ic Body Swap Blues: Lantern Hill (IC)

[Kaede Kimura]

GM

 

Morning of the 30th of November 2024

 

The sun rose over Freedom City, same as it always had. The night prior had seen a small event, magical energies were being channeled to two locations for an unknown purpose. Two teams of heroes investigated, and it seemed the situation was resolved. Yet none of the heroes seemed to remember much of what occurred, or how they got back to their home.

 

Southside, the Chop Shop

Callie was a woman who had spent a great amount of time honing her body to the peak of what humans were capable of. She had learned to listen to her body, understand exactly what it was telling her. And upon her awakening she knew what it was telling her was wrong. Her limbs were heavy, power echoing from muscles like pistons and steel. Her heart thundered like a powerful engine. The bed she lay in felt different than the ones she was accustomed to in her apartment and the Atomic Tower. The smell of engine oil fills her nose. Something was deeply wrong here, and she needs to find out what. She opens her eyes to a small room. The decorations seem those of an enthusiast for cars and motors. More pressingly her body was no longer her own, wiry muscles replaced with bulkier ones more suited for lifting, her skin paler, and scars from battles long ago fought replaced with new, unfamiliar marks.

Southside, Devon's Apartment

Lark was a college student. She was used to old mattresses and poor quality sleeps. Even when staying in Blackstaff Investigations, Christopher was not exactly affluent and his guest room left much to be desired. As such, she could immediately tell that she was not in her normal residence in this comfortable bed. This suspicion was immediately followed up by a sense of weight on her wrist and an odd... absense. A pressure that had been at the back of her eyes had faded, a pressure she had come accustomed to in her time as a werewolf. These oddities initially distracted her from the odd feeling of her body. She had to some degree become familiar with a sense of change since her curse came manifest, but this time was altogether different. Opening her eyes she found herself in the bedroom of an apartment. Nice, simple, and well-appointed. When she looked around the change became clear. She was in the body of a man, with a strange watch-like device on his wrist.

Bayview, Claremont Academy, Gookgak's Room

Michael tended to wake early, a trait he took pride in and had cultivated over the years. But he normally wasn't so... energized first thing in the morning. He felt like someone had hooked a drip of pure caffeine up to him in the middle of the night. Like how some of his more hyperactive friends must feel in their day-to-day. He rolled over to start his morning routine, and immediately felt that things were wrong. His ear pressed into the the cushion, feeling long and pointy, his body felt small and far weaker than he had become accustomed to, and his sheets most certainly were not covered in what felt like coarse sheepskin rugs. Opening his eyes he found himself in what he would recognize as Gookgak's room. And body.

Bayview, Claremont Academy, Carmen's Room

 

Alice woke slowly at first, enjoying an uncharacteristic feeling of support from the matress beneath her. Slowly though her mind muddled through the haze of sleep, picking up little notes of wrongness like a pocket gathers lint. The absense of her flight keeping her up, like a muscle being relaxed when you were used to being tense. The feeling of fur as she shifted in half-asleep state, comfortable, but wrong. The feeling of claws extending from their sheaths as she stretched, satisfying but alien. Her tail brushed against her face as she curled back up, the sensation finally dragging her from the lands of sleep. Things were very wrong. She opened her eyes to a school dormitory, a thing she only recognized from movies and the like. Her new body was fuzzy, with dark fur and graceful limbs. Her ears and tail twitched with agitation as she looked around for answers.

 

The four heroes quickly started to come to the conclusion that they had swapped bodies with other people. But how and why eluded them. The last thing they remembered was responding to a disturbance in the cemetery at Lantern Hill. Perhaps that might hold the answers, but first they need to find out where- and who- they are.

[Poncho]

(Golden Star)

 

Nice morning. Nice morning. He did feel drained, but maybe he had had a big fight? Sometimes his battery ran low. He didn't feel comfortable though. The sheets were too rough. But he felt energetic despite feeling weak. That was unusual for him. 

 

A mirror made him recoil in terror and horror. He did not like that. Googak was difficult to begin with. Was this some of his magic?

 

Had Googak stolen his body!? Surely he wouldn't do that. Right!? He needed help.

 

He needed magic help, and he didn't know any magicians- besides Blackstaff, who was very far away-. But he knew Carmen. Carmen would know what to do. He hoped.

 

He struggled in his goblin body to the window, opened it, and leapt out. Because he forgot he couldn't fly.

 

He fell directly into a bush, and forced his way out of it covered in torn branches and leaves. 

 

"Get off! Get off!" He screamed, barely avoiding a panic attack- and only barely, beacuse he was clearly running on anxiety and fear-. And he took off at a sprint to the girl's dorm. He felt so slow. So sluggish. How could he have so much energy and yet be so weak and scrawny. He felt dexterous, but that was it. 

 

It was Googak who forced his way into the Kord dormitory and made a beeline for Carmen's room, screaming the entire time.

"Carmen! Carmen! I need help! I really need help! Carmen!? Why am I so short and weak!? Googak do you not do any exercise!?" to anyone listening, it definitely seemed like Googak had lost his mind.

[Tiffany Korta]

Madam Raven

 

As a Raven and having helped out at the Atom Academy for a while, Callie was well used to the strange and uncanny, still, this was a first even for her. Springing into action might be tempting but it wouldn't help, instead, she took a few moments to center herself, trying to get a new sense of body she seemed to have suddenly inherited.

 

She carefully got out of bed, finding out how flexible (or not) this body was compared to her own. Things still felt off, bodyparts not telling her what they felt, she'd had more than a few broken bones over the years and it felt a little like that but different. Poetry had never been her strong point, and apart from maybe Zhuangzi there wasn't much to draw on for on the subject.

 

This was an investigation, like she'd done a thousand times, gather evidence, identify who she was and where she was, and then work out how it could be happening. 

[Kaede Kimura]

Shooting Star 

 

Alice fought to keep the panic she was feeling down, looking around for some method of verifying what she was seeing. Upon spotting the phone next to the bed she quickly seized it and turned it to selfie mode, grateful that such functions could be activated from the lock screen.

 

It turns out confirming what was happening didn't generally make it feel better. Alice tried to focus on calming her thundering heart for several seconds, but it only kept jackhammering harder. She had to figure this out, who she might have been turned into. Her vision fuzzed at the edges, why couldn't she stop panicking and focus?

 

Her new body sucked in a breath of air that had been needed several long seconds ago without Alice's input, a harsh reminder that if she was in someone else's body she needed to breathe. She cringed internally as she manually sucked in air, the reflex having apparently atrophied in the time she had spent only needing to inhale to speak. Her breath sounded loud in her sensitive ears. But at least her heart was starting to calm.

 

The newly feline girl stood after a few moments, looking for any sign of identity. Fortunately her search turned up a student ID, revealing that her temporary new body was Carmen Alvarez Arrache. A student at Claremont Academy. 

 

And that most likely the shrieking and pleading for help outside the door was most likely for 'her'. Something which she would have to field without risking messing up poor Carmen's life. Quickly she got dressed, the long skirts and such might not be her personal style, but again she wanted to have a minimal impact on this girl.

 

Timidly she opened the door to a small goblin-like creature in his underwear panicking. She could handle this. She was Shooting Star, she could handle anything.

 

"Everything alright little guy?"

 

Nailed it. 

[Poncho]

(Golden Star)

 

"...Carmen?" he frowned. The little Goblin creature considered this.

 

"...Carmen, Googak has apparently taken my body. Or maybe someone else did it near my house. You understand what could happen if Googak has my powers and is just wandering around, right? He could tear this whole place down, especially if Parker or Lawrence aren't around. I mean, some of the other students might be able to stop him, especially if he's still figuring stuff out, but you know that'd be bad, right? What with how I have cold control powers and can shoot beams of ice out of my hands and stuff. It'd be like Nuclear Winter." he said.

"I really need your help getting back to Lantern Hill."

[Spacefurry]

Lark (Southside, Devon's Apartment)

 

Lark slowly came to. Almost immediately something felt… off. She couldn’t put a finger on it at first but as she became more aware of her surroundings things started to stand out.

 

Something was missing, the room didn’t smell like anyplace she could remember.

 

Wait… now that she was trying, she could barely smell anything.

Lark wrinkled her nose, and even that felt wrong. She lifted a hand to rub her face and an odd weight was there on her wrist.

 

Blinking at it she turned her wrist to look at the strange… watch?

Was it a cursed item?

Lark tried to remember what she had been doing before she woke up. Had she been with her boss on a job? No, she had been at the office late studying.

Something else was wrong she thought as she looked around the room. Everything was dull and washed out.

There was more wrong though and it slowly dawned on Lark. It wasn’t there.

The hunger. The pressure. The wild was missing.

She didn’t feel the wolf calling in her mind.

The revelation had her standing bolt up staring at the watch thing. Was this thing responsible for this? As she squinted at it she noticed something strange.

Her arm didn’t look right. Lark’s brow furrowed in confusion as her eyes slid up her arm to her chest. Her jaw fell open as she took in the wholly different body responding to her actions.

“What in the hell?”

An unknown voice escaped her lips and she quickly covered her mouth. Her eyes darted around the room in search of a mirror. Finding one she stared at the stranger reflected back at her…

 

“F*CK!”