Stephanie rolls a 6

Stephanie throws the dice on the coffee table, and it bounces a few times before landing with 6 dots up.

“WOOOOO! Six!” Stephanie shouts in triumph.

She grabs her piece and moves it 6 places forward onto a red space.

“Red was what again?”

“The mind, your personality, your thinking.”

“Oh,” Stephanie’s heart starts to race at the thought of the game magically changing her mind. She starts to think about what could happen to her, what could a mental change be.

She reaches over pulls a card from the holder and sees that the card’s back has already changed to red and reads out loud what it says.

__

“The second player has made her move,

Let us see how she will improve.

Things aren’t always what they seem,

why not pick a different team.”

__

“Wow, how straightforward and not convoluted at all,” Stephanie says sarcastically.

“Well, this is a mental change, so, only you would be able to figure it out.” Nora says to Stephanie.

“In that case, I continue!” she says excitedly.

The card once again changes to black, just like Cammy’s. Everyone is staring at Stephanie in anticipation of Stephanie’s response. Stephanie closes her eyes and tries to focus on her mind to see what changed. Everyone sits there in anticipation of what Stephanie will say. Stephanie sits there, her mind racing over, trying to think of every thought that has ever been thought. She quietly mumbles in front of everyone, not actually saying full words out loud, but parts of statements and half ideas.

Morgana quietly tells the group, “I don’t think she is gonna figure it out if she is actually taking this long.” Stephanie suddenly opens her eyes, all girls got excited and got closer, holding their breaths, waiting for what she was about to say. A grin slowly breaks out on Stephanie’s face, she takes a deep breath and tells the girls, “I have no clue what changed.”

Everyone groans in response.

“You really didn’t figure it out?” Juliette says.

“Nope. I thought every thought my brain could think of.”

“And you don’t have a single idea? Not a single one?” Morgana said annoyed, knowing well that Stephanie has millions of ideas.

“Well yeah, I have some ideas. The main one is that I cannot possibly realize what the mental change is, cause I think of the change as always being a part of me.” Stephanie says proudly to the group.

“I don’t like the sound of that,” Nora says will a shocked expression.

“How are we supposed to change people back to their original form if they don’t even remember what they were like before the game.” Cammy asks Stephanie.

“Well, it’s quite simple, you ask me questions, and when I say something which is different from what I remembered to what you all remember, then that's the change,” Stephanie says confidently.

“BRUH” Morgana says, her reaction representing the thoughts of everyone else in the group.

“There are thousands of things! How are we supposed to know what changed?” Hana says.

“Well, I don’t know. If I knew, then I would tell you.” Stephanie answers.

“Urgh. You said that was your main idea. What was your other idea?” Morgana

“My other idea, a little more pessimistic than I would like, is that the mental change would also mentally change how you see me.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“Hmmm, let me try to explain. It’s like, say I used to be really shy, and then a mental change happened to make me really outgoing, instead of you all remembering me as shy, and then seeing the new me as different from the old me, the mental change would have also changed your perception of me, and you would think that you have always known me as being outgoing when in reality, I used to be shy. It’s like my first idea, but instead of just affecting me, it affects everyone. Does that make sense?”

“I don’t like that idea,” Nora says with a serious expression.

“I’m gonna pretend that we aren’t in that scenario, and just start bombarding you with questions,” Morgana says while getting next to Stephanie.

Stephanie readjusts herself, a smile on her face, ready to answer the incoming questions.

“What’s your name?”

“Stephanie”

“How old are you?”

“Is that a mental change?”

“Just answer”

“21”

“What do you do?”

“I’m a college student.”

“Who is everyone in the room?”

“Hana, Nora, Juliette, Cammy, and you, Morgana”

“Why are we here?”

“That’s one of life’s greatest mysteries, isn’t it?”

“STEPHANIE”

“Right, uh, we’re all here to hang out cause we finished finals.”

Morgana stops her questions and stares at Stephanie for a few moments. She then throws her hands up, “That’s all I got, I have no clue.”

“Maybe it wasn’t a super big change, and we should just move on?” Juliette says, hoping to fix the current dilemma.

“Or it is a super big change, and we can’t figure it out cause it also affects our perception of her as well. Either way, we should move on.” Nora says with some finality to it.

“No no no, we can figure this out,” Morgana says in response to Nora.

“Yeah, we have time, surely we can figure this out.” Hana stands next to Morgana, taking her side. “We should focus more on the riddle, right? Like, what does it mean to pick a different team?”

While the girls start to deliberate about what questions they should ask next, Stephanie is still sitting waiting patiently, and she starts to think to herself. Her eyes wander around the room before stopping at Cammy.

“Damn, was Cammy always so cute? I didn’t realize her dress was so short, I can almost see her panties. Is she single? I think she’s single. She could pull quite a hunk with the curves on her though, I wonder if she would date me? Wait…did I always think like this? Hmmmmmmmm. I think so, the girls were always chill with me ogling at them.” Stephanie senses her arousal when staring at Cammy.

“STEPHANIE!” Morgana shouts as she steps back in front of Stephanie, blocking her view of Cammy.

“HUH?! YES, WHAT?”

“Alright, do you want to win this game?”

“Yes”

“Hmmmm, what will you use the wish to do if you win?”

“Change everyone back to normal after all the transformations.”

“Hmm, in that case, we’ll just accept the fact that we can’t figure out the changes, but at least we know, if she wins, the motivation to turn us back is still there,” Morgana says while Nora and Hana nod in agreement.

“Just…keep saying everything out loud, and hopefully we’ll notice if you say something weird…well…weirder than normal.”

“Aye aye, Captain Morgan!”

“We’ll just go with Juliette’s idea and move on.” Morgana and the other girls move back to their seats around the board.

“Yay! That means it's finally my turn.” Juliette reaches over to the dice.