Jason stood there for a minute, panic beginning to set in. Even just the feeling of nervousness was subtly different in Lucy's body; less of a coiled-spring tension winding up inside him and more of a trembling that got worse and worse as the seconds ticked by and he kept thinking about the fix he was in. If his body was really gone...if he really were stuck with his cousin's body...! This whole thing had been a mistake...if only he could go back in time and-
He caught himself, realizing what he'd been overlooking this whole time. Of course - how had he forgotten? This freaky device did have an undo function! All he had to do was hold in the button, and things could go right back to normal. He felt a flood of relief wash over him. "Thank God," he muttered.
Lucy eyed him curiously. She'd removed her head in order to cradle it close to her chest, in what he assumed was an attempt to comfort herself, and was transferring it from one hand to the other while she rubbed the tears out of the corners of her eyes. "Huh? Did you think of something?"
Jason nodded. "Yeah. The device has-" He stopped. "Wait, is my voice higher?"
Lucy nodded thoughtfully. "Oh, right. The voicebox is in the chest, so you've got mine right now. But most of the word-shaping stuff happens in the mouth and nose, and it's controlled by the brain, so you sound like a girl version of you instead of me...interesting!" She had already brightened noticeably; that didn't take her long, Jason thought.
He sighed, still noticing the higher pitch of his voice at the moment. "Anyway, remember? In the instructions, it explained how to use the undo function. All we have to do is use that to undo your changes, and things should go right back to the way they were."
Lucy smiled in relief, then frowned. "Aw...well, at least you're not stuck, I guess..."
Jason nodded. "Right. Here, hand it over."
Lucy handed him the laser katana, then sat back on the bed. Jason was just about to activate it when she stopped him. "Hey, maybe we'd better both hold onto it? I dunno if it'd make a difference with the undo function, but I definitely don't wanna forget the expression you made when you realized you had my body." She gave him a sly grin.
Jason thought that, on the whole, he'd much rather she forgot, but he couldn't bring himself to deliberately muck around with her memories. Besides, it wasn't like he was ever going to be able to forget it... He sat down next to her, trying not to think about the strangeness of feeling a different butt underneath him or a different pair of legs hanging over the edge of the mattress, or the gentle jiggling in his chest. "Alright," he said in his new, girlier voice, "let's get this over with."
He held out the hilt, and Lucy grabbed hold of it as well; he couldn't help but notice how her hand seemed larger and stronger now that his wasn't, feeling the soft skin of her palm and fingers wrapped around his now-identical hand. It was oddly comforting, in a way, but he had more important concerns. Recalling the instructions that had come with this crazy device, he pressed in the button and held it.
Nothing seemed to happen, until Lucy's head promptly fell right into his lap. "Eep!" his cousin exclaimed. Jason looked down in surprise to see her lying atop his thighs, then dropped the katana in his hurry to catch her when she started to slip down towards his knees. He picked her head up and brought her up to eye level, staring at her in surprise, then looked over at her body, which had lurched forward to catch her at about the same time but stopped short once he'd grabbed her. Her neck, which had been restored when she'd made her modifications earlier, was gone again.
He found himself alternating between staring at his cousin's head held in his hands and her headless body sitting next to him, then looked down at his body. "What the...?" he sputtered, trying to make sense of things. He hadn't changed back, but somehow Lucy had reverted to her earlier state...? But the last change made was to his body! Why wasn't that undone?
"That's odd," Lucy said. Jason started a bit at the feeling of her jaw moving in his hands, but managed to avoid dropping her. She glanced down at his body - at least to the extent she could without being able to tilt her head on her own. He found himself almost subconsciously dipping her gaze downward even as he was feeling embarassed to have her inspecting his altered body. Over next to him, her body crossed her arms over her chest. "Why didn't you change back? Heck, why did I change back?"
Jason felt a knot forming in his stomach. "I...I don't know!? That was supposed to be the undo function! Why...? Was it because we were both holding it?" He pressed in the button again and held it. Nothing much seemed to happen until he looked over at Lucy and noticed that her neck was back, like she'd set herself up a few minutes ago. "That doesn't even make sense!" he sputtered.
"Maybe it's getting confused because you weren't the one to make the last changes?" Lucy suggested. "Here, give it to me."
Jason was a little uneasy about the question of whether or not his memories would be affected if he wasn't touching the hilt while the undo function was activated, but he was a lot more uneasy about the idea that they might not be able to undo this. He handed it over to Lucy, who placed her head back on her neck, grasped the hilt in both hands, and held the button in. Jason held his breath, waiting for sanity to return to his life, but all that happened was that Lucy's head fell off again. (Fortunately, this time she was prepared enough to catch it herself.)
He stared down at his cousin's head, which was laying in her lap, then at his altered body, then back to Lucy. "I don't understand!" he moaned. "Why isn't it working?"
Beside him, Lucy's body shrugged. "I don't get it either. It's like those crummy programs where it only lets you undo the last step or something - only it's not even the last step! Maybe they didn't get all the bugs out yet...?"
"Oh, great," Jason groaned. "I can't seriously be stuck like this because we got a beta version!?"
His cousin set her head down on the bed and gently rubbed his shoulders, which felt oddly soothing despite the fact that it drove home how comparatively slender his frame was now. "Hey, cheer up," she said. "We know the undo function does work, right? It's just not undoing the right thing. In that case, all we need to do is find whoever made this and get them to fix it so it does!"
He stopped to think about it. That...actually made perfect sense. Except... "But I don't even know who made it," he sighed. "I just found it on my bed this afternoon. There wasn't even a letterhead on the instructions or anything."
Lucy frowned, reaching over next to herself to scratch her head. "But if they delivered it to you directly, they must be in the area somewhere, right? Heck, for all we know they're parked across the street waiting to see what you do with it."
Jason shook his head in confusion. "But...I mean, they somehow got it directly into my room without Mom noticing. Maybe they can just teleport things anywhere they want. It wouldn't be any crazier than what this thing can already do."
"But then," she countered, "we already know that this thing is a little glitchy. Maybe all this technology is as new to them as it is to us."
He shrugged. "Maybe. I guess it's a better idea than doing nothing, anyway."
Lucy grinned as her body patted him on the back and rose from the bed. "'Attaboy. C'mon, let's go see what we can find."
Jason got up, then realized what the assorted new sensations he was feeling as he did so implied. "Wait, I can't go outside like this!"
His cousin laughed as she picked up her head from the bed. "Why not? Aunt Harriet didn't even notice anything was out of the ordinary with me before we removed her head, and now she thinks that's normal, too. Nobody's even gonna notice."
He clasped his head in his slim, girlish hands. "But you're...I mean, weirdness aside, you're all girl. I just look like a freak."
Lucy shook her head. "You really don't, cuz. It's not like your face is all square-jawed chiseled hyper-masculinity or anything. On my body, you just look like a kinda boyish girl. If we fix your hair, nobody would even know. Now c'mon!"
