Chapter 2: The Reincarnated One and the TS girl with cat ears

Emma left the sanctuary and used the "very cheap" teleportation circle to the Neo Tokyo District, the most technologically advanced area of ​​the island. There, the buildings weren't made of wood, but of a ceramic composite that glowed with violet and blue neon lights.

The Kaguya family residence was a high-tech bunker. Hanako's father was the chief architect of Nippon's defense network, and their home reflected that obsession with security. Emma reached the armored door and placed her hand on the retinal scanner.

“Access granted: Guest Futsu Emma. Warning: The resident subject is in a state of heightened sensory sensitivity. Proceed with caution.”

The hallway was dark, lit only by the LEDs of the servers that buzzed on the walls. 

Emma walked toward the back room, where a holographic "DO NOT ENTER" sign was flashing red. "Hanako, it's me. I brought the protein supplements your mother asked for and... well, some high-quality tuna from the market," Emma said, gently knocking on the door.

There was a hissing sound, definitely not human. Then, the frantic tapping of a mechanical keyboard.

"Leave it at the lock, Idiot-kun," Hanako's voice had changed. It still had its sarcastic, direct tone, but now it was higher-pitched, with a cadence reminiscent of an involuntary purr. "My immune system is undergoing a massive upgrade, and my patience is at 2%. If you go in, I'm not responsible for any claw marks on your face."

"Come on, you can't stay there forever," Emma insisted. "Keiko's worried. And I... well, I miss the guy who used to beat me at Street Fighter."

There was a prolonged silence. Then, the electronic lock clicked sharply. The door slid open a few inches, revealing only a sliver of darkness from which a single violet eye peered out, glowing with a feline light.

“That guy doesn’t exist anymore, Emma,” Hanako said, her voice small and almost vulnerable this time. “The Archetype deleted the ‘Masculinity’ system file. What’s left is… this. A coding error made flesh.”

Emma sighed and, defying the warning, pushed open the door.

What she saw was a room flooded with monitors. In the center, standing and almost kneeling on an ergonomic chair that was much too big for her, was Hanako. Her hair, now a bluish-white, fell haphazardly over her shoulders.

A pair of white cat ears twitched irritably on the top of his head, and a thin tail beat rhythmically against the chair seat. 

She was wearing a sweatshirt three sizes too big that hid her slender figure and...her shorts—making it look like she was wearing nothing underneath and showing off her seductive legs—but she couldn't hide the fact that her face, once that of a skinny boy, now had a delicate and captivating beauty.

Hanako looked at him, her pupils dilating for a second before returning to her human form. She shrank back in the chair, hugging her knees.

"Satisfied?" Hanako hissed, though her tail curled shyly around her waist. "Now I'm a 'waifu' in your stupid old stories. Are you going to ask me to say 'meow' or can we get on with our lives?"

Emma placed the bag of food on the table, looking at her former friend (now a full-fledged friend) with a mixture of pity and respect.

"I'm just going to say that white looks good on you," Emma replied with a genuine smile. "And, meow or no meow, you're still the only person who can hack my terminal in under three seconds. So get ready, Hanako. We're leaving for Atlantis in a week, and I'm not going to let you stay here locked up like a glitch in the system."

Hanako looked away, her ears drooping slightly.

"Atlantis..." he murmured. "I've been analyzing the security protocols of Academy City. It's a labyrinth of iron and magic. If we go there, Emma... nothing will ever be the same in Sakura."

Emma looked out the window, towards the horizon where the Floating Island cast its shadow on the sea.

—I know. But that's what we're together for, right? The idiot, the maid, and the hacker cat. It's the perfect team for a bad anime.

Hanako grimaced at those words, as if she didn't know what to say.

♦♦♦♦

Kaguya Hanako's room was a capsule of electric gloom where time seemed to be measured in processing cycles rather than seconds. The air, thick and laden with ozone from the constant hum of the servers, now held a new hue: a subtle, unsettling biological trace that she tried to suppress with high-end air filters. 

Emma stood by the entrance lock, watching her friend's silhouette shrink in front of the wall of monitors. 

The violet glow of the screens was reflected in his eyes, whose pupils dilated and contracted at a speed that no normal human could replicate.

“My mother says dinner’s ready,” Hanako announced. His voice, once that of a fourteen-year-old going through a period of change, now possessed a crystalline clarity, its cadence ending in an almost imperceptible vibration. “She says it’s our ‘last supper’ as a family before they have to leave for work and the Federation sends us to that iron labyrinth called Atlantis. But we both know what it is, Emma. It’s a diagnostic test. They want to see if the new ‘hardware’ can sustain a conversation without the software crashing.”

Emma sighed, crossing her arms over her sinewy chest. She knew the Kaguya family; for them, the world was a series of interconnected systems. Hanako's awakening wasn't a tragedy for them, but a statistical anomaly they hadn't quite finished tabulating in their spreadsheets.

“I’ll go with you,” Emma said calmly. “If your father starts with his speeches about mana efficiency, I can distract him by asking him about the Foundation ships’ new phase drives. You know he can’t resist giving an engineering lesson.”

Hanako let out a snort, a sound that originated deep in her throat and ended in a defensive hiss. 

He stood up from the chair with unnatural agility, as if gravity did not apply to his new body in the same way. 

His movements had lost the bony awkwardness of his masculine self; now he flowed like mercury, with a predatory grace that seemed to deeply bother him. 

She adjusted her gray sweatshirt, pulling up the hood to hide the white ears that were twitching irritably under the fabric.

"If you say anything stupid in front of them, I swear I'll hack into your personal network and delete all your files of those old stories you keep so carefully," she threatened, though her fingers trembled slightly as she opened the door.

They descended the stairs in tense silence. 

The Kaguya residence was a bunker with a Zen-industrial aesthetic, where cedar wood blended seamlessly with tactile glass panels. In the dining room, the table was set with almost suffocating perfection. 

Kaguya Shinji, the father, sat with his back straight, consulting data on his neural interface glasses. Beside him, Akiko, the mother, finished arranging the bowls with a mechanical smile that betrayed deep fatigue.

"Emma-kun, thank you for convincing her to come down," Akiko said with a slight bow. "Please, sit down. Hanako, sit to your father's right."

Dinner began with the metallic clatter of chopsticks against the ceramic. The atmosphere was so heavy that Emma felt the air crackle under the pressure. 

He noticed that Hanako barely touched her food; her senses, now heightened by her Therian nature, seemed overwhelmed by the smell of the food and the hum of the fluorescent lighting. Her ears, beneath her hood, darted frantically toward every tiny sound in the house.

"I've updated your Academy registration, Hanako," Shinji began without looking up. "The Solomon Foundation has accepted the profile change. You're now listed as 'Singular Grade Therian, Feline Subtype, Female.' This is necessary to prevent access errors in the dormitories and tuning labs."

Hanako placed the chopsticks on the table with a thud.

"Was it necessary to turn my identity into a technical report right now, Father?" she asked, her violet eyes glowing with a dangerous electric light.

"It's a matter of reality, not feelings," Shinji replied coldly. "Your cellular structure has changed drastically. Your mana processing levels have increased by three hundred percent. As a son, you had a bright future as an analyst, but as a daughter and Oracle, your value to the Federation is immeasurable. We cannot allow an identity crisis to interfere with the outcome of the mission to Atlantis."

"Like a daughter," Hanako repeated, a bitter laugh escaping her lips. "Less than a month ago you were giving me advice on how to be a man of honor, and now you talk about me as if I were an upgrade to the island's systems. I'm not a code you can rewrite as you please."

—Honey, Hanako is still adjusting...

Akiko tried to put a hand on her husband's arm, but he gently moved it away.

"The outside world isn't this sanctuary, Akiko. In Atlantis, Hanako will encounter the intolerance of Westphalia and the ambition of the Shadow Court. If she doesn't accept what she is now, they will destroy her. And worse, she will enter her first heat cycle unprepared. Her instincts will cloud her judgment, and she will become a burden to Emma and Keiko."

Emma felt her own aura begin to vibrate in response to the tension. The ground beneath her feet seemed to cool.

“Mr. Kaguya,” Emma interjected, her voice, though low, cutting through the noise of the house servers like a mountain breeze. “Hanako doesn’t need reminding of the danger. She’s been hacking defense systems since she was a child. She knows what’s out there better than any of us. What she needs from you isn’t a performance analysis, but to know that she still has a father.”

Shinji looked at Emma, ​​assessing the hidden strength in Goro's grandson. He knew the young man was capable of feats that science couldn't yet explain, but his engineer's mind wouldn't accept emotional variables.

"Loyalty is admirable, Emma-kun, but biology is absolute," Shinji declared. "Hanako, if your animal impulses take control, you'll endanger the lives of your comrades."

Hanako stood up abruptly, knocking over the chair. Her hood fell back, revealing her white ears, which were now pressed against her skull in a gesture of pure, savage fury. 

Her pupils were barely two black slits in a sea of ​​bright violet.

"I won't be a burden to anyone," Hanako hissed, and this time the sound was a low growl that rattled the glasses on the table. "I've built my own mental walls. Atlantis won't break me... and you won't tell me who I'm supposed to be again."

Without waiting for a response, Hanako turned around and ran towards the stairs with a speed that turned her into a silver blur. 

The slam of the armored door shook the foundations of the house. Akiko covered her face with her hands, letting out a stifled sob. Shinji simply returned to his food, though Emma noticed his hands trembling almost imperceptibly under the table.

"I'm sorry, Emma-kun," Akiko whispered. "She was our little boy... and now, when I look at her, I feel like I'm standing in front of a stranger who has my son's eyes."

Emma stood up, feeling a weight in her chest that not even the most rigorous training could relieve.

"She's still herself, Lady Kaguya. It's just that now the world demands she be something she never asked for. With your permission, I'll go and see her. Don't let Lord Kaguya worry about the odds; I'll make sure she doesn't get lost out there."

♦♦♦♦

Emma returned to Hanako's shrine. This time, the electronic lock was deactivated. Upon entering, she found her sitting in the darkest corner of the room, amidst a tangle of fiber optic cables that glowed with a bluish light. 

She wasn't hidden behind her screens; she was huddled to her knees, and the sound she made was human, broken, and filled with an anguish that no machine could process.

“I was right about one thing, Emma,” she said, tears rolling down her cheeks, sparkling like diamonds under the monitor light. “My body is betraying me. I feel things that shouldn’t be there. The world smells too strong… the air, the food… even you.”

Emma sat on the floor next to her, keeping a safe distance, respecting her personal space.

"Do I smell that bad after training?" he joked, trying to ease the tension.

"No," Hanako replied, burying her face in her legs. "You smell like sunshine, metal, and... something that makes me want to get closer. It's unbearable. My brain screams that you're an uncontrollable variable, but my instinct says you're warmth, you're protection. I hate this. I hate not being in control of my own chemistry."

Emma smiled with a melancholy she rarely showed. She extended her hand, stopping it inches from her, waiting for silent permission.

—Welcome to humanity, Hanako. We've spent thousands of years trying to control our feelings without success. You've just added a pair of ears and a tail to the equation. But you're still the smartest person I know.

Hanako looked up, staring at him with those eyes that now seemed to process the world in a much deeper and more painful way.

"Will you...protect me at the Academy?" she asked, with a vulnerability she would never have shown in her previous life. "Not from the demons, Emma... but from myself. If I lose my way, if my instincts turn me into someone I don't recognize... will you bring me back?"

Emma closed the distance and, with extreme gentleness, placed her hand on Hanako's head, softly stroking the soft fur between his ears. Hanako tensed, emitting a small defensive hiss, but a second later, his eyes closed and his body yielded to the touch. 

She leaned towards him, seeking the warmth of his strong, calloused hand, and a treacherous, rhythmic purr filled the room.

“I promised you years ago, didn’t I?” Emma said, as the light from Sakura Island filtered through the window, bathing them in an artificial glow. “We’re a team. And in my story, no friend gets left behind, no matter how many changes their bodies undergo.”

In the darkness of the room, surrounded by the echo of a civilization that refused to die, the reincarnated idiot and the hacker who had lost her world remained silent, while the clock continued to tick away the time they had left for their journey.