We're doing another summoning test run today, supposedly to evaluate another upgrade to the system. Based on past experience, I had already mentally prepped myself for yet another bizarre new error to occur.

"WHAT HAPPENED TO OUR AVATARS?!"

And, as it happened, I was right. That would be Akihisa freaking out over the fact that upon summoning his avatar, it came out life sized- and female. Very clearly female.

"Don't look! I don't want anyone to see me like this!"

...and that would be Himeji, crying and trying to hide the form of her bulky, male avatar behind her much smaller body. It isn't working very well.

You know, by this point I wouldn't even call this out of the ordinary. First we had out of control life-size costumed avatars, then we had mind reading child avatars, and after that we had occult themed avatars, so this really doesn't break the pattern in any meaningful way. Shouldn't be long before-

"Everyone quiet down!" the principal shouts as she makes her presence at the door known.

Huh, right on cue.

"As I'm sure you're aware by now, there seems to have been an error while upgrading the Summoning System."

"Seriously?!" Yuuji yells. "How do you screw up the system so badly-"

"-that everyone's avatars are now the wrong gender?!" Shimada finishes for him.

They have a point. Just what kind of tech is this system running on that unintentional glitches can result in stuff like THIS happening anyways?

"Just put up with it for a while until we get this sorted out." the principal finishes before walking right back out.

...Alright, this is fine I guess. For me, this isn't all that different from when they got life sized the first time around, since my avatar changed gender that time too. At least they aren't going crazy, and aside from having changed to fit the equivalent gender stereotype (except for Shimada's, oddly), there's no real difference in their clothing this time. If they'd ended up in rather more embarrassing costumes again... honestly, I don't want to think about that.

The principal having left after "explaining" things in the most minimal and unhelpful way possible, everyone besides me turns back to their avatars to examine them. Some more vocally than others.

"Great. What am I supposed to do with you?!" Shimada questions her avatar, for some reason thinking it might answer. Though, given that this system has made that happen before, for all I know it actually might.

When it stays silent other than giving her a pleasant smile, Akihisa takes it upon himself to try and fill the void.

"Hey, look on the bright side Minami." he says with a closed eyed smile. "Since your chest is so flat it's not like there's really much of a difference between THE SPACE SEPARATING BOTH ENDS OF MY SPINE!"

Poor guy never seems to learn...

I take a moment to simply scan the room, taking it all in. Let's see... Akihisa lying on the floor recovering from his most recent case of spinal trauma... Himeji and Shimada having moved on to gushing over how cute Akihisa's avatar is... Shouko suddenly in the room poking Yuuji's eyes out for daring to so much as look at his own avatar... Kouta trying to snap pictures from beneath his avatar's skirt- that's kind of creepy...

"Hey, how come Hideyoshi's avatar is a girl?" Akihisa suddenly asks everyone, back to normal just as quickly as usual.

I just sigh. Probably for the same reason YOURS is. It's normally male, right now it's female. The breasts should be a tip off.

"Hideyoshi got so lucky, how come his avatar gets to stay the same gender?"

You just contradicted yourself! You called me a he and then somehow referred to me as female in the same sentence! Do you really not see the problem with that?!

"Eh, Hideyoshi? What's wrong? Did I- hey, don't feel bad, you're developing, right? I'm sure you'll look like that soon."

My head drops in to my hands. Seriously? I'm never going to be able to make them forget about Yuuko's little slip from back then, am I?


Well, as it turns out, this event has a downside, but it also has an upside, unlike the other errors we've encountered in the past.

On the downside, the glitch seems to have made it impossible to unsummon avatars in addition to the more obvious effects, so we're stuck with them until further notice.

On the upside, class is essentially canceled (as in, officially, for once), so we can just sort of go wherever we want as long as we stay in the school. And personally, I'm kind of curious as to what's going on with the other classes. The summoning field is still covering the whole school, so I'm sure someone other than us has tried summoning their avatar by now.

...which is why all of us are currently walking down the hallway towards Class E. I mentioned where I was going, and suddenly everyone else decided they wanted to come along too, I guess. Our avatars are just sort of trailing along behind us, a bizarre floating entourage consisting entirely of our half identical twins.

Well, this should be interesting.


AN: We interrupt these Hideyoshi-centric shenanigans to bring you a classic Baka and Test event which will of course get absolutely everyone involved, except with Hideyoshi as the main POV. Our favorite androgyne can't be at the center of everything after all, not when stuff like THIS happens school-wide (or at least Class F-wide) on a regular basis.

Short chapter even for this, I know, but only because there's an extra long chapter coming up next. Look forward to it!