Jason groaned. He felt like he had been microwaved, boiled, and then trampled by a herd of rabid goats. Can goats even be rabid? he thought sluggishly, and then shook his head to clear it. He needed to assess the situation, figure out what had happened. It was still dark out, and the sun was rising around 7'o clock this morning, they got in the fight around 11, so sometime in between 11 and 6? It was always hard to tell with Gotham's oppressive clouds. He rubbed his face—which shouldn't have been an option with his helmet on. Ok, helmet gone, but mask still in place? Did she take it as a memento or some shit? Without his helmet to aid in night vision, he could only see the dark outline of Dick, still unconscious. He made to stand up and almost topped over again.
His sense of balance was way off, and he felt… wrong. That was the only way to describe it. He looked down to see if he was injured—and nearly screamed.
Jason was wearing Dick's Nightwing costume.
"What the actual fuck?" he said aloud. He scrambled to find a reflective surface to look into and found a shallow puddle. It was enough to see his reflection, and when he saw it, he just about passed out again. For when he looked into his reflection, he found that the reflection staring back was that of Nightwing. He waved his hand in front of his face a couple of times, even slapped himself, to make sure this wasn't an illusion, but the image held.
Slowly, he looked with horror over to Dick where he lay, and realized that in his place, was himself. He staggered over to Dick, panic shaking him inside.
"Dick, wake up!" He didn't stir. "Dammit Dick," he reached over and slapped Dick—himself—across the face. At that he sat straight up.
"Ow, what the hell, Hoo—" He froze, staring into his own face. Panicked, he looked down at his body—Jason's body—and up again. And screamed.
"I take it you see our problem," Jason said dryly.
"Oh my god, oh my GOD, what the fuck happened?! I'm you and you're me and—what the fuck?!" He pulled off Jason's helmet and threw it to the ground, Jason could see his wide, terrified pupils.
"It seems to me that Sabrina the Teenage Witch whammied us and made us switch bodies," he growled.
"Okay, well, there's got to be a way to get back, I mean we can't stay like this!" Dick patted his face, feeling the dissimilarities.
"No shit Sherlock, but what do you propose we do?"
Dick thought for a moment. "I know, let's run at each other, and then when we hit, maybe we'll switch back!"
Jason scoffed, which sounded very strange coming from Dick's voice and body. "That didn't work in Freaky Friday, do you really expect that to work here?"
Dick glared. "You got any better ideas?" Jason was silent. "I didn't think so. Come on, get up."
When Dick tried to stand, used to his lighter body and more graceful form of movement, he fell over. He tried again as he spoke.
"Christ, Jason, how much do you weigh?"
"Oh, I'm sorry, Mr. I-fly-through-the-sky-like-a-bird, is my body not pleasing to your standards?" Jason snapped.
"Forget it." They walked to opposite sides of the rooftop. "On three, ok? We need to hit each other as squarely as possible. One, two, three!" Sprinting towards each other, they hit in the middle with a sickening smack, and collapsed on the ground groaning.
"I don't think it worked," Dick groaned, still stuck in Jason's body.
"It worked to give us both concussions," Jason shot back, still stuck in Dick's body. The earpiece in Jason's ear crackled.
"Nightwing come in. Can you hear me?" Tim Drake's voice filtered in through the pain still flaring in Jason's skull.
"Nightwing, you there? Your communicator just turned on, do you need help? Are you hurt?"
Realizing that Tim was in fact talking to him, Jason spoke up.
"Yeah, just not in the way you think. We have a problem, but it's too hard to explain it here. I'm coming back to the cave, and bringing D- er, Jason with me." Jason glanced over to Dick, who mouthed who are you talking to, as Tim responded.
"Oh, uh, ok. See you two soon, then. Red Robin out." The confusion rang clear in his voice, since Jason usually didn't drop by the mansion anymore, with a place of his own to go to. Not to mention that Damian, the little creep, was still trying to "prove himself the superior combatant" every time Jason stopped by. It didn't really give incentive to visit.
"We're… going back to the cave?" Dick glanced down and grimaced. "Like this?"
"I don't know what else we can do right now. At least there we can regroup."
Dick let out a heavy sigh. "I guess you're right. Here, let me check my—your—arm before we go."
"What's wrong with my—oh." Jason looked to the wound on his blue and black clad arm. It had stopped bleeding and was starting to scab over, it didn't look swollen. "Should I be worried?"
Dick examined it and patted down Jason's jacket, pulling things out of various pockets until he found some gauze. "Nah, it was just a king snake. Y'know, red next to yellow you're a dead fellow, red next to black you're okay Jack?"
"I usually go by Jason, not Jack, how hard did you hit your head?"
"Never mind, in any case, it wasn't poisonous, even though she wanted it to look like it was. My guess is that she was saving up her magic juice to hit us hard at the end, but that means she might not be as powerful as she appears." He finished wrapping the arm. "As for your burn, it doesn't look too serious either, I'll deal with it once we're back at the cave. Hey, how did you get here?"
"I flew. How do you think, genius?"
"Cut it out Jay, we need to figure out how we're getting back. Am I riding your motorcycle to keep up with appearances?"
Jason's eyes narrowed. "The hell you are. That bike is my pride and joy."
"Great. Mine's faster anyway."
"It is not—"
"We should take backroads to get back then. Let's get going."
They made it back to their motorcycles, still wobbly but starting to find their balance. Dick reached his bike first. He made to swing his leg over the seat, but clipped the longer leg on the wheel, promptly tumbling towards the asphalt. He just caught himself before he face-planted. Jason erupted in laughter, but when he put up the kick stand on his motorcycle, his smaller mass was unable to keep it balanced and he tipped the massive bike over with a yelp. Righting his bike, he flipped off Dick waiting patiently while inspecting it for damage. Having found none, they set off slowly into the night, the damp streets reflecting the dim light of the street lamps.
It was fortunate they didn't run into anyone to fight, as it would be difficult to explain Nightwing and the Red Hood driving each other's motorcycles, and even harder to explain why Red Hood was suddenly into acrobatics and Nightwing was now using guns. They pulled into the vehicle bay of the bat cave and began to make their way up to the main area.
"So how do we try to explain this?" Dick asked Jason.
He shrugged. "I dunno, just be blunt, I guess."
They found the computer area to be occupied by Tim seated at the computer while Bruce leaned over the screen and pointed at something. They looked up upon their arrival.
"Hello Dick, Jason," Bruce greeted them as they entered. Jason felt uncomfortable to be greeted so amiably. They took off their masks and Bruce looked over to Jason. "Tim mentioned you had some sort of a situation out there tonight, care to elaborate?"
Dick stepped past Jason, surprising Bruce. "Yeah… so you how we went after that arms shipment? Well, we stopped that, but we ran into this enchantress who—" Dick paused as Bruce's characteristically neutral expression turned to one of shock as he peered over his shoulder.
"Dick are you smoking?" he asked taken aback.
The real Dick turned sharply to Jason, who had somehow produced a lighter and pack of cigarettes from out of thin air, and said sharply, "Jason, I swear to god if you smoke while you're in my body you won't have a body to return to."
Jason rolled his eyes but put the cigarettes away. "Yeesh, lighten up Dick. Don't be one of those 'my body is my temple' assholes who only eat kale. Live a little."
"I'll live a lot longer without you polluting my body."
Bruce and Tim watched the exchange in utter confusion. Once it clicked, Bruce's expression turned to complete exasperation and he looked skyward as if praying for strength while Tim's eyes widened in horror.
"Wait, you don't mean…"
"We do." Dick answered solemnly.
"So Jason…" Tim glanced between the two of them
"Yo," he said, gesturing with a peace sign from Dick's black and blue-clad hand.
"And Dick?"
"Present," he said despondently, an odd expression to be seen on Jason's face.
Bruce pinched the bridge of his nose. "I can feel the migraine coming on already. Explain."
They told the whole story while they finished patching their respective injuries, from the thugs to the enchantress and waking up on the roof top. As Dick spoke, interspersed with snide comments from Jason, Bruce listened intently while Tim typed notes on the computer. The end of the story was met with silence on all sides. Tim let out a low whistle.
"Wow, when you guys fail you really know how to do it spectacularly, huh?"
"Go fuck yourself Drake, you think we wanted this to happen?" Jason retorted angrily.
"Hey I'm just stating the obvi—" He was cut off as a dark shape jumped from the rafters above where it had been stalking its prey.
Jason yelled "Damian, wait!" but it was too late as the youngest member of the family fell upon Dick, knocking him roughly to the ground. Dick gasped as his arm was bent painfully and Damian zip tied his wrists to his ankles. He turned around to look at Damian with a tone of hurt in his voice. "Lil' D?"
Damian gazed haughtily down at Dick. "At last I prove myself superior, Todd. I have bested you in combat—keep that in mind for any future endeavors of yours that rely upon my compliance. Furthermore, I am unaware of what leads you to believe you have permission to use Grayson's code name for me, but you are sorely mistaken if you are under the impression that I shall allow that behavior to continue."
Tim attempted to whap Damian upside the head, which he deftly dodged. "You idiot, that's Dick not Jason!"
Damian took a step back, anger, confusion, and a small amount of guilt written on his face. "What is this nonsense, Drake?"
Dick sat up, the zip ties now lying in a pile next to him. "It's fine Damian, you didn't know. Jason and I got whammied by a witch and now he's in me while I'm stuck in him."
Jason grinned evilly and said, "No need to make it sexual, Dick."
Damian glared at Jason. "Don't ever smile with Grayson's face like that. Ever."
Jason scoffed. "Whatever. So what are we gonna do? This has been fun and all, but I'd like to get back to my smokin' bod ASAP please."
A dagger flew past Jason's ear. "Todd, I don't want you to say a single word while you're inside Grayson's body."
Bruce intervened before the argument could go any further.
"Dick, Jason, get yourselves cleaned up. I think you should stay together until we figure this out, and stay here. Get some sleep and we'll figure this out in the morning."
Damian, still appearing guilty at the prospect of attacking his mentor, said nothing but stayed close by Dick's side as if to protect him from Jason. They each went their respective ways, Dick, Jason, Tim and Damian to their bedrooms for rest, and Bruce off with his phone, presumably to make some calls to inquire about their current situation.
A/N: Hey everybody! Thank you all so much for the support for the first chapter! I plan on updating the story every Friday, school is about to get back in session for me so we'll see how that goes, but I'll do my best to stick to the schedule. I slipped a line from One Piece in here so kudos to you if you found it, I thought it was too funny not to include since it works so well with the situation. Thanks for reading, and please review!