The craving to make cosplays as accurate as possible leads some people to curious places and interesting solutions. Pollstory for June
—
Marin Kitagawa had a problem.
It was, in her opinion, a very serious problem. A deep problem, which meant, it was a cosplay problem. The kind of problem normal people might have called “not a problem at all,” which only proved that normal people could not be trusted with art.
She stood in front of the mirror in her room, hands on her hips, turning this way and that while the golden accessories on her costume gave soft little clinks. Gojo had done an amazing job. Of course he had. The top had the exact right cut without being impossible to wear. The skirt flowed in the same layered style as the reference art. The little fake scales along her shoulders had been painted by hand. The jewelry looked like something stolen from a fantasy temple. Even the wig sat perfectly, framing her face in those soft waves that made Alicia look like a noble village girl who was definitely not hiding the fact that she could crush a man with her tail.
That was the problem.
Marin leaned closer to the mirror, narrowed her eyes, and tried to look at herself like she was looking at a screenshot from the game.
Human Alicia looked good. Human Alicia looked really good. Human Alicia was the form Alicia used when she snuck into human villages, all mysterious smiles and innocent little lies, acting like she was just a beautiful traveler who needed a place to stay for the night.
But human Alicia was not real Alicia. That was because the real Alicia was a lamia.
The real Alicia had a long yellow-white tail that curled around pillows, pillars, enemies, and sometimes even people she liked. The real Alicia filled half the screen when she shifted back into her true form. The real Alicia did not walk into a room. She glided into it, took ownership of the floor, and made every chair in the place look like it had personally failed her.
Marin looked down at her legs, her very normal looking legs.
Nice legs, sure. The sort of human legs that shouldn’t raise eyebrows anyway. Useful too. Legs that had served her well for years and had done nothing wrong except be attached to a person trying to cosplay a lamia.
But still, she sighed so hard her earrings shook. “It’s perfect,” she said to the empty room. “It’s literally the perfect wrong Alicia. Which makes it worse.”
She turned again, trying to see if the skirt hid enough. It did. Gojo had designed it cleverly, with enough flow and layers that it suggested Alicia’s silhouette without looking cheap. If she posed right, the photos would look incredible. Anyone else would have been thrilled.
And Marin was thrilled. But she was also deeply bothered.
The little bottle on her desk caught the light when Marin looked at it. Then she looked away. Then she looked at it again, because looking away had not solved anything.
The bottle was small enough to fit in her palm and filled with a thick golden liquid that moved more like syrup than water. The label was printed slightly crooked, and the font looked like someone had asked a fantasy potion shop and a scam email to share custody of a child.
Wan-Ting’s Miracle Potions.
Under that, in cheerful pink letters:
For when monstrous imitation just isn’t enough!
Marin picked up the bottle and gave it a tiny shake. The potion sparkled, but not the normal sparkly kind. More like suspicious sparkles. Sparkles that suggest untold confidence.
She had found the website at two in the morning, which was already a dangerous time for her wallet. It had appeared in an ad under a cosplay forum post about monster-girl body illusions, and the reviews had been insane in exactly the right way.
Five stars. My centaur shoot was so realistic my horse got jealous.
Five stars. Became a slime girl. Lost my keys inside myself. Worth it.
Four stars. Potion worked, customer service did not explain how to stop being eight feet tall.
That last one should have been a warning, but heck if you ever got 2am-brain Marin to care.
Anyhow, she unscrewed the cap and sniffed it. It smelled sweet, warm, and faintly fruity, with a strange spicy edge underneath. Like honey, peaches, and bad decisions. Exactly what she needed.
“Okay,” she told herself. “Worst case, it does nothing. Best case, it helps the cosplay. Weird secret third case, I die, but honestly that would be super rude of them.”
She paused. “Okay, no. Not die. Bad joke. We are not dying for cosplay.”
Then she drank it anyway.
The potion went down warm. Not burning. Not unpleasant. It spread through her chest and stomach like she had swallowed sunlight, then settled low in her body with a strange, heavy pulse. Marin stood very still, waiting for something dramatic to happen.
Nothing happened. At least not at first, making her look at the bottle and sigh. “Seriously?”
But that’s when a little tingle ran through her toes, making her freeze up.
The tingle crawled upward, slow and delicate, like invisible fingers brushing along her ankles. It moved over her calves, behind her knees, up her thighs. The warmth followed a moment later, soaking into her muscles until her legs felt soft and heavy and strangely alert. She took one step back from the mirror, then another, watching herself with wide eyes.
The first scale appeared just above her knee. It was small, pale yellow and kinda glossy.
Then another appeared beside it. Then another. A spreading shimmer of yellow scales crept over her skin in curved little patches, following the shape of her thighs and calves like someone was painting her from the inside. Marin’s mouth fell open. She lifted the hem of the skirt just enough to see better, then immediately forgot to be scared.
“Oh my god,” she whispered. “That color match is insane.”
The scales kept coming. Yellow over the outer sides of her legs, lighter cream-white near the inner edges, exactly like Alicia’s true form. Not even just close, pretty much exactly her colors. It was honestly extremely impressive.
Marin bent lower, trying to see the shine under the light. The scales were smooth when she touched them, warm and slightly slick, not like plastic or paint. They felt like part of her. That should have been the scary part. Instead, her brain offered the extremely helpful thought that Gojo would have gone feral trying to get this texture right with fabric.
Then her legs started to stretch, which made Marin let out a tiny noise that was not a word.
The floor seemed to slip away from her. Her knees lowered, or maybe her thighs lengthened, or maybe both happened at once in a way her balance did not approve of. Her feet slid farther forward without her moving them. The muscles in her legs pulled long and smooth, filling with a slow, deep strength that felt completely different from standing.
She tried to step back, but her left foot moved too far. And then her right leg was suddenly longer than expected. That's when the rest of her body made an executive decision to fall over.
Marin landed on the floor in a messy heap of skirt, wig, jewelry, and wounded dignity. The bottle bounced out of her hand, rolled beneath the desk, and came to a stop against a stack of fabric boxes.
For a few seconds, she just lay there, staring at the ceiling. Then she sat up fast. “Nope. Okay. Bottle. Information. We are getting information.”
Her legs were still tingling, even if tingling was just the word Marin used to somehow not use the word changing. There was a difference, at least in her head, and the difference was that she felt like she had more time that way.
Nevertheless, her legs were much, much longer now, stretched out awkwardly in front of her, already too long for the space between her bed and desk. The scales had spread all the way down to her ankles and were creeping over her feet in neat little rows.
Marin grabbed the edge of the desk and dragged herself closer to the fallen bottle. Her legs followed a moment later, sliding over the floor with a slow, heavy scrape that made her stomach flutter. They looked too long… and too smooth… and too yellow.
And somehow more and more like Alicia’s.
Marin reached under the desk, hooked the bottle with two fingers, and pulled it out. Though the label was even less useful up close.
WAN-TING’S MIRACLE POTIONS
COSPLAY ENHANCEMENT SERIES
Shake well. Drink responsibly. Side effects may include extreme accuracy.
Marin reread that line multiple times.
“Side effects may include EXTREME accuracy?” she read aloud. “What sort of a sideeffect is that?! Who writes such a thing?!”
She turned the bottle around. There was more text, but most of it was tiny and printed over a little cartoon snake girl giving a double thumbs-up. Marin squinted.
Do not use near open flames, jealous witches, active curse circles, tax collectors, or emotionally unstable dragons.
“Okay, amazing. Super helpful. Love that for me.” Marin lets out, when she felt her legs shift again, making her look down.
This time, her legs weren’t just growing, but changing shape entirely. The scales were not the only thing anymore. Her legs still had thighs and calves, technically, but the lines between them were beginning to blur.
The knees looked less obvious and her calves thickened and stretched until both legs resembled long, powerful bands of muscle under the scales. Meanwhile her feet narrowed, losing their familiar shape as the scales wrapped over them like closing gloves.
The warmth deepened. Her muscles rolled in ways legs were not supposed to roll. Marin felt each movement as if her body had suddenly gained too much length for her brain to track properly. She tried to lift one leg, but the entire lower half shifted with it, heavy and smooth and not at all interested in acting like a normal limb.
“Okay,” Marin said, breathing faster. “That is not a normal leg anymore. I should probably call some help, huh?”
But, she was distracted again as she watched the scaled length flex and move to how she wanted it to move.
A tiny, awful, delighted smile tugged at her mouth. “But Alicia’s tail does kind of start like that.”
The second she said it, both legs twitched inward. Marin’s smile vanished.
“No. Wait. Hold on.” She fumbled for her phone on the floor. It had landed beside a pile of reference prints, screen still black. Marin snatched it up, unlocked it with fingers that only shook a little, and opened the browser.
The last page was still there, but the internet just wasn’t. Wan-Ting’s Miracle Potions website loaded one image at a time like it was being powered by a tired hamster, making Marin stared at the spinning circle.
“You cannot be serious.” She said, feeling her thighs slowly starting to press together.
She gasped and nearly dropped the phone. The pressure was not painful, far from it, which also somehow made it worse. It was warm and firm and strangely natural, like her body had been waiting for permission to fix a mistake. The scales along the inside of her thighs softened at the edges, then began to blend together.
Marin leaned back on one hand, phone clutched in the other, watching with horrified fascination as the space between her upper legs disappeared.
“No no no no, website first,” she said, jabbing the refresh icon with her thumb. “You do not get to be mysterious and have bad loading times. Pick one.”
While the website continued being useless, the fusion moved lower.
Her upper thighs became one continuous shape beneath the skirt, a thick scaled base that flowed out into two long sections still pretending to be separate legs. Marin felt her hips shift to support it. Her posture changed, lower body settling onto the floor instead of preparing to stand. Her stomach tightened as the new weight dragged behind her, not clumsy exactly, just huge. Like her body had decided the room needed a centerpiece.
The half-formed tail slid sideways and knocked over a makeup case, making brushes scattered across the floor.
Marin looked at them. Then at her changing lower half. Then back at the phone.
“Priorities,” she told herself, and hit refresh again.
Her knees vanished as useful landmarks. The two long shapes pulled together down their length, scales smoothing over the seam as they merged. The sensation was weirdly intimate, like every inch of her lower body was being zipped together by warm magic. Muscles rearranged under the scales, joining into one stronger, heavier line. When Marin tried to move one foot, both ends twitched together, and a long coil swept across the floor with enough force to push a chair sideways.
She grabbed the chair before it hit her bookshelf by making her tail, (because that was absolutely what it was becoming), curling around one of the chair legs by accident.
“Did I do that?” Marin asked, staring at it. The tail squeezed the chair once more. Marin sighed. “Okay. Cool. We are grabbing furniture now.”
The website finally loaded the top banner of the correct product. A smiling white haired chibi potion seller appeared, winking. Marin made a sound of pure betrayal. “Why do websites always load the mascot before the product information?”
Her calves fused next, though calves was now a nostalgic word. The twin lengths became a single smooth tail, thick near her hips and gradually narrowing as it stretched farther across the floor. The yellow scales darkened slightly along the top, while the underside paled into creamy white. It was beautiful, that was the unfair part. It should have looked wrong because it had been her legs five minutes ago. Instead, it looked like the missing half of the costume had finally arrived and brought its own lighting budget.
Marin swallowed. Every movement made her aware of her body in a new way. The tail was long. Really long. Long enough that the end slid under her desk, bumped the wall, then curled back toward her laundry basket. It moved when she thought about moving, but not in simple directions. It bent and flowed, answering her like a body part she had owned forever and had somehow never practiced with.
Her feet flattened into the tapering end and vanished completely. Marin literally watched the final seam smooth over the tail tip.
It was on heck of a strange thing to see.
She took one slow breath. “Okay. So. Legs are gone.”
That's when the website finished loading. Of course it did. Marin lifted the phone in both hands and read the product page.
Miracle Lamia Potion
Will turn even the humaniest of humans into a perfectly fine lamia.
Below that, in smaller text:
Warning: uses on men will result in lamias too, which are exclusively female.
Marin stared. She looked down at her enormous yellow-white tail, then back at the phone. Then she looked at the bottle.
“That is exactly what it says,” she said, in a voice that sounded personally offended by cause and effect. “It does exactly what it says.”
Her tail shifted behind her, curling around the fallen makeup case and dragging it closer like it was trying to help, making Marin glance at it. “Thank you. Also, please do not start being more organized than me.”
For a moment, she thought it was over. The warmth in her lower body settled into a steady pulse, and the scales no longer spread. Her tail lay around her in a loose, shining curve, so perfectly Alicia that part of her wanted to grab the camera before reality changed its mind.
Then something tugged on her ears, making Marin’s hand shoot up to the side of her head. “Oh, come on.”
Her ears stretched beneath the wig, pulling longer and finer. The sensation made her shiver from the base of her neck to the tip of her tail, which answered by curling tighter around the chair. The upper points of her ears slipped out through the hair, becoming elegant and tapered. Small yellow scales formed along the outer edges, delicate as jewelry.
Marin felt one between her fingers. Her panic hit a wall of artistic appreciation and got confused.
“They even did the ear scales… ack,” she whispered, being interrupted by a dull ache blooming in her mouth next, causing her to press her lips together.
Two of her upper teeth sharpened slowly, pushing down into neat little fangs. Not absurdly huge, but definitely inhumanly so. Just enough to change her smile into something more dangerous… and more like Alicia’s. Marin touched one with the tip of her tongue and immediately froze.
Her tongue was changing too. It grew lighter, softer in color, and longer against her teeth. The movement felt strange, too flexible, too aware. She tried to pull it back and found she could curl it in ways that made her cheeks heat. The tip thinned just enough to give her words a faint hiss when she tested them.
“Alicia,” she said, which came out smooth and sibilant, making Marin slap one hand over her mouth and her tail flick.
“Oh my god,” she mumbled behind her fingers. “That is so embarrassing.”
Then she lowered her hand and tried it again, quieter. “But i do so look like… be like…”
The hiss was still there, and her face went a little less red. “That is so good.”
She sat in the middle of her room, breathing hard, surrounded by knocked-over brushes, scattered fabric, a suspicious empty bottle, and the proof that maybe two-in-the-morning shopping was not always a mistake. Her lower body curled around her in a thick loop, yellow scales catching the light every time she moved.
The skirt had survived better than expected, mostly because Gojo had built it with layers and room for posing. The part underneath had not survived at all. Marin decided not to think too much about that and instead thanked every cosplay god in existence that Alicia did not wear pants.
Pants would have died immediately. She tugged the skirt into place, checked herself in the mirror from the floor, and stared.
The fake human disguise Alica was gone. This was an ACTUAL Alicia cosplay.
Not perfectly, maybe. Marin was still Marin. Her face was still hers, red and stunned and grinning despite every reasonable instinct. But the shape, the ears, the fangs, the long shining tail filled the room with impossible confidence. That was true-form Alicia. That was the thing that had been scratching at the back of her brain since Gojo first finished the outfit.
She looked amazing.
She also had no idea how to leave the room. That problem arrived in her mind one second before footsteps sounded in the hallway.
Marin went cold.
Gojo.
Right.
Final adjustments.
Today.
Now.
“Oh no.”
Her tail reacted before she did, sweeping in a wide nervous curve that knocked the empty bottle into the open. Marin lunged for it, missed, and accidentally pulled herself forward with one strong coil. The motion sent her sliding across the floor much faster than expected. She grabbed the edge of the bed, stopped herself, and ended up half-sitting, half-coiled in a pose that probably looked dramatic if nobody knew she had gotten there by failing.
A knock came at the door.
“Kitagawa-san?” Gojo called. “I’m here. Is now still okay?”
Marin looked at the bottle. At the website still open on her phone. At the long tail that crossed the room, curled around the chair, and disappeared briefly under her desk before looping back again.
“Uh,” she said, her tongue made the word come out slightly wrong. She cleared her throat, which did not fix the fact that she had fangs now. “One second!”
That would have been a good time to hide the evidence. Unfortunately, the evidence was most of her body.
The door opened because they had known each other long enough that “one second” usually meant Marin was adjusting a wig or fighting with a bracelet, not undergoing a species change on the floor.
Gojo stepped in with his sewing kit tucked under one arm and a small box of trim in the other hand. And he stopped.
His eyes went to Marin’s face first. Then to her ears. Then to the fangs visible because her mouth was still half open. Then down to the tail. Then along the tail. Then farther along the tail. Then to the part of the tail that had somehow curled around his ankle without either of them noticing.
Neither of them moved.
Marin’s tail slowly uncurled from his ankle.
That made it slightly worse.
Gojo looked at the empty potion bottle on the floor.
He looked at the phone still showing the words Miracle Lamia Potion.
Then back at Marin.
Marin sat very still, hands folded in her lap like that would make the several meters of snake tail less obvious. Her face burned. Her ears twitched once, which she had not known they could do. The tail end bumped the laundry basket and knocked a sock onto the floor.
Twenty seconds passed, maybe more. It felt longer because Gojo was very good at silence.
Marin raised one hand and gave him the smallest wave of her life. Her fangs caught her lower lip when she smiled.
“Look, Gojo,” she said, her tail shifted behind her, glossy and yellow-white and completely impossible to ignore.
“I found a way to cosplay a lamia.”