Heather decided that using the totems so soon after diapering Hillary was a mistake. She didn't throw up, but it was close. When she felt able to move without spewing her guts everywhere she carefully lifted her head and looked around.
She was back in her room, but her room wasn't back to normal. The bed she was sprawled on was an actual bed, not a crib bar in sight, and the much hated toy box was gone, but her dresser was still very much a changing table. She groaned, and heard an answering groan from the floor.
"Mel?" She whispered hoarsely, "Is that you?"
"No. It's the fucking tooth fairy." Mel responded bitterly. "What happened? Why am I looking at a changing table? Aren't things supposed to return to normal?"
Mel pulled herself upright and into Heather's view. She was dressed normally again, in her pajamas. Heather looked down at herself and saw that she was back in the butterfly-print Big Tots diaper, but it was soaked. Both Mel and Heather stared at it for a bit.
"Want me to change you?" Mel asked with a rather forced grin.
Heather didn't respond. She just rolled carefully off the bed and to her feet. She waddled over to the changing table and pulled open a drawer. She stared at the contents for a minute, then turned sheepishly to Mel.
"No." Heather sighed. "I don't want you to change me, but apparently I need you to. It looks like more than just the furniture is lingering."
"Alright." Mel said. "I'll help you out. This is partly my fault, after all. Stupid beta."
Heather hauled herself onto the changing table while Mel staggered over. Mel's power to lift and manipulate her had gone, so once again she had to lift herself up so her diaper could be removed. She didn't protest when Mel put a new one on her.
"Sorry." Mel said. "I can't find any panties. Looks like it's diapers for now. Besides, I think your incontinence is lingering as well."
"What makes you say that?"
"Well, you just peed a little when I opened your diaper."
Heather groaned. She hadn't felt it at all. She hoped that at least people would think it was normal for her. She got her answer sooner than she liked when her mother opened the door and poked her head in.
"Oh good." Mandy said brightly. "Thanks for the help, Mel. Having three in diapers is a handful. At least Heather doesn't cause trouble like her siblings. Make sure she brushes her teeth. I'm going to go and get Hillary ready for bed now."
Mandy pulled the door closed behind her as she left. Leaving the two teens staring at each other.
"What did she mean by that?" Mel asked.
"I don't know, and I'm scared to find out." Heather said.
"But we're going to anyway?"
"Yeah." Heather sighed. "Just get me dressed first. I hate having my tits hanging out where everyone can see them."
"Oh, I don't mind." Mel said cheekily, but she withered under Heather's glare.
Mel pulled open a drawer and pulled out a tee-shirt. Heather recognized it. It was one of her real ones. A band tee she had gotten at a concert a few months ago. She happily accepted Mel's help in putting it on and eagerly stepped into the proffered pajama pants. The two then carefully opened the door and sneaked down the hall to Hillary's room. The door was half open, so they peered carefully in. The room looked exactly as it had just before they'd activated their totems, but Hillary was nowhere to be seen.
"Where is she?" Mel whispered.
"I don't know." Heather whispered back. "Mommy did say that she was going to get her ready for bed."
Mel turned and stared at Heather.
"What?" Heather asked.
"Did you just hear yourself?"
"What? Did I say something wrong?"
"You just called your mom 'mommy.'"
"I did not." Heather said indignantly.
"You most certainly did."
"When the two of you are done gossiping, would you be so kind as to let us through?"
Both teens jumped and spun around. Mandy was standing in the hall, holding Hillary.
"I'd like to get this one fed." Mandy said, brushing past them. "So if the two of you could take your conversation elsewhere it would be greatly appreciated."
Both teens stared at Hillary. She was in a diaper, of course, and nothing else. There also seemed to be something wrong with her. She stared blankly at them, and a thread of drool dripped from her lower lip. Mandy carried her across the room and sat in the rocking chair. She lay Hillary across her lap, the reached up and undid her shirt buttons. Mel and Heather watched in horror and fascination as she bared one of her breasts and pulled her younger daughter's head up to it. The diapered eleven year old didn't hesitate. She latched on and began suckling in earnest.
"Could one of you please get the light before you leave."
"S-sure Mrs. L." Mel sputtered.
She grabbed Heather's hand, flipped the light off, and the two fled back to the relative safety of Heather's bedroom.
"What. The fuck. Was that." Mel said, breathing heavily.
"I don't know." Heather said hollowly. The image of her mother's breast was hovering in her mind.
"What happened to Hillary?"
"I don't know." Heather repeated.
"Where's my phone. We need to contact Big Tots. I don't know what went wrong, but they need to fix this shit right the fuck now."
Both girls grabbed their phones from the bed and got to work. At least, Mel did. Heather couldn't help but notice a few notifications on her phone. She tapped one and was greeted with a picture of herself at the park, sitting in a stroller in a onesie and very obvious diaper. She panicked for a moment, but then saw that it was the Big Tots app. It was asking if she wished to save any of the pictures taken of her during the scenario. She swiped through them. There were lots of her being pushed around in her stroller from every conceivable angle. Then she found the ones of her being fed a bottle. Images of her mother breastfeeding Hillary rose in her mind again. She shook them off and swiped further. There she was getting fucked by the trans Au-pair, and then getting eaten out by Mel. She wanted to delete the pictures, but she just couldn't bring herself to actually do it. Reluctantly, she hit save all and turned to see what Mel was up to.
While Heather was going through her pictures, Mel had been messaging the Big Tots rep again. The rep had a lot of questions, many of which Mel didn't know how to answer. She tried her best anyway, and the rep seemed satisfied with her responses. Finally, she was directed to download an update to the scenario builder app. The rep promised that, thanks to the unique data gleaned from their broken session, the update would be able to help them put things right. Unfortunately they couldn't tell her exactly how to do that. The update would allow them to alter the lingering effects of the scenario, but the changes wouldn't be immediate. They would have to fiddle with things a bit, and some changes they made would affect other things. All in all, it would take a few weeks to get things back to normal. The other option was to simply wait it out. The rep said that lingering effects always faded within six months. Mel and Heather agreed that that was far too long.
The updated app was not user friendly. Heather was greeted with more menus, sub-menus, and sliders than she knew what to do with. She tapped half-heartedly through several of them before her mind began to wander. Once more, the image of her mother's breast rose in her mind. She wanted so desperately to suck it, to taste the sweet milk.
"Hey! Stop drooling and pay attention!"
"Wha?" Heather said, startled out of her daydream.
"I said I figured it out." Mel said testily. "It looks like whatever weird power is behind the diapers and app is unbalanced or something. We need to spread it out and rebalance it to make things go back to normal faster."
"How did you figure that out?"
"I asked on the forum."
"There's a forum?"
"Duh." Mel rolled her eyes and held up her phone in front of Heather's face. "Everything online has a forum. Look, this guy says we just need to focus on the personal submenus under the profile tab. See?"
Heather focused on the screen. Sure enough, there were several screenshots from the app showing where to go. She followed the instructions on her own phone and soon found the appropriate menu. The options here made a lot more sense. Each of the three girls had their own set of menus with well-labeled sliders and buttons. Heather could actually make sense of them. She immediately tried unselecting incontinence, but a warning popped up telling her that all adjustments made would affect the other subjects.
"Affect the other subjects?" She asked Mel. "What does that mean?"
"It means," Mel said carefully, "That anything we change must also change all of us equally in some way. We need to trade the effects of the aborted scenario among ourselves to balance things out."
"So if I want to stop pissing myself..."
"Then either me or Hillary have to take on a babyish trait to offset it. See the bar at the top?"
Heather looked at the bar. It was separated into three segments, each labeled with one of their names. Hillary's portion was the largest by far, while Mel barely had anything. Her own section was probably about a quarter, maybe a bit less.
"We need to make the three sections as equal as possible, with nothing left over." Mel continued. "If there's anything left floating around it could affect something random out here in the real world. A few people on the forum say that the effects they've seen appear to be permanent. One or two points won't make much of a difference, they'll just make some random object more babyish, but one guy says that he left about 20 points floating to see what would happen and..."
"And what?"
"And it all went into him and his roommates. Now they're permanently incontinent and have to deal with random bits of clothing morphing into baby clothes if they wear them too long. Though that last bit should fade in a year or two, according to the Big Tots rep."
"I don't want that." Heather shuddered. What had already happened was bad enough.
"Me neither. So lets get this balanced. The more balanced it is, the less time we have to put up with it."
The two girls got to work, carefully selecting traits to remove from Hillary and what they were willing to add to themselves to balance things out.