Ch 36
V 1.0
A/N 1 – I was not able to write the Motoko/Kotoko lemon like I wanted to, but I did make the first part of this chapter extra limey (yet within site guidelines) for your reading pleasure.
Motoko Interlude -
Part Two
Café Touch-And-Go!
Private Living Quarters,
Akihabara District
Tokyo, Japan
December 25
early morning
(almost four months after story start)
Coldness was now a constant part of her life now. So why was she feeling so warm?
The futon that Motoko was used to sleeping on was not of the best quality. The cotton cover was already threadbare even though it was only a couple months old, it was lumpy, and if your face was right against it, the smell of camphor was apparent. The pillow that went with it was thin and made of foam, and covered in a cheap cotton slipcase.
However, the futon she was on right now had a satin cover on it with a light floral scent to it, the pillow was both fluffy and solid, and her arm was on top of something that felt smooth, and warm and moving up and down slightly.
Her eyes slightly open, all Motoko could see was short brown hair in front of her. Not fully up to speed upon waking, the former swordswoman calmly wondered why there was hair of that color in front of her face. It looked like the hair was still attached to someone's head, which mean that someone else was in the futon with her.
Someone…
With short brown hair…
Was laying on the same futon as her…
After Motoko did a quick check with her hands on both her body and the other person, she was able to add one more observation to the above statement.
…And they were both naked.
Even as her body tried to initialize it's fight-or-flight response, Motoko kept still. Contrary to what some people would think, she had previously woken up with other people in her futon, but in those cases it had always been Kaolla Su in bed with her, latched on like a blonde limpet in an attempt to keep bad dreams away. This was the first time she had awoken with an adult in bed with her.
She could not remember how she wound up in some strange man's bed, but as soon as she could safely extricate herself, she would go looking for a bokken and damn what her family would say! But first, she had to get her arm away from the grasp of the other person, who was holding her hand against their stomach.
After a couple of slight tugs Motoko's hand stayed where it was, the other person's grasp was too strong. She knew she could break free in a heartbeat if she used technique and more strength in the movement, but the other person was apparently asleep and Motoko wanted to keep it that way.
Twisting and pulling did little to help free her trapped arm. It was only when a despairing Motoko started to wonder if it were really practical to do what she had overheard some customers talking about and chewing their arm off like a wolf with a paw caught in a steel trap that the choice was taken away from her.
"You're not thinking of doing something silly, are you Mo-chan?" Releasing the hold on her hand, the other person slowly turned to face her, revealing that it was Kotoko Yamada, her boss. Her light brown eyes blinked sleepily as she looked her subordinate in the face, their bodies so close that Motoko could feel bare breasts against her equally naked chest. "You know, like running away screaming?"
"I must admit, that did cross my mind." Staring into the other girl's lighter eyes was almost like a form of hypnosis. For some reason, Motoko was not panicking, not getting enraged at being taken advantage of, even if it was by another female and not by some lecherous male. In fact, there was a overwhelming sense of lassitude running through her body, making her very reluctant to move at all. It was very much like the so-called 'runner's high' she sometimes got after running long distances in her training. "What did you do to me? I've never felt like this, so… relaxed?" Motoko asked in some wonder and just a little fear. Surely she had not been drugged?
"I didn't do anything you didn't enjoy, Mo-chan. You were quite a bit sensitive at the beginning though." Kotoko gave a slight smirk as she looked at her bedmate. "It was making me wish that I had a bed instead of a futon, that way I could have tied your arms and legs to the bed posts to keep you from thrashing around."
To her dismay, memories of the night before began to surface in the younger girl's mind. Memories of soft lips exploring her blushing face, her throat, her aching nipples. Memories of gentle hands traveling her body, trailing from the graceful curve of her back down to her slender and defined waist, down past her rounded bottom to her long legs. Memories of long delicate fingers, stroking, caressing, lightly tugging and twisting, discovering and passing boundaries and borders unexplored by any other person. And finally, the memories of the sounds, the moans, the sharp cries, and finally the screaming that to her ultimate horror had come from her own throat.
The incipient train wreak that was about to take place in Motoko's mind suddenly disappeared as Kotoko's lips pressed firmly against hers, the tip of her tongue piercing the seal of her lips. Motoko could only moan and clutch onto the other girl as she plundered her mouth, leaving no corner unexplored.
Breaking away after a minute of concentrated osculation, the ronin girl could only lay there as the older girl smirked at her again. "What sorcery is this?" Motoko gasped.
"It's called sex, Motoko-chan. Surely you've heard of it?" Kotoko left her face close to Motoko's, but otherwise just watched her, her hand softly stroking her lover's face.
"I know of sex for the purposes of reproduction, and for perversion, but nothing like this." Motoko had never really considered that sex was supposed to be pleasurable for both partners, just that it was a wife's duty to submit to her husband for the purpose for conceiving children.
Kotoko blink-blinked at her. "Come on, you can't seriously think that sex is just about guys getting off, do you? Why do you think girls are so into guys if they don't something out of it?"
"Because they are looking for husbands?" Motoko's response caused the older girl's head to fall back on the pillow.
"Gods, Mo-chan, you sound like you got your sex ed from your old spinster aunt! Even learning about sex in the locker rooms at school would teach you more than that!"
"Actually, it was my Great-aunt Naoko who instructed me on reproductive matters. The health and development classes at junior high school covered the rest."
Kotoko's eyes turned to look at the other girl while her head stayed in place on the pillow. "Your Great-aunt Naoko… by any chance, was she older, not married, looked and dressed very plainly, never had a life outside of work? Kind of nosey and into everyone's business weither they wanted her to be or not?"
"I would say that description was fairly accurate," Motoko allowed. She had never mentioned her background in the kendo arts and her family to anyone at her place of employment, so she had not talked about how Aunt Naoko was considered the clan busybody.
"You do realize that the closest your aunt has ever come to sex is when the bus she was on hit the speed bump too hard?" Kotoko could see the incomprehension in Motoko's eyes. "Your aunt just told you that guys want to stick it in and get off, and leave the girls behind and in trouble, right?"
"Not quite as crudely as that," Motoko muttered. Truth be told, Aunt Naoko's little speech to nine year old Motoko had lasted about ten minutes if that, and left her with more questions than answers. The technical information from health class did not help very much either. But seeing how boys treated girls in school and how perverted men took advantage of women on the street did lead to certain perceptions of the male members of the human species.
"And what did your spinster aunt tell you about same-sex relationships?" Kotoko casually asked… perhaps a bit too casually.
"Just that they had no place in the purpose of producing children and heirs for families." Great-aunt Naoko had actually gone into some detail on how same-sex sexual relations was almost as perverted as non-marriage sex, and in some cases worse as it distracted the people involved from their family duties. Little Motoko did not understand at the time why two men or two women would want to be together like that, as she could barely understand why a man and a woman would be together except for producing children. However, the glint in Kotoko's eyes gave Motoko a feeling that it would not be a good idea to go into detail about this, especially since Motoko had not really been concerned about such matters until recently. But in light of what happened between the two of them the night before, the ronin girl knew that she could not afford to offend or anger the other female with some ill-thought-out remark.
Most of Motoko's anger against males and perversion came to the surface after her sister Tsuruko's marriage, which resulted in the heirship of the clan to pass to her. Her brother-in-law was some non-entity from a minor samurai family barely suitable to marry an Aoyama. The fact that the man was a salaryman barely competent to hold a bokken correctly, let alone skillfully, was another black mark against him. But the straw that had broken the proverbial camel's back as it were was the night that Motoko had inadvertently seen the couple having sex. And it was not as though she had walked into their room and accidently seen them; Motoko had decided to take a late night bath at the onsen at the family compound and thought the hot baths would be deserted at that hour. Apparently she had not been the only one to think that, as she had come upon her sister and brother-in-law already there, and too distracted to notice her.
From what little Motoko had learned in her sex ed instruction, she was only familiar with the standard position, and barely at that. So it was a shock to see her sister on her hands and knees on the floor of the onsen, her husband on his knees thrusting into her from behind. Yet this was nothing compared to the cries she had heard coming from Tsuruko, degrading demands for more, for faster, for harder. Up to that point Motoko had only seen her sister as someone to be admired and feared, but seeing her act as she imagined some common street trollop would had shook her to the core.
Motoko never told anyone what she had seen that night. She knew that if she had thrown what she had seen in her sister's face she would have reacted very badly. But the images did not go away, they would always surface in the back of her mind. So no matter that her respected sister and sword mistress was in front of her, the memories of her on her knees submissively begging for more always superimposed itself on her. This of course almost ruined her relations with her family, as the disgust and the revulsion those memories brought forward was not something she could let go. It was only when Motoko had left Kyoto and moved to the Hinata-sou that her relations with Tsuruko began to improve, especially since they were all over the phone. But in some corner of her mind, Motoko mourned the loss of the image of her beloved aneue, the tall, beautiful and proud sword-mistress and former heir of the Aoyama clan.
"Well, now you know that that is not entirely accurate, right Mo-chan?" Kotoko asked, the glint disappearing from her eyes. Leaning forward, she softly kissed her lover, not aggressively like before.
Motoko relaxed under her touch, not trying to pull away. The feelings this simple touch were producing were still surprising to her, as she had had very little positive physical touching in her life ever since she was a toddler. It even made the diminution of her name into something she did not mind, something that she had always been vehemently against. It had taken several rappings with Shishu's sheath to break Kitsune Konno from the attempts to use her name that way when she lived at the Hinata-sou, but that had been the last of it, until now.
Now, just hearing the hated name come from Kotoko's lips made her insides heat up, a heat that was steadily increasing the longer the kiss went on. A heat that brought back more memories of what the two females had done the night before; Motoko laying on her back shivering and moaning as Kotoko had explored her body with fingers, lips and tongue. The high pitched cries and body spasms as her lover brought over the edge over and over again. The lower pitched moans from their last tryst, where the two were laying on their sides against each other, their tongues dueling pleasurably for dominance, her sensitive breasts rubbing against Kotoko's, their legs intertwined and their most sensitive parts pressed together, setting off an erotic explosion that not only caused Kotoko to finish along with her, it caused Motoko to pass out in a faint.
"What will we do now Ko…toko-san?" Motoko almost slipped and used a too familiar version of her lover's name, but given the smile on her face, she caught it regardless.
"Well, I was thinking that we could wash up and get some breakfast, then watch those videos we missed last night." Nuzzling the other girl's nose, she continued softly. "And I don't mind if you call me Ko-chan, at least if we're by ourselves. If the other girls hear you, you can expect some teasing about it though."
"Ko-chan…" Boldly, at least for her, Motoko moved forward and kissed her lover briefly before moving back, a blush still forming on her face. "That sounds like a good idea." Throwing back the light covers on their bodies, Motoko slowly came to her feet, her nude body the object of the older girl's unabashed gaze. The blush still on her face, Motoko turned and after finding the bathroom walked off and entered it. It was only until the sound of the water running in the shower came on that the smile on Kotoko's face slipped off, a slight frown appearing in its place, a frown tinged with sorrow. Shaking her head, Kotoko rolled to her feet and followed her lover into the washroom.
end Motoko Interlude
Hinata-sou Dormitory
Hintata City, Kanagawa Prefecture
Metro Tokyo, Japan
December 24
mid evening
(almost four months after story start)
Noriyasu Seta was known as a noted archeologist and world traveler, especially in the countries and continents that bordered the Southern Pacific Ocean. Anywhere that there was a possibility of artifacts of the Turtle God civilization (which apparently had a wider reach than even the Polynesians), Seta had been there. Easter Island? Check. Australia? Check. Galapagos Islands with its giant turtles? Double check.
Of course, some of those places were not the most friendly of environs, and that was before its inhabitants were taken into account. Papua New Guinea and its headhunters? Check. East Timor during the late unpleasantness? Check. The Solomon Islands with its tons of unexploded ordinance from the Pacific War and the aptly named Iron Bottom Sound, littered with so many sunken ships and planes it threw magnetic compasses off? Check. Mindanao Island of the Philippines, which had the magic trifecta of Communist rebels, Moro Muslim rebels and various bandits and pirates? Double check again. And ironically, it had been in one of the lesser threatening countries, Thailand, where he had come closest to finally meeting his Maker.
However, not all of his travels had been so life-threatening. Seta had spent a year of post-graduate studies in America, mostly at the University of Southern California, but with plenty of side-trips as well. It was on one of those trips that Seta went to New Orleans during Mardi Gras, and his love of zydeco music was born.
Keitaro Urashima was sitting in the Christmas decorated main living room, a large glass of warm sake in hand, watching in some disbelief as a recently de-casted and grinning Seta was spinning around the room dancing to the zydeco song 'Oh Yeh Yai' (a song which to his ears appeared to include both an accordion and a washboard as a musical instrument), a reluctant Haruka in his arms. Or maybe not so reluctant… a smile was threatening to break Haru-chan's visage. A demonically lit and smiling Kaolla Su was working the DJ position behind a stack of amps, woofers, laptop computers and gods knows what else (upon seeing the massive stack of instrumentation, Keitaro had given the pouting teen firm instructions not to turn the volume past 7, with a never exceed limit of 9), all patched into her bleeding edge wireless internet network and the worldwide web… which was why the teen genius had been able to find, download and play Seta-sensei's obscure request not 30 seconds after his asking. As soon as the song started to play, Seta had grabbed a startled Haruka and started to dance, which looked like a crazed combination of a waltz, the foxtrot and the swing.
The Urashima could not really fault his boss' mood. Not only had the cast finally come off his leg, leaving him only with a cane to use when he needed to, he had finally completed the varied requirements for Nyamo's residency paperwork. In fact, the dusky doppelganger of their domestic tenant was now sitting next to a smiling and head bobbing Sarah, melon soda in hand and a confused smile on her face, while Shinobu sat on the blonde's opposite side, watching the ongoing display with wide eyes and a cup of tea cooling in her hand.
What Seta did not know was why his struggles with the government paperwork had finally come to an end. After hearing his boss bitch and moan about the ongoing death of a thousand paper cuts he was undergoing to make Nyamo a legal resident in Japan, made even worse since she was already here, Keitaro had decided to break out the big guns. After conferring with Haruka and getting her agreement, the two had opened the most Holy of Holies, a virtual Ark of the Covenant, a veritable weapon of mass destruction in paper form… Granny's little black book.
The innocuous Moleskine notebook had sat in a hidden drawer in Granny's desk. While Keitaro had known of its existence, only Haruka and Hina herself knew the trick to opening the compartment. Keitaro knew the emergency way to open the compartment (brute force would cause the desk to catch on fire), but he did not want to mess with blood seals again. He made sure he had Haruka teach both him and Kanako the opening seals, and after hesitating for a moment, she agreed, especially since Kanako was not born of Urashima blood and needed to know.
Flipping through the notebook had been a revelation. Entries were organized by name, university attended and jobs held, especially those in major businesses or the government. The Urashima recognized many of the names from the TV news and newspapers. Also noted were brief entries on what could politely be called 'personal interests' of the person involved. In most cases there were just notes, but other notes were in coded language that the three Urashima had been taught when they were younger as 'tradition'. Now they could see that the coded entries referred to safe deposit box numbers and locations, presumably containing proof of what the 'personal interests' notes alluded to. Also noted were positive and negative numbers, alluding to favors given and owed. Most of those entries were one or two in either direction, but one high ranking name had a whopping four favors owed from him, an ill omen if there was one.
After getting the names of some of the people in people in the notebook that could be helpful in solving Seta's problems, Keitaro started to make calls. At first he wanted Haruka to do it, but she convinced him that as the heir of the clan and its future leader, they needed to know that he could handle himself and not pass this off to 'mere females'. Keitaro had snorted at that, as no one was fool enough to think of Hina Urashima as a 'mere' anything.
It was rather scary to see how far some people jumped when certain names were mentioned. Keitaro had been treated rather normally for most of his life, but as soon as the name 'Urashima' was mentioned, formerly snooty secretaries would connect him with the person he was looking for in ten seconds or less.
The first two calls were fairly simple. After introducing himself as Hina's grandson and heir, he asked if there was something that could be done to expedite some paperwork. After asking for specifics, the officials in question would promise to put the paper on the fast track, with their keeping personal attention on them.
The last call was a bit trickier, as the Immigration official had been reluctant to talk to him and seemed disinclined to do anything productive. Looking at his entry, Keitaro had seen that not only did this guy owe Granny two favors, he was one of the ones with the 'personal interests' notations. After pausing for a moment, Keitaro casually asked how his second career in modeling was going. A long moment later the official, whose modeling involved leather and lace with bondage optional, tightly agreed to expedite the paperwork. Keitaro politely thanked him and said good bye, hearing the phone on the other end not quite get slammed down. As a result, when Keitaro made a note on his entry, he put down 'reluctant' and 'no favor given nor received', with Haruka nodding in approval.
The results the next day had been unexpected. Just as the residents had been getting ready for dinner, Seta's deathtrap van came to a crashing halt outside. Hobbling out of the smoking vehicle with his cane to support him, Seta had been bouncing around like a five year old on a sugar rush. After spinning both Sarah and Nyamo around and almost getting them sick, the Urashima had gotten the reason for his good mood out of him. He had gone into the Immigration bureau with the expectation of having to submit a stack of paperwork and receiving another stack that appeared almost identical to fill out. But instead of being called in to the caseworker's cubicle, Seta was instead led to the office of the assistant deputy director of the agency, the fourth or fifth man down from the top. Barely recognizing him as a former school mate that he had not been friends with, and was somewhat jealous of his exploits in school, Seta was surprised to have a manila envelope tossed into his chest by the scowling official. Opening it up, Seta found a Japanese Re-entry Permit booklet (a type of stateless person passport) in Nyamo's name, with a five year permanent resident visa included. Also included was a certified judicial order naming Seta as Nyamo's guardian. When the academic looked up at the other man in shock, the official merely snarled at him to get out and not ever bother him again. Seta decided not to look a gift horse in the mouth and ran out of the office as fast as his bad leg could carry him.
Now sitting around the heir to the household were his two girlfriends, Natsumi and Miyuki. While the darker haired girl was sipping at a glass of wine, Natsumi was throwing back sake bombs like they were going out of style. In fact, she had actually beat Kitsune in a drinking contest, the dorm rule for public drunkenness waived for the Christmas/celebratory party this night. It had taken only ten rounds for the fox girl to slide under the table, and his brown haired girlfriend was still going on strong. Kitsune was left propped up on the couch next to a faintly scowling Naru, who had been pried away from her books by the now dozing friend. Nursing her vodka spiked egg nog (Seta's contribution to the night's activities) she watched the dancing couple with a hint of longing in her eyes.
Almost matching her expression was Kanako, who was leaning up against the wall behind the younger girls. Keitaro knew that his adopted sister was massively not happy about his romantic situation, but there was little he could do about it. But what the young male did not realize was that his two girl friends were silently communicating behind his back, reaching an agreement and coming to their feet, pulling Keitaro up with them.
"Huh? What? Is something wrong?" Keitaro was sputtering as the two girls dragged him to the dance area.
"We came here to dance, not just listen to the music, Kei-kun," Miyuki said with a semi-pout on her face.
"With both of you?" Keitaro did not have a problem with that, but he was sure that Kanako would.
"Actually… no." The two watched as Natsumi grabbed Naru from the sofa and pulled her toward the dance area. Stopping by Seta, the brown haired police girl spun him around and pushed him toward the no longer reluctant girl. Seeing Seta nod and smile, Naru gave a shy smile in return and started to dance, matching his movements, but not the grinding that the academic had started to do with his former girlfriend.
Turning back toward her partner, Natsumi joined Haruka in dancing with Miyuki, who then proceeded to start to grind on his aunt. Natsumi caught Keitaro's eye and flicked her own at the wall behind him, and he suddenly understood.
Walking over to Kanako, he stopping in front of the now wide eyed girl and offered her his hand, silently asking her to dance. Smiling widely, Kanako took his hand and followed him onto the dance area, turning and starting to move sinuously, matching Seta's prior efforts but with some dirty dancing thrown in for flavor.
Giggling loudly, Sarah grabbed Nyamo's and Shinobu's hands and pulled them onto the dance area. The blonde gaijin girl started to dance, matching what her father was doing, but Nyamo instead started to do some South Pacific islander dance, and after hesitating for a moment, Shinobu started to copy her.
After seeing all this happen, Su set the music player on automatic and vaulted down to the floor, a flash equipped digital camera in her hand. After taking multiple pictures of all the couples and trios dancing, Su tossed the camera next to the still snoring Kitsune and joined in the younger girls dance, forming into a dancing ring, spinning around and laughing.
Keitaro turned from his sister for a moment, hearing Sarah above all the other girls as they danced and spun around, the laugh distinctive. It reminded him of when they had first met, back in Thailand. Shaking his head slightly, he turned back to Kanako, trying to get back into the holiday spirit, knowing that there was little he could do about memories, and now was not the time to brood about it. Instead, he focused on the smile on Kanako's face, trying to make sure that good memories would tamp down the bad, memories that even now were trying to come to the surface.
end chapter 36
A/N 2 – The plans of mice and men often go astray. So much for posting within a couple weeks. *sad*
I am sure that some people out there think that Motoko is acting out of character and illogically (gee, that sounds familiar) by allowing the customer harassment at the café and for allowing her boss Kotoko to seduce her. Here is the thing – Motoko has been going through extensive desensitization to male lust and taught to respond with the minimum force needed at her new job. She does not just beat the hell out of men anymore; at work the worst she does is slap them. On the trains she does do farther by breaking bones, but that is because those are attempted sexual assaults. And as to being seduced, due to the poor sex education she received and we all now know about Motoko has a massive blind spot in her mind. She thinks MEN are perverts, and that women normally are not sexually excited or perverted (it's one of the reason she reacted so badly to seeing Tsuruko having sex). Also Motoko has had so little positive physical contact in her life that Kotoko kissing and caressing her caused her mental barriers to fail.
As to the second part of this chapter, I've always had a mental image of the cast of Contract Labor dancing around to Cajun/zydeco music. The song in the story is Oh Yeh Yai by Terrance Simien & The Mallet Playboys (you can look it up on YouTube), featured in the 1987 movie The Big Easy. The reason I did this is because I think it is almost impossible to dance to this song and not be happy at the same time, and I wanted a different kind of song for the Christmas party. *smile* Another excellent song from that movie is Buckwheat Zydeco - Buck's Nouvelle Jole Blon, also available on YouTube.
Most of you will be happy to hear that the next big flashback arc will now start in Thailand, with Keitaro, Seta, Nyamo and Sarah on the dig site. That arc should last a couple of chapters at least before we switch back to current time New Years in Tokyo, where Keitaro will run into some childhood friends, two of which he will not be too happy to see again and one that he will be glad to meet again. But before all this takes place, the next chapter will be an omake chapter involving some of the girls, a certain turtle or two, and…balloons? *grin*
Winner of the most unusual place to read my story this last chapter is Hong Kong, along with Mainland China. Runner up is Uruguay, and special mentions go to Cuba and Iran.
Thanks to AZ MII for going over this story for me.
As of 04Sept12 0150 PDT this story has 280,761 Views, 488 Reviews, 53 C2 Listings, 672 Favorite Listings, and 607 Story Alerts. Thanks again guys.*thumbs up*