Vincenzo Fontana was a confident, dangerous man. Deadly with his dangerous gunplay and intimidating, no-bullshit personality coupled with a strong body fit for a killer. If someone crossed him, they'd pay.
Keith Johnson was an indecisive, deadweight of a young man. He had no skills to be proud of other than his burger-flipping skills and customer service. He was a slob that didn't care about what other people thought of him. He just liked surfing through life as is.
His best childhood friend Alan reached out a helping hand after said person graduated from university, finding Keith's state to be pathetic enough that help was absolutely needed. To Alan, education was important enough that having it was better than absolutely nothing. Keith once thought that his friend had a stick up his ass. The verbal lecture Page sang in his ears was a lesson to never question his resolve.
When Keith Johnson was subsumed into Vincenzo Fontana, he wasn't scared at all. No, he became a different person entirely that he temporarily forgot who he had been. The regret of traumatizing his best friend by threatening to shoot was one of the reasons Keith held back every dark impulse playing the character of Vincenzo was infusing into his thoughts.
The Italian mobster had his way of dealing with things. Those methods were cruel and horrifying for Keith to even consider using. The urge was always at the back of his mind that it was as if he had to go to the next pages in a catalogue of actions he could take just to find one that felt the most reasonable and safe.
He was having fun indeed, playing the character with him at the helm, alone. At first, the character was him, through and through. He would have shot Alan dead. But when he acclimatized, he found himself realizing that the takeover was to prevent him from freaking the fuck out.
But what about Gabriel Fletch?
At first glance, everyone would assume that Liam Barnes completely absorbed Alan Page and removed him from existence. The result of the merge seems to have been a stereotypical meathead from a frat. The only physical traces of Alan that he could see was the roots of the hair being black and the hazel eyes he knew so well. Everything else, from his stature, mass, musculature, height, and even mannerisms screamed of being a cocky jock that spent too much time in the gym lifting iron and letting his brain drain.
Keith was afraid that letting Alan stay in that merged form for longer would cause irreversible damage or identity death.
Vincenzo only has one player making the decisions.
Gabriel has two complete opposites, one of them being a reserved nerd. Everyone would automatically assume that the dominant personality would take complete control. The body was already a testimony to the assumption.
It was safe to say that Keith was wrong in all his assumptions. Alan was in there, making as many decisions in his familiar field of expertise as Liam did.
It was both weird and comforting to hear Alan's way of speech being infused with jock lingo.
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"Alright, Amico. You can stay in that state longer." Keith sighs as he stands, putting his fist into a fistbump for Gabe. "I trust you enough if you tell me more about your... situation."
Gabe's face momentarily falls and Keith was afraid that he made a wrong move. The thought was dashed when Gabe whoops with joy and strongly bumps his fist with unchecked strength, staggering his unprepared form. He was then engulfed in a hug by the big smart jock, and if he had been in his original body he would have been crushed.
"Thank you brah!" Gabe laughs into his ears with audibly restrained sobs, perhaps being overjoyed that they could be best friends again. "I'll definitely help you get your university registration done tomorrow on time!"
Gabe releases Keith from the tight hug with eagerness equal to an excited rottweiler, bouncing on the balls of his feet and a shining grin on his face.
"Dio, the enthusiasm you have for me to study is just the same as before with Alan." Keith chuckles with his suave voice, putting a palm to his face as if in disbelief. "Studiare Tutto il tempo" (Studying all the time)
Gabe chubs up in his jockstrap hearing it, but he doesn't care. Vincenzo of course notices the bulge growing in this man's pants and could not help but wonder how well endowed Gabriel really was.
"I'll tell you more about my situation later because it's already late into the morning and you need to have your old body back." Looking at the car keys in Keith's hands, he points it to the mirror. "Bro, can you change yourself with a reflection?"
"Eh? Haven't tried that before." Vinnie stands up and walks to the mirror, Gabe staying well out of the mirror's direct reflection of the Italian man. "Quite the theory, compagno."
"Yeah man, I'm not sure if it would work, but might as well try the easier way to see yourself change." Gabriel scrunches his face in thought, noting Vinnie's control. "You seem to have perfect control over the keys, so you'd be able to do it."
"Thanks for the vote of confidence." Keith stares at his reflection for a minute or so, noting how his features looked and committing it all to memory. The angular face and the slight scarring. The coal-black eyes meshing well with his black hair. The perfect teeth. If he was going to lose all this for university, might as well remember it all.
Keith aims with the keys to the mirror, taking a deep breath. Pressing the keys, Keith tries to imagine his old body and closes his eyes.
There was a burst of pixelization, but not where any of them thought it would happen. The mirror itself warps and reassembles before it was finished.
A Keith lookalike drops limply to the floor with an audible thud, lifeless and inert. No shock escapes Vinnie's mouth, however.
"Holy fuck, bro," Gabriel mutters looking at the whole body on the floor. "You made a flesh sex doll."
"Stai zitto, I know you think I'm hot but that thing is just disturbing, compagno." Vinnie walks over to the body, there were no life signs. It looks like the key's energy can't be reflected nor can it create life. "It's not living."
"Change it back into a mirror before it rots, bro." Gabe looks on, eyes squinting at the body, inspecting. "Keith, I don't think you look like that."
"I can see that too. It looks of Italian descent." Keith takes no time to allow further inspection and fires at the corpse again, this time turning back into a mirror with Italian designs. "Dannazione, my changes are focused on the Italian heritage."
Gabriel crouches down and grabs the mirror, easily hefting it with his muscles and placing it back on the wall. "How about firing at yourself?"
Keith once again focuses, aiming the keys at his own chest. He once again focuses on his self-image. It was perfectly detailed just like how he remembers it!
Pressing the unlock button did nothing.
"Huh, some kind of safeguard against deleting yourself?" Gabriel looks to be deep in thought, completely focused before he offers his palm for the keys. "You need some American changes, bro?"
Vinnie sighs, tossing the keys to the whitebread jock that caught it like second nature. "Might as well get it over with, Amico. We need sleep and all the time to acclimatize for the registration tomorrow."
"Yeah, man. Good throw by the way." Gabriel aims at Vinnie, the hot muscular body of his ready to be changed and molded away into Keith. He briefly thought about changing Keith into another jock like himself, but immediately reprimands himself to focus.
"Alright, one American Keith coming back." Pressing the keys, Vinnie explodes into a cloud of pixels before he reforms into a human form once more.
"Ah." Gabriel stares as Keith looks down at himself, noticing the difference. Keith had transformed back into himself, indeed. Blonde hair, blue eyes. The only different thing was that he was ripped, similar to when Keith had demanded to be clothed. "You alright bro?"
Keith inspects himself properly, checking out his thick biceps coming out of his sleeveless mesh t-shirt. The UnderArmor shorts he wore accentuated the thick legs he had before.
"Yeah, bro. I still have memories of Vincenzo and my original life like normal. I'm just way more jacked than before, and that's awesome!"
Gabriel was unsure what to do with this new development.