"Wait, Yuna - what are you doing?" I gasped, my voice trembling as the indigo ink on my thighs pulsed with a rhythmic, blinding light. The vibration was so intense now that my teeth were literally chattering. Every time I breathed, tiny violet sparks danced in front of my eyes, smelling of ozone and burnt sugar.

  "Hush," Yuna commanded. Her voice was uncharacteristically steady, though her face was the color of a ripe tomato. "I'm your Unnie, Kurumi. Your big sister. You're acting like an electrical capacitor right now. If we don't bleed this charge off, you're going to have a neural blowout. Your brain will literally fry."

  She stood up and, with zero hesitation, reached for the hem of her own cropped t-shirt. She pulled it over her head, tossing it aside, followed quickly by her skirt. My Kenji-brain hit a critical error. Sure, she'd slept naked next to me. Sure, she'd jumped into the shower with me naked. But those were just typical girl things, they didn't mean anything. Yuna stood there in the dim light of the foyer, completely nude, her amber eyes reflecting the purple arcs crawling over my skin.

  "Y-Yuna!" I squeaked in protest.

  "It's physics, Kurumi! Clothes are insulators! They trap the static." She was already rummaging through the cabinet, pulling out a large bottle of high-end, lavender-scented body oil. She looked back at me, her gaze sharp. "Sweater off. Panties, too. Everything."

  I was too weak to argue. My fingers fumbled with the wool, and the moment the fabric slid away, a dozen tiny violet sparks jumped to the wallpaper. I slid down the panties, standing there shivering and glowing like a broken neon sign.

  "On the yoga mat. Face up," she muttered.

  I collapsed onto the mat, feeling utterly defenseless as I stared up at the ceiling of Yuna's apartment. Then, I felt the warm, heavy splash of oil hit my chest, then my stomach, then my thighs. It was slick and viscous, coating my new skin in a shimming layer of lavender-scented conductor.

  Then, Yuna lowered herself onto me.

  The sensation was catastrophic. Because she had coated her entire front in the oil, she slid over me with zero friction. The moment our chests met, a massive *CRACKLE* filled the room. Indigo and violet sparks showered the floor around us, but Yuna didn't pull away. She let out a sharp, choked moan, her body jerking against mine as she absorbed the first, violent wave of the discharge.

  I was forced to look right at her. Her face was inches from mine, her amber eyes wide and glazed with a mixture of intense concentration, pain, and ... something much darker that I couldn't put a name on. My own body responded instantly, my nipples hardening, a hot lust burning within my core.

  "Don't ... don't look away," she panted, her voice vibrating against my lips.

  As she began to move, using her entire body weight to ground the energy, the friction of our oiled skin created a different kind of heat. I felt her nipples - taut and sensitive from the static - rubbing firmly against my own. Every slide of her torso sent a fresh jolt of white-hot electricity through my core.

  Yuna wasn't just acting as a heat sink. Driven by the frantic energy between us, she hooked her leg over mine, my thigh pressing firmly into her crotch. I felt her breath hitch, becoming a series of ragged, wet gasps as she began to grind herself rhythmically against my leg. I wanted more, this wasn't enough, my body yearned for pleasure.

  I watched her face come undone. Her head rolled back, her throat arching as she let high-pitched, desperate sounds. A massive surge of violet light exploded from my skin, arcing through both of us, and Yuna's entire body went rigid. She let out a long, shuddering cry, her hips bucking hard against my thigh one last time before the energy dumped out of me in one final, teeth-rattling pulse.

  The silence that followed was heavy, broken only by our synchronized, frantic breathing.

  The glowing ink faded, retreating back into my pores. The air stopped tasting like ozone. We lay there on the mat, bodies still tangled together, the oil making our limbs feel heavy and liquid. I could feel a new, warm wetness on my thigh that definitely hadn't come from the bottle. But my brain, desperate to survive the sheer awkwardness - clung to the only logical explanation it could find.

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  It's got to be a reaction of the electricity and the oil, I thought, my heart hammering against my ribs. It's just chemistry. Or maybe the bottle leaked when we fell? Yeah. Totally normal.

  Yuna eventually slid to my side, her shoulder and hips pressed against mine. We lay there together, both of us completely nude, drenched in oil and sweat, staring up at the dark ceiling. The only night came from the neon glow of the city filtering through the window, reflecting off our shimmering, exhausted bodies.

  "You're ... you're grounded," Yuna whispered into the dark, her voice still shaky.

  "Yeah," I managed to say, my own voice sounding far away. "Grounded. Better."

  We lay there for long minutes - the F-Rank failure and her Unnie - the silence between us vibrating harder than my electrical storm had.

  "Kurumi," Yuna finally gasped once more, her voice sounding small. "That wasn't 0.8 kilowatts. That wasn't even close."

  "I know," I whispered. I felt hollowed out, but in a clean way. Like a pipe that had finally been flushed. "I don't understand. The test ... the dummy."

  "The test was in a clinical room by yourself, right?" Yuna sat up, her movements slow as she wiped a smear of oil from her collarbone. She looked down at me, her amber eyes searching. "But at that restaurant, people were watching you. They were wanting you to be a Super. Wanting you to be more than F-Rank. And then that guy reached for you..." She trailed off, a strange look passing over her face. "I've never heard of a super with powers that depend on people's perception, but maybe? We'd have to prove it - run more tests, controlled experiments."

  I shrugged helplessly from the floor, not sure I followed her logic.

  "I don't think you understand, Kurumi. If you feed off their gaze ... The more they look, the more powerful you become. That's ... potentially unlimited power." She let out a high-pitched maniacal laugh, cutting it off a few seconds later as she realized I wasn't joining in, the expression of confusion on my face clearly stopping her amusement.

  She stood up, seemingly unbothered by her own nudity now that the emergency was over, and headed toward the bathroom. "Come on in and shower with me. Then I'll try to find you something to wear that ... well, that isn't a single-use meme."

  Blushing, I followed her into the bathroom. This was just what women did, right? I tried to face the wall, avoiding looking at Yuna's body as we quickly showered off the baby oil, but it was impossible for us not to brush our bodies together in the tight confines of the shower. My body was sending so many unfamiliar signals, flushing red, having trouble breathing, but I did my best to ignore them. Yuna was the only person I knew in this strange world and I didn't want to scare her away by acting like a man, by spoiling things.

  I have to act natural, like a woman, or else I'm really screwed. Apparently women in this world are a lot more open with their friends than I would have guessed, even from anime. It's fine, it's just their culture. I can't let myself be weird about it.

  After the shower, I toweled dry and stepped out of the bathroom. Yuna was waiting for me with a fresh pile of clothes. This time, the white t-shirt read "Lilith's Lesson" and I blinked twice as I stared at it. On it, a purple-haired succubus with improbable proportions wearing a tattered school uniform stood, surrounded by occult circles. She could have been this body's sister with how similar we looked to one another. As I raised an eyebrow at Yuna, she shrugged apologetically.

  "Pretty much all of my t-shirts are porn, sorry. Well, not sorry. I'm a woman of great culture and I'm not ashamed of my choice in entertainment. But ... you know." Then she handed over a black pleated mini-skirt, the kind that looked almost like a school uniform. "It's the only thing I have with an elastic waist that might fit you. Your hips are ... uhm. More generous than mine."

  Yuna had trouble meeting my eyes as I pulled on the outfit, groaning as I did. It was ridiculous. The t-shirt spread across my chest, tight over my breasts and I could see my nipples through the thin white fabric. And the skirt ... my hips, wider than Yuna's, stretched the fabric to its absolute limit. The elastic groaned and the hem - already short - rode up so high that it was essentially a belt. If I stood perfectly still, it covered the tops of my thighs. If I took a single step, my bare privates were visible to the world.

  "It's ... a look" Yuna coughed, turning to her computer. "Very Street-Idol of you. Anyway, we need to talk logistics. You need money for real clothes - I can help buy a few, but I'm not exactly rich. My friend, Sora, owns the pizza restaurant downstairs - Za Bay Pizza. She's always looking for delivery drivers willing to stand up to D-Rank thugs. It's a start."

  "Delivery?" I looked down at myself - at the ridiculous outfit with the micro-mini skirt, then over at the ludicrous four-inch heels I'd worn earlier. "In this?"

  "We'll find you some sneakers," Yuna replied, waving away my concerns as her fingers flew across the keyboard. "But first, we need to claim your digital footprint."