Akamatsu and Kodansha own Negima. Others own other things. Whatever. Let's just move on already.
I'm poor, I make no money from this. You already know that too.
Alrighty then.
Your Mother's Gentle Hand.
Book Zero.
One year ago, this happened:
"Well, Hasegawa-san? Aren't you going to walk in? There's nothing inside that you should be wary of."
A bigger lie had never been told before.
But trusting the golden blond woman's voice, since it was charged with an unmistakable sense of authority like that of a general, the young Chisame had no choice but nodding and walking in as told. Only to stop immediately and yelp in horror at the sight of the scene waiting for her inside.
There was a naked mannequin of sorts over the room's main table, lying on its back with its vacant green eyes fixed on the roof above. The weird thing was the mannequin blinked at random intervals, and its chest rose up and then came down in a blasphemous imitation of human breathing, and its hands wiggled their long thin fingers as the girl looming over the doll's body worked on its mechanical entrails, her face covered by a wielding mask that barely allowed to see her black pigtails poking out of the back of her head.
"Sp-Springfield-sensei!" Chisame screeched, rushing back to clash against the taller female's stomach. "What's that girl doing there?"
"Oh, for the love of all that is-" the woman looked in, scowling as she contemplated the delirious situation for a moment before calling out, "Hakase-san!"
"What?" a muffled question came from inside the mask. The masked girl's thin frame, hunchbacked over her awfully messy work, covered all over by large and smelly spots of grease, oil, and some substance eerily similar to thick, crimson blood, didn't move away from her labor at all.
"Hakase Satomi-san!" Arika Springfield walked in, past Chisame, directly facing the room's prior inhabitant. "This is a serious violation of the terms of your stay here. Cease these experimentations immediately, or you will be reported."
Finally, that had made her to turn her welder off and lift the mask off her cute, bespectacled, dirty face. She gave the mature female a somewhat wounded look.
"B-But I'm almost reaching my deadline, and the labs are still undergoing repairs! If I want to finish before—"
"We don't want to hear any excuses," Arika said, stern and far colder than she had been while politely showing Chisame the Mahora campus. "That behavior won't be tolerated anymore now you have a roommate."
"I'm not going to be her roommate!" Chisame had quickly protested.
"Hasegawa-san, please," the blonde had reassumed a more gentle tone as she calmly ushered her forward, towards the other girl and the robot thing. "My point still stands, as you have no reason to fear being here. This young lady, despite her... quirks, is just your age, and I trust she will have as much to teach you as you will teach her. Meet Hakase Satomi, your roommate and classmate for the duration of this term, and possibly the rest of your formation at Mahora as well."
Chisame cringed while looking at the freak's face. And the freak looked back, with large and curious black eyes, full with an eccentric spark not too unlike that of a drunken monkey. Eyes that were pretty much the only clean thing in that face splattered all over with ill smelling chemical leftovers.
The freak was the one to break the awkward silence with an unfazed, "When did you mention a roommate?"
"You were handed a report on the subject last week," Arika informed her.
"I don't remember that," the Hakase girl replied.
"As per the Headmaster's requests, I even left a reminder note pinned on your icebox," the blonde with the mismatched eyes added, her voice just slightly strained.
"You did?" the strange girl craned her neck back towards a door and into her kitchen. "Oh, it's true! Yes, I think I do remember now."
Chisame gave another imploring desperate stare up at the shapely and attractive female. Sadly, she seemed unmoved by her plight, despite her somewhat empathic glance and her sparse but sympathetic patting on the poor girl's right shoulder.
"She is a soul in need of friends here, just like you are," the Headmaster's assistant shared with her. "I'm positive you'll both find what you are looking for, even without realizing it, in each other."
The mannequin chose that moment to creepily rotate her eyes towards Chisame, scaring her even more.
"Eeek!"
Arika's hold on Chisame's shoulder became strong as steel in that exact moment, to better prevent her from running away. "My apologies. It would seem I have forgotten to also mention Karakuri Chachamaru-san, another of your future condisciples in Class 1-A."
"What? She's the anatomic display for the class, you mean!" the brown haired girl quickly corrected her.
"Pleased to meet you, Hasegawa-san," the thing spoke with a soft, polite, but perfectly inhuman and sterile voice. "I will be glad to help you with anything I can."
Then it reached up with a hand, grabbing one of Chisame's to give it a gentle and feminine shake.
"Kyaaaa!" Chisame screeched, scared out of her wits. It was so cold! Like a corpse's!
She let the heavy handbags she was carrying to fall down and still attempted to escape, only to immediately stumble into the conveniently placed and firmly planted shapely body of Springfield-sensei. "Please, you can't do this! You have to reassign me!" she begged.
"Please do keep your wits about yourself, Hasegawa-san," the foreigner instructed, voice still just as professional and even. "There is no need to fear from Karakuri-san either, and in any event, she will be sleeping in Hakase-san's workshop as soon as it is repaired."
"Actually, I haven't programmed her to follow sleep patterns yet," the dirty weirdo piped in. "I don't think I will, actually. Too bothersome, and there are more efficient ways to recharge energy. Oh, sorry. My manners."
She walked briskly to Chisame and quickly took her hands into a much firmer, almost tomboyish, rather clumsy handshake. "Excuse my forgetting you! I have been in an absorbing nonstop finishing procedure for Chachamaru for the last few weeks, and I haven't had the time for much else, I'm afraid. Want to watch?" she offered.
"Hakase-san, I am positive I have just told you to stop those procedures in your roommate's presence," Arika repeated herself, the strain growing tenser.
"Oh, yes. That..." Hakase sighed, disappointed.
Chisame made a face, looking down at the prone object they seemed to be trying to pass as some sort of human being. "What... what is this... Why are you..."
"I am an artificial intelligence developed under commission of the Mahora Robotics Club," the mannequin informed flatly. "I am going to enlist in this year's first grade class A as a test of my capacities regarding interaction with Japanese modern society. As such, I eagerly look forward my continuing intermingling with your gracious person, Hasegawa-san."
"S-Stop that!" Chisame gasped. "The fact you're being so polite just makes you scarier!"
"Um, maybe I should readjust her speech patterns. Less flowery, more concise and to the point, okay? Okay. I got it," the Dr. Frankenstein wannabe absently stated while wiping her hands clean with a towel that had been lying on a nearby chair. She then handed it over to Chisame, who only then noticed her own hands were just as dirty after the mad scientist's handshake. With a disgusted grimace, she was fast to wipe them as clean as she could.
The whole living room was an absolute mess, as a matter of fact, and she was sure the rest of the dorm would be even worse. Would she have to clean all of that up? She couldn't set a webcamera and allow her just started community of fans to watch... THAT!... around herself. Her wonderful web project would die on its crib!
But of course, the girl with the messy pigtails who was looking at her face couldn't care any less about any of that, could she? She was just there, smiling as a dumb frat boy who had just farted.
Finally, Chisame dared to make the question she had been dreading for the last few minutes.
"Umm... where is the bathroom, please?"
"Well, heh heh," Hakase Satomi scratched the back of her neck sheepishly. "I don't think you should walk in there just yet. You'll see, I was testing Chachamaru's water endurance there a few hours ago, and—"
Chisame bit her lower lip, whimpering under her breath.
That would be a hideously long school year.
To be Continued.