Chloe and Alex.

Chloe's annoying voice burst through the other side of his door, "John! Your nerdy friend is here!"

John opened the door to see Chloe's retreating figure going down the hall. He paused for a moment, considering just testing the gun on her at level 5, just because. Maybe that'd make her a little less of a brat. John shook his head as he walked down the hall after his sister to get his friend. He took a breath as he approached the front door to suppress the need to shout something at Chloe before heading back to his room. He could be the bigger man for a few minutes, at least with a D&D friend within earshot.

He opened the front door to see Alex in all her usual attire there. Her usual too-big sweatshirt with some sort of anime reference and baggy jeans combo hiding her figure from most of the world with a backpack behind her. Today's sweatshirt had some Demon Slayer art on the front.

"Hey John, got some new books to show me?" Alex asked as she saw him.

John smiled as he waved her in. "Yeah, I actually got the third edition books for the Sword Sage and Ballroom Brawler classes, the "Gates of Gratheridon" adventure for us to workshop. He thankfully had gotten these in the mail a few days ago and hadn't thought to have Alex over yet. Hopefully his offering of genteel nerd culture would make asking her to test out a potentially brain draining bimbo gun on her seem less crazy.

...

It was a hope anyways, and hopefully didn't sound as stupid as it did to John.

As they got to his room, John decided he couldn't just spring this on her. It may be easier to ask forgiveness than permission, but he needed his fellow nerd's inquisitive mind on this. Maybe she'd find perspectives that he hadn't thought of yet on the gun.

"So... There's another thing I wanted to show you that I found." he started.

"Really? Found some interesting nerd merch to show off?" Alex asked as she made a beeline for his bookshelf, already searching out his new books.

Alex paused for a moment to think about how he wanted to bring this up.

"Well... Have you ever read a story online about a device that can... Change people?" He got out.

Alex didn't look back as she kept searching his bookshelf, all three new books and a few others she was probably going to use as reference under her arm. "Like a cursed item? Some sort of artifact of disguise? A Mask of Many Faces? Something like a focused, instant reincarnation? I've read a bit about those, why?"

John took a moment, she was thinking about in-game artifacts and items and wasn't just really blaze about some real-life shit. He hoped anyways. "No, I mean something in real life that can change someone's looks, perspective, or intelligence."

That actually pulled Alex from what she was thinking as she put the books down on his desk. "What are you talking about there John? There's no such thing like that in real life. Right? That sounds like the kinda shit people think are used in alien abductions, government experiments, or raunchy erotica with body modification. There's nothing actually like that."

John decided to bite the bullet. "Well, I might have found something that is at least pretending to be that, and I figured you could help me check it out?"