Changes and Advantages

Friday night spent in the company of friends, eating pizzas, complaining about teachers and classes, games at the ready to spend the evening, all without a care for tomorrow and simply enjoying the moment; how long had it been for Vanessa Dinger since the last moment she was able to enjoy a moment like that? It certainly felt like another life, quite literally in fact.

Looking at the golden ring currently on her finger, the new girl looked at it while making it move around with the help of her thumb, surprised about how snug it felt on her finger when the size of her hand had certainly changed, but the ring had also changed with it; instead of the usual plain gold ring that she had found when she was still an older man, now the ring had changed, having some flowery design all around, certainly looking like something a teenage girl would use.

She still couldn’t believe the kind of power the ring had, and even when he had experimented a bit once he had discovered the ring was able to change things with a simple yes or no question, he hadn’t yet put the power of the ring to the test like now. She was still surprised about how complete the transformation had been, she just had to be more specific about questions to guide the conversation and the effects of it; first, make sure that she was able to change her age without affecting the other person, then she discovered that she not only able to change memories and even relationships, but with the perfect question she could gain the body and life she wanted.

Yes, she had seen the effects of the ring when she had used the ring on Jennifer and Ms. Perez, and had even created new events out of nowhere, but it was always good to check if events were just a coincidence or indeed the power of the ring extended to complete rewriting history, maybe one day she could rewrite laws of physics, or maybe even give super powers… maybe she could even see those superheroes and villains up close if the powers of the ring would allow it, but no, she had done enough for now as a foundation, she just had to be careful from now on and keep practicing and experiment.

Talking about experimentation, Vanessa had quickly discovered that powerful wishes could even grant flashes of information and memories, specially when she was part of those events; case in point had been the fact that Vanessa when, as she decided to grab a slice of pizza, had grabbed the one full of veggies, which was surprising considering the other was full of fat and meat, but something about the other pizza had seemed more tantalizing; something about just gorging on that much fat just felt wrong, after all, it was hard to maintain a body as hot as hers, so that explained the feelings.

Through the usage of the ring she was able to gain knowledge without even realizing, first by remembering parts of her life as Vanessa, but also of the friendship she had with Cynthia, how she had spend time with her and her family, that’s why it was so normal to call Clyde as kid, since she had always called him that. Another wish that had given new information about that knowledge theory, was the fact that she had given Cynthia and by extension herself, a great amount of power in Smash, creating a full year of training and practising that made both of them almost experts in their corresponding characters, not to the level of pros, well, at least Vanessa didn’t think she was as good as a pro, but enough to be way above amateur Smash players.

So she could give abilities, knowledge and changes in body if she asked for certain things, nice to know, so as she finally had some dinner and went to the bathroom to change out of her cheerleader outfit, Vanessa checked on the backpack that had magically been conjured when she wished for said cheerleader past, finding the one thing that would give her so much more info about her new life, her smartphone.

After being able to quickly get around the sliding password, another point to the power of the ring making her remember stuff, she quickly connected to the wi-fi of the school and began her investigation; first, came her parents, quickly discovering that the older Mr and Mrs Dinger never had her or any doppelganger of her previous life, instead there were two children, and surprise, she was the daughter of the older son, so it was a surprise that now she not only had an aunt and new cousins, her parents were now her grandparents, talk about awkward next time she saw them.

With that out of the way she then began to dig around the life the ring had built for her, and she had to admit that there was only one way to get good info, after all, she was now a hot cheerleader girl, what better way than in social media? The best bet was obviously Instagram, finding out that she had a huge following, and while the photos uploaded were nice, clearly exciting some people, it also told much about her life, that of being perpetually stuck in middle class, not that there was anything wrong, but of course, she could always get better, so she decided to do a new experiment, what if she didn’t give specific quantities or the exact point? Will the ring still follow up with it or was her own intent good enough?

“So,” she said aloud while sitting on top of one of the tables, as the other teenagers either turned around to look at her, or those that were busy trying not to be send to the loser’s bracket simply grunted in acknowledgement “doesn’t my daddy have, like, a shitton of money?” Vanessa decided to keep the question open, she could have asked if her dad was one of the richest people on Earth or something similar, but making it like this, well, it was better for the experiment.

“You are probably the only girl I know that use daddy unironically,” the words from Clyde made her think back to what she had said, and while she tried to sound more like what several girls, specially the more stuck up ones, used to say, but he was right, she clearly remembered calling her father like that, great, she was a spoiled brat.

As she paid attention once more to her smartphone, she found out that the wish had been granted and that her life had once more been altered; while before she had a smartphone that had clearly been used for years, but at least a model she wouldn’t be ashamed to use in public, now she had obviously a current gen smartphone with its own case that was obviously custom made.

Looking downwards at her own clothes, she also noticed the change in her wardrobe, and between the nice shirt that she was using under her gray and silky hoodie, the comfortable and stretchy jeans and her new low heeled sandals, she knew that the price tag for those clothes had several numbers, followed immediately by at least three zeroes.

Taking a look at her ‘friends’ -even if she had flashes of memories, the friendship still felt rather new to her- she noticed some changes too; the Switch dock now was sporting a custom made cover with the symbol of Smash and she was sure that was not the pre-release version, and the controls that they were using now also had custom made looks, each of them showing their character of choice in them, when before they used whatever they could get their hands on; looking quickly into her backpack showed that, yes, she had her own custom control showing Princess Peach, meh, there were worse characters to main, at least she had good moves.

“Is just that, well, don’t I have a whole entertainment room with a huge TV and a projector?” And as an answer she just received some nods from the others “well, I’m just wondering why we are in the laboratory instead of using all that,” as Steven and Wes kept on playing for control of the stage, it was clear that the one that would answer was their undisputed redheaded leader.

“We just thought that it would be nice to just play like this, no real home advantage and all that, besides, today is pretty low-key, we are still going to spend tomorrow together either way,” oh, that’s right, Cynthia was going to spend most of tomorrow on her house, some kind of long sleepover, wait, was that another memory that she had gained? Cool. So, with that out of the way she returned to social media to see the changes, and oh dear lord, there were changes indeed.

While before it was clear that Vanessa had a very similar house to when she had grown up as Mr. Dinger, now several photos showed her in a white bikini taking the sun at the side of a pool bigger than her previous apartment; checking some more she finally saw some where she had tried to tag Cynthia, but the way in which she was trying to put a hand over her face said all she needed about her refusal to have an instagram. When before she just had a couple of thousand followers, the number now had reached almost two million, with many of her new photos making not only thirsty guys follow, but also a lot of people into gaming or expensive clothes, what a change.

Placing her smartphone aside, she decided to keep on going with her desire road, after all, she had originally came to mess around with Cynthia, a girl that had been very vocal about her previous life and what she liked to do, mainly ogle at pretty girl boobs, but she had certainly gotten sidetracked with her changes, so why shouldn’t get some new enjoyment of her life and at the same time, keep on getting closer and closer to the redheaded girl.

“Hey, Cynthia, can you come with me to the bathroom?” Time to get things into motion.