World War B(ody) SW(ap)

Disguise Self

Elowen had been skeptical in letting Trent join the party. Sure, his skills of lock picking and sleight of hand were useful, but having a trickster rogue around was becoming quite frustrating. Today, it seemed he used his limited magic to swap their bodies, and Elowen was furious.

“It’s not an actual swap,” Trent explained as he leaned up against a wall, “It’s more like we’re just disguised as each other for a bit -- just until a long rest.”

“Then let’s set up camp,” Elowen insisted.

“We just woke up! It’s in the middle of the day! Just relax and enjoy it.”

“It’s a waste of your limited magic that we could use in combat.”

“Then will stay close to the city today. What could possibly go wrong?”

Stop Joking

“Okay, these things are weird.” Jeff said he nervously touched the arm of his wife’s body that he was presently swapped with, “If we take them off, will we switch back to our own bodies?”

“Oh, no. It’ll cause permanent brain damage, and we’ll be stuck like this forever,” Linda replied.

“WHAT!?”

Linda laughed before adding, “I’m kidding! I’m kidding! No, if we take them off, we’ll be fine. We’ll still be swapped, but we’ll be fine. We just have to reactivate them to switch back.”

“Well, let’s do that.”

“Oh, come on, not yet! I want to stay like this for a week.”

“This isn’t funny., Linda Stop joking.”

“I’m serious.”

Separate Attempts

Brian though his neighbor Esther looked good for her age, considering she was in her 60s. He just wished he wasn’t the one currently inhabiting her body due to the swap between them.

Luckily, they both seemed fairly committed to swapping back. And inside Esther’s home studio, they both set about their own methods for doing so. Brian had gathered a bunch of wires and parts on the table. He knew enough about these things; he was sure he could build some sort of device to get them back to normal.

But progress was slow as he turned to look at Esther in the corner in his body. She was meditating in his 25 year old mal body. He thought it looked silly, and he was even more skeptical that a spiritual hippie solution was the way to go here, but at least she was trying something -- though she was no closer to getting them swapped back than he was.

Perfect Form

My form was still great. I was prepping for a perfect spiral, and then the thing just sort of floundered and wobbled for a short distance in the air before rolling to the ground. I couldn’t figure out what I was doing wrong.

Before the Great Shift, I could probably toss a football a respectable thirty yards, but this body? I’d be lucky to get it three feet.

I get that I swapped bodies with a woman. She has muscle than I did; her arms felt a little bit like noodles sometimes; but I still shouldn’t be this bad, especially when still doing everything else right.

There was nothing else I could do except for picking the ball back up and trying again. And again. And again.