The same colorful affini that saved me… saved us walked in. She came in as a towering beautiful giantess of color and splendor striding from a door between two of the beds. We all turned to face her and, in that moment, we stopped being perfectly mirrored in movement. We began to diverge if only slightly.

 

"Hello petals~" She had that same beautiful voice full of care as before. Actually, perhaps more. She seemed overjoyed to see me and us. "How are you all feeling?"

 

"G-Good." We all squeaked out. "Uh thank you for saving them."

 

She quirked a delicate eyebrow on her verdant face. "Oh, are you not happy I saved you yourselves? Only that I saved the others?"

 

"Uh…" I turned my head and we met each other's eyes. They were thinking the same thing. That we thought the other two mattered more than ourselves. "M-Maybe."

 

"I see." Her strange alien eyes looked between us. "Let me introduce myself, I'm Calytrix Aurea, Fifth Bloom she/her. I am an affini and I'll be taking care of you three until you are all confirmed to be fit to take care of yourselves."

 

We all let out a small, "heh." Me, able to take care of myself? I wasn't good at that before… Now, I was so defunct it was sad. Only, I looked at the other two and realized. They were the same. I messed them up by merely existing.

 

"Could I get your names, or perhaps name and pronouns?" She queried.

 

Right, conversation. That stuff I was bad at and then didn't do for stars only know how long. "Uh…" Okay still stuck talking together. Honestly, it's a little neat to do that without trying. "I'm…" Crap, are we going by our new name or the old one? I looked for back up… right if I'd back them up with the new name, they'd back me up… right?

 

"I'm M-Melanie Maelstrom, uh she/they pronouns." We all said. The first time we ever used that name. It felt nice, sort of.

 

The affini, Calytrix smiled wide and said. "That was adorable. It's a pleasure to meet you Melanie, Melanie, and Melanie. Like I said I'm going to be the case worker for you three while we sort out how to best care for you all."

 

"Okay." "Alright." We froze. I looked at the other two. One of them said alright instead of okay. That was different… and weird. They thought so too… I think? We were identical, but for some reason now one acted differently. Was it imperfect cloning? Was it just natural variation? It left me feeling a little bit bad. I-I sort of liked having them and I being the same. I liked knowing what they were thinking.

 

"I see you three are beginning to deviate due to natural variance. Rest assured it's perfectly natural as small differences cascade forward."

 

"But I don't want to deviate…" We all said, but slightly off in timing.

 

"Oh…" She looked genuinely surprised. As if we shouldn't have said that. Like we went off script. I mean I tended to say the wrong thing or say stuff that didn't really work in conversation when I spoke but… I didn't think what we said was that bad… was it?

 

"Sorry, I was just a little surprised. You all want to be the same?" She asked.

 

I shared a look with both of them, if I interpreted them right then the answer was. "Yes" "Yes" "Yea"

 

"Well Melanie, we'll do our best to help you three in any way you need. For now, you all seem to be in perfectly fine health, so we can head out now to my place where you'll stay during your all's wardship." She cheerfully said.

 

We turned to each other and the obvious thing was on all of our minds. "We don't have any money." Like how were we going to pay for all these health care costs, and staying at her place. We never even got the money for the experiment.

 

Caly started laughing, presumably at us. "Petals, the Affini Compact is post scarcity, you don't need money anymore, everything is free."

 

"Free?" I don't know about my doppelgangers but I passed out.

 

 

My vines reached out and I caught all three before they touched the ground. Each one pulled into my embrace. I knew they'd faint from those words before I spoke them. My exact tone, posture, and timing turned what would have simply dumbfounded them into something that entirely shut down those cute little brains of theirs.

 

Her reactions had all been almost perfectly in line with what I had expected. Almost. I underestimated the bonding they'd have. To think they wished to remain as identical in mind as possible was… I should have seen it. It fits so well with what I know of her. It was simply a step beyond what I had anticipated.

 

Regardless the committee saw how they reacted to one another and thus I would find no objections to the combined wardship. I had succeeded. They were fixed and whole. Or rather in the sense that they are functioning independent sophonts. As much as any terran can be described as functioning outside the guiding care of an affini.

 

Scratch that, she is less functioning than the typical independent sophont. She should be domesticated. I wanted to domesticate her. I-I couldn't stop myself at this juncture. I needed all three of her to be mine, but I needed her to be willing.

 

I gave each one something to prevent them from prematurely waking up and then went through the necessary bureaucratic motions of reconfirming that all my documentation on my work was accurate and that her fainting trigger was known and intended. Eventually I was finally rightfully congratulated on saving the clones from their misery and making them happy whole functioning sophonts.

 

All that was left was to take them home and begin the interplay that would have all three walking into my grasp. I wouldn’t even need to do much, she was already so hopelessly submissive. Their hesitancy for xenodrugs would need to be corrected, but they'd eagerly take the class-Gs which would slowly open them to the idea.

 

The biggest problem at this point was predicting how their interactions and natural steady divergence would affect them. They'd never truly diverge significantly, not in my care. They were all vines grown from the same roots after all. But they would diverge enough to potentially distress each other.

 

I had a lot of work to do. Three terrans in my care, and potentially, no, inevitably three florets to care for. Yet at the same time they were like one floret with three bodies to manage.

 

At home, I placed all three of them in my bed and gave them the counter agent to the class-Z, while I slipped out so they could wake up alone and together.

 

 

By the time I, we, came too, we had already been moved to a rather nice and colorful home. Bright colorful happy bits of abstract art were everywhere. The bed was ridiculously large even for apparently the three occupants of said bed. It was nice. It was beautiful. I found myself weeping because I finally got to see color again. The awful white sterile lifeless walls were gone and now, now there was color and life. Someone lived here. Someone was meant to live here.

 

I wasn't crying alone, I had two people, two clones who felt the same way. Except maybe I was a clone and… It didn't matter. We were the same. We had the same feelings of joy, and the fact that they understood why I was crying with joy amplified the feeling. I was free and apparently everything would be free now.

 

I turned to look at the other two on this big colorful comforter, they were positioned differently and turned to look at slightly different timings. That bothered me like a splinter in my emotions. I didn't know why. Or maybe I did?

 

When I first found out I had clones, I felt sorry for them. The idea they'd have to be me and how bad that made me feel filled my mind. Now… Now, I realized they were me, and for the first time in my life I had people I understood and who understood me right back.

 

There had always been a disconnect between me and other people. A dysfunction of communication that denoted something broken in me. I was neurodivergent. I knew that even though my parents spent years hiding that fact in an effort to pretend that I was normal. I always knew I was different, like someone forgot to hand me the guide book to life and social interaction that everyone else seemed to know by heart.

 

Words. I should probably say words to my clones. I didn't like thinking of them as clones. They were more like… twins? Triplets? "Sisters?" I said it first. Alone. They did not have that same thought at that same moment accidently spoken aloud.

 

I watched them wipe the tears out of their eyes and I followed suit. They both confirmed. "Sisters." Somehow my body threatened to cry more at that. I had a big sister already, but she was always her own person, different from me in the same way everyone else was. Now I had two new sisters, and I was going to be the best sibling ever to them.

 

One of my sisters then said. "So, uh gender." Oh, right I was, we were still sorting that out.

 

"Sorry." I and another sister apologized at the same moment. I knew why. I was a mess of confused gender feels and they didn't deserve that. They deserved to know who they are. Using the word sister for them only added to the mess which is almost certainly what made her bring it up.

 

The other sister then told me. "We are such a mess."

 

"Yea." We agreed.

 

The one that said gender then continued. "So, like does wanting to be a sister make me a girl?"

 

"I don't know…" I answered.

 

"Well Devon said something similar." The other answered.

 

I looked at her. Really looked at her. Right, she had all of my memories. They both did. I was just rather shocked at that fact that should have been obvious.

 

She then, seeing that I and my other sister were shocked, asked. "What? Do you two not remember Devon?" I knew that look on her face she was thinking that we were the clones and she was the original.

 

"Yea" "Yes" We answered simultaneously.

 

I continued. "Of course, I remembered. I, or we, were shocked that you remembered."

 

"Oh." And now it was her turn to be shocked that yes, we all had the same memories.

 

My other sibling said, "Sorry I'm being awkward."

 

We both turned to her. "You're fine. I'm the one being awkward." We then looked at each other and laughed. Our other sibling joined in. Stars, we were a mess.

 

As our laughter was subsiding, the door opened. Into this colorful yet oversized lively room strode a familiar kind and yet commanding presence of a rainbow of flowers growing from the most beautiful giant plant woman I'd ever seen. Technically the only giant plant woman I'd ever seen.

 

Her voice was just as pleasant to listen to as before. "Morning girls~"

 

We all gave slightly out of sync responses of "M-Morning…"

 

"Well, aren’t you three absolutely cute. Do you all remember who I am?" She paused for a response. I just sort of limply nodded as did the others. "Excellent. Now, I'd like to discuss a few quick things before we get you three ready for the day, is that alright girls?"

 

Uh, so being called cute, and a girl. I think I'm weak to gender affirmation and compliments. Probably because I'd never been complemented before let alone called cute. Also, being elated at being called a girl by her was hitting me right in the gender.

 

I realized neither I nor either of the other two had responded to her. The affini, Calytrix if I remembered the name right, was just smiling warmly from her towering height that made me feel small and potentially, if her words were to be believed, cute.

 

Response. I needed to respond. "Uh…" We all started. "Okay." Hey! We said the same one this time! I smiled at that and I peeled my sight off the pretty giantess long enough to notice my sisters were smiling too.

 

Calytrix walked forward a little and then sat on the edge of the bed with her oddly very human shaped plant body. "So, first thing I wanted to say was a reminder that for a short while, you all will be staying here with me. This is happening to make sure you three are adjusting to both each other and to being free from that prison cell. You all were not in good health when we found you."

 

Yea I wasn't and they apparently weren't either. I was glad I told her to save the other two.

 

"Now the second thing was that I noticed that you girls seemed to be stuck in bodies that don't seem to align with your gender. I can provide xenodrugs to fix that issue if you three wish. I assure you they are both safe and more effective than your terran pharmaceuticals."

 

Oh. She was asking to start us on hormones. Devon explained that bit, but she was saying they had better HRT than humanity had… and that it was compatible with humanity while being more effective and safer. What kind of miracle working aliens were they?

 

I was still unsure about the gender stuff but every time she referred to us as girls it made me a little more certain that I was something female.

 

Getting lost in my thoughts caused a familiar disassociation. My thoughts slowly lowered to a simmer, the same lethargy and zoned out inattentiveness that got me through months in that cell. Unfortunately, my awareness was practically nonexistent by that point. My eyes blankly transfixed on a distant point. That cell broke me.

 

"Oh, petals are you alright?" A beautiful concerned voice pierced into my functionally empty mind. "You seem to all be having cognitive trouble. Here let me help you all out."

 

She brought down some of her pretty colorful flowers right in front of my locked gaze. A gentle complex melody surrounded me as I watched the colors dance and shift. I got lost in the strange sensory input until it stopped.

 

I blinked and shook my head. Wait, what just happened? "Wha…" I heard two other voices say the same. We were all functioning again. I looked at the alien.

 

"You all got mentally soft-locked." I looked at her rather confused and she seemed to pick up on it. "Being in that cell left some mental dysfunction. I input specific sensory information like a key that unlocked that little disconnect you were having."

 

"You can do that?" We all asked at once.

 

She laughed softly. "Yes, I can. I can do it every time you find yourselves stuck like that. Alternatively, with a specific xenodrug regimen I could reduce or eliminate your soft-locking issue."

 

Now, I wasn't one for drugs or anything that really messed with my head. I had hang ups which were likely just Accord propaganda that got stuck. The Accord kept trying its whole war on drugs thing over and over as if it had ever worked in the past. Really it was a thinly veiled attempt to punish certain groups the people in power didn't like. Still, I had hang ups. There were legitimate grievances with drugs from addiction to side effects and overdosing.

 

"I uh…" "Um." We were being different again. I visually confirmed their thoughts and continued. "So, I don't really want to take the uh xenodrugs…" The others agreed verbally.

 

She so gently looked down on us and asked. "But what about the ones for transitioning?"

 

"Oh." We all said together again. "I uh." Transitioning was different. I knew because I looked into it a lot after talking with my trans roommate a few times.

 

One of my sister's blurted out. "Yes please."

 

"Yea." "Same."

 

Calytrix seemed to like and expect that reply. "Alright flowers, I can get you started right now if you'd like." Three nods were given. She brought out three brightly pink flowers with tiny needles that made me want to change my mind, but before I could, I was injected with something.

 

Now from my talks with Devon, apparently normal terran HRT had a ramp up time of days before you really mentally felt it. Yea no. My brain got flooded with girl juice and it felt like I was truly thinking right for the first time in my life. Like, I didn't even know I could mentally feel like this. It was as if a smog in my head vanished leaving a nice clean brain behind.

 

"Wow."

 

Our big beautiful affini host seemed pleased with our reactions. "Feeling better already?" She got affirmative replies. "Good, now let's get you three cleaned up and then I'll make you all something to eat."

 

Now old me, would have maybe rejected the idea of someone instructing me to get cleaned up and then serve me food, mostly because I felt bad about people doing things for me, but my time in that cell had me do a lot of that. I didn't even question it as she showed us to the bathroom to get cleaned up.

 

My brain started thinking on its own again when I noticed what I was wearing. It was a bright colorful hospital gown. Yes, a hospital gown, totally not a dress. Not that I wanted to wear a dress, just that this was definitely a hospital gown.

 

My sister cut through my thoughts. "Oh wow, how did we end up in dresses?"

 

I turned to look and yea okay, seeing them on my sisters confirmed that they were dresses. My first thought was a guy in a dress. My second thought was to remember Devon. Dresses weren't gendered and guys can totally rock dresses. Besides, I'm like a girl or girl adjacent. That means they are too. Also, it's mean to think my sisters look bad in their dresses. They look great and are definitely rocking the flowery cute colorful dresses unlike me who wasn't at all.

 

"Huh, we are…" My other sister started. "You two are rocking those dresses."

 

"No, you two are." I corrected. I definitely wasn't able to rock a dress like them.

 

"Sis, you look great." My sister told me.

 

"Yea, you two look so much better in those than I do." The other one said…

 

"Melanie." Calytrix firmly clearly said in an attention-grabbing way. "You all look beautiful in your dresses. Remember that you all look identical, thus your sisters looking good means you yourself look good."

 

Huh, I guess she was right… but I had a hard time thinking of myself that way. It was so much easier to praise my sisters than accept I might not look terrible. Of course, we were apparently all doing that. There was only one solution, talk my sisters up until they didn't feel insecure about themselves anymore. Unfortunately, that meant both practicing talking and giving compliments. Two things I was definitely not good at.

 

One of my sisters hugged me and I hugged back while also pulling the other one in. Giving hugs was definitely easier than talking and giving compliments. I also didn't realize how touch starved I was until our first hug. Which meant they were too, and luckily, we had a solution. More hugs!

 

"Awww!" Calytrix must really like mushy hug it out stuff. She didn't interrupt other than her noises of fawning over us.

 

Eventually we broke the hug and needed to bathe. The affini offered to like wash us for us, but uh, we declined that hard. She didn't need to do that stuff for me, or us. That left us all alone to wash ourselves…

 

"Should we take turns?" I asked.

 

"It’s a big tub…" Melanie stated.

 

"How would bathing with someone else even work?" Another Melanie asked.

 

I hummed for a moment. "That's a good question."

 

"I know right?"

 

Melanie summed up our thoughts. "There's three of us, we should be able to figure this out."

 

"And yet…"

 

"…we can't." I finished.

 

"Stars, I really wish I was smarter."

 

"Yup." Melanie and I responded.

 

So, we stripped and reassured each other that we were definitely still sisters and girls and just sort of floundered until we remembered how baths work. We were used to showers, but the shower head was a little too far up. Obviously, this was made for an affini, but there was a little railed walkway up and down the tub for a human like me, or us.

 

Really it was like a pool rather than a bath. Not that I ever went swimming much. Being shirtless felt wrong. Which was probably a gender thing. Just dropping that in the pile of things to maybe one day sort out.

 

We all sighed and took a bath while making sure not to look at ourselves as much as possible. Thankfully it just meant looking at my sisters instead. That was only mildly better but we'd take what we could get. It's not like any of us had anything we hadn't seen before.

 

The three of us all had the same dusty brown hair, freckles and light brown eyes. Plus pale skin from being shut-ins stuck in a lab prison. At 5'10" we were pretty average in height for an amab. The weirdest part was the scar on my right arm, they had identical scars. When I pointed that out, we all got distracted looking for more scars and freckles we remember. We were so identical it was insane.

 

I pondered in silence the fact that I really felt a kinship with these two. I felt closer to them than anyone else in the universe for obvious reasons. Also, it wasn't like I, or we, hadn't all lived with our older sister before. We knew how to share, and honestly, I was super thankful to not be going through all of this alone. I had a weird clone family and that meant a ton to me.

 

I was mildly bothered and kinda scared we'd keep getting more different as the small differences in life piled up. I didn't want anything to drive a wedge in the closeness we had. It was inevitable, but at least we could stay sisters. Our big sis was going to flip when she found out her little brother was actually three little sisters.

 

While stewing in my own thoughts, it was clear my sisters were having similar if slightly different versions of the same thoughts. We all wanted to hold on to this weird dynamic we got handed. It sure as fuck beat being alone like we had been before joining the experiment. Also during it in a way.

 

Anyway, the bath. We got the water nice and warm and maybe dropped too much soap in which made the whole experience sorta weird and we were all having trouble with doing it right. Maybe we should have asked the big plant woman how to use her shower since we had experience with that.

 

After sort of cleaning ourselves and then like asking each other to double check we just relaxed.

 

Melanie asked, "So like you two both definitely remember that secret wish we had when we were little, right?"

 

I thought for a second as the other Melanie said, "Oh you mean about wanting a twin?"

 

"Oh yea!" I replied. "Wow, we got our wish."

 

"Exactly!"

 

"Honestly this is better than a twin." That got several affirmative noises.

 

I sighed. "Yea, it's like I can talk to you both and you two just get it. I don't even have to try."

 

"Yup. Honestly I'm a bit bummed we aren't still doing the speaking at the same time thing."

 

"Same. But I think being a little different means we can actually like talk to each other. Like about how much better you both looked in those dresses than me."

 

"Melanie!" Melanie and I started, then giggled. Well, she giggled, mine was more of a laugh or chuckle.

 

"What? It's true."

 

I shook my head. "It's really not."

 

Melanie was having none of it. "You two need to stop putting yourselves down, you both looked great and I'm sure the HRT will make you both look even better."

 

"Are you implying that it won't do the same to you?" Melanie accused.

 

"Yea like Calytrix said we're the same so…" I had a hard time actually admitting the last part of that thought.

 

There was a noticeable stretch of silence before Melanie asked. "Why do we do this to ourselves?"

 

"Cause we always have?"

 

I looked at them though I was sort of sulking. "See this is why I was sad to get clones, you both don't deserve this. You deserve better."

 

Melanie raised her eyebrow. "Are you implying that you're not the clone?"

 

"Okay before we like argue this I have to ask. We're all on the same page of like, being the original validates our like self-deprecation, right?"

 

I winced and so did Melanie. We both said together. "You didn't have to like say it."

 

She gave us both a look of really?

 

"Okay, fine, yea, that's it. I spent weeks worrying about you two and it just-"

 

"-hurts to see you two putting yourselves down." I finished.

 

Melanie took a deep breath. "Maybe we should just agree that it doesn't matter who the original is and like, not be mean to ourselves?"

 

"It's just hard to do that. I'm not used to it."

 

"Yea, like this is how I've thought for years, I can't just not."

 

All together we took a deep breath, sighed, and said, "We're a mess." We then looked up and smiled that we managed to do it again. I mean I sort of heard Melanie start doing it and followed her lead but by the time we sighed I really felt the vibe.

 

After a moment of indulging in that moment, a knock came. "Girls, you three doing, okay?"

 

"Yea." Nice we did it again.

 

"Alright, enjoy your bath. I've got food that'll be ready when you three get out."

 

We all got out and found skirts and blouses left out for us. The affini opted for tie dye rainbow coloring on the skirts with white tops. I looked to my sisters and acknowledged the trouble with trying on our first skirts when looking so male. Well technically we already wore a dress but that didn't count.

 

"So, are we going to wear these?" Melanie asked.

 

"Maybe let's just all put them on at the same time-"

 

"-and reassure each other we can all rock the skirts."

 

We all nodded to confirm then I cheekily said. "After you sisters."

 

We put on the skirts and shirts making sure to reassure the other two that they definitely looked good and were rocking the skirts. Only we then discovered twirling in the skirts and uh. Look when we were one person, we were kinda silly in private, but now we were silly in private together.

 

The best part about them basically being me was that we all knew we were not nearly as hard on each other as we were on beating up ourselves. We all had two positive voices canceling out our inner one negative voice. Since we all definitely started to notice we needed that.

 

"I love you both."

 

"Love you both too."

 

We both looked to our last sister and forced her to repeat the words for unity. "Love you both." We all started laughing cause we're dorks.