'Cause I've learned to slam on the brake, before I even turn the key

Nick could tell that something was different about Morgana when she returned from the bathroom. He couldn’t tell quite what that difference was, but he knew that something had changed. And it was a good kind of change. The sort of change that made him relax when he saw her shy little smile, assuaging his fears that something bad had happened.

After all, she’d been in the bathroom for a while. He’d been half afraid that today had been too much for her and that she’d just run off and abandoned their date, and half afraid that she really had gone to the bathroom, and was puking all that taffy she’d eaten into the toilet bowl.

He was glad that, as far as he could tell, neither of those things were the case.

“I’m sorry I kept you waiting so long,” Morgana sincerely apologized. She wasn’t even fretting when she did it, either, her apology was short, succinct, and from the heart. Her eyes shined brightly at him as her lips parted into a small smile. “Should we continue with our date?”

“…Yeah,” Nick said after a momentary pause. Again, there was something different about her, but he couldn’t quite put his finger on it.

It was a nice change, though. Like she’d let go of some burden that he could only guess at.

Or like she’d come to terms with something that she’d been struggling with for quite a long time.

Nick didn’t know what was next on Morgana’s schedule. It turned out there were a lot of things she still wanted to do. Small things, mostly. Like browse the flower shop where Sylvia and Marley were buying plants for their room (Were they still doing that, he wondered?) or dipping in for a quick stop at the cat café to pet the little kitties.

He was happy to follow Morgana’s lead; it seemed like she knew what she was doing, and he didn’t mind following her, so long as she was enjoying herself.

Just seeing that light smile on her lips made him feel like he was having a good time himself. And by the time they’d reached the last thing on her itinerary, he honestly would have been happy with ending the date right there.

But she had one last thing she wanted to do.

“Okay, um… this… may be a waste of time,” Morgana conceded, showing Nick the taciturn, withdrawn side of herself for the first time in a while as she glanced shyly up at him, a blush spreading across her splotchy complexion.

Nick didn’t mind that at all. He liked how soft Morgana could be, and he appreciated the bravery she showed when she spoke up even when she was feeling shy and uncertain.

“I don’t think it will be,” he said earnestly, shaking his head. “Whatever you’re feeling, I’ll be there to support you, Morgana.”

She beamed when he said that and nodded her head slowly, her eyes sparkling in moist agreement as relief washed over her.

“Well… there’s a shop, that… that I want to go to, but it’s not like a normal shop,” she explained. “It’s more like… a magic shop, I guess?”

Nick’s curiosity was piqued. “Oh?”

Morgana nodded. She summoned up her spellbook and presented it to him; just holding it seemed to fill her with confidence, and she felt like she could do anything.

“Me and some of the girls, we went there early in the round, after I first got my transformation,” Morgana explained. “I was hoping that maybe… if we go back there now, we can see if they have anything that might help me, you know… develop my skills more? Just a thought, I mean!”

It was a bold request. Essentially, Morgana was asking him if she could pretty please experiment with her magic as their last “stop” on their date.

And it wasn’t like Nick had any objections. He was happy to oblige her if that’s what she wanted, and he nodded his head as Morgana flipped through the book to find the next empty page in anticipation for their last stop of the afternoon.

He didn’t miss the way she froze on the spot, or how her eyes widened like saucers.

“Morgana?” Nick asked, concerned but more curious than anything. “Is everything alright?”

“Umm… uh… y-yeah, I… I think so?” She mumbled, a dazed expression on her face. She raised her head and looked him in the eyes. He could see the apprehension in her gaze. He also saw her hands were trembling, as her fingers dug into the pages of her tome.

Yeah. Something was definitely up.

“You still want to go to the magic store?” He asked, testing the waters.

Morgana gulped. “R-right, the, um, the store… yeah, uh…”

Her eyes flickered over to that page again, the one she had the book open to, the one she was carefully positioning away from him, so he couldn’t read it.

Not that she was behaving suspiciously or anything.

“Morgana?”

“What!? Um…” She jumped and nearly dropped the book. That confirmed Nick’s suspicions. But what was he supposed to do? Press the subject? Morgana had been so positive and upbeat since her bathroom break, and he was afraid that if he said anything she’d sink back into that mire of self-doubt and toxicity.

And that was the last thing Nick wanted.

Fortunately for him, he didn’t have anything to be worried about, because a moment later Morgana let out a soft, whiny sigh and raised her head, showing him the page that she’d hidden from his gaze.

“We… we don’t have to go,” she said, sounding a little disappointed, but also eager. The magic library had been completely blasted off her itinerary now that she had something else to capture her attention.

Something exciting, thrilling, and also very, very scary.

“It… it just showed up,” she explained quickly, swallowing. “I don’t know when, but… it’s there… it’s… I think it’s a new spell!”

A new spell. That made five of them. Nick had been there for three and apparently the fourth had been used during Gina’s slumber party, but he hadn’t been present for it.

And now she had a new one.

Like all Morgana’s spells, this one was a mystery. The only explanation either of them got was from the picture inscribed on the page. And it was a cryptic picture indeed.

The closest analogy Nick could make to what he saw looking back at him on the page was a very twisted and warped fence. That’s what it looked like to him. Detailed filigree twisted into the shape of a heart, and twisted further upon itself still, to the point that tiny little notches protruded from each crisscrossing overlap.

What did it mean? Well, how the fuck was he supposed to know? But it was a very entrancing picture all the same, even if he was completely in the dark about it.

Morgana’s expression was a familiar one, as some of her old anxiety returned to her face. She looked up at Nick with a hopeful glance, as if she was expecting him to have some brilliant insight into the meaning of this picture, and could tell him what this spell would do.

Obviously he didn’t have a clue. And yet he didn’t want to disappoint her, either, so he just sort of stood there like an idiot as the two of them stared at each other.

It took way too long for one of them to state the obvious, and when they did, they were both so aligned in their thoughts that neither could really be certain which of them had said it aloud.

“So… should we test it out, then?”

When Dawn got the message from Morgana that there had been a change of plans on her date agenda, she’d been relaxing in the lounge area with a good book.

She promptly closed that book, and without a second thought marched straight into her bedroom and locked the door behind her.

No attempt was made to talk her friend out of it. After all, this was Morgana’s date, and she was an adult, technically, so she had the right to make her own choices and do things that she wanted to do, if she thought they would be things she would enjoy.

Dawn would never take that away from her!

And she wasn’t about to be present while all this was going down, either. Whatever carnage Morgana was about to wreak with her spell, that would be a problem for the people with worse instincts than her.

Across the island, in the Shopping District, Morgana was a little disappointed by the lack of response from her friend. But she understood that she’d been bugging Dawn enough today; the cat girl had earned a nice, long break.

Besides, it’s not like she needed Dawn here to use the spell or anything.

Morgana placed her hand on the book, and waited to see what would happen.

…To her disappointment, nothing happened.

“Well?” Nick asked, lowering his arms awkwardly to his sides and trying badly to pretend like he hadn’t just been making a poor shield to protect himself from the backlash he anticipated. “Did… did it work, then?”

Morgana’s face reflected the sigh on her lips. She shook her head. “How would I know?” She grumbled. “The page flashed, but…”

But nothing happened.

This wasn’t so unusual, to be honest. After all, several of the spells in the book didn’t take effect right away. The wind one, for example, could be easily missed if no one was wearing a skirt, and the peach one, well, Morgana (and Nick) were immune to the effects of the aroma.

It was entirely possible that this was one of those spells that wouldn’t work on either of them, but would work on other girls, in which case Morgana wouldn’t actually know what it was capable of until they got another girl to serve as a guinea pig.

…Research assistant, until they got a research assistant.

Or a victim.

“Well, uh… maybe it’s just not working or something?” Nick didn’t know the first thing about magic, but he was trying to be supportive. “It’s probably not a big deal or anything, right?”

“Yeah, I guess,” Morgana conceded with a nod, shutting the book. “I probably need to have someone else around to make it work or something.”

Again, Dawn’s face flashed through her mind, but obviously she couldn’t ask her friend to help her with this.

“Well, if you want to subject someone to the effect of your spell, we could just ask Holly,” Nick said with a laugh, trying to bring Morgana’s smile back. “Knowing her, she’ll be happy to take you up on anything you offer!”

He did get the smile back on Morgana’s face, which was good. But the shy girl wasn’t entirely thrilled with the suggestion.

And she let him know by playfully swatting him on the arm. “Trying to get another girl involved on our date? That’s really- ehh!?”

A tingling sensation jolted her fingertips, like static electricity. Her whole body twitched and she felt herself go numb as the world spun around her. Morgana had never done **** before, or gotten drunk (she was a good girl, after all!) but she imagined that what she was feeling as the tingling sensation spread through her body and blurred her vision was a good hint at what that was like.

Especially when her vision crystallized and everything seemed so… different. Yeah, she was definitely having a **** trip or something, considering what she was looking at.

Morgana was looking down on herself. And not, like, the way she normally did, but like physically looking down on herself. She saw how dazed and flustered she looked, and how embarrassed and confused she seemed to be when she looked right into her own eyes.

Having spent a sizable portion of today looking at her reflection in various mirrors, Morgana immediately knew something was off due to the angle she was looking at. And when she raised her hand, her reflection didn’t do the same.

Then Morgana saw that hand, and it looked nothing like hers. It was bigger, darker, and a lot more defined. Rougher fingers, and a bit thicker, too, and there was hair all across the wrist…

“Huh?! What’s wrong with my hand?!” She exclaimed, or at least she thought she did. Because the voice that she heard in her ears didn’t belong to her. It was deeper, a rougher tone, and one that sounded strangely familiar and yet completely different…

“Muh-Mo… Morgana?” Her reflection was talking now, too, flapping her mouth open and closed like she was getting used to it for the first time. Like she was having trouble talking somehow, but that couldn’t be, right?

And why did she look like she had seen a ghost?

“Morgana?” Her reflection repeated, and the first thing that occurred to Morgana was how different her voice sounded. She’d heard her own voice several times in the past, most notably in her failed attempt to be a streamer back in high school, so she recognized it a little. But if that’s what she was hearing, then what the voice coming out of her own mouth? Whose voice was that?

And why was she staring at her own body, holding her own spellbook, looking utterly horrified?

Stunned, confused, and still feeling very tingly, it took far too long for Morgana to figure out what the spell had actually done.

“We switched!?” Morgana couldn’t believe what she was seeing. Looking at “her” reflection in a nearby store window, the only face staring back at her was Nick’s.

It was quite surreal. While Nick wasn’t some brawny macho man or anything like that, seeing his masculine features twisted with shock and embarrassment in a fine approximation of Morgana’s flustered panic was definitely bizarre. This wasn’t at all like when he’d been turned into a woman by the effect of the mirrors, this was something else entirely!

Morgana and Nick… they’d switched bodies!

It was a common premise, and one that she’d seen many times in manga before. Tearing her eyes away from the window she snapped her neck- or, well, his neck- around and faced herself again- or more accurately, faced Nick again, staring at her in mute horror from within her own body.

I guess that’s why nothing happened at first, she thought vaguely as two pairs of screams echoed through the air.

“H-how did this happen!?” Nick in Morgana’s body dropped the spellbook without even thinking about it, clutching his flustered face. He felt so weird like this, being in the body of another person. A girl! And not just any girl, but Morgana. He was acutely aware of how much smaller he was compared to the body he was used to, because it was standing right in front of him, staring down at him in shock.

Nick cringed. Did he really look like that much of an idiot when he was surprised?

“The book!” Nick heard his own voice gasp as Morgana lunged forward, picking her spellbook up off the ground. She flung the pages open and scanned it quickly, opening it back up to the page with the filigree heart on it.

Their eyes met again.

“So that’s what the spell does!” Their mutual glance of horror seemed to communicate between the both of them. It would have been quite hilarious if it didn’t feel so horrifying and violating, in a way as well.

Nick blushed, his face burning. It was an action Morgana’s body was acutely familiar with.

“It- it happened when we touched each other,” he pointed out, taking a shaky step closer to her. “Maybe if we touch each other again, then… we’ll go back to our normal selves?”

Yes, please, that would be just great. After spending all day (and the last 18 years) finding nothing but flaws in her body, Morgana wanted nothing more than to be back inside it.

Everything was wrong. She wasn’t used to being this tall. Her shirt felt so constricting around the collar, like she was going to **** herself.

…Oh, and not to mention the jeans that felt even tighter than the ones she was used to wearing in her own body somehow, even though she knew that was obviously not possible. Nick’s jeans weren’t plastered to his ass the way hers were!

No, the only reason she felt that way was because, well…

Because hearing Nick’s voice- or more accurately her voice- was causing something very uncomfortable to stir within her pants, and she felt an odd, unpleasant ache down below that made her shiver with horror as she understood the implication.

She couldn’t grab the hand Nick extended towards her fast enough. And the moment she did, another current passed between the two of them, and a relieved sigh escaped her lips as she felt that familiar tingle roll through her body again. She slumped backwards, exhausted, only to realize that she was back in her own body.

Morgana felt dizzy. But it was her own body that was dizzy. And she knew that because she was looking at a face that wasn’t her own this time.

But she knew that the look of relief mixed with horror slathered all over it was identical to the look she must have been wearing on her own face.

“That… that was really, um…” Nick felt like his body was burning. Now that he’d gotten it back, he could feel the impact of Morgana’s Sotto Voce and how his own words spoken through her lips had affected his body. It wasn’t a pleasant sensation, to say the least.

Morgana nodded, looking exactly like how he felt. “Yeah, it… it was…”

She grabbed her book back from him, being careful not to touch him this time. But she was just being cautious. Somehow she knew now that she was back in her own body that the effect of the spell had worn off, and even if they touched each other again, they would remain right where they were.

That should have come as a comfort to her, but she didn’t let herself truly get comfortable until she looked at her reflection in the store window and confirmed for certain that she was back in her own body.

“I… I’m not going to use that one again,” Morgana said, shaking her head. She didn’t care that she’d spent practically the entire day wallowing in envy and self-doubt, wishing she had various qualities of other women in Nick’s harem.

She was in her own body again, and there was no place like home.