"Your call," Alex was saying. "You or me, into... something," he said, running a hand through his blonde hair. "Or, you know... both of us if you're feeling daring."
David looked at his phone's screen and stared at the app for a moment. Supernatural, and them or Alex. So many choices, the considered, But maybe it would be smarter to change Alex rather than myself in case something goes wrong? David took a breath. Yeah... and I think I know just the thing.
Hitting refresh a few times on the screen concerning Alex as the focus, David flicked through a few of the 100% accurate statements about their friend. Eventually, they landed on the simple statement: "Alex Fischer is charismatic human being." David chuckled. The app had a certain specific-randomness to it's wording... as if it went out of it's way to not give you exactly what you needed but instead made to present unique situations.
"OK," David said, glancing up at Alex. "Ready?"
"Hit me!" Alex said, grinning wide.
Highlighting the word human, David replaced it with the word incubus which, to them, was a very fitting choice for Alex. Alex was very good at talking people into things, including being the only friend they had who had managed to request and gain three different pay increases. More importantly, though, incubi were exclusively male as far as David knew, and so this change would be two birds with one stone.
David hit Submit on the app to activate the newly altered message. Instantly Alex was no longer a blonde-haired, green-eyed woman in her early thirties in appearance... but instead a lean, muscular, adonis of a man. His breasts were gone, totally flattened. Off the top of his head, his blonde hair flowed to the center of his back. The bulge at the front of his pants was notable, though not absurd. And, while he looked masculine, that didn't stop him from having the same rounded butt and a feminine face.
"You are the prettiest guy I've ever seen in real life."
"Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy?" Alex wondered, putting a hand to the back of their head slowly. The smile was somewhat gone from their face which wasn't what David was expecting and so they become concerned. "I appear to have a blow-hole," he said, pressing two fingers partway into his skull at the top of his head. "What thing did you make me?" he asked. "I'm not a dolphin-man or something, right?"
"You look human to me," David blinked. "But I made you an inc—"
"Oh, I'm definitely not human," Alex said, holding out his arms in front of himself and looking over his arms. "My skin's a weird color... and also scales or something." He looked up. "Wait, what did you say I was?"
"An incubus," David said. "I don't see you like that. You look like a male version of yourself to me."
"Oh, I'm very not," Alex said, pulling up the pants leg of their blue jeans a bit to look over what appeared to David to be a normal human leg. "If you can't see all this... I must have on some sort of glamour on or something," he offered as a thought. "But, no, I'm scaly. I've got wings. There's, like, some horror elements happening all over my body. I've got a blow-hole which, honestly, is probably the weirdest thing, though I think is a more Brazilian Incubus if I remember my region-specific demons."
Alex took a breath. "Also, it feels a little like my insides are... like a plasma or something? Or that I can feel energy inside me that my epidermis is, like, holding me together."
"Freaky. I wish I could see it."
"Maybe you don't?" asked Alex. "It's possible that this is a 'true form' situation and if you look upon me in all my glory that you will be driven quiet mad."
"You don't sound that horrible," David blinked.
Alex's green eyes looked into David's brown... and those eyes felt like they were burrowing a bit into their soul, probably by accident. "Dude." There was a certain stern inflection to Alex's one word... very serious. "Demons exist in the world... if they didn't before. I'm one," he said. "And this also means it's possible that seeing my 'true form' is hidden from you because I care... and that if you saw me, while the plain text description of me might not be all that bad, my form might itself have a built-in supernatural madness that it induces in people. We really can't be sure."
"Try to, like... show me?"
"You're willing to go crazy? I don't want to break you, dude."
David set their phone down on the counter next to them without locking the screen. "If it's real bad, you've got three minutes before my phone locks where you can use it to try and help me," they said flatly, as seriously as they could be without seeing anything other than a male Alex in front of them. "I trust you."
"OK," Alex said, standing up and moving to the space behind the couch. "I think I know how to... will it off... the appearance altering magic or whatever it is."
David watched as Alex put their arms outward and took a deep breath. Slowly a new form appeared, almost layered over the top where Alex existed. There were scales, yes. Horns. Wings. Their shoes were gone and they had talons off their toes, their fingers had claws. But even so, Alex's 'true form' was not fully solid, as if the details were not yet fully fleshed out.
"OK," Alex repeated. "It feels like I'm about to break my skin and burst like a balloon," he said, really searching for a better way to word it and coming up short. "I think if I press harder, I'm going to break free of it and you'll see me... in all of my quote unquote glory," he smirked.
David nodded. "I'm ready. Or, you know... I think I am."
"OK," he said a third time. "Here we go."
Alex flexed his muscles in a way that looked bizarre. Or, rather, muscles under his skin appeared to David to move and twist and wrap up, bunching together in a way that looked completely unnatural. A flash of colored light filled the room for an instant, and when it had passed, there was Alex standing in his 'true form'.
What did Alex actually look like? They had...