One morning, after a night of strange dreams involving muffin men, Master Shake awoke to find himself transformed into a large Incubator.
He thought it somewhat strange at first that his entire body appeared to be white, but then he remembered that it was all white to begin with.
It occurred to him on some level that he was walking on four legs instead of shuffling along on his cardboard bottom, but he'd had a lot to drink last night, and his head still hurt.
"Heyyyy..." Frylock blurted, dropping a spoon into his Wheaties as the former humanoid milkshake padded into the living room.
"Ugghh, right now all I wanna see is an omelet and some orange juice. Lemme tell you, moonshine and paint thinner in a Shirley Temple may sound good after about 10 rounds, but shiiiit...you pay the price the next morning. I swear I'm gonna kick that Early Cuyler's ass next time..."
"Shirley Temple? Isn't that a girly drink?" Meatwad asked from the chair where he was watching TV.
"O-only on a dare with that damn squid! Owww!" Shake snapped. "A-and it was after a whole keg of beer and a round of Old Fashioneds! Don't you call me gay, you little pansy! You still play with dolls; do you think real men still do that stuff?"
"Hey, those are my best friends, and don't you...Oh my God, what happened to you, man?" Meatwad gasped. "Are them German magicians in town? 'Cause it looks like one of their white tigers got loose or something!"
"The hell you talking about?" Shake replied. He glanced toward Frylock, who was still eying him agog. "And what are you going all googly-eyed about?"
"Umm...you should probably take a look in the mirror," the box of French fries answered, pulling a hand mirror out of hammerspace.
"WHAT THE?...I'm...How did...W-w-why I am some kinda...mutant cat? What the hell happened to me?" Shake blurted. Despite his agitation at finding himself transformed into a vaguely feline form sans a nose and plus a fox's tail, strange, frilled ears, and beady red eyes, his mouth would not shift out of an eerie and apparently fixed smile. "That...*fart* SQUID! Probably put some kinda absinthe or LSD in my drinks. He's hiding somewhere and laughing at me, isn't he?" He ran down the hall toward Meatwad's room and tried to open the door, only to find he no longer had opposeable thumbs. "EARLY! GET YOUR ASS OUTTA THERE! C'mon, open the *fart* up!"
"Hey, hey, hey, calm down, Shake!" Frylock said, floating toward Shake and wrapping his tuberculous arms around his neck. "Early isn't here. He was extradited back to Georgia last night, remember?"
"Well...SOMEONE did this to me!" Shake said. "And I don't even know...what the hell am I supposed to be?"
Scene change scene (black)
"Hmm, interesting," Frylock said, gazing intently at his computer screen. "For some reason you seem to have turned into an alien creature called an 'Incubator'."
"Why's it called an 'Incubator'?" Shake replied. "I can't even crack an egg properly in one try with my hands the way they are now!"
"Hmm, weren't you planning to make an omelet for breakfast today? Not that you ever could anyway."
"I was assuming you'd hear me and make me one as usual. But how can I get out of this? I can't even sit down properly!"
"Beats the hell out of me how it happened. But there is...one man who can help."
"Not Dr. Weird again, is it?"
"Of course not. You remember he lost his license, don't you? I'm talking about the one and only John Christoe. He lives on a dental floss farm in Montana."
Shake blinked. "N-not the Center for Disease Control or some...hospital or something? Or at least a lab? You're telling me the only guy who can help me is some jerk out in Montana? Hey, next time we need a loan, why don't we just go see that hobo who hangs out under the on-ramp?"
"Hey, try to understand, Shake, just try to understand," said Frylock. "He's a magic man. People come to him from all around looking for answers. Here's his business card."
Shake just stared. "How much did he pay you?"
"Well, he was a colleague of mine and Dr. Weird's at Yale Medical. And his techniques are still, umm...experimental, so he might actually pay you. And hey, no event has a zero-odds possibility of happening, so there's just a chance that you might get your old body back. Lately he's been more focused on breeding dwarfs, but I think he has some experience in body transfer."
"Okey-dokey. What time's the next bus leave?"
Shortly after Shake left, Meatwad rolled into Frylock's room. "So you really know that John Christoe guy, Frylock?" he asked.
"Pfft, no. I just grabbed this off some drunk I found passed out in a dive bar in downtown Newark and wrote 'Montana' over it in marker. I changed him into...that myself."
"Holy *fart*, man! Why'd you do that? Never knew you had that in you..."
"Meatwad, I don't want you talking that way," said Frylock. "Besides, bastard just broke my atom smasher. I was still making payments on that thing!" He typed a few strokes on his keyboard. "That 'alien' I turned him into was actually a character from this Japanese anime series called Puella Magi Madoka Magica."
"Aw man!" snickered the talking meatball. "You watch this stuff? Dayum, maybe I was wrong when I was calling Shake gay back there!"
"Yeah, I know the poster looks...kinda fruity and such, but believe me, it's more of a horror story than anything. Most of those girls there end up...well, I shouldn't give too much away."
"Pssh, yeah right, boy. Y'all better hand in your man card right now."
"You wanna get changed into something too?"
"Well okay, so yeah...I guess it might be a dark and edgy show; they say you can't judge a book by its cover and all..."
Scene change scene (black...again)
The Pennassagunk, New Jersey bus station. You could never find a more vile hive of scum and villainy ("vile" used in place of "wretched" at the insistence of Lucasfilm and our lawyers). But much the same could be said for any American bus station. The ticket clerk didn't ask any questions after Master Shake purchased his ticket to Bozeman, Montana, even when he had to hand him Frylock's credit card using his mouth. Of course, that might have been due to the presence of a large nuclear waste du—ahem, storage facility across the street. The State of New Jersey wishes to remind our readers that all industrial waste products are safely placed in aquatic storage to await further distribution.
The ladies' room door swung open, and out walked a grim-faced, dark-haired magical girl named Homura. "Ughhh," she groaned in English for some reason, rubbing her stomach. "I guess it's true what they say about bus station nachos; you don't buy them, you rent them. By the hour." Then her eyes popped all the way open.
After all her trekking throughout the world in hopes of revenge for what she done to her (and Her) so many times before, she had found him.
But she couldn't just kill him in public. Even if this was New Jersey and every cop was played by the same guy as Space Ghost (and thus could be assumed to be a useless moron).
No, she would have to follow him to wherever he was headed next, before he unleashed his evil upon another naive adolescent girl.
"Tomorrow. You," hissed Homura as she bought a ticket to Bozeman.