in one paw to take on anyone he might encounter. Growling, he whipped around and SMASHED the spotlight that had appeared behind him, sending a pair of ACME employees scrambling in terror.
Turning back to his current conquest, Virmir scowled. Before him was nothing but an empty chamber, filled with nothing but vats of various bubbling solutions designed for strange purposes by the corporation.
“Blast. They should at least have the courtesy to show up when a customer comes to make a complaint.”
He carefully stepped into the large warehouse. Virmir sniffed and let out a gag at the smells. Whatever was in the vats was too foul for using his nose to be a useful method of finding someone to speak to. He walked a few more steps in, and finally found a door that was labeled Employees Only. Or rather ‘ylnO seeyolpmE’, indicating that the fox was already in the restricted area. He marched towards the door, his hammer held up over his shoulder, its UROCYON label visible to the world.
Suddenly, Virmir stepped in something sticky. He lifted his footpaw, looking at the goop in disgust. “Eww!” He hopped away from the vat that had spilled the substance, backing up against a metal stairway as he tried to scrape it off with his claws. He stared at his paw as he leaned against the railing, blinking in surprise.
It looked like he had stepped in an oil slick, but it still had its odd rainbow pattern on top of a metallic sheen even as it sat on his paw. Only it wasn’t sitting on his paw; it was creeping up along his pads, up onto the fur, up along his legs…
“GAH!”
Dropping his hammer, he waved his leg, turning it into a blur of solid color until he stopped his thrashing. By the time he did, the strange coloration had climbed nearly halfway up his leg, slicking down his fur as it went. Not only that, but the claws he had used to try to use to scrape it off had been covered too, and the metallic-textured substance had overtaken his elbow.
The sheer amount of BLASTing that followed was mindboggling, even as Vir began to run around the room, dashing behind one vat only to pop out from behind another as he panicked. He tripped and skidded along the metal flooring, leaving a streak of rainbow-colored liquid behind him as he slid. Desperately rolling around on the floor, Virmir only managed to coat himself further in the sticky stuff that he had stepped in. The fox only stopped once he had coated himself entirely, and still he twitched on the ground as the strange substance covered him.
Slowly and stiffly, Virmir got to his feet. Even his armor and the accompanying ragged cape had been coated, and it became clear that the goo was doing something odd to the angry fox. He stood rigidly with his head down as the strange metallic sheen began to settle, losing the swirling rainbow reflection as it took on the appearance of solid metal. He stood unnaturally still for a moment, and then something clicked in his mind.
>.INITIALIZING SYSTEM FUNCTIONS
>.OPTIC………..READY
>.AUDIO………READY
>.MOTORFUNC……..READY
>.RESPIRATE……..READY
>.NEURAL………READY
>.CAUTION: FIRST-TIME USER DETECTED
>.RECOMMEND AUTOMATED CONTROL
>.ALLOW (Y/N)
>.N
“GAH!”
Virmir’s head snapped up, his eye swirls curiously comprised of green ASCII characters. He shook his head, and his eyes returned to their usual color and immediately looked down at his body. It still looked like it was made out of metal, and he gaped at it in wonder.
“What did this blasted corporation do to me NOW?”
Just as he finished the question, something clicked in his head and his eyelids automatically closed as if he could find the answer projected on his eyelids. Appropriately, the answer was indeed being projected on his eyelids, and he watched in dumbfounded confusion as the artificially-aged silent film presentation played out literally before his eyes.
‘WHAT DID THIS BLASTED CORPORATION DO TO YOU NOW?’ ®ACME Corporation LTD. 20xx
‘A GLIMPSE OF THE FUTURE!’
The 60s style title card faded to a fuzzy image of a clearly robotic silhouette.
‘MERGE THE BEST PARTS OF FUR AND MACHINE!’
The image was now lit, showing a seemingly metallic furry waving to the camera.
‘BE WHAT YOU WANT WITH GREY GOO!’
The film clip now showed a badly-animated transition from the metal furry to a taur of the same species.
Vir’s eye twitched as the projectors cut out and his eyes opened up once again. What was this crazy corporation doing in this factory? As soon as he thought the question, he had to make a concerted effort to stop the instructional video that tried to project itself from behind his eyes. Growling to himself, he took a few steps to make sure that the goop hadn’t altered his body too much. Thankfully, his motor functions seemed to be in order, so he stalked over and retrieved his hammer from beside the staircase. The now-metallic grey fox then continued towards the ‘ylnO seeyolpmE’ sign for a few more steps before thinking back to the instructional video. He considered for a moment, looking down at his body.
“Well, it couldn’t hurt.”
He thought about assuming a taur form, and his tail suddenly retreated from his body, creating a second torso behind him as it did, until he was in his taur shape, looking far more imposing as his battle armor flared out to protect his new lower body. He grinned NOT-evilly as he looked himself over.
>.TAUR FORM ACTIVATED
“That’s more like it! Now, if only I could get my fur back…”
>.SYNTHETIC SKIN ACTIVATED
Virmir’s GLORIOUS grey-and-white pelt grew out full in only moments, and he waved his once more fuzzy tail in approval. Now he could force ACME cease the construction of their defective products and receive his due refund. Not that he had ever paid for any of the product he had received, but he was certain that he was due some recompense for his experiences with ACME products.
He reared up on his hind paws and SMASHED the ‘ylnO seeyolpmE’ door beneath his forepaws. “ACME Corporation, your DANGEROUS and DEFECTIVE products have gone FAR ENOUGH! I demand—“
Beyond the door was an empty hallway. The grey fox growled and dashed down the hall, repeating his demand as he skidded into a production floor area. Still, no one was about. Up and down, in one door and out another, from catwalk to catwalk and conveyor belt to conveyor belt. The machines were running, spitting out row upon row of questionable merchandise and carrying that merchandise to sheer walls, which were quickly painted into facsimiles of highway tunnels and loaded into the back of ACME Corporation trucks painted on the same walls. Still, not a single employee walked the factory floor.
“Does this whole blasted place run itself?”
Virmir’s new mental process immediately began projecting the movie entitled ‘HOW THE ENTIRE BLASTED ACME CORPORATION RUNS ITSELF’ ®ACME Corporation LTD. 20xx.
Virmir looked about the factory aghast from atop a catwalk. No wonder the products were defective! How could anyone expect an entire factory to run itself with no one to supervise it? How could they expect quality? How could they expect customer satisfaction? How could they expect to STAY ON SCHEDULE?
The armored foxtaur leapt down to the factory floor and began to scramble about from one machine to another, shaking his head in embarrassment at all of them. “NO! That is not how you make a taurification wand! Who approved the freeze beam? WHERE IS THE UROCYON WAND?”
He was soon dashing from one machine to the other, trying to fix what the negligent ACME employees had fouled up. He manifested a wrench from his partially-mechanical new body, using it to adjust a bolt on one machine as he inspected a rod that had fallen into a box to one side. It misfired and shot him in the chest, but the nanomachines that had altered his body kept it from changing without his permission. They also gave him a complete rundown of what had gone wrong, and what needed to be fixed. Virmir had soon remotely shut down the conveyor and had a long, toony mechanical arm extending far up the shaft to tweak the inner workings of the mechanism.
This factory would be in order and on schedule if it took him all day!
*
Trask walked into the ACME production plant later that day, looking about at all the sparkly clean and perfectly functional mechanisms. He had followed the hammer-trail that Virmir had left in the ground during his approach, and was trying to find out what had happened to the fox after the disaster with the snow wand. He finally discovered his target, or what looked like him, sprawled across the ACME production floor.
“Virmir?”
The figure seemed to be made of metal and was clearly a taur, but the antennae hair and the battle armor were still recognizable. He raised his head as Trask approached before dropping it back to the floor with a CLUNK.
“BLASTED… nanites… out of power.” A power cord appeared out of thin air from Virmir’s tail and coiled perfectly on the ground. “Plug me in… please?”
Trask approached curiously and took the end of the cord, poking at Vir with his toy paw. “How did this happen?”
The toy fox watched with mouth agape as a projector somehow appeared from Virmir’s side and played a short film entitled ‘HOW THIS HAPPENED’ ACME Corporation LTD. Trademark Pending before withdrawing back behind the metallic panels of Vir’s side.
“Just plug it in,” the fox groaned quietly.
Trask squeaked and ran off, looking about for a place to plug the cord in. He looked all about the production floor until he reached a small control room that looked like it hadn’t seen use in years. For some reason, this room contained a single outlet which was under the only desk in the room. The toy fox plugged it in carefully, and heard a sigh of relief from outside. Before he could go to check on Virmir however, something caught his eye.
Lying on the floor was a conspicuous remote, a single dial above a single BIG RED BUTTON® on its face which also bore the large-print words MASTER CONTROL. The toy fox picked it up and stared at it, and noticed that the dial was set to GREY FOXTAUR. The toy fox glanced out of the control booth at Virmir before returning his gaze to the dial on the MASTER CONTROL. It only had one setting, but one turn to the side changed the text above it. Trask smiled deviously and leaned to watch Virmir as he pressed the BIG RED BUTTON®.
“Blast it, Trask!”
