When the needle shot out of crate and injected itself in Ranmaru's arm, he screamed. The sharp pain in his arm subsided almost instantly, but in its place was a chilling feeling. Ranmaru's last conscious thoughts compared it to the sensation of touching a steel bar left in a open-door freezer overnight.

The lights in his head turned off a second after that thought. Seiichi's last words went unnoticed, as little good they did.

------

[i]"All systems functional. Reboot completed."[/i]

A strange, electronic voice uttered a single sentence in Ranmaru's mind. It sounded a bit like his own voice, except there was something off about it. It sounded a little bit higher pitched, but perhaps he was overthinking things.

Ranmaru opened his eyes, realising that he was face-down on the floor. He turned his head towards one of his hands, and wriggled his fingers. Everything felt like it was working as it should be, but why did he feel so weird? The needle must have done something to him, but it wasn't a feeling of sickness or unease. Well, it might have been unease, but there was something off about his body.

He heard Seiichi (or to him, a girl's voice) mutter something about being a girl. A weird thing for a girl to say, but he had no idea what a girl would be doing here. Ranmaru glanced up, at where he recalled Seiichi last stood, but only saw a red-haired girl in school uniform. She was petite and kind of adorable, but she was where Seiichi was.

Grinding his teeth, Ranmaru sat up and reached for his groin with his fingers. He rolled his eyes and groaned in annoyance when his fingers gently pressed against his crotch, finding none of his male parts there.

"If—" Ranmaru shut himself up, a little startled by the change in his voice. It was subtle, but he knew his voice sounded a bit more feminine. It was still quite a deep, low voice, but still quite recognisable as a female. "If that's you, Seiichi, we've just opened two Pandora's boxes at once and lost something rather important!"

Though if that girl was Seiichi, 'she' definitely was not wearing the girl's school uniform when Ranmaru first saw her. Did reality change to accommodate their sudden changes, and why wasn't Ranmaru wearing a skirt like Seiichi?

"This is great! Just great! All because of you, I've just become a girl through some weird magic—"

Ranmaru pointed his finger at Seiichi, but he stopped his sentence as he watched his hand do something weird. The flesh upon his fingers dissipated to reveal a steel metal facsimile, with the tip of the index finger opening up to form something like the barrel of a pistol. With his other hand, he gently poked his metal right hand. He felt the cold metal upon his left finger, but also the sensation of being poked in his other hand.

"Fuck. What the hell happened to me? To us?" muttered Ranmaru, staring nervously at his hand. It took him a moment to realise where he was pointing it, and he nervously shifted the direction of his pistol away from Seiichi. "Did I just become a cyborg?"