Yuuri was no stranger to being tossed off a cliff.

It was, however, a new experience to wake up to being tossed off a cliff.

Luckily, his paltry survival instincts were in good working order, and if his shouted "Help, help, aiieeee!" was a bit girlier than usual, he could rest assured that none would live to tell the tale.

Because he was going to hunt down the bastard that did this and, like, sic Wolfram on him or something. Wolfram was surprisingly good for stuff like this. Threatening people into either silence or charred body parts, that is.

And also, assuming that Yuuri didn't die from this, and also assuming that he didn't end up falling to his not-quite-lethal-yet-not-unharmed demise, he figured he'd be rescued by someone who would keep his confidence about the squeaking. Gwendal was good with secrets. If it was Conrad, Yuuri would probably be teased forever about it because Conrad was a dick like that, but at least Conrad wouldn't let it get out to other people, and—

"Yuuri!"

—oh, it's Conrad. His voice is a little high-pitched too, so if he teases me, I'll tease him back. Thank you, powers-that-be, for holding back the creation of Maou-paste for one more day.

All these jumbled thoughts ran through Yuuri's mind for the few seconds in which he was airborne, and stopped immediately with the impact of his body into Conrad's arms. Yuuri's mind was blissfully blank as he savored the feeling of safety after another close call. For a rare moment, all was silent save for their harsh breathing and the thud of heartbeats.

Slowly, awareness crept back and Yuuri came to notice that his hand, which was, he supposed, resting on Conrad's chest, was touching something that was… not Conrad's chest. He tentatively gave the soft mound a squeeze. What is that? New armor? He squeezed a few more times. Why does it feel like—?

Yuuri glanced up, and they both shouted at once.

"Conrad!"

"Yuuri!"

"You're a girl!"

"You're a boy!"

Conrad's eyes were blown wide in shock, which Yuuri supposed must mirror his own, because Conrad was not Conrad! Or, well, it wasn't any sort of Conrad that Yuuri was familiar with. Because Conrad was a man the last time they'd met - which was yesterday night - and now this person before him had a squishy chest!

"Wait, you said—" Yuuri started. "But I've always been male."

"And I've always been female," Conrad replied. "If this comes as a surprise to you, then I think perhaps we're dealing with other worlds?"

"Alternate dimensions. God, I hate when that happens."

It wasn't something that happened often, per se, but it happened often enough. Usually, it had to do with Anissina's crazy experiments, like evil roller coasters that went so fast they tore open the fabric of reality. Sometimes they were dream worlds or worlds of possibility that Yuuri accidentally created with nothing but a wish because his powers were too strong and he couldn't always stop them before they lashed out in the wrong direction. He sighed and hoped that this time it was something that could be fixed with a quick invention instead of a long quest full of soul-searching and crying until his face was blotchy.

Conrad interrupted his thoughts with a tap on the arm. "Pardon me, Your Majesty, but your hand is still on my..."

Boob. My hand is on your boob. It's perky. He slithered down to the ground in a puddle of hormones and shame.

-oOo-

In another dimension, another Yuuri suddenly went from being tossed off a cliff to landing in what looked to be her own soft, king-sized bed back at the palace.

"Oookay, that was freaky," she said as she bounced and settled.

It obviously wasn't the first time she'd fallen through a portal, but it was definitely a first for the portal to drop her somewhere so innocuous as her own bedroom. Normally - which was not normal at all for the standards of other people, but such was the life of the Maou - the portal would have taken her to, like, a dungeon or a sacrificial altar or something equally dreary. Maybe, if she was lucky, it would only dump her in the ocean next to a ship full of undead pirates.

Yuuri had laid down and hugged one of her pillows when she heard a snore coming from under the covers. She pushed aside more pillows to uncover a few tufts of golden hair.

"Oh, it's just you, Wolf. Were we having a sleepover? I don't remember." She snuggled in next to her friend, but then she thought… Well, it had been a horrible morning so far, so she deserved some cuddles. Wolfram was rather aloof at times, acting like cuddling was beneath her station because blah blah princess blah blah decorum blah, so Yuuri took this opportunity to latch on like an octopus and start talking about her day. "So Conrad and I woke up extra early this morning to catch that thief. We would've asked you to come if you weren't so hard to wake up before noon…"

Even though Wolfram was asleep and couldn't possibly be listening, it felt good to let things out. By the time the story came to a close, she had crawled all the way on top of the other body.

"The end!" Yuuri finished with a flourish. "Until tomorrow, when we try again because I'm pretty sure the thief got away."

Wolfram was still snoring softly. Yuuri was contemplating whether she should take a nap right here on top of Wolf when she felt something poke her in the thigh. It was hard, but… kind of fleshy? Yuuri shifted in discomfort. Wolfram continued to snore.

Yuuri cautiously nudged the thing with her thigh again. She reached down and poked at it with a finger, which made Wolfram grunt in her sleep. The thing twitched in Yuuri's hand, which made her jump. All the while, a deep feeling of dread had taken up residence, balling up in her gut.

Yuuri shoved back all the covers and leapt out of the bed to see a sizable tent in the frilly pink nightgown.

The outline didn't leave much to the imagination.

Wolfram grunted again, and a wetness started to spread at the tip.

He wasn't wearing underwear.

-oOo-

"How come you're a girl and your name's still Conrad?" Yuuri asked as they headed back to the castle. He was sitting in front of Conrad on a horse, which was a lot more distracting than it used to be because Conrad had boobs now, and they pressed against his back when the road got bumpy. He supposed it was better than the other way around.

"I don't know wh— Oh, I see. We have the same name? It's a girls' name here, but it must be a boys' name in your world."

"That makes a strange amount of sense, I guess. I hope everyone's names will be the same. That'll be so much easier to remember."

Conrad chuckled, deep and throaty, and this was also way more distracting than it used to be, because it was the chuckle of a sexy, kick-ass sword lady - the type he'd always drooled over in fantasy RPGs. Some guys in school had liked the scantily clad dancers, the sweet and innocent clerics, or the huge-breasted dominatrix death mages, but Yuuri had always gone for the lady knights. Swords were hot.

Wait. If Conrad is… Then everyone else… Dude, Gunter would be so hot.

This train of thought left Yuuri feeling a little aroused and a lot uncomfortable. Those were his friends he was thinking about. Also, there was no guarantee that the Gunter in his home world wouldn't psychically intercept his thoughts and get a sex change in the heat of the moment. No, it was best not to think about Gunter's potential hotness. Or Gwendal's potential hotness. (Oh my god, sexy lady general...) Yuuri didn't want to die for thinking of him that way because Gwendal could totally kill a man with his glare alone.

Hey, Wolfram! What about Wolfram?

The Wolfram of this world - girl Wolfram - would be a haughty princess; of this he had no doubt. She would have a dainty but curvaceous build and luxurious golden curls much like her mother… er, father? And… and she would drink tea with her pinky up. Yes, absolutely. She would definitely do that, Yuuri thought. Whereas guy Wolfram was like a yappy little Pomeranian, girl Wolfram would be the ankle-biting Maltese. A white one with a little bow on her head.

Upon entrance through the castle's gates, Yuuri's imaginings were promptly dashed by the appearance of Wolfram herself.

"Yuuri! You said you'd wake me up so we could go together!"

"Whoa, bifauxnen…"

-oOo-

Wolfram awoke to a chill in his lower parts. He first noticed that the blankets were off and he'd had an accident in his sleep. Embarrassing, yes, since he'd thought himself long past that stage of youthful uncontrollability. Perhaps something out of the norm had set him off this time, but it was certainly nothing to be overly worried about. After all, his occasional bedmate had his own share of nocturnal emissions, resulting in many an awkward shuffle to the bathroom which Wolfram had always been courteous enough not to tease him for.

Being notoriously groggy in the mornings, it was only as Wolfram was preparing to commence his own shuffle that he realized there was another person in the room, and it wasn't Yuuri. Wolfram froze. It was a double-black! And the features were so similar to Yuuri's as to be eerie, but her build was slighter and undeniably female.

The intruder was pacing across the room and mumbling to herself. "—can't believe my first experience with a man was this, oh god it almost got on my hand what if it had gotten on my hand—"

"Who are you and how did you get in here?"

"Wolfram!"

"Halt! Get back and explain yourself!" Caught off guard, he was without a sword, but far from helpless. Wolfram raised a hand and prepared to incant a fire spell.

"Oh my god, Wolf! You grew a thing!"

"What?"

"And I touched-it-I'm-so-sorry-I-molested-you-in-your-sleep!"

-oOo-

Gwendal's female counterpart was short and disturbingly lolita. When Conrad had taken them to Gwendal's office to explain the situation, Yuuri had nearly choked on his tongue. It wasn't just Gwendal herself, who had the same dour expression despite being vertically challenged to the point where she, at an estimate, would only come up to Yuuri's chest. ("Gwendal inherited our father's youthfulness," Conrad said. As if that were supposed to explain anything.)

No, it wasn't just that. It was… the office. Stuffed animals everywhere. Knitted monstrosities looming out from every corner, from behind every shelf. Lace and frills and cute heart-shaped button eyes. And in the center of it all sat Gwendal, a tiny figure dwarfed by her gigantic mahogany desk and guarded by hulking not-quite-pandas. Glaring.

It had all the makings of a psycho slasher movie.

What happened to the sexy lady general? Yuuri lamented. He had to admit, though, that it seemed very Gwendal. The large man had always loved cute things, and if the things Anissina said about him were true, he'd always wanted to be cute himself. This Gwendal was certainly cute… So much so that she crossed the line and landed squarely in creepy territory.

Gwendal had called in Gunter to help research ways to send Yuuri back where he came from (because Anissina was not to be disturbed except in dire situations, Gwendal said with a shudder), and Gunter had also been not at all what Yuuri expected.

Gunter, in Yuuri's mind, was supposed to be lithe, like a dancer. Instead, she had blouse bunnies bigger than Cheri-sama's. This would not have been a problem if Gunter hadn't run up to Yuuri for a bone-crushing hug only to pull back at the last minute, shriek, and then fling herself to the ground and start sobbing dramatically for the loss of Her Majesty's feminine charms. ("Don't take it personally," Conrad said. "She's a lesbian.")

No one was the way they were supposed to be. Yuuri had once sighed over the fact that there were no dateable women in Shin Makoku. Cheri was like his grandmother ten times over, Gisela would "accidentally" wrap his bandages too tight if he annoyed her, and Anissina would, well, she would poison him. It's what the Poison Lady did. But here he was completely surrounded by women, and still none of them were dateable.

Gwendal was like twelve years old. Gunter was smoking hot, but unfortunately only attracted to Maous with girl-parts. Wolfram, who had been pretty as a boy, was handsome as a girl - a flat-chested, athletic tomboy. Not that Yuuri was all that much of a breast guy - Wolfram was still very attractive in her own way. But everything about Wolfram's personality had translated perfectly. The hotheadedness, name-calling, and rough-housing had all come along for the ride, which meant Yuuri had had to deal with a butch girl grabbing his shoulders and shaking him until his brains fell out when they first met. If he didn't know better by now, he would have slapped her all over again.

Conrad was actually pretty normal, like the girl-next-door, if the girl-next-door were secretly a gallant knight. Still, Yuuri couldn't say that Conrad's female version had turned out the way he thought she would. Because that thought, "What if Conrad were a girl?" had never, ever crossed his mind like it had with some of the others. "Conrad" and "girl" just did not compute. Seriously, how was he ever going to face his Conrad without imagining boobs on the man?

That's why Yuuri preemptively kept his eyes up high as they spoke. Higher than he usually would, like at her hairline, which was weird, but not as weird as things would get if boobs.

"So I was thinking about the differences and similarities between our worlds," Yuuri said. "And I was wondering how I compare to the other me."

"Well, you don't seem to be as, how do you say, touchy-feely? as our Yuuri. Is it just that you're uncomfortable with us being different?"

"Ah, maybe that's a little part of it, but no, no, I'm not all that… touchy. My mom is, though. In this version of Shin Makoku, everyone's switched, but all the gender roles are switched too, so nothing really changes in that regard. I think maybe the gender expectations on your Earth and on my Earth - and wow, that's complicated - they're the same, which means that the other me would have grown up differently than this me, if that makes sense."

"And this explains why she is more free with her touches?"

"Well, yeah, I think so. That's how it was when I was on Earth, that it was okay for girls to hug each other a lot, but it was weird if boys did it. People could be really judgmental about it. And I know, I know I should keep an open mind about these things, and I think I do a good job of that when it comes to accepting other cultures, but until recently I've never thought of myself as anything other than an average Japanese boy, so I do things like an average Japanese boy would. That includes not throwing myself at other people."

Wolfram butted in. "Hmph. How weak the men of your world must be, to shy away from physical contact."

Conrad looked to be smothering a laugh when she heard that, which made Wolfram glower in her direction. Yuuri's head whipped back and forth between the sisters, certain that he was missing some kind of inside joke.

-oOo-

"Would it be weird if I asked for a hug?" Yuuri pleaded to Wolfram with what she hoped were her best puppy eyes.

He narrowed his eyes and frowned, suspicion marring his angelic features. "Why?"

"Because." She heaved an exasperated sigh. "I'm hug-deprived. I'm stuck in a strange world with no one to comfort me. Shouldn't my fiancé come to the rescue?"

Wolfram was very, very suspicious of this female version of the wimp. She was cunning. Of course she still maintained a certain amount of air-headedness, and her story of how she got here was complete with a harebrained scheme of chasing after a thief who had stolen dangerous magical artifacts, which was exactly what Yuuri would do. Her reactions to the castle's other inhabitants, though, was troubling. Wolfram was used to manhandling Yuuri into various positions, so for Yuuri to be the one to initiate intimate contact was too odd.

Though it killed Wolfram to say it, he reigned in his jealousy and asked, "Why don't you ask Conrad? I'm sure he'll be most accommodating."

"Have you seen your brother? He's... you know… And as much as I've had my fantasies about handsome men - a girl can dream, right? - it's also kind of intimidating because we're the opposite sex now and it isn't proper for a teenage girl to be crawling into a grown man's lap."

"Oh, so he's intimidating because he's handsome? And I'm not?" At this point, Wolfram was gritting his teeth and there was a vein throbbing in his forehead.

"You're pretty. Or cute, maybe. Like the baby-faced member of a boy band. Totally harmless."

Wolfram had never been known for his control. "I almost came on your hand!" he burst out. And immediately regretted. "I mean, if that's not proof of my masculinity…"

Yuuri remembered, and was horrified. She stopped asking for hugs. Things only got more awkward from there.

-oOo-

"I think we should go after the thief again," Yuuri suggested. "We'll recover the stolen artifacts and use them to open another portal or something. At least with the artifacts in our hands, we can study them closer so we'll better know what we're dealing with."

"And I think we'll deal with the bandit after you're gone. We should just chuck your wimpy ass off that cliff again!"

"That's not going to work!"

"It will! The portal's still open!"

"I'll catch you if you fall," Conrad added with a smile.

-oOo-

"I don't care," she said. "Even if some ridiculously handsome guy is going to catch me, I'm not suicide-diving off a cliff just to see if this works, which, by the way, it's not going to."

(But of course, she ended up doing it anyway.)

-oOo-

The bandits, plural, ambushed them at the top of the cliff. This wasn't anything new to Yuuri, either. He had Conrad and Wolfram at his back, as usual, even if they were girls and, okay, Conrad wasn't literally at his back because she was down there waiting to catch him if things went wrong. Besides those few nitpicks, this situation was fairly standard for them.

Just a leap away from the cliff, in the middle of the sky, was a slowly opening rift. It reacted to the proximity of the bandits, particularly the one holding what Yuuri presumed was the magical artifact responsible for his recent woes. That, or it was a kindergartener's first foray into clay sculpture.

Wolfram held her own quite admirably against their attackers, and Yuuri, being very aware of how useless he was in a sword fight, tried to stay out of the way for the most part. He chucked a couple of rocks and sometimes darted in to clonk someone on the back of the head, though.

All was going well until one of the bandits lifted up an evil-looking, pulsing orb and smashed it on the ground. Giant fire ants poured out and streamed their way, and Yuuri and Wolfram began stomping as quickly as they could. The fight quickly turning into a jig; they jittered up and down like a sock hop gone wrong. Then, to add insult to injury, the ants made their way up Wolfram's pant leg and began biting her. Wolfram shouted out in horror and started kicking ineffectively while still trying to fend off their attackers.

"Take off your pants!" Yuuri yelled. It was the only way. "Hurry, before they regroup!"

"The portal!" Conrad shouted from below. It had opened enough for Yuuri to go through.

"But—"

"Don't worry about us, just go through!"

Wolfram's pants dropped to her ankles and she started kicking off the giant ants.

It was the last thing Yuuri saw as he leapt through the glowing circle.

She wasn't wearing underwear.

-oOo-

"There's nothing here. When I came through from the other side, there was this blue glow-y thing that's not—"

The blue glow-y thing appeared.

"—oh. It's here. Guess this is good bye."

She leapt through.

-oOo-

Unlike the first time they had fallen across dimensions, there was a slow drifting sensation this time around. Maybe it was because they were aware of what was happening and not either freaking out or asleep, so they could properly appreciate exactly how weird this all was.

Everything was blue-tinged white and very glow-y. It felt like a gel was pressing up against them, like they were swimming through something viscous as they fell through the tunnel to their respective openings.

"Um, hi. Hi, me. I'm you."

"Except not."

"Yeah, except not."

The lull in the conversation stretched out more than was comfortable. This was, by far, the most surreal talk either Yuuri had ever had.

"Your Wolfram goes commando," they both said at once. Two identical grimaces formed on nearly identical faces as they thought about the implications.

No more was said between them.

-oOo-

Yuuri fell through the other side with another unmanly screech, and yes, Conrad was there to catch him. It was like that first time Yuuri had taken a ride with a flying skeleton and been embraced as he came down, and he thought, "Ah, now I understand the appeal of being embraced by a man."

He planted both hands on Conrad's chest and exclaimed, "You're a man again!" Oh frabjous day, calloo, callay!

In another dimension, another Yuuri did the exact same thing.

A/N: Anissina's roller coaster actually happens in the KKM PC game. My memory is shaky, but I believe they meet evil!Cheri and good!Stoffel in the alternate universe.