Testing the Mindswap Mechanics

This is a little confusing because mindswap is confusing to describe. I think I made it clearish, but uh, yeah I had fun here.

This takes place during the 2 months of "Village Arrest" Enjoy!

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Waking up in Ino’s body for the first time was weird. Ino’d been in her body a few times over the years to test certain ideas, but she’d never been in Ino’s. She’s softer, more gentle natured, it feels less like she has the world on her shoulders and more like the world’s worries are just a babbling brook in the distance. People say that stress has a physical component, and the first time in Ino’s body made her believe that outright. Theoretically her body should be reset after every rest, but it seems her emotions aren’t altered and that means the basic surface effects of those emotions get to stay.

Does that mean the power of her emotions and their impact could theoretically kill her if they got to be too bad, or is that outside the realm of realism? There aren’t enough books on the mental space, so she chose not to think about it much.

The second time she entered Ino’s body was somehow weirder? She was instructed to try walking by her own voice, Ino enjoying using her classical deadtone to greater effect than she ever could. Walking at a different height, with a different body weight, and different muscles was just incredibly awkward. Ino’s got a bigger chest than hers and she really didn’t think the slight difference would matter but it did. Poor Ino, her body is just plain out worse for combat, as a ninja that’s so sad. There’s a lot of little things like that. Things that’ll be pronounced enough to probably matter in some years for other reasons but right now just serve to make her less efficient and awkwardly unbalanced.

Maybe she was being too harsh? It was only her second time.

The third time she entered Ino’s body things were a little different. They were finally going to play with the system, and nothing says ‘fun time’ like messing with the mechanics of a reality bending system while in a completely different person’s body. She was so ready!

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“Woah, your stats are stupid.” Ino says, playing around with the system in her body like it’s her own. “How do they even get that high? What have you been doing?”

“School.” Sakura mumbles, looking through Ino’s with less disappointment than she figured she would have. She’s taken training a little more seriously since she first got the system, and while she’s not progressing as well as Sakura would like, it can’t be understated how much more significant the system’s improvement modifiers are on her than they are on Ino. It goes past simple numbers, her traits alter her skills which alter her numbers, her efforts, her motivation and positive feedback loop. She’s basically playing an entirely different game, it’s not right for her to judge Ino.

That doesn’t mean she doesn’t, it just means she’s less jerky about it. “Sorry for being mean about your stats, originally.” Sakura forces out in Ino’s voice. It feels weird to hear Ino apologize for something when it was her own body that did it, even if it’s like, her actually apologizing and Ino - look she’s just not ready to conceptualize this whole body swap thing very well so she’s moving on.

“So we can confirm that your stats are bound to your body, not your soul.” Ino says, “but it’s weird, I don’t feel smarter in your body, or dumber socially. Do you feel dumber or smarter socially?”

“No… But that’s already in the theory of your technique.” Sakura reminds her, opening a scroll at their side to remind Ino of the section she’s referencing with her finger. “The soul has a mental component to it, that’s how you pass from place to place and go back, if it didn’t have that, you couldn’t reverse the technique.”

“But it says your body’s Mental stat.” Ino pokes the box floating in the air. “So it can lie to us.”

“I don’t think it is.” Sakura shrugs, getting a confused look from her own body. “On the surface it’d be really easy to assume that Mental stat and Charm are our ability to interact with those aspects of reality, but what if it’s more complicated than that? What if it’s our capacity to learn and a boost to our learning rate, not our current understanding?”

“Wouldn’t that mean you could use my body to learn social skills, and I could use yours to study?” Ino asks, her own voice slowing a little bit as she processes.

“Possibly, but it’s also possible we destabilize our souls by doing so and become incompatible with our own bodies.” Sakura pokes through Ino’s skills, they’re so cute! Who uses the system to pick up knitting and make-up? Ino does, that’s who. “So as cool as it sounds, I’d rather not test it.”

“Because then we’ll die…” Ino trails.

“Because you’ll die, I get the feeling the system will happily let me continue to use your body eternally.” Ino’s voice chimes, as if it’s a happy topic she’s enthusiastic about. “Then there’s the fact that we’re allowed to enter each-other’s bodies despite the desync in the first place. It’s possible the issue doesn’t exist and we’re wasting potential by ignoring it…”

“We can only stay swapped like this for a week, a few hours at the max if we’re any real distance away from each-other. The forceful integration part might function differently, I don’t want to test that.” Ino sighs using Sakura’s airway, it sounds natural. Which means she sighs too much, damn-it.

“It’s too bad we don’t live closer to each-other, I’d love to mess with everyone by swapping for a week. Sakura snickers at the thought, Ino’s voice has a melody to it that sounds good with any sort of laughter. She should make her laugh more often…

“You said you wanted to vacation to Wave at some point right?” Ino asks, tilting dyed blonde hair to give her a green eyed gaze that looks so dull. Sakura needs to practice that, for sure. It’s a nice look but it could be so much better with a little care to make herself pop. “Why don’t we go together, we can mess with everyone there.”

“Uh… are you any good with kids?” Sakura asks, “because Inari isn’t going to leave me alone the moment I enter the country. I’m going to have to install child safety stuff in the workshop I plan to have built there.”

“No, but I can get good with kids, I want to have some someday.” Something about that look seems odd on her own features. It’s soft and there’s a glint of something deep in that gaze that makes her feel warm and she’s not sure why. She’ll need to spend a few hours in front of a mirror later testing that. She’s learning a lot about herself right - oh crap is that the charm thing?

She decides to stop paying attention to that lest they die.

“We should get testing. How do you feel about a race?” Sakura asks.

“You fell flat on your face when I asked you to walk. My nose hurt for days.”

“My body knows earth and water jutsu, just soften the ground before I hit it.” Sakura suggests.

“Sakura… I’m pretty sure jutsu aren’t body specific.” Ino gulps, as her brain puts together that maybe they are.

“Something better to test!”

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“Sword of the five elements!” Ino stands atop a hill of her own creation, holding a crackling sword of potent chakra above her head like it’s a ball to be tossed. It spins in the air, her energies moving as easily as she breathes. “You realize chakra isn’t supposed to flow this easily, right?” Ino asks mid-cackle, before sending the death blade booming through the air towards her own body and watching Sakura barely manage to put up a rock wall in front of herself. She dodges to the side, using the small amount of time the wall provides to escape before the sword pierces it and explodes in all directions, sending fragments of burning rock throughout the training ground and creating a small crater.

“And Earth isn’t supposed to be that hard to use!” Sakura shouts back, “are you trying to kill yourself? Should we swap places in the next session and explore your mind for a change?”

“Don’t you be socially aware on me, we might die if you do that!” Ino allows herself another cackle, while a hundred water shuriken appear above her head, and take off after her own body like they’re hounds on the chase. “You have this much chakra!? How do you manage to look so depressed when you can just do this at any given time?”

Ino’s body darts to the side, picking up a stick just in time to block one, two-”fuck-” her trait doesn’t activate. Maybe it’s that the jutsu is stronger than academy student - likely - or maybe it’s just that it doesn’t exist in Ino’s body, but she finds herself quite cut up an instant later. “Guk-”

“Sakura?” Ino asks before her own body even hits the ground, reaching out with Sakura’s natural affinities to soften the dirt below the slumping form just like Sakura suggested. Ino’s got a better grasp of her own jutsu and control than she does, which would make Sakura simmer if it wasn’t for the fact that she’s overly proud about it. Go Ino, she’s going to be awesome someday. A quick analysis confirms that the trait she got to reduce in-combat pain didn’t activate, so it’s likely she’s stuck with Ino’s traits while in Ino’s body. It turns out getting slashed up really hurts. “You okay girl?”

“Nope, you’re going to feel that for a while.” Sakura grunts, piling up a little of the watery dirt - mud really - and creating a pillow for herself.

“Hey, wait, I don’t have your recovery, I'll get an infection!”

“Mnn, we should get to a hospital then.” Sakura mumbles, while Ino scrolls through the system menu for a list of available options.

“We have some healing sprays-” Ino begins.

“Don’t you dare use one of those for this, they’re mostly surface level cuts and those can restore limbs.” Sakura cuts her off, like hell she’s using full restores on Ino being careless. Maybe if the wounds were deeper she’d think about it… She’d use all of them if she was in any real danger.

“Jeez… The hospital’s kinda far away so I’m gonna head to the forest of death and get a few herbs to tide us over until you can be transported. Be right back.” Her own body ditches her at a breakneck speed, her training with Lee serving Ino well. How come Ino’s so coordinated in her body but she sucks in Ino’s? It’s unfair.

“I’ll be napping.” Sakura mumbles into the mud, using it to cover her wounds while she waits.

“Your body’s awesome, getting to the forest of death, picking what I needed and getting back took me like twenty minutes. I even got a skill for herbology, you know how long that would have taken in my body?” Ino asks.

“Like ten times as long?” Sakura suggests, head nuzzling a pillow in Ino’s body. Medical ninja frequently roam around the outskirts of training fields just in case some Genin hurts themselves, which does mean she got picked up about two minutes after Ino left. Good thing too, her body was a lot more hurt than they knew, Ino managed to sever tendons with those shuriken. In the future she’ll have to check her HP stat before she makes bold claims like ‘it’s just a flesh wound.’

“Maybe like thirty… sorry about that, I got a little carried away.” Ino admits, probably looking away awkwardly but Sakura’s too busy sticking her face directly into this pillow to check. The least she needs is to accidentally raise her own charm capacity when they have no way to test if it’ll cause any problems. Maybe they can get some advice and ideas from Inoichi on the matter? At a later date, for sure. After the exams, if they’re going to spend a week in each-other’s body they should definitely be sure it’s okay first.

The powerleveling potential does make her salivate though. It’s such a cool concept!