(Keeping Looney28's beginning because it answers relevant questions.)
You look at the statue dumbfounded. That statue had been a man just a few moments ago. You look at the man who wants you to be his adopted daughter and wondered if he would change the other man back. Seeming to read your mind he says, "I won't be turning him back for awhile. He was stealing from me and this is how I tend to deal with thieves."
"So how many people have you turned into statues?" you ask trying to get your mind around what just happened.
"Just a couple," the man says nonchalantly.
"Why did his hair turn blond when he became a girl?" you ask. "That would be body modification and only the Mod Ring could do that. Am I right?"
The man comes over and unties you as he says, "For the most part that would be correct. However sometimes when the sex is switched other genes become dominate. This can result in hair color changing or birthmarks forming or disappearing. If when you change you want to make some modifications to your body I know who has the Mod Ring."
"Have you met the person?" you ask as you're freed.
"I have not met him but I know who it is," the man says going over to a desk. You follow him and he hands you a magazine opened to an article about a plastic surgeon named Lawrence Lavigeo. "People think he's a very skilled surgeon," the man says sighing. "Of course anyone who knows about the rings can see that he's using the Mod Ring." You read through the article and after you finish you can see how he does it knowing about the rings now. The man waits until you've finished before asking, "So will you accept my offer?"
"At the risk of being turned into a statue, I fundamentally don't want to be a girl. If you turned me into one, I would resent you perpetually. Other than that, I'm actually willing to go through with it, I've racked up a good deal of debt and am currently out of a job. I wouldn't mind liquidating what little I have and setting it aside to grow. Is gender a deal breaker for you?"
The man sighed heavily, "I can't blame you for being attached to your gender, many of us are, some aren't. I was hoping you weren't. And as for turning you into a statue, we can't effect others with rings on, I'm surprised you haven't tried already, Go ahead, try to make me 30 again. I want you to."
You raised your hand gently placing it on his shoulder. You were concentrating intently with your eyes closed. There was a strange feeling as though you could hear a silent cacophony and piece by piece you could feel it coming together. "Almost there." The other man mumbled, and he was right, you could feel him helping to build a pathway of sorts. The last piece of the path clicked into place, the silent noise was in harmony. You opened your eyes to see the other man was opening his as well, your gazes locked and the word "Thirty" erupted from your mouth as though pulled out by an unseen force and both of you were suddenly released from the effect.
Immediately, each of you grabbed your knees for support, the effort was exhausting mentally and physically. The effects began to show, the man lost quite a few extra pounds, and wrinkles, as the ample gray subsided down to a stray strand here and there. "See" the man said beginning to right himself, "you couldn't do..." his pants fell down. "it?"
His eyes went wide with realization and elation? "What? Did we succeed? How did you know? Did you hear the song too?"
"Yeah!" you replied, "but it was silent, which is weird for a song."
"I noticed it too and yeah, that is weird."
"But the song was also a path!"
"Now that you mention it, I suppose it could be."
"Alright, This was shocking and fun but change me back so my pants fit. My life is expecting me to remain 48."
The pair resumed their positions as before and attempted to rebuild a bridge through the rings defenses but after 15 minutes of holding concentration, They could both feel that the now 30 year old wasn't able to get his last piece of the silent song bridge thing taken care of and in frustration he hit your arm off his shoulder.
As soon as you lost contact with him, the order you had arduously willed from the chaos violently snapped back. just as before words of power erupted from your lips, but this time they weren't coherent fully formed words, and the 30 year-old's defenses were still up, which is what caused this in the first place.
Pulled by the invisible force you whipped around, at the nearest living target and spewed forth your words of arcane abomination. "Failgalath etchubzierinct" you bellowed toward Jack. The man turned boy, turned girl, turned statue, was being mocked by two of his coworkers as the raw power was released in their direction. They began reaching for their weapons but it was too late as your voice reached them first.
Jack, quivered and in statue form reverted to male, aged to 90 and his hair, left arm and right nipple reverted back to flesh. Mark, the youngest of the group having just turned 20, aged to 45 making him the second oldest non inanimate member. He grew a pair of breasts and a fully functioning vagina. His legs ballooned out rapidly and seemed to stop offering support. When he pulled back his pant legs he found that his legs became the legs of a blow up doll. Vincent, the oldest of the group at 47 grew one boob, an ovary, and long hair on his left side which also became more curvy, before he rapidly regressed to being unborn and was sucked into Marks new vagina as mark pulled down his pants to assess his lower body. Marks belly then swelled to 7 months pregnant and his face was a mix of shock and horror before he simply laid down staring into space.
As before you were immediately released after saying the words, This time was even more draining than the first and the noise you made fluctuated widely with some shrieklike high pitches and some lows below your register. It hurt your voice.
"At least we know why we were told it wasn't possible, failure has terrible side effects. We'd better do some damage control before someone dies! ow ow god my head Ahh!" The man fell to his knees clutching his head and screaming in pain. he tried to focus long enough to, presumably inanimate everyone, protecting them from time in a freakish state, or animate them fully, which didn't seem his style. Instead he began screaming at the top of his lungs and rolling around on the floor, clearly in immense pain, until he passed out.
In a panic, you removed his rings putting them on your fingers, you then returned him to his rightful age and turned him into a hollow rubber silicon version of himself, not knowing if he was dying. You then ran over to his men and began immediately trying to return them all to their former selves. Jack was easy and once fully flesh, color returned to his arm and nipple, his hair didn't need nutrients. As soon as Jack was reverted he saw the freakish state Mark was in and came to his aid.
It turned out Mark wasn't laying down due to shock, He was laying down due to shock induced labor. Possibly from the strange hormone mix, maybe infant Vincent was thrashing, more likely falling to the floor broke the water and started this. You reverted Mark to full female thinking that would make labor easier.
Jack looked at your hand after you changed Marks gender and noticed you had all three rings. He pulled his gun on you. You looked up at him calmly, "I'm not your enemy, we can sort this out later but right now these men need us." you barely choked out. your voice needed more time to recover. Jack's face went distant. He stole a glance at Mark's belly as he dropped his weapon. "Vinny? is-is, that..." he trailed off. He suddenly became pale, "Mark! your vagina ate Vinny!?" Jack suddenly looked pale and ran off. a few seconds later he could be heard retching.
You looked at Mark and realized you knew nothing about about helping someone give birth, the whole place was disturbingly unsanitary, and you don't want either of them to get hurt.
You remembered the guys comment, "Some of my employees like being clothes." If maintaining full human shape wasn't required for survival... you extended your hand and turned both Mark and Vincent into plastic tarps.
You dragged Mark out of the fluid he leaked earlier and unwrapped him. Inside you found a smaller tarp all bundled up. As you grabbed it you realized the tarps were connected by a rope which you easily untied and discarded. Setting Vinny aside you focused on making him age into an adult, and be completely male. There was no indication anything happened to the tarp. Cautiously you reverted Vincent back to human. He came back as a half male, half female infant. Apparently the only ring that works on inanimate things, even human inanimate things, is the inanimate ring.
You aged Vincent back to his twenties unsure of his age to begin with and made him only male again. He just laid there naked, apparently collecting himself. Going back to Mark the tarp, you were the one who made him fully unclothe so you collected his pants and shirt tossing them on him as you reverted him back to human. and then you returned him to male. You recalled one older guy and two younger, you assumed Mark's age didn't change.
Mark came back to his senses and began getting dressed. There was a weird silence as you stepped away, you didn't exactly want to check on Jack who was about to shoot you before getting sick.
"So, uh.. you like becoming clothes? The other guy said some of his employees liked it... and he was wanting me to leave here needing a new outfit... so I assume you..." you trailed off not sure how to ask what the sensation was like.
"This woulda been my first time." he responded hiking up his pants.
"Well, what was it like? Being a tarp I mean?"
"You made us unaware," he said as though you should understand that simple concept. Noticing your face he elaborated, "When you turn people into things, they become those things, but for them to retain consciousness, you need to specifically will that to be the case. We just went away and came back." He finished buttoning up his shirt and began tucking it into his pants, he noticed he had somehow developed a gut that wasn't part of his young athletic frame, maybe a side effect of sudden pregnancy he reasoned.