Hi-Rez Model

	“Alright, so we’re finally done with the beta testing and stuff?” With a small sigh, a squirrel with bright orange fur leans back into his seat, a small smile starting to press its way onto his cheeks behind his oversized front teeth. He had been here for the better part of a week, from dawn till around noon trying to figure things out for him and his team’s game - their mascot was supposed to be the star of the show, after all! If anyone was going to make sure that everything was going right for this thing, it was going to be him.
	“Ah, almost, almost, just one more thing that I think we need to work with and then it should be ready to put out for sale.” With that, a rather tired looking rabbit leans back in his own seat, a plastic clipboard in front of him - he and the rest of his team had been working non-stop with the squirrel and his group, and it had been a few grueling weeks since they had started. Right now, all they needed to do was make sure that everything ran smoothly, there weren’t any bugs that they all didn’t know about, and then they could finally go home to get some much-needed shut-eye.
	“Well, what’s stopping you?”
	“Well, um… you said you wanted to save character customization for the very end, right? We can’t, um… exactly do anything else right now without you giving us the go-ahead on it.” The rabbit looks down to his clipboard for a moment. “Let’s see… we should be, um… we should be working on the character sliders and how they interact with the VR interface.” With that, he looks up once again. “Uh… whenever you’re ready and all, I mean.”
	“Heh, born ready. Where’s the gear? Been wanting to get this over with since I walked in today, you know?” And with that, the squirrel stands up from his seat, raises his hands above his head in a deep stretch, and lets out a small sigh before making his way over toward the plastic table against the far wall - there, a large computer monitor was sitting on its top, a keyboard and mouse being right in front of it. The actual computer tower itself was nowhere to be seen - probably somewhere in the back room so that no one accidentally knocked it over or something like that. Nevertheless, with a small sigh, he makes his way over and quickly types something up on the keyboard.
	“I mean… I hope so. It's loaded with our latest test build, so it should be good to go. All we need you to do is navigate your way to the character creator. It should just be right there when you log in.”
	“I know, I know, trust me, I’ve done this every day for… what, the last month now?” The squirrel looks toward the rabbit for a moment before glancing at the various other people in the room - both his own friends and the development team behind this whole game. After a moment or two of making sure that everything was in order on screen, he quickly stands up, and makes his way over toward the side of the table - there, a bulky-looking headset and a pair of gloves were hanging there. He had used these same devices for a while, and he could pull them on as quick as a lick!
	After quickly doing so, he saunters back toward the middle of the room, a smirk on his face.
	“Alright, you guys ready? I think we’re finally gonna make some progress, yeah?” At the squirrel’s words, the rest of the room quickly nods and starts to mumble to themselves before making their way toward their own seats - time to see what would be going on this time. WIth that, the squirrel quickly pulls that headset down over his eyes before holding his hands out into the air. “Alright… so, let’s see… start a new game, right?”
	“No, no, this time you’re going to pick the second option in the list. Do you see where it says ‘character creation’? That’s what you should be looking for.”
	“Oh, right, right. Uh… let’s see… Okay, that’s the one. And, uh… All I see is a black scree- oop, nevermind, it’s up now. Hehe… this is the default stuff, right?” For a moment or two, the rabbit at the back of the room leans forward toward his own screen, itself linked to the computer at the far end of the room. He could change things as he liked from where he was with a simple click of a button or seven. On screen at the moment, though, was a sort of caricature of the squirrel himself, complete with a number of exaggerated features, somewhat cartoon-like proportions, and a wide smile plastered across that avatar’s face.
	“Right, right, this should be what everyone should be seeing when they start up in the character creator. Now, I’m gonna bring up some sliders for you to try out, okay?” And with that, the rabbit quickly leans forward at his own desk, places his clipboard off to the side for a moment or two, and presses a few keys on his keyboard - a moment later, a number of lines appear off to the side of the squirrel’s vision.
	“Sliders? Where- ah.” The squirrel nods to himself for a moment or two before quickly backing up from his spot - he was right up against it, after all, and he couldn’t see anything very well when he was so close.
	“Right, so, go ahead and slide them to either side of the line they’re on, alright? The system should try and make sure that everything matches what you change.”
	“Hehe, no kidding! This is what took you guys so long, isn’t it?”
	“Well, when you have to configure everything individually, it tends to take a bit more time than you think, you know?” With that, the rabbit presses one of his palms against the side of his face - he had spent more than his fair share of time trying to figure out how to make sure that each of the hair styles had their own physics, their own light refraction, and everything in between, and this was only for the beta test! “Anyway, go ahead and start with the first slider, okay? I’m going to be recording any sort of bug or unintended thing I might have missed in there.”
	“Don’t have to tell me twice, you know!” And with that, the squirrel quickly reaches out with his gloved hand, grabs something within that virtual space, and starts to pull the first slider off toward the left, toward the word “shorter” - almost immediately, the model in the corner of his vision shrinks down to half its size. “Heh, that easy, huh?”
	“It should be just that easy, yes. Now, do you happen to see anything off? Anything looking like it’s trying to fight for its own space?”
	“No, no, it looks good. Lemme check the others, yeah?” And with that, the squirrel quickly starts to slide the various other sliders down either one way or another, a smile quickly starting to spread its way across his cheeks.
	“Ah, hey, hey, careful! You might make it crash if you go so fast!” With that, the rabbit looks up from his spot at his monitor. He quickly turns toward the squirrel and-
	He stops. Was he… always that tall…?
	“Oh, relax, this should be one of the most stable things you’ve made, right? How else are you supposed to try and fix stuff if you don’t know what stuff to fix?” The squirrel quickly glances toward the general direction of the rabbit, the smile on his face not having moved an inch in his fiddling, before quickly turning back toward the various other sliders that were starting to fill the screen. “Ooh, this one should be good! Which one of you came up with this slider here? ‘Femme’? Kinda weird, but sure.” And with that, the squirrel quickly takes that slider in his virtual hand, and quickly shoves it toward the far side of the line.
	This time, the model to his side quickly starts to fill itself out - the rump, the hips, the litheness, everything that he liked to see on someone! As soon as he does, though, the rabbit’s eyes widen at the sight of the squirrel’s form starting to fill itself out.
	“I-... uh…” The rabbit quickly turns toward the monitor off to his side, his brows quickly starting to furrow once again - there certainly was a resemblance to the squirrel and the avatar that he was starting to mess around with. This couldn’t be a coincidence, could it? “Um… Mister Roadkill?”
	“Yeah? Something up?”
	“Yeah, um… do you think you could take off the headset for a second? We’re gonna try and see if we can revert things back to their defaults, okay?”
	“Oh, you’re being a big killjoy - lemme have a little bit more fun and then I’ll let you have a turn, yeah?” And with that, the squirrel quickly takes another of those sliders in hand, this one labelled “cuteness”, and shoves it toward the far left. As soon as he does, the squirrel’s body quickly starts to soften and appear more cartoon-like with each notch he changes on that program.
	“Mister Roadkill, we need to stop this for now, there’s something wrong with what we’ve got. I think it’s-”
	“Oh, come on, dude! Yesterday it was telling me that we had to keep testing for hours and hours at a time, but now you wanna say that we need to stop after a couple of minutes? Come on, man!”
	“No, you don’t understand, there’s something going on with-”
	“With the program, yeah, yeah, just like yesterday and the day before and the day before that, now let me have a little bit of fun and see what kind of character I can make for once, would you mind?” And with that, the squirrel slides another slider to one of the sides, this one labelled “voice pitch”. After a moment or two of making sure that everything was going how he wanted, the squirrel presses one of his palms against one of his (newly-oversized) hips.
	“There, now, isn’t there some kind of thing you techies like to use to save your game or something like that? I could have sworn that there was something you used…” This time, when the squirrel speaks, his voice sounds about an octave higher than normal, causing the rabbit’s eyes to widen a bit - this wasn’t something that he could prepare for, was it?
	“Mister Roadkill, we need to stop the test right now, okay?”
	“Ugh, fiiiiiiine, lemme just save my game and we should be good.” And with that, the squirrel quickly turns his way toward the back side of the room, a button with the words “Save Character Template” appearing in his vision. After a quick press of it, he smiles and lets out a small sigh before reaching up and grabbing that headset in front of his face - as soon as he does, the first thing he sees is the rabbit staring at him with an incredulous look on his face.
	“Oh my god.”
	“What? I swear I didn’t turn your game into a mess of code again!” As soon as he says that, the squirrel’s eyes widen - was that his voice? And why did everyone else look like they grew a foot and a half? “Uh… am I missing something, or, uh…?”
	“No, no, uh… hang-hang-hang on, okay?” And with that, the rabbit quickly starts to make his way back to his computer, his brows furrowed in a mix of worry and confusion - there was no way that their game could change someone like this, right? With that, sits down, quickly types something up on his screen, and furrows his brows a bit. “What the…? It should be here, right…?” The rabbit looks toward his colleagues. “It should be here, right?”
	Almost immediately, four other people quickly start to type their way through their files, their own faces starting to look more and more confused with each passing second - this was not normal.
	“Uh… hehe… you guys are acting kinda weird, aren’t you? Also, uh… were you guys always that tall, or something?” And with that, the squirrel quickly sets his headset and his gloves down, his brows furrowing a moment or two later - was that table so high before? “I mean, uh… you guys are all looking like you just saw a ghost or something. Something you… Something you need…” He trails off at that point, his own voice quietly reaching his ears once again. He stands there for a moment or two before quickly starting to make his way over toward one of the walls to the side of the room - he had told one of his groupies to bring in one of the mirrors from their van, just in case he needed to change out of his outfit.
	As soon as he makes his way over there, his eyes widen at the sight of himself - he had grown shorter, sure, but now he looked like he was straight out of the video game! He quickly turns himself around as best as he could, his eyes as wide as dinner plates. Not only did he look like he was straight out of the game he had been testing for the past month, but he looked almost exactly like the avatar that he had made moments prior!
	“...Oh my god. Oh my god…!? Barry, Barry, you know how to fix this, right?”
	“Trying, trying! ...Oh my god, I think you saved over the file for the avatar itself!”
	“Uh… in English, please? I’m not really savvy with all of this crap, you know. The most I can do is check my email, and even then it’s not something that I do all that often!” With that, the squirrel presses his palms to his hips, a small blush starting to form on his cheeks.
	“Ugh… it means that you ended up saving, uh… whatever happened to you over our file for the default avatar. Now it’s gonna take us a lot more time to figure how this happened to you, you know!”
	“Longer?! How much longer!?”
	“I mean… at least a couple of weeks just to try and make everything like how it was before, and that’s not even trying to figure out how to fix you from all of this!” At that point, the squirrel’s eyes widen before his mouth closes - this wasn’t good. This wasn’t good at all, now was it?
	“I… wait… you… don’t know how to change me back?”
	“That’s what I’ve been trying to say, you know! We have to make the actual model from scratch again! We need to get started as soon as possible!”
	“...Ohhh no.”