Tutturu♪! It’s your waifu♪!
Disclaimers:
The following is a fan-fiction parody. Steins;Gate and Steins;Gate 0 are owned by Mages Inc., Nitroplus, Chiyomaru Studio, and Spike Chunsoft. Please support the official release.
This work contains sexually suggestive content and is not appropriate for minors. Reader discretion is advised.
Spoiler Warning:
This work contains spoilers from Steins;Gate and Steins;Gate 0, and is set during the Closed Epigraph chapter of Steins;Gate 0.
エフ³ : 二次創造の楽しみ
Efu Efu Efu: Fan Fiction Funsies
Steins;Gate: A Kurisu Christmas
Date: 12/15/2010
World Line Divergence: 1.129848
As Rintaro Okabe ended his call with [Kurisu], he turned away from the Yanabayashi Shrine, bearing a sullen look on his face. Indecision and worry had wracked his mind once more after he narrowly avoided another one of his ‘episodes.’ Memories of his mistake— the death of Kurisu— resonated deeply within his mind, and the burning sensation of vomit had brushed up against the bottom of his throat. Five months, and it was still the same. He was better, but the wounds had not healed. If anything, he thought, they were being reopened every time he talked to the binary program who wore the visage of a human, the woman he couldn’t save. Still, he could not seem to avoid her. He could not remove Kurisu from his life yet again. As such, he ignored his initial impulse, urging him to turn off his phone to repress [Kurisu’s] calls. Maybe it was a sign of his personal weakness, his inability to move on, and deeply seated depression. Or maybe it was something greater. Something that would lead him down a… different path.
Okabe wanted little else but to distance himself from the world around him and repress the concerns gnawing away at his sickly mental wellbeing. But obligations dictated that he remain in Akihabara and meet with Dr. Leskinen and Maho. On his way to their hotel, he stopped at a vending machine tucked away in a small alcove and was met with a series of drinks to choose from. His finger gravitated towards a bottle of mineral water, a health-conscious choice, but in order to repress his bothersome feelings with a more chemical-rich substance, he instead purchased himself a Dr. P. An unpopular beverage that just so happened to be his personal drink of choice, and one that served to motivate him many times in the past.
Ducking away from the bustling street into an alley, Okabe opened up the bottle and began to gulp down its contents, only to find his tongue assaulted by a pungent fruity flavor that spurred nausea within him once more. He spat out the liquid immediately and turned his eyes over to the bottle, seeing the familiar label of the soft drink, but noticing that the color was vibrant green as opposed to the deep brown he had become accustomed to.
Before Okabe could do much more than registering this, the contents of the bottle began to escape their confinement, defying the laws of gravity as the liquid billowed out the ground, and coating his hand in a chilled sticky substance. Okabe tossed the bottle down as it overflowed and backed away to an alley wall, looking at the substance before him in awe not only because of its behavior but because of its appearance. As it looked uncannily similar to the Gelnanas the Future Gadget Lab made this past summer.
These Gelnanas were physical proof of the potential of the PhoneWave (name subject to change) and were one of many things Okabe had linked to the death of Kurisu. As such, he could only gawk at the green liquid as it moved in an unnatural fashion, escaping the bottle, rising up above the ground, and expanding well beyond the volume of its 1-liter container. As it grew, the substance began to take on a definite shape, that resembling a human. A human by the name of Mayuri Shiina.
Okabe clenched his cranium as memories came flooding back and he was forced to recall the innumerous times he led Mayuri down the path of a cruel and unusual death. From getting shot in the head, run over by a train, hit by a car, or overcome with a disease inflicted on her by causality. All of which were horrid sights to behold, but none was more wretched than the world line where Mayuri was captured by SERN, who sent her body back in time as an experiment. It was a sight that Okabe had seen many times before, humans transformed in mutilated corpses that were lodged within walls or buildings. Yet none were even close to the sight of Mayuri’s body, completely jellified, after she was sent back in time to 1967.
Now, that same jellified body was before him, albeit dressed in different clothes, and holding the distinction of being very much alive, moving about its limbs in a casual manner as it got its bearings, darting its head around, and turning to Okabe, where this figure spoke to him in an all too familiar and all too chipper tone.
“Tutturu♪!”
“Ma-Mayuri?” Okabe barked, his throat hoarse and his voice shaky.
“That’s right Okarin! But you probably shouldn’t call me that. Instead, you can call me Maygooshii!”
“May… goo… shii?” Okabe stuttered as he looked over the slimy Mayuri before him, dread still painted onto his face
“Ehehe… Don’t worry Okarin, I’m not your Mayuri. Maygooshii is a Mayuri Shiina from another world line.”
“How… how is that even possible?”
“Maygooshii isn’t really sure. I tried asking Okarin— my Okarin— what happened, and why I was like this, but he said that it was dangerous to let anyone else know. He said that if SERN figured out what happened to me, it would be worse than a hundred world wars!”
“I… I see,” Okabe stammered, “but Mayu— erm, Maygooshii, why are you here? Are you… trying to help prevent World War III?”
“Mhm! Maygooshii got lots of powers from the accident, and she wants to use them to turn all the bad timelines into good timelines with happy Lab Mems. Especially Okarin!”
Okabe’s mind froze as those words escaped Maygooshii’s gelatinous lips. The past three minutes had been more wild, outlandish, and unbelievable than the months of time travel-related struggles he’d been subjected to. Maygooshii, a transformed Mayuri from another world line, was promising a way to defy causality, a way to reach Steins Gate. But most of all, a way to save her.
“Kurisu,” Okabe muttered.
“Ah, don’t worry! I know how much you love Kurisu. Maygooshi can see into your heart and knows your deepest desires! And she has the power to make your dreams real!”
Following that decree, Maygooshi thrust her person onto Okabe, embracing him in a goopy glomp. Okabe flinched as he felt her cold and moist body, but he was unable to object to her actions. Her words were lofty with promise, and sent him into a paralyzed daze, believing that his troubles may be over, while having no idea how they could, or would, be solved.
“It’s Mayuri, you can trust her,” he thought to himself, using his past experience with his closest friend to boost his shattered confidence. However, deep inside, Okabe knew this was not the Mayuri he knew, she was from a different world line, had a different appearance, and while his experience had shown him that a person’s personality changes little between timelines, he did not know if this rule had any exceptions or limits.
For that reason, and many others, he was not at ease as Maygooshii’s body liquidized and expanded once more, stretching over Okabe’s body and encasing him in a slimy sheathe. It was crisp, yet comforting. Enough for Okabe’s mind to lull itself into a calm, for his anxieties to momentarily melt away, and for his mind to recollect over his conversation with [Kurisu] mere minutes ago. There were many things he could focus on, but for whatever reason, his final cohesive conscious thought was the following:
“The genius named Kurisu Makise was the person I always wanted to be.”
A thought that sealed his fate, for better or for worse.
Okabe’s eyes fluttered as his body nudged him to awaken from what was a restful slumber, and was met with the sight of a dull grey metal interior. As he moved his head about and sat himself upright, Okabe could tell that he was in a boxy room with no furniture, a large circular platform beneath him, three featureless walls, and a fourth wall that bore a large window. The ceiling was approximately 2 meters tall, and it all made him feel… claustrophobic.
Okabe gingerly moved his way to the window but tripped as the platform under him began to rotate. Upon falling on his bony boyish bottom, he found himself surrounded by arcs of electricity coming from the walls and shooting in sporadic patterns. He remained where he was in hopes of not getting shocked, but as he gawked at his surroundings, he caught a glimpse of the windowed wall and wretched at what he saw. It was the Future Gadget Laboratory, but it looked gigantic from his perspective, with massive tables, furnishings, and… decorations?
From the angle of the room he saw, his surroundings, and the familiar sight of arcing electricity, Okabe managed to piece together what was happening to him. He was in the PhoneWave (name subject to change). Before his mind could begin to race about the hows and whys pertaining to this perilous predicament, Okabe was struck by a stray bolt of electricity, sending an immobilizing current throughout his body. He moaned and groaned as his body scrunched into a fetal position, gyrating with every passing moment.
At first, Okabe assumed this was merely a bad shock, something far more damaging than any other time travel attempt or electrical accident he had ever experienced, but as the sensation began to linger, and the current continued to coarse across his being, he began to feel that something was amiss. His body erupted in a cold sweat, with secretions expelling themselves across his pores, and drenching his face in a heavy liquid. He mustered enough conviction to move a hand to his forehead in an attempt to offer momentary relief, but as his fingers mingled with his forehead, he was not met with his familiar and coarse skin. Instead, he was met with something softer. Something more… liquid.
Pulling back his hand, Okabe looked at his fingertips and saw that they were coated in a sticky green substance that was cold to the touch. Okabe knew what was happening, and while the how or why was unbeknown to him, he could not do anything to fight against it anyways. All he could do was lay there and writhe as he saw a foreign color enter the pigmentation of his hands, and gasp as his digits began to meld into a single sappy clump
Within a matter of seconds, his hair melded with his skin, the two morphing into a sheet of sludge that consumed every inch of his exterior and soon seeped into his innards. His eyes were jellified, leaving him unable to so much as see what his body had been reduced to, and soon he found himself divorced from sensation in general as the substance ate away at his flesh, severing his nerves and replacing their bountiful sensations with a feeling of overwhelming numbness.
The substance continued its trek, filtering past Okabe’s teeth and pouring itself into his stomach, tacking his bones from many angles, dissolving their structure into something more analogous, it eventually made its way to Okabe’s brain. His final thoughts were of a primal fear as the last part of him vanished, and the physical being that was Okabe Rintaro ceased to be.
…At least that appeared to be the case.
As Okabe’s transformation finalized, his consciousness, the underlying sense of identity that made him had faded away into nothingness. A realm of no sight, no sound, no sensation even as innate as time itself. It was a state his mind lingered within for an internally immeasurable duration until the vast excess of nothingness was replaced by something, by sensation.
A sense of place and of presence was the first to return to Okabe, recognizing that he had a body once more. However, it was loose, vague, and lacked the same stability he had been used to. Still, driven by impulse more than any complex thought, he attempted to move his regained body, and succeeded, but in a way that felt… wrong. He attempted to lift his arm, but could not feel any arm to lift. He tried opening his eyes but he did not have any eyes which he could open.
Okabe thought and focused on his internally undefined form, trying to make sense of it, seeking answers from his staggering mind, only for him to remember what the PhoneWave did to him. It robbed him of his body, his senses, melting him down into a jellified substance. Based on his past experience, this should have meant his death, but he still existed, he still thought, and as he continued to recollect, he remembered his introduction to Maygooshii. A woman who was able to grow and seek a human form. Seemingly through her own force of will and nothing else. Perhaps, Okabe thought, he could do something similar.
In his mind’s eye, Okabe pictured himself in as much detail as possible and began exerting his will outwards, urging his gelatinous form to move and expand itself. Steadily, his being abided by his desires, churning and gestating about, splaying itself into the vague outline of a person, and granting him a greater understanding of his surroundings, allowing to feel the floorboards beneath his feet. This progress filled him with a great determination and caused his body to begin shifting beyond the floor, for it to defy the physical limitations of a liquid by moving upwards and condensing into more a definite shape.
Through much mental exertion, Okabe had regained the form of a jellified humanoid, one who lacked details such as fingers, toes, or hair, but possessed eyes, ears, and a nose. He was able to smell the mixture of Daru’s lingering body odor and the cleaning solution Mayuri typically brought to tidy up the lab. The sight of the ceiling and its overhead lighting was the first thing to greet him, the dull shimmering of the fluorescent lights being a sight comparable to the light of heaven’s gate to Okabe. And the muffled ambient noises that he had experienced when using the lab as a point of personal introspection and pontification came back to him as well. However, in hearing this, in seeing this, he could not help but wonder where everybody else was, and if he was all alone.
Using his goopy arms and their questionable musculature, Okabe thrust himself off the floor to get a better look at the lab and he reacted to the sight with awe, as every surface had been lathered in festive decor. Between ornaments bound to the ceiling, colorful paper rings adorning the walls, Santa hats trapped on existing furnishings, and even a Christmas tree where a deluge of boxes normally stood. It was obviously Mayuri’s doing, a labor of love done to enrich the hearts of those she cared about, and fulfill her more creative desires. But more than anything, it was an indication of how much time had passed since he was embraced by Maygooshii on December 15th, 2010.
He began to worry about the unrest and frustration his sudden disappearance must have caused those he cared about. Mayuri, Daru, Suzuha, his parents, even Maho and Dr. Leskinen. He needed to regain his form to explain things to them. Okabe Rintaro needed to return to normal. And so he began to fight against his body, urging for it to change and shift into that of a fully-fledged human so he could reunite with everyone, to escape the fate he had been cursed with. His mind flooded with images of his desires as his body burned with intensity. Digits thrust out of his stubby limbs, his head melded from a ball-like shape to a humanoid skull, chin, and neck, and his torso began to contort itself to resemble that of a human being.
However, that was not quite enough for Okabe. Even as his form became pronounced, he could still tell it was made of a slimy substance, and not flesh. Despite his body’s aching, its pleas for him to pause and rest, he continued to exert himself, urging his green semi-translucent person to adopt the structure and appearance of a human, to become the Rinatro Okabe that he was before he fell into this bizarre situation.
Every morsel of his person gestated with pain as his being condensed itself into a skeletal structure, as his gooey innards became fleshy tendrils, as the organs of a human began to appear, and as they became coated in a layer of skin. The lab was filled with guttural screeches as the transformation continued, fluctuating in octave and volume as his body reformed itself. It provided Okabe with much-needed relief as he continued this battle against his own redefined physiology… but then he stopped.
The fatigue had become overbearing, and he fell to the ground in a half-formed shape, one that, as far as he could tell, more closely resembled a human than a pile of goo. His body had reached its limit, and his striving consciousness could not keep his eyes open long enough for him to look down and see his form, the one constant in his perilous journeys throughout time, rendered in an unrecognizable state. And so, unable to keep his eyes open he embraced nothingness once more, hoping he would awaken with the strength needed to reclaim himself.
Time had become a nebulous concept to Okabe. He could not measure how long it had been since he found himself in the PhoneWave, how long since he woke up in his goopy form, how long his struggle to regain the body of a human had lasted, or how long it had been since he fell into a slumber, too overburdened with exhaustion to continue. All he did know is that the windows outside were dark when he first woke up in his slimy body, and now they were filling the lab with sunlight.
Okabe groaned as he made a mental note of this, before bringing a hand to his forehead in an attempt to alleviate piercing pains that ran through it. As he did so, he caught a glimpse of his hand… and jumped at the sight. While it bore an outer coating of an all too familiar gooey substance, it was unmistakably a human hand with defined fingers, nails, and joints. With skin, flesh, and blood beneath a translucent cover. For a moment, he thought that he managed to achieve what he set out to do, that his body became that of Rintaro Okabe once more. But as he stared at this lone hand, he began to realize how… different it was from what it should have been. It was dainty, small, and svelte, a stark difference from his larger, thicker, and more masculine hands. Okabe found the hand eerily similar as it moved before his face, but he could not recall why.
Shaking his confusion aside, Okabe propped himself up above the floor in order to peer down at his person, hoping that it was entirely human. Everything he could see, everything between his toes and shoulders, was just that, the body of a human. But not the body of Rintaro Okabe. It was the body of someone else. And while Okabe could not tell who, he was certain that it was the body of a woman. A gorgeous woman with a slender build and supple breasts that Okabe looked at with awe, heat filling his face as he did so. Okabe shut his eyes and brought his hands to his head, shoving his hands through strands of damp goo-coated hair that went well beyond his shoulders.
“What the hell is going on!?” Okabe shouted in a voice that was appropriate given his current body.
The higher pitch and softer intonation startled him at first, but the voice itself, the sound that echoed throughout his head, caused Okabe’s eyes to widen. He knew this voice. He knew it all too well. But he did not want to accept it without further evidence. Evidence that could be provided by glancing into a mirror.
Okabe struggled to push himself off the floor, impatiently forcing himself onto his wobbly and womanly legs, where he stumbled shortly after taking his first step, nearly collapsing onto the floor. Using the Christmas tree, fridge, and couch for support, he steadily made his way past the purple curtain and into the bathroom. At the precipice of revelation, he ran towards the mirror, where he looked upon his reflection in awe.
“K-Kurisu?”
From the hair draping over the breasts, the greyed blue of the eyes, and the fine features of the visage, the woman looking back at him in the mirror was unmistakably Kurisu Makise. The woman who invented time travel. The woman whose dying body Okabe held in his arms, knowing that it was his fault she had to suffer such a fate. The woman he could not bear to face. The woman whose very name he struggled to say. The woman… who he loved.
Okabe felt his grip on his consciousness slipping as he tried to process this information, hyperventilating as he tried to make sense of this discovery, and being constantly reminded of his current situation. Every time he so much as breathed, he felt Kurisu’s mouth, felt her lungs fill with air, and heard her voice gasp. He could not do this. He could not be this close to Kurisu. But he also could not give up. He could not run away. Because no matter what he did, or where he went, Kurisu would be with him.
He needed to push through this. He needed to find his resolve. He needed to be able to withstand this surprising turn of fate, and not wither up in the face of adversity. He needed to be… Kyoma Hououin!
“FWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!” Okabe vigorously chortled in the voice of Kurisu.
“So, this is how the organization is fighting back against me! Do they think the mad scientist of madness, Kyoma Hououin, can be stopped through a mere transformation? What fools! I’ve overcome adversities that eclipsed this, and this shall be mere child’s play for a man such as I! But first, I simply must free myself of this viscous membrane, lest it contaminates my research. I must say, Christina, you truly are marvelous from every angle, and while I’m sure you would prefer it if I restrained my hand, I trust you’d rather have me cleanse your body than waltz around in the nude, trailing goo behind me. Fwehehe. Of course not. I call upon you, Downpour of Freyr, cleanse this transformed body of mine so I may continue my experiments, and become the Kyoma Hououin the world knows and fears once more!”
Okabe then turned to the shower faucet and began to douse his person in the water, causing his gooey layer to wash away into nothingness, seeping down the drain, and leaving his body truly naked and very moist. It was refreshing in a sense, allowing his pores to breathe and body to be rejuvenated through a warm cascade. But as the water continued to fall onto him, he became only more aware of how different his body now was between the curvature of his torso, the long hair brushing against his back, and the flatness of his lower regions. Every drop of water made him more aware of his current state, that he was in a body that was modeled after Kurisu down to the most minute of details.
While his initial discomfort and shock had been surmounted through a reprisal of his chuunibyou delusions, Okabe was overcome with guilt as he stood there, feeling as if he was committing a sin by simply standing and letting the water wash over him, and feeling like he had humiliated Kurisu vicariously by using her voice to say such nonsense. However, he could not simply stop now. He still could not run away, and until he found a way to get him out of these unwanted circumstances, he had to exist with this body. He briefly tried exerting his will, forcing a change, trying to return his body to that of Okabe Rintaro, but his form remained unchanged no matter how much he wanted to return to normal.
Instead, Okabe knew it was best to adapt to his new form for the time being. Deciding to make the most of his current situation, Okabe looked around the small shower, quickly eyeing a collection of body wash and hair products that Mayuri kept, which inspired Okabe with a way to become more… intimate with Kurisu’s body. With… his body. To do so, he had to discard his more chivalrous inclinations and, for just a few minutes, relieve himself of all the stress and anguish he had gone through as of late. After all, he had already seen her naked, felt her naked body for himself, and was currently being reminded of every detail as the water continued to pour, so would it really be that much of a stretch if he scrubbed himself a little bit?
Perhaps it was because of all the mental fatigue that had been weighing him down, the stress of losing Kurisu, worry about an impending world war, and the agonizing transformation he underwent just a short while ago, but Okabe managed to muster a smile as he looked down at himself, grabbing a bottle in one hand, and softly grabbing a breast with the other, gasping as his finger gently brushed across a nipple.
“Kurisu… you really are beautiful,” Okabe muttered under his breath.
The softness of her skin, the curvature of her torso, the smoothness of her hairless form, it was all enticing to Okabe as he danced his hands across his reshaped person, becoming closer to Kurisu than he had ever so much as fantasized about before. It was all starkly different from the body he had known, a lean yet incredibly male body with thick fingers, broad proportions, and coarse texture. His senses were too preoccupied to truly compare the two at the moment, but as he lathered his reshaped person from face to toe, Okabe was in awe at just how different two people could feel. It was enough to bring a smile to the young man’s face as he put the boy wash away and turned an eye towards the hair products.
Like most men his age, Okabe knew very little about any aspect of feminine hygiene, much less how to care for and maintain such a large body of hair. Yet, regardless of his knowledge, he still had enough foresight to lather it thoroughly with shampoo and conditioner before giving it a good rinse. A somewhat exhaustive task for him given the length of Kurisu’s hair.
After turning off the shower, its warm water already having run out, Okabe began to dry himself off using a conveniently placed towel, once more acclimating him to the minute details of his new form as he patted it down. It was an act that made him blush with embarrassment as he did so, but rather than pontificate on that and feel dirty or perverted for such mundane transgressions, all Okabe wanted to do at the moment was rest, to sleep, and to reexamine the situation when his body did not ache with an undercurrent of fatigue.
After securing a towel around his torso, Okabe returned to the lab proper, and plopped his barely covered tuchus onto the sofa, sighing as his upper back pressed against his damp hair. The window outside to Akihabara was as sunny as it was when he last woke up, but despite the time of the day, he was ready to toss a blanket over himself and sleep as is. At least, before he noticed a small plastic bag placed on the coffee table, which he somehow missed up until now. Looking inside, he saw a pile of neatly folded clothes, along with a cutesy piece of parchment plastered with characters from the popular manga series RaiNet Kakeru. The message read as follows:
Dear Okarin,
Tutturu♪! It’s Maygooshii
I want to begin by saying that I am sorry you had to undergo such an unpleasant transformation. For all the powers I gained through the accident, and all the capabilities of the Super PhoneWave DX Version VII-β, it is difficult to transform somebody into someone else on a genetic level, and even harder on the person we’re transforming.
You went through more pain than anyone should ever be subjected to, and have been carrying too many burdens for far too long. I wanted to bring you into a world line where there is no worry of a world war, where you can lead a peaceful life and one where Kurisu Makise still lives. Most Okarins want just that, a peaceful timeline where they can spend time with their friends. But right as I was about to finish transporting you into a new timeline, you revealed to me another desire. You were… envious of Kurisu. You wanted to be a genius just like her. You… wanted to be the genius named Kurisu Makise.
I thought about simply putting you in Kurisu’s body in a world line where she lived, allowing you to live her life, but I also know that you love her dearly, that you would want to see and be with her, along with all of your friends. I knew you wanted a world line where you could fulfill both these desires, and while it took me some time, I eventually managed to make it into a reality.
In this world line, Kurisu Makise is still alive, you live as her twin sister, Christina Makise, and Okabe Rintaro was never born. You and Kurisu still managed to become friends with Mayuri, Daru, Luka, Faris, and Suzuha, and are both on an extended vacation away from Viktor Chondria University.
This was a very difficult world line for Mayuri to create, and as a side effect, it will take some time before things settle, and everything is sorted out. After which, it will become as peaceful and happy a world line as any other. Within time, people will start remembering you as Christina, scientific knowledge will come to you, and you will learn the skills needed to live your new life.
I know this is a lot to worry over and think about, but for now, it would be best if you rest… Christina. Beneath this letter is a change of clothes. I’m sure you’re exhausted after everything you’ve been through, but I’d recommend trying to wash off the residual transformation gel and changing before going to bed. You don’t want to get a cold, now do you?
With love,
Mayuri “Maygooshii” Shiina.
P.S. It’s almost Christmas, and this world line’s Mayuri is throwing a party! And with two Kurisu’s around, I guess you could call it A Kurisu Christmas!
Okabe looked at the letter dumbfounded, immediately re-reading it and looking down at himself in awe as he finished it. He respected Kurisu. He admired her. She was in many ways everything he wanted to be. But did he want to become her? Could he ever conceivably be her? Will everybody truly remember him as Christina?
But his mind could not process those questions. He needed rest, and to do that, he needed to dress in the clothes that Mayuri had prepared for him. A plain bra and undergarment, a white buttoned shirt, a red tie, a pair of black shorts, a pair of leggings, and a lab coat befitting his new proportions.
This was Okabe’s final struggle before he could finally sleep. And one that demanded his full knowledge of the female body… but mostly just how to hook a bra. While the panties, shorts, and leggings were all intuitive enough, it was an ordeal for him to hook the bra properly while managing the wet mesh of hair that kept falling onto the middle of his back. Following several struggle-riddled minutes, the latch was sealed, and Okabe was free to slap on a button shirt before his upper body slouched to one side of the couch, leaving him with just enough energy to lob a lab coat over his person as an impromptu blanket.
There, with hair still drying, and eyelids so heavy they felt as if they were made of lead, Okabe fell asleep, and remained there, sprawled haphazardly on the couch, for hours upon hours. All until he was woken up by a shout.
“AAAHHH!”
The sound was enough to nudge Okabe out of his deep slumber and back into the waking world, where he craned his reshaped neck upwards in search of the one who made such a loud noise. Looking up he saw Kurisu, her eyes locked onto Okabe, and mouth agape. Okabe smiled softly as he saw her standing him, and he spoke in a hushed tone.
“You’re alive.”
“Eh? Who— who are you? Why do you look just like me?” Kurisu replied.
“Heh. I am a man of many names, but you, my assistant, know me as… Kyoma Hououin!” Okabe said as he erupted off the couch, clenching his lab coat and putting it on in as dramatic a manner as possible.
“I— Is that you… Okabe? What… what the hell is going on here!?”
“…So, that’s what happened,” Kurisu said, clutching an empty cup smelled of instant coffee.
“Yes,” Okabe said, reluctantly looking away from Kurisu as he sat on the sofa.
“A being that can travel through world lines.”
“Yes.”
“That can transfer people into other world lines.”
“Yes.”
“That has access to technology that can transform people.”
“…I do not pretend to understand how it works… Kurisu. I may be a mad scientist. I may be a time traveler. But there are things even beyond my understanding.”
“Hm… I suppose so. …It all feels so surreal, but in time it will become normal, you say?”
“That’s what Maygooshii wrote.”
“I don’t like the idea of my memories being altered with that… but I suppose that it makes me feel a bit better that somebody like you isn’t going to be running around with my face and no idea how to behave themselves. You’ve always been such a handful, you know?”
Okabe sighed in response, looked up at the decor-riddled ceiling, and turned back to Kurisu, smiling.
“What’s that smile for?” Kurisu replied with a scowl.
“I’m just… happy that things worked out. That I don’t need to worry about saving the world any longer. That I can just… live my life, surrounded by the people I love. That, more than anything, is what I wanted. I never expected it to work out this way, but now that it has I…”
Okabe’s words trailed off as tears began to trail down his face, imploring Kurisu to sit next to him, to her ‘sister,’ and embrace her in a loving embrace.
“Oka— …Christina, I have always cared for you. You were an eccentric oddball when I first met you, somebody who irritated and frustrated me, but… you treated me like a person, like a friend, and not just a genius. I… loved that about you. And after hearing what you went through, I… I will always care for you deeply, no matter who you are, I will be at your side. But… tell me, is this what you truly wanted?”
“… I’m not sure. You were like somebody from a dream, from a different world, and I… was jealous. I was intimidated by so much about you, and that’s why I treated you that way. So I could talk to you without being overcome by feelings of inferiority. Now that I am… your sister, I suppose that does make me your equal. I wanted that. I wanted that so dearly and deeply, but I… never imagined that it would happen like this. That I would, quite literally, become Kurisu.”
“We could figure out a way to call Maygooshii, I’m sure of it—”
“No. Thank you… Kurisu, but no. I have seen enough. I have done enough. I do not want any more wild world-spanning adventures. I just want an ordinary life… or as ordinary as it can be with you involved.”
“W-What’s that supposed to mean!?” Kurisu asked with reddened cheeks.
“It means that… with you, life ceases to be ordinary, and becomes extraordinary,” Christina said with a sunken smile.
“Bahahaha! I can’t believe you just said that.”
“If there is one thing I’m good at, or at least used to be good at, it’s bringing levity and nonsense to dark and dire situations.”
“By becoming Kyoma Hououin?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, just make sure you don’t act like that in public anymore. I don’t want my… sister to go all chuunibyou on me. I don’t know if I can live with that kind of embarrassment.”
“Heh. I’ll make sure to restrain myself… sis.”
“It’s so weird hearing that come out of my own mouth… and we really need to change your appearance sometime. I don’t want people getting us confused at the university.”
“So, you want me to cut my hair or something?”
“That is the simplest solution, but we’ll need to find the right style for you…”
The hours ticked by as the two continued their idle conversation, musing about the arrangements and possibilities of their new lives together, enjoying each other’s company, and throwing small jokes about. They remained in this tranquil state as night fell upon Akihabara and the door to the Future Gadget Lab sprung open gingerly and the two were met with a friendly greeting.
“Tutturu♪! It’s Mayushii!”
As Mayuri and a menagerie of lab members came in, many of them dressed in elaborate Christmas costumes, Kurisu and Christina looked at each other with smiles and stood up to greet their friends. While the world and their lives had changed, the bonds they formed remained solid. They were forever linked, and while the biggest hurdle of their lives had been overcome, they were still willing to take each other’s hand as adversity came. From stopping malicious multi-national organizations to dealing with the most awkward Christmas party either of them would ever experience.
Das Ende
…
April Fools!
…
Alright, I should probably explain what that was. While I have grown very much accustomed to writing my own characters, worlds, and situations between my series of disconnected short stories, dubbed Randoms, and my novels, I recently developed an urge to return to the realm of fan fiction, something I have not attempted since I wrote a crappy Metal Gear Solid fanfic back in 2008. This urge has been a persistent desire over the years, but as I’ve been letting my creative juices run wild with Randoms, I’ve been more prone to picking up stray ideas and nurturing them into full stories, rather than letting them die and dissipate before they can be developed beyond the conceptual phase.
This happened when I was playing through Steins;Gate 0 for a review I posted last month, where I was caught off guard by one line in particular: “The genius named Kurisu Makisea was the person I always wanted to be.”
In context, this is used to explain why Okabe feels the need to address Kurisu by the name Christina, but I chose to interpret this (admittedly curiously worded) line into the prompt of a story. A story that originally involved based god of spacetime Maygooshii from a world line with a divergence of 69.420000 traveling around the temporal multiverse to fill it with happy endings, and Okabe being a big old pervert.
But as the narrative process took form, I changed things to a story that is more in-line with the themes of Steins;Gate, while still being more than a bit clunky in its application, as the story was designed to facilitate certain events more than to maintain the integrity of the source material. The core concepts I was playing with here— the gooey transformation, twinification, and whatnot— have really nothing to do with Steins;Gate, and the title, “A Kurisu Christmas” is something of a misnomer, as the story has nothing to do with Christmas, and ends right before a Christmas party. I thought about changing the title but, come on, A Kurisu Christmas is too good of a title for me to pass up.
Now, do I think this story was good? Well, it was a story whose outline consisted of bullet points of things that I wanted to address and scenes I wanted to write, without much regard for the middle bits in between. Why does Maygooshii do the things she does and why does she exist? Because I thought the idea of a divine jellified Mayuri was cool. How and why is Okabe shrunk before being put into the PhoneWave and turned into goo? Because it seemed like a cool idea. Why does he struggle to regain a human form after becoming a pile of goop? Because overcoming adversity is a core part of his character, and I thought it would be a neat scene to write. Why is this new world line like this? Because Steins;Gate and Steins;Gate 0 make their own leaps in logic regarding certain world line changes, and if they don’t feel the need to explain why this or that happened, then why should I bother quart-assing an explanation when it don’t matter?
So, structurally, it’s kind of a mess. But I’m pretty happy with the scenes as they are, especially given how this is my first time using somebody else’s characters in over a decade.
Anyways, Efu Efu Efu: Fan Fiction Funsies (エフ³ : 二次創造の楽しみ) will sporadically replace Randoms going forward, depending on whether or not the idea I want to explore in a given month is based on an existing property, or is an ‘original’ creation of my own design.
Also, I should probably explain the name of this new segment. Fan Fiction Funsies is pretty self-explanatory, as these segments are a place for me to have fun writing fan fiction based on assorted properties, and the rest of the title… is just a bunch of weeb garbage that I threw because it seemed cool. Efu is the Japanese pronunciation of the letter F, and the abbreviation of Fan Fiction Funsies would be F F F, or Efu Efu Efu if you are a dirty weeb like myself, which I stylized as Efu cubed, or エフ³, as a visual shorthand for Efu Efu Efu or エフエフエフ. The second part of the Japanese title, 二次創造の楽しみ, or Niji sōzō no tanoshimi, is my approximate translation of Fan Fiction Fun in Japanese, though a direct translation back into English reads as “the pleasure of secondary creation”. A title that… is actually pretty apt all things considered.
Header image assets were taken from The Spriter’s Resource.