"When are you going to take me into the demon realm with you, Dark?" I asked, laying on his couch, playing with my phone. He looked over at me. "Never. You can't go there." I looked over. "Why?" I asked, innocently. "You can't survive there. You would literally die." I was perplexed. "Mark said you took someone with you there once. Why are you lying to me?" "I didn't take them to the demon realm. I can't. Like I said, humans can't survive there. If you wanna go stare at boring guardian angels, we can do that." It appealed, but not as much as demons did. "I really wanna meet your sister." I said. "Sister?" he asked, confused. "Circe. Your sister. Don't tell me you forgot you had a sister." Dark raised an eyebrow at me. "I thought I explained that she isn't my sister." "You two grew up together, that makes her your sister as far as I'm concerned." He rolled his eyes. "I don't have siblings or any other relatives (y/n). You still don't understand our structure I see. Perfectly normal, you don't have the same origin." "I still want to meet her." Dark let out a sigh. "Someday maybe. I still can't take you down there." I sighed, a bit frustrated. "I wish I was a demon." I said. "It'd be cool to travel to different worlds." "You wouldn't like the job. Trust me there. Having to spend your time either intimidating people or controlling negative emotions in people is no picnic. It's frustrating at times. Just last night I was up all night long with Mark. Asshole was raging over-wait for it-another video game. It took hours to break him down and restore him to his natural state. Very exhausting." I shrugged. "Sounds easy to me." "I wish you could try it." Dark said. "You'd see it's not as easy as I make it sound." I thought for a moment. "Didn't Mark give you a blood transfusion some time ago?" "Duh." Dark said. "That's what brought you to the way you are now, right?" He looked at me with a half scowl. "Yeah. No shit." he said. "Well..." I started. "Well what?" he asked indignantly. "Well what if you gave me one? Would that make me a demon?" Dark looked deep in thought. "I have no idea. You'd have to ask Mark." "You don't know?" I asked, surprised. "But you're the demon." "Yes (y/n), I am the demon...I had no idea that blood transfusions between humans and demons meant anything until Mark said so. They never taught us that stuff. Mark read it in some demonology book he bought online." I was getting a bit excited. "So if it does work, would you trade places with me?" Dark looked at me wide eyed. "Absolutely not. I don't want to be a human." "That isn't what I meant. I want to know if there's a way we could trade for a day or something." "If that's the case, I'll bite. If not, forget it. We are not permanently trading places. There's a lot of reasons for that." I eagerly called Mark and begged him to bring the book over. He agreed, though reluctantly. He said the book was complicated and he didn't want anyone to blame him for anything going wrong. I promised him nobody would. He arrived about 40 minutes later, book tucked under his arm. "So what's this about?" he asked, still a bit confused. "I want to go to the demon world. I need to know if there's a way to temporarily switch bodies with Dark." "Bodies?!" Dark interjected. "You never said anything about a body switch." "But you said humans can't go to where you're from. Won't my human body break?" He looked defeated. "Yeah you're right. Jesus Christ. Just open the fucking book, Mark. I want this day to be over now more than ever." I felt a bit bad stealing Dark's body from him, but it was the only way to experience what I wanted to. Besides, I'd bring it back in good shape. Mark skimmed through the book until he found what he was looking for. "Here it is. A temporary demon-human body swap." I watched his eyes dart back and forth has he read. "Sounds simple. Says there's actually a spell...no bloodshed needed." "A spell?" Dark asked, skeptical. "We don't do spells in the demon realm. We don't need to." "Apparently no being is exempted from having a spell cast upon them. Look, it's written in Aramaic. You two hold hands, Dark you're the only one who can read this shit. So read it." Dark looked at me. He narrowed his eyes a bit. "You had better treat my body with so much respect..." he muttered. I just giggled, clutching his hand. "You're sure this is only temporary, right?" Dark asked Mark. Mark reread the book's entry. "Says here it's for a period of no greater than 12 hours." Dark sighed. "Give me the book then. (Y/N), this had better be worth it. Like you'd better come back here saying Circe is your best friend worth it." I nodded eagerly. "Don't worry, it will be." He sighed and read off the text. I was expecting explosions and earthquakes. Tidal waves and smoke. What I got instead was a bit of a burning sensation,then I fainted. When I woke up I did NOT feel like myself. I felt stronger, smarter, and...capable. Of what, I did not know, but I felt like I could rule the world. I blinked hard a few times. "Mark?" No response. "Mark left. It's just me." I looked over. "Hi, welcome back." I was confused. "Dark?" I asked. "Well no shit. Who else?" I scurried to my feet. "You're me!" I said. Dark sighed. "Isn't that what you wanted?" he asked. I stared in disbelief. "We've swapped literally everything. Our voices, our bodies...everything." I said. "Yeah. That's how it works." I looked down. I had Dark's lean, toned body. "I feel sorta weird. Like I'm..." "Supernatural?" Dark said. "That's exactly it!" I exclaimed. "That's because, for the time being, you are. You are me. Totally me. Now, I have to say something: before you go down to the demon realm, change that personality up. You are entirely too shaky and bouncy. Play it cool." "How do I go down? How do I shapeshift? How do I teleport? How do I do any of the things you do? I want to levitate, how do I though?" Dark facepalmed. "Calm down. Use your mind. You have to focus harder than you've ever focused before." I closed my eyes and thought about being a cat as hard as I could. I opened my eyes. I was still Dark...er, myself. "Try it again. See, it isn't easy." I tried again, thinking of cats, all cats, cats all day. When I opened my eyes I was a cat. "Cool!" I said. Dark picked me up. "Be careful. Very careful. You don't understand how powerful you are. Don't tell ANYONE in the demon realm who you really are. If you talk to my caregivers, keep it short. They're smart. They can see through almost anything. They will accept you, but that's a risk for them. As for Circe, you can tell her. She's trustworthy, but BE CAREFUL. Don't get her into trouble." I nodded, licking my paws. "Set me down, I have to change back." I focused on being Dark as hard as I could and much to my surprise, it worked the first time. "Nicely done. I see you're better at it than I was when I was first learning. No surprise there, I was awful." I smiled. "So how do I get down there?" "Through Mark, through a portal, or through teleporting. Don't choose Mark. You are nowhere nearly skilled enough to use blood for anything. On that note, you have to come back up at 3. I told Mark to give himself a slashing at 3 to get you back up here. You'll know when he does that. It'll feel like something is calling you in a certain direction. When you hear that, follow it and enter the portal. I also told Mark NO outbursts of negativity today because you're not me. You can't deal with that. Trust me." I rolled my eyes. "Hey, how do you do that finger snap thing?" I asked. Dark raised an eyebrow. "Finger snap thing?" he asked. "Yeah, you can do so much stuff by snapping your fingers. Oh, and I want to leave those cool shaped black clouds behind me when I teleport. How do I do that?" Dark sighed. "Firstly, you ask too many questions. Secondly, you aren't ready for that. That's for experts. You are far from an expert. Believe me, you'll have enough fun with the basics." I frowned. "Fine...just explain teleporting." "Think (y/n). Think. Imagine yourself going to where you want to be." I focused. "Keep thinking,keep imagining." I stopped. "This is hard. You make it look like it's automatic." Dark smirked. "Thank you for that much-deserved validation." he said. I went back to focusing. I imagined what the demon realm looked like. I felt myself start slipping into another dimension. It didn't look quite right,though, so I stopped. "Describe your home to me." I said. "I think I'm going somewhere I don't wanna go." Dark vaguely described a post-apocalyptic city with a red sky and a 'heavy' presence. Whatever that was. Sounded intimidating. I imagined it as best as I could and before too long, I was back to slipping into another dimension.
