I thought it was just a stupid novelty cloak — the sort that glows and promises “transformations” for a laugh — until the air went thin and a laugh like glass echoed from somewhere I didn’t remember. One blink and the world tipped: my face stayed mine, stubborn and bewildered, but everything below my neck made a clean, impossible switch. Leather hugged curves that had never been mine, a red-and-blue suit cinched a waist and lifted a chest I hadn’t had to fill before, and a new, thunderous strength thrummed under the latex. The witch’s joke — whoever she was, some mischievous DC-styled enchantress — left me smelling of ozone, dressed as Superman and fully female from the neck down; it was unintentional, surreal, and embarrassingly, deliciously distracting.

I had to sit with them — two guys who insisted they saw the woman, not me — and every glance felt like a small, electric confession. Their eyes tracked the new lines of my body, and even when my voice tried to explain, it was the curve of my hips and the way the suit clung that kept the room spinning. Power and vulnerability warred in my chest: I could feel flight in my limbs and a ridiculous, warm awareness in every inch of this borrowed skin. They joked, they nudged, and I laughed along while secretly trembling at how intoxicating it was to be both rocket-strong and recklessly soft at the same time — trapped in a gorgeous, impossible costume and all the attention that came with it.