"I think the detachment mode sounds pretty rad," Lucy said.
"Okay," Jason replied with a smirk, "detachment mode it is. What is it you want to try doing with it?"
She got an excited look on her face, made as if she was going to say something, paused for a moment, then frowned. "I, uh, hadn't thought about that," she said. "It just seemed too wild to pass up..."
He waited while she thought for a minute, wondering at the ease with which she accepted this whole thing. His cousin had always had a bit of an odd streak, but even so...!
Finally, Lucy came to a decision. "Okay," she said with a grin, "let's go all the way with this. I want you to cut off my head."
Jason would've spray-misted about half the room if he'd been drinking anything. "Pardon!?"
She giggled. "You getting cold feet already? C'mon, you were the one who just proved to me that this thing's for real. If it can stop time, a little light beheading shouldn't be too far beyond its abilities."
"Well, I mean, I get that," he said. "I just...why!?"
"To try it out, obviously," she said. "If you want to test a magic whatsit that can safely separate body parts, it doesn't get more total than severing the entire body. Besides, we can always undo it."
Jason frowned. "Yeah, I guess; it just seems..."
Lucy laughed. "Cuz, we're talking about harmless, fun-for-all-ages dismemberment here. Any way we do it is gonna seem weird."
He nodded, chuckling softly. "S'pose you're right," he said, lifting the glowing blade by the hilt. "How do you wanna do this, then?"
She thought for a moment. "Good question. I dunno if a magic laser blade carries any momentum, but I suppose I'd rather not have my head knocked off onto the floor...maybe if I kneel down on the bed?"
She clambered up on it and knelt down in the classic execution posture with her hands clasped behind her back. Jason chuckled at her flair for the dramatic, while at the same time wondering if this crazy experiment really wasn't going to end badly. But it is real, he reassured himself. Time is stopped, exactly like it said; that's no mere coincidence. Lifting one leg up and planting his foot on her lower back, he brought the katana up high.
After taking a moment to set the blade against her neck and test his aim, he swung it down; it sliced cleanly into her with a sputter and hiss. The sensation was surreal. The blade seemed to weigh nothing, yet he could feel it arc with his swing; it sliced cleanly and effortlessly as if it were an infinitely-thin mathematical ideal, but he could feel variations in the little resistance it did encounter as it went through skin, spinal cord, sinew, throat...
Yet it was completely bloodless; indeed, he could hardly even see any evidence of the cut, aside from a thin glowing line that the blade left behind it. But it continued on through, and no sooner had it emerged from the other side than Lucy's head tumbled down onto the mattress. Jason felt his heart skip a beat - and then watched in amazement as her body, instead of collapsing, began to fumble around blindly, looking for its missing part.
Relief washed over him like a flood. It was one thing to be intellectually convinced that this crazy thing would actually work as advertised, and another thing entirely to actually know that it would. As bizarre as this was, it was comforting just to know that his cousin was alright, for extremely strange values of "alright."
"Wow," Lucy exclaimed, as her hands found her head and she lifted herself off the mattress. "That was the absolute strangest thing I've ever experienced in my life."
"D-did it hurt?" Jason asked. Lucy's neck twitched on her shoulders; she frowned thoughtfully, then used her hands to shake her head "no," laughing merrily as she did. "Nah," she said. "It was weird, because I could feel every little detail of my neck being cut, but it wasn't painful at all. I've never felt anything like it."
She sat upright on the bed, cradling her head in her lap and staring up at him. "This is so weird," she said. "I haven't seen things from this height since we were little." She then carefully lifted her head up until her arms were fully raised; even sitting on the bed, she ended up at eye level with her cousin. "And now I'm up here. What a trip!"
Jason stared in amazement, noting how quickly she seemed to be acclimating to her strange new circumstances, using arms, hands, and even individual fingers to reposition and turn her head about now that it no longer rested atop her neck. Was this that thing it mentioned about gaining increased abilities to compensate for lost parts?
"Here," Lucy said, reaching out to offer her head to him, "you try."
Feeling just a little weirded out, he carefully set the katana down on his dresser and took her head from her, nearly dropping it in the process. "Waugh! Watch it!" Lucy yelped in surprise.
"Sorry," he said sheepishly. "I never realized how heavy it'd be..."
She gave him a little mock-pout. "Now is that any way to talk about a lady's weight?"
He laughed as he tried to get a good purchase on her head without pressing too hard into her face. Having her long hair caught between the base of her skull and his hands made it tricky. "Sorry. But you know what I mean."
He felt a little twitch in the muscles of her jaw and what used to be the top of her neck, and it took him a moment to realize that she was trying to signal a nod; somewhat bemusedly, he dipped her head down and up again. "Mm-hm," she said. "My body was a little surprised as well."
Jason gave her a funny look. "'My body?'"
Her body shrugged as she looked up at him from his hands. "It's...it kinda feels like my body is a separate entity," she said. "I mean, I can still feel it, and it's still me, but it feels like it has a mind of its own, almost. I can feel what it's thinking, but it's the one thinking it. I guess that's probably how I feel to it, too."
Jason thought for a moment, then remembered something from the directions. He went to grab the katana, then realized he was still holding Lucy's head. Carefully setting her down on his desk, he picked up the blade and took a close look at the hilt. "I think you're right," he said. "It looks like the selector musta got jammed when I hid the thing earlier; look, it's setting right on the detent between the 'detachment' and 'sentient' modes."
Lucy peered over at the device. "Huh, wow. So...it did like a halfway thing, then? My body almost has a mind of its own?"
He shrugged. "I dunno, but that seems to fit with what you're telling me."
She looked like she wanted to nod thoughtfully, but her body was still sitting on the bed some feet away. "Hm. That's something I never expected to have to sort out. Like, do we consider her as sort of a separate person, or merely an unusually autonomous part of me? That hurts my head just to think about." Her body tentatively reached out to the desk and picked her up, gently patting her on the head as she returned to the comfort of her own lap.
"Beats me," Jason said. "I'm still trying to figure out how this would even work in the first place. Like, you as a disembodied head talking clearly when the bits that actually make the noise are down in your throat, which isn't even attached anymore. How the heck does that work?"
She laughed. "At this point, all I can say is 'maybe magic?' Or maybe there's some kind of wormhole connecting them or something. Except that doesn't sound like how the instructions suggested it works...?" She frowned. "Wait, I do still have a neck, don't I?" She lifted her head up and turned it around so she could see. "Oh, right, that glowing surface thing. I guess we don't get to see what that looks like until time resumes..."
He shrugged. "When I picked you up it just felt like skin underneath. At least, as far as I could tell with your hair getting in the way."
Lucy nodded, turning her head slightly in his direction in acknowledgement. "No kidding. If this goes on for long, I'll probably have to cut it back just for practical reasons." She looked back over to her body and the neck-stump rising above her shoulders. "Man, though, if it isn't skin on top, I'm gonna have to start wearing high-collared shirts."
Jason laughed, then smiled as an idea came to him. "Maybe not. Here, hang on..."
He picked up the katana from the dresser and flicked the selector switch over to the "vanishing" setting; one side of the blade turned a bright purple. Going over to Lucy's body and steadying his aim with one hand on her shoulder, he carefully brought the blade to her neck, purple side up. Cutting through a human neck for a second time was still bizarre, but now that he was no longer plagued by the nagging worry that he'd end up killing someone, it was a lot less unsettling. After a little careful cutting, Lucy was left with a smooth expanse of purple glow that went from one collarbone to the other as if she'd never even had anything in between.
"There," he said, "problem solved."
Lucy, who had set herself back into her lap to keep her arms out of the way, lifted herself up for a look. "Oh, wow," she said. "This is so weird. But less weird than having a headless stump sticking out, I guess."
"I've lost track of what is or isn't weirder than anything else by this point, honestly," Jason chuckled. "Any other crazy things you want to try, or shall we let time go back to normal?"
She swiveled her head around to grin at him. "We can get to the other options later if we want. Meantime, I'm dying to see what's under this glowy stuff."
He nodded and hit the red button on the hilt again. The world resumed its normal course around them with nary a hint that there was anything particularly unusual about a young woman whose head was not attached to her body. Lucy turned back to her body and gave a whistle. "Wow, yep! Nothing but blank skin. Well, and the mole that used to be on the side of my neck." She frowned. "I guess even like this I can't exactly get a look underneath my head, can I?"
Jason ducked down for a look, and she did what she could to pull her hands back and part her fingers without losing her grip on her head. "Yep," he said, "same here." He thought of something suddenly, and hunkered down to look her in the eye. "Hey," he said, "what did you mean by 'if this goes on for long' earlier?"
Lucy gave a dismissive little laugh. "Oh, n-nothing, I just...well, I kinda thought it might be fun to stay like this for a while. You know, just 'til my folks get back." She giggled. "I wonder what my mom would think if she saw me like this? Or do you think that reality changes and people think I've always been this way?"
Jason stared at her. "Wait," he said, "what is my mom going to think?" The question of how she'd react to seeing her niece's headless body carrying her own head was suddenly all-consuming.
Lucy laughed. "Hey, good question! Auntie Harriet's pretty cool, I bet she takes it in stride. C'mon, let's go show her!" Before Jason could even move to stop her, her body had risen to its feet and, after a brief bit of tottering as she got used to standing and moving like this, she sprang out the door, head in hand.
