Rows and rows of furniture passed around Max as he gazes around the store, pondering on each of them. He’d come with a simple mission, to find a nice little chair for his desk, something wooden, nothing complicated… but in the process he’d gotten lost thrice, searched through almost countless sections without finding anything, and wound up eating some suspicious food-like vegetable balls from a stall that bore the cryptic name “Grönsakbullar” … he felt a little queasy. Tired as well.
 
Must have been hours in here, he thought to himself, starting to feel as though he’d never leave the place. Trot, trot, search, trot trot, search some more, it was getting almost rhythmic to him, endlessly repetitive. Stiffness was spreading through his muscles, he noted, more than likely from all this walking in here without break… or maybe it was the Grönsakbullar. Urgh.
 
He blinks, the steady clip clop of his hooves on the hard tile floor had shifted, an almost metallic tapping sound was added in with them. The stallion stops, glancing around, the sound stopped with him. With a nonchalant shrug he starts anew, but there it was again! Tap, tap, tap, with every step- he hadn’t been shod any time recently, was something stuck in his hoof? A nail? That’d be… perfect.
 
Max stops again to investigate, looking down and yelping in surprise to see it was his very hoof that was the source of the sound! A dense metallic coating had materialized over it, starting to squeeze his hoof tighter and tighter as he watched, not painfully, but creating intense discomfort. Beneath that hoof a bizarre coppery pad had formed as well, the source of the tapping! He stares in disbelief as that tight squeeze crept up his foreleg, straightening it out and compacting it down into what was little more than a metal pipe.
 
With a gasp he jumps back into walking as fast as he could, he had to find somepony to help! Strange magic was never a good thing… Swinging that rigid foreleg like a post he limps along further, wincing as another discomfort reaches his sense, a tightness in his chest and neck followed by another squeezing crush. Turning his eyes down, his whole neck was beginning to flatten out and harden, taking on a wood-like sheen and itching profusely as two brass screws come into being along the base of the board that was now part of him.
 
The stallion wheezes, stiffness affecting his breath and movement as he charged onward seeking help. His right forelimb stuck out stiffly, meeting a similar metallic fate as the left, tapping along as he hobbled forward before the effort and exertion just became too much. He feels the board of his chest flatten out, lungs with it- any hope of calling for help now was lost as he breathlessly tried to make a sound- nothing came out. A spectral force pushes him backward, rearing up onto his hind hooves and wobbling from side to side as his pipe-like arms were pulled out behind him and stuck rigidly in place by the apparition of screws.
 
Max’s eyes grow wider as a hole starts to form in his middle, clear through to the other side, without any pain but a tight squeezing and popping crack as his spine seemed to split to each side. His back went rigid, now merely two split poles holding the board of his chest and head up, slowly tilting to a righter angle with his hips. His knees had knocked together and touched as he stood precariously on his hooves, fusing into one and flattening out with a creak of wood and metal, taking the contours of a wide wooden seat.
 
He tips dangerously backward, balance all but lost as he plops down onto his metallic forelimbs, leaving him sitting back just like a chair. The stallion twitches and squirms as much as his mostly changed body would allow, rapping his hind hooves on the tiles in a last ditch effort to draw attention to his situation. In a moment though, that familiar tightness returned, taking his legs into a more rigid and thinner form, leaving him sitting in the aisle, head all that was unchanged.
 
A sinking sensation grew over him, neck and jaw locked into the board, he could move only his eyes and ears now. With a wince he feels his head receding, sinking back into the board that his chest had become, mouth fusing shut, followed by nostrils and ears, all the features that he had left. Mere minutes later, his eyes were subsumed beneath the grain of wood, leaving him staring out from the backrest of the chair his consciousness now inhabited.
 
Max’s mind reeled and rolled, listening to echoing pops of wood and metal as his body settled, feeling screws tightening firmly all around him. A slight ruffling feeling is felt as a tag materializes, hanging off his side. Once the last straggling sensations had subsided, he was left there on the tiles, mind to himself as it wandered about, thinking of the predicament he was now in and if he’d ever escape.
 
Had he the ability to move he’d have started, coming to a realization….
 
He’d found the chair he was looking for! Just not in the manner he’d forseen.
 
Hopefully somepony would buy him soon, he thought.