Storyline continued from: https://derpibooru.org/images/3285568#comment_10802746 and inherits the somewhat dark weirdness in that picture and the implied transformation. Spoilered a very brief risque situation.

She used to have another name, but she couldn’t remember what that was.
She used to be a guy, and she remembered that clearly. Human, at that. In fact she was still of the human male persuasion until shortly before lunch break yesterday. What happened? Hard to describe.

Reality seemed slippery in the creepy, retro-themed toy shop where Miss Lexi the Magical Unicorn (Lexi for short) worked by court order. Shoplifting, alternative sentence, consent of the store owner, 90 days to avoid being sent to prison.

She hated it here. She hated the weird stuff on the shelves that never looked the same whenever you turned your head for a moment. She hated how it was never a consistent size. She hated the harsh, flickering, 80s-themed lighting that washed out any but their own colors. She hated the owner, whom she would only ever refer to as Creepy Boss, and with whom she sometimes had a difference of opinion that resulted in some sort of situation she could never fully recall later. It always felt like she’d lost the arguments somehow.

So yes, Lexi hated her job. Her six-day long career as the only full-time clerk in this dismal toy store was punctuated by weirdness, and the blurry workdays that followed her brief dust-ups with Creepy Boss did not help. What was even more infuriating? How nobody else ever noticed how weird it all was. No matter what happened, no matter how unsettling or impossible, nobody reacted. People walked into the store like it was any other. Even her own mom hadn’t reacted to Lexi’s announcement that her son was now either a daughter or livestock yesterday. The nonchalance was truly maddening.

This wasn’t the only time Lexi had been… altered by that store, but it was by far the longest lasting. She usually went home as a normal human male by the end of her shift, but yesterday it didn’t happen for some reason. Something about Creepy Boss and an argument about how she should be on her “best behavior.”

She’d carefully avoided puncturing the roof of the car with her horn when her mom arrived to pick her up in the evening. Rather than be surprised to see a graceful and feminine human-unicorn hybrid slipping into the passenger seat where her human son usually sat, Lexi’s mom seemed more interested in policing how much smooth, bare leg her mutant daughter’s cutoffs let show. Lexi tried to explain she had no control over what the store did to her, but her mom scarcely seemed convinced by the time she dropped Lexi off at the apartment building.

Lexi spent the night waking up as her horn knocked against the headboard every time she turned in her sleep. Rising late without feeling refreshed, she skipped the shower and threw on the baggiest clothes she could find in her closet. Thankfully whatever weird reality-glitch occupied the toy shop hadn’t spread to her wardrobe, and she approved heartily when her 2XL black tee and straight-leg khaki slacks hung loosely off the slim female build that she’d been cursed with since yesterday. The only concession she had to make was her shoes. Not only were her new feet too dainty (the only word that fit) to fill out her spare sneakers, for some reason she couldn’t quite relax them out of a tip-toe stance. Looked like she was stuck with the platforms that appeared with the rest of her girly attire yesterday. They clacked in the kitchenette as she swigged her coffee and ate a couple of un-toasted toaster pastries. Filling her pocket with the remaining everyday carry items of wallet, phone, and fidget spinner (her pocket knife having disappeared when his clothes shifted into her clothes yesterday), she locked up and carefully descended the stairs to the ground floor. Her mom was waiting with her ride to the hell hole. There wasn’t much talking during the trip.

Lexi clocked in at 7:58 am and started setting up the register counter. Mornings were always dead, and after school was usually three hours of pure torture as sugared-up little monsters would run amok, while their parents talked or shopped or whatever as if this surreal vaporwave cavern was a daycare. Today promised to be no different as Lexi settled in. Things were quiet. She flipped her fidget spinner until the staccato strobing trails it left in the shop’s harsh light irritated her. She drummed her fingers on the counter, but that just showed how her nails were now longer and a pearly color so she stopped.

Then Creepy Boss came in from the stock room and started up. “Oy, saggy-duds! Ya really think yer gonna bring back the Skater look like it’s nineteen-freaking-ninety-seven?”
Lexi sighed. It looked like there was going to be another argument today. “I don’t recall being given a dress code during orientation, sir,” she said with as much restraint as possible.
To her shock, Creepy Boss was at a loss for words. He gaped, he closed his mouth, he scratched his bushy white beard as if to shake loose some comeback. Finally, he gave up. “Bah, even little girlies know ta dress their dollies better’n ya doin’…” he muttered in his geographically ambiguous accent.
“Don’t have a lot of experience in that department,” she retorted. She hadn’t even been a girl for 24 hours, what did he expect?
“Eh, well, er… be on yer best behavior, lassie!” he said sternly while conceding the point. “I’m off ta do some other bis’ness, ya know how ter lock up if I ain’t back by closing.” With that he lumbered out of the store and quickly disappeared into the vastness of the nearly empty mall. Lexi was relieved on the one hand and nervous on the other; relieved that it looked like there’d be no unwinnable argument with Creepy Boss today and no subsequent memory fuzzing, but also nervous that somehow his absence might leave her stranded in an even worse situation.

The morning hours passed slowly. Four customers and two browsers before lunch. None of them went missing, thankfully. Lexi ate the rest of yesterday’s bag of oats in the stock room pensively, dreading the after-school rush. Business picked up a little bit between 1 and 3 with five customers and one annoying, pimple-encrusted teen who should have been in a class instead of trying to hit on her. Then the brats started trickling in.||

Two incidents of boys whapping other children with the toy axes, causing some crying. Lexi was glad than anyone vaguely adult-sized was still intimidating to 8-year olds as she confiscated the plastic weapons and shooed the bullies out of the store. Then there was the game of tag that resulted in not one, but two heaped displays being knocked over. At least their mothers were around to deal with the offenders and offer apologies as Lexi grudgingly re-stacked the strange, mostly toy-shaped things that seemed to shift and squirm in her hands even though she never saw them move. Then it was the general crying, screaming, squealing, and shouting for the next hour until the snot-goblins started being picked off by their absentee parents. Finally, with only half an hour until closing time, there was just one unattended child left. A young girl with thick glasses and a neon green princess tiara (brought from home; at least Lexi knew she’d walked into the shop with it instead of taking it off the shelves because they sold out of princess stuff yesterday).

Princess Whatshername did not entirely approve of Lexi. “You’re pretty,” she began, catching Lexi off-guard.
“Oh, uh, thanks?” she said.
“How come you don’t dress pretty?” the child pressed.
“I dress the way I like to dress, because I’m a grown-up,” Lexi said, trying not to roll her eyes. “And I can dress however I want.”
“You dress boring. I’m going to play with a dolly and dress her real pretty so you can see how to dress pretty,” the green tiara’d girl announced.
“Well don’t play with anything before you pay for it,” Lexi warned. The girl was already wandering off down the aisles, looking through molten masses of retina-searingly bright plastic. Fearing her rule might be ignored, Lexie followed behind to enforce the policy. She also sort of wondered if some horror might leap up from among the terrifyingly misshapen objects on the shelves and drag the little girl into a pocket dimension, or something. Lexi was NOT going to be held responsible if that happened. She was almost disappointed when nothing of the sort came to pass, and instead the little brat reached into a rack of plastic fashion dolls and pulled out one packed with three different outfits.
“I want to show you this one!” Tiara-girl announced.
“Fine, but you have to pay first.” She was skeptical this child would have cash as she followed the bouncing booger-bag back to the counter. On tippy-toes, her neon green crown barely cresting over the countertop, Coke-bottles placed the doll next to the register. Lexi rang it up. “27.35,” she said. A tiny fist pushed a wad of old bills next to the doll, produced from who knows what pocket, followed by a clattering of loose coins. Lexi sighed and began counting, straightening the bills as she went and stacking the coins by denomination. To her surprise, it was exact change. The doll was retrieved from the counter and the box torn open while Lexi was distracted with her register.

The store was screwing with her again, she thought. There might not be a dress code, but Lexi knew that being topless and pantless would NOT go over with Creepy Boss! And that girl was still sitting there on the side of the counter! Panic was starting to set in when suddenly something soft and yielding slipped between her body and her clutching arms, draping thickly over her knees. Something that glowed pink in the store’s terrible white, magenta, and blue lighting. Lexi un-hunched slightly and let go of her shoulders. Impossibly, a colorful dress had materialized around her while she’d been huddled in the fetal position and covered her nearly-naked form from neckline to knees with billowing fabric. It was almost offensively feminine, but at least she was no longer in violation of the law and store policies.
Just then, Lexi felt something pinching up at her hair. Reaching up, her fingers found the rock-hard and glassy smooth texture of some sort of bejeweled hair decoration that trailed a silky ribbon. Even as she processed what her hand was touching, another slight tug announced the materialization of a heavy loop tied to hair in such a way that it would naturally hang where human earrings would reside beside her face. Following quickly, an impressive weight of cold metal and glittering stones suddenly pressed down around her collarbones. She was just able to peer down past her own face and see the bottom of an intricate and very ostentatious necklace now bearing down on her pale skin. Finally Lexi felt each arm suddenly bearing their own additional masses; on one wrist was a thick, shimmering bangle of some metal and, crooking into her other elbow, a hefty pink purse insisted on existing.
“See?” the brat with the green crown boasted as she popped up in front of the counter, waiving her doll proudly. Lexi stopped fretting with her frou frou developments and looked, then stared, at the doll. It was wearing a fancy pink dress and purse, and the little monster had attached big plastic jewelry and accessories exactly where Lexi had felt things pop into being on her just a moment ago. “See how pretty she is?” the girl demanded without acknowledging the clerk’s predicament in the least. Lexi wondered if, like everyone else, she didn’t even recognize that something truly weird had just happened at all while they sat there in the store.
“Yeah, kiddo,” Lexi sighed. “You dressed her up with a real pretty dress.”
“What’s your name?” Coke-bottles asked.
“Miss Lexi the Magical Unicorn,” she blurted out automatically, before finishing with “Lexi for short.” Then she blinked. All of that came out like a reflex, which weirded her out even more than the mysteriously matched dress conundrum. She’d never actually given out her recently-acquired name before and wondered if the store was doing stuff to her mind.
“Lexi… Lexi…” the little spoiled princess mulled over before wrinkling her nose decisively. “That’s not pretty enough!”
“Tough,” Lexi said, crossing her arms defiantly. “If you’re done shopping then it’s time to leave, Little Miss Prissy-Pants. Go find your parental unit or something.”
Instead of fussing, the tiny tyrant giggled like she’d just heard the world’s dumbest knock-knock joke. Scooping up her doll and its accessories, she skipped out into the the nearly empty mall and out of sight. The unicorn girl behind the counter sighed with relief that this ordeal was finally over. She glanced at the slightly dripping clock. Five minutes until closing time. Then she suddenly realized that if her pants were gone, maybe her wallet and phone were too. Without thinking, she patted down her dress for pockets and nearly panicked before remembering that there was a brand new purse swinging from her right arm. Anxiously, she unzipped it and dumped the contents onto the counter with a clattering. Her phone greeted her eyes, as did her fidget spinner, her wallet, and even the pocket knife that had vanished into the ether along with her boy clothes the other day. Her chest sank down as she emptied her stress into an exasperated sigh.
“Hrmph, not pretty enough indeed,” she grumbled, smoothing out the delicate pink dress and tugging at its blue sleeve-thingies. “There’s nothing wrong with my name.”

She had just finished packing up her personal effects once more when Creepy Boss sauntered in through the door. “Closing time, lassie!” he announced before freezing in his tracks. His eyes narrowed a piercing gaze at the hybrid girl behind the counter. “Ya didn’t leave the store unattended to change into them duds, did ya?” he leveled at her with an accusing finger.
“Of course not, sir,” she replied dryly.
“Don’t be tellin’ stories, lass,” he said with a serious beard droop. Reaching for something in his pocket, she saw him pull out and finger some sort of round, black fob. She didn’t even have time to register the words “Simon Says tell the truth” before her world shrank down into a swirling cloud of green, yellow, red, and blue lights that danced and whispered without voices. In her incoherent state, she readily volunteered the truth; she hadn’t left the shop all day. But her recollection of the questioning was fuzzed out immediately by the insistent, all-consuming quartet of colored lights and their captivating ballet. She blinked back to full awareness. Creepy Boss was speechless again. She wished she could remember whatever just happened to explain the look on his face. “Yeh, well, fair ‘nuff I s’ppose. Oakay lassie, this one don’t count against ya. But remember! Stay on yer Best Behavior all week. I’ll know if yer tryin’ ta pull one over on me, just like when I caught you thievin’. Yer on thin ice, missy! Now off with ye, I’ll close up today. Don’t come in tomorry lookin’ too fancy, tho! Them petticoat whatsits gonna snag on all the merchandise….”
She blinked again. Was it really going to be that easy this time? Without waiting for this side-evolved gibbon to change his mind she immediately clocked out, picked up her purse, and practically bounced out from behind the counter and through the shop doors into the mall proper.

Leaving early meant she had some time before her mom would arrive to ferry her back to the apartment. She strolled around the shops, each of which seemed as mutable as the one she was forced to work in. Some of them had trees growing in them. One of them seemed to be either selling mushrooms or, she thought, maybe selling TO mushrooms. Her platform heels stopped clacking in front of a particular one, though. The Blood Orange Boutique, lined with racks and mannequins and other vaguely similar displays all showing off stylish women’s clothing. There were no customers she could see.

“Eh, wouldn’t hurt to look,” she said before crossing the threshold into No Man’s Land. Lexi spent the next fifteen minutes perusing the displays before a ding from her purse announced a text. Her mom was outside and ready to drive her to the apartment. “Ugh, already? I wish the bus was reliable enough so I didn’t have to rely on her.” Lexi sighed at leaving empty-handed. “But at least none of this stuff is as pretty as what I’m wearing. I’ve got better at home,” she consoled herself on the way out.