"I put on the outfit, and slunk out of the bathroom. If only it had been a little warmer and less windy, I would have just stayed in my wet clothes. But as things were, I walked out to find Seiya and Shikami waiting for me.

"So….Hot, I think they say? Kawaii!" Seiya the fox boy said, his nose bleeding copiously. Then he ran towards me like he was going to hug me. He didn't get very far. Shikami and I simultaneously kicked him in the stomach, hard. He went flying through the rice screen wall and into the hot spring beyond. He surfaced, sputtering, and shook his head vigorously to disperse the water droplets clinging to his hair. I put my arm in front of my face to shield my glasses from the flying water droplets.

"Please don't touch me without my permission." I said calmly. I really felt like cursing him out, but I figured I'd save that for later, in case he did any thing really assine. Shikami faithfully translated, somehow managing to obey both her directives. Another fox girl came into the room and introduced herself in English.

"I'm Satchi Sada. That lecher is my brother, unfortunately. Welcome to the Satchi Hot Springs Resort. Where are you from? My brother keeps insisting you fell from the sky. "

"I'm from the USA, but a different world's USA. I don't really expect you to believe that, but at any rate I'm here. I have no money, no other clothes, I don't know very much Japanese, I don't know any one here, and something tells me getting home won't be as easy as getting on an airplane. My name is Sarah Pritchard, or Pritchard Sarah I guess is how you'd put it."

"That's no problem at all!" Sada said brightly. "You can say here for as long as you like."

Sarah eyed the pink swirls in the hot spring dubiously.

"Don't worry, we'll put him in a cage and chain him down if necessary, he won't touch you. But you'll need a name that's easier to pronounce, if you stay with us, then you can just use our family name…. How about Satchi Saraneiko?"

"I guess that would work. If you really mean it about staying here, I guess I will, for a while at least. I should get a job or something, but I'd need to speak Japanese first."

"How old are you?"

"16."

"Then you can go to school with me! I go to Murasaki Academy For Girls."

"Same problem, I don't speak Japanese."

"That's fine! I don't speak English well, either. I'm using…" She made the exact pose Ashe from Pokemon makes when he's caught a new Pokemon, "…My Handy Dandy Lapel Pin translator!" I examined the pin she held out, it looked like an anime character pin except about twice as thick. It was in the shape of a cartoon kitsune with three tails. About five minutes later a "bur bur burbur!" rang out from the bushes. I poked my head over the bush to see what appeared to be a house elf from the Harry Potter movies clutching a trumpet, but then I noticed it had the same empty eyes as Shikami.

"Is that a houseelfcom or something?"

"An early prototype. It will do anything you ask of it, but five minutes late. And if you give it clothes it stops obeying entirely. Well, come on in and meet the rest of the family and then Shikami will measure you and order some clothes. "

"Sounds good to me. Are you sure your parents don't mind? I'll pay them back as soon as I can, but I don't know when I'll have money."

"I'm sure. We're delighted to have you." She led me into the building that seemed to be a hotel. "We live on the second floor. These are the guest rooms." We went upstairs and emerged in what seemed to be a dining area and living room in one. There were four kitsune people already there and three kitsune Persocoms clad like Shikami and me. A dignified older couple whom I pegged as Seiya and Sada's parents sat watching TV, their mother wearing a pale blue kimono and their father wearing a long-sleeved dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up and pants which matched the suit jacket slung over the back of the couch. He was holding a white-haired little boy on his lap. Other than the fact that he was wearing a strange pair of sunglasses, the little boy seemed more human then any one else I had met today. Normal ears, no tail except his white ponytail. A girl that looked about fourteen was laying on the floor staring so intently at a textbook that I turned my head until I could see around it. She was reading a manga inside the book.

"Hi, um, Konichiwa. I'm Sarah Pritchard. Thank you so much, I'm sorry to impose upon you like this. Everything here is so strange to me, I'll get a job and pay you back as soon as I can. You're all taking this more calmly then I would have had situations been reversed. Do people fall randomly from the sky a lot here?"

"I'm Satchi Hirosuke. We're pleased to have you. We have plenty of space, and since my grandfather discovered what is still apparently the only natural hot spring in downtown Tokyo, money hasn't been an issue for this family. Sala Pricklard is it? Could you use something easier to pronounce for school?"

"Your daughter suggested Satchi Saraneiko."

"Perfect! Saraneiko-san it is! This lovely kitsune next to me is my wonderful wife, Sakura. This child is Suichi. We are watching over him for his parents. "

"I'm pleased to have you with us, Saraneiko-san. Our younger daughter Keiko is the one studying on the floor there. We were quite amazed when she took such an interest in Biology. " Sakura said.

"Specializing in human anatomy of course." A dripping wet Seiya commented with out a trace of sarcasm as he looked over her shoulder, shaking the water out of his fur.

"yeeeee!" Keiko squealed. "You're getting me all wet!" One of the Persocoms walked over handed her a towel. Another Persocom flung a bigger towel over Seiya's head.

"And I'd always thought Persocoms didn't have much personality." I commented.

"What's the joy in that?" A boy commented as he walked up the stairs and emerged into the room carrying what appeared to be a severed hand for a minute until I noticed wires sticking out.

"A Persocom part?" I asked.

"Yeah, creepy, huh?" Keiko commented. "You should see his room, boobs and legs and heads and arms and fingers everywhere!" She shuddered delicately.

"Keiko!" Her mother warned.

Hirosuke just laughed. "This is our resident Persocom designer, Alexei. He created all the Persocoms that work here. Alexei, meet our newest adoptee, Saraneiko. She's American also."

"Yo." The totally humanoid brunette boy about my age waved. "My parents had a strange sense of humor. My full name is Alexander Lucifer Beelzebub Smith. Either Alexei or Luke is fine." He pushed his glasses up his nose and pulled what looked like half of a pair of clip-on sunglasses out of his pocket and clipped it on a lens of his glasses. "Hate to run, but Xena can't move her pinky, and a sword is not a friggin' tea cup. Pardon my French, but her owner will be quite disappointed if she's not ready for the convention this weekend. You going to Murasaki with Sada? Take Comp Sci, the prof is cool." With those apparently unrelated comments, he grabbed another random shiny thing off a bookcase, probably what he'd left his lair to get in the first place, and vanished back down the stairs again.

Shikami reappeared with a violet tape measure wrapped around her wrist, ends dangling. "Saraneiko-sama, how would you prefer to be addressed?" I thought it over and decided on something neutral.

"Sara-san would be fine, Shikami."

"Sara-san, please come with me. Sada has requested that we put you in a room downstairs, since the only remaining room on this floor is Keith-kun's old one and right next to Seiya's. Come with me, I have it all set up and I'll measure you for clothes. I got a yukata from our guest inventory, I figured that might be adequate for you to sleep in tonight."

"Thank you." I followed her to my room.

I was halfway done changing into the yukata she left me as sleepwear when I noticed a flicker of movement above me. Then I saw a telltale flash of orange above an inch wide hole in the ceiling. I grabbed a conveniently placed scythe (a reject from a Sailor Saturn costume, perhaps?) and slammed it through the ceiling. Good news, I got his nose. Bad news, he fell through the newly enlarged hole, clad in nothing but a pair of pink boxers with naked neko-girls posing in lurid positions with Japanese characters and hearts covering key portions of their anatomy. So now instead of a kitsune pervert spying on me from above, I had a bleeding kitsune pervert in pink boxers ogling me from the floor. I kicked him through the closed door into the hallway, pulled the yukata all the way on and tied it shut, and pulled my dresser in front of the remnants of my door so he couldn't crawl back in when he regained consciousness. I walked over to the computer screen built into one wall and pressed the room service button. A smiling Persocom with a pastel green beehive set between long, thin elf ears appeared.

"Room Service. How may I help yo- Oh, Sara-san, how pleasant to meet you! I'm Kari."

"Hi Kari. Seiya-san fell through my ceiling and I had to kick him out of my room, so could you send somebody to fix my door and ceiling? ….Oh yeah, maybe a medic also. I hit him kind of hard with that scythe. Whose idea was that?"

"…The ceiling AND the door? The scythe was Sada's idea. We had all hoped you wouldn't have to use it, but I calculated an 85 percent chance that you would. Sorry, probabilities are my little hobby, I'm in charge of keeping track of bets placed by our guests, they often bet on horse races in places as far away as the US. I'll get right on it. Medic and carpenter on their way, Luke-nii-san may follow them, he monitors COM channels if he gets bored."

Within minutes, the cavalry arrived. I heard a sweet chirpy voice ask, "Does it hurt when I do this?" and then an inarticulate scream of pain from Seiya in response. Then there was a knock on my dresser.

"Hello again, Sara-san. It's I, Luke. I have the carpenter you requested." I moved the dresser away from the doorway and revealed Luke in a 3\/1L L337 T-shirt, a human looking Persocom with long brown hair pulled into pigtails carrying a toolbox, and a pink-furred purple-haired neko-girl Persocom in a white lab coat poking and prodding Seiya's bloody nose with evident enjoyment. Luke followed my gaze to the pair and shook his head. "If I knew they were going to use her as a medic, I never would have made her such a sadist. I thought that she'd have to be one to survive being around that pervert. If you think humans can hold a grudge? They ain't got nothin' on Persocoms. Takes a Hell of a lot to piss off most Persocoms, but they never forget. They're designed to remember. Yeah, sure, you can wipe their hard drive, but that's a heck of a lot of trouble to go through to get rid of one memory you may not even know they have." I realized that there hadn't been a tiny delay between when he spoke and I heard him, like there had been with every one else, except Seiya when I first landed.

"You're speaking English." I said, not knowing how to reply to his earlier comments, "You fix Xena's finger?"

"Yep, just a blood clot." At my quizzical look, he elaborated. "Persocoms move using intricate hydraulic systems. Their 'blood' (air quotes) is equivalent to brake fluid. Sometimes stuff gets in and stops up the system."

At that point, I broke into Sarah's narrative yet again. "So that's why I bleed!" I said, looking at the red streaks down my shirt.

She glared at me and then returned to her narrative. "As I was saying, while Luke and I had been talking, the brunette had pulled in a ladder and began patching my ceiling.

"Do I want to know what those stupid boxers say? Oh, and what's her name?" I asked.

"They say approximately 'I want my own neko-com!' That is Kyoko. She's one of the youngest here. I finally finished downloading all the carpentry data two months ago, hang on, lemme call a Laptop to hold her nails." He said as a nail hit him squarely on his head. I wondered if it was an accident. He tapped something into my wall panel screen; I guess they call 'em COMs, and about thirty seconds later a Persocom the size of a Barbie doll rollerbladed into the room. She stood on one foot and tapped her left heel. The wheels on her pink sneakers so out of keeping with the Roman-style armor and tunica complete with helmet crest retracted and she lost another quarter inch of height.

"What will ye, milord Emperor?" She asked with a bow, her strange Irish burr matching her fiery red hair but clashing with the rest of her outfit.

"Ah, she sent you, Gladiatrix. Excellent. Go hold Kyoko's nails so she doesn't drop any more." Luke said, beaming.

"Yes, milord." She said, bowing again before rushing up the ladder to Kyoko's aid.

"The Roman name for a female gladiator. Creative, but why's she dressed like a general? They'd never waste that kind of equipment on a slave. Celtic makes a certain amount of sense, I guess, but I doubt many of them captured made it to personal assistant to the emperor."

"I'm surprised you know that much about her character. She was a prop for a pitch for an alternate history anime that never happened. I took her back when her commissioner couldn't pay my bill."

"Two years of Latin class. We watched a movie titled Gladiatrix when our teacher was on maternity leave. You have many customers fall through on their payments?"

"A few. My Persocoms aren't cheap, and most don't bother commissioning a custom job if they aren't sure they can pay for it. I got three back all at once when a client was convicted of embezzlement. He had paid all but the last payment on all three; he ordered them as a set. My lawyer proved her worth there, insisting I get the type of contracts I do. I got all but three hundred dollars of the payments, plus I got the 'coms back. I have to do so many buybacks though; I'd be in danger of bankruptcy if it weren't for the Satchi family. You'd be amazed by how many people discover they didn't want a Persocom with an actual personality after all. On the other hand, more and more of the people who actually do are finding me, and almost all of the rejected 'coms have found a home here. They all wear those silly maid outfits, but Picametre is allowed to wear her lab coat as a badge of office and Kyoko wears coveralls when she paints, the rest of the time she has leggings under the outfit since, as you can see, her jobs put her in positions where it'd be easy for guys to look up her skirt, and the maids got really sick of cleaning up the bloodstains. I'm glad they didn't have one for Gladiatrix, she's too small."

"Bloodstains? She have self defense programming?" I asked.

"Well, yeah, but she never needed it. The guys would pass out when their windpipes got clogged with blood. They could have just looked down, but…"

"The view wasn't nearly as interesting. That sounds like most of the guys I know." I yawned. "Looks like Kyoko is done with the ceiling, I've got to get some sleep, what day of the week is it?"

Luke looked at his watch. "Um, Tuesday now, I think."

"Shit, means I'm getting dragged to school tomorrow, I'd bet. Have Kyoko fix the door tomorrow; ah you know what I mean. I'll use the dresser for tonight." They left and I dragged the dresser across the doorway again and crashed on the sleeping mat, oblivious to bits of ceiling and bloodstains.

I was awakened within about three hours, six am local time I guess, by a timid knock on the dresser.

"Sara-san? It's Kari. I just stopped by to tell you that in light of your eventful night, you will start school tomorrow. Sada has offered her room to you while she's at school, so you can get some sleep while Shikami and I clean up this one."

"Thanks, Kari" I replied, dragging the dresser away from the doorframe. I pulled my yukata a little further closed and grabbed my pillow. "Lead on." I told Kari. I followed her to Sada's room and crashed on her pink fuzzy comforter, falling asleep almost instantly. "

Suddenly the lights in the train went out, breaking Sarah's narrative. She cursed as an automated voice repeated in smooth soothing tones that they were experiencing minor technical difficulties, and she was sure they'd be resolved shortly.