Traits

It didn’t matter how hard Conor worked out, he was never able to lose weight or get into shape. As a result, he never saw much of the point or appeal of going to the gym. That is, until he got the device. No one else seemed to be able to see it or notice its effects, but it could swap traits between two people, including himself.

And so he hit up the gym for the first time in a very long time. He immediately started by stealing a guy’s muscles. Next, he tried aiming for another guy, but a woman walked in the way -- Conor ended up with a lot more than he bargained for. Of course, he didn’t have much reason to panic, not yet anyway. Sure, he had turned himself into a woman, but the device ensured no one else would notice or care. He could keep switching traits to himself as much as he wanted. And, heck, he might just enjoy being a woman.

Quota

After being zapped by a strange ray gun in the park that transformed him into a woman, Walt was desperate for answers. After digging, he found the organization responsible and a clause that would allow him to return to normal. He just had to pick up a ray gun of his own and transform the genders of twenty people.

It seemed easy enough. He made a vacation of it, going to a cheap motel is a city a few states away -- he didn’t want to transform anyone he knew accidentally.

After a day, he had already transformed a dozen people. One more day, and he’d be done, but he was starting to have second thoughts. Being a woman was actually sort of fun, and if he stopped transforming people, he’d be able to be like this forever. Then again, transforming others was it’s own kind of fun, could he just give that up?

Over There!

“Give me back my body!” Rich screamed at the top of his lungs to the face that were his just a few moments ago.

“Don’t look at me! Look at that weird guy with the ray gun over there!” Jenna shouted back.

“What are you talking about?”

“Just turn around and look behind you.”

But by the time Rich turned around, the man in the suit with the ray gay had ducked behind a corner. It left Rich in a difficult position; should he trust what Jenna was saying or not?

But as he pondered his choices, Jenna began to run after the man with the ray gun. With few options in front of him, Rich had to then run after Jenna. If there was a weird man, maybe they’d catch him. If there wasn’t, he sure wasn’t going to let this woman get away with his body!

Punished (Part 4)

View Part 1 of Punished.
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View Part 3 of Punished.

Chris just wanted the damned thing to work! Nothing he tried was getting him his body back. He was sure he was going to be stuck like this, and he was more convinced as he watched the strange man bleed out on the floor. He cried.

After a few hours, he wiped the tears. He’d have to figure out just who he was now. The man had said she had been a trespassing in this place before him. Maybe that was a few days; maybe that was years. Either way, there had to be a missing persons report, right?

Thinking about going to a police station after what he just did seemed weird though. He doubted anyway would come visit this spooky mansion soon. He could sit here and cry for a little while longer...and think...

Punished (Part 3)

View Part 1 of Punished.
View Part 2 of Punished.

What was nearby was apparently a wrench. Chris picked it up and swung with all his strength. It didn’t matter how unfamiliar he was with his new body, it was in flight or fight mode. The strange man was knocked out cold. Was he still breathing? Chris wasn’t even sure whether he cared enough to check.

He pried the ray gun out of the man’s bloody hand and looked at him. He wasn’t able to learn how this thing worked, but his body was still inside of it somehow. It couldn’t be as easy as point and shoot, could it?

Chris did a simple test as he aimed it at himself and pulled the trigger. Nothing. He tried aiming at the strange man. Also nothing. He even tried using the finger of the man’s unconscious body to shoot himself. It still didn’t work.

Punished (Part 2)

View Part 1 of Punished.

Despite the fact that it felt like forever, it only took moments for Chris to be transformed. Once it was over, he could move again -- or at least he could try. The changes to his body made it feel so strange. The heels on his feet made it difficult to stand; his hips swayed in odd ways. The man told Chris that he was free to go. Of course, Chris wasn’t about to leave looking like this!

Quickly deciding his new body offered his best hope, he shuffled as quickly as he could over to the doctor. He got real close, leaned in, and gently touched the man’s chest.

After a few minutes of flattery, Chris tried to get him to reveal how the ray worked. The man seemed annoyed, but Chris assured him, “Why would I want my body back already? I haven’t explored this one yet! I’m sure it’s a lot of fun. But I wouldn’t want to suddenly revert back in the middle of that fun.”

“There’s no chance,” The man began to crack a smile, “Your body’s pattern is safely stored in the ray gun. You actually have the body of the person who thought they could sneak in here before you did. Such is the cycle.”

Before the man finished explaining, he jumped on top of Chris. Chris never felt so much panic in his life. He felt weak and helpless, and completely afraid for what would happen next. He reached out for something...anything...

Punished (Part 1)

“I’ll teach you about snooping around here,” The strange man in the lab coat said as Chris tried to get away.

But Chris couldn’t outrun the man’s gun. The thing didn’t fire bullets, and it wasn’t a taser. Instead, a strange blue beam knocked Chris to the ground and began to transform him. His body changed; it became more feminine; his hair grew out; his chest expanded; even his clothes changed.

The whole process felt like forever. It was more than enough time for him to regret exploring this spooky mansion on the edge of town. He thought no one lived there; he thought it was abandoned. Maybe this guy was a squatter. It’s not like that mattered now. It seemed like Chris was praying the price for going where he wasn’t invited. And he supposed he was lucky he wasn’t dead, but instead -- he had been transformed into a woman!

Never Fire a Shot into the Air

When I was young, my dad told me would take me hunting. He warned me never to fire a shot into the air, because you never knew where it was going to land. He even shared a story about a guy who knew who fired his rifle in celebration after bagging a deer only to have the bullet come down at hit him in the head as he left the forest. I don’t know if that story was true, but I probably should’ve taken his advice to heart.

When my friend and I got our hands on this weird body swapping ray, it started out as fun. You’d zap one person with it, zap another, and then the two people would swap bodies. We messed with people for hours.

We were laughing at the whole thing, and then my so-called friend decided to zap me. I wrestled it from his hands, knowing that I would swap with whoever was zapped next. I probably should’ve smashed the thing, or just swapped with him. Instead, I thought it would just be harmless to just shoot it in the air.

I should’ve listened to my dad.

It took about an hour for the shot to come back down to Earth. But I knew immediately when it did. I wasn’t with my friend anymore. I wasn’t in the same city anymore. I wasn’t even a guy anymore. Just as my dad had warned me when hunting, the shot of the body swap ray had come back down to Earth. I’m sure my friend would be amused by my current body. Heck, he was probably amused while talking to her now that she was in my body. She was probably freaking out with what I imagine were lots of “like”s and “gawd”s. But now I needed to figure out how to get back there and sort this whole mess out.

Randomizer Ray

“Do you want to return the Randomizer Ray?” Taylor asked the person standing before him, “The policy was clear when you bought it. We don’t take returns.”

“I don’t need to return it. I need to fix it!” Nick explained, “I want my body back! I didn’t meant to zap myself with it!”

“It’s a Randomizer Ray, not a Reversal Ray! I can tell by the colorization that this one mostly randomizes things related to gender, but it IS completely random. You could zap yourself with it and turn yourself gay, or you might change genders, or become asexual; I’ve even heard it can cause a body swap if two people are close enough. Really, anything remotely related to sex or gender can happen when you get hit by that thing.”

“I know! It was funny when I used it on other people, but I accidentally turned myself into a woman! I want to be me!”

“On other people? I’m not sure that’s ethical, but to solve your problem? Well, you can try to keep zapping yourself, but the odds are astronomically small you’d ever get anything even close to being yourself again. Gender has a LOT of variables.”

“Maybe you can fix it if I zap you!” Nick threatened Taylor, hoping for a different answer.

“Go ahead. You think that would be my first time getting hit by a Randomizer Ray? I used to be a woman named Taylor, now I’m a guy named Taylor. You just move on...”

You'll Never Get Away with This!

“Goddammit, Jen! Could you put that thing away?” A frustrated Harrison said looking back at his own body, “Playing with that weird body swapping gun is what caused us to switch bodies in the first place, and then it broke! Now you said the store you bought it from was somewhere around here?”

“I lied.”

“What? Why would you?”

“Because I’m not Jen at all,” Harrison’s original body said, “My name is Lawrence. I used this body swap gun on your precious girlfriend, and then I used it on you. I put the safety lock on and pretended it was broken. Then I lured you here on the premise of ‘fixing’ it so I can use the other function on this thing.”

“What the hell did you do to Jen?”

“Technically, she’s in my body rotting away in a jail somewhere; though she doesn’t really think of herself as ‘Jen’ anymore. But if it makes you feel better, she‘ll basically exist again soon enough; that’s the fantastic other feature you’re about to know first hand. Once I zap you, you’ll forget who you really were, and you’ll only think of yourself as Jen with her personality and memories. For all intents and purposes, you’ll be her completely -- well, almost completely. You won’t have any memories of the body swapper, of course. And just because you will act like her and think like her, you’ll find that you’ll have a strange gap of knowledge and skills. You probably won’t remember how to do things she does just sort of automatically at this point, something like putting on makeup or picking out just the right outfit. And considering she was you’re girlfriend, I’m guessing you’re straight? You absolutely still will be. Looks like Jenny’s gonna be a lezzy.”

“You’ll never get away with this!”

“You won’t even remember what I’m trying to get away with...”

Zapped!

Ludwig Von Braun cackled with glee as he roamed the streets testing out his new invention. All he had to do was point and shoot to swap the brains of any two subjects. The first pair included a businessman and a homeless person. Another pair included a woman and her dog. And then an Asian couple holding hands.

Niether Jin nor Mei had seen the man. It also took a few minutes to recover after being zapped, so Von Braun was long gone by the time they noticed their new bodies. But what did remain was a long line of body swapped victims. With a few questions, Jin and Mei learned they weren’t the only ones. A few more and they found out about the zapping ray. Along with several others, they set off to find the crazy man swapping everyone’s bodies.

They finally found him sitting ona a curb and crying. It didn’t seem right. The woman now inside of Van Braun’s body explained she was a college student who had been swapped by Van Braun before he snatched the ray and ran off. Tracking this guy down and getting everyone back to normal was going to be tough.

Beef

After a weird incident in the park involving a strange man with a body swapping raygun, Brian found himself in the body of a young Indian woman named Chanda. The police eventually apprehended the strange man and were using the raygun to swap everyone back to normal. There was only one problem for Brian, he had no idea where Chanda or his own body had run off to. Luckily, Chanda’s sister Anika offered to help him look.

The two searched in the park and into the surrounding streets with no luck. They decided to take a break for lunch and stopped by a fast food place.

Brian took a few bites of his hamburger, but soon stopped to look at with disgust, “Ugh, I think they messed up my order. This is gross.”

Anika shrugged, “Mine tastes fine. It’s probably because you have Chanda’s body. Technically beef is against our religion or whatever, so she doesn’t eat it. You’ll probably be vomitting it up in another hour or so.”

“Why wouldn’t you tell me that before I ordered it? Why didn’t you tell me before I ate it?” Brian said with a look of disgust.

“Whatever. She’s the traditionalist, not me. Obviously.” Anika gestured to her own hamburger, “Besides, you better get used to vomitting if you’re stuck in Chanda’s body.”

“Wait...is she bulimic? Am I now bulimic?”

Anika seemed apologetic, “Oh, God, sorry no! And I probably shouldn’t joke like that about eating disorders, but, well, it’s a sister thing...like a thing I joke about with her out of jealousy, you know?”

“So this hamburger isn’t going to make me vomit?”

“Oh, no, it probably will. The beef thing I was totally serious about.”

A Walk in the Park (Part 2)

View A Walk in the Park (Part 1) here.

Jake sooned learned that the chaos was traced back to the kid with the ray gun, which made sense since that was the last thing he could remember before being swapped into a new body. He also soon learned he was a little bit luckier than most. He had been swapped completely; others merely had parts swapped. When he finally found his dog, he wasn’t even sure if it was actually his dog with a woman’s body or a woman with his dog’s face. She seemed to act pretty dog-like, and Jake was soon convinced it was. Of course, it was a little harder for Jake to convince his dog who he really was, considering he now probably appeared to be a strange woman to the dog. Nevertheless, a friendly face and a few dog treats, and Jake was able to put a collar around her and lead her away from the park. Of course, Jake didn’t get very far before realizing heading back to the park to find the kid was probably the best option. Even if he wasn’t able to get himself back to normal, he was absolutely sure his dog wasn’t going to manage being 80% human!

A Walk in the Park (Part 1)

It was gorgeous day out, so Jake decided to take his dog for a walk at the nearby park. He walked by the playground, and there was one kid playing with this weird plastic raygun that looked like it was some vintage 1960s sci-fi prop. He didn’t think anything of it when the kid aimed it at him, but the next thing he know, he was knocked out cold.

When he awoke his head was pounding. He pushed himself up so he could sit against a tree. People seemed to be in an outright panic. They were screaming and running. Once Jake was able to look down at his own body, he realized why. He now had dark skin, he was wearing a pink top with two clear breasts pushing it outward. It was very obvious he now had a body that wasn’t his own, and (to be more specific), he had the body of a woman! He told himself he wasn’t going to panic like others seemed to be doing. He just wanted to find his dog and get out of there.

Chase

Neither Ralph nor Claudia had noticed each other when they were in the park, but it was hard to ignore the crazy man with what looked like a toy ray gun. He was going around aiming that weird toy at everyone, but both Ralph and Claudia were shocked when he actually zapped them with it, resulting in the pair swapping bodies. This was, of course, something neither of them could be oblivious to; they quickly began to run after the odd guy.

Claudia could really feel Ralph’s age as she ran. Things hurt in ways she would never had anticipated. Ralph, o the other hand, had difficulty with Claudia’s clothes. Running in heels was terribly painful, and he was sure the dress would flip up and expose Claudia’s underwear. Still, they had no choice but to try to push through it. There was no other choice but to catch up with that crazy man and confront him.

Saturday (Part 5)

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Eventually, the neighbors returned home with disappointing news. No one had found Eric’s body, the kid, or the body swapping gun. No one heard of any additional swaps either. The old eccentric inventor told everyone he’d start working on a new version right away, though it may take some time to complete. Until then, everyone was stuck. Eric felt particularly awkward to be stuck with Riri Nakamoro’s body. At least she offered to loan his some clothes -- though it seemed she exclusively owned dresses and heeled footwear. He often thought about buying some less feminine stuff, but he kept hoping things would be resolved any day now.

Months passed.

The old man had eventually finished the new version of the body swapping gun. It took a while to figure out who to swap with who. Eric waited, knowing he was going to be one of the last to swap back since his body was still missing. He knew Riri would want her own body back, even though he was kind of getting used to it at this point. He started doing the math as to who he might wind up as in the end...

Saturday (Part 4)

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Several hours passed, and no one seemed to return. Not one of the swapped neighbors nor the kid with the body swapping gun. In fact, the first person to come by Eric’s door was Mr. Nakamoro. He was certainly surprised to see what he thought was hit wife lounging about in Eric’s house wearing a bikini.

He didn’t seem happy.

In fact, Mr. Nakamoro yelled a whole lot in Japanese, and Eric was glad he didn’t understand a word of it. But Eric did try to quickly calm him down to explain what happened. Since Mr. Nakamoro lived in the neighborhood, the idea of body swapping seemed reasonable enough, but why the bikini?

Eric honestly didn’t know either. She had just been wearing it when they swapped, and he hadn’t changed. He also explained how he was getting worried that they weren’t going to find the ray gun to swap everyone back to normal.

Saturday (Part 3)

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Most of the swapped neighbors went out in search of Eric’s body and the body swapping gun, but Eric was a little more hesitant. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to find his body and swap back as soon as possible, he just wasn’t exactly comfortable with the idea of running around in Riri’s body. Instead, he volunteered to stay behind in case the kid came back. Mostly that meant lounging about on the couch and watching television. He didn’t even bother changing out of the bikini. After a few hours, he finally did start to feel more comfortable, but he was also starting to worry that no one seemed to have found his body or the body swapping gun yet.

Saturday (Part 2)

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Even with everything strange that had happened in his neighborhood over the past few months, it was still hard for Eric to accept that he was now inside the body of his neighbor, Riri Nakamoro. He felt the long hair on his head, the weight on his chest, the slenderness of his arms and waist. It was all so weird, but why would she do this to him?

Simply put, she didn’t. As he soon learned, the old inventor across the street had created a body swapping ray gun that had gotten into the hands of one of the kids on the street. While Eric was now in Riri’s body, Riri was in the body of the old man. The old man was in the body of a young, female college student on the block. About a dozen others were swapped in some way. No one could find the kid’s body or Eric’s body that now had the kid inside. Things were going to be messy for a while.

Saturday (Part 1)

At this point, Eric figured he should be used to strange things happening in his neighborhood. An eccentric scientist had moved in last year, and his experiments were often bonkers. One time, he made half the houses on the block disappear. Then there was the time everyone became elderly for an afternoon.

And this Saturday, he noticed his neighbor, Mrs. Nakamoro on his lawn. She seemed to be fooling around and playing some sort of game while wearing a bikini. Eric approached her and she pulled out what looked to be a toy gun. Eric tried to ask serious questions, but it seemed she just wanted to be silly. As he turned to go back inside, he expected the gun to fire some water of bubbles at him. Instead it stung with an odd tingle. He seemed to go lifeless for a moment.

The next thing he knew, he saw his own body running down the street with the toy gun. He was shocked to realize that he now had Mrs. Nakamoro’s body!