Chihiro Fujisaki, about to undergo some unplanned development

(All characters appearing in this story are over 18, adjusted from the canon work as required. While loosely based on Danganronpa S: Ultimate Summer Camp, the canon of this story will vary. Spoilers for Danganronpa may appear throughout.)

A vast, glinting beach, blue waves all the way to the horizon, and an assorted cast of blossomed young men and women of all shapes and sizes, all dressed for the beach. This was the kind of vacation most students could never imagine, nonetheless pay for: a virtual vacation to Jabberwock Island for its senior Ultimate classes, courtesy of Hope's Peak Academy and a handful of its brightest programmers, engineers, and tech wizards.

It wouldn't be all fun and games, of course. While on this island, the students were expected to develop their talents, although they had no idea yet what that meant. Still, they had fifty digital days of beautiful, simulated summer weather to figure it out. Needless to say, even if the geniuses behind this simulation hadn't put in a million safeguards against **** or ****, the idea of conflict itself seemed foreign here.

One of the few students not yet changed into a swimsuit, the Ultimate Programmer, Chihiro Fujisaki, stood back at the road watching the others. He took in a deep breath of salty air, then turned on his heel, disappearing alone into what would, for anyone looking, appear to be a shimmering hole opened in thin air.

Chihiro, one of the handful of Administrators granted special access in this world, had a responsibility to run final diagnostics on the systems before he relaxed. Of course, he didn't have to do it alone, but he was on first shift for it. Someone had to be, and through a mixture of his friendly nature and an aversion to conflict, Chihiro wasn't the type to complain about responsibility.

Still... the young man couldn't help but be a bit despondent, away from the sun of the beach. After all, he was still wearing his school uniform. Even if he wasn't the only person in this world wearing his school uniform, he'd feel a little silly...

That was, of course, because his school uniform included a poofy, pleated high-waist skirt, a cute, long-sleeved top, tall, dark stockings, and cute Mary Janes. His brown hair was long for a boy, his skin was pale, and his build was slight, in spite of the training he'd started recently. There was a time when dressing like this would have given him confidence: his soft nature and timidity, which made him targets of bullying as a kid, were likable charm points when all his friends thought he was a young woman. Now, however, he was eighteen. He'd already revealed his secret to a select few supportive friends... and, while it was scary to imagine taking the spotlight in front of not only his class, but at least two other classes, he was ready to move into a new phase of his life. He was ready to live as a man!

... Theoretically. Eventually.

After all, Chihiro had every opportunity to program himself a male uniform in this world. Even better: everyone was in a swimsuit! What if he'd programmed in a pair of swim trunks with no top and had a big "tada" reveal to everyone when they'd appeared on the beach? That would have been-

"Awful!" Chihiro squealed to himself, covering his steaming red face and squirming despite being alone. "I imagined it so many times, but it's useless...!" He took a deep breath and stabilized himself, placing one of his dainty hands to the collar of his uniform. Then, he clapped his palms to his cheeks, psyching himself up. "It's okay to take it one step at a time, as long as I get where I'm going. I can be strong...! I'll do it before the vacation's over for sure."

Back to the task at hand. The sooner Chihiro finished his duty, the sooner he could get on the beach with his friends. Not that this place was too bad, all things considered! In this space, there wasn't a need for décor, but walls and floors were still comfortingly illuminated by soft white light in the darkness, since the virtual consoles needed to be operated by humans.

The first thing he needed to do was bypass security and access his account. Most Administrators did this through typing on a sort of floating keyboard, but Chihiro had rigged his own access with an alternate method. By interacting with the AI he was programming, named Alter Ego, he ought to be able to manage most of it by voice.

... Now that he thought of it, where was Alter Ego? It was weird that he hadn't announced himself since Chihiro had entered. The programmer thought it'd be just his luck if the program he'd tested ten times by now didn't run under the actual server load... No point in worrying about that now. He'd just access the system manually. He booted up the virtual console...

"H-huh?"

A text field should have appeared on the virtual screen for him to enter the Administrator universal code. Instead, clicking that button had taken him to what looked like a match-three puzzle game. "Is this... Chiaki's security system?" he mused, considering it might have been the work of the Ultimate Gamer, an Administrator who'd helped design the virtual world aspects. "Did she overwrite everyone else's access by mistake? Geez... B-but hold on. If this is Chiaki's security system... w-why does her avatar look like me?"

It was true: in the bottom right corner of the virtual screen, next to what looked like a score meter, there was something that looked like a cartoon representation of Chihiro. It had his big, round eyes, his swishy brown hair and skirt... it'd be almost a perfect recreation if it wasn't for one thing.

Chihiro gasped. "Chiaki is playing a game with me in it... w-with b-b-boobs?!"

They weren't huge, but they were there: a valley of cleavage peeking from the neck of the avatar's open uniform shirt. It was too cartoonish to be very provocative, but it definitely suggested that whoever made it thought Chihiro was a woman.

"A kinda shameless woman, too!" Chihiro muttered to himself, growing red with a flurry of emotions. "Is this how Chiaki sees me?! I..." The young man sniffed, realizing he was starting to tear up and feeling ashamed, even though he was alone. "W-well, I'm not gonna cry! I know. If Chiaki is gonna make fun of me, I'll... I'll beat her game and mess with her console! Just a little to get back at her, eheh!" The young man giggled and smiled, feeling in a better mood as he imagined pulling a prank on his friend.

He clicked the big, flashing "START" button. He'd never played this game, of course, but you didn't become a programming nerd or work with the Ultimate Gamer without running across a match three puzzle. Chihiro thought he was actually pretty good at them. How hard could it be?

...

"H-how... how hard could it be?!?!" Chihiro wailed on his lonesome, now actually bawling huge tears as his dreams of getting through this strange security system crashed with every gem he failed to crush. It wasn't actually a match-three or a Tetris clone but some unholy combination of genres. "Th-the fall speed is too fast! These items make no sense! Th-th-there are garbage blocks too?! No human can win this!!"

Since he had no hope of clearing the level, he was free to come to a separate realization. Of course Chiaki would program her security system like this! You'd have to be the Ultimate Gamer to get access to her system: nobody else could possibly clear this unfair game!

Before he knew it, he was looking at a lose screen. He was surprised to see his avatar apparently wasn't programmed with a losing pose. Even though Chihiro had just lost, the female avatar was celebrating and jumping in place like he'd won.

A message appeared on the screen. Wiping away his tears, Chihiro almost didn't bother to read it, determined to go and tell his "friend" her prank wasn't funny. Before he tore his eyes from the screen, however, he realized the message didn't look like a typical "password denied" or "account locked" scrawl. He decided to read it more carefully, out loud:

"Welcome to Gem Ladies. You've been chosen for an exciting opportunity to beta test this game in a virtual world. W-while exciting games and opportunities await you, we've selected your first failure penalty automatically based on personalized calibration. Press the button to continue..."

The button read "Ultimate Erotic Development."

Chihiro had a bad feeling about the button, but he was also growing concerned that what he was seeing might have nothing to do with Chiaki, after all. The idea of the straight-faced Ultimate Gamer pulling a prank like this was far-fetched to begin with. Disguising it as malware would be too irresponsible to imagine. "There are so many failsafes in place... and I don't wanna interrupt everyone else's beach fun," he admitted, even though the idea of Chiaki mad about being pulled out of the sun was hard to imagine. So, he pressed it-

"STOOOOP!!" a voice he didn't recognize shouted at him from the screen, as though the world itself had decided to protest his rash decision. "Aw heck, ya pwessed it! What're ya thinkin, both of you?!"

It wasn't that he didn't know the voice, Chihiro realized. He'd heard it before, but rarely. It was the whiny, cutesy wail of Usami, a program Chihiro had created for routine administrative purposes. Appearing now on the screen as a cute white cartoon bunny in a magical girl outfit, its ordinary helpful and sunny personality seemed at odds with the obscenities it was yelling now. Also, who else was it talking about...?

Of course, there was a second figure: the Chihiro avatar he'd seen before. In front of his eyes, the character disturbingly morphed into a half-white half-black shape, like a bear doll. For whatever reason, it was laughing obnoxiously and holding its belly. Its voice was somehow more obnoxious than its laugh. "Gyahaha! Too late, I already got her! This sucker's mine, which means this whole world is mine! The first beta test in a virtual world, my name's gonna go down in company history!!"

Chihiro didn't have to wait for an introduction: the character's names were displayed next to them, USAMI and MONOKUMA. What the young man wanted, really, was an explanation. He began to demand one, but found himself flinching back as USAMI started shouting again.

"You numbskuw, I'm tewwin' ya, ya messed up! Heck, what's with this dumb wabbit's- There!" With a beep, the voice changed to something that sounded more like a serious woman's, probably in her twenties and clearly pissed off. "Does this guy look like a lady to you?!"

"The hell are you talkin' about?" MONOKUMA groaned. "Well, okay. She looks more like a cute little girl than a mature woman, but the bioscan says she's eighteen."

"Uhuh," USAMI humored the bear, tapping her foot and crossing her stubby arms. "And what does the bioscan say about that thing between his legs, hm?"

MONOKUMA went silent. He seemed to be reviewing something only the two of them could see... Then, he gulped. With a beep, the bear was speaking in a shrill, younger woman's voice, sounding whipped. "Dammit...! I fucked up, huh? Sh-she's really not a woman... But she already picked a punishment! You know the rules: to seal the loophole, the player isn't allowed to undo the first punishment, no matter what. It's gotta happen. No, in fact, it's gonna happen... any second now."

USAMI turned from her counterpart to Chihiro, making eye contact that seemed to dispel the notion this baffling scene could be a recorded video or any other kind of prank. "It's okay, kid. I can still fix this and switch it over. You're a guy, right? You should be treating yourself to Custom Girls! That's the cleanest thing for everyone. Hey, picture this: all those hottie friends of yours in swimsuits out there on the beach? Picture getting them to do anything you want them to, look any way you want them to! That's what Custom Girls is all about, and that's what I'm offering. Tap over here, and I'll make everything work out-"

"Wait!" The other, panicking stuffed doll shouted out, her model switching to a version that was shivering and sweating bullets. "Wait, I'm beggin' ya! If you start Custom Girls up now with a punishment from Gem Ladies, everyone's gonna know I fucked up! Better idea: don't tap anywhere! Consent to Gem Ladies by lettin' the time run out! Then we'll do, uh... all the super fun stuff that Gem Ladies implies! I'm sure I can even work with you and find a way to make it like, um... Not awful? I mean, c'mon! Sure, I haven't told you what Gem Ladies is yet, but 'Custom Girls?' Controlling women? Sounds pretty fuckin' misogynist to me..." When that appeal didn't seem to be earning her target's full confidence, MONOKUMA instead fell to her stubby doll knees. "Oh please please pleeease, you have to! If you tap that bunny bitch, it's like you're killing me! My blood, your hands! You're not a murderer, are you? Uh, whoever you are...?"

"Ch-Ch-Chi-" Chihiro tried to speak, unable to get coherent words out as his brain tried to catch up to what he was seeing and being asked to do. His finger started to hover over the bunny.

MONOKUMA screamed. "Fuuuck me, Chichichi, please no!"

USAMI, clearly more composed, spoke in a voice that carried no less urgency. "Trust me, kid. If you don't click me, you. Will. Regret. It. For the rest of your virtual life, however long that is. Over here. C'mon."