"The skaters have one less guy than they're supposed to, now," explained Brendan. "So we should give them a guy back, to replace Alan. Keeping the balance in the school and all that shit." Brandon scrunched up his face in thought, and responded, "Sounds like a good idea, bro. Better a skater than a nerd." Brendan nodded in agreement, and turned to Matthew.
He started with the same question that he had asked Alan. "How do you feel about school, Matthew?" The hypnotized nerd answered in his entranced, monotonous voice, "School is tolerable, at best. I often do not enjoy it because the work is so easy and because so many of my so-called colleagues are imbeciles, but my constant success and my manipulation of others make it bearable." Brendan frowned. He was so smug, too smart for his own good. He would enjoy taking him down a peg.
"You're right, Matthew, for the wrong reasons. School is just barely okay for you, yeah. But not because it's so easy. It's so hard for you." Matthew realized that this didn't make sense, but it was clearly right. "You're not smart enough to think hard enough about what you're supposed to think about, and you hate working hard, so you just slack by." Even though Matthew was in a trance and wasn't thinking about much other than what Brendan was telling him, which he realized was absolutely true, he could feel his mind thickening, the vibration of his thoughts in the background slowing. He could think harder if he tried but he wasn't going to put up that effort. "And you don't like all those people who rub it in that they're smarter than you." A flash of anger went through Matthew's dulled mind. Yeah, he did hate those people. It would be too much work to actually go after them, but still.
Brendan continued, "But school is okay for you because you have friends. They think and act like you and you like the same things." Matthew felt a strange... lowering. He had always thought himself above everyone else, he had always felt isolated, but now he knew he was part of a group that he wanted to be a part of. "Do you know what those things are?" Brendan's question surprised Matthew. He thought harder than he would have liked to, but the idea of not trying to answer the question never occurred to him. "Uh... I like drama and research... but I don't, 'cause they're too hard... but, uh... I don't know." Brendan grinned. "You like skating with your friends, Matthew. You like sitting around with your friends and getting high or playing video games or talking about shit and just not working, and you like skating." Half-memories of doing all of those things popped into his brain. "Do you know what that makes you, Matthew? What you are?" The answer lay just under the surface but he couldn't bring it up. "...No."
"You're a slacker and a skater." That felt so right. The concepts clicked in Matthew's brain, and he felt like he clicked into something. A clique. A niche, a position in society. He didn't realize it, but the remaining bits of his subconscious were beginning to fill in the blanks of his new life with what he knew about what he now was. His long black coat climbed on his body and became a hoodie, and turned green. His shirt softened into a T-shirt and grew a band logo in a green color that matched his hoodie, his jeans shrunk into board shorts, and his dress shoes became sneakers. Most of his jewelry evaporated, except for some of the gold, which coalesced into a chain around his neck. Brandon blinked and stared in surprise at the change and opened his mouth to say something, but his brother raised a hand to stop him.
"The other thing that makes school for you," Brendan went on, "is your hot body." If he hadn't been in a trance Matthew would have smirked. He knew that he'd never had a hot body, that he didn't... but that didn't matter, because he knew that he did. Energy passed through him, like his body was coiling up and preparing to run. "You're muscular, with a six pack and all that shit. Not big or brawny, but lean and toned, like a skater should be." Matthew felt himself growing and hardening, and his clothes grew with him. "You have tanned skin, and curly, dirty blonde hair, and you have some body hair but not a lot." His skin and hair darkened a little, and the latter grew out a little, but he kept the same amount of body hair. "You have a handsome face... sort of between manly handsome and cute handsome... and light blue eyes." His face shifted around and realigned and his eyes tingled. "And you have a pretty big dick and balls... and you're horny a lot." A strange but familiar feeling passed through him as his genitals swelled up. He used to be so busy that he barely had time for a libido, but now... he had a lot more time on his hands, and with his new body he wouldn't have much trouble finding someone to spend it with.
Brendan looked over his handiwork and smiled. "What are you? I mean... never mind. Where do you fit in, here in school?" Matthew, still in a trance, answered, in a voice that was deeper and slower than his old one. "I'm... like, a skater, I guess."
Brandon nodded in approval at what his brother his done, and Brendan continued asking questions. "Do you like school?" Matthew might have shrugged but he was still in a trance. "Not really, dude. It's too fucking hard to deal with but I can get through it 'cause I can hang with my buds." He didn't think about all the slang and swearing he was using now, it was just instinctual.
"What's your name?" This Matthew didn't have any trouble answering. "Matthew Charles King." Brendan smirked. "No, it's not. It's..." Brendan looked thoughtful for a minute as Matthew looked on, confused. "...Shane Alan Smith." Of course that was his name, why would Shane have thought any differently? Shane. It was like part of his identity. A ripple went through him as his entire life shifted from his old family to one of the many Smith families in the area. "You were never the old Michael, the nerd Michael. You've always been this way. You and everyone else... except for me and my brother... are going to forget he ever existed, because he never did." And even though Shane felt another wave of rightness crash through him as Brendan said something that he... couldn't quite recall anymore... it felt like there was some voice in his head, some part of his mind, that was angry and scared and shouting and getting quieter. He tried listening to what it was saying but it was too confusing and too hard, and it probably didn't matter anyway, so he stopped trying. The voice faded away. Shane had always been this way. Brendan snapped his fingers.
Shane blinked and saw the two football players. "Hey, sup, bros." He chuckled dumbly at his cleverness at calling the brothers "bros" and moved along, dreading his next class and already telling himself that he would sleep through it. Brandon returned, "Sup," and then high-fived his brother once the new skater had gone. "That was awesome, bro, you really showed that nerd. Whaddya wanna do next?"