CATS AND CRADLES

        An "All-Purpose Cultural Cat-Girl Nuku Nuku" Lemonfic

        by Antaeus Feldspar


DISCLAIMERS AND AUTHOR'S NOTES:

        The following story is a work of fiction, based on characters from
the animated Japanese series "All-Purpose Cultural Cat Girl Nuku Nuku."
This fan-fiction is not meant to reflect on this high-quality production,
and my use of these characters is in no way meant to circumvent or obviate
the purposes of copyright.
        The content of this story is sexual in nature.  It may be illegal
to read depending on your age and your geographical location; proceeding
past this warning places responsibility with you.  The description of
certain acts in a work of fiction is in no way meant to be interpreted as
approval of these acts in reality.

        I had originally envisioned this story quite differently.  My
sexually-oriented fiction reflects my belief that one can enjoy even the
most extreme of fantasies harmlessly simply by remembering the rather
obvious fact that fantasy is not reality, and by not giving in to the
self-fulfilling prophecy that fantasizing about something will inevitably
drive one to doing it.  With that in mind, this was originally supposed to
be as deviant a take on the "Nuku Nuku" series as my previous lemonfic,
"Like Squid For Enema," was on the "Ranma 1/2" series.
        Somewhere during the planning, though, that story didn't seem as
interesting as a somewhat stranger, more tender one, about what might
happen between Nuku Nuku and Ryuunosuke as Ryuunosuke grows up.  That story
is the story that follows.

***

        Ryuunosuke was on his feet and running for the door of the
classroom from the very second the end-of-day bell rang.  He knew the
teacher was glaring at him, but for the past hour, he had been thinking of
those pictures, unable to concentrate on anything else.  He had to find
Hikaru and get the pictures; Hikaru was going off to visit his mother in
Hokkaido over the long weekend, and Ryuunosuke thought that if he had to
wait even a single day more for those pictures, he might burst.
        He ran down the front steps of the middle school and scanned the
long lines waiting for the buses, breathing heavily.  There!  That was him,
leaning against the bus stop sign with the Game Boy in his hands.
        Hikaru didn't look up when Ryuunosuke dashed up to him, but just
continued staring down at the screen.  "Hello, Ryuunosuke," he said, using
the least polite form of address that wasn't a direct insult.  Ryuunosuke
brushed it off, though; that was just Hikaru.  "Got the money, Ryuu?"
        Ryuunosuke pulled the small wad of saved bills and coins out of his
pocket.  "Here it is."  He pulled it back as Hikaru reached for it.  "Wait
a minute.  I want the pictures you promised me.  I don't pay until I see
the pictures and know they're worth it."  He had seen glimpses of some of
them, glimpses that he had held onto during the long nights.
        Hikaru craned his neck and looked around, a bit too obviously, Ryuu
thought.  Then he shrugged his bag off his left shoulder and reached into
it for a cardboard folder, the kind that everyone used to hold worksheets
and homework.  The folder was decorated with characters from "Pocket
Monster."  Ryuu trembled on receiving the folder, and was so nervous he let
Hikaru take the money from his hands.
        Ryuu flipped the folder open.  Right before him, taking up a  whole
page ripped from a magazine, was an American woman, naked except for her
pubic hair, being penetrated by a hairy man whose face was out of the shot.
"Shut that folder!" Hikaru whispered fiercely, and slapped the cover
closed.  "You don't look at that here, dummy!  What if someone sees you?
We both get busted, that's what!"
        Ryuunosuke, so hard in his pants he could barely think, just nodded
his head.  Hikaru took another very obvious look around, and whispered
again.  "That's everything I could get without my Dad noticing.  He gets
off on American women, so he has all that sort of stuff mailed to him by
one of his business friends."  He looked around.  "Remember, if you get
caught with it, you found it lying around in the open in the changing room
at the baths.  You can remember that?  They'll believe it, perverts like to
leave stuff like that around."
        Ryuu nodded, still somewhat in awe.  "Thanks, Hikaru.  I'll...
take good care of it.  Uh...  good luck this weekend...  good luck with,"
he fished around for some end to the sentence, something he knew about
Hikaru, which wasn't much.  "With Pocket Monster," he finally concluded.
        Hikaru smirked as he boarded the bus.  "Ryuu, buddy, you're the
one's gonna have fun with Pocket Monster this weekend."
        * * *
        Ryuunosuke ran home, his heart pounding and his throat dry,
clutching the folder tightly closed.  He hoped Nuku Nuku hadn't forgotten
and tried to pick him up from school on her ten-speed bicycle; he had told
her not to pick him up today but she got confused between days easily.
Besides, riding behind her on her bike wasn't as comfortable now that he
was older.
        _You jerk,_ he called himself.  _You pervert._  He clutched the
folder tighter to his chest.  He had been saving that money for months for
Nuku Nuku's birthday present, out of the little dribs and drabs of money
Dad sometimes gave him for allowance.  Now he had gone and wasted it...
wasted it on something he wasn't even supposed to know about, yet.
        That wasn't the part that bothered him, so much as the money coming
from Nuku Nuku's birthday present.  If only Dad allowed him to accept the
money Mom and Grandfather kept trying to give him...  They were rich; the
check Grandfather had sent for his twelfth birthday (and that Dad had sent
back) was more money than Ryuu had ever had at one time in all his life.
        He ran into the apartment and forced himself to act casual.  It
took an effort to loosen his sweating fingers on the edges of the folder.
He told himself that he wasn't some...  dangerous pervert, who couldn't
control his urges.  He could resist the temptation to run immediately into
his bedroom and ...
        A few minutes later, he was in his bedroom on the futon with his
jeans and shorts in a heap on the floor, staring in amazement at the
wonders in the folder.  There were magazine pages, the flattened cardboard
covers of video tapes, and pictures from old calendars.
        Ryuu's cock stiffened every time he looked at the full and delicate
bushes of pubic hair these women seemed to have.  America seemed to have an
unlimited supply of strange and uninhibited women, willing to do anything,
it seemed, in front of a camera.  Black women, white women, women with
piercings everywhere, women taking men's stiff erections into their mouths,
women licking each other between the legs, women easing thick plastic
imitation cocks into their bottom holes...
        Without even meaning to, Ryuu moaned quietly, and then froze.
_Stupid, stupid, stupid!_  What if someone had been home?  Dad, or... Nuku
Nuku?  He didn't know how either of them would react to finding him
masturbating in front of a stash of dirty pictures.  Nuku Nuku might
possibly understand...  which would be even worse.
        It was always hard to tell what Nuku Nuku would and wouldn't
understand.  For that matter, he knew that a few of his classmates had made
nasty remarks about "Ryuu's sister, who's twenty-four and still can't make
change at the market...  who still can't count to a hundred without losing
track at least once."  He knew they'd have more respect for Nuku Nuku's
intelligence if they knew they were talking about a brain that had come
from an ordinary cat, in control of a humanoid android body.  But of
course, that was exactly what they could never be allowed to know.
        Ryuu sighed and fished under the futon.  Every time he did this, he
told himself he'd never do it again.  He pulled out the sock and slipped it
over his cock, which he had allowed to subside to half-stiffness.  Holding
it tight in one hand, he focused on one of the pictures and began to stroke
himself.  The young woman's skirt was up, and her hand was busy in her puff
of blonde pubic hair; her lips were pursed around the head of a cock that
seemed to be bending in the middle under its own weight.  Ryuu closed his
eyes, trying to picture himself with a cock that big and thick...  with a
woman that pretty and soft, who wouldn't think it disgusting to put her
lips on his stiffness and swallow what came out.
        Yes...  he could visualize the whole thing in his mind, except that
instead of having to turn her head to the side so the photo could be taken,
she could bend down over his hips as he lay back and suck his cock like
that...  mmmm...  his hand moved faster, as his cock in its cloth sheath
pointed to the ceiling and throbbed.
        Mmm, that was so good, picturing the way her heart-shaped face just
brushed his manly profusion of pubic hair (which he hoped he really would
have some day) as she pushed her pursed lips right up to his scrotum.  What
was she doing with her hands?  Ah, she was bringing her sexy naked breasts
up, to rub the nipples on his thighs.  That was good, that was so good...
he was so hard, it felt good to really squeeze with his fist and pump his
erection roughly, thinking of a woman with her long blonde hair falling
down around his hips and his throbbing cock...
        Except that as his balls were on the verge of letting go with their
spurts of juice, the hair suddenly changed in his vision from blonde to
magenta.  Ryuu lost his erection and began to cry.
        He _was_ a dangerous pervert, he _was_ disgusting and horrible.  He
had bought the pictures from Hikaru out of desperation, trying to pretend
he could get other pictures out of his mind.  He had promised himself that
he'd find those pictures so sexy and dirty that he could leave the other
ones alone.  But the pictures that came into his head when his cock
stiffened were always of the sweet, strange girl whom he had been raised to
think of as his sister.  Nuku Nuku.
        For a fleeting moment, he thought the thing to do was to leave.
Leave the house, the town, maybe even Japan.  Never let them know where
he'd gone, and never ever let them know what terrible thoughts had gone
through his head.  That was stupid, though.  He didn't have any idea of how
to disappear like that, certainly not from the kind of search Mom could
finance, with all her money and power.
        His heart beat painfully slow as he thought of the other thing to
do with terrible shame and dishonor.  Edged sepukku swords.  One apologized
for one's terrible wrong with the blade, cutting through one's intestines
to bring a painful death.  He whimpered and felt the tears roll from his
eyes.
        "Ryuunosuke?"  Nuku Nuku's voice came from no more than a foot
away.  He jerked so violently with surprise that for a few seconds he
thought he might have actually broken his spinal cord.  He remembered that
his cock was only covered by a sock, and grabbed at his jeans to lay over
his lap.  "Ryuunosuke, what's wrong?"
        "Nuku Nuku!  You're not supposed to go into people's rooms without
knocking!"  He rubbed the tears from his eyes with his knuckles, and was
able to see the concern in her deep blue eyes.  If only she knew what
terrible wrongs he involved her in, in his dreams...  "You don't know
what's going on inside!"
        "Oh.  Yeah.  I forgot that, Ryuunosuke.  I'm sorry."  She lowered
her eyes, truly penitent for having forgotten.  A second later she raised
them again.  "But Ryuu, you were crying.  You were sad.  I don't want you
to be sad."  She didn't even know how beautiful and dangerous she was, the
way she knelt in front of him on hands and knees, her peach-colored T-shirt
hanging down and showing the sweet slopes of her breasts.  Ryuunosuke
started to cry again.
        "Oh, please, Ryuu, don't cry.  Nuku Nuku will do anything she can
to make you feel better," his older sister whispered.  Her finger wiped a
tear from his cheek.  _You wouldn't say that if you knew what I'd want you
to do,_ he thought.  _You'd hate me forever._  He couldn't control his
tears; they washed down his cheeks, and as Nuku Nuku gathered him into her
arms and pressed his head to her shoulder, they were soaked up by the
fabric covering her generous breasts.  Her fingers ran softly through his
hair.
        He closed his eyes tiredly.  She might hate him if she knew what he
thought about, but at least for now, she loved him.  That felt warm and
living, let him rest eyes sore from crying.  He was unprepared when she
said in an interested tone of voice, "Does it have something to do with all
these pictures of fucking?"
        Ryuu freed himself suddenly from his sister's arms, blushing
furiously and grabbing the pillow to cover his genitals.  "Nuku Nuku!  You
shouldn't say things like --" he hesitated, knowing he had no right to tell
her what was right or decent.
        She wouldn't have heard him, either, he thought; she was poring
over the pictures of entangled and exposed bodies with the same rapt
attention she sometimes gave to balls of yarn, or dust motes in a ray of
sun.  "Wow!  I didn't know that cocks could get that big, did you,
Ryuunosuke?  Do you think she's pretty, with that hair between her legs?  I
think he thinks she's pretty, because his cock is sure big for her."
        Ryuu found enough of his voice to whisper, "Nuku Nuku.  I'm .. not
sure ... you should be looking at those pictures."  _I'm very sure we
shouldn't be looking at them together._  The pillow was starting to tilt
from the lifting force of his erection.
        Her eyebrows lifted as she turned to him.  "Really?  Why not?  You
were looking at them."  Her lips made an O; he could see that a thought had
occurred to her.  "Ryuunosuke!  Are these pictures what made you sad?"
        He shivered.  Oh boy.  Conversations with Nuku Nuku, just by their
very simplicity, had a way of diving directly into the deep end.  "Yes...
and no."  He tried to find a way to explain without revealing.  "They made
me sad, because they made me want to do something...  with a special
someone.  Who I can never, ever do that with."
        Nuku Nuku nodded as he spoke, and her brow furrowed slightly as she
tried to work it out.  "Why can't you borrow money from Mama-san and go to
Canada?"
        Ryuu shook his head, trying to rid himself of the dream-like
feeling.  "What?!"
        "Isn't that where Yoshimi-chan moved?"  Ryuunosuke's mouth fell
open; he hadn't even thought of Yoshimi for years until Nuku Nuku brought
her up.  "You could go to Canada," Nuku Nuku continued.  "You could find
Yoshimi-chan, and then if you still find her pretty and she finds you
handsome, and everything smells right, you can fuck and everyone will be
happy."
        _Not everyone.  For instance, her parents would be decidedly
unhappy._  "Nuku Nuku, we have to talk about sex.  About how humans do it."
        Nuku Nuku looked uncertain.  "I've watched some of Papa-san's
tapes," she offered.  Ah, that started to explain where her very direct
vocabulary had come from.  "But in them, fucking makes everyone happy.
Especially the men.  The men get to be very happy when they blow their
loads.  And the women seem to be happy, too, when they get cum on their
faces or their tits or in their cunts.  Isn't that the way it is?"
        Ryuu groaned; it was physical pain, trying to smother his cock with
the pillow as his sexy older sister talked innocently of cocks and cunts
and cum.  "Nuku Nuku, humans have all these rules...  rules of how you
can... fuck...  and how you can't.  And who you can.  And, especially, who
you can't."
        Nuku Nuku tilted her head to one side.  "You mean that even when it
would make everyone happy, sometimes you can't do it?  That makes no sense!
If Ryuu was sad because he wanted to fuck, Nuku Nuku would want to make
him happy by fucking him."  Ryuu gasped out loud.  Nuku Nuku stared at him
before her face broke into one of her brilliant smiles.  "Ryuunosuke!  You
mean I was your special someone?  You are so sweet!"  Beaming with
enthusiasm, she started stripping off her T-shirt, under which she wore no
bra.
        "Nuku Nuku -- oh, close the door, at least, Nuku Nuku!  If Dad
catches us, we're in deep sh..."  Ryuu closed his eyes in desperation, as
his sister crawled on hands and knees to slide the door shut, then crawled
back, heavy breasts swaying beneath her.  "Nuku Nuku, human rules say that
you absolutely can't f... fuck anyone in your family."
        Nuku Nuku pulled the pillow gently away from his groin, and pulled
the sock from his erection.  A thin thread of pre-cum stretched from the
tip of his cock until it finally broke.  "That can't be right.  Papa-san
and Mama-san fuck all the time.  Sometimes in the beds and sometimes over
the kitchen counter and once on the hood of Mama-san's limousine and once
with Papa-san dressed up as a Russian cossack and Mama-san pretending to be
a princess of the Tsarist family but not with as many clothes."
        Ryuu took in a deep breath, overwhelmed by this sudden information
on his divorced parents' continuing involvement with each other.  "That's
different...  Nuku...  that's..."  He yelped and trembled as Nuku Nuku
gently pushed her head down to his crotch, despite his half-hearted
attempts to fend her off.  "Nuku Nuku, they're married.  Or they were.  But
brothers and sisters...  they can't...  do things like this."
        Nuku Nuku's tongue flicked out and tickled the joining of his shaft
and his ball-sack.  His cock spasmed into total rigidity in a second.  Oh
God, Oh God, was it really necessary to resist temptation?  "But Ryuu, I'm
not really your sister.  You know that."  She kissed his quivering cock.
"You know I'm not even really human.  Cats don't have rules like humans
do."  Her luscious mouth wrapped right around the head of his flagpole and
sunk down on it.
        Ryuu shuddered...  It wasn't fair, he had meant to do right...  and
yet Nuku Nuku's calm, happy conviction made him feel that there was another
right besides the one that was so shaming and painful.  One more push, he
thought, and he might give in completely.  "What rules do cats have?" he
breathed.
        Nuku Nuku raised her head from the fellatio she was performing, and
pulled a strand of her long magenta hair away.  "Enjoy pleasure," she said,
and went back to sucking.  Ryuu gave in, and simply moaned with sensation
as his lovely, loving semi-sister gave him head, swirling her sweet tongue
around his swollen manhood.
        After they had had to stop three times for her to pull hair out of
her mouth, though, Nuku Nuku sat back on her heels and giggled, her
milky-white breasts quivering.  "That doesn't work so well.  Let's try
something else."  She pushed the folder and all its pictures off the futon,
and lay down on it, squeezing her breasts happily.  "Kneel over me," she
said, "and fuck my mouth as if it was a cunt."
        "Or a pussy," Ryuu whispering, amazed that he could make a joke in
this crazy situation.  Nuku Nuku giggled, and opened her wide for his cock
as he obeyed orders and straddled her mouth.  It was a position they had
never taken in his dreams or fantasies, yet it was a good choice, because
as she licked him and sucked him and took his gentle thrusts into her mouth
(it was especially arousing to feel her slightly over-pointed front teeth
rake his erection lightly), she used her hands to caress his legs, squeeze
his buttocks, and cup his balls tenderly.
        _Oh my God,_ Ryuunosuke thought as he felt the shifting of heavy
liquid within his balls, readying itself to jet out between Nuku Nuku's
waiting lips.  _The girl of my dreams is here with me.  And me with her.
And she's sucking my cock to show me how much she loves me.  Who cares that
she's my sister?  Who cares that she's really a cat?  Who cares that she's
an android?_  "Nuku Nuku," he whispered to her, and tenderly touched the
lips smiling around his shaft.  "You are my special someone.  You always
have been."
        One of Nuku Nuku's long, tender fingers eased itself between Ryuu's
bottom cheeks and pushed within the tight ring of his sphincter.  Ryuu
winced slightly at the sweet pain of the invasion, and let the long-delayed
flood stream forth from his balls.  Nuku Nuku sucked eagerly for his cum;
every jet that spurted from his throbbing head was another wave of pleasure
washing outward from his cock; every time his ass tightened on her finger,
the wave of pleasure was broken up like a wave crashed onto rocks, to
reflect back as a thousand tiny ripples.
        When even Nuku Nuku's probing tongue could urge no more juice from
his softening member, he removed it from her mouth, and she wiggled her
finger to ease it out of his bottom.  Without words, he crossed the room
and brought back a box of tissues, with which he gently wiped and cleaned
her finger.  She giggled, and used the same tissue to wipe between his
buttocks.  Then she pulled him down to join her on the mattress.  Ryuu,
drained of so much tension that he could feel each beat of his heart as it
pumped through his body, snuggled in the arms of his sister/not-sister and
closed his eyes.
        * * *
        Ryuu woke slowly, shivering in an evening chill.  He stared in
confusion at the fall of long hair on his pillow, wondering whether he had
really left his dreams after all, before he remembered what had happened
that afternoon.  He smiled softly, and reached down to pull the blanket up
over himself and Nuku Nuku...  and then saw the dried tracks of tears on
her cheeks.
        "Oh, Nuku Nuku," he whispered.  Had it really been her wish to be
with him after all?  She was so self-sacrificing; had she given him his
pleasure and only told him it was a pleasure for her as well?  What if he
had hurt her?  His heart thudded like lead.
        Her wide eyes opened and blinked at him several times.
"Ryuunosuke..."  She smiled at him, and reached up to touch his chin,
running a soft fingertip down his throat.  "Sweet Ryuu.  Thank you so much,
Ryuu."
        "Then, it wasn't...  what we did that made you cry?" he asked.
        She beamed up at him.  God, she was so beautiful, with that long
beautiful hair, nearly black in the dim light, falling down over her bare
shoulders.  "Oh, no, Ryuunosuke.  It was very good to ..."
        "Be with," he suggested hurriedly.
        "... to be with you."  She snuggled into the pillow and caressed
his bare hip, her hand moving up under the shirt he wore.
        "Then what made you cry?" he asked softly.
        Her face fell.  He reached down and put his hand over hers,
squeezing softly.  She sniffled.  "I don't know if I can explain it.  Even
trying to put it into human words makes me so sad, because it doesn't quite
fit all the way right."
        "Can you try explaining it to me, Nuku Nuku?"  He brushed away from
her cheek one of the tears starting to fall.  "I'll be patient, and I'll
try to understand, I promise.  You helped me when I was sad.  I want to do
the same for you."
        She looked away from him, out into the dark corners of the room.
Sadness made her face look adult, and old.  "I know sometimes you get
embarrassed about me, Ryuunosuke, because I can't do things the way humans
do them.  The human world is all rules, rules, rules, and my cat brain
doesn't do a good job remembering rules.  That's because cats have
something else besides rules."  She folded her hands behind her head,
staring up at the ceiling.
        Ryuu remembered how, in the first few years that Nuku Nuku had
lived with them, he had had a little boy's black-and-white view of how
everything should be.  Nuku Nuku was in a human body, and that made her a
human, and therefore she should be a human in all ways.  Only in the last
few years had he started to understand what an enormous demand on her that
really was.  "What do cats have?  I thought cats just had their own
different rules."
        Nuku Nuku shook her head.  "Nuh-uh.  We don't need them, we
have..."  She made a tracing motion up and down between her chest and
belly, and stared wistfully at her skin.  Ryuu wondered how he'd feel
waking up every day to a body different from the one he was born with.  "We
have something inside," she said, "that tells us what we're supposed to do
all through our lives."
        "Really?"
        She nodded.  "I still feel it the way the cats feel it inside.  We
don't have a name for it; it's just what tells us what we're going to do.
And I still feel it; it tells me what I would...  would have done by
now..."  The tears started rolling faster down her cheeks, and she sat up,
putting her hand to her face.  "If Nuku Nuku was still a cat!"
        Ryuu knelt besides her and hugged her tight, holding her close to
him with one arm and using the other to stroke her back.  "Oh, Ryuunosuke,"
she sobbed.  "I'm supposed to have the tingling inside that tells me it's
time; I'm supposed to fill my lungs and sing out to all the boy cats..."
She wrenched herself out of his embrace and threw herself down on the
mattress on all fours, thrusting her hindquarters up and out.  "And then
all the boy cats come after me, and they enter me here..."  Her fingers
pressed forcefully under her skirt, repeatedly, and her face distorted with
satiation.
        "And then my belly gets full," she whispered.  "And sometime next
season, the kittens are born, and they come to their mama..."  She dropped
to the mattress again, lying on her side, kneading her full breast.  "Their
mama has milk for them," Nuku Nuku whispered.  Her face distorted with
tears again.  "Oh, Ryuunosuke!  That's what's making Nuku Nuku so sad!
It...  the part inside, it just doesn't understand that I'll never, never
be a mama cat.  It just keeps telling me I will be, and the human of me
knows I won't."
        Ryuu laid down beside his treasured sister, and gently nudged aside
with his face the hand with which she was kneading her breast.  He had his
eyes closed; he only hoped he was doing the right thing for her, as her
nipple popped into his mouth.  He nursed at the nipple gently, as he
thought a kitten might.
        He heard her sister's surprised and pleased gasp, and felt her
fingers caressing his hair.  "Oh, Ryuunosuke?  Are you my kitten, now?  Oh,
how sweet of you, Ryuu...  Be my sweet kitten, coming to its mama for
milk..."  He could hear her voice trembling between tears and laughter.
"Oh, my sweet fuzzy kitten.  Drink your mama's milk, she's got so much milk
to give you...  you'll grow up big and strong, into a big boy cat...  sweet
kitten, nursing from your mama..."
        After a while, her words trailed off into just a pleased hum, and
from there, into a deep, deep rumbling noise -- as close as her android
body could come to purring, Ryuu thought.  For just a single second, he
merged into the fantasy completely, becoming in his head a kitten, suckling
the sweet mother's milk and being immersed in the deep purr of her
pleasure.
        She made him stop on the one breast but guided his head to the
other, as if the first had run out of milk.  It made him sad, made him feel
the echo of what she must be feeling, to think that no milk ever would
really flow from those breasts.  Finally she sighed deeply, satisfied, and
pushed his head down to her shoulder, kissing the top of his head and
hugging him.
        Ryuu was on the verge of falling asleep again when the front door
slammed.  He and Nuku Nuku sat up; he felt his heart pounding.  Nuku Nuku's
auxiliary sensor panels flicked up from the sides of her head; she nodded.
"Papa-san," she whispered, "walking towards the room."
        She kissed Ryuunosuke's head lightly; then rolled out of the bed
and into a one-handed backflip, the envy of an Olympic gymnast, that landed
her directly before the sliding closet door with only a small thump.  She
slid it open and curled inside the small space just as Dad pushed open the
door to the room, cigarette hanging from the corner of his mouth.
"Ryuu-san!" Kyusaku Natsume boomed.  "How's it going?  Was school good
today?"  A few strands of magenta hair still hung out the opening of the
closet door.
        Ryuunosuke had his blanket pulled up to mid-chest; he hoped it
covered the folder and its contents lying on the other side of the futon.
"Yeah, Dad, real, um, great.  Great school.  Was your conference --"
        Kyusaku ran right over his son's sentence; a good sign.  "Professor
Nakajima!  What a man!  What ideas!  I have a new motivator circuit idea
that he inspired with some of his observations on hydraulics!"  Ryuu let
out a sigh of relief.  Dad in the throes of a new idea was in no danger of
noticing the time of day or night, let alone anything that someone might be
trying to hide from him.  He nodded in the appropriate places as his
father's enthusiastic description of several different fields of science
working together washed over him.  Dad had a propensity for dragooning
anyone who was handy into the role of sounding board.
        Finally, having talked out his idea and worked himself into a
creative frenzy, Kyasaku sprinted down the corridor towards his own room
and his own computer, to set to work.  Nuku Nuku pushed open the closet
door and peered around carefully.  Ryuu nodded.
        Nuku Nuku tiptoed over to the futon and gave Ryuu a deep, open kiss
on the mouth.  She reached down under the blanket for her T-shirt, a little
wrinkled for two people having napped on it.  She shrugged it on, winked at
him, and tiptoed from the room.
        * * *
        "They say that the best gift is one you make yourself," Kyasaku
Natsume said a few days later, at a party for Nuku Nuku's birthday.  They
had no idea when she might have born as a cat, so they had taken to
celebrating her birthday as the day she first came on-line as an android.
        "I hope that's true," he continued, "because this will be my
present to you!"  He spread a packet of much-modified blueprints on the
table.
        Ryuunosuke and Nuku Nuku studied the blueprints in quiet.  "Thank
you, Papa-san," Nuku Nuku said finally.  "What is it?"
        Kyasaku's eyes widened.  "What is it?"  He gestured at the paper.
"Don't you see it?  It's a new musculature unit design, to give you even
better fine motor control.  And it's gel-hydraulic, so it could be used
anywhere that your body needs to be soft but strong.  Like your tongue."
        "If you say so, Papa-san," Nuku Nuku said.  "Nuku Nuku knows
Papa-san is the best inventor in the world!"  Kyasaku swelled visibly with
pride.
        "Thank you, Nuku Nuku!"  He patted his pockets.  "Akiko and her
father sent something for you, as well..."  His brow furrowed.  "Talked
them down to a reasonable amount this time...  where did I put that...
hope it wasn't in the coat that went to the wash..."  He sighed, and tapped
out ashes from his cigarette.  "Oh well."  He looked across the table at
his son.  "Ryuunosuke, where's your present for Nuku Nuku?"
        Nuku Nuku cut across Ryuu's stammer.  "Oh, Ryuu gave me my present
a few days ago."  She smiled at him as he blushed.  "It was a present he
made himself...  and it was from the heart."
        THE END

        ***


        This story is not in the public domain.
        The rights to redistribute this story by electronic or other
means for non-profit purposes is freely granted, as long as it is
distributed intact, including these notices.
        Distribution of this story for profit is expressly prohibited.
        The practice of altering this story, including but not limited to
appending 'continuations,' is expressly prohibited.

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