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Metainfection

The Original

Tags: FtM, Anthro, Growth, Twinning, Toon, Mild Sexual Themes, Identity Play

Originally produced for the Defeminization Discord Server

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No matter how many times it had been explained to her, Takamaki Ann couldn't really square the calculus of Mementos. She wasn't even sure the saying worked that way, and that was just as troubling a thing to think about on this dreary day.

She thought about it as she hopped another turnstile, landing with a clack-clack of Panther-ine heels on concrete. Never failed to get a smile.

Tonight was another prep operation. Shido's plan to hijack the election loomed on the horizon, December 18th. Akechi's defection to the party had brought spirits back up, but there was still a greater sense of dread, that a lack of preparation could quite possibly doom the Phantom Thieves. The shadows in Shido's palace were no joke. A cut above Nijima's nightmares in every regard. Ann would've been proud of that pun if her calf had healed, but it had not, and it reminded her every step with a dull throb. She still sported a grazing wound from the cruise ship goons, who had shot at the thieves on their way out the day before. That was a good enough reason to come back to the metaverse maze.

Metaphysical maze? Metaversical maze? Ugh. More like a laborious labyrinth. English vocab doing work.

It had been decided after roll call that there were still paths to explore on the way to the Depths. Treasure chests and squirming trails on the map the Thieves had ignored on their first few passes. There wasn't too much, in total, but rounding the party up in the Catbus and driving to each missing spot on the map was, to put it in Ryuji's words, fucking boring. With that, Akira agreed.

He split the raiding party in three. He, Akechi and Kasumi took the main stretch and every junction fraying off of it. Ryuji, Yusuke and Morgana took the upper tunnels, spread so far laterally that hailing a bus for help seemed natural. This left Ann, Makoto and Haru together, the girl squad, cutting through lower tunnels with wit, grit and firepower. They were strong enough to handle the shadows on their own, so this far down, they split again, agreeing to stay in shouting distance in case something bad happened.

Ann supposed the trip would've been filled with bad things happening. But as she turned the corner onto the next station, disappointment reared its ugly mug again.

Nothing.

On a second look, there was something, but it trembled behind a distant pillar, peeking out the side, wondering when Panther would give up and go away.

In the absence of adrenaline, in the dearth of combat, in the lack of shiny things to at least remind her what she was doing this far underground, Ann found herself absolutely bored.

This was the third time Ann had crossed into Station Narcissism, connecting platforms Sophism and Autoerotica, substation exit Nous // Aletheia, all tonight, and she had just about had it.

Ann knew she wasn't stupid. She was farther from the dumb blonde joke than Yusuke was from a normal diet. Still, she was worried. Self-conscious. The first time the Thieves came through, back in October, she kept her lips shut about all of these seemingly important names here that flew over her head. Look it up, she told herself. Don't ask ditzy questions.

Three months later, Ann, frustrated, kicked a trash can. What did it all mean? Why were these stations so tightly knitted together? What sense did it make? Did it matter?

"Ughhhh..." Ann moaned. "I hate this plaaace..."

The bin's aluminum deathrattle echoed through the station. Something a half-mile away turned tail and ran.

"And there goes my company," Ann said. "Great."

As she pouted, there was a glint at the top of the center-escalators. Her belt-tail flicked. Could have been a fluorescent bulb shorting out, she thought. No reason to get my hopes up.

It glinted again. Ann jogged around the side to see it more clearly.

It was a treasure chest. It sat right underneath the Narcissism sign, squat and shiny. A blackened box with a golden trim. Waves of red puffs wafted out of the top like stink lines.

"Treasure?!" Ann gasped, then realized how loud she was and cupped her mouth. "... A treasure chest, aww yeah." She ascended the steps to it with relief. Even if the treasure turned out to be a dinky life stone, she felt some comfort in indulging her inner magpie and forgetting about tonight's hours spent finding a veritable cache of jack-all and nothing.

She kicked the latch open with a flourish. A bright light shot out from inside.

I am thou... thou art I...

Stars twinkled in her eyes. New Persona? Upgrade? Jackpot!

From the sea of MY soul, I come...

Ann stopped. That wasn't how it went, was it?

Twirling smoke erupted out of the chest. Ann squinted up at it, trying to make sense of the tumbling shape. It twisted and snaked and billowed out, floating above her with a growing presence, a humanoid figure with clear humanoid features.

Ann's jaw slowly dropped. "... Car... Carmen?"

Only, it wasn't Carmen, not as Ann knew her. Her original persona was a damsel, modelled after the Sevillian femme. Ruffling pinks and reds flew down her hourglass body, split open at the chest, styled at the mask, flanked by a pair of dumbstruck shadows on leashes. Curling drills, pointed stomping boots - objects of desire sharpened into weapons. Carmen that spun in the air and bowed in Ann's favor was a man. Some facsimile of one. Bulldog shape, with great shoulders running to thick arms, triangular chest tapering to thin legs and pointed feet. A pencil moustache and goatee stuck out from under the lip of 'her' mask, and underneath it, there was a square jaw. Carmen's costume stuck to the body as best it could, but the lack of curves gave the corset little to do and sapped the dress of any appeal at all. In the Persona's hand was a rapier, wrapped with vine leashes.

Ann realized this face was familiar. "No no- no wait a second. Zorro? The heck is this?"

Zorro/Carmen shook their head. They slashed at the air and vanished with a tuft of sulfur.

Ann stared past where it had been, processing what she could only guess was Zorro caught in drag. A cold sweat rolled over her. "... right. Um. Practical jokes. Is that what you things do down here when you're bored?"

There was no answer. Ann felt mildly queasy.

"I am going to walk out of this station," she said, "and we're not going to speak of this again. Isn't that right, Hecate?"

She stomped her heel on the escalator metal to call her persona. It didn't answer. "... isn't that right, Hec-ACK-"

Summoning energy shot up into her throat and she gagged. Ann's vocal chords throbbed, itched until it was swollen shut. She grabbed at her larynx and stumbled, meandering back down to ground level. All at once, her face felt thick and wide. Her body clumsy She felt like no acrobat, but a ponderous, thudding giant, barely able to keep balance.

When her heel hit the floor, another shot slammed into her diaphragm. The muscle squeezed, and out of her mouth leapt a yowl.

"Mrrrroooooow~~"

She stopped. She cupped her mouth shut, and then she followed down her throat. There was a v-shaped knot in the middle. She pinched it, and winced when she found the interloper mingling under the skin, exactly as she felt it bouncing between yowl and swallow. Boys have those, she thought rather astutely. "... t-that's an Adam's apple..." Ann muttered like a boy.

Her fears drained down her spine and became vertigo. She stumbled forward. She threw her hands onto a linoleum pillar before all balance was gone. Behind her, her tailbone ached and twitched with sudden life. "Hngh- the hECK?" The statement erupted into a youthful crack. That was not what she wanted to hear, nauseous as she was.

Yearning to be free, Ann's tailbone yanked her hips up into the air. Her bodysuit creaked like a tree being dragged down, earthy, loud stress forced upon it. The sides bulged and stretched. She took a heady breath and bit her lip. She was trying to ignore the tugging force on her butt and failing badly. "Hhh... nnnh... " Pressure mounted, piling in the back end with nowhere else to go.

Until finally, with another yowl, a tail shot out of the suit.

Ann gulped air like a fish. Somewhere in the middle of that, her face had flushed, and she could swear sweat was beading down her forehead. Nausea abated enough for her to look at the problem area.

It was a problem indeed. Jutting out of her butt was a bushy tail. It was black, with a white tip, nearly as thick as her arm. And housing it, she saw a pair of head-sized dough balls stuffed up around her hips that, upon squishing them, she determined to be hips, her hips, and her rounded butt, flush with plush padding under the latex. They wrapped, she supposed, around her upper thighs like they were pigs in an overstuffed blanket. She was quick enough to catch a rounded crease poke out where her crotch should have been and inflate, roughly to the circumference of a well-inflated basketball.

"What...?" Ann croaked. The situation was so absurd, a half-smile hit her lips. "That's not right..."

She tried to step out, to stand upright and look at herself. The accumulated weight in her lower body seemed to thud into the foot, and as it made contact with the concrete again, her whole leg spasmed. Momentum carried the other leg into a spasming thud. Latex rippled like jello, fattening in places and softening in others until the third step set everything into place.

Ann looked. Her legs had shrunk, but she didn't shrink. They were now stubby appendages with pink paws poking out from under her heft. A quick check of her proportions confirms they weren't good. From the waist down, her body had been warped into a cartoonish pear.

More sweat began to bead. Ann examined herself weakly, experimentally padding left and right. "Takamaki," she said, higher-pitched than before, trying to reassure herself. "This is a dream... t-this is a dream... that isn't your body..."

Gurgles begged to differ. Her stomach wound into a knot, soon turning Ann's guts into a towel being wrung out to dry. With every squeeze, the queasiness bubbled to the top of her head and back down again, spilling into a greater bulk around her tummy. She had to raise her hands up to avoid bumping into her rounded abdomen. She could feel slickness crawling up from below, the same that lurked around her legs and made them feel velvety and soft. It reached tendrils into her rib cage, and quite quickly, breathing became difficult. A vice pressed her bust back into her chest, until it popped with a grease-slick squeak, and let Ann breathe again. Contrary to logic, Ann felt her chest had gotten bigger, not smaller, but not in the way she'd hoped. Her breasts were gone, subsumed under rolling meadows of black velvet moobs.

The bulge suddenly made sense. Ann threw her head back and clutched it, groaning like a boy. "This can't be happening," she said, feeling all of the happening in every little detail. Under her fingers - charitable notions that they were for how fat they felt - Ann could only just find her features. They disappeared quickly. Behind them, sand seemed to pour, collecting and pushing her face off its mooring. High cheekbones bulge into rounding sides, stretching out to her shoulders The top of her head swelled. Eyes rapidly outgrow the spanning widths of her fingertips, until they dominated her face. All of this was accompanied by a surge of nausea so sudden Ann nearly vomited.

Instead, she hiccuped. He felt different now.

"Morgana?! Here kitty!" Makoto Nijima breached a corner, and relaxed when no shadows could be seen. Carefully, with flashlight in hand, she approached Narcissism Station. That was where the cat's yelp came from.

As far as Makoto could tell, it was Morgana's voice she heard. She was reasonably sure now. At first, the pitch was off. A little too low, slightly femme, but the echo couldn't be trusted. Nothing could be trusted down here. She wrote the discrepancy off as acoustics playing tricks, focusing on why that darn cat broke formation and came looking for them.

"Hello...!" Makoto projected. "Is there something wrong? Morgana?" Concern fell hand in hand with annoyance. "If you can hear me, please use Navi next time?"

After a moment, she heard: "N-no problem, Nijima-san!"

Makoto rolled her eyes. It didn't sound life-threatening, at any rate. She needed a break, though, and time to check in with the party. Spelunking metaphysical subways was always unsettling.

When she arrived at the station, she expected to find Morgana. She did, of course, but the Morganna she found wasn't comforting so much as they were thought-stoppingly bizarre.

For the creature thumping around her side of the station was big. 2 and a half meters, she guessed. It was round, rose red hiding a night black in-between zipper teeth. Its arms and legs were stubs, ending in plush paws of pink, and it had a slick paunch and a slick stiffy hiding under stretched latex crotch. It stuck out like a baseball bat. The face felt familiar, but tuggingly so, as a mask hid its oval dimples for big blue eyes, and all but the hairline and pigtails of platinum blonde hair were visible. A long smirk ran from pointed ears.

This Morgana was a giant compared to her. It was also wearing Panther's gear, though it seemed unbothered by that. "Hey, Nijima! Did I spook you?"

Makoto struggled to speak. She gawked, scratched her head. The clone of Morgana set off on a proud waddle to close distance with her. At that time, she did not think of a good answer.

"Ah. Um. Hello... Morg..." she ran the permutations for portmanteaus, feeling silly for doing so. If this was a shadow, it would've pinged something in her head, but in the clone's shadow, there was nothing.

"MorgANN?" The clone suggested, putting a paw to its sassy hip.

"That works, I suppose," Makoto said mutely. It was too surreal to ask.

"Oh come on," Morgann said, "That was a good one! Morg-Ann? It fits like a glove?" He scratched at his crotch bulge with a casualness that surprised Queen. She blushed. It was uncanny, but also strangely sexual.

"What, um, happened," Makoto asked. She felt very small. "What are you? Who are you?"

"Duh," Morgann said, beginning to pace around Makoto. "I'm Morgann Takamaki. We've been on the same team for, like, months now? Phantom Thieves?"

Makoto blanked. The air smelt like earthy, musky fur and sweaty bodysuit. "I don't remember a Morgann at all. I know a Morgana and Ann, but not... both?"

Morgann's tail shot stiff in surprise. "You know THE lady Ann!?"

Trepidation bolted Makoto to the ground. She could not move. This weird amalgamate was too strange to back away from. It was almost as though something psychic kept the conversation going and she was trapped in it. "We're teammates," she finally said.

"She's so pretty..." Morgann fawned. Makoto's eyes dared to look down, and found a stubby paw pawing at the basketbulge. This made a thread of logical sense, but in studying it, the thief's head felt too stuffed up to comprehend it.

In fact, it felt so full that Makoto's words snuck out before she could proofread them. "Yeah, she's beautiful-"

Her focus shattered. What a humiliating thing to say to a sexual deviant like this.

"Her hair's so good..." the clone egged on, nudging Makoto in the side. He wore a smirk like the cat did, feistier by girth. Seeing it, Makoto could feel latches coming loose behind her mask. There were feelings of Takamaki-san inside her, that wasn't a secret, but the compulsion to add to Morgann's description ran out of her brain and down out of her mouth like an oil slick.

"And her pigtails are perfect~" she blurted. Her esophagus constricted in a heartbeat and produced a crack like his.

Morgann grinned. He didn't even realize the camaraderie he was building with Queen was infectious. "You know, like, she's got perfect eyes too~"

A smile crept up Makoto's face. Her cheeks began to stretch, and the groin of her suit ran taut. "Perfect nose," she countered. Compulsiveness took the reins from her. She had to keep this game going.

"Perfect lips~" Morgann said and hip-bumped her.

Makoto wobbled, confused, until crash padding of a sort began to push out of her butt. "W-woah!" Stumbling as she found her center again. Round fat rapidly ate through her meagre femininity, and while she ballooned at the waist, Makoto's ears flicked up to the top of her head, black as new moon night. "Perfect face...!"

Morgann sneered. "That doesn't count! Dumb cat~"

"I'm not dumb!" Makoto said, figuring out too late something catty was happening to her. With a final puuwopp her face rounded completely into an oval blob, hazel-gold eyes framed behind an overtaxed faceguard. The act snapped her briefly out of trance, and she jerked her hands to her face to register everything that had changed about it. "Morgann, there's something wrong with me-"

"No way!" Morgann suddenly appeared behind her, paws on her shoulders. "You lookin' cooool, Makotogana~"

Makotogana shook her head. "That's not my name," she lied, not knowing what her original one was. She felt lighter than air in her skull, while her torso felt ever heavier. Soon, she approached Morgann's double-chin and passed it, proving she was growing. It also proved her hair was still mostly intact, though surrounded by velvet fur, which coaxed a purr out of her when it was rubbed. "What's happening to me...?"

"We were on, ah, purrfect lips~?" Morgann spurred. Makotogana couldn't help herself.

"Perfect BOOBS!" she blurted! In a single motion, her sex inverted, and a hard erection tented her stretching suit. "Her boobs are sooo good~"

"What about her buuuutt~?"

The transforming girl obeyed frantic urges to rub her bulge. This was something she'd only experimented with before. A distant voice from her past life called it edging. But the difference between a textbook definition online and doing it with a swelling hand was indescribable. "It's so spherical... the perfect shape, nnfh..."

Morgann found himself following along. The two cat-men stood shoulder to shoulder, breathing shallow breaths as they played with themselves. All lucidity on Makotogana's side vanished as meta-infection ate the last bits of her feet, popping her gloves and boots into an identical set of gunmetal paws. Her boobs, tiny miscreants they were, last the longest, but fade with a wimp, creaking the last few laces of her bodice to taut tightness.

After some amount of time neither of the twins could gauge, they came down from their high and looked back at each other. Neither were really aware of who they used to be. Their local reality simply accomodated.

"... that was pretty nice," Makotogana huffed.

Morgann beamed smuggly. "Understatement of the year! You loved it."

"So what if I did?" Makotogana padded away, feigning a pout. His asscheeks bounced and got Morgann to snicker.

"You're a pervert like me," he said. "That's what."

It felt like a statement of fact rather than an insult, so Makotogana found trouble being mad about being called a pervert. He just sighed and fought with his wedgie. "Hmmmfh. Instead of masturbating to Lady Ann, we should probably go find her."

"Yeah?" Morgann's ear twitched.

"Let's see if we can't find Haru. Maybe she can point us in the right direction."

If Makoto were aware of what she had become and what her new self was doing, she would have surmised this was an infection vector of some kind. A twin dose of mental conditioning and body rewriting that put other metaverse entities in danger inhaling the same air as them. Ann probably would've picked up on it too, or pretended like she did, and the two could have quarantined themselves until Akira found a cure.

The inkling never crossed the two cats' minds. With a nod and a giggle, blind to their maleness, they waddled out of the station in single file. Last they heard, Haru wasn't far...

Haru Okumura was, in fact, leisurely close. When the squad broke ranks to cover ground on this level (Adyeshach, which only Ann could properly pronounce), Haru had decided not to run too far from the stairs. This was because the charm of Mementos hadn't lost its luster yet. Dingy as it was, the subway tunnels ambled on for miles in slow spirals and corkscrews, running like roots, or really, capillary veins.

She tittered softly. What a morbid thing to think.

It was in one of these capillary tunnels where Haru paced. The floor had twisted until she was walking on stone arches. She snaked between gaps. No shadows for yards, distant reds half-lighting dusty trails of dirt and railroad ties, casting her silhouette wide as she passed underneath. She was alone with the wind, the clicks of her heels. This was a place where she could get peace of mind. It reminded her of set design - Cube's angularity, perhaps, with a dash of Blade's gothic aesthetic and the Thing's claustrophobic man-made prison. The mise-en scene was a little sparse, but if she could fund a production with this art direction...

Haru happily sighed. She rested a hand on her cheek. "... Okumura... films? Ohhhh, stop... daydreaming. You have better things to do."

This was the third time she had said that this trip. She did not, in fact, feel there were better things to do.

"Haruuuu!" called a high-pitched voice.

"Haru-chaaaan!" called almost the same voice.

Haru turned on her heel - and startled herself with the grinding edge of her axe. She nearly topples over. "Oooh! Hello! Mona-san? I'm here, yes!"

The voice came from far away, back at the staging area. She skipped back to the corner, following the vocal trail with her arms out. If that indeed was Morgana's voice, and not a daring shadow with mimicry as its foul special ability, then the search was probably done. It followed reasonably. With wary pauses, she angled and hopped around the twisting architecture until it aligned properly with gravity. Moments like these reminded her was lighter, more physically capable in the metaverse. Prideful thoughts, Haru told herself, taper them down.

As she caught sight of the staging zone, she suddenly felt even lighter. Comparison has a magical way of accentuating how the body reacts and responds to itself. In the real world, and Haru experienced this, her body seemed to shrink in the presence of taller people (Kunizaku especially). It was sticklike thin too around 'healthier' people - Kobayakawa's gut came to mind, and time and again, she felt like she'd blow away in the wind. Naturally, when she came across a pair of very bulky butts waiting by the escalator, with tipped tails fluttering everywhere, goosebumps hit Haru so concisely her own behind felt concave.

"You think we can fit?" The cat in the Panther suit asked, gazing up into the dark abyss that led to the next floor.

His partner, the cat in the Queen suit, grumbled and plucked at his corset strings with stubby digits. "It's gonna be tight. I'm thinking maybe single fi... fi... uh..."

Morgann sneered. "Dumb cat~"

Makotogana huffed, indignant. "There's a saying for this, I know there is. You know what I'm talking about!"

The scene was uncanny. They had their likeness's hair, cropped a little to match their cartoonish heads. As Haru processed their voices, too similar to be distinct, echoes of Ann and Makoto's color led credence to a budding theory that these two were not native. They were not Shadow cosplayers, that's for sure - they did a better job of disguising themselves before pouncing on their prey. The cats' round bodies, evocative of Morgana's super-deformed pudge, stretched the costuming too much. Three hundred pounds, slickly sculpted yet warping the intended hourglasses of each thief suit to a walking joke. Funhouse mirrors conveyed a better reflection of the real thing.

Maybe they were the real thing too. Ann and Makoto... transformed?

Haru approached in the thin alley between their asses, awestruck at the way they simply surpassed her height and weight in every way. It was so odd, she had to offer her input. "Single... file?"

The cats turned round, surprised. Before Haru could process anything, half-erect bulges wagged into view in front of her and sent her mentally reeling. "Oh hey, it's Haru!" the voice in the red-pink costume said.

Haru flushed. "O-oh my goodness, you're- ah, those are big!" She flinched, and then she retreated a few steps, blocking the offending lewdness with her palms.

Morgann guffawed, rubbing his package proudly. "What, you talkin' about our dicks~?"

Makotogana snorted. "What else?"

Haru gawked up at them, anxious to find something sillier to look at. Blonde pigtails and a brown short-crop did as well a job they could. "Why do you two have... a-ah... packages!?" Not the deliverable kind, unless Haru meant a [blank] in a box, and she swore to herself she didn't.

The cats looked at each other. "Your point?" Makotogana asked quizzically. Statements like those made her sound smarter than her empty head felt at times.

"Ann and Makoto aren't boys!" Haru wondered if that obvious statement made her sound dumb. "They have... ah- boobs! And hips! A-a-and..." She wouldn't dare utter the p-word. A lady of her station could never debase herself like that.

Morgann's inhibitions were more lackluster. "Pussy."

"The word you're looking for is pussy." Makotogana nodded.

Haru squeaked! "You don't say that!" And shut her trap. The voice that flew out of her lips was crunched and fed halfway through a helium filter.

The cats grinned. They had an idea where this was going.

She tried to right herself again, enunciating as clearly as she could. "Pussy is... s-such a... vulGAR word... I-I can't even say VAGina without... w-without..." She shivered, then swallowed. A bump bounced in her larynx. She sounded exactly like them...!

Morgann's catsuit creaked and squeaked as it approached. The way he carried his heft, defiant to his shortstack shape, was hypnotizing to watch. "I think you need a crash course in slang," he said, plopping his paw on her shoulder.

Haru sniffed at the air. It suddenly hung thick with musk, as if the fur peeking out of Morgann's suit was damp with sweat and raked with dirt smells.

It only got worse - Makotogana flanked her on the other side, surrounding her summarily with a blanket of warm latex. "You're devele... dev-uh... you have to sound like an adult sometime, y'know?"

There was only one time in her life Haru felt so tiny. It was freshman enrollment, trapped between the principal and her father while papers were being signed. With their exaggerated bodies, Haru felt only as tall as Mona around these Monas.

But not for long. Her cheeks burned suddenly, expanding like rising cookie dough. "There's no way you can make me say something as vile as p-puh... the p-word again," Haru said, defiant. It was hard to make it stick with a stammer.

The cats thwacked her in the keister. "Pussy!" they admonished!

Haru yelped and jolted a foot into the air. When she met ground again, the buttons on her vest popped, and her belly swung forward! "W-wah?!" It pushed aside the blouse underneath it and wobbled and settled so definitively, Haru couldn't see her bloomers past the wall of a toony muffin top. She pleaded what she could find in embarrassment. "Y-your way of helping me is... you're changing me! I'll never say it!"

Morgann wanted to egg her on, but fate was already working, and she wanted to watch it do dirty things. Pressure knotted under the base of Haru's spine, silently at first until her buttcheeks began to audibly inflate. Haru looked over at it, her other cheeks swollen and furred, and moaned out of dizzy anticipation for something earth-shattering. "That's... not... my buuuutt..."

Out it went. Her bloomers creased, growing to their greatest extent. Haru's cat ass ballooned even bigger than that, until it dwarfed its neighbors and poked out of the baroque sleeves, bush and quite Noir. Her feet shuddered under the weight and did the bodily equivalent of a stammer holding herself up until infection crawled into her long lady legs and sucked the girl out of them. Her stockings survived the swell, but her shoes swallowed their fate and simply melted into pudgy little pink paws. To top this, to rob Haru of her forbidden word, her crotch sank, pouring like molten iron. She held onto her paunch and pitched forward, gasping, while the cats kept her standing.

"Oh no, now m-my pussy's-! WAIT, NO, I DIDN'T MEAN IT-" Careless. Her sex poured into a weighty mold, taking the tiny amount of give left in her bloomers and forcing it tight around a beachball-sized crease. Cheeks flashing scarlet, but foreign in her own body, Haru can only squeal and squirm, watching her cock come to fruition.

All three looked down at its girth. Two of them were impressed. Haru was mortified. "My co~ooock..."

The cats considered, and agreed. "Your cock~" Morgann hummed.

"A fat freaking cigar," Makoto nodded, "isn't it?"

"I'm so s-sorry you have to see this... this thing..." Haru drifted off. She realized two facts about herself. First - she didn't want to call her cock ugly. It really was not unattractive. Looking at it from multiple angles, mostly erect from all the blood rushed down to her crotch to make it grow, it felt... it smelled... not bad. Not good, of course, erections aren't supposed to be waved around in public...

Mona, however, was naked almost all the time, and he didn't seem to care. And she looked like Mona.

The second followed the stream of consciousness neatly, well and tidy. Haru had grown in the intervening minute. She met Morgann and Makotogana at eye-level. And the creasing, flattening feeling in her chest hinted that she would only get bigger the longer she indulged their antics. There was the humiliation of growing a penis, sure, but the impact of that horrible truth was deafened by the growing admiration she had for it. The admiration she had for their cocks too, and their round bellies, and their fat asses too.

A third thing dawned on her when her body shuddered, and her cat partners gawked at her hands. She felt big.

Very big.

When her chest flopped into fuzzy moobs, cradled by a broach and ascot, she smirked. And the dimples of her smirk pulled her face, stretching her head to its... 'proper' shape. "You know what else I can say... ?" Haru began.

Morgann and Makotogana quirked opposite eyebrows. "What?"

Changing Haru planted her hands on her hips. "Dick!" They popped into round digits. "And... and cock too~" This was an opportunity. As the biggest one in the group now, she had every right to say their ugly curse words! Coquettishly, rather, the confidence had a ways to go.

"Whaaaat?" Morgann gasped for effect.

Makotogana fakes some invective. "Don't tell me you're a pervert too, Okumona! Three's a crowd!"

Okumona, not Haru, cupped his crotch as his arm muscles soaked up fat and fur, straining his blouse strangely. His tail, the last thing to sneak out, fluttered with joy. "Ohhhh~.You're going to have to arrest me, officer! I'm the biggest pervert!" And she meant it literally.

The three Morganas shared a laugh at that. What had happened to them had simultaneously lost its impact and rewove itself back into the narratives about themselves. There were, supposedly, Haru, Makoto and Ann in the Phantom Thieves, but their bigger cousins were members too - translated through prisms of different species and different habits. It didn't even resonate that they were horny, male cats, thinking about their former selves in lusty fantasies.

Morgann deserved the lion's share of blame for that.

They were simply big, wore their old costumes, and loved every second of it.

Duty snapped them out of their reverie with a transmission from Navi.

[Hey! New orders! We're about to call it for the night. Meet back at the entrance.]

"Oh shi-" Okumona caught herself before her loose inhibitions f-ed her. "-iiiitake mushrooms! We better get going."

Morgann and Makotogana affirmed it with nods and tail-swishes. "Right," Morgann said, taking charge. "Single file. Haru, early warning, wait till we ride up it first. Your fat butt's gonna break the escalator if all three of us go at the same time!"

"No, it... ohhh, what a risk. Fine, I'll wait!" Okumona stepped back, giving her partner in Queen's pajamas the right to go after her.

"You think Futaba's going to be worried?" Makotogana asks in a brief moment of clarity.

"About what?"

"... nuffin~"

Metainfection 2

The Queen Epidemic

Tags: MtF, Twinning, Forced Clotheswearing , Mild Sexual Themes, Identity Play

Originally created as a commission for Thisismyaccount410

---

Nijima did not mean to hit send.

"O-oh... darn it!" she growled. Her fingers tapped at the group chat screen, trying impotently to stop the attachment from going through. Where was the cancel button? There should have been an X somewhere she could mash, but when thumbs mashed around for a quick kill on the upload, Makoto got nothing but UI clutter and bouncing tabs, staggered to a halting stop by the overheated processor in her phone. Chaos reigned in messenger form for a handful of seconds...

And then Makoto Nijima moaned. She moaned in frustration as the screenshot she quarantined popped up in the group chat.

MAKOTO: Hey, Navi can you look at this? It appeared in my IMs with an unknown

source.

dZcWMugINMs9vhbnjLdJo0zIfBdrXtjz9kCDzTFB3Bw6JaaI5mvfN74cUoUdUWfE

Poor Queen sank. Her head fell into her hands.

For all anyone knew, she just infected everyone with a shape-changing curse!

She would never live this down. Not this morning. And if worse came to worse, not for a long time.

Not two weeks ago, the Phantom Thieves had become victims of a 'shadow spoof' like this. The term Navi - also known as Futaba Sakura - used was 'meta-infection,' which better described the hornets' nest the Thieves had kicked over by accident. To make a long story short, Anne touched something infected. A seeming treasure chest suddenly, and quite rapidly, turned Anne into an obese fascimile of the team mascot Morgana. Cartoon smile, squat body, tail, paws and everything, even his apparent maleness. It wasn't long before infected Anne found Makoto and teased her into transforming...

Nijima's cheeks burned thinking about it. Being oversized and fat, furry and... ughhhh, lewd. What a mess. She sat back in her chair, dreading to hear a warning creak out of her seat.

The team had high expectations of their badass bike thief. Being a victim hurt almost as much as the physical memory of being a cartoon clone.

It wasn't long after that when the Thieves caught up with the infection, but by then, Okamura was ensconced, and Navi was in danger of gaining a cat bulge in her pants. She had a stroke of genius then: a factory reset. While the cats (including Makotogana) were busy comparing all the things they would do for Lady Ann, the boys stole away their smartphones. Not a difficult task in the least, according to Ryoji. A smug boast, but he had every right to brag. With Navi's instructions, the boys started a Metaverse Navigator reboot. Mid-complaint, the cats shuddered to a stop. Then, all of a sudden, their obesity suddenly disappeared, and the realism of their teenage lives just... popped back into existence!

They were lucky that time. As Navi discovered, code had infected the Thieves' phones. Viral meta-code could do all of the nefarious things trojans and worms could do to a phone: rewrite personal details, corrupt the BIOS, cause fatal system errors and even permanently brick the thing if left to fester. "Morgana syndrome" had hit the first stage, according to Navi's diagnostics. Some kind of malicious shadow program thing stole Morgana's shape and ambushed Ann Takamaki, rewriting the personal data on her phone to copy Morgana's! The science of it didn't matter so much as the bug, the ripple effect of being careless. Quarantine and a factory reboot saved the girls from having to walk back into Tokyo as horny tomcats - but it was a wakeup call to more insidious threats lurking in the metaverse. They had to be more vigilant now, more discreet, relying on their system admin to scan for viruses...

And here Makoto was, fat fingering hazardous mail to the place everyone could see it. There wasn't even a delete function on the page! She could only stare into her phone, hoping someone would strike her dead on the spot. Save her from this well of utter embarrassment.

"Makoto!" Sae shouted from her room. "Are you dressed?!" The shock nearly killed her sister then and there.

"Y-yeah! I'm dressed..." she said haltingly. Checking, preening at herself. No wonder she made a mistake; it was 7:16 in the freaking morning. Sae, her prosecuting sister, had to make it to the courthouse by 8:00 at the very least, and out of concern for her health, Makoto offered to tag along with a bento lunch.

'Offered.' Offered was a flimsy word. Sae had a precarious habit of 'forgetting' to eat, and coming home delirious and overworked. All it took was one night of collapsing in the foyer, unconscious, to raise the alarm. There was less say in the matter than Makoto would've liked, at least as far as her concern went. If she didn't go with Sae these days,

Her phone buzzed. Makoto tapped back at the home screen...

RYUJI [07:16]: hey uh

RYUJI [07:16]: you alright, makoto?

There it was again. The reason why anguish lurched at her heart.

YUSUKE [07:16]: It looks like a string of symbols. A puzzle?

Oh, she wished. Makoto tried to set the record straight, shuffling back into a seat at the kitchen table:

MAKOTO [07:17]: I'm sorry!!!! This is for Navi, please disregard

MAKOTO [07:17]: How do you delete attachments

MAKOTO [07:19]: does anyone know how to delete attachm|

Heels on hardwood jolted her back into reality. Sae walked out of her room with purse in hand and perfect, silver hair flowing over her shoulders. "We're too late for the B, so we have to take the C... that's 25..." she mumbled out a gibberish of times and letters that'd only make sense with Tokyo's stringent metro schedule. Makoto would've been amused if her sister wasn't stringing herself out on the daily. "Are you coming?"

Makoto flinched. Her ears pounded. She slipped her phone into her pocket and grabbed their lunchboxes. Geez, Sae didn't even give her a chance to look at herself in the mirror... "Dunno why you ask, sis - when I say it I mean it."

Sae rapped at the front door. "Get your butt in gear, then, or we're going to miss the train!"

Makoto sprang to her feet then, bowing her head to insistence. In retrospect, this was probably the worst thing she could have done if the attachment she linked was infected.

But maybe it wasn't? Maybe that random number string was just as mundane as it looked. There was something she learned in CS I - phishing? She could've been the victim of a phishing scam on a device built for metaphysical communication. Some hacker (Russian or Chinese? Didn't matter which) looking for a hole in her security choosing her, of all people, to try their luck. She doubted they could understand what the Phantom Thieves did on a daily basis. In that case, the worst thing could be...

... Queen couldn't fathom a guess. Futaba Sakura knew so much more about the internet and its hazards. Makoto was a child, fumbling in the dark and hoping against hope that she picked up a mundane computer virus like a random stranger contracted the flu in a packed subway car. Hoping still that a mundane virus only did mundane things to her profile.

She imagined it. Getting sick from the Tokyo metro... then... changing in the Tokyo metro... this time turning into blocks of gibbering static and randomized code...

Makoto needed some help. This could not wait. Not one block away from their apartment, she took her phone out again to troubleshoot. When she tapped the screen, it fumed uselessly in her hand.

Makoto muttered in disbelief. "... you've got to be kidding me..."

---

Ryuji peeked at his phone's system tray. 8:26. He groaned.

The price for booking it to school in the morning was boredom, and he was paying it. Not like he had a choice. He was broke - in the real way, and in the attention span sort of way. Double threat.

He tapped his sneaker on the tile, trying to stay sharp. Stay awake. The last time Ryuji fell asleep in homeroom, he got markered for his trouble. Ann stuck to it for a week. Never thought he'd live it down.

Then compulsion picked at him. Fine. He had to check his phone again. It'd been an hour since the thing buzzed.

The screen opened up to the group chat, right on that number jumble. Ryuji stared blankly at it before switching off to other chats. What a weird thing to post. Even for Queen, it was pretty oddball. Could've mistaken it for a Yusuke post, that airhead. Though it was rich for Ryuji Sakajima, of all people, to call somebody else weird. The Thieves gave him shit all the time for being a dumbass, and while it was mostly true, it was hardly a license for him to do the same.

After a quick look - nothing in messenger. What did he expect to find? He tapped back down to his home screen. His thumb hovered around the icons, past the bluntly pedestrian nameplate in the center - Ryuji Nijima as always - and looked for Twitter.

A hand threaded back through his hair. He'd always worn it short. Lately, though, it had been getting longer. Straighter too, and softer. He pinched a lock, rubbing it under his fingers as it slowly neatened, and the blonde dye bled out, swallowed by rich chestnut brown. Messy ends flattened just under his jawline, smoothly trimmed. Ryuji's bangs settled, and he remembered he had them, swishing his fingers through. They turned swiftly turned blunt. The braid he worked so hard on, it fell flush over the crown of his head, running ear to ear. It took months to get his raucous hair to behave.

Ryuji smiled conservatively. His eyes lidded in comfort, and when they fluttered open, his pupils glittered. Under eyelash curtains, they turned red.

So what if the guys teased him for his hair? He was class president, wasn't he? His reputation preceded him. Even if it wasn't a good reputation, on account of busting his leg. The thought made Ryuto grimace. The mental image of his blood oozing through stockings...

Change the subject, brain. Talk to somebody.

Ryuto shot glances around. Akira wasn't there yet. That also meant Morgana wasn't around to bully. Ann was somewhere else. He crossed his lithe legs in agitation.

... wait a second. Yusuke responded to the group chat. Wasn't he awake?

Ryukoto dug back for his phone and instinctively dived into PMs...

---

"Hm?" said Yusuke, falling out of trance. The youth's phone was buzzing on the table. Reluctantly, he pulled away from the easel, setting his brush down with a little flourish.

MAKOTO: Hey. What are you up to?

Well, the answer was obvious. At least, it was obvious to Yusuke Nijigawa. He had learned quickly that what the team expected did not typically line up with his line of thinking. A more pretentious sort of man - Madarame, he thought bitterly - would've called it an artist's vision, but Yusuke knew better.

Carefully, he typed out:

YUSUKE [08:28]: Painting a landscape

Then he paused, thinking of a good way to describe it. Flowery or honest?

MAKOTO [08:29]: I was thinking about that thing I posted in the group chat.

YUSUKE [08:29]: of the district courthouse.

YUSUKE [08:29]: Oh?

Yusuke glanced back up, letting his mind settle. The linework had already been done - a few images drawn up on Goggle image search and thumb-tacked on the corkboard of his apartment. Aside from that, the easel, the bed, a stack of profolio gear, a trash bin overflowing with takeout, and a suitcase, this was it. He chuckled; no wonder he was still thinking about that character string. There was little here to stimulate his curiosity. The painting, a recent obsession, didn't count. For some reason Yusuke couldn't quite pin, his thoughts drifted back to the courthouse... and Makoto's sister Sae. They drifted often, especially after that riddle-post came through, so much that compulsion forced him to abandon a portrait just to scratch the itch in his fingers.

His phone buzzed. He checked it expectantly.

MAKOTO [08:32]: I'm inclined to believe it's some kind of cipher.

Eyes fluttered in interest.

MASUKE [08:33]: That's what I was thinking as well.

MASUKE [08:34]: Perhaps it is based on a simple replacement scheme. One latin symbol for a number, vice versa?

Masuke processed his thoughts. He attended to his fingers - inelegant tools he had fashioned into precise components. They shrank as he stroked them, slimming imperceptibly with every press of his thumb. Delicately, his fingertips stretched out, popping with fresh paint on their delicately trimmed nails. Not that Masuke had the time or the focus to really indulge himself, but just trying to look polished and presentable led him to experiment. His girlish hands were just one result.

His neatly trimmed bob was another.

A fact occurred to Masuke. Makoto messaged him - but it was a separate Makoto than the one who posted the riddle. The starving artist squinted, almost as if he could see the seam of some great stitch in the universe... His eyes began to shudder...

But then it hit just how stupid he was being. Makoto had sisters. Idiot. He would know too - wasn't he related?

He tugged at his white sleeves, adjusted the arms of a dress as it swiftly ate through his button up. Ran his hands down the sides of his chest, from curve to curve. School uniforms did an awful job of hiding his figure, the very bare figure he could manage to grow. He frowned, rolling his shoulders, chafing under the strap loops so badly he slipped his fingers underneath to ease it all out.

Girls like him... him? Her, girls like her - have to lie about their measurements to get something that wouldn't bunch up in the chest.

She sighed plaintively, pleating down the edges of a wave that started in her belt, and slowly turned the seat of his thin-pants into a checker-patterned skirt. It smelled like several days of reused laundry, something she didn't notice, working odd hours and integrating haphazardly back into school. Wouldn't dare smell her pits - what would the Thieves say? What were they saying about her already...?

The artist checked her phone one more time. If Makoto was going to take her time answering, she could do something more productive than wistfully admire her own school uniform. Something in group chat was blowing up, but it was hardly a problem right now. She could check it in a bit.

What was it she was doing... oh... oh, the portrait. She needed to sign it and send it out to the gallery before she passed out in the afternoon. Deftly, our starving artist got to her feet, stole away the brush, dipped it in his master's inkstone, and scrawled a quick signature...

NIJIMA, M.

---

NAVI [08:38]: wtf you guys

NAVI [08:38]: you just left this up???

NAVI [08:38]: crap

NAVI [08:38]: shit

NAVI [08:38]: i don't have admin privileges

NAVI [08:38]: can't delete

NAVI [08:38]: akira

NAVI [08:43]: @akira@akira@akira

AKECHI [08:44]: could you please not spam this channel? I have towork.

NAVI [08:44]: d00d, there are three makotos in the user bar, we have a bit of a crisis here

ANN [08:45]: maaaaan i missed a nametag party?

AKECHI [08:45]: that's... normal...?

HARU [08:46]: A nametag party? Oooh, delightful!

NAVI [08:46]: guys this is serious

NAVI [08:47]: oh god.

NAVI [08:47]: op please come back.

AKETO [08:50]: Call me if anything happens. Going in to work.

By the time Akira Kurusu thought to check the chat that morning, class was already moving into first period. The line of texts was enough to make him stop in the hall. He followed it up with a hint of dread, scrolling...

Makoto bumped into him from behind. "A-ahh. Oops. My bad."

Akira jolted to look at her, eyes briefly glazed. His brain told him that it was class president Makoto Nijima - the second class president. Queen 2. Track runner until she hurt her leg. Sheltered girl with a tiny sliver of an attitude, hiding a vicious thief's heart underneath.

But then his spirit saw a dead name flashing behind his eyelids. Ryuji... Sakamoto...

"Helloooo?" Makoto said, dour and worried. "Are you okay, Akira?"

Akira dutifully nodded. He forgot what he was about to say.

"Can we, ah, talk about what I posted?"

Akira looked at her quixotically. Makoto cleared her throat.

"... I'll pitch in to get us a pass."

The door to the girl's bathroom clicked shut. It wasn't often that Ryuji Makoto asked for confidentiality in a girl's washroom, but when she did, it was serious.

Akira briefly went cross-eyed trying to get the distinct sense of nausea out of his stomach. Something was wrong...

"So you probably saw it," Makoto began. She stepped lightly around the side, her short stature beaming through the mirror. Her hands were crossed, in that authoritative way Makoto 1 usually did when she was serious. "I remember getting a message with some sort of scrambled message from an unknown source. It wasn't anything with a mementos address, and I'm sure the network Navi put us on..."

Akira couldn't understand her after a while. Her words slurred, and his balance swung off-kilter. A knife of unease stabbed down his spine.

I AM THOU... THOU ART I...

He huffed, curling his hands around his face. There was something ticklish under the skin, like his head was a sack of dice, the insides rolling and clacking around. He wanted to listen, to take this seriously, but a force behind his social mask, his persona, the real self, it resisted the call...

I AM THE FACE OF A POPESS...

He swallowed. There it was. He distinctly remembered what the jailers said about Makoto's Arcana. Priestess, morphing into Popess and back again.

Makoto's voice drifted back in. Her tone shifted to concern. "Joker? Hey, hey now... you don't look so good..."

Akira wagered that he didn't. He looked back into his reflection, and found his black eyes staring back with highlights. Strands, no, streaks... full bands of red.

He blinked away his shock, finding eyelashes fluttering off his eyelids. That shape was undeniable.

Akira staggered backward, reeling with no firm mooring to hold. Makoto yelped in confusion, but it changed little. His jaw narrowed, as did his nose, and his face was soon to follow. His cheekbones fell flush with a feminine curve, and with a purse, his lips lightly puckered and swelled.

Before Joker knew it, he had his friend's stern features staring in double vision. One was perturbed, the other was fascinated.

The worried face regarded him helplessly. Its owner wrung her hands. "Was it something I said? I-I don't think it's anything to worry about."

One by one, the curls on Akira's head lost their kinks. Along the topline, a braid twisted into shape, separating bangs from a browning bob. Despite the initial panic Akira fell into, watching the process had a therapeutic finality to it. To his shock, he had to remind himself it wasn't his real hair.

He put his hands up, looking expectantly at Makoto. Did she know?

"W-what?" she said, taking a step back.

A sudden, soothing rush shot down Akira's wrist and he found himself stepping off the stall lining. He was straightening his body, shuddering, softly sighing, then loudly sigh, flexing his hands down and out. Every time they coiled in, a little bit of their manliness slipped away, and a little more of the prez' lithe, worked digits etched out of the clay of his frame. Taking a chisel to his essence could not do justice to how pleasant it felt to simply roll his shoulders.

His shrinking shoulders.

A moment into Akira's stretching dance, and his blazer fell off. Makoto gasped, covering her mouth, processing the drop but not the straps leaping out from the beltline and fastening around the phantom troupe leader's shoulderline. The act bolted him forward, sucked the breath right out of his chest. Hands hit the sink. Fabric came up with a sudden exhalation, stretching to cover his male chest, but when he sucked back in, the definition left him! The giddy sting of growing nipples coaxed a moan out of his mouth...

This was understandably worrying to see.

But it wasn't over. Akir... Akito? Akito's eyes crossed trying to remember his name. He shook his head and laid his palms flat on the counter, intent to push himself back up.

The attempt soundly failed. His uniform pants ripped as he tried to steady, but it wasn't down the seat. His head darted back, trying to puzzle out what was happening. And lo, Akito's butt wobbled behind him, growing a soft curve under the seeping skirtline.

The legs underneath him were weak, but he had to trust them. Akito kicked off the sink...!

And his feet gave out. The world swung around his head in a rush of colors, until he hit the cold tile butt-first.

She shivered with utter delight. She. Her male parts had simply disappeared, and the shockwave of the fall was now running through her hips.

For a while, the new Makoto's head spun. Two realities held their grip on her, reducing his mind to a haze while the second Makoto of the day wagged her hand in front of her face and snapped her fingers. "Sis? Sis?! Are you sick? You need me to take you to the nurse?"

The smile was too much of a give away. Makoto muted it as much as she could and projected a feigned nausea. Not that it was hard, but that there was a look to it Makoto had to keep consistent to keep from being called out. Somehow, someway, Queen Joker transformed, down to wearing her teammate's very clothes in a fashion that fit too solidly to be coincidence. She felt her thoughts, her expectations, the essence of Makoto at 7:16 in the morning distilled into a body mask. Half-submerged in a second identity, wearing Makoto's look, was such a wrong feeling that she... she hated to admit... that she wanted to explore.

Right before Makoto finally resolved to drag her sister to the clinic, Makoto grabbed her arm. Makoto helped Makoto up and shouldered her weak body. "You look pale..."

A weird thought, because their face was naturally pale. Makoto nodded with a queasy look.

"I'll try to get the Thieves on the phone. You sure you want to stay out like this?"

For the sake of exploring this lurid infection, Makoto bowed her head in agreement. Makoto trusted Makoto implicitly, and so, began to help her out of the bathroom. At the same time, she fetched her phone...

MAKOTO, aka YUSUKE [09:21]: I think I figured it out.

NAVI [09:21]: hit me

MAKOTO, aka YUSUKE [09:22]: The message is an encryption cipher.

MAKOTO, aka YUSUKE [09:23]: aha

MAKOTO, aka YUSUKE [09:23]: it translates from an arcfour reader

NAVI [09:23]: yusuke you idiot genius

MAKOTO, aka YUSUKE [09:25]: Remind me who that is.

NAVI [09:25]: right

NAVI [09:25]: mb

NAVI [09:25]: ly queen

MAKOTO, aka YUSUKE [09:25]: Awww~

MAKOTO, aka RYUJI [09:25]: Hey, we've got a girl down. Queen Joker collapsed in the bathroom today.

MAKOTO, aka AKIRA [09:26]: hey

NAVI [09:26]: yo queens

NAVI [09:26]: i need everybody at my place like

NAVI [09:26]: now

MAKOTO, aka YUSUKE [09:27]: Will there be food?

NAVI [09:28]: well that's one thing that hasn't changed

NAVI [09:28]: anyone heard from makoto prime

MAKOTO, aka RYUJI [09:29]: Who?

MAKOTO, aka YUSUKE [09:29]: Who?

In a courtroom downtown, the original Makoto moped.

Nothing she tried had worked on the brick, once warm, now lying cold between her hands. Her smartphone was fried. Popping a battery out didn't work. Asking for a charger proved a moot point. Her limited understanding of phone repair ended with pressing the reset button on the back and hoping for the best, and when that avenue led to a dead-end, her options withered and died on the branch of responsible self-policing.

She screwed up.

Helpless, useless, sinking in the pew, in her formal best, clutching the bento in her lap, there was nothing she could do. If she really, really messed up, the message would get back to her that night. Desktop swarmed with messages, the fallout of some mutagenic mess sprung loose upon Tokyo.

Small comfort - she was fine. Makoto certainly didn't feel any different. And there wasn't a tail shimmying out of her hips. Nor too was she devolving into a sporadic mass of static and corrupted data turned flesh.

Haru could steal her brain for the day and Makoto would be so fine with that.

With precious little she could do without a device to contact the Thieves, all Makoto could do was get through the day. Do some homework, play secretary for Sae, make sure she ate, walk her home. The phone being dead helped her focus, at least. No distractions.

Just then, a very distracting announcement hit the barrister. "Nijima Makoto, special deputy of the Tokyo police department, please take your seat on the left side of the courtroom"

Makoto's face drained of its color.

From behind her, Makoto Nijima, dressed in a plain suit and tie, accented for the curves she could muster, stepped past her, flanked by legal aides. Gloved fingers raked through the bob and braid with a characteristic flair that could've belonged to only one detective prince.

Makoto's eyes tracked to her twin. A pitiful squeak escaped her lips.

She could not move.

But she could dread.

And she could admire how good she looked in a suit.

---

Epilogue

Sae clicked her tongue. "... so you're saying it's permanent?"

Futaba nodded slowly, slurping ramen into her mouth.

The original Makoto stared up at the ceiling in a daze. Disbelief was for earlier that day, before she really understood the ramifications of a fumbling thumb-press. To her surprise, it didn't feel as bad. She felt horrifically guilty, she'd say in a heartbeat, but it was hollow.

Makoto across the table grinned with her mouth full. "Could you pass the rice? Oh, and some miso, I'm starving."

Makoto to her right obliged, sweeping over the suited Makoto's head. "Keep eating like that, and you'll pop. For real."

Haru giggled in turn, sitting across that Makoto and to the right of the rice-happy Makoto. "Ooooh, this is fun! Can I guess which one is which?"

"Go for it," Futaba said nonchalantly, perched on top of a chair with the bowl in her lap.

"Umm... hmm, who brought the portraits in..."

The scene was surreal to see. Makoto thought it was a dream when she came home, and pinched herself five, six times before it finally stuck that this wasn't a feverish fantasy. The Nijima dinner table was packed at all ends. Five Makoto Nijimas made it back to the apartment, all with the distinct delusion that they were part of a multifaceted family of athletes, artists, detectives and... legal assistants. Subtly, original Makoto could tell them apart. As far as she could tell, the girls - Haru, Ann, Kasumi, Futaba, sat down in a checkerboard pattern with pulled up chairs - they could tell this wasn't right. They also shot Makoto knowing glances every now and then. All she could offer was a bleak smile.

What had started as an emergency meeting wasn't a complete mess, though - the Makoto formally known as Akira Kurusu had enough yen saved up to order out for the group and bring it to them. With that, and a little chef-ery in the kitchen the Nijimas barely used, she made a feast of styrofoam cartons, lo mein, fried rice, dumplings, mixed vegetables, miso, a communal ramen pot and the odd salad.

She seemed more aware. She also seemed to be enjoying herself. Queen Joker never told her secrets.

Sae shook her head, watching the second course go down swiftly. "... I... suppose we don't have room on the fold-out."

"No," Makoto said meekly.

"Well, there's a few places that will still be open by the time you're through." Her sister stepped past the Phantom Thieves, receiving adoring looks from the twinned girls. It was hard not to feel her heart warm, seeing it. "... take my card. You're buying air mattresses until we can afford to move you all in."

"I suppose we're a little old to be sleeping together," one of the Makotos said sheepishly.

The invisible line of acceptability ran narrowly through that statement for Makoto. It was one thing to have to be a family with her former guy friends, it was another to sleep with them.

"Alright," Makoto Prime finally said, stirring her ramen. "After dinner, then, we'll pick something out."

"Fun," Ann stressed, furrowing her brow. "Just like a sleepover."

A sleepover that lasted forever. Or maybe until college. Regardless of who they used to be, every Makoto would be chasing a good degree. Anything to help Sae. Anything for the family.