A couple of hours later, Jon entered his room again and closed the door. He hopped across the room and climbed onto his bed. A few moments of rolling around and he found a comfortable position, slightly on his side to allow room for his tail. Crossing his arms behind his head on the pillow, he lay and stared at the ceiling, thinking.
Supper had been rather odd. He had wondered how he would manage to sit down at the table, his new lower body and tail making a normal chair pretty much impossible to use. Surprised to find a strange construction in the dining room, it had taken some thought before he had realised it was a chair designed for a kangaroo to use. The seat was oddly shaped and had a slot in it which extended up the back for a short distance. He'd realised this was for his tail and after a few moments experimentation figured out how to get the new appendage through it. Leaning back he'd found the seat pretty comfortable.
Every else in the family had treated his newly marsupial condition as completely normal, and after eating and talking for a while he'd pretty much forgotten about it for the time being. It had come suddenly back to his attention when he'd stood up after the meal and taken his chair with him, his tail stuck in the slot. His mother had laughed gently at him and helped him untangle himself from the chair.
After supper he'd chatted with his family for a while, trying to find out what they thought about his half-kangaroo condition without seeming too curious. It hadn't bourne much fruit, though, as it became apparent as no-one had any idea at all that a few hours before he'd been a normal human in every way. After a while he'd given up, and ended up playing a game of scrabble with the rest of them. He'd lost.
Dropping his gaze to his body, he pulled his left hand out from under his head and softly stroked the fur covering his lower chest and stomach, ending up feeling his pouch entrance. It was still in some ways the oddest part of the change, although he couldn't quite figure out why he felt like that. 'You'd think that suddenly having a huge tail would be weirder', he thought to himself, raising his gaze slightly and looking at the end of the aforementioned appendage. He twitched the tip of it from side to side for a moment. The feeling was very strange but he had no trouble with controlling the tail at all.
'The changes obviously go deeper than the obvious", he thought, 'it's rewired my brain to handle the new parts.' Jon wasn't sure how he felt about that. He didn't like thinking that such a deep and essential part of his identity had been altered, but at least this way he was able to function. He couldn't identify any mental changes, he felt pretty much normal aside from the physical differences, but the whole experience was surreal.
Returning his attention to his pouch, which his left hand was still fiddling with, he reached down with the other hand and and gently pulled the opening wider. Reaching inside with one hand, he suddenly realised it was much deeper and wider than it had been before the last change. It now extended down between his legs, which were mounted more on the sides of his lower body than before. His genitalia had moved back some distance to allow for the changes, and were hidden by the fur. The pouch was the correct size for a female kangaroo of his height, which from biology class he realised was actually considerably larger than the real animal would be. The new animal parts were proportional to his original body dimensions. This was actually a good thing, he thought, as otherwise he would probably have a lot of problems.
After a few minutes of playing with it he suddenly realised that pouch had more than just skin and fur to it's construction. There were muscles and tendons there as well. It took him some experimentation but he eventually discovered how to pull the opening closed or allow it to gape open, and he found he could tighten the pouch structure itself quite a bit, or allow it to relax until it became loose and floppy.
There was sufficient room in the new built-in pocket to hold a considerably larger payload than before, probably as much room as a large backpack could hold. He couldn't decide whether this was good or not, not having ever though about what size pouch he'd want if he ever grew one! Suddenly curious, he rolled off the bed onto his feet, and grabbed one of his pillows. Opening the pouch he carefully stuffed the pillow inside, pushing it down as far as it would go. It disappeared inside, and he did the same thing with the other pillow. This also fitted easily, although his pouch was now bulging down between his legs in a strange way. There was still a lot of stretch left in the thing, and although it felt really strange it wasn't uncomfortable at all.
He hopped over to the mirror on the back of his closet door and looked at his reflection, smiling at the result. Having a sudden thought, he moved back to the door to his room and locked it. Even if his family were under the impression that he'd always been a kangaroo hybrid, he didn't really want anyone to see him experimenting like this. It was a little embarrassing. Returning to the mirror he stared at the reflection of his pouch hanging low between his legs. When he relaxed into a position that left his huge feet flat on the floor and his tail supporting him, his pouch nearly touched the carpet.
Opening the closet, he leaned in and retrieved a stack of clean clothes. He realised they were all shirts of one sort or another, obviously his change left him no longer requiring anything for his lower body. He did notice some odd looking shoes in the back of the closet though, and resolved to investigate later.
Folding the shirts tightly as he went, he began stuffing them into his pouch on top of the pillows. They all fitted, and he moved on to spare sheets. In the end he had pretty much emptied the closet of soft items, and his pouch was stuffed to the point it now firmly rested on the floor. It bulged out in front of his legs by more than a foot, and still had a little space left. He added his basketball on top, and shut the closet door to look at his reflection.
There had to be at least thirty pounds of load in the pouch, but he didn't have any problems hopping slowly around the room. Every time he jumped his pouch wobbled around a bit, an obvious and quite different feeling to before. Climbing onto the bed he lay down like before, and looked down the length of his body to where the pouch rose in a furry bulge. "Weird" he said out loud, shaking his head in amazement.
Getting up he emptied his pouch, putting the clothing back into the closet. He had some trouble with the last pillow, which was at the bottom of his pouch packed in tightly. He had to pull quite firmly with both hands inside it past the elbows to remove the thing.
He wondered how much weight he could carry in his new addition. Thinking of a way to test this, he decided he had no intention of filling it with bricks or anything sharp. A sudden idea struck him and he rummaged through the drawers of his desk until he came up with a plastic back containing several very large balloons. They were about three foot sphere when inflated, made of quite thick rubber, and were left over from a school project on weather balloons. Unlocking the bedroom door he hopped down the hallway to the bathroom, went in, and locked that door in turn. Getting into the large shower cubicle, which he abruptly realised was considerably larger than before, he pulled the sliding glass door across behind himself.
A few moments fiddling had the shower head unscrewed from the hose, and one of the balloons stretched across the end of the hose itself. He pushed the balloon down to the bottom of his pouch and slowly turned the water on, quickly adjusting the temperature when the cold rush made him jump and squawk in surprise. The inside of the pouch was very sensitive to cold, he found.
The balloon slowly filled up, stretching his pouch skin gradually. He relaxed it as much as he could to allow the balloon to fill it completely. After several minutes the weight of water must have exceeded 80 pounds, and he found he couldn't stand erect very easily. A few more moments and he decided the weight was as much as he could handle. There was still some room left in the pouch, but a couple of cubic feet of water weighs an awful lot.
Jon turned the taps off, and carefully pulled the neck of the balloon up to where he could get at it. Pinching it off, he removed it from the hose and quickly tied a knot in it, then let go. It disappeared into his pouch, and he leaned back on his tail as much as he could. The pouch was now pressing firmly against the bottom of the shower and he could feel the pattern of the anti-slip plastic on it. Slapping the skin with one hand he watched fascinated as it rippled and wobbled. Doing some quick math, he worked out that there must be over a hundred and twenty pounds of water in there.
Contracting the pouch muscles he could push the water higher along his abdomen as the balloon changed shape. Trying to hop out of the shower he found he could only just stand up with this amount of extra weight. Remembering a nature documentary he'd seen once that had featured kangaroos, he leaned forwards and placed his hands on the bathroom floor, then pressed down hard with his tail and succeeded in lifting his legs from the ground. He swung them forward over the shallow lip surrounding the shower cubical, and moved his hands again.
Proceeding in this manner, he moved the few feet to the floor-length mirror on the wall and stood up, his tail the only thing allowing him to maintain an upright posture with such a load. He inspected his odd body with interest. "Very weird", he said to himself.
Returning to the shower, he tried to remove the balloon, unsuccessfully. Slapping his forehead at his own stupidity, he realised there was no way he'd be able to get that weight out. 'Oh fuck', he thought. 'Now what do I do?' Eventually, he struggled back to the sink and retrieved the tweezers his sister used to thin her eyebrows, returned to the shower cubicle, and squatted down so his pouch rested on the ground. Sliding the door shut once more, he opened the pouch and reached down inside with the tweezers. Jabbing the balloon, he winced as it popped with a muffled thud and slapped the inside of his pouch with the recoil. A gush of water shot out of his pouch and sprayed him in the face. "Ack" he spat in surprise.
Contracting his pouch as much as he could, he squeezed the bulk of the water out. Feeling around inside he removed the burst balloon, then reassembled the shower and used it for the correct purpose. He shampooed his fur, which required a considerable amount of time to rinse, and washed out his pouch which produced a very strange and quite pleasant sensation.
Jon found he had to lean forward and nearly rest his shoulders on the ground, while relaxing his pouch opening, to allow all the water to escape. He was somewhat surprised how easy such a position was to attain and became aware that his new body was more flexible than it had been before. He was also a little taken aback at how easily he was adapting to this new shape.
Drying off required two large towels. The rack of them above the toilet seemed considerably more full than before, yet another adaption the magic of the stone had managed.
Eventually, shower and pouch experimention done, he hopped back to his room.
