Power Swap: How does this even happen?! (Ash)

[Marnie Sullivan]

It was the closest Marnie's room ever came to looking like a tornado had hit. Clothes were scattered across the bed and floor. Her box of books was pulled from under her bed, a couple paperbacks tossed to the side. Her desk, ordinarily empty but for a few school supplies, was strewn with assorted knickknacks and miscellany. And Marnie herself, well, her hair was standing practically on end - not a result of her camouflage power but of running her hands through it over and over.

There was too much happening. Even without touching anything, the world had totally changed. The wallpaper, her clothes, even her face in the mirror were all different. Colors she didn't recognize had blossomed all around her, beginning with that first flip of the lightswitch when Lucas had woken her before sunrise. And the sunrise, god - she'd caught a glimpse of it through a slit in her curtains that morning and watched, transfixed, as the sun melted into the clouds in shades she'd heard of but had no idea how to name now.

Once the sky had faded to a familiar blue, Marnie had turned back to the confinements of her room and made a beeline for her closet. Yanking the door open revealed not only the familiar shades of blue and yellow, although she could see that they still dominated her wardrobe. Flicking one hanger to the side after the other, she saw a sweater here, a dress there that wildly differed from how she'd known it before this morning. She had stopped when she reached the dress she'd purchased at Greg's suggestion those months ago - she knew it was red, he'd told her it was red, but he couldn't have told her how vibrant it was, how much it popped! A wide smile had spread across Marnie's face as she reached for the fabric. She wanted to try it on -

Her room was replaced by the interior of a coffee shop as the sounds of shopping crowds filled her ears. Her newly discovered colors were seeped away, leaving blues and whites and yellows. Where a moment ago she was curious and excited, now Marnie was simply nervous. So nervous. They were outside - she'd only ducked into this shop to avoid them but she could hear the lilt of Karalie's voice over the crowd, and her phone was buzzing in her hand and it was Lucas and oh fuck, she'd been spotted -

Marnie's hand had recoiled from the dress, heart racing. What had just happened? It wasn't like she had just vaguely remembered where she'd worn the dress last - it was like she'd been transported back there. She could still practically hear the babble of the crowd in her ears!

Thank god there were no classes for Labor Day; Marnie forgot all about them as she grabbed one belonging after another, tossing them aside after each memory faded from the forefront of her mind. What was going on here?

[Ashley Engel]

Another day, another set of hours to devote to drudgery.
Ash was not excited. She should have been. Oh lord, she really should have been. But initially her day was slow. Labor Day meant no classes. No classes meant students would be everywhere without any sense of schedule. So leaving the dorm room at all was not going to be fun. She had half a mind to stay cooped up. Just lay in bed all day long. But her sleep schedule was not going well and despite every opportunity to sleep in late open, she didn't.

She got up, got dressed.
Which in an of itself was a fun experience. She'd been putting everything off in her quest to perpetually avoid people. And on that long list of things that needed to be done and hadn't, laundry was high up. That, returning library books that were overdue, and several other small chores were piled up on her. The fact it was a holiday made her want to push it all off for longer, though. Just one more day. Library fees wouldn't exactly hurt her any, and she could stall to do laundry until late at night when everyone was probably asleep, right? Maybe?

The answer, in flat logic, was yes.
And that was why the basket of dirty clothes was left at the foot of her bed for later. But the stern, rational part of her knew leaving the books for another day would just make her come up with an excuse for tomorrow. And who knew, maybe forcing herself to do it right then would be a good incentive down the road to not be so careless.

So she left her room done up in the only things that were left clean in her wardrobe- dark jeans that were one size too big and rode low on her hips, and a black t-shirt she was positive wasn't hers. It had to be Cain's. If the way it hung off her, too big and almost down to her knees, wasn't enough of a clue then the design definitely was. A little too anatomically correct to be comforting, the whole thing had a ribcage and spine across it with a very.. accurate rendition of a heart splattered behind the bones on the chest. Essentially, not any thing like the flat colors and conservative style she usually wore. But literally everything else was beyond dirty. Even her jackets, which she'd continued to wear into the hottest summer months with a special kind of stubbornness.

Ash tried to breathe. She gathered up her messenger bag, double checked the library books inside, and initially planned on sprinting as much of the walk from the dorm room to the library as possible. Going out with just a t-shirt on.. arms uncovered.. Just thinking about it before even leaving was driving her insane.

She never got to the library, though.
Out of the dorm room. Downstairs. She made it as far as the first floor before stopping. Staring. Even with headphones in, there as always background noise. At least, there usually was. But no matter how low she turned the volume, nothing swam up to take its place. Even when she stopped dead in the center of the common area, staring at a group of girls still in pajamas laughing about something, nothing happened. Ash could only pick up the conversation as they spoke it, what she could overhear at a distance.

It was reckless, but she wound up approaching them. She didn't say anything. She just got up in the girl's faces even when their conversation went dead silent. And that was all Ash heard. The awkward, nervous silence between the three strangers before one of them hesitantly asked the brunette literally standing right in the middle of them what was wrong.

Ash sprinted. Not to the library. Up.
Why Marnie was the first person to come to mind, she didn't know. Didn't want to think about it, and didn't have room to. She was bolting like her life depended on it, up the stairs and back down the hall. It was a booming, uncoordinated bang when she practically shouldered the front door open. She outright tripped on the way to Marnie's room, catching herself just barely on toes and hands before she kept going.

With no more warning than the front door banging, Ash slammed into Marnie's door.
Knob, stupid, turn the knob.
Her hands scrambled to open it without asking first in the same moment panic and excitement welled and ebbed enough to let her voice finally crack out of her strained throat.

"Marnie!" Ash screamed. Which was weird for a variety of reasons but mostly for the fact that she, of all people, was making any sound louder than a whisper.
"Marnie I need you to think something really loud for me like right now!"

[Marnie Sullivan]

Marnie's head snapped up at the bang of something colliding with her bedroom door. Too disoriented by her confusion to move, she just watched as the door slammed open and her roommate burst in. Ash was screaming at her? Silent, stoic Ash?

"Ash, what - ?" she began, but even was she tried to form a coheren sentence she couldn't help thinking, something's wrong, this is wrong, something's wrong with me and Lucas and now Ash too!

"Uh, shit, um..." Marnie stammered, run in her hands through her hair again. Think something random, something loud. "Okay, I'm thinking!"

Why was I in some old lady's house when I picked up a book a few minutes ago?

Marnie wasn't quite sure how to "think loudly" but if she had a yelling voice in her head, she was using it. If Ash heard then maybe she might have an answer. Somebody needed to have an answer for this.

"Ash, what's going on?" Marnie asked frantically, not waiting to see if Ash caught her thoughts. Now wasn't the time for patience, it was time for panic.

[Ashley Engel]

Ash looked excited.
Not just mildly interested or humoring a situation briefly. Not even somewhat alert and involved. But honest to god excited. Bent knees, hands raised with fingers splayed. She looked at Marnie like she held the secret to all of existence and any second it would be revealed.

And, judging by Ash's reaction to the brief silence, it was.
"Oh. My. God!" She laughed. Loud and short, but honest. Clear. Happy.
Ash laughed and surged forward, both hands without hesitation reaching for Marnie. Not even the girl's shoulders, but her face. Cupping her like man in the face of god, reverential and full of joy.
"I have no idea! But I don't care! I can't hear you, Marnie! I can't hear a single thing you're thinking!"

Maybe it wasn't that unusual in the abstract sense. In a detached, uninformed way.
Because there were plenty of videos online of teenage girls jumping around screaming in joy. But the fact it was Marnie's room, and it was Ash hopping backwards and making a squealing noise of all things, made it surreal.

Unfortunately, the explosive bliss was short lived.
The mess of the room wasn't precisely deadly, but it was still there. Ash kept jumping with the good news, moving backwards. It was inevitable that she would trip. Inevitable she would fall, and in those split second moments of tipping backwards do what anyone would do. Think about not falling. Seeking some way consciously and otherwise to right her balance.

Her legs weren't the most responsive in the moment, though.
What was? Power. Inherent ability. Shape-shifting, apparently.

As loud and disruptive as the door slamming and all the screaming had been, absolutely nothing topped the wall-shaking thud that came when Ash landed. She did not hit Marnie's floor entirely right, though. Which was to say, she didn't hit it as a human being.

One second there was touching and then squealing and jumping.
The next a full sized coca-cola machine was rocking back on two corners, swaying just for a blink before the balance shifted fully. There was a groan, a creak. Then the booming sound of the full machine falling backwards, barely having enough room between the bed and walls to fall back flat without any permanent damage to anything else.

Well, not counting the mental effects of watching someone turn into a vending machine, at least.

[Marnie Sullivan]

Well, Marnie certainly hadn't been expecting that response. Not hat she had any idea what she did expect, but Ash laughing with delight and grabbing her face was not high on the list.

It was as though the girl were a totally different person - and on any other day Marnie would have probably been happy to rejoice with her, but her own head was too clouded to ge that far. Ash couldn't hear her thoughts anymore? Her power was just gone? But... could that even happen? Why did Ash lose her power when Marnie had -

Had Marnie gained a power? Was that what was happening? But surely that was impossible, this didn't make any sense -

"Ash!" Marnie hurried to reach out and grab the girl's arm to stop her tumbling to the floor, but she froze after a step as she watched Ash turn into a vending machine what he fuck she turned into a vending machine!

Time slowed to a crawl as the vending machine - Ash? - teetered on its rear edge and then fell, fell, fell with an almighty CRASH. Marnie stood, dumbstruck, for at least a full minute before releasing a high-pitched "WHAT THE FUCK!" and scrambling across the room. She fell to her knees at the machine's side and reached out and -

- and then the panic was gone, vanished, and in its place was a sense of excitement, of thrill, as branches whipped past her and the smell of pines and dirt filled her nostrils and was that an owl hooting nearby? A man's voice behind her: "Be careful." But she couldn't slow down, wouldn't slow down, she was free of the walls that stifled her by day and there were so many stars and she was safe with him, so what if she scraped a knee? Here, this would be their campsite for the night, she could watch him pitch a tent and they'd have a fire and -

- and suddenly she was back in her room, fingers splayed over the plastic casing of the coke machine in front of her. So strange... This didn't make sense, but for a moment Marnie couldn't bring herself to be bothered. There was a lingering peace, a satisfaction from that sense of freedom that had filled her a second ago.

"...Ash, is that you?" she asked at last, her voice less troubled than it had been a minute ago. There had been so many stars.

[Ashley Engel]

There was a bang. Softer than the crash, more plastic in nature.
The faceplate of the vending machine wavered, popping back out after being dented in the fall. Then there was silence. Maybe from the outside it seemed fairly calm. Ignoring the weirdness of the situation, it all settled back into the usual silence that was across their dorm room.

But inaudibly, there was panic.
There weren't good words to describe what it felt like to be a vending machine. They didn't have eyes. Feet. Hands. Ash couldn't look at herself, couldn't figure out what had happened with any real sense. Not just in terms of logic, but in legitimate sensory capability. With what mouth, ears, hands, nose, could she perceive anything?

She knew, though. Sort of.
She knew what to do, how to handle the situation. Which was probably the weirdest part of the whole thing to her in the moment. She didn't understand what was going on or why, but she knew what to do to make it stop. Like a base instinct, the drive to breathe or eat or sleep.

Unlike the sleek Transformers movies with edgy sound effects and computer-esq tones, when the vending machine started to shake and crumple there was no folding sci-fi noise. There was, however, metal on metal. Which for anyone who had never heard it before, happened to be one of the worst ear-screeching sounds around. The machine buckled and dented like it was being crushed, scraping and creaking and filling the room with an ungodly level of sound like Marnie's bedroom was suddenly a site for trash compaction or car crushing.

When it was over though, there was no hunk of wrecked metal. There was Ash.
Laying flat on her back, staring up at the ceiling with wide eyes. She just stared, looking deeply terrified. Her lips pursed slowly, and her brows came together. And then she spoke, slow and stern. Far more like her normal self.
"I have no idea what that was. But I still can't hear you. So I think I'm totally okay with it."

Whatever Marnie had said, if she heard it at all or not wasn't clear.
Ash just laid still, not moving. Trying to adjust to the sudden soreness throughout her body and the oddness of whatever had just happened.

[Marnie Sullivan]

At first, Marnie was content to just gaze dreamily down at the brightly colored machine in front of her. After that last vision, the whole situation felt more silly than frightening. And then the noises began.

The first bang of the cursive-splashed front panel popping out of place served to snap Marnie back to reality. When the screeching started, tearing at her eardrums, she scrambled backwards, legs kicking furiously until her back smacked against the wall behind her. Unable to retreat further, she clapped her hands over her ears - anything to block out that awful sound. God, how could she have felt so peaceful only a few seconds ago? she wondered, eyes squeezed shut.

Eventually - thankfully - the screeching stopped, and Marnie peeked one eye open to peer at the machine that was no longer a machine but in fact her roommate. The tiny girl lying still, staring in horror at the ceiling was much more familiar than the one that had been bouncing off the walls a minute ago - well, at least one thing was back to normal.

Not that it answered any of their questions.

"...Well, shit," Marnie said flatly, as Ash's words finally registered. If now didn't qualify as stressful enough for an invective, nothing ever did.

"I mean, I'm happy for you, don't get me wrong," she continued hastily, followed by a grunt of exertion as she pushed herself to her feet. "I was just really hoping you knew what was going on because I am seriously clueless."

Well, mostly clueless. Lucas' messages earlier didn't exactly paint a clear picture of what had happened to him, but he did say he thought his muscle memory was gone. And here was Ash, with a totally bizarre new ability but explicitly clear that she could no longer hear the thoughts of others. Maybe it was a bad idea to pull a pattern from only two people, but what if...?

Marnie raised one arm tentatively, chewing her bottom lip as she concentrated. Sure enough, the prickling sensation she'd gotten used to over four years didn't appear, nor did the shade of her skin show a single trace of change.

"My camouflage is gone too." The words were quiet, mostly to herself. She'd been so caught up in testing her own new power that she'd completely forgotten about the one she'd taken for granted. "But... what happened?"