Makoto learns of Kyoko's catastrophic changes

Makoto Naegi had been all the way across campus when he first got wind of Kyoko's bizarre new social media presence. He'd begun making his way to the library even before he got the first flirty, thinly-veiled sex invitation he'd ever received. That had been skipping ahead a few stages in a relationship the lucky student hadn't realized he was part of. Had Kyoko ever even texted an emoji before today?

Makoto was no detective, but he had a responsibility to investigate. This was about his responsibility to his friend, he reminded himself. Still, his heart was pumping as he stared at his messaging app, his eyes tracing the panting emojis he'd been sent and his brain trying without success to form a mental image of Kyoko making that face. He was so caught up in that struggle that when his phone buzzed with another notification, he felt a guilty jump.

This time, the text was from Sayaka. What would he do if he opened up his app and saw a message like that from his most famous female friend, as well? What would he have to believe? An epidemic? A widespread hack? ... A popular phase? Thankfully, her message was more like her usual. It had a praying emoji begging him to hurry to the library, but that was it.

When he arrived, based on the social media posts he'd been watching, he was expecting to find a bizarrely bleach-blonde Kyoko. When he saw the balloons scattered all throughout the library, he'd started to suspect that wouldn't be the case. However, there wasn't a sign of any party going on here... In fact, there was no Kyoko to meet instead.

Instead, there was only Sayaka, standing with her hands folded in front of her lap, discretely keeping her skirt in place. Besides the strange gesture, the only unusual thing about her was her face; she had a look of exhausted frustration that she was carefully correcting to a presentable look of worry as Makoto arrived. More noticeably, she had an X of light scratches across her ordinarily magazine-ready face. She looked like she'd lost either a tough encounter with an animal or a small scrape with a comic-book character. "Oh, thank God you're here!" she called, waving him over with one hand while keeping the other in place.

Makoto waved to her and approached, unable to hide a wince from looking at her face. "Sayaka! Is everything okay in here? Does that, uh... does it hurt?"

"Oh, it's mostly fine now. It's not too noticable, is it?" she asked, beginning to sweat when she didn't hear him respond. "Ahah... I'm sure it'll be fine with a little makeup, right? N-no biggie..."

"Sayaka, what's going on? It looks like you were attacked, and this place looks like... Actually, I'm not sure what to say it looks like. What are those-"

Sayaka saw the gaudy chain of ribbons he was looking at on the floor. Her big blue eyes widened and her legs moved into action with urgency, zipping her over to the item he'd indicated. Using only her feet so she wouldn't have to bend over, she began massing the chain into a neat pile, making sure the very end of it ended up buried. "Don't worry about me. Everything's actually much better than it was five or ten minutes ago. I finally got Kyoko back to normal, only..."

"Only?"

"Well, she got a little aggressive with me, and now she's up there. In her box."

"... Huh?"

Keeping one hand folded on her lap, Sayaka carefully pointed to the top of the bookshelf. On top of it, barely visible in the shadowy part of the library, was a cardboard box with Kyoko's name written on it in painted black letters, decorated with crude paw prints. As soon as Makoto's eyes fell on it, two fuzzy little peaks rose from the top of it, followed by two bright purple eyes, lit in the darkness. And before Makoto could react, the cardboard box was shunted roughly from the bookcase to the floor as its sole occupant sprung from the high bookshelf.

There was a crash as the nearby bookcases rocked dangerously and a few books toppled off. Makoto had been knocked flat on his back, his head luckily cushioned by falling into the pile of colorful handkerchiefs Sayaka had just organized.

On top of him... It was Kyoko in her third unusual state of the evening, as mind-blowing as any of the others Makoto might have seen if he'd arrived thirty minutes earlier. Making no effort to hide herself from the young man, the woman straddling over him had Kyoko's face, her hair (only frayed out a bit more wildly at the ends), and the same body (which he only knew from seeing her in a swimsuit once before). The really crazy thing was how she was dressed, or rather, how she wasn't. The only clothes protecting her modesty were fuzzy stickers: black kitty paw prints over the tip of each breast and a patch of black fur only just large enough to hide her pubic hair between her legs. Her back was hidden from Makoto's view, but Sayaka could see that a twitching black cat tail was inserted as a plug in her ass. These cat features were accompanied by a black cat-ear headband, matching oversized paw gloves and short boots, although the paw fingers each tipped with tiny claws. The final detail worth noting was a bright red collar she wore with both a jingling bell and her school ID card dangling from it, displaying her name...

"Kyoko... Kittygiri?" Makoto muttered, shaking the stars from his head as he read it. He had a lot to take in, but the card was the first thing dangling in his face. As he regained his senses, he'd come to see the dangling card twist and reverse, allowing him to see "If lost, return to MAKOTO NAEGI" written on the reverse... and, just past that, her perky, barely-covered breasts.

"Nyakoto Nyaegi, nyaaa," Kyoko answered him. Her eyes were big and bright, but strangely unclear in their emotion. It was even harder to guess what was going through her head once she brought her face down close to his and began lapping at him with her tongue, ignoring his sputtered protests which only grew as her affectionate gesture threatened to approach his lips. "Mmm... I don't smell other kitties on you. That's because you're a good master, and I'm your only pretty kitty, nya." Her tongue brushed him along with her signature lilac-colored braid.

Sayaka carefully considered if she wanted to get close to Makoto looking up from a low angle, but decided he needed her help. As she approached, however, Kyoko underwent a stark transformation, arching her back so her tail was in the air and hissing with a furious expression. The idol withdrew, instead picking the notebook up from where it had been discarded on the floor. It was decorated with all cutesy paw prints. Naturally, all of the writing was in Sayaka's handwriting: as precious as the idea of an Ultimate Kitty Detective was, there'd be no way the class pet could write her own name. "Kyoko was really mixed up when I got here, but I fixed her by filling in these prompts. I think this is related to something dangerous she was researching." Sayaka couldn't tell if Makoto had the bandwidth to listen to her, but she wanted to do something to prove she'd been helpful, regardless. "Ahem. 'My name should be Kyoko Kittygiri. My hair should be topped off by my fuzzy ears. My gloves should be soft so I can hug Nyakoto, but sharp so I can fight off Sayaknya...' and, so they are! Everything's back to normal. I know you can't keep her on a leash, but can't you at least trim her claws?"

Makoto had been taking a moment to reach a point where he could listen. Kyoko had been slowly circling her way around him, rubbing every surface of his prone body with her own pale, exposed flesh or obscene prop tail. Makoto wanted to be a gentleman, but there really wasn't any way to avoid peeking through his fingers as she entered his field of vision from around the side of his head, culminating in an eye-popping view of her underside and her occupied hole, granted modesty only by the very thing fit into it that dangled below her. Having finished her nuzzling, she'd begun kneading, plopping back onto him on all fours. Her concerningly tipped claws massaged into the chest of Naegi's clothes, as if making a comfortable resting place for her. While a part of Naegi couldn't help but imagine what a cozy nap with the beautiful classmate who'd apparently become both his girlfriend and his pet in the same bizarre thirty minutes would be like...

He had enough presence of mind to hear Sayaka finish rattling off her handiwork. "Sayaka, that isn't Kyoko's name, and those obviously aren't the right details. Is anything else written in that book?"

"Oh... you're right! It says 'the Popup is targeting me. It's changing me in ways I don't understand. To fight it, I'm trying to make a record of important details about myself. It's the only way I can hold on to who I am.' But that's strange! I wasn't messing around. Those are the right details about Kyoko, right?"

"N-no!" Makoto called back as Kyoko curled onto his chest, nuzzling her cheek against it.

Finally, something seemed to sharpen about Kyoko's expression. Her jaw began to hang slightly open, revealing tiny fangs that matched her current appearance. She looked at Makoto's face in horror, then up to Sayaka's. "No! I'm not supposed to be a cat, Sayaknya. I'm supposed to be master's pretty kitty. Nyakoto feeds me milk from my saucer and I jump up on his bed every morning nya. I give him plenty of kitty kissies and always let him pet my silly kitty pussy nyaaaa~!" As the emotion left her face, replaced by a vapid unreadability, Kyoko made a show of flexibly leaning her head down to access her own thigh in a crouched position. She began grooming herself shamelessly, keeping her contented eyes locked on those of her master below her.

"Well, there you have it," Sayaka said, rolling her eyes with an expression that said "what can you do?" but expressed no urgency.

Makoto gulped, trying not to stare at the image in front of him. Something was wrong with Kyoko... no, not just Kyoko. Sayaka too. Sayaka was acting like this was normal, but Kyoko had definitely never been like this. Why couldn't Sayaka remember, when Makoto himself could remember every detail of Kyoko clearly? "Maybe... this is my good luck?" he muttered pensively, although any onlooker might think he was talking about the attractive, loyal, and nearly-naked woman on his lap.

Speaking of his lap... Makoto could tell there wasn't much more he could take of this, and Kyoko could, too. As she felt something begin to press against her lower body, she looked at Makoto with curled eyes and an out-of-character grin that showed her sharp teeth. Color had risen to her face at an alarming rate. "Feeling frisky, Master? Let's make a litter, nya!"

"Sayaka, p-pass me the notebook, quick! I can remember what Kyoko's supposed to be like! I can... still fix this!"

The idol looked surprised, but she passed it to him. For reasons still unrevealed to him, she dropped the paw-decorated notebook and pen on the floor and kicked it over instead of walking over and handing it down.

Makoto grabbed the pen and stared at the page, trying to twist out from under his increasingly aggressive friend pinning him down. As she playfully pawed at him and purred, Makoto contorted himself into position to read and write. Although he knew he had to act fast, it was hard... The longer he stayed in this situation, the more he felt like his brain wanted to accept what Sayaka was asserting as the truth. Was there really any harm in having Kyoko as a happy, contented pet/girlfriend?

Then, he remembered that inexplicable panic she'd shown for a split second when she'd begun to deny "Sayaknya" before. There was a real Kyoko in there, and her last name wasn't supposed to be "Kittygiri." Makoto might be her last shot at getting back to herself, an intelligent, reliable detective...

And one who didn't shamelessly grind against her "master's" unfortunately erect rod through his pants while their friend was watching. "C'mooon, Master. Your kitty's in heat and she wants to play 'family,' nyaaa~! Don't be a pussy, nya!" the ordinarily cool-headed detective's voice sang in a strange teasing affectation, totally unlike herself.