While you are still upstairs, your sister takes a look at the empty package on the table. “It looks like someone got new socks” she thinks as she turns the package around. A sheet of folded paper falls out onto the table. Curios as Susan is, she looks it over, reading the explanation. “That´s absurd, magic socks? Which can change you into whoever shoes you put on afterwards?” she thinks and laughs a bit.
Just then her little kid brother Tim moved towards the shoe cabinet by the front door. “Wait, Tim is over at my neighbors with his friend, I saw him there. And he has no keys to come in alone, and can´t be here faster than me” Susan thought. Another look at the sheet and she realizes that that wasn´t Tim, but someone else. “Most likely Tom, who is afraid of me finding out. That´s why he didn´t respond when I called.”
Just as “Tim” got Tom´s shoes from the cabinet and turned, Susan decided to greet him. “Hey there, Tim. Do you know where your brother is?” “Tim” stiffened at her addressing him. “Uhm…” he gave as a response.
With a small laugh, Susan mentions him over. “You got his shoes, so I guess he is upstairs, and is hoping to escape outside to not babysit little Ken here.” Now “Tim” looks rather guilty. But he came over to her.
As soon as he was near enough, Susan moved and hugged him tightly, sitting back with him on her lap. “Hey, let go” “Tim” mutters, but she didn´t. Instead she grabs for the basket with her little Ken inside right next to her on the table, pulling his baby-booties of without her brother noticing.
Grinning, she adjusts “Tim´s” position on her lap, and slips the booties over his feet instead. He had left Tim´s shoes in his room and only came down in his magic socks after all. As a shudder went through “Tim´s” body, Susan laughed. “It really works, right, Tom?” Tom went rigid on her lap. “How did you…?” “You left the empty package on the table, with some kind of manual for the socks inside. And as I saw “Tim” moving around, when I have seen him with my neighbors, I could guess.”
On her lap, Tom had started to shrink even smaller. He gave a yelp in panic as he noticed. “What are you…? Before his voice went away in gibberish. “I had to try the socks myself, and as it was the easiest, I took little Ken´s booties for you, Tom.”
Tom wanted to protest, but while he could think what he wanted, nothing was understandable to Susan. The now mostly naked baby boy throws a fit on her lap. So, Susan got up again, pulling the rest of Tim´s clothes off of Tom´s body. When he was naked, she laid him on the table and slipped the booties back over Ken´s feet, before she took a change of clothes she had packed for Ken and put it on Tom.
Soon Tom was wearing a diaper, covered by a green onesie, and fitting green booties. As he was still throwing a fit, she pushed a pacifier in his mouth and used it´s cord, which normally was used so the baby didn´t lose his pacifier, and bound it behind his head a bit tightly. That way he couldn´t spit it out.
Slowly Tom calmed down sucking on the pacifier, as his mind grew foggier slowly. “Don´t worry, Tom. I will be happy to have you be my second son. But as you are Ken´s twin brother then, let´s name you Ben instead, okay?” Susan said grinning.
While Ben´s eyes got wide in fear, not wanting to be his sisters second son, Susan returned Tim´s clothes to his room and took his shoes from Tom´s room to the cabinet alongside the one´s he had gotten from there before, and packed the socks back into the package. She would keep them, maybe she could use them herself later. They had grown back to normal size after she removed them from Tom´s feet.
Susan smiled at her brother, now more like her son´s twin brother. She was sure she would miss Tom, but having two sons instead of one is far better than a brother.
T
As she had read in the explanation, if you put the shoes on yourself, you change into the owner of said shoe´s with your mind completely intact. You would get some knowledge of the owner if you keep the body longer, but your mind stays the same.
But if someone else puts the shoes on your feet, said knowledge came faster, and small adjustments were made to the mind. The victim would still remember everything of his old life, but it was more like a vivid dream.
Normally it took between an hour and a day for the knowledge to set. But as Ken was only a rather newborn life, it was far faster for Tom to change mentally. Tom, not knowing all this as he hadn´t read the explanation, “watched” his memories flash before him and vanish into the back of his mind, knowledge as well, until nothing of him was left in the front. Only a second Ken remained behind. And as Susan had said, she would call him Ben instead.
That left Tom as a silent watcher of his new life, imprisoned in his own head, as his consciousness worked with the body of a baby, even if he could control himself, he was far from changing anything.
Then Susan headed to her appointment with both her babies, as she now had no babysitter without her brother. If someone asked, she would just say the second baby, Ben, had been left behind in the hospital, born shortly after her Ken, and she had agreed to raise him as her own son. As for Tom, he had run away, and nobody had an idea where he was.
Over the next days Ken and Ben played everything together, and Susan loved every moment of it. Okay, maybe not being woken up by them crying in the middle of the night, but that was the only downside for her. Meanwhile Tom cursed his sister as he could do nothing. He didn´t enjoy watching his body play blocks or putting everything in his mouth.