When I woke up from my overexertion of magic use, I was kind of surprised at how good I felt. It wasn't clear for a moment, but it came soon enough. I felt lighter and my mind was clearer than it usually was. Was that what a good night's sleep was like? it had been so long since I've had one that I don't really know anymore. That was only mildly important.
The important part was when I woke up I could feel someone else really close. I opened my eyes to see a sleeping Twilight Sparkle lying on the right side of the large bed in was sleeping on. Now, upon seeing this I almost jerked back in surprise. However, some part me knew that it would just be a dumb move. Instead I backed up a little bit before trying to shift the covers I was sleeping under so that they wouldn't disturb her since she was sleeping on top of them.
"So you're finally awake," a feminine voice called out.
Again, thankfully, I didn't jerk in surprise. Now that I knew someone else was there and knew I was awake, I stopped being so subtle and levitated the covers and sheets off of me without disturbing Twilight. Not sure why I didn't do that in the first place. What was even more obvious was the fact that I teleported off the bed to the side I could see and should have done that instead of everything else.
I was surprised that the voice belonged to one Robin Nico, or Nico Robin if you read it like that. She was sitting in a small chair in the corner of the room with a book in her lap looking at me. A cursory glance of the room noted to me that other than the large bed, the chair she was in with a small book table that you'd see in a motel next to it, the door at the far end of the foot of the bed, and an oddly rounded window that seemed to be closed off, the room was very bland. The walls were a cream color while the floor was covered in a nice red shag carpet that felt nice on my feet.
"You seem to look like your old self... well, almost," she continued.
I wasn't sure what she meant by that until I looked down to try and figure that out. Instead of the usual sight of my hairy, fat torso I saw a much sleeker version of my own body. I didn't have the typical muscular Z fighter type of body. It was more like a runner's body with a slim build. Also, I was uncomfortably naked. In front of Robin. Who was grinning. And very hot.
I immediately dove down and placed the bed in between us. She simply chuckled at my embarrassment. She then placed a bookmark in the book and set it on the table. Upon standing up, she opened a drawer on the table and pulled out some clothing with Eris sitting on top of them.
"Would you like these?"
I promptly levitated them over to myself and started getting dressed.
"Don't worry. I won't tell anyone. You're just lucky that I haven't had to be treated for Aizen's power or else it wouldn't have just been the two of you in that bed."
I wanted to make an 'I wouldn't have minded' comeback joke, but I was still too embarrassed to say anything just yet.
"So, you're a past version of the Seth that we know? Intriguing to say the least. Not surprising considering your history, but all the same not something that we were expecting having known you for this long. You were quite... different than we had pictured you. It didn't stop a few attempts from some of the overzealous ladies who knew you from trying to get in here. This is easily the least guarded you've left yourself in the last two years."
"It's kind of an odd feeling for me too," I said finally after getting dressed, pocketing Eris, and finding my voice. "I have the memories of that version of myself thanks to the memory orb he left, but I still have, at least from what I can tell, the same mentality that I did before it happened. That mentality being both on the grounds of wondering why you didn't let them in mixed with knowing exactly why you didn't let them in. It's a little confusing."
"I'd imagine so."
"Well, I probably ought to start trying to figure out what's going on. So... what's going on?"
"The short version is that we won. You held all of our enemies in place long enough that we stopped trying to simply contain them and were able to push back their forces. Most of the enemy forces were eliminated, but some of them, including most of the Espada, managed to flee. And yes, per your orders no enemy women were killed you sexist softie."
"While I'm really happy to hear that could you explain how it is that I'm now in what seems like someone else's body?"
"Of course," she said with a chuckle. "To begin with, you fell unconscious because you had run out of magic and your body didn't have the endurance to cope with such a strain that you had undertaken on yourself. You ran out of magic because you stopped the battlefield and without a battle taking place you burned through your reserves at a rapid pace. Once you were unconscious, Twilight placed a shield spell around the both of you after Zommari was thwarted to keep you safe. She eventually let the shield down when Gohan happened upon you both and the three of you sped away from the battlefield as quickly as possible.
"From there Gohan brought you both here to Capsule Corp. We checked the both of you over and found only the extreme exhaustion on your part as the only concern. They asked a few of us to keep an eye on you while you recuperated. We had stayed outside the room with the exception of Twilight to respect your privacy. Less than an hour had passed before something happened. Twilight yelled for us and we came in to find something unexpected. Your entire body started to glow in a golden color."
I wanted to make a snark about going super saiyan considering the setting, but this was too serious to interrupt.
"It took us a short amount of time to realize that Eris was also glowing. We never intervene when it comes to you and Eris. Therefore we decided not to do so this time either. That was how this-" she said waving her hand towards me, "happened. Eris somehow changed your body of her own volition into a much more healthy version."
I softly palmed Eris in my pocket while continuing to listen.
"Ever since then Twilight hasn't left this room. After she tried to get Eris to stop, and getting quite upset at us for not trying to do something, she settled for keeping an eye on you. She's been eating just fine, but she's been concerned ever since then. She's stayed here the last three days just watching you. She wasn't sleeping too much so we're lucky that she's doing so now."
That brought a smile to my face to know that she was so concerned about me. Still...
"And the reason I was naked?"
"When the glow from Eris stopped your clothes just... disintegrated."
"...Disintegrated..."
"They just turned into flakes of dust and wafted up from your body into thin air. I'd say the term disintegrated is apt," she smiled again. "Still, you don't look the same as you normally do, but you do look quite better than you did three days ago and that's before you changed if Nanoha's description was accurate."
"Yeah, but that isn't solely a good thing! I'm an alternate version of the man you all know! I still have to go home and try explaining this to people and going by the time differential I'll be arriving at most in the same night I left! How am I supposed to explain that I lost around fifty pounds in a single night? I at least had a shot with my glasses because I could've just said I decided to start wearing contacts! I'm pretty concerned I might not be able to go home now!"
"Isn't it obvious?" Twilight said. I hadn't even seen anything to indicated she had woken up. "You use your illusion spell. By the way. You're a jerk."
"Sorry I woke you up," I said through my chuckles while ruffling her mane a bit. "Anyway, is it really a good idea to always have my illusion spell going?"
"You don't have to always have it going forever," she said and yawned for a second. "You just alter it gradually to make it look like you're losing weight. But you shouldn't being lying to them in the first place. You should tell them the truth."
"Even if I didn't mind doing so, there's other problems with showing them this. There are so many issues with this that it's tough to even predict it. Like what my dad would think if he knew that I was friends with talking ponies. You have any idea what he thinks about guys like that? It would not be flattering in any way. That's just the first thing I can think of."
"You don't think your dad would like us?"
"I think at best he would tolerate you. At best. He still believes in racial stereotypes so I'd be very concerned if he ever met any of you. But that's getting off topic. The illusion spell will be a good idea for the-"
A knock at the door interrupted me. A shout of come in resulted in one more pirate by the name of Nami coming in to see the three of us awake.
"Hey there Seth! You look much better than before. Sleep off whatever was wrong?"
You know, I was kind of surprised to see Nami wearing some conservative clothes when she walked in. A tight pair of blue jeans with some high-heeled boots and an orange t-shirt with a light blue vest over it. Wait a sec. A turn of my head towards Robin and... Yeah, she was wearing the exact same outfit except her t-shirt was canary yellow and the vest was black.
"Are you two wearing essentially the same outfit?"
The two looked at each other and then back to me.
"I guess we are," Robin replied with a smirk.
"I never thought I'd see that happen," Nami added with a smirk of her own.
Now normally I'm rather oblivious to this sort of thing, but the smirks that they gave off indicated to me that something very odd was going on. So I decided to call them on it.
"What is going on? I don't think Robin would care that much, but Nami wouldn't be caught in the same outfit as anyone else unless she was infiltrating someplace and it was required. This definitely isn't that situation."
Twilight sensed my confusion and stood up on the bed in front of me to face the two of them.
"I don't think he remembers Nami."
"Well it isn't the same Seth. You told me that. I didn't think he would know in the first place," she replied a little upset.
I did relax a little bit hearing that. I wasn't quite the same person, but I had his memories so I tore through the memories I had and quickly figured out what was going on. Apparently while I had used my hypnosis ability on quite a few individuals it wasn't as many as future me had made it out to sound like. Sure, I pretty much had to use it on every person from the Bleach universe except Ichigo and his friends. However, the number of new people he used it on after coming here was actually sixty seven individuals.
Amongst the Strawhat pirate crew Aizen had only used it on the monster trio. Everyone else that came had not been affected. That included two individuals I hadn't expected to be on the ship. The reason why I was surprised was that the crew was in-between the Punk Hazard and Dressrosa arcs which means that even though I didn't see them last time, Trafalgar Law and Caesar Clown had been dragged along to this universe. Clown boy took it way better than Law did.
The point of all of this was that Robin and Nami hadn't been hypnotized by future me. The more shocking part was that somehow future me had some kind of godlike charisma and was dating both of them at the same time and they both knew and didn't care! Who in the fuck was this guy? I do not have that kind of swagger! How would that amount of time change me that much!? At least I know he didn't have sex with them. He was waiting until after Aizen was defeated and-
..........
"Oh my god this is the private victory party," I sputtered out.
"See? He does remember," Robin said.
"I'll admit I doubted he would remember."
"What are you all talking about?" Twilight asked with a look back at me.
"Twilight do you remember that night where Discord and I showed you those illusions and-"
"Yes I remember," Twilight cut me off. "It was both enlightening and... unnerving," she finished with a shudder.
"Well, the next phase of that might just happen in a second."
She whipped her head back around to see both of them finishing taking off their vests. I was pretty much as shocked as she was, but I still hadn't quite blanked out yet. This may have been something I wanted, but I was torn on whether or not I should just let it happen. What was I supposed to do?
What should I do?