Alyssa and the Stoner

"So that seriously wasn't a booze nightmare. That seriously happened."

"Yeah." The bearded dude doesn't actually look at me, just keeps his eyes glued to his TV, tapping buttons and watching his digital avatar slowly circle a band of enraged villagers. "I get this a lot, actually."

"And," I slowly announce as I try and fail again to pull my shirt down over the new additions, "I'm seriously some sort of superhero."

"Weeeeeeeell. I wouldn't put it that way." Tap tappa tap, and his dude strikes down one of the pitchfork-wielding mob. "The girls like you, they're kind of, well..."

"Well, what?" My impatience rises, my wings rise with it, and the shirt is back around my neck. "And how the hell am I supposed to not violate public decency laws?"

"Girls like you are kind of cursed. You try to help people out, and suddenly your good intentions are paving everyone else's roads. Plus the costume swappers try to off you." Tap tap, another pixelated enemy falls to pieces.

"Costume swappers." The words come out slowly, bobbing up from a sea of dry disbelief. "This sounds more and more like a bad magical girl show with every word you say. Also, the clothes problem."

"It pretty much is a bad show, man. Weird shit. Worse than the last dimension." With loud, poorly-imagined sounds of weapons impacting flesh, his avatar collapses. "Dammit, not again."

I raise my (shortened, weaker, at least not hairy any more) arms above my (smaller, lighter, probably much better looking if I can just check a mirror) head, brushing a lock of (longer, finer, softer, is that blonde now?) hair back in the process. "Sorry for distracting you. Also, the clothes problem."

"Oh, right, right." He sets the controller down and turns, looking me straight in the eye. "You're kind of, well, not done changing over yet? Normally you'd materialize a costume like one of the swappers. I think there are words you have to say, but I never know what."

There's that twitch in the wings again. Dreadful, huge things coated in silver feathers, stiff and aching like a muscle you haven't moved for days. "You're telling me I have all this power - power I can feel in my bones, taste on my tongue, light and healing and enough lasers to shoot down an army of those little puchuu pricks - and I can't even use it until I figure out a magic goddamn spell like some kind of two-bit Harry Potter reject?"

"That's a fact. And calm down. A girl your age shouldn't sound like she just got out of the Navy or whatever."

"Fuck that! This is sixty gallons of bullshit in a fifty-five gallon drum! I HAVE THIS POWER TO HELP PEOPLE, and-"
And then the glow courses over me, warm and bright and soothing.
And then the glow fades, and I feel the fabric, draping down over me and somehow not impeding the wings. White with gold trim. It's quite a nice dress.
And then the glow returns, pulsing briefly in the air before fading to leave some huge book gently settling into my hands.

"Well, there you go," he says. "I guess open it up and see what it says? Girls like you usually find a way to cover the wings, but I never really figured it out."

I grasp the cover of the book with my (longer, slimmer, just generally less stubby) fingers and lift up. The pages are covered in a strange, flowing script, one that I understand perfectly. "Yeah," I say. "You probably didn't really need to worry about it."