attribute theft, sort of inanimate tf, mind swap

Anna arrived home from work and dropped her belongings one by one as she walked towards

the couch. To any casual observer, Anna was a generously attractive 23-year-old woman. 5’6”, pale skin, curvy, healthy thighs, shoulder length brunette hair, and a cute nose.

Anna looked around the apartment and called out to her friend as she floomphed onto the couch. “Brittney, could you come here for a second?”

Brittney peeked her head out of her bedroom, “What is it?”

Anna waved around the device in her hands. “I made a new thing at work and I want to test it out.”

Brittney scurried out of her room and hopped onto the couch with Anna. Brittney was a head shorter than Anna at 5 foot nothing. While Anna was average-sized and curvy, Brittney was small and petite. She had short black hair in a pixie cut and olive skin.

“Ooh! Ooh! What does this one do?” Brittney asked.

“This one is an attribute exchanger. It can swap any two properties between any two things. I’m calling it the ‘property swapper’,” Anna said.

“Ooh, ‘prop swap’, cool. Show me,” Brittney said as she pulled out her cell phone to record.

“Sure! Umm, here, let me swap, uhh…” Anna fiddled with the touch-screen on her device for a few seconds while Brittney recorded. After Several moments of nothing, a ‘ding’ noise came from Anna’s tablet.

“Done!” Anna proclaimed.

Brittney looked around the apartment, confused. “What did you swap?” Brittney asked.

“I swapped how fast our hair grows!” Anna said, smiling.

“You have the power to swap anything with anything and you swapped something that would take days if not weeks for us to notice?” Brittney asked rhetorically.

“Maybe I should swap how excited I am about this to you so you can understand just how cool this is,” Anna said indignantly.

They stared at each other for a few seconds before Anna did just that.

Ding.

Anna was suddenly very disappointed in herself, while Brittney was beaming and feeling the roots of her hairs.

“Anna, this is so cool!” Brittney said with her newly-swapped excitement.

“Cool? I guess… But maybe I should have done something a little more visible… Although I now see why you were so unimpressed. Despite your attitude, which I now have, it is still very scientifically and magically significant that I can swap something abstract like hair-growth-speed between two people. Here, let me show you something that anybody would be impressed by…”

Anna pressed some buttons. One ‘ding’ later and the swap was done. The follicles Brittney was feeling on her own head suddenly shot outwards and rested on her shoulders. Brittney looked over to Anna. Instead of her usual long, brunette hair, Anna now sported Brittney’s black pixie cut.

“Woah! You look so cute with my hair!” Brittney said.

Anna rubbed her hands through the very short hair she was borrowing from Brittney.

“This feels so strange,” Anna said. “I can’t remember the last time my hair was this short.”

Anna got up to look at herself in the mirror near the front door and left the property swapper on the couch. She made lots of poses and kept running her hands through Brittney’s hair.

“I may have to cut my own hair this short, sometime,” Anna said. Unexpectedly, she heard a ‘ding’ from the couch. Anna saw that Brittney's' pixie cut on her head had become light brown. Anna looked over to Brittney. Brittney’s hair was still Anna’s shoulder-length, but now it was Brittney's usual black.

“I’m digging the length, but I need my own hair color to feel like me,” Brittney said as she twirled the long locks Anna had swapped onto her.

Anna’s eyes widened. “You need to be careful, Brittney! I haven’t shown you how it works yet!”

Brittney groaned, “Come on, it’s simple enough, just tap, tap, boop-“

Ding.

Anna watched as Brittney paused, then screamed while frantically rubbing her head.

“I’m bald!” Brittney cried.

Anna took one last look in the mirror at how nice Brittney’s pixie cut looked on herself in a light brown before marching back to the couch.

“Brittney, did you have two targets picked for the swap?” Anna asked.

“I thought I did!” Brittney said.

Anna picked up the device from the couch.

Anna sat down next to Brittney and explained, “It looks like you cleared me from one of the sides. If you try to swap something without two targets, the property swapper just stores it. See?”

Anna showed Brittney a digitized copy of Anna’s hair in Brittney’s natural black.

“Okay, okay, just so long as my hair isn’t gone forever… Let me try again.” Brittney said.

Brittney stole the device back from Anna and, after a few more taps and another ding, Brittney was still bald. Brittney smiled and ran to her room, leaving the property swapper on the couch with a mildly perturbed Anna.

Anna picked up the property swapper to try to figure out what Brittney did, but Brittney burst back into the room before she could. Brittney was holding the torso and head of a mannequin and it had a full head of hair. More specifically, the mannequin had Anna’s hair.

“Ta da!” Brittney said, showing off her creation. She set it down on the coffee table and sat next to Anna on the couch.

Brittney rattled on, “Isn’t this great? Think of how useful this is. You’ll be able to dye and curl your long hair no problem like this.”

Anna tapped through the property swapper as Brittney continued.

“If you need to head out before your hair is done drying, you can just put it on my mannequin and wear a hat! Or you can wear a wig! Ooh, maybe you could swap the wetness of your hair with the dryness of a towel, or…”

Ding.

Brittney was disoriented. She was no longer sitting on the couch next to Anna, she was sitting on the coffee table facing Anna. Or… Sitting wasn’t the right word. She was propped up on the coffee table. Sitting next to Anna was the torso and head of the mannequin attached to Brittney’s arms and waist. Brittney had slowly pieced it together: Anna had swapped Brittney’s torso and head with the mannequin.

“Hey! What gives?” Brittney asked.

Anna smirked at Brittney's newly reduced state. “You used the property swapper without my permission. I haven’t installed any safeties on this yet, so you could have gotten us both stuck. I just want you to understand how serious this could have been,” Anna said.

“I understand now,” Brittney said, “Now swap me back. I don’t want to be a mannequin!” Brittney said.

“Ooh, sorry. Mannequins don’t get to make requests. Mannequins like you also need wigs,’ Anna said as she continued to tap away on the device.

Ding.

Brittney the mannequin-torso now had Anna’s long hair on her head in the same black color Brittney had swapped it to earlier.

“You can hold my hair for me while I’m out using yours,” Anna said, running her hands through her borrowed pixie cut.

“Anna, can you at least give me my arms back?” Brittney asked.

“Mannequins aren’t supposed to talk. Mannequins aren’t supposed to have minds, either…” Anna smiled and started tapping away on the device.

“Ugh, Anna, come on… Don’t-“

Ding.

Brittney’s face went blank. Her eyes still blinked occasionally, but other than that she was a blank slate. Anna looked down at the property swapper. She had swapped Brittney’s consciousness with no target and left Brittney’s mind in the device.

“And I know just where to put you…” Anna said as she got up from the couch, leaving most of Brittney’s body on the coffee table and the rest attached to the mannequin torso on the couch.