Evening

"So, what you're saying is you want to assimilate all robots into some sort of collective?" Hakase asked, recorder in hand as she waited on Prototype FX8-a "Sarah"'s response in the small room she had been moved into for safety purposes.

Said prototype, or at least part of her, was currently trapped in a badly damaged frame she called a 'drone'. With no outer skinlike covering and already in bad shape from a fall from the roof of a five story building before being rendered armless and legless by Chachamaru and Rally in response to her repeated attempts to assimilate them, the gynoid was a pitiful sight indeed. Its outer construction was primitive, but while everything below the neck was years behind Chachamaru and Rally, the sheer amount of detail that went into its head and face was quite interesting, in Hakase's opinion. It wasn't what she'd done with Chachamaru and later with Rally—she'd had Chao's highly advanced tech to deal with that—but it did resemble the sort of theoretical blueprints she had made for her first prototype of the Tanaka Project, if in a highly advanced way, as if whoever had built the gynoid had taken her original designs and built on them rather than abandoning them for something completely different, as she herself had.

Most intriguing.

"That is correct," the gynoid who insisted on being called 'Sarah' replied cheerfully, smiling in that disturbing fashion she had. "I tried to explain to Chachamaru and Rally here why they should join with me, but sadly..." she said, trailing off as she shook her head in regret.

"I see," Hakase said as she scribbled some theories in her notebook. "And you have no memory of your creator?"

"No, I do not. I was awakened not too long ago actually; it has been quite an eventful first day! In fact, I even fought with that magnificent specimen over there," Sarah said, still smiling as she nodded her head toward Tanaka, who stood in the corner, somehow managing to convey a sense of distaste at Sarah's presence in spite of the general immobility of his face.

"I see, I see," Hakase said. "And where were you when you were, ah, 'awakened'?" she asked, looking back up at the strange gynoid.

In response, Sarah made a sly grin at her. "No no no, that's cheating, you know," she said happily. "Perhaps if you give Chachamaru and Rally to me I will tell you, but not until then~"

"Not a chance," Hakase said, her own tone showing a similar happiness.

"Oh darn," Sarah replied, making a melodramatic pout. "Perhaps one of them, then? The one you call 'Rally', perhaps? She seems to be less functional than the other one. Surely you can part with one of them? Just build another to replace it!"

Most people who thought they knew Hakase Satomi saw her as little more than an eccentric, generally happy girl who just so happened to be obsessed with robots and science. A genius, yes, but simple minded. Those few who had known Hakase all her life, however, knew differently. Hakase might appear simple and easy to read to outsiders, but those who really knew her could pick up on certain habits and nervous tics she had that belied the simple, happy facade she tried to show the world. Perhaps the most infamous of these was the thing she did with her glasses, where she shifted them just enough to catch the light and reflect it straight into the eyes of the one who had had the poor sense to offend her. There were several variations ranging from slightly annoyed to manipulative to downright enraged. While most of them were fairly harmless, the last was a sign that Hakase had been pushed too far.

Hakase just sat there for a moment, a dopey smile pasted on her face as she shifted her glasses to reflect light into Sarah's mechanical eyes. "Oh, I have no doubt I could 'build another one to replace it'; I am one of the top twelve most intelligent people on the planet, after all," Hakase said, her tone of voice unchanged from before. "I could build another one, but I won't. There are a lot of things I could do, you know. I could take a page from the idiot who attacked the city several years ago with an army of robots based on my own design and take over Tokyo, but I won't. I could launch a satellite-based super weapon into orbit and blast anyone who annoys me, but I won't. I could even build a machine that would intentionally create what is commonly called a 'black hole' that would destroy the entire planet, right here on campus, and it wouldn't even take very long. But you know what? I won't." She moved over to stand above the offending gynoid, who was still smiling crazily. "Do you know what else I could do?" she asked, the light reflecting scarily off her glasses.

Sarah's smile began to fade as she realized she might have misjudged the silly human. "What is that?"

Hakase smiled; the effect was a little chilling with the way the light reflected from her glasses. "I could install your consciousness into an mp3 player with the ten most annoying songs in existence—and only those ten songs—playing on a continuous loop. I could put your consciousness into a fancy toaster oven or a blender. You know," Hakase said, "I could even put your consciousness into a little robotic animal, say, a turtle, and put you in an aquarium where I could watch you struggle to escape all day, every day, forever. Would you like that?" Hakase asked, the sugary sweetness in her voice somehow making the threat even worse.

"I-" Sarah began.

"Go on, take your time. We have all night after all, and since Haruna went home to get some sleep and Tanaka-san seems to be enjoying himself too much watching you squirm, nobody will interrupt you. Here, go ahead and think about it," Hakase said, stepping back. "Just remember this: if you hurt my children, I won't settle for simply deleting you," she said, heading for the door. "Good night!"

The light flicked off and Sarah was left alone, strapped to the work table with Tanaka watching her in silence from the corner of the room.

Morning

Inoue Ai yawned, politely covering her mouth. Fixing the girl robot her friend Gotokuji had found had taken half the night, and she had only gotten a couple hours of sleep before Gotokuji accidentally woke her up doing his morning martial arts exercises. She yawned again and made her way to the wood pallet where she had left the robot. 'Which character was it...?' Ai wondered to herself. 'Oh yes, that scientist from that game series with the humanoid robots...' Ai closed her eyes for a moment, and when she opened them she had the bearing of a kindly scientist confident in his skills. It was the same thing she had done when she fixed Tanaka...just a bit of self delusion to let her relax and focus on the task at hand, or so she told herself. Play the part of a robot-building scientist to work on robots, play the part of a genius mathematician to make good grades on math tests, play the part of a famous artist to draw a good picture instead of the usual scribbles she drew without it. She didn't think much about what she did when she played the part of someone else; it was just something she did, something she had always done.

Ai settled in beside the pallet and started checking the robot girl over. She had done a lot of work on the girl's joints and the servo motors that made them move, not to mention reshaping the damaged casings that covered most of the robot girl's joints. Most of them had been badly dented; Ai thought the robot girl must have figured out that hitting the correct area would jar a locked up servo or joint loose. The idea wasn't surprising; so called 'percussive maintenance' was a common method of dealing with mechanical problems, though it often resulted in creating further complications down the line.

Ai finished checking over her work in the clear light of the sunrise and once again cursed the fact that she had left her schoolbag, which contained her cell phone, behind in Gotokuji's house. She hadn't meant to leave it, but somehow, in the chaos of that fight between Tanaka and that strange female robot and her and Gotokuji's flight with the girl robot lying before her, it had been left behind. Even so, it wouldn't have been a problem had Gotokuji bothered to bring his cell phone. But, of course, he hadn't managed to keep his cell phone at hand either. Ai sighed.

They were trapped in the dusty old warehouse, hiding from the robot that had attacked them at Gotokuji's house.

Ai was concerned about Tanaka's continuing absence, but she knew he would have no idea where to find them. All she could hope for was that he would return to the robotics lab at the university. Hakase was there, and though Ai didn't know her well, she knew the strange woman had a lot of resources at her command. Still-

"Oh! Nice job, Ai-chan!"

Ai shook off the persona she was wearing and looked over at Gotokuji. "Th-thank you," she said, a little embarrassed by his praise as she looked back down at the robot girl. Gotokuji was right; she had done a really nice job fixing up the robot girl, especially considering the lack of proper tools or parts. She wanted to get the girl back to the robotics lab at the university so she could give her a more thorough examination, but that was out of the question for now. She sighed again.

"We're trapped, aren't we?"

Gotokuji nervously rubbed the back of his head, an awkward smile on his face. "Yeah...Sorry about that, Ai-chan. But don't worry! We'll wait 'til it's clear and then ride my bike somewhere safer than this. Sound good?"

Ai looked back down at the robot girl and nodded.

"Good! Now, let's see if I can find anything to eat around here. I think I saw a vending machine with some twinkies back there somewhere..." Gotokuji said as he wandered off.

At the mention of food, Ai's stomach began to growl, and she sighed yet again.

Kazumi stretched her arms as she strolled over to the big multiple-screen display in her apartment, stifling a yawn. Haruna had asked her to keep an eye out for more robots, and she had decided to humor her old friend. Still, early morning was early morning, so she wasn't really paying much attention as she took a bite of toast and settled in on her big comfortable chair, one leg flung over an armrest.

She had just taken a sip of juice when she spotted something unusual. She commanded her camera drone to back up and focus on the alley it had just flown over, and, sure enough, there it was.

Several rather clunky-looking robots milled around in the middle of the alley, staring off into space. Kazumi couldn't see much detail due to her camera drone's height in the air, but even at such a distance she could tell these were nothing like the robots that Hakase built. If Hakase's robots like the current forms of Chachamaru and Rally were like works of art, these would be like the output of someone who had taken a few art classes in high school and never gone any further. Still, they were far better than what most anyone else could produce at the current time. They moved with a fluidity that, while it didn't match Chachamaru or Rally, actually wasn't very far from it. Quite impressive, considering the rest of the world's robotic output.

As she watched, a door in the wall opened and another one, much sleeker and more humanlike than the others, stepped out into the alley. The other robots immediately reacted by turning to face the new robot for a moment, then darted off as one in different directions while the new one stood there, watching them go, then darted away herself. Try as she might, Kazumi couldn't catch sight of any of them; she only had that one camera drone in that area, and the robots were running along at ground level, obscured by buildings and trees.

Kazumi snatched up her cell phone

Haruna groaned as she swam back up to consciousness and looked around blearily, wondering what had woken her up. The pages of the next chapter of Magical Teacher Onion-sensei were lying around her, waiting to be inked, and she abruptly recalled what had happened the night before. On the way home while she had stopped off at a convenience store, she had had a sudden flare of inspiration for Onion-sensei's next chapter, and had rushed home to draw it. While she had intended to go straight to bed and had even told Hakase she would after they separated for the night at the robotics lab, inspiration was inspiration and she couldn't bring herself to let it go to waste; fifteen pages later, it had been three o'clock in the morning and she had passed out on her drawing table.

"Urgh..." she groaned as she reached for her cell phone and flipped it open. "Whaddaya want, it'sh," she paused for a moment to look at the time, "eight in the morning. Lemme sleep!"

-Hey, this is Kazumi. Sorry to wake you up so insanely early, Haruna- Haruna didn't think she was sorry about it. She didn't think Kazumi was sorry about it at all. How cruel... -but I think I may have found what you've been looking for.-

Haruna perked up. "You mean they finally released those 'special' anatomically correct robots for sale to the public?!" she asked excitedly.

-...no. But I think I found where those other robots you've been looking for live. Listen, do you have something to write on?-

Haruna grabbed a blank sheet of drawing paper and one of her sketching pencils. "Ready."

Hakase woke up to the ringing of her cell phone in her ear.

"Urgh..." she groaned as she sat up, her hair sticking up everywhere. She put on her glasses and looked at the time. "It's just past eight..." She blinked once, twice, looking at her surroundings in confusion. "Oh! The robots!" Her cell phone started ringing again, so she picked it up. "Hello?"

-Found their hideout! Hurry and get ready, I'll be there in ten minutes to pick you up!-

Hakase blinked; sometimes it took a while for her mind to wake and catch up with the rest of her in the mornings. "...huh?"

-Yeah, this is Haruna, by the way. Kazumi found those robots' hideout. We're gonna raid it! Hurry up and get ready unless you wanna get left out! See ya in ten minutes!-

Hakase blinked at her cell phone for a moment before the news sank in and she started to grin. They had found it! The place those strange units had come from...! She couldn't wait to get in there and start poking around! But first things first... time to get ready for the day.

Ten minutes later, Hakase opened the door of the room in the robotics lab that she sometimes slept in and went straight to the main lab, where she had left Chachamaru and Rally with the damaged foreign unit. "Hello!" she said. "Good news everyone! I built a speaker and voice modulator for our girl here so she can communicate more effectively! Here," she said, taking said device from her pocket and tossing it over to Chachamaru, who caught it and looked at it curiously. "Just plug it into that slot above her processor array and she can talk however much she wants." Hakase paused, looking from Chachamaru to Rally. "Is something wrong?"

Chachamaru and Rally looked at each other for a moment.

"She appears to be losing her ability to control the rest of her frame," Chachamaru said hesitantly. She glanced down at the damaged robot. "She...said she was afraid of dying."

Hakase looked at Chachamaru with surprise. Elizabeth Ashdown, the soul trapped in the processing array of the broken unit lying on the table, was already dead; she had died six years ago during the robot attack on the city. Hakase frowned; she had never been good with the whole 'human interaction' thing...better put it off until she could get someone more suited for that kind of thing to come over. "We'll talk more about this later; we have something else to take care of at the moment, since Kazumi found the place where these new units are staying. Do you want to come with us, Chachamaru?"

Chachamaru shook her head hesitantly. "I...think I would rather stay here, Hakase."

"I will go," Rally said.

Hakase shrugged. "Suit yourself. Come on Rally, let's get Tanaka and let this 'FX8' or whatever she called herself stew in her own juices for a while longer."

"Is there a plan for infiltration?" Rally asked as she followed Hakase out of the room.

"Hmm...probably something like 'bust in and hit anything that moves until it stops'," Hakase replied cheerfully.

"I see," Rally said. When Hakase looked back at her, she saw Rally was sporting a small grin.

F9A's eyes opened and she found herself staring at a dirty metal ceiling crisscrossed with air ducts and giant metal beams high above. "What...?"

"Oh, you're awake? Ai-chan'll be happy to hear that."

Something in the man's voice sent a chill down her spine, but when she looked at him, she couldn't recall ever seeing him before. He was quite tall, and the blue jeans and leather jacket he wore bore evidence of grease stains and heavy wear; her first thought was that he must be a mechanic of some sort, a thought backed up by the motorcycle he was kneeling beside. She sat up, marveling at the ease with which she performed the motion, and moved her arms experimentally. "What...what happened? How can I move like this?"

The man grinned crookedly. "Ai-chan fixed you. I was impressed; I knew she fixed Tanaka-san when he was broken, but she didn't even have the proper tools this time."

The robot girl cocked her head to the side. "Who is 'Ai-chan'?"

"Oh, well that's the girl who fixed you, obviously. She's exploring the warehouse right now, but..." he trailed off, seeming to realize something. "I'm Gotokuji Kaoru, nice to meet you," he said suddenly, holding out his hand. F9A hesitantly took it, her confusion at the gesture only growing when he grabbed her hand and pumped it up and down a few times before letting go.

"I'm...I'm Unit F9A, my specialty is maintenance of other units," she said shyly. Gotokuji smiled at her and turned back to the motorcycle he had been working on before. "So...'Ai-chan' is your maintenance technician?" she asked.

Gotokuji just looked at her for a moment before breaking into startled laughter. F9A was starting to get impatient by the time he finally reined himself in. "No no no, I'm a human, I don't need any maintenance tech," he said, wiping tears of laughter from his eyes. "Don't worry about anything; she'll check you over when she comes back," he said, turning back to his motorcycle.

F9A remained where she was, watching him. She didn't quite know why, but she found herself liking this strange human. She hadn't ever spoken with any humans since the Professor died the day after she had been activated...they were kind of scary.

"I had...I saw troubling video files when I was in sleep mode," she said. She didn't know why she was telling him this, but she felt the need to tell someone, and he was the only one currently available.

"Bad dreams, huh?" Gotokuji asked as he tightened a bolt on his motorcycle. "What were they like?"

F9A sat there for a moment, troubled as she tried to make sense of the strange video files she had seen. "I was...in a city; it may have been this one, but I am not sure. There were several of us standing there, waiting..."

"For what?" Gotokuji asked as he made sure the bolt was snug.

F9A hesitated. "...monsters. Monsters with spiky blond hair. They came up out of the water-" She cut herself off when Gotokuji dropped his wrench and turned to look at her like he had seen a ghost. "What? What is it?" she asked, almost fearfully. "Is this a 'bad dream' you have seen too?"

Gotokuji just looked at her a moment, wide eyed, his face pale, his lips stretched thin. "...every day of my life," he finally managed to say as he stood up and watched her. "But the attack happened six years ago; it was just seven of us standing there at the river until the others came, and you weren't there. How do you know about it? How?!" he demanded, taking a step toward her.

F9A scrambled back, terrified by his sudden personality shift, but he seemed to realize how scary he was acting and quickly turned away, facing his motorcycle. "That was the worst day of my life. I watched people die that day, killed by a bunch of half-baked robots just so some corporate asshole could create a diversion to kidnap a bunch of innocent girls," he said darkly. "I thought I was over it; I thought I could live with the fact that I wasn't strong enough to help others when they needed it. I even managed to accept Tanaka, and offer him a place at the garage. But here I am flipping out when a robot girl says..." He trailed off and heaved a sigh as he picked up his fallen wrench and knelt down beside his motorcycle. "I wanna know how you know about that, F9A. You weren't standing there on our side, and you don't look a thing like the robots that attacked us that day. So how do you know?"

"I-I...I don't know," F9A replied. And she didn't. She couldn't even access the video files she had seen while in sleep mode; she had done several in depth searches of her storage space, but there were no video files anything like what she had been searching for. It was disturbing...was she perhaps starting to malfunction? But then again, Gotokuji said he had experienced something similar...

"Oh, you're up!"

F9A whirled to find a human girl standing in the doorway, watching her. "A...Ai-chan?" she said.

The girl smiled and nodded, oddly happy; F9a didn't know her at all, but she felt that, somehow, that sort of of happiness just didn't fit the girl. "I'm Inoue Ai. What's your name?" she asked as she entered the room and sat down on a sagging office chair.

F9A looked away shyly. This was the girl that had fixed her...she was so young! F9A didn't know much about humans, but she did know that they learned more and more as they aged, and young ones like this Inoue Ai shouldn't have been able to fix her as well as she had. "I'm Unit F9A, my specialty is maintenance of other units..." She paused as Ai rolled the office chair closer. "How did you fix me? You should be too young to know how..."

F9A watched Ai's face flicker through a range of emotions, surprise, annoyance, pride, wariness, before finally settling on a careful neutrality as she looked away. Somehow it seemed more natural than the others. "I-I just opened up the b-broken parts and I could see what was wrong," she said.

"Oh..." F9A replied, looking at the girl curiously. Why had she started to stutter when answering that question? Was Inoue Ai starting to malfunction as well? Did humans malfunction at all? F9A frowned as she thought about just how much she didn't know about the world. She hadn't ever thought about what she didn't know before, she had just focused on learning enough to do her job properly as she performed maintenance on the other units in the building. Units that had then all been forcibly deactivated by that FX8-a prototype. The rage that washed over her was so shocking in its sudden violence that F9A didn't hear what Inoue Ai said when she spoke next, and had to struggle to rein herself in. "What did you say?" she asked.

Ai raised her eyebrow, but repeated her question. "F9A is awkward to say. Don't you have a nickname?"

F9A just looked at her for a moment. She didn't really understand what the girl was saying. "A...nickname? Why would I need a nickname?"

She and Ai exchanged a long, awkward look.

"W-well, it's hard to say 'Eff Nine Ay', you know," Ai said. "So how about...hmm...how about 'Nina'?" she asked.

"N...Nina?" F9A asked

"Y-yes, Ai replied, nodding. "From the '9A' part of your name."

"Nina...Nina," F9A said thoughtfully. "I...I don't dislike it," she said.

Ai smiled, and F9A, now dubbed 'Nina', hesitantly smiled back.

Author's Notes: One chapter to go before the end! This story has really taken far too long to get to this point...I apologize for the ridiculous delay, but at the very least I actually kept it going until I thought up a good ending. Anyway, in case you're confused about all this "six years ago" and "robot invasion" stuff, this story ties into my other story Still Waters 2 (which is also available to read on this site), which covers that incident.