text: Right after Sam helped me up, I felt myself being swept into yet another strange, otherworldly dimension. Yet, the grasp felt *different.* Not one of malice or malignancy, but one of whimsy and just a hint of untapped insanity. Eventually, I was deposited onto a couch within a rather cozy little apartment room. I looked around frantically, trying to figure out what was going on. “Yes, yes, I’m sure you’re very confused and all, but please do try and adjust yourself.” A college-aged girl stood in front of a blackboard, her-- “Hey. No describing us in the narration.” The girl rapped her pointer against the blackboard, a frown clouding her face. “I’m Lothli, and that over there is Maishul.” I followed her pointer to see what seemed to be an identical twin to the first girl, strapped to a chair with duct tape. Strangely, her mouth was straight up *missing.* She wasn't *struggling* or anything, just kind of sitting there limply, rolling her eyes. I got the general feeling that she wasn’t in any sort of real danger; it was more of an ‘oh god, here we go again’ type of mood. “Right, she’s tied up only because she would start bombarding you with uncomfortable questions if I let her speak. Now, on to the lesson.” The blackboard sprung to life, animating squiggles of chalk onto the board. In a few seconds, it shifted to say: “SHAPESHIFTING 101: The Square-Cube Law and You!” “Right, so something very important that you’ll have to grasp, Charlie, is the Square-Cube Law. It’s a law that governs the amount of mass within you and how it’ll translate to how you shapeshift into different pounds. So, since you’re 135 pounds--” Wait. Wait wait wait. Not only did this weirdo know my *nickname*, but she also knew how much I *weigh*? I didn’t know how she got this information, and I was beginning to feel a little concerned. “Stop worrying about insignificant things, Charlie. Now, say you wanted to transform into a rat--” “What!? I can turn into animals? I thought it was just changing my face and all that,” I exclaimed. “Yes, yes.” Lothli sighed before waving her hands at the blackboard. “Let me explain. First of all, you’re now a changeling. That means that you’re basically a skinbag packed full of this weird crystalline liquid that can reshape yourself at will.” The blackboard shifted to display a cuttlefish colored in with glittery blue chalk, titled with “✨Charlie!!!!!✨” A rather *disconcerting* image, to say the least. “Maishul, stop drawing on the blackboard. Sorry about that.” With a second wave of the hand, the image once again redrew itself to be a much more understated anatomical human colored in with a nice, sedated blue. Still somewhat disconcerting. “Anyways, that means you can change into basically anything you want. But you still have to obey conservation of mass, so the size may be radically different than what you may imagine.” Lothli snapped her fingers, and what appeared to be a regularly-sized rat appeared, floating in midair. Within moments, however, the rat began to rapidly spin in circles, with a caption titling it as “rapdly spinnin rat.” Yes, that was how it was spelled. “Ahem, apologies.” Frowning, Lothli stared at the rat until it decelerated, waving away the caption as well. “Well, since you’re 135 pounds, that puts you at just about 2.14 cubic feet of Charlotte.” “A rat is essentially a cylinder about 2 inches high and 8 inches long, disregarding the tail, which contains a relatively minor amount of mass. We can use that, along with the formula for a cylinder, to calculate the volume of rat Charlie.” The blackboard shifted again, showing two mathematical formulas: h = 8 * r 2.14 = πr^(2)h “Now, we substitute r for h...” 2.14 = 8πr^3 “And then solve for r!” r^3 = 2.14/8π r^3 = 0.085 r = 0.440 “Plug that back into h...” h = 0.440 * 8 h = 3.520 “So, in conclusion, if you turned into a rat, you’d be around 0.8 feet tall and around 3.5 feet long. Does that make sense?” I stared at the blackboard. My magical powers... it all came down to *math*? Something about that was faintly irritating. “Anyways, time for you to turn into a rat. Chop chop now!” Lothli stared at me impatiently, but I didn’t really want to transform into a rat. I mean, aren’t they kind of gross? I-- “If you don’t turn into a rat, I’ll do it for you. And you don’t want to be transformed by my hand, trust me.” The twin’s voice was underpinned by a vague, menacing shade. No, I did *not* want to experience that. I closed my eyes and pictured a rat in my mind. Ordinary little rat. Brown fur, tail, all that jazz. When I opened my eyes, I found myself lower to the ground. It felt...strange, to say the least. My fur definitely felt different from my clothes. “Hmm. Alright, let’s see how close we were.” Suddenly, holographic rulers sprung up around me. I squeaked in surprise. “Ahh. 0.8 feet by 3.4 feet. I assume that extra bit of mass was distributed to your tail and the volume of your fur, perhaps.” At that moment, Maishul began emitting an irritating on repeat. I had no idea about *how* she was doing it, especially without a mouth, but doing it she was. And it was horribly irritating. “Okay! Okay! Have your mouth back! Gah!” Lothli snapped her fingers, and Maishul’s mouth manifested back onto her face. Immediately, she shouted, “If you turned into a human cell, you’d be around 163 miles wide!!” ...What? I could do that? I mean-- “Don’t try it. Seriously. I don’t want to rebuild this apartment. And scrub the minds of the ungodly number of random people who would see that crap.” Lothli shook her head. “I think it’s about time you go back to your serial. Well, we’ll see if we need to grab Sam next...” “Huh?! Don’t you *dare* touch Sam--” With that, the invisible hand from before grabbed me, dragging me back from whence I came. But at least I knew the exact dimensions I would take if I transformed into a rat. *** WC: 1061 Charlie is from u/fhangrin’s serial, .