Flat as a Mirror, Thick as a Plank of Wood

Heat. A sweltering heat consumed Anon 47509494's body as he rolled over on the ground. A rudimentary understanding of nuclear power from random browsing on the Internet in the outside world hadn't actually prepared him for the "job" he had taken when he had ended up in Gensokyo's Old Hell; nuclear power plant control. The way it worked was nonsensical, and while the idea behind it had been just opening and closing the top hatches while the out-of-sight fuel burns. The Satori that ran the estate above the facility had assured him he'd just cover for Okuu while she went on break and his compensation of food and board would be covered for a while till he found something more permanent. She'd light the fire, go out to play, and he'd enjoy a simple job of maintaining heat levels.

As a pipe burst above him, spraying scalding and contaminated steam into the collapsing maintenance tunnel, Anon thought that perhaps sommething more permanent had found him. The taste of metal crept into his mouth and the rips and tears in his hazmat suit allowed ionizing daggers stab into his flesh. He needed to get to the emergency tool at the end of the hall. Anon thought back to the incident, of how the hexagonal prism on the control arm had grown red hot and deformed, wilting downwards and dripping into the flaming pit below. The control arm followed swiftly after before the claxons had sounded and the screens flashed warnings. It was too little to late by that point when the explosion had rocked the complex.

Anon was crawling, dragging his rapidly degenerating body across the metal grating that charred and melted his suit on his body. His body was leaking something from somewhere, or maybe everywhere. It seeped from the holes in his protective shell, baking and boiling on the floor. The emergency tool was just ahead. A cabinet with what appeared to be another one of those bronze hexagonal prism control rods. It was above him now, the handle tauntingly just out of his reach. Flesh clung desperately to bone as it strained and sloughed off when he pushed himself from the ground. The door was weakly opened and the supplies within fell on top of the suffering Anon.

The instructions were simple enough for his radiation bombarded brain to understand, the special material of the picture book manual resisting thermal meltdown of the air around it. Step 1: remove all coverings on the right arm up to the elbow. 9494 degloved his right arm in more ways than one, forcing him to hold the manual in one hand to avoid staining its pages. Step 2: stick right arm into control rod till unable to push in further. Indeed, the device had a hole in one end and Anon propped the other end against the wall as he leaned all of his weight on his arm and into the hole. Relief washed over the once again covered limb, cool and numbing. Step 3: take the anti-radiation pill. He looked over to another package that had fallen out of the cabinet; a plastic box with a single very large crimson pill in it. Anon clumsily opened it with his free hand, looking the ruby-red medicine over with bleary curiosity. A black sliver in the middle gave off the impression of a pupil, and he took a deep breath before he removed the hood to his suit.

The air cooked his face and burnt his hair instantly, forcing his eyes shut. A single breath evaporated the moisture from his lungs and he hastily shoved the pill down his throat, nearly choking on it before he could properly swallow it. The moment it was down, however, the pain stopped immediately and his eyes shot open, still stained red despite the now quickly mending blood vessels that had burst. The world around him was warping and melting and burning and he felt... fine. Still foggy in the head, but nothing hurt. The metallic taste in his mouth was gone. Anon sat leaned against the wall, watching the flames grow with a serious lack of concern. He could feel his hair rubbing against the molten wall behind him and guessed that not all of it had burned off after all. Slag from the cabinet above him dripped onto his suit and 9494's body merely acknowledged the weight of it on his shoulder. Something told him the suit was probably not much use to him anymore, especially because of its new looseness around his body. It must've been torn to shreds.

Anon stripped himself of the protective gear in a daze, not minding the flames lapping and licking at his boots. As he stripped, the clothing underneath charred away and fell to ash off his frame, leaving his chest bare to the open air. There was some bump on his sternum that distracted him from the many differences in his torso such as the paleness of his skin, the narrowness of his shoulders, and the light pink nipples that capped his now much softer pecs. A newly dainty and not-decayed hand traced up his tight stomach and poked experimentally at the growing presumed tumor on the center of his chest. Despite the rapid expansion and the fact his suit was now wrapped around his ankles and leaving basically everything below his waste exposed after the clothes burnt away, 9494 was unperturbed. When crimson began to break the skin, he was unperturbed. When a ruby red eye fully blossomed on his chest, he was unperturbed. Anon merely kept tapping on its unyielding surface, marveling at the way it shined and reflected the raging flames around him. By now, the hazmat suit had melted and charred off completely, and he absentmindedly kicked off its remains. Something was itching Anon's nape.

He wandered around the collapsing maintenance tunnels, often going in circles or stopping and staring at nothing in particular. The itching at his nape had reached down to his back, and he often found himself having to blow something out of the view of his eyes and whipping his much longer and pitch black hair around. The dainty hand found something else to mess around with; his rapidly diminishing manhood. Each tug and caress sent shivers up 9494's spine and caused the developing wings poking from his shoulders to shudders and twitch. The changing man's breath quickened, a heat from his lungs exhaled into the environment with increasing intensity despite the air around him cooling down rapidly. At a certain point he couldn't continue his aimless walking. The tugging sensation had become to much to ignore, and now he dumbly pleasured himself in the middle of the hall. The heat from his breath washed over his mosquito bites and sent them tingling in delight. Returning oxygen in the facility ignited at the edges of his mouth as his eyes blankly stared down to his nether region.

At a certain point, Anon was grinding against his fingers, pushing the changes further into his pelvic floor. Large wings flapped along with the new Hell Raven's desperate humping, and soon the finger tips entered a newly formed snatch. The sensitive lips clenched the around the third knuckle on her middle and ring fingers, wet sounds joining the pants reverberating off the cooled walls. She leaned on her control rod, air around her glowing blue with Cherenkov Radiation. So close... so close to... what? It was on the tip of her tongue, but the idea escaped her. It wasn't till 9494 was right on the edge that she was interrupted.

"Unyu?"

Anon stopped and found herself snapped back to a semi-consciousness, fingers slipping out of herself as she looked toward the sound. It was a large lady. Very large. Big wings that blocked most of tunnel. Pretty clothes. Humongous chest with a large crimson eye in the center. Okuu cocked her head in confusion at the scene in front of her, and then looked back over her shoulder to a now shocked Kasha whose tails twitched in shock.

"Is this mirror broken?"

Before her companion could even answer, Reiuji Utsuho walked up to her supposed reflection and reached out, pinching the smaller Hell Raven's cheek. That didn't make much sense. Not only was the reflection wrong, but it wasn't following her movements and she could even touch it!

"....Whatta you doing?"

Oh, it even spoke in her voice! What a weird reflection! Another hand smacked hers as Orin came over with a scowl and Okuu let the small clone of her go. The smaller Utsuho rubbed her cheek that had been strongly grasped between two fingers. The Kasha pushed her large companion back a bit, and looked back to the new youkai with concern in her eyes. Finding something like this after the nuclear meltdown wasn't expected. She thought they'd find just a charred corpse of the newly employed human, but this....

"Are you okay?"

"I'm fine!", Okuu chimed from behind Orin cheerily. The feline youkai shot a quick disproving look to the original Utsuho, causing her wings to fold closer in behind her back from the wither look. Anon nodded her head at the concerned nice kitty lady, eliciting a sigh from her.

"Uh... who are you?"

9494 opened her mouth to answer, but she choked on the reply. It was... something? She did have a name. Everyone had a name. However, trying to remember it was quickly giving her a headache. A tense moment passed and Orin's increasingly furrowed brows and worried eyes made the new girl panic even more. It'd be another length of silence before the elephant's foot in the room spoke up.

"Of course she does! Her name is Reiuji Utsuho!", chirped the real Reiuji Utsuho. Orin turned back to scold her, but soon found herself barged past as Okuu shoved her out of the way. The former Anon was confronted with the woman she had become an approximation of. Confusion etched itself on the smaller one's face while the bigger one simply beamed at her like the Sun. Her name was Reiuji Utsuho?

"My name is Reiuji Utsuho?", the little Hell Raven asked shakily. The giant Hell Raven nodded affirmingly, blocking the Kasha behind her from coming between them with her wings. The utter confidence in Utsuho's assertion made her mind fog become thicker and her eyes became even more confused. The original walked closer to the trembling imperfect copy, arms outstretched as she picked her up and pulled her into a tight reassuring hug. It was then that their third eyes touched one another.

"Unyu!"

The shocked exclamation came from both simultaneously as an electric shock was shared between the eyes in their chests. Information was exchanged within a moment short enough to have basically not existed. Instantly, the new Reiuji Utsuho's mind was filled with an encyclopedic knowledge of nuclear physics and memories not originally hers. To make space, everything else was incinerated in an instant. Her chest eye gleamed and another shock transferred just a little more.

"Sometimes, you go by Okuu too!"

The new Okuu's chest budded, beginning to press into the old Okuu's breasts. The growth wasn't much, merely bringing the small puffy nipples out into legitimate boobs and solidifying her femininity. Her wingspan strecthed out a little more, feathers lengthening slightly, and her feet came slightly closer to touching the floor. She cooed into the crook of the other's neck, suddenly more comfortable (and much dumber) than she had ever been in her life. By the time Orin could finally intervene, the fission was over and Okuu and her reflection smiled blissfully at her from a deep hug. Orin's mouth flapped open and close like a fish out of water.

It was hard to explain the situation in words, but Satori understood perfectly what happened from thought and let out an exasperated huff as Utsuho and Orin sat across from her desk, her pet bird preening a smaller, mentally identical (and quite naked) clone's wings that sat in her plush lap. Well, she was one human employee short, another pet richer, and the facility's meltdown had been stopped. She supposed it wasn't so terrible, and the coming months would prove the trade was worth it with the increased efficiency of the Old Hell of Fires' output. Nobody, however, was more happy about the trade than Okuu her-selves. The pair spent almost all of their time together, Utsuho adoring the company of her imperfect reflection.