Authors note:
This story is a short one off connected to events of The Truce. A light hearted funny story to cheer everyone up through recent events :) enjoy
Things were relatively quiet in the lair today. Blowhole was in his lab, cleaning things and putting the place back to a presentable state. He didn't want it looking a mess for when his guest was to arrive. Not that he needed the place to be clean for his guest. He didn't owe his guest anything. Anyway, Kowalski was due any moment now and Blowhole was looking forward to the day ahead.
Kowalski was bringing some of his inventions with him today. Some with minor faults and some which downright failed. In the past, spying on the penguins, Blowhole had witnessed Kowalski create a few dolphin worthy things and wanted to explore and improve them. Some of them could be of use to him in the future and it was also an excuse to have a little bit of fun and just invent for a day. Like that time he and Kowalski had worked on those hover boots. He called this research and Red One couldn't argue with him since he was technically getting a lot of important information from Kowalski about his inventions.
Blowhole heard the clunk of the elevator door and smiled realising Kowalski had finally arrived. He pushed the rest of what he was fiddling with into an open drawer and closed it promptly, turning to the open lab door and waiting for the penguin to waddle on in.
Kowalski did appear in the door frame, several moments later, dragging a large bag with him. He looked out of breath, so Blowhole took the initiative and met him halfway, grabbing the bag off the floor and carrying it to the desk.
Kowalski took his time to catch his breath and chuckle.
"Don't ask me to bring this much stuff again. I nearly had an aneurysm."
Blowhole chuckled back but proceeded with unloading the bag of scientific goodies. This was all quite exciting. There were finished models of inventions and half broken, deconstructed things too. Today was certainly going to be a fun day.
Kowalski hopped up onto the table and helped Blowhole unload the bag, placing things orderly and scraps together in piles.
"So, tell me what's what," Blowhole said excitedly.
Kowalski nodded and started pointing to various things.
"This is the shrink ray, it has minor faults. For some reason it gave me polka dots once. This one doesn't have a name yet, but it turns your bones to jelly."
Blowhole cocked a brow and chuckled.
"Did you mean for it to do that?"
Kowalski chuckled back and shook his head.
"No, it was meant to send ultrasonic sound waves to your brain to stun you. Like an immobilizer. But instead the frequency is so low that it just turns your bones to jelly."
Blowhole laughed and grabbed a pen and notepad, noting down that this would be a fun invention to play with. Turning peoples bones to jelly certainly sounded fun.
Then, with the end of his pencil, he pointed to the next invention. A very polished and finished ray gun. Or at least, it looked finished.
"This one?"
"Ah, that's the freshinator-erizor... I cant remember what it's called, everyone calls it something different."
"What does it do?" Blowhole smiled.
"It turns rotten organic food into its fresher state. Its essentially a regressor. It turns back time for organic cells and regresses them. A rotten fish becomes a fresh fish," Kowalski smiled.
"Interesting. So, what's wrong with it?" Blowhole asked putting down the pencil and picking the ray up.
Kowalski took a second to sit down on the desk and make himself comfortable.
"Well, it fires from external impact. Skipper was showing Private a few moves once, kicked a bowling pin to my face and made me drop the ray. It hit the floor and the impact caused it to fire. So that needs fixing."
Blowhole cocked a brow and looked the ray over. It did indeed look very polished and perfect and he couldn't even begin to figure out why the ray would fire due to impact like that.
"That's strange, I've never had an invention do that before. Could it be the trigger mechanism isn't as tight as it should be?" He asked.
Kowalski shrugged.
"Everything looked fine to me when I completed it."
Blowhole took another moment to look the invention over before holding it in one flipper and gently whacking the side. The pair waited for a moment but nothing happened. So Blowhole gave it another gentle hit, on the top this time. Still nothing happened.
Kowalski grew uncomfortable, recalling what had happened after the invention had hit the ground that day. But to his fortune, Blowhole stopped hitting it and chuckled.
"We'll leave this one for later," he said, reaching to put it down.
He went to gently place the invention on the desk, bumping the handle on the side of the table ever so slightly, but of course, misfortune was the pair's shared middle name. The invention fired suddenly, causing them both to gasp and jump back. The beam of green light shot across the desk and bounced off the chrome trim of the large computer before it dispersed through the air.
Kowalski's heart pounded for a moment before he calmed down and chuckled. That could have been a disaster. He turned to joke with Blowhole but strangely found he was no longer standing there. But where could a dolphin get to so quickly... oh no.
Kowalski listened for a moment before he leaned over the side of the desk, peering down at the ground below. Blowhole's segway was still there, standing proud where Blowhole had once stood and his metal eye patch clinked on the floor as if it had fallen from a great height. And there, below everything, laying on the floor was a very stunned, very small Dr Blowhole.
Everything was silent for a moment as the world seemed to stop. Blowhole just stared up at Kowalski as Kowalski stared down. Then he chuckled, awkwardly, trying to lighten the mood and deter Blowhole from wanting to kill him.
"Yep, this is exactly what happened with Skipper."
"What happened?" Blowhole asked but gasped after hearing his own voice.
That wasn't his voice, it sounded nothing like him. All squeaky and annoying. He tried to sit up but found he didn't come nearly as tall as he usually would. Panic settling in his gut he looked up to Kowalski again, this time with fire in his eyes as rage started to overtake him.
"What- what's going on? Why am I so small? Why do I sound like a baby?!" He exclaimed.
Kowalski jumped down from the table and found he now stood eye level with the dolphin. He raised his flippers in a bit to calm the dolphin down but found it only irritated the dolphin more.
"Calm down, I can explain and fix you. As well as food this invention also freshens living animals too. So, you went from being a rotten fish to a fresh fish. Good pun as well," Kowalski explained.
The baby dolphin just growled and clenched his flippers.
"I don't care for the explanation, turn me back now!"
Kowalski scrambled for a moment before he hopped back up to the table to retrieve the ray. Hopping back down he wasted no time in reversing the ray and aiming it at Blowhole. He fired. Nothing happened. He fired again. Still, nothing happened. He fired a third time and a forth and over and over again, panicking that it wasn't working and he was going to be a boiled bird served next to a side of roast potatoes.
"What's the hold up?!"
Kowalski flushed red and backed away slightly.
"I think you broke it," he said quietly.
The room was silent. Kowalski lowered the ray and back up a few more paces, silently chuckling to evade Blowhole's tiny wrath.
But Blowhole just groaned and flopped back onto the floor in a fit of frustration. This certainly was going to be an interesting day.