"KUWABARA!" Yusuke had been shaking his best friend, trying to get him to wake up, his voice a shrill, feminine screech.

"Huh?" said Kuwabara, turning over in his sleeping bag. It was as Yusuke had feared: the voice that spoke was definitely a female one.

"I…am…a…girl," Yusuke hissed through clenched teeth.

"What?" Kuwabara mumbled sleepily.

"I SAID WE'RE GIRLS!" Yusuke shouted at him. "DON'T YOU NOTICE SOMETHING'S MISSING?!"

It took Kuwabara a moment or two to wake up fully, but he checked, as Yusuke had done minutes before, and then he got it.

"WE'RE GIRLS!"

"I KNOW!"

"DID YOU DO THIS?!"

"OF COURSE NOT, YOU MORON!"

"THEN WHO DID?!"

"I DON'T KNOW BUT I'M GOING TO BASH THEIR FACE IN!" Yusuke hollered at the top of his lungs, punching his fist into his other hand. Surely, an offense of this magnitude warranted a far more painful death than the Spirit Gun could achieve.

"Shh!" Kuwabara said suddenly. "We better stop shouting. You're gonna bother my sister."

"We can't let her see us like this!" Yusuke shrieked. "What are we going to—"

The Spirit Detective was interrupted by a knock on the front door. They were in Kuwabara's living room, so they could hear it clearly.

"Come in," said Kuwabara, and the door opened.

"Just as I thought." Yusuke and Kuwabara both turned their heads to hear a beautiful woman's voice, soft and silky like satin, and…

Yusuke felt his heart catch in his throat. No. Just no. This could not be happening. How could that be his friend and teammate? Yusuke had always thought of Kurama as a little bit like the mom friend of the group, and a lot like the older brother he never had. But this girl—ahem, this woman—wasn't Kurama. She couldn't be.

Waking up as a girl was bad enough, but realizing that one of his best male friends had transformed into the most delectable creature he had ever seen was astronomically worse. For a split second, Yusuke was glad a certain part of him was missing, because if it wasn't, the way he felt about Kurama's new body would have been a lot more difficult to disguise. The ravishing young woman was classy and refined, hands in her pockets, gorgeous fire-engine red hair flowing down her back, huge breasts, feminine curves, a concerned expression on a delicate, angelic face, lovely emerald eyes that took in the scene at a glance, wearing a bathrobe that could be so easily opened if you just untied the belt…

Ack! No! That was Kurama! And yet Yusuke could barely tear his eyes off those breasts, noticing that underneath Kurama's robe, his nipples were just visible through the fabric…NO! Yusuke shook his head to clear it and tried to distract himself by looking for Hiei, since where there was Kurama, there was usually Hiei.

Sure enough, the fire demon was standing in the doorway, his glare almost palpable as he aimed it at Yusuke, as if he knew what the Spirit Detective was thinking. Hiei, at least, didn't look as different as Kurama did. He didn't seem to have any curves, or even any breasts. The main difference was his hair, which was now even longer than Kurama's. He looked murderous, though, and Yusuke found his gaze wandering back to Kurama. It took all of Yusuke's willpower to stop looking at Kurama's…No. I'm not even going to think it, Yusuke decided. I'm just going to keep my eyes on his face.

"No need to stare at me, Yusuke," said the vision in red, floating elegantly onto a nearby couch. "You look quite strange, too."

Yusuke suddenly remembered that he had breasts now, too—if you could call them that, he thought, looking down at his chest. He had been wearing a long T-shirt and a pair of shorts to sleep, and he was wearing underwear but no bra. Not that he would know how to put on a bra. But they were barely visible through the T-shirt.

"Mine aren't as big as yours," he said.

"I wouldn't expect us all to be the same size," said Kurama. "Besides, I'm more than a year older than you are. I had a massive growth spurt between the ages of fourteen and fifteen."

"It's the truth," said Hiei. "When we met, he was barely taller than I am."

"Well, whatever," Yusuke dismissed them. "They feel like chunks of cement. And they hurt."

"Mine don't hurt," Kurama told him, worry flitting across his face.

"I agree with Urameshi," Kuwabara spoke up. "I don't know how girls stand having these things."

"It makes sense, because you're not used to them," Kurama explained. "But I'm sure it would help if we had proper support."

"So what do you expect us to do, go bra shopping?" said Yusuke.

"Actually," Hiei put in, "I think our first priority should be reversing this condition."

"How are we supposed to do that?" Kuwabara asked.

"We need to contact Reikai," Kurama replied promptly. "If anyone has intel abut this sort of thing, it will be them."

"I think I have my Spirit Detective case around here somewhere," said Yusuke, but in truth, he had no idea where it was. Leaving his friends in the living room, he went to search the house for it. He had taken to bringing it with him wherever he went, just in case a situation where he might need it arose. But overnight, he'd lost track of it. And as he walked (especially up the stairs), his newfound breasts kept banging into his chest, causing his every moment to be shrouded in pain. Hiei was lucky not to be given any, he thought.

Finally, he found the case upstairs in Kuwabara's bedroom, and he headed back downstairs, wincing all the way. By the time he got there, the shock had worn off slightly, and he was feeling pissed. He wasted no time in dialing Koenma.

"HEY! PACIFIER BREATH!" he shouted. "WHAT THE HELL IS THIS?!"

"Is that Yusuke?" came Jorge's voice.

"It is," Koenma observed. "But…in female form?"

"YES!" Yusuke hollered. "OVERNIGHT, ALL FOUR OF US GOT TURNED INTO GIRLS!"

"You can tell the difference?" said Kurama hopefully.

"Of course," Koenma replied. "You'd have to be blind not to notice that difference, Kurama."

"But no one else seems to have realized what happened," Kurama said. "It's just bizarre. My mother didn't notice anything wrong, and my closet is full of female clothes. In fact, my mother even called me by a different name today."

"Do you have a theory?" Koenma asked, giving Yusuke a strong suspicion that Koenma himself did not.

"Yes," said Kurama, suddenly looking slightly nervous. "Personally…I don't think we were turned into girls at all. I think we've entered an alternate reality where we were always girls."

"What?!" Yusuke shrieked, but Koenma nodded.

"That makes sense," he said. "I can tell the difference, of course, because Reikai is on a different plane of existence from either reality. But really, an alternate reality seems like the only way to explain this."

"Well, we're trying to figure out how to get back to normal," Kurama told him. "Do you know how this happened, or if there's anything we can do?"

"It's probably just a slight hiccup in the space-time continuum," Koenma replied. "If that's the case, you should return to your own dimension soon enough."

"I think somebody did this to us," said Yusuke. "You know, like a demon."

"Unlikely," said Koenma. "I don't have any information on someone you could track down. But if you're correct, and someone intentionally created an alternate reality, you would have to defeat them before you were able to turn back."

"How am I supposed to beat these jerks into the dust if I don't know anything about them?!"

"Good question," said Koenma, "but as I've said, that's very unlikely. I would trust that this problem will resolve on its own in time. Meanwhile, I'll do what I can to see if there's a way to expedite the process, and we'll try to locate anyone who can create alternate realities. I assure you that's not a very common power. You four keep your heads up now, all right?"

"Hey, wait a second!" Yusuke shouted, but the screen went black. Kurama sighed heavily, resigned to his fate; Hiei just groaned and curled up into a miserable ball on the edge of the couch.

"So we're stuck?" said Kuwabara.

"I think we should probably put on something more decent," said Kurama. "I told my mom I couldn't go to school today."

"My mom doesn't care if I skip," said Yusuke.

"Shizuru will probably make me go, though," said Kuwabara.

"Speaking of Shizuru…" Kurama began. As if on cue, Kuwabara's older sister entered the living room, wearing old jeans and a sweatshirt. Kurama didn't expect her to notice a difference, any more than his mom had, but she paused instead, and her eyes grew wide.

"Woah," she said, putting her cigarette out on her pants leg. "What happened to you guys?"