Yuri Worlds

[91] Shift

Misaki woke an indeterminant amount of time later. Her feet angrily pounded, like they were ringing with their own alarms and had been bitterly announcing themselves for a long time without recognition. Her throat wasn’t as bad as the last time she woke, but the absence of her water bottle still disappointed her.

They left them around the chairs, and with everything, especially Yuka’s fight with her sister, it was clear that carrying around tall, liter-sized bottles of water was the last thing on their minds. Misaki had to wonder if they would’ve served as decent tools and weapons. If so, they probably would’ve been confiscated anyway. She could envision splashing the water on the threshold to short it out.

A soft, concerned groan issued from next to her. Yuka roused quietly and struggled to get comfortable leverage against the wall. She attempted to reach out for Misaki, but the restraints and her stiffness held her back. Her stretching practically sounded like crunching bamboo.

When her bright, anime eyes opened, they searched everywhere before finding Misaki. Yuka tilted carefully closer, fighting with long tangles of hair sucked deep in her mouth. They bumped lightly and lovingly before fussing to find better positions.

The blemishes on the back of Yuka’s neck were still gone, but her left leg ached as though it had been pounded by a hammer. Using it to sit up further was a careful struggle.

Misaki surmised that at least some of these physical consequences had to originate with where they were and everything that happened lately. She couldn’t feel a system circulating air, but the space wasn’t oppressively hot, nor did it dip to any level of noteworthy comfort. The blinding brightness of the blank spaces all around was also disorienting. Her bedroom back home got hit with that same level of morning assault when the tree out front swiftly shed all its leaves towards December or January due to the peculiarities of the Mediterranean climate.

They gingerly assisted one another in loosening the hold of tiredness. Yuka tugged at her restraints before rubbing and then smacking them against the wall. Nothing allowed her to gain proper leverage.

She compared it to an enormous finger trap crossed with a contorted straight jacket. Misaki wrapped her arms around the gap. Yuka refused to yank as hard as she physically could and possibly throw Misaki around. Ironically, this lighter-force approach made better progress. Working together with measured but persistent tugging, Yuka finally slipped free and brought her stiff and brightly discolored arms around to her front, gently dropping them in her lap before sneaking them back around because of the open threshold anyone could look through to see them.

Considering what Misaki learned from plumbing her leg memories, she had to wonder if Haruka intentionally left this loose enough for an escape. She wanted to tell Yuka these new details she uncovered, but questions and concerns about speaking them aloud when she didn’t know who or what was listening kept her silent on the matter.

Yuka still deserved to know that her sister might actually care. They had a strong, invisible, but tangible connection; she just didn’t know how to use it to privately convey specific, detailed information.

After stretching and popping her joints, Yuka flopped down, coughed some of her dry throat loose with a hand cupping her mouth, and looked warmly at Misaki. She took a few measured breaths before a long, wary one. Stretching her arm out again, Yuka tested her abilities. It was a simple matter for her to retrieve the shape of her shield and obsidian sword. Tilting her head, she shifted both from black into a metallic gray and back into a normal limb. She shook her head with a mix of persistent bewilderment and uncertainty.

"What can I do…? What can’t I do? Should I? Can I turn into a giant dragon?" She looked at Misaki with wide eyes. Misaki‘s eyes widened as well. Yuka was quick to amend that she wasn’t actually going to turn into a giant dragon if she could, especially not without saying anything first. Then she had a different thought.

"…What if I turn myself into a boy?" Her entire demeanor tightened up and crunched like her spirit was contorted into a pretzel while she sat there, not moving. Her eyes dashed around, and just a hint of blush made it to her cheeks. As her words hung in the air without a response, Misaki absorbed them, and Yuka furiously edited and amended one aspect after another.

She wasn’t actually going to turn into a boy, although she was curious to try the configuration. Clothing wasn’t something she even attempted, so perhaps leaving that out would be preferable. However, she did note that boys were bigger and stronger, as Misaki herself alluded to, so maybe this boy form would be useful at breaching confinement. As a last, stray thought, she remarked that who knew what the company and those they controlled might attempt to do to them? Why not just give it a shot?

Misaki smiled and teased her for heaping such unnecessary anguish and uncertainty on herself when she would’ve said in an instant that she supported whatever she wanted to do for whatever reason. Yuka’s blush escaped all her efforts at control with this calm reassurance. She smiled softly and nodded as she took a few breaths, let her arms and legs go slack, and shut her eyes in concentration as she slowed her breathing.

The first physical changes came from her arms stretching out slightly before receding back. They undulated, with the veins tightening and then softening against the skin. Her hair deepened to practically vantablack but with more texture and nuance, reminiscent of the spill of an artist’s inkwell. The lines of her face hardened, as though depicting the actions of an invisible, erosive wind rewinding. Little flecks of facial hair experimentally licked at the edges of her face before vanishing again.

Boxy, but thin and lanky contours developed across her shape. Misaki raised a curious eyebrow at some suspicious puffiness developing between Yuka’s thighs. She resisted a smirk or a blush. Yuka finished up her transformation by shedding her yukata once again and developing a complicated but slightly tangled suit around her body. It was baggy and not a good fit, even for her tentatively manly shape. When Yuka opened her eyes, they were just as deep and dark as her rather messy hair.

Softly, with her same voice, she asked, “How do I look?”

Misaki smiled warmly and told her she looked "cool.". A cheerful, flirty smile crossed her lips as she probed her altered body and soon commented, "It’s kind of difficult to hold all this at once. It feels and sounds like sitting right in front of a very loud orchestra, and you have to make sure they keep playing… Oh gosh, it hurts. Such a pounding headache. I think I can hold onto it, though, just a little bit more."

Immediately, Misaki wondered if the discomfort was due to some force or inhibition emitted by the room that was making it harder for her. Yuka rocked her boyish head but had the impression that it was more because what she was doing was exhausting and complicated. Misaki laid a hand against Yuka’s broadened shoulders. It wasn’t long before what blushing Yuka was able to keep at bay absolutely exploded with overwhelming colorization.

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“I feel really weird… and kind of swollen and so awkward and a bunch of other stuff.”

Misaki felt a swirl of emotions and feelings she never expected to feel. She wanted to crawl onto Yuka’s lap and test if the places she turned inside out were responsive. All this was from Yuka’s imagination, but considering all the shit that the company had put them through, she honestly had no idea anymore what sex, gender, or whatever any of them might’ve started out as, or if it even mattered now. She just wanted to snuggle. So she did.

Yuka squeaked loudly, as though Misaki had actually accidentally stepped on her toes rather than somewhere else. The sensations that Misaki felt were unusual but so captivating. She viscerally yearned to get closer than seemed possible and prudent. The magnetic lure was still there, urging her to combine herself with the place on Yuka that felt like home.

Her partner was gorgeous. Neither the face before nor the face now mattered. It also didn’t matter that she looked unnatural and dark, like some supernatural, spooky heartthrob from a questionably written, suggestive romance work. She was still the same person, and he was the same. Was this a representation of Yuka’s internal, terrible monster she so feared brought to the surface? Yuka stumbled and fumbled through her answer to this curiosity. This was a little of her imagination of what a boy was supposed to be like, with random, intangible impressions and a mess of other thoughts. She attempted to use a metallic version of her arm as something approaching a mirror.

Misaki leaned against the dark, pretty boy’s cheek as he got his first look at his appearance. He had plenty of complaints about his work and how weird and distorted the whole thing seemed. Little tweaks fluttered across his body as he scrunched his forehead to hold back the orchestra.

"I love it," Misaki simply and confidently responded. "I love you because you made this; you made it yourself, and this is the face you wanted to show me. No matter how it looks to anyone else, I feel honored and happy to see you and share what’s inside you. And that’s not just because I used to be inside you too."

If Yuka could’ve melted right there, she would’ve. She practically swooned with joy and bliss, which then burst into a rainstorm of sobbing and spilling tears. She didn’t need to explain why she was crying, and Misaki didn’t try to stop it. They kissed close and rocked gently, fighting so many aching forces knocking on their own personal Roche limits.

At the end of this round of tears, Yuka steadied herself, found comfort in Misaki being so close to a sensitive part she just created on a whim, and kissed the girl she loved with quiet confidence of her own.

Moments later, Yuka relinquished her hold on this experimental form. Misaki made sure that she had her yukata before nude embarrassment could kick in. Yuka gently ruffled and adjusted the fabric once everything was back in place. She stared at the open threshold on the other side of the room, preparing glowers and glares for anyone who might try to peek. But they were still alone, left suspiciously without guards or watchers. They clearly had other means of keeping tabs on them, as the company bastard’s knowledge of so many things suggested.

Morning. They would come for them in the morning, whenever that was, if it wasn’t here already. And make them amenable. That sounded like brainwashing.

Yuka carefully stood up, resisted a yawn, and scrutinized the opening. Misaki joined her with concern about how close she was to the electrical field. And she got even closer, her hand stretching out like black licorice toward the edge of the influence. It was hard to tell exactly where that influence extended until Yuka hit it. What followed was a loud, rumbling crack that pushed them both back like an angry puff from an invisible giant. Yuka had had parts of herself severed before. This violently sheared off the edge that made contact, and a plume drifted away, like ash from a long-burning cigarette.

Misaki rushed to comfort Yuka as she stretched out her mouth in agony. The hand drew back to regular human proportions without so much as a nick or the smallest scratch to show anything had happened. However, her hand shook as she struggled to flex her fingers and shake it out from what she described as a pulsing numbness that refused to go away. Urgently, she made Misaki promise not to attempt anything like that herself.

Not that she was tempted. Her expectation was around the same neighborhood as trying to row across a river in a boat made of cotton candy. Stalking in front of the open doorway, Yuka rubbed her chin several times before glancing up to the ceiling and down to the floor beneath her feet. She stretched her feet longer and her arms further, with human qualities, before blending them into rigid black vines.

She communicated to Misaki that there wasn’t much give. The problem was that the rounded aspects of the space distributed pressure as opposed to a straight edge, which could have far more points of failure. Fortunately, despite appearances, there absolutely were seams. She swarmed her body into a large and overpowering black mass that undulated back and forth in the same way that Misaki aspired to in her memory of being sealed in a box. Minute cracks and persistent rocking wiggled the structure like a fissure in a porcelain tooth.

That leverage evolved into crumbling and enough grip to then shift the door frame. They were screwed if the threshold had its own sustainable energy source. Fortunately, Misaki noticed that the electrical force field started to flicker like a half-attached light bulb. This encouraged Yuka to start rhythmically pounding against the side of the structure with enough restraint to keep from making an audible noise. A fissure in the side was finally enough to cause wiggling distortions and ultimately shut it down like a popped soap bubble.

Relief and delight pass between them as well as stomach-churning urgency to safely flee. Shutting her eyes and focusing for a second time, Misaki watched as Yuka shifted again. She expected to see the boy form return, but instead witnessed Yuka transfigure herself into an exact doppelgänger of Haruka. Instead of sliding out of her outfit, she expelled oily aspects to change its color to a muted gray that matched what Haruka had been wearing earlier. She expressed curiosity and relief that it actually worked.

Getting the voice right was a struggle, but they both found that if Yuka talked in a sharp, clipped monotone, then it was close enough without making any changes that might needle her with further distractions and discomfort. The illusion likely wasn’t going to stand up to any variety of protracted scrutiny, but perhaps they could fool just enough random workers. A big risk all around, but worth a shot.

Misaki slumped and put on dejected body language. Yuka straightened her body, which led to a sharp crack in her back as a consequence of leaning against the wall too much, and mimicked her elder sister’s presence without pushing it to the point of mockery. Misaki complimented her, and she responded with in-character glaring contempt before cracking a quick smirk.

Checking around the nearest hallways and corners through the blank threshold, they were clear. They each took a deep breath and swiftly stepped out into this place of quiet, hidden horrors.