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In retrospect, it was probably McQueen’s fault for trusting and ingesting anything that Gold Ship handed to her willingly.
“Huh.” She heard Gold Ship hum from somewhere behind her, sounding confused. “So that’s what it does.”
Bringing her hand up to feel at the strange weight on her head, McQueen paused when her fingers came into contact with something that felt suspiciously like the headgear Gold Ship usually wore. “Why is your-“ She turned around, poised to argue with Gold Ship, and instead froze, horrified. “Why do you look like me?!”
Gold Ship ignored her question, looking down at her (McQueen’s) shoes with a frown, then back up at McQueen (herself). “You’re really small, Mac-chan.”
McQueen let out a whimper, ignoring how gravely it sounded coming out of unfamiliar vocal cords, and covered her face with her hands. “Goddess, this is a nightmare.”
This was not how her day was supposed to go. Goddess, she had just wanted to go get lunch and train; was that too much to ask for?
“Heh, I was right. Your skirt is shorter than mine.” Gold Ship, seemingly unbothered by the small, minuscule fact that they’d quite literally switched bodies, commented gleefully, doing a twirl. “How scandalous.”
“What did you give me?” McQueen interrupted, grabbing Gold Ship’s shoulder and gesturing towards the teacup that was still half full. “I’m serious, Gold Ship, I have a race next week, I need to train in my body.”
Gold Ship lolled her head back, eyes narrowed in thought. “Uuuh, dunno. I just thought it looked funny.”
Oh yes, McQueen was going to murder her.
She could barely believe what was happening anyway. How on earth was any of this real? Switching bodies? What sick kind of magic was this? And Goddess help her if this was somehow permanent.
McQueen looked down at herself, letting her larger-than-normal hand drag itself over the plane of her stomach. Just as a way to make sure that this was real, she told herself, but her intentions quickly shifted.
Her abdomen felt as solid as it looked, and proved the thoughts that she had every time she looked at Gold Ship’s physique true. She did indeed have abs, defined and hard ones at that. A part of her couldn’t help but scoff despite the other part of her that was internally wishing that she could have this same experience, but with her own hands. Of course Gold Ship would somehow manage to remain this built when doing the absolute bare minimum when it came to training. Hell, McQueen wasn’t even sure she’d seen Gold Ship show up to training at all that month.
She was just about to reach up to feel her biceps next when her voice, well, Gold Ship’s now, she supposed, spoke up.
“Maybe Tachyon can help?”
McQueen physically recoiled. The last thing she needed now was to become that Uma’s guinea pig. Goddess knows what that would entail anyway.
“How would she help?” McQueen muttered, dropping her hand before Gold Ship could notice that she had essentially been fondling her body.
Gesturing behind herself, Gold Ship shrugged. “I stole the stuff from her so she’d probably know.”
Ah. Yes, that would explain it.
McQueen crossed her arms, awkwardly uncrossing them immediately after when the weight felt unfamiliar against her chest. “Are you sure she’ll help? I’m afraid she may just use us as guinea pigs or something similar.”
Gold Ship laughed. “I hope so, it would be so fun.” Upon seeing McQueen’s frown, she grinned, giving McQueen a wide-eyed look that was completely alien on her face. “Or, we can just run each other's races next week!”
“...We’re going to Tachyon’s dorm right now.”
McQueen decided that she did not, in fact, enjoy the experience of walking with legs that were clearly much longer than her arms. Come to think of it, the entire ordeal was making her wonder how on earth Gold Ship even managed to run her races, let alone win them without stumbling over her own limbs.
For her part, Gold Ship didn’t seem to have much trouble maneuvering through Tracen’s halls in McQueen’s body; if anything, she seemed to be taking the opportunity to make it do things that McQueen certainly would never do of her own accord. McQueen would love for her to stop, but as it was, it was surprisingly hard to get Gold Ship to stop skipping down the hallway when McQueen still wasn’t even sure how to properly put one foot in front of the other without feeling like she was seconds away from stumbling.
Somehow, they made it to Tachyon’s dorm without any major roadblocks, aside from the few stares they had gotten on their way there solely because Gold Ship was apparently incapable of walking normally.
She had hoped that after that, there would be no more issues, but that thought was quickly washed away when McQueen went to knock on the door and, upon opening it, realized that the figure in front of her was definitely not Tachyon.
“Oh, hey?” Jungle Pocket greeted awkwardly, glancing between Gold Ship and McQueen as if their general presence was confusing her. “Did you two need something?”
McQueen turned to Gold Ship, surprised to find that the usually taller Uma was already looking right at her expectantly. Sighing, McQueen turned back to face Pokke and nodded. “Yes, is Tachyon in there, by any chance?”
“Uh…” The clear confusion on Pokke’s face was hard to miss, but regardless, she heeded McQueen’s question, tilting her head and holding a finger up as she craned her neck back to yell. “Tachyon! Two of the fruit brigade guys are here to see you.”
“The what brigade?” McQueen exclaimed, her affronted tone sounding nearly alien coming out of Gold Ship’s vocal cords.
Pokke at least had the presence of mind to whirl around and frown at McQueen, squinting as if she’d just grown a second head. Her eyes then drifted towards Gold Ship, and McQueen had to watch on in horror as Gold Ship, still very much in McQueen’s body, began making vaguely embarrassing expressions, seemingly testing how they felt on the new face she now had, and it honestly took everything in McQueen not to jump her right then and there.
“Hey, dude,” Pokke yelled again, this time with more urgency bleeding into her voice as she finally noticed that something was off. “Hurry the fuck up, things are getting weird.”
“I can hear you just fine, Pokke-kun.” Came Tachyon’s surprisingly airy response, followed only by a white sleeve pulling the back curtains to the side to properly reveal herself to the newcomers in her dorm room.
Tachyon wore her usual strange smile, stepping forward until she was able to lean her head over Pokke’s shoulder with a hum. “Is something the matter? It’s not every day that we see a Mejiro at our door after all.”
McQueen would argue that a Mejiro would never find themselves at Tachyon’s door at all, actually, but now didn’t seem like the right time to throw around half-hearted digs, considering Tachyon hadn’t actually done anything wrong. Yet.
“Yes,” McQueen uttered, folding her hands in front of her in a way that was decidedly very unlike Gold Ship, which probably explained the look of horror she got from Pokke, along with the slight eyebrow raise Tachyon gave her. “We, um, may have run into a problem of a considerable magnitude, and we were hoping you could help us.”
The silence that followed could have suffocated all four of them, it seemed.
Jungle Pocket continued staring at them, eyes flitting between McQueen and Gold Ship, as if something there was only just managing to escape her notice. Tachyon, for her part, kept her eyes trained on McQueen, and she had to admit that she did not like being stared at as if she were some specimen in a lab.
Honestly, she had no idea how Jungle Pocket or Manhattan Cafe handled it.
McQueen practically felt like a weight had been lifted off her when Tachyon turned her gaze away from her in favor of looking at Jungle Pocket. “Pokke-kun.” Tachyon said, turning a wistful smile towards her friend? McQueen still wasn’t sure what they were to each other. “Could you go get my clipboard? I left it on my bed.”
Despite making a grand show of rolling her eyes and scoffing, Pokke didn’t verbally complain as she turned on her heel and walked back into the dorm.
McQueen could hear Gold Ship snickering behind her, and unfortunately, a stern look did nothing to quiet her.
“Which one of my experiments did you take, Gold Ship-san?"
That question was apparently enough to get Gold Ship to stop laughing, and to McQueen’s annoyance, her answer came just as promptly, too. “Eh, I don’t know. One of the green ones? It had weird red stuff in it.” Gold Ship shrugged, and only then did McQueen notice that Tachyon didn’t seem nearly as put off by the fact that Gold Ship’s answer had come from McQueen’s body.
“Ah.” Tachyon hummed to herself. “I see. How unfortunate.”
McQueen’s eyes widened. “Unfortunate?”
Tachyon waved her concern off. “It’s nothing dire, it just means I’ll have to start from point zero and toss the rest of that batch away, which is rather unfortunate.” She glanced over her shoulder towards the general area where Jungle Pocket was still riffling around. She smirked, holding a sleeve up against her mouth as she cocked her head. “For all her bravado, she’s extraordinarily easy to tame, don’t you think?”
McQueen blinked, refusing to acknowledge the question that, in her mind, had absolutely nothing to do with her. Meanwhile, Gold Ship snorted, the sound coming out slightly more nasally than usual. “We should revoke the Jungle from her name.”
“Oh no.” Tachyon hummed, more than happy that Gold Ship seemed to be willing to humor her. “It does suit her quite well still.”
And right on cue, Pokke returned with a clipboard in hand. She passed it over to Tachyon, mumbling something under her breath, though the frown on her face quickly died down when Tachyon thanked her.
Yeah, McQueen wasn’t going to unpack whatever that was, especially not when Gold Ship looked to be having a field day with the interactions they were witnessing.
Tachyon began flipping through her clipboard, going through nearly half the sheets before she landed on whatever she had been looking for.
She turned it towards Gold Ship, inquiring. “Was it this one, Gold Ship-san?”
Gold Ship nodded, laughing under her breath when Pokke’s eyes comically widened. “Yep, that’s the one doc.”
“Fascinating.” Tachyon hummed to herself, a grin tugging at the corner of her mouth. “I must recreate this. Tell me, would you let me take a blood sample from each of you? It’ll be quick-”
“We came here so that you could switch us back.” McQueen interrupted, seeing no point in beating around the bush even if Jungle Pocket was looking more and more concerned by the second. “Can you do that?”
Tachyon sighed in disappointment. “Yes, yes, I can do that. So that’s a no on the blood sample?”
“Yes.”
“Eh, I’ll do it.”
McQueen looked at Gold Ship as if she’d just made the unanimous decision to sign herself into the army. “What?” She hissed. “You’re in my body, and I’m not giving anyone consent to take my blood!”
“Hey, wow, why is she talking like that?” Pokke finally spoke up, pointing at McQueen. “She didn’t use to talk like that, right?”
Tachyon chuckled, reaching a hand out to pet Pokke’s hair. “You are actually quite slow for being so fast, hm?”
Pokke growled, crossing her arms defiantly. “Just tell me what the fuck is going on, cause this shit is getting weird.”
“Okay, you ever watch Freaky Friday?” Was Gold Ship’s genius next choice of words, and oh, how McQueen wished it were legal to throttle people because she was seconds away from doing so just to get Gold Ship to zip it. “Basically, that happened to me and Mac-chan.”
“Ooooh.” Somehow, by some miraculous feat, Jungle Pocket nodded as if that made sense. She pointed between the two of them. “So your minds just switched? Huh.”
“Glad we’re all on the same page.” Tachyon interrupted, looking weirdly impatient. “Now, I don’t know how this happened, considering the initial use of the serum-”
“What was it supposed to do?” McQueen let herself ask, deciding to indulge in that one curiosity for the time being.
“It was a prototype,” Tachyon explained, flipping through her notes. “A mixture I was making to allow Uma’s to have children with each other. I do believe I was going to make Bucket over here try it for me first, but it seems you two have infringed on those plans-“
“I’m sorry, what?” McQueen cut in, eyes wide in terror. “Are we-What do you mean? Is one of us pregnant now?”
Tachyon looked up, shaking her head in something that almost looked like disappointment. “Unfortunately, no. Not if this was the result. Though, could one of you tell me how exactly you ingested the serum? The more details, the better.”
McQueen turned a stern look towards Gold Ship, one that the latter met eagerly with a grin. “Sure thing.” She said, slouching forward. “Y’see, I let Mac-mac drink the thing first, then I drank from it. Like I put the stuff in her tea or whatever. Then she drank it, and I thought 'heck, why not test drive one of my own pranks?' and had some of the tea too, so yeah, that’s pretty much what happened.”
Despite the two sets of eyes looking at Gold Ship in pure disbelief, Tachyon only nodded sagely, as if anything that had been said made sense. “I see, so the problem stemmed from two people ingesting it with the other's biological residue.” She mused to herself. “Well, based on that, you don’t need to worry. You should only be in each other's bodies for another day or two, then you’ll switch back.”
Pokke raised a brow, crossing her arms boredly. “This sounds more like some woo woo shit than science.”
“It is science, Bucket-kun,” Tachyon replied, putting unnecessary emphasis on her chosen insult. “But regardless, you two can go, though do keep me updated if anything else happens-“
“Oh Goddess, leave them alone, Tachy. This is your fault anyway.”
“And how, pray tell, is this my fault, Bucket-kun?”
“Wh-You’re the one who made that stupid potion? Of course, it’s your fault! I don’t even know why you keep making them.”
“Ah ah ah, I remember you enjoying a few of my experiments, no? What was the last one you indulged in again? A stamina enhancer?”
“…Okay, but that was in a controlled environment.”
“Oh? So you do listen to my ‘science talks’ as you so eloquently put it earlier.”
“What the fuck are you on about-“
McQueen dragged Gold Ship out of the room before they had to stand by and continue witnessing whatever seemed to be playing out between the two upperclassmen. Though notably, Gold Ship seemed perfectly fine acting as the sole audience member to that, and really, the only reason McQueen was able to drag her out in the first place was probably because she was in Gold Ship’s body at the moment.
A small but needed mercy, she supposed
Somehow, Gold Ship also managed to hold in any ridiculous comment until after they had put an ample amount of space between themselves and their upperclassmen.
Not that it made her next comment any easier to process.
“D’you think that’s how they, like, do foreplay?”
McQueen let go of Gold Ship’s hand, allowing herself a moment to inhale a deep breath before exhaling it all in one go and asking. “What?”
Gold Ship shrugged, lacing her fingers behind her head as she walked, and Goddess, was it weird to see her body in that position. “I mean, they obviously have a thing. And their whole dynamic is kinda, ya know. Or maybe that’s just the whole mad scientist and guinea pig thing. Wait, d’you think they roleplay?”
McQueen didn’t bother dignifying that question with an answer; instead, she resumed her walk down the hall, all while Gold Ship audibly tried to keep up.
And perhaps a more spiteful part of McQueen laughed at knowing that, finally, Gold Ship was finding out what it was like to have to keep up with someone’s strides. Though that didn’t do much to quell the reality of the situation they were both in.
They were still in each other’s bodies and would have to be for a day or two until it wore off if Tachyon’s words were to be trusted.
Two days. She still had to survive this ordeal for another two days.
Goddess, what had she done to deserve this?
Despite McQueen’s mounting frustration with their predicament, Gold Ship could not be happier, honestly.
Sure, not having access to her usual height advantage was a little annoying, but as it was, Gold Ship had no problems skipping around campus in McQueen’s body. Besides, she only had to wait for two days; how bad could that possibly be?
Very, according to McQueen.
Regardless, Gold Ship spent most of the first day of their unforeseen transformation following after McQueen, which the latter didn’t have any complaints about, either, much to Gold Ship’s glee.
And despite her initial disregard for the idea of them running each other's races, McQueen did end up agreeing to running a few laps around the track with Gold Ship. The activity did involve more near injuries than necessary, considering McQueen was still getting used to running with Gold Ship’s longer legs, but based on the smile she wore in the locker rooms, Gold Ship had to assume that the run had satisfied something in McQueen.
By the end of the second day, Gold Ship had expected McQueen to pull away from her. Whether that be the fault of reality catching up to her, or McQueen reminding herself that Gold Ship was at fault for their current predicament…Well, Gold Ship would argue that it wasn’t completely her fault. Tachyon should just learn to label her potions better.
But regardless, considering that was supposed to be their last day in each other's bodies, Gold Ship thought that McQueen would take that as an opportunity to start her usual avoidance shtick that she reserved for whenever Gold Ship did something that particularly irked her.
Evidently, nothing of the sort happened. Quite the opposite, actually.
McQueen, for some reason or another, seemed to have decided that sticking to Gold Ship like glue for the remainder of their time in the other's body, including deciding to spend the night in her dorm, was the right thing to do. And while Gold Ship had no idea why McQueen had made that decision, she couldn’t find it in herself to be upset. Getting to spend more time with McQueen was always a win in her book, especially if she was willing to turn the proximity up to ten.
Oh, how lucky Gold Ship was that she was alone in her dorm so she could very easily accommodate another person if she so wished. Perks of having a roommate who spent most of her time camping and going wherever the wind took her, rather than staying on campus.
Well then again, that did also mean that Stay Gold could show up at any time, but Gold Ship trusted that her roommate (and kind of father figure?) wouldn’t show up that day, or night.
The only problem, really, was that McQueen seemed intent on taking the second bed in the dorm rather than sleeping in Gold Ship’s bed, which by all accounts was very rude considering she was literally in Gold Ship’s body already.
“Come on, McQueen, Stego could show up any minute, you can’t just take his bed.”
McQueen huffed, fluffing out the singular pillow on the bed parallel to Gold Ship. “Oh please, she hasn’t shown up to campus in a month, I doubt tonight’s the night that she’ll finally barge in to reclaim this.”
Gold Ship pouted, pressing her palms against the mattress as she leaned back. “But Mackie.” She whined, deciding to use one of her trump cards. “It gets so cold at night, and I’m not in my strong and robust body anymore; I need someone to keep me warm.”
“I-” McQueen balked, flushing a shade of red that Gold Ship was sure would look much cuter on her own body. “Are you calling me frail?”
“I mean.” Gold Ship looked down at herself, squishing the meat of her thigh between her fingers. “You are really soft, Mac-chan.”
“Don’t touch me like that!”
Gold Ship laughed, cocking her head teasingly. “Huh? But it’s my body now, isn’t it?”
“...If I sleep in your bed, will you stop it?”
And that was how Gold Ship ended up in her current predicament, which involved being curled up in her own bed while McQueen somehow found a way to lay completely still next to her, clearly doing everything in her power to keep a healthy amount of space between herself and Gold Ship.
Not that it lasted long, because the second the aforementioned cold Gold Ship had been talking about hit, she heard McQueen grumble some words of annoyance before pressing herself closer to Gold Ship’s back in search of some warmth.
It seemed, despite their body switch, that they’d still retained their original body temperature, because as it was, Gold Ship wasn’t cold at all.
She silently noted that down as something that she should probably tell Tachyon, maybe in exchange for another less world-shifting potion to give to McQueen. But she could iron out the details tomorrow, when she wasn’t busy fully enjoying the feeling of McQueen burrowing her face against the back of her neck.
A part of Gold Ship was still aptly aware that it was her own body that was curled around her, but strangely, it didn’t take much for that touch to register as McQueen’s. And sure, the arms around her waist and the slow breaths against her neck were coming from her body, but it was McQueen. And that made all the difference.
So much so that Gold Ship barely needed any more time to be able to comfortably relax, with the soft sound of McQueen’s breathing lulling her to sleep.
The next time she opened her eyes, Gold Ship truly could not have been more disoriented.
It was dark still; that was the first thing Gold Ship registered. And upon blinking her eyes a few times, she quickly noticed that her face seemed to be pressed against a soft head of hair.
Wrinkling her nose, she threw a quick glance towards the adjacent bed, noticing that yes, Stay Gold hadn’t returned while she’d been asleep, so that was one worry solved.
She next became aware of the weight against her chest, enough to open her eyes properly and try to make out something in the dark. And upon looking down, Gold Ship easily spotted McQueen lying on top of her.
Ah, so the potion thing must have worn off. That was good. And strangely, Gold Ship found a fair bit of comfort in finally being able to look at McQueen’s face with her own two eyes.
Her hold around McQueen’s waist tightened slightly, enough for said Uma to squirm further in her arms and bury her face against the crook of Gold Ship’s neck. A move that had Gold Ship grinning gleefully, nuzzling her own nose against the side of McQueen’s head.
Gold Ship smiled, shutting her eyes with a contented sigh as she focused on savoring that moment for as long as it lasted.
Though she did think to herself that she would definitely have to come up with some extravagant apology to make up for this entire debacle, if only to increase the chances of something like this happening again.
It was the principle of things, after all.