You decide to move things along

Well, you’ll take what you can get for now.

And it doesn’t take long for you to get another opportunity to move things along between you and Robin. You get a message early Sunday morning reading <Hi. Do you want to come over?>

Which, of course you do.

Once there, Robin greets you wearing one of the nicer t-shirts and pants she bought yesterday but carefully avoids the topic of the ‘experiment’ at the end. At first she mostly talks about university and the episode on netflix she watched last night. Things get interesting when she tells you “ After people found out that I’m a girl I stopped looking at my social media for a while. I finally found the courage to check it again this morning and ... It’s kind of a mess.” and shows you her phone.

Scrolling though the open twitter-feed, you’d say mess is kind of an understatement. The account is in the grips of a full on flame-war. It started with old schoolmates calling Robin all manner of things for deceiving them and others riding to the rescue. And things just devolved from there. “Yikes!”

After letting you scroll through that morass for a few minutes Robin reclaims her phone “You said you don’t know what the side-effects of using your power all the time could be. And that’s the reason why you don’t use it to much. But I have been thinking. I’m not sure I’d even notice a few random changes to my life at this point. And you probably want to know the limits of what it can safely do. So it would be a win-win if I am your guinea pig, wouldn’t it? ”

“Probably.” you agree, putting more **** in your voice than you feel.

“It can’t be worse than this.” Robin insists “ Just change it so everyone knew I was a girl, but I still wear guy things and do guy things and people accept me as if I was one of the guys. That will make my life as much like it is now as possible, only without people posting pictures of my head badly photo-shopped onto a pig. ”

“Why are they doing that anyway?”

Robin just shrugs “I have no idea. Something about putting lipstick on a pig. I didn’t really look into it. So will you do it?”

“It’s worth a try.” you agree. “People always knew you were a girl, but they were cool with you wearing guy things and doing guy stuff.”

Robin looks down at her Phone again, smiling in relief at whatever she sees there. “It worked.” But when she looks back up at you, there is an anxious look on her face “But the side-effects haven’t happened yet. Not until you choose them?”

“In this reality Sylvie made you promise to sign up to a dating app as part of your new life on campus and go on at least one date a month to give guys a chance, a promise you haven’t broken yet and won’t until you get yourself a boyfriend.”

You doubt any of these dates even reached a good-bye kiss at the door with how minimalistic the stones changes usually are. But it should make for a nice surprise if Robin checks her online-life in greater detail.

You’d love to see her face when it happens, but robin quickly puts her phone away and the conversation shifts from how being younger already meant that almost none of her old classmates knew her now. And from there Robin kept telling you about the upsides and downsides of her new life. Which is interesting. Seeing how the stone managed to keep most of the major points in her life consistent throughout all these changes was fascinating. But there is another point you are also very interested in.

You are trying to think of the best way to broach the subject of robin running off after admitting she’ was curious about kissing you, when she looks at the clock and gives you a sheepish look “Hey, uhhh… it was fun talking, but II kinda lost track of the time. And I need to get ready for my date.”

“Your date?” you didn’t think your change would come into effect that fast. Or for Robin to be so casual about it.

“Weeelll. I hope it is a date.” Robin admits “I texted Rachel last night. To try and see if I still have a shot, you know. And maybe it would be better if you weren’t here when she arrives? Just in case? I need to pick an outfit too. ”

Ah.

“I’ll get out of your hair then.” you decide as you get up “Good luck.”

Well you waited this long, you might as well wait another day.

Maybe you should get a date of your own.

But you sunk this much effort into the thing with Robin no, that it would feel kind of cheap to just tell the next pretty woman you see that she really wants to have mindblowing sex with you right now.

And you’d loose your moral justification for preaching to Robin about not asking for a magical fix at the first sign of inconvenience.

Or, maybe you just have a masochistic streak you don’t know about. That would also explain why you would refuse free sex and money if it is almost literally right there for the taking?

Eh. Who cares. Refusing money and sex is a lot easier if you know there will always be more opportunities to get more.

As long as you have the stone.

Which you lug around in your pocket.

Ok! New plan! You’ll worry about getting laid tomorrow. Today you’ll make sure you don’t loose the stone.

It has takes you most of the day to decide on the best way to avoid loosing the stone. And once you did, it took a bit longer to decide on the best way to secure the personnel and equipment to have it surgically implanted. And to make sure the nobody couldn’t access the stones’ power while handling it during the surgery. And a dozen more contingencies to take care off on top of that.

So you are understandably grumpy when your phone rings the next morning, after what feels like mere seconds after you finally managed to get some sleep despite the ache of the fresh incision.

It’s Robin.

“Err, I have a small problem.” she begins without preamble. “Well more than one. But the big one is, that Rachel and I opened a bottle of wine last night. And I tried to break out a few complements. But then things went off the rails, a bit. I mentioned a few times to many that she is a lot prettier than me. And then that stupid urge to do something about it kicked in. So I didn’t argue when she offered to put some makeup on me. And I thought that would be that. But I have to go to class now, and I have this urge to put on make-up again. Please make it go away. I don’t even know how to put on make-up. Rachel did all the work yesterday. I’m sorry for waking you up like this. I’ll make it up to you. I promise. ” then an idea strikes her “does your power work over the phone?”

It does. You tested it yesterday.

“Yeah. You don’t have the urge to wear make-up to make yourself pretty.”

“Ok, that should do it. ” there is a moment of silence before robin announces “It worked! My face doesn’t feel naked any more. But there is a price isn’t there?”

“You don’t need to wear makeup because you already have a pretty face, ” and you might have stopped there if you weren’t tired and grumpy “with wide innocent blue eyes framed by lashes that are long and dark enough to be straight of a mascara commercial and very generous lips that are naturally pink and glossy and honey-blonde hair. ” you add with a small laugh and hang up.

Serves her right for waking you up and treating you like her personal genie! you think as you close your eyes again.

And if you weren’t still half asleep you could have predicted what came next.

Namely that you got about five minutes of shut-eye before your phone rang again. and shutting it off buys you a mere 30 minutes before someone is hammering on your apartment-door.

You are seriously considering turning someone into a toad as you roll out of bed, slip into your bathrobe and shuffle to the front-door.

The cute blonde outside takes a hurried step back when you yank the door open. “Whoa! What happened to you?” Robin asks looking you over.

“Long night.” you mutter and step aside to let her in “Better question: What happened to you?”

“The last change backfired. I look like a total bimbo now.” she gestures towards her new face. You wouldn’t say she looks like a total bimbo, but Robin isn’t wrong. Those eyes are wide enough to make her look a bit startled all the time and the lips are huge enough to form a natural pout. That’s the kind of face that looks more at home kissing guys behind the bleachers than doing any heavy thinking.

“It doesn’t look that bad.” you assure her “But I can see what you mean.”

“Well I remember people treating me differently now. I still hung out with the guys, but they keep treating me like a kid. Always telling me to let them do this and to let them help me do that. I can’t go to class like this.” Robin continues ” Please! Can you just fix it and then I’ll let you go back to nursing your hangover. ”

You have to give the new face one thing. It’s hard to hold onto your anger, when those large doe-eyes look at you pleadingly.

You sigh and agree “Sure.” before you had time to think things through properly. But how could you say no when she is chewing on her bottom-lip like that? And now it is too late to back out, so you concentrate on her and say “You don’t look like a ditzy blonde.”

But you can’t have Robin ask you to reverse whatever change you made, almost as soon as you add it. That way you’ll never get anywhere.

And speaking of things going nowhere: nothing happened to Robin. Did the stone malfunction somehow? Does it not count as touching if it is inside you? You realize the actual reason as soon as Robin shakes her head “That seems way too open ended. It’s probably how I wound up looking like a bimbo in the first place. ”

“So what would you suggest?”

“I don’t mind being pretty. I just don’t want to look like a ditz. So how about this? I look like an intelligent and very attractive young woman. People don’t treat me like kid or a fragile doll. ” she counts the points down on her fingers “And girl-me knows just as much about make-up and fashion as Rachel, even if she doesn`t use it much.”

You raise an eyebrow at the last one and Robin hastily amends “I just want Rachel to stop teasing me about it. And it might be nice to know I actually look ok, when I stand in front of the mirror.”

“No judgement here. so? Anything else.”

Robin thinks about that for a moment before shaking her head “No I think that pretty much covers it. I don’t mind being blond. I just don’t want to be a blonde with a capital B. ”

“All three changes you just outlined apply to you. ”

Robin nods “Accepted.” before letting out a deep sigh “But you’ll mess it up again, right? ”

You smirk and nod “A little bit. But first I need to fix an oversight. You instinctively recognize any direct changes I make like this as supposed sideffects when you encounter them and the next two changes will lead you to the conclusion that asking me to directly contradict the change to your face is why you went from looking like a stereotype to actually being one. ”

Robin gives you a nervous look “What kind of stereotype?”

“I am still thinking. Maybe a hot geek since you wanted to look smart.”

Robin doesn’t look very pleased at the idea. and after a while she opens her mouth to suggest “How about…..”