Amber’s whole body felt like it was buzzing. She was nervous, giddy, embarrassed, and ecstatic all at once. When she’d bought the costume months ago, it hadn’t fit her at all; even if it had, she knew it wouldn’t have looked right on her body. But now, in her new 5’4” feminine frame, it fit her like a glove. At least, the glove parts did. The rest of it was kind of strange-fitting, which made sense considering it was a cheap Amazon buy direct from China, but Amber didn’t mind. She could finally wear it.

And Kat was here for it.

“You have no idea how fuckin’ adorable you look in this,” she purred, running her fingers up and down Amber’s arms. Every graze felt like it was sending electric shockwaves through Amber’s body. This was wholly different than how it felt to get touched in her old body, as if her entire skin had been turned into a mild erogenous zone of some sort.

Despite the overwhelming nature of these feelings, she made some effort to focus. “Then how about you show me?” she slyly smiled, reaching for a hidden pocket in her skirt where she had stashed her cell phone.

Then Kat gasped. “OMG, you even have a fuckin’ tail?!” She reached around and grabbed hold of it, then froze. “Wait… it’s not a plug, right?”

Before Amber could respond in the negative, because gross, the bedroom door flew back open and a suitless, breathless Matt graced their eyes.

“Guys… I have… a call!” he panted, shoving his phone out at them. Amber didn’t know what he was talking about, as his cracked phone displayed only his home screen. Besides, there was no way he could have received a call, as he had no cell service. He did, however, appear to have 99+ unread messages, which really irked her. Who doesn’t get bothered by all those little red dots littering their home screen?

Seeing the perplexed looks on their faces, Matt turned the phone back to himself, then cursed. “Fuck, I swear I just got a call from Kat.”

“Wait, what? She was…” Amber’s eyes shot wide open in realization. “No way…”

“ALTERNATE ME CALLED YOU?!?” Kat screamed, just about bursting Amber’s eardrums. “Call me back!!”

“I can’t, I lost signal or something! I don’t even know how I got signal to begin with!”

Amber snapped her fingers. “The closet!”

They all rushed to the rear of the apartment and piled into the narrow space, all staring anxiously at Matt’s phone. Nothing happened for a couple of seconds.

Then suddenly, LTE.

And just as suddenly, another series of vibrations, and an incoming phone call displaying Kat’s face.

“Answer it! ANSWER IT!!” Kat yelled, but Matt was already doing just that. He put it on speaker as soon as the system allowed him to.

There was a crackling sound, and a whine that was undulating in pitch. Sounded like service to another dimension was pretty spotty.

Matt looked like he was about to speak, but then paused and motioned at Amber instead, presumably because she had the voice the other Kat would have been expecting.

“Hello?” she said with some trepidation. Some more crackling, and then…

“-lie - shit - you? -fuck - okay?”

It was horribly compressed and mangled to hell with static, but with those frequent interspersed swears, it was unmistakably Kat’s manner of speech.

“Holy motherfucking shitballs…” the physically present Kat whispered.

“Can - hear me? -safe?” Alt!Kat was still trying to get through to them, in vain. Matt started waving his phone all around the closet, trying to tune in to the weak signal as if it was old-school bunny ears on a tube TV.

Then, as he straight up shoved the phone onto the rear wall of the apartment:

“-shit, can you hear me? Allie, please, fuck! Where are you? God damn it!”

“Kat, holy shit, I can hear you!” Matt responded, audibly shocked.

“Wait, who the fuck are you? What did you do with Allie?! Put her back on the phone right the fuck now or I swear to God-”

“Kat, it’s me, I’m here!” Amber answered her as Matt facepalmed silently.

“Holy shit, Allie, where the fuck are you?? We all showed up to your place for game night last night and your phone’s been going to voicemail this whole time and the last time anyone saw you was after algo yesterday and we’ve all been freaking the fuck out and oh my god are you okay??”

“Kat, I’m fine I swear, it’s okay, I’m really sorry for worrying everyone but it’s kind of hard to explain where I am right now…” Amber continued for Matt. “I literally don’t understand how this phone call is even happening.”

“The fuck does that mean? Do I need to call the goddamn police or David’s brother or someone? Are you in jail? Were you kidnapped??”

Amber was about to respond when Kat – her Kat – started frantically waving and pointing at her mouth. Not really sure how to proceed with the situation, she hesitantly nodded.

“Omigod holy fucking shit you’re not gonna believe this but I’m you from another dimension and Allie’s trapped in my dimension and is actually a guy named Matt now,” Kat blurted out in one quick go.

There was silence from the other end.

Matt looked at Kat with disdain, rolling his eyes.

“What… what the fuck?” Alt!Kat finally said. “The fuck does any of that mean? Who are you? Where’s Allie?”

Amber sighed. “How the flying fuck would you expect anyone to believe that?”

“I mean, it’s me, I fucking thought I’d believe myself…” Kat grumbled. Suddenly, she snapped her fingers. “Wait, shit, the password! What the fuck was my password??”

“Password…?” Matt asked.

“When we started talking about the clone sex shit, I came up with a password to use if I ever found myself in a clone-y situation and I needed to prove they were really a clone of me, or like if I ever traveled back in time, how would I prove I was from the future. But like, what the shit was it??”

“Allie, what the hell’s going on…? What the actual shit are you trying to pull here? I’ve seriously been so fucking scared for you. If this is all some massive prank…” Alt!Kat spoke again, uncertainty and doubt clouding her tone.

“Correct horse battery staple!” Kat yelled, nearly jumping at the phone in her excitement. “Your clone password is… correct horse battery staple!”

“Wait, the fucking XKCD sample password…?” Amber interrogated. “How the fuck is that a safe password to use for this?”

“Because if someone else knew that that was the god damn clone password, then they had to have known I had a password in the first place, and that it would be fucking dumb as shit. Ergo, it me.”

 Amber could find serious flaws in that argument, but didn’t quite feel like raising them at that moment. Instead, she looked to the phone in Matt’s grasp, still pushed up against the wall of the closet, above her miscellaneous clothes drawers.

There was silence for a bit. Then some noise and whines started to creep into the audio.

Just before static overpowered the signal, Alt!Kat could be heard saying “holy motherfucking shitballs…”

And then the phone lost service once again.

“Fuck!” Matt exclaimed, slapping the phone against the wall a few times, probably out of frustration, but possibly hoping that it would actually work again.

“Shit, I think I actually got through to her!” Kat cried. “Fuck, how do we get her back?!”

Amber’s brain was running on overdrive, trying to process what exactly had just transpired. As another clap of thunder shook the apartment, she had a flash of inspiration.

“Y’all, it was raining yesterday when Matt came into our world, right? What if it has something to do with the weather? Like the lightning or something?”

“If it is lightning, we’re kinda boned though, right?” Kat thought out loud. “You can’t fucking predict lightning!”

Matt had been staring off into space, mouthing something silently. Without warning, he suddenly shoved past the two girls and out of the closet, throwing open the back door to the apartment. Amber could hear the rain absolutely pouring outside, yet Matt just ran right out there without so much as shoes.

“What the actual- Matt!” Kat yelled, quickly putting on her combat boots on her way after him. Amber went to follow, but her jingling collar reminded her of what she was wearing.

Damn it, now is not the time to be a catgirl maid!

Amber groaned and quickly equipped Matt’s old rain boots from the night prior, wincing at the fact she was about to sully her cute costume. But it was a goddamn Amazon cheapo buy, and this was more important! She at least remembered to unpin the tail and leave it and the ears inside before she ran after the other two.

It was dark and miserable outside. The wind was picking up and twisting in random directions, throwing rain into Amber’s face and tossing the skirt of her dress up, which forced her to hold it down. Regardless, she plowed onwards towards the vague shapes dimly illuminated by the streetlamp at the far end of the parking lot by the dumpsters, at the very edge of where the second floor apartments overhead ended. When she was close, one of them spotted her and waved her over.

“Matt has signal!” Kat yelled, straining to be heard over the storm. “But it won’t let him make a call!”

“And the signal’s real weak too, like if I point it back at the apartment, I lose three bars!” Matt was also yelling, though he wasn’t looking away from the screen of his phone, which was currently pointed towards the alley.

“What does this mean? Why did you know to rush out here?” Amber questioned.

“It’s something to do with that puddle!” Matt responded, pointing at a small puddle that had formed in the well of a few car tires driving through soft mud by the dumpsters. “That’s the one I fell in yesterday and nearly drowned in!”

“The fuck do you mean, ‘drowned’? How do you drown in that?!”

“That’s what I’m fucking saying! I think it’s-”

His thought was interrupted by the lighting up of his phone screen with Kat’s name and face for a brief moment before he punched the “accept call” button. Before he could say anything, Alt!Kat started screaming.

“DID YOU SERIOUSLY FUCKING HANG UP ON ME AFTER YOU PULLED THAT GODDAMN CLONE PASSWORD SHIT?!”

“You dumb motherfucker, didja think interdimensional phone service was gonna be rock-solid?” Kat replied, only slightly less loud than her alternate. “It started fuckin’ pouring outside and we were only just barely able to get a connection with you indoors before that went and happened!”

“Who the fuck are you calling a dumb motherfucker, you dumb motherfucker?” Alt!Kat snapped back. “But… yeah, I guess that checks out…” Amber could hear Alt!Kat take a deep breath through the fuzzy connection. “Okay, so like, you’re me from another universe? Holy shit, dude… And Allie fell through some portal into your world, and that’s where she’s fucking been this whole time? Jesus fuck, we thought she had been kidnapped or something!”

Amber could see Matt visibly wince. She wished she could do something about that, but for now, there were bigger transdimensional fish to fry.

“And she’s a dude now, named Matt. More crazy sci-fi bullshit, don’t question it.”

Orrrrr Kat can do her Kat thing and just fucking throw it out there, I guess.

“Uhh… okay, well, that’s… huh. Neat? I guess? I don’t… Sorry, I don’t fucking know how to process all this at once. We’re, uh, gonna have to talk later? If we still can? How the flying shit is this phone call even happening right now?”

“That’s what we’re saying!” Matt exclaimed. “The only thing we have to go on is that the signal seems to get stronger when we’re closer to this puddle I fell in yesterday.” He paused. “It’s Matt, by the way.”

“Oh shit, hey man. I have so many fuckin’ questions for later, but nice voice.”

Even in the dim light, Amber could see Matt’s face flush.

Then she heard a gasp from the other side of the connection.

“Wait, shit, I wanna see!”

The screen lit up from where it had dimmed, with a message saying “Kat is requesting a switch to video. Accept?” Matt looked like he was trying to consider the idea, but Kat swooped her hand over and hit the ‘accept’ button without so much as a second thought.

 With a little whoosh sound, their call was suddenly video-enabled. Their own camera was struggling to pick them out in the low-light setting, but Alt!Kat was brightly lit, though blocky from compression.

“Damn, is that you, Matt? And other me! Whoa! And… wait…” She leaned in, her face now filling the entire screen. “Is that other you? Is her name also A-”

“Amber, actually,” Amber interrupted, knowing that Alt!Kat was just about to commit a dangerous act of foot-in-mouth by saying Matt’s deadname.

“Amber… are you wearing a fucking maid outfit? Because it’s hella adorable.”

Now it was her turn to blush.

“Anyways, we may not know how this works, but more brainpower wouldn’t hurt. Kat, can you get to work from your end trying to figure shit out about this?” Matt asked. “I think I fell into this puddle by the dumpsters behind my apartment and somehow it was a portal here or some shit. We had to get real close just to talk to you.”

“This might be a dumbass question, but didja try jumping in yet?”

He stared at the phone in his hand, eyes widening, then flashing over to look at the alley.

Without another word, he dashed out from under the protection of the roof, coming to a stop in the puddle. When he didn’t immediately fall through, he started jumping up and down, water and mud splashing out from under his bare feet. He made a loud grunt in frustration, then turned to the other side of the alleyway, at the little bit of sidewalk that was peeking around the corner of West 34^th Street. “Wait, I have an idea!” he cried out, quickly moving to the other side of the alley and hopping up onto the sidewalk. He swiveled around to face the girls, and as he began to run back towards them, Amber pieced together what his idea was going to be.

And he was going too fast.

Matt took a running leap off the curb, and time seemed to slow down. As if she was playing a video game, Amber could almost see a predicted trajectory for the jump, which ended with him diving headfirst into the concrete dumpster foundation. Without any time to think, running on pure adrenaline-fueled instinct, Amber jumped into the alley herself. Matt was just putting out his hands to arrest his fall as Amber intercepted him, redirecting him from a certain concussion and neck trauma. However, the force of the impact into her stomach twisted her around and pushed her down onto her ass-

Nothing.

Nonexistence.

No feeling.

No weight.

No time.

No air.

Sudden panic.

A desperate scramble for purchase.

Then…

Something gave way.

Flow.

Movement.

Current pulling.

Pulling…

Pulling…

Suddenly, with a disorienting jerk, the world snapped back into focus.

Amber was sitting in a puddle in the alleyway behind her apartment, by the dumpsters. It was nighttime, and it was raining heavily. There was no illumination in the alleyway, as the streetlight had gone out. Thunder rumbled in the distance. Her abdomen was sore from where something had hit her, hard.

She blinked.

She looked around and blinked again.

She blinked a third time, for good measure.

Matt was gone.

“What the… fucking… what?”

She blinked yet again, her brain not comprehending what she had just experienced, and how that had somehow led to Matt being absent. Was that…

“Holy shit… did Matt actually go home?” Amber mumbled to herself, trying to sort out what she was feeling. “Was that the sensation of being nearby when interdimensional travel happens? Is that how it fucking feels to be on the edge of a black hole, spiraling in but not past the event horizon? Kat, did you see what the fuck happened with-?” She whipped her head around to where Kat was standing under the protection of the apartments on the floor above.

Except Kat wasn’t there.

Amber unglued herself from the mud holding her ass and skirt in place and stood up. “Kat? The shit? Where are you?”

The only reply she got back was the howling of wind and the patter of rain.

Going back under the safety of the apartment garage roof, Amber gave the area another sweep before pulling her phone out of her hidden pocket. She quickly pulled up Kat’s contact info and gave her a call. The phone didn’t even try to establish a connection, it immediately beeped three times and flashed the words ‘No Service’ at her.

Wait… isn’t this what happened with…

She shook her head to clear her thoughts. Maybe she, or they, were back in the apartment? Maybe they’d left her sitting outside in a mud puddle while having a hallucinogenic trip because something really important had come up? That had to be it. She had no other ideas, so she quickly ran to the rear door of her apartment and tried opening it.

The handle didn’t budge.

She gave a loud, exasperated sigh, as if for another person’s benefit despite her being alone. Clearly, someone had been idly messing with the door handle lock again. She didn’t have the key for that lock, only for the main deadbolt above it, which meant that Kat’s recurring fidgeting with the lock would often make her go all the way around to the front door, where her key actually worked in both locks. She hadn’t brought any keys out with her, in any case, so it’s not like that mattered now.

She knocked on the door a few times, hard enough for someone in the bathroom or kitchen to hear, hopefully. Maybe Kat got a sudden bad case of diarrhea? Surely that was why she had run inside without her. Surely.

It… can’t be the other thing…

Her heart was pounding. She had to get inside her apartment, prove that what happened wasn’t what she thought it was, but she didn’t know how.

Wait, the front door might be unlocked? Maybe Jess and Fer left it unlocked or something?

She didn’t have much confidence in that, but she decided to run to the other side and try it anyway. She clambered up the stairs to the second floor apartment landing, then ran around to the wide, main staircase that led out to the front lawn of the apartment complex, which was illuminated by a few bright porch lights and one or two dim streetlights trying to shine through the sheets of rain. Jumping down the stairs nearly two at a time and nearly slipping on her muddy boot-soles, she dashed around the side of the staircase to the front door of apartment 103.

Locked again.

She pounded on the door of the dark apartment, but an icy feeling was gripping her chest.

She pulled her phone back out and tried once again to call Kat.

No service.

Her breathing was speeding up.

Short, shallow, shaky.

Kat.

I have to find Kat.

If this really was… what she thought it was… then Kat would still be at home.

Seven blocks north, one block east, on 41^st and Pecos.

Amber just started running. Her big, cumbersome rain boots splashed through puddles on the sidewalk, adrenaline helping to lift and drop them with speed she wouldn’t have managed normally. She nearly slipped and ate shit a few times thanks to the slick surface on which she ran, but managed to just barely catch herself each time. She barely paid attention to intersections, with only a slight glance left and right to make sure there was no obvious traffic coming her way. Thankfully, with how miserable the conditions outside were, it seemed to have dissuaded many people from driving that night.

As she rounded the corner of 41^st and Maple, she saw Kat’s place, a small two-story cottage that had been converted into two separate apartments, one on each floor. Part of her wanted Kat to be there, to help her, but another part of her was terrified of what Kat’s presence at her apartment would actually mean about where exactly she was.

She used the last dregs of her adrenaline-fueled energy to push her way up the stairs that wrapped around the side of the building. Before she could knock on the door, it opened for her.

“Alli- no, wait, Amber?! How the fuck-??”

Before Kat could finish speaking, Amber's legs and emotions simply couldn't take it anymore, and she collapsed into her arms with a wailing cry.