Warning: Genuinely explicit, squicky chapter. Read at own risk. In fact, feel free to skip this one, I'll summarize it next chapter.

"Johnny, what are you doing?"

I look up to see Zan peering into my room from between the bars of my cage. Zan has become a regular visitor, just like Meia, BC, and Dita. And Duelo, but that's less visiting and more psychoanalyzing. I hold up the small device in my hands for the blue-haired singer to see.

It's a small device, with three stacked layers. On the bottom layer, two motors and rotation counters are mounted, on opposite sides of the board. These motors are attached to a jar-sized wheel with a rubber tire. Also on the bottom are three ultrasonic sensors, one facing the front, the left and the right. On the front and back, there are ball bearings to keep the device from scraping against the ground. On the second layer, a battery sits, one large enough to keep the device running for about thirty minutes on one charge, depending on what it does. On the top level, there's a surge protection circuit and lots of metal spikes called headers.

I complete the robot by slotting a pre-made circuit board on top of the headers, creating a nice connection. Now, I only have to hit the switch, and the programming should take over. "I'm working on this robot." I say. I place it down on the floor, and it suddenly tears off as the ten second waiting period ends.

Unfortunately, my code still isn't working properly. The left wheel isn't turning as fast as the right, and what should have been a straight line path ends up curving to the right and the left wheel spins too fast for the right to catch up. Then it slams into the opposite wall, wheels skidding on the slick floor. I sigh deeply, then haul myself off my bed and over to the struggling robot.

"Was it supposed to do that?" She asks.

"No, it was supposed to go straight, then come to a stop before it hit the opposite wall." I pick the up the robot and switch it off, then return to my seat. "It's not using the PID controller or the sensors, so it's doing locking up somewhere in between..." I stare off into the distance and bite my lip. I've been working on this issue for two hours.

Thankfully, Meia and BC agreed to let me have my stuff back, or else I would have gone insane down here. I'ts been two weeks since we chased Rabat out, and we've only had three battles in that time. That's pretty much the only thing they let me out for, aside from scheduled, supervised bathroom breaks and the occasional quiz on what's next. BC and Magno are still trying to figure out what my deal is, but whatever The Fixer did makes their eyes go glassy and their minds wander whenever they get close to the truth. This leads to them occasionally interrogating me, which involves a lot of threats, yelling, and anger. None of it on my part.

I've managed not to have any episodes during these interrogations, which I think of as a miracle.

Anyway, since if I don't do anything for three days on end I might legitimately kill someone to relieve the boredom, they let me have my toys back. The first thing I did was create a transformer and cut a hole in the wall with the small welder I had Zan bring from the Reg. Wiring the transformer in hadn't been so hard, just nerve wracking. High current cables will do that, even if they're turned off. You should have seen the look on Meia, BC, and Magno's faces when I asked for the electricity in my cell to be shut down while I worked in the dark for thirty minutes.

The transformer allows me to finally charge my devices up, so I feel like I can use them with impunity. That leads to me actually spending the time to work on my projects. As much as I'd like to claim that I had designed both the transformer and the little wheeled robot myself, I couldn't make those claims. The transformer is a combination of someone else's frequency transformer and a metal loop I had wrapped with wire myself. It's kind of worrying how warm it gets, and I haven't decided it's stable enough to hide away inside the wall yet. The small robot was originally intended to run rat mazes in a competition, and one of my smarter friends can be credited with building it.

Thankfully, I'm the one who knows the software, even if the hardware doesn't make sense to me. Once I can get access to the internet back, I'll look up the part numbers of the chips my partner used to make this protection circuit-

"Then, why isn't it working?" Zan asks, drawing me out of my reverie.

"Er, it's getting stuck before a block of code can execute. I think there's a loop..." Noticing the girl's eyes have glazed over, I restart. "I'm telling it to do the wrong thing, and I don't see where. It was originally designed to travel through a small, even maze and I'm trying to adapt it to work on the wide open floors."

She nods politely, but her eyes continue to show me just how lost she is. "Okay. What are you going to do with it once it drives straight?"

I open the code on my computer again, scanning through the lines of code to see if I can spot the problem. "Well... I haven't really explored this ship much. For the most part, I've been locked up."

Zan turns her head away. She wasn't told the truth of either incident just like the majority of the ship, and my mysterious lock up led to a lot of rumors about me being created and spread. Right now, I'm either the leader of a secret division of the men's intent on bringing down the pirates (I made sure to mention the rumor in front of BC. Her face turns nice shades of purple, if you push her buttons right.) or a serial murderer who was found over the corpse of one of the pirates. Since nobody's yet to actually die since this journey started, I don't understand how that rumor caught hold.

"So, I decided that if I can't go anywhere, I can just get this little guy to look around for me." I'll have to add some more sensors and things, because right now all it can do is move around and map out a non-existent maze. It can't actually tell me what it finds, or if someone picks it up, or if it encounters an obstacle it can't get past. And it's not good at the moving part. "At this rate, though, we might get back to Mejare before I complete it."

"...Mejare?" Zan repeats.

I look up from my laptop to look at Zan. "Yeah, that's where we're headed, right?"

She nods. "Yes, but aren't you trying to get back to Tarak?"

Oh. Yeah. "Er, yeah. Tarak. I was..."

She jumps in when words fail me. "I figured it out. Your from a different planet than Tarak, like Rabat. That's why you don't dislike us women so much, and why you have music with both men and women singing in them!"

Well, close enough. I smile at her. "Wow. Interesting deduction."

She beams, obviously thinking I meant that she was right. "Does that mean you know about men and women?" She asks hopefully.

I nod. "Yeah, it's not really a mystery to me. Why?"

She stands up and turns to the door. "Wait here for a few minutes, I'll be right back."

"It's not like I can go anywhere." I mutter, but she's already out the door. Oh well, let's get back to coding. I really, really miss my whiteboard. Whenever I had a problem with my code, writing it on a whiteboard always seemed to help. Writing it down on paper wasn't the same, and I'm not exactly sure I want to start writing on the walls just yet.

With a few more tests with the small robot spinning it's wheel futilely in the air and keeping it plugged into the computer for diagnostics, I finally narrow down the problem to one section. There, I finally catch the mistake. The error code that checks whether the wheels are already spinning isn't firing, which mean it keeps turning the wheel motors on, which means that it never advances. And it's all because I put in a "less than" instead of a "greater than."

Amazing how one semantic error can screw over an entire program. I compile the fixed program, but Zan comes back before I can test the little robot again.

And she brought friends. Among the faces I see, there are some pilots, two ladies from the security detail, Paiway, Dita... and Duelo. They start to crowd into the cell area, chattering excitedly. The last person into the cell area ends up being Meia, who is talking hurriedly into her comm unit asking for something.

Zan steps right up close to the bars of my prison. "I knew some other people who I knew would be interested." She says.

I glance at the swarm of people still figuring out where and how to arrange themselves. "Gee, did you invite the entire ship, or only this half?"

"Only half." Zan says, running with my joke. "Meia's inviting the other half."

I quirk an eyebrow.

"She's trying to get your words broadcast throughout the ship."

If this had still been an anime, I would've sweatdropped. "...Zan, this topic isn't exactly... something you talk about in public." I finish awkwardly. I step as close to the bars as I dare, and whisper to her. "I don't even know where I have to start, since I don't know how much you all already know."

She tilts her head. "Just start at the beginning. It shouldn't be that hard."

Before I can retort, she plops down where she was standing, and I notice that the rest of the crowd has settled down and is gazing at me expectantly. Oh, this is going to be fun. Dita is in the front row next to Zan and Paiway, Duelo is leaning on one wall, and Meia's on the other.

"Well then." I clear my throat. "So... what exactly do you want to know?" I ask desperately. Maybe they want to know how men and women are supposed to get along? Please, please let that be it. I don't want to give the bird and the bees talk to an entire ship.

"Why do you have that tube between your legs?" Dita immediately answers.

"God dammit." I curse under my breath. "Okay." I take another deep breath. "Okay. So, let me start with the fact that males and females are actually the same species." I wait for the skeptical looks to stop. "Yeah, I know. 'But we don't look the same!' It's called sexual dimorphism, and it's a trait of most mammals that I know of." I continue. I kind of wish I had some visual aids for this, but if I did have pictures of the sexual development process of boys and girls, people might have some questions. "Most of human's secondary sexual characteristics show up around puberty, which occurs after about ten to thirteen years of age. In men, this means facial hair, though all of us on this ship shave it off."

Duelo nods at my comment.

"For women..." I gesture to Paiway, who blinks in surprise. "Well, you can see she hasn't developed breasts yet, so she's probably right before or just hitting puberty."

There's an uncomfortable silence. I can tell that a lot of the occupants of the room are recalling their own puberty, which was probably a time of confusion for everyone even on Mejare. Duelo seems fascinated though, and I pray to the Paksis he doesn't decide to start examining any of them right here and now. Thankfully, he turns back to me without molesting anyone. "So, John. You said secondary, which means there's a primary, am I correct?"

I grimace. This isn't going to go well, I can feel it. "Right. So... the, uh, tube between male's legs." I start. This bring's everyone attention back into laser focus on me. "It's used in procreation. Erm, I'm assuming all of you-" I look down at Paiway. "Or at least most of you are familiar with how a uterus works, either by owning one or because Ezra's pregnant." I gesture to Duelo. "Honestly, Mejare women reproduce almost naturally, but they splice two ovum together instead of fertilizing the ovum the normal way." I take another deep, steadiying breath. "Any questions?"

Three hands go up. I close my eyes and count to ten. I just want to get this over with, please be easy questions. I gesture to Duelo first.

"What is an ovum?" He asks.

"An egg. It's... I'll give you a more detailed and medically useful version later okay?" I gesture to Zan next.

"How does an egg get fertilized naturally?"

"I'm... getting to that." I hedge. "Dita?"

"What do you use the tube for?"

"I'm..." going to cry. "I'm getting to that."

A hush falls down over the crowd, and possibly the ship. I wonder if Bart's watching. If he is, he's bound to be really confused right now. I can see some of the audience trying to puzzle out some things.

"So..." I start, then hang for a minute. "Men have... seed, which they give to the women to complete the egg, and turn it into a child." Now that I'm talking, my mouth starts running as fast as it can. "Then the woman has the child grow inside her, and she eventually gives birth after about nine months."

"Huh? But then, there's nothing different between what we do now and what you're saying!" Comes a voice I don't recognize. It's a green haired woman, one of the security ladies.

"There is a difference." I say, my voice a deapan. "When it's a man and a woman, there's no need for a machine to make the child." I say.

This raises a clamor, and I decide to retreat to a corner of my cell, since everyone's trying to talk over each other, quickly drowning me out. Duelo is deep in thought, off in his own little world. Depending on how much he knows about the male anatomy, he might have been able to figure it out. Then again, I don't know how they handle reproduction on Tarak. Sperm banks/donors? Stem cell extraction?

Dita comes right up to the bars, looking like she might try to get between them at any second. "But, you didn't answer my question!" She cries. "I want to know about the tube!"

...Why me? If this was only Zan, or maybe Dita too. Hell, if everyone I know on this ship was here, I might be able to continue. But with all of these strangers? These crew members I never had a chance to interact with meaningfully? I can't judge how they'll react. However, if I'm going to continue.

"Before I get to that," I say to Dita, stepping forward again. "Meia? I need you in here for a second."

She looks surprised, then wary, yet she deactivates the field for a second and steps inside.

"Okay, first, I need to whisper some things to you." I say, keeping my voice steady. "And I know this is creepy, but I promise I'm not going to do anything to you, or force you to do deviant things."

She shudders at my words, but the action seems to relax her a bit. She doesn't tense up as I carefully approach her... at least, not much.

"Okay, I need you to get Duelo and Bart in here, since... well, I want some time for people to calm down where they can't interact with each other." I wince. "It's... back home, this is the most difficult topic to explain to anyone, as it's a taboo subject. I'm still not sure how far I should go... and we may want to remove Paiway."

She arches an eyebrow at me. "Why would we need to do either of those things?"

I take a deep breath. "Meia, do you have an age of consent on Mejare, and if so, is Paiway past that?"

Meia opens her mouth to speak, then her cheeks color as she realizes what I'm getting at. "Wait, you mean, this has to do with sex?"

At least I didn't have to be the first person to say it. "Yeah. It does. And I don't know how it's treated on Mejare, or on Tarak, and I'm hoping it's similar enough that we don't have a massive problem as soon as the mechanics are figured out." I say in a hurry. "Look, we already have one kid who's going to be born on this ship. We don't need a few more before we get back to your home planets."

Meia nods her head vigorously before turning to the comm unit on her wrist and hurriedly whispering into it.

When Bart finally shows up, he's visibly recoiling from all the intense stares he gets. He timidly tiptoes through the crowd, coming up to the suspended plasma while glancing around nervously. "The captain said you wanted to talk to me?" He asks, his eyes dancing around.

I nod and gesture he comes over toward Duelo. Once all three of us are huddled in the corner, I hold up three fingers behind my back. Then two.

Meia drops the bars of my cage, and I reach out and grab the two other males on board, yanking them in with me and Meia. Meia turns the bars back on, but only too late do I notice that two others had made it inside: Dita and Zan.

Fan-fucking-tastic.

Bart starts to start complaining at me, but I cut him off with a gesture and walk right up to Meia. I can feel Dita and Zan's eyes boring holes into me, but I ignore them to whisper in the leader's ear. "Meia, I hate to ask this, but," I hesitate.

"Hate to ask what?"

"When Mejare woman have sex, do you use toys?"

I really should have expected the fist. I wasn't braced for it, and the hit sends me careening into a wall. It succeeds in killing the ever louder crowd's conversation. Meia's face is crimson, partly in embarrassment, and party in rage. She grips my collar and huals me off my feet, pinning me to the wall several inches off the floor. "Wh- Where- Who- How-"

"I'm sorry, but knowing would make explaining easier." I say, hoping to appease the angry woman. "I really, reallly REALLY didn't want to ask."

She suddenly releases me, and I stumble sideways as I land. She turns away, but mumbles before heading to the opposite corner. "Yes."

Well, that at least makes things easier.

Once the crowd has finished crowding back around the cell, and the five other occupants of my room had found nice places to sit, I find myself standing, alone, against ignorance. Against innocence. I note belatedly that Paiway was still here, on the other side of the fence.

Right now, running headlong into the glowing plasma is starting to seem like the less painful option. After a few seconds of contemplation, I finally grow back that spine I keep insisting I have. "Okay, so, when women have sex on Mejare-"

I think the room actually warmed up from all the blushing.

"-they use additional tools to help, right?" Duelo, Bart and Paiway still look confused, but I'm not planning on enlightening them right now. "Well, there's a reason that the tubular ones look suspiciously similar to male's crotches."

Dita pipes up, confused. "So, you mean you put your tubes inside our-"

"Yeah, Dita." I cut her off. "Yeah."

The room falls completely silent, no one even daring to breath.

And then, one of the more anti-men of the pilots leans over and throws up.

Thankfully, The reaction to all of my revelations ended up being a lot different than I had predicted. Instead of curiosity, Bart and the majority of the pirates started staying as far from each other as possible. Duelo is, of course, curious beyond all belief, but he seems to be content to mull things over for now in his lab, going over Ezra's records for evidence of my claims no doubt.

The problem, really, is that Dita refuses to leave. And since she refuses to leave, Zan refuses to leave. And Meia is still here, still red in the face. I'd open the gate and shove them out, possibly with Meia's help, but Jura had shown up. I'd forgotten how hard she'd pushed Hibiki back in canon, and that was when they didn't actually know how to do anything.

Now? I fear for my life.

"LET ME IN!" Jura pleads.

"NO!" Dita and Zan say in perfect unison, then glare at each other.

Today started out so well, I only had coding problems to solve. I'm sitting on my bed, dangerous as that could be, head in my hands. Meia stands beside me, halting any advance the other two inside the cage try to make.

It's a stand off.

I shouldn't have actually told then, should I? Well, hindsight is twenty/twenty.

"But I want to make a baby!" Jura insists. "I want to try it!"

"No! Mister Alien is going to make one with me!" Dita says back.

Oh god, not her too.

Zan huffs. "He doesn't even pay much attention to you, Dita."

"He changed! We talk about aliens and science and computers!" Dita exclaims, whirling on her friend.

Meia turns to me. "You were expecting the whole ship to be like these two?" She asks.

I continue to hold my head in my hands. "Uh-huh."

"...Are you sure that actually saying all of that was a good idea?"

"I'm positive it was a bad idea." I growl. The three near the bars are attempting to yell over each other, creating a cacophony. "I should have stopped somewhere around explaining about ovum and stuff."

"...Is it true, that our, er, toys are based of of-" Meia asks cautiously.

"Yes, it is. No, I'm not showing you. If I hear about anyone doing the 'I'll show you mine if you show me yours,' I'm going to kill them. Slowly." I put as much venom into my voice as I can, but I lose it as I continue. "I don't think I can stop Parfet and Duelo, though. Duelo's too curious, and Parfet likes him too much."

Meia seems disturbed by the thought. "And..." She swallows. "The only way to get babies where you come from-"

"Yeah, sex is everyone's favorite activity." I say flatly. "About three quarters of the media back home is focused on sex and relationships."

Meia turns a pale shade of green. "Was our show-"

I lift my head to glare at her. "You call a Vanguard merging with a Dread 'combining,' and it makes you sweaty and tired. Also, you three-" I gesture to the three pilots, excluding Zan. "argue over who get's to do so. Loudly. With much jealousy."

"..." Meia stares at the other three, still arguing with each other too much to notice our conversation. "I feel sick."

"Join the club." I let myself fall sideways onto the bed, my head not particularly appreciating the hardness of the metal, covered by cloth though it is. "Now I really have my work cut out for me."

"Really?"

"I have to dissuade Jura and Dita from trying, and stop Zan from thinking she wants to try in the first place."

"Too late on that front." Meia comments levelly.

I listen to the shouting match and quickly find that Zan's joined the fight. "God, I feel like I'm in a harem anime. I'm not a good person, go fuck someone else."

Meia sits down on the edge of the bed, facing directly away from me. "Why exactly would it be so bad?" She asks carefully. "By Mejare's standards, Jura is very attractive. Dita and Zan aren't far behind."

"Tell me, which one of them are you planning on having a kid with?" I ask. "Or even just share a bed with?"

"None of them." Meia responds after a second to register what I said.

"Neither am I." I finish. "Maybe it didn't sink in, but I could feasibly get them pregnant. Today. Without a machine to help. And sex is supposed to be this intimate thing, though I've never really..."

"Never really put stock in it?" Meia finishes.

"I guess." I sigh heavily. "I'm not interested in it that much, I don't want kids."

"Does this have something to do with your problem?" She asks.

"Probably." I respond glumly. "I get that Jura and Dita think having a kid is all wonderful, but Jura has Barnette, someone who loves her. There's nothing wrong with the way you guys are doing it and folks back home would kill to have the tech that enables it. Same for Tarak's method, I'm sure, but Jura really shouldn't just go after someone else." I blink a few times. "It's like seeing someone pretty, and abandoning your wife to go have a child with them real quick."

Meia squints her eyes. "I don't see your point."

"What?"

"That kind of thing happens on Mejare all the time. It's considered an honor to be the Fama of a child with someone famous." Meia informs me. "And even then, Jura isn't technically in a relationship with Barnette right now."

"Great, just great." I moan. "That's not how it works back home. There goes that excuse."

"Why do you need an excuse? What's the problem?" Meia persists.

"I don't belong here!" I hiss. "I'm not a good person, and I'd make a terrible Ohma. I refuse to be held responsible for a kid, and we both know what happens when that's the attitude taken by the parents." I give her a pointed look, and she glances away.

"I think that Jura or Dita would both do fine raising a child." Meia observes. "So if Jura's out, why is Dita? Or Zan for that matter?"

"They're both too young, for starters." I say. "I don't go for girls that young."

"They're your age." Meia's face twists in confusion.

"No, I'm twenty three. I just look sixteen. And even if that doesn't matter, there's still the biggest problem with those two."

Meia doesn't respond, instead watching the three way fight.

"Since Zan and Dita have a crush on me, having sex would only reinforce that thought. Since I don't reciprocate, that would be cruel."

"You're a lot kinder than you give yourself credit for." Meia finally says.

"How so?" I turn back to her, confused.

"You could just use them, but you do your best not to. I don't even think Dita would hate you for it, yet..." She trails off. "If they knew you didn't love them, and the still loved you and wanted to be with you, would you chase them away?"

"...I don't know." I answer honestly. "I think I would, since that can't be a fun way to live."

"You don't choose who you fall in love with." Meia reminds me.

"Yeah." I think back to my last relationship, and how that had ended.

We fall into an uncomfortable silence, or as close to that as you can get with thee other women ten feet away, still yelling. Which, I realize, with a chill down my spine had stopped sounding like a competition for who gets rights, but for some sort of order. "Meia."

"Yes?" She turns to me.

"Why are they arguing over who gets first? First in what?"

"Oh, they decided to share?" Meia looks surprised. "I wouldn't have expected that from them."

"Polygamy is a thing on Mejare?"

She nods, and i turn over to face the wall. I'm living the otaku dream, and it's a fucking nightmare.

Meia gets up off my pallet. "I'll get those two out and keep Jura out. We'll talk later."

"Thank you." I say.

It's another fifteen minutes before I dare open my eyes, and I find the thing that would make me the happiest.

I'm alone.

I sit up, grab my laptop, and glance over the code again. It looks right, it should work. I plug in the mouse robot, upload the program, and flip the switch.

This time, the robot soars straight forwards, turns once it sees a wall in front of it, and comes back to me, stopping right where I left it.

Well, at least something went right today.

The little maze running robot actually exists. It was designed for a competition in April of 2017, though I had an error in my code that caused our mouse to fail before it could solve the maze. I blame the fact we had to switch chips with less than two days left until the competition started, meaning we had to rewrite the code and rewire the entire robot, and I got three hours of sleep in the 72 hours leading up to the competition.

The robot's name is Jerry.