Vinyl groggily opened her eyes. Light rushed into them, which caused her to grunt in discomfort. Everything was blurry, but Vinyl could make out enough to know that she was lying down. Slowly, her vision came into focus, and she could tell that the light was coming from an open window in the kitchen.
What the hell? It’s already morning?
It wasn’t the first time Vinyl woke up while lying face down on the floor. Probably wouldn’t be the last either. Slowly, she battered away her remaining sleepiness and sat up.
“That cider was a little too strong.” Vinyl rubbed her sore temples. She paused with confusion upon hearing her voice. It sounded… different. It was kind of calmer and not nearly as party-inducing as before. Maybe the cider scorched my throat enough to screw over my voice. It’ll probably be fine.
There was a sharp throbbing in her head, but other than that, she seemed to be fine. “Hey Tavi, are ya down here?” She called out.
“Urgh…” came a shoddy response. Octavia lay behind Vinyl, but she didn’t bother turning around to look at her collapsed friend. It would be an effort she wasn’t willing to attempt. “Not so loud Vinyl. My head hurts.” Vaguely, Vinyl thought her friend’s voice had also changed, but she attributed it to being a shared drinking symptom.
“It’s called a hangover, Tavi. They tend to happen after you have fun.”
“I am never going touch alcohol again. Not even cider. I just can’t handle it.”
Vinyl removed her gray hoof from her head. “Yeah, well–” she abruptly froze in midsentence and stared down at her hoof. A plain gray hoof stared back at her.
Her pupils shrunk down to the size of peas at what she was seeing. Unnerved, Vinyl flipped her hoof over and back a few times. It was gray on both sides. A familiar gray too, Vinyl felt like she could recall seeing it before. Multiple times in fact.
That cider screwed up my brain more than I thought. I’m sure my hoof isn’t actually gray.
She turned to face her friend, wondering if she would think her hoof was gray as well. “Heh, hey Tavi, would you get a load of this–” Vinyl cut herself off a second time when she saw what was lying on the ground behind her.
She was staring at herself.
On the floor in front of her, a white unicorn with an electric blue mane lying face down on the tiles. A pair of purple shades – her purple shades – was lying right next to her. There was a tiny pool of blood on the kitchen floor, and Vinyl noticed it was seeping from a cut on its – her – cheek.
“Holy hell.” Vinyl's mouth hung agape at the sight before her.
“What’s the matter?” her body spoke using her voice. It sent an unnerved shiver down Vinyl’s spine, and she clamored backwards.
What is happening? This can’t be the cider playing tricks on me anymore. Is that… really me? Vinyl scrunched up her face in confusion. But I’m me. At least… I think so…
Vinyl stared back down at her hooves. They were still gray. Out of curiosity, she reached for her mane. It was still there, but when Vinyl pulled it forward to see it, she gasped. It wasn’t the cropped and jagged piece of awesome that she was used to. She was instead looking at a long, silky black mane that was all too familiar to her.
Ignoring the pounding hangover in her head, Vinyl struggled up and reached for the nearest reflective surface. Her off-color hoof found the champagne glass from last night. She brought it her face and stared her slightly refracted image.
Two purple eyes blinked back at her. The reflection in the glass wasn’t her face at all; it was Octavia’s. Vinyl felt her jaw slid open in shock and the Octavia in the glass repeated the action. To make sure she wasn’t crazy, Vinyl slapped herself in the face. After a wince, she looked back at the glass and still only saw Octavia’s reflection.
“This is really, really bad,” she muttered.
Her old body shifted slightly, and Vinyl flinched as she saw this. It was beyond bizarre to watch her body move independently of her.
“Vinyl, are you trying to do some sort of impression of me?” her old body asked; its eyes still closed. “Because I am warning you now, my head and face hurt far too much right now for me to put up with any foalish trite.”
“Uh… T-Tavi is that you?”
Vinyl’s body moved again, this time slowly standing up. “Obviously, Vinyl. Who else would I–” She froze, her eyes finally opened so she could see what was going on. Vinyl stared into her own eyes with a feeling of surprise and fear. She had no doubt her roommate was experiencing the exact same emotions.
The two of them then began screaming.
Apple Bloom woke up with just a little bit of ennui. Her ear involuntarily flicked down, then up as she tried to summon the will power to climb out of bed. She was more or less fighting a losing battle until the corner of her eye caught something.
On her nightstand was a cider mug, and its contents caused her to catapult out from underneath her covers. Today was the zap apple harvesting day, and Apple Bloom was jittering with anticipation over finishing her potion.
With fervent joy, Apple Bloom grabbed her mug and raced down the stairs, ready to pick the first zap apple that came across her eye.
Today is going to be a great day!
Vinyl and Octavia finally stopped screaming five minutes later.
“Oh my Celestia!” Octavia cried out in Vinyl’s voice. “You’re in my body!”
“And you’re in mine,” Vinyl noted with panic.
Octavia glanced down and saw her now white hooves. She let loose a squeak of shock, then dug her hooves into her new electric-blue mane and screamed again as the full force of the realization took hold.
“Tavi, calm down!” Vinyl tried to grab her friend's shoulders and steady her. This became counterproductive when Octavia swatted them away - undoubtedly more unnerved than before - and screamed at an even higher pitch.
“Tavi!” Vinyl shouted. It still had no effect. Gritting her teeth in annoyance, Vinyl outstretched her hoof and slapped the crazed mare inside her body. “Get a freaking grip, Octavia!”
Her breathing was still spasmodic, but at least she’d stopped screaming. Vinyl was grateful for that much; her headache was already bad enough. She looked down at her hoof, noticing a small amount of blood sticking to it. She'd hit the cut cheek.
“You slapped me.” Octavia held a hoof up to her stinging face.
“Technically, you slapped me,” Vinyl retorted. Then she laughed, much to her friend’s dismay.
“Are you serious?” Octavia roared. “How can you even joke about this? We are inside each other!”
Vinyl – despite her own desire to freak out – couldn’t stop herself from using Octavia’s trademarked snort-laugh. Octavia’s white cheeks inflamed with a blush as she realized what she just said.
“You know what I meant,” she grumbled.
“Sure I do.” Vinyl smugly grinned. “You know Tavi, if you wanted my body there was an easier way to get it.” The horrified look Vinyl saw on her face was enough to make her snort-laugh again.
“Why will you not take this seriously?” Octavia demanded with a stamp of her hoof.
Eventually, Vinyl calmed down. “You’re right.” Vinyl wiped a tear from her eye. “You’re absolutely right. This is some serious shit we're in.”
Octavia winced. “Can you please not use my voice to utter profanity? It’s unsettling.”
“Whatever,” Vinyl muttered.
“How could this have happened?” Octavia cried, moving back onto the subject of their bodies.
“As if I know. Did you come in contact with anything magically freaky in Manehatten?”
Octavia shook her head. “No, absolutely nothing. I went straight to the auditions and then to a hotel. Granted the pillow mints tasted awful, but I highly doubt that’s what caused us to switch bodies.”
“Yeah it’s unlikely that caused us to… switch… bodies…" There was something familiar about that phrasing to Vinyl. "Wait a minute, switch bodies… body switching… Oh crap, body-switching potion!” It all makes sense. That kid from yesterday had been pretty adamant about having a body-switching potion in her mug of cider. “A motherfricking body-switching potion, of course!”
Octavia’s eyes widened. “A what kind of potion?”
Vinyl grinned sheepishly. “Oh yeah… Hey Tavi, here’s a story you’ll get a kick out of.”
“Why am I afraid to ask?” Octavia said to herself.
“Well you see…” Vinyl began hesitantly. “I may have run into a kid yesterday who was also carrying a mug of cider, and when I asked her about it she said it was a body-switching potion. I told her that was a lousy excuse to use when she was caught underage drinking, and you kind of have to agree. I mean, whenever I was caught with some booze I always had a story prepared. Like this one time, I told my teacher that a plane full of crocodiles and vodka was flying over my head, and the pilot had to–”
“Vinyl!” Octavia interrupted. “Get to the point.”
“Right, sorry. Anyway, I kinda got my cider mug mixed-up with hers, and well… I guess she wasn’t lying about that body-switching thing, right? Pretty funny, huh?” Vinyl chuckled a little. She glanced at her roommate.
Her old body had never held such a stoic expression before. Vaguely, Vinyl pondered the idea of asking Octavia to play poker for her.
“You… mixed up the cider… with a body-switching potion…” It sounded calm, but Vinyl knew her own voice well enough to tell Octavia was building up a fury-frenzy.
“Heh… yeah,” Vinyl awkwardly put a hoof behind her head. “My bad, Tavi.”
Vinyl saw her eyelid twitch as Octavia’s rage built up. “You… mixed up the cider….”
“Yeah… we kinda established that already,” Vinyl reminded her. It was probably only fueling the flames to come, but she had a hard time filtering out sarcasm.
Octavia threw her face into her hooves. “Sweet Celestia, I’m in the body of an insufferable, incompetent moron!”
“Hey, I’m not incompetent!” Vinyl shouted.
“I think you finally managed to top the drunk hooker incident, Vinyl.”
“Well, at least this time we don’t have to worry about a toilet on the front lawn.”
“Vinyl!” Octavia shrieked, giving her a shove. “Do you not realize how much trouble we’re in? What if we’re stuck this way forever? Do you really want that? I might get a call back to Manehattan any day now and you can’t go in my place!”
The smile was chased off Vinyl’s face. “Yeah… and– holy shit! I have a gig tonight, Tavi! Ah crap, I can’t miss my first show at Club Stirrup. I’d never work in this town again!”
A look of mild surprise passed across Octavia’s new face as she absorbed the fact that her roommate had a job. It went away as quickly as it came, however; replaced with the fear for their current situation.
“W-what are we going to do?” she quivered, voice deep with concern.
The question caught Vinyl off guard. Normally Octavia had a plan to fix whatever mess Vinyl created. If neither of them knew what to do, then they were most certainly screwed.
“I-I don’t know, Tavi. Should we tell somepony about this? Go to an emergency room or something?”
“No… they’d think we’re insane,” Octavia asserted. “And the last thing I need the Manehattan Philharmonic to see is ‘resident of an insane asylum’ on my resume.”
“Well then where else can we go?”
Octavia pondered this for a moment. Her ‘thinking face’ on Vinyl’s face was unsettling, but she supposed there was just no getting used to switching bodies with your best friend.
Then again, I do now have access to any part of Tavi that I want…
No! Bad thoughts, go away! This is serious.
“What about the princess?” Octavia’s suggestion broke through Vinyl’s thoughts.
“Twilight?” Vinyl asked. “I dunno, doesn’t she normally make situations like these go from bad to worse?”
Octavia frowned, the bad memory of a parasprite trying to eat her bowtie likely at the forefront of her mind. “Well… you could always learn to play a cello with concert level precision in the next few days, as well as practice and perfect mannerisms in order to be passable as a proper lady.”
The kitchen was hit with a sudden silence as Vinyl tried to comprehend what Octavia just said.
“Hey, Tavi?”
“Yeah?”
“Let’s go to Twilight.”
“I thought so.”
Vinyl reached down with a gray hoof and plucked her dark shades from the ground. Shoving them onto her face, she proceeded to yank off Octavia’s bowtie. “All right, come on.”
Octavia held her mouth agape. “You are not going out like that.”
Vinyl raised her eyebrow, though Octavia couldn’t tell thanks to the shades. “Why not? This is how I always go out.”
“In your body, it’s fine,” Octavia retorted. “But in my body I would never wear something so… well…”
“Cool?”
“I was going to say lascivious,” Octavia griped. Vinyl shrugged, not knowing or caring what that word meant. “The point is my body is not wearing those glasses.”
“Well you don’t exactly get to make the call when it comes to your body right now,” Vinyl slyly told her. “So the glasses are staying put.”
Octavia harrumphed loudly. Her face perked up when she got an idea. “Fine,” she relented, picking up the discarded bowtie. “In that case I’ll wear what I want.”
“Oh no!” Vinyl said. “I’m not letting you walk around with that on my neck. I look like a…”
“Sophisticated and responsible member of society?”
“I was going to say dork,” Vinyl returned.
Octavia growled. “Well then, how about this for a compromise,” she suggested. “You wear my bow tie, and I’ll wear your stupid sunglasses.”
Weighing her options carefully, Vinyl relented. She’d end up looking like a dork, but at least she wouldn’t look like a dork.
… Oh Celestia, this body-switching crap is going to be confusing.
Octavia held out the bow tie to Vinyl expectantly, and she tried to call upon her magic to put it on. Nothing happened.
Blinking, Vinyl looked up to check on her horn before realizing it wasn’t there anymore.
“Crap,” she said dejectedly. Octavia cocked her head, confused. “I-I guess I don’t have magic anymore.”
Octavia looked up at Vinyl’s horn, now squarely on her head. “Oh, yes, it would appear so.” She noticed the upset look on Vinyl’s face. “Are you going to be okay?”
“Yeah… yeah, I’ll be fine. Let’s just get this fixed, all right?” Octavia nodded. “On the upside,” Vinyl said, trying to secure her chipper, light-hearted mood from earlier. “This is probably the first time in your life you’ve ever been horny.”
Octavia’s white cheeks flushed. “V-Vinyl!”
Laughing, Vinyl snatched the bow tie from Octavia’s outstretched hoof and reluctantly hoofed over her shades. “Come on, we gotta princess to find.”
Vinyl trotted out the door, hearing a few grumbling complaints from Octavia as she followed.