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. This story is a sequel to my last lemonfic, "Cats and Cradles," but if I've done my job correctly, you don't need to have read that story or even have watched the original anime series to understand what's going on here. I recommend doing both, of course. ************************* EIMI'S STORY by Antaeus Feldspar The pretty cashier, a red-haired girl about his age, kept apologizing for the lateness of his cafe au lait. "That's all right," Ryuunosuke Natsume said, and smiled at her. She giggled at him and blushed. He wondered if that meant she liked him, and if so, what he was supposed to do about it. He felt himself blushing back, at which she giggled more. As pretty as she was, Ryuu felt relieved when the repaired machine had finally produced his coffee and he could take it back to the table. "So what if you got in her pants?" Hikaru was saying as Ryuu approached the table. "Half the guys in the school have screwed that bitch." Ryuu rolled his eyes. The guys were back to playing that very boring game, 'Girls We Have Banged,' a game Ryuu regularly declined to play for many reasons. The only element at all new was that Tetsuo had something to contribute. Tetsuo blamed his bad luck with girls on his acne and his lack of height; Ryuu privately thought the answer had more to do with the fact that his ideas about girls came from afternoon anime shows. But now Tetsuo was pounding the table, trying to convince Hikaru and Hayao of the reality of his "conquest." Ryuu slid into the booth at the end, sipping his cafe au lait. "Not only did she sleep with me, but it was her idea! I mean, she said she wanted to have sex with me because I was so sexy and turned her on so much!" Ryuu glanced over at Tetsuo, who looked ready to cry as the two other boys raspberried him. "I'm telling you, that's what she said!" "Oh yes, but would you swear to it on your collection of Mazinger videos?" Hikaru asked, in apparent innocence. Hayao threw back his head and belly-laughed. Tetsuo's eyes narrowed. "And I wasn't going to mention this. But she said she wanted me because no other guy she'd had had been able to satisfy her." Hayao stopped laughing. "So put that in your pipe and smoke it." "Can we change the subject?" Ryuu asked. "Does anyone else think Mr. Daigoji is going too slow with our Physics class?" "Yeah, you would think that, Ryuu-boy. You take after your father," Hikaru said out of the side of his mouth. He turned back to Tetsuo. "So. Tell us, Oh Great Seducer, if you satisfied her so well, why isn't she with you now?" Tetsuo reddened. "Fuck you." "Fuck you, you little --" "Let's just change the subject, hunh?" Ryuu sighed. Sometimes he wondered why he didn't just find a better group of friends. Mostly out of doubt that anyone else of his age would be any more mature, he supposed. "This is a family restaurant; we could get kicked out." "Not much chance of that, where your mom owns the chain!" Hayao leaned across the table, a leer spreading across his pudgy face. "I bet you just don't want to tell us about all the girls _you've_ done the downtown dance with, Ryuu. What's the matter? Don't wanna brag?" He snickered. "Who I sleep with is none of your business!" Ryuunosuke clamped his mouth shut and counted to ten before he continued. "You're right, actually. I _don't_ want to brag. If -- when -- I go to bed with a girl, it's because we care for and want to please each other." Ryuu stared Hayao in the eye. "As opposed to having something to prove to my buddies." "Hah! Right!" Hayao smirked. "I knew it, Ryuu's still a virgin!" Ryuu opened his mouth to answer the charge, and shut it again. What did it matter? Let Hayao be wrong, and let him miss the point. He really didn't have anything to prove. Sort of. That "sort of" was another reason he always tried to steer conversation away from his sex life. "There she is!" Tetsuo exclaimed suddenly. "Eimi! Eimi-chan! Over here!" He waved over Ryuu's head. Ryuunosuke turned to look and felt his jaw dropping as he recognized the woman approaching the table, a petite-framed woman in a fire-red outfit of tight blouse and short, short skirt. Eimi recognized him, too, a few seconds later. She ran the rest of the distance to him, rather unsteadily on her high heels, giving out a delighted squeal. "Ryuu-kun! Oh, sweetheart! It's so great to see you again!" Ryuu flinched as she made to jump directly into his lap; he brought up his hands to try and catch her. Most of her weight landed on his thigh; he gasped and hoped the sudden crushing pain in that leg didn't mean a fracture. Eimi was small, of course, but built solidly. That was almost a pun. She wiggled herself in his lap until her hip was pressed against his crotch, and turned inwards towards him to press her small breasts against his chest. "Mmmm, Ryuu," she whispered. "Missed you so much. It's been too many years." "Uh. Yeah," Ryuu said. Still in shock, he noted that her short hair had gone from dirty-blonde to a deep midnight black. He also suddenly realized that one of the hands that he had brought up to catch Eimi's fall had landed under her thigh, and that with her wiggling, his fingers were nearly touching the black lace panties her short skirt exposed to view. He blushed and pulled his hand away. "Uh, hey, Eimi?" Tetsuo had a hold of Eimi's calf, and appeared to be trying to massage it. "Um, Eimi... when do you want me to come to your place again?" She turned her head slightly, the first attention she had paid to anyone but Ryuu, and scowled. "Never." Her tone went from frosty to savage. "And let go of my leg." Tetsuo didn't get a chance; she pulled it out of his hands and gave him a sharp kick to the upper shin that had him howling with pain. Hikaru and Hayao stared across the table at him and at Eimi, wiggling in his lap. The manager was approaching the table, probably ready to kick them all out despite the possible repercussions from Mom. Tetsuo was sobbing, and probably only partly because of the physical pain. Ryuu could swear that he saw the red-haired cashier stare at him and then turn around hurriedly. He sighed. There was an explanation, but unfortunately it wasn't one that he could tell anyone. The explanation was that of all the android women he'd ever known, Eimi was the most screwed-up and insecure of them all. * * * Eimi was the reason they had been thrown out of the restaurant. Through a lot of fast-talking, however, Ryuu had convinced the manager that Eimi was actually the only innocent one among them, and should not be punished for their rowdy misbehavior. The light shining in Eimi's eyes worried Ryuu; she thought he was taking the blame out of chivalry. His real reason came from having seen the cataclysmic damage she could do in a tantrum, and knowing that she'd do it again if the manager tried to throw her out. Ryuu stared up at his bedroom ceiling. He knew he should be working on his English homework, but how could he concentrate? He didn't care what Ms. Tsukino said about letting nothing interfere with schoolwork; if she had an Eimi disappear from her life for six years and then re-appear out of the blue, she'd find it pretty hard to concentrate, too. Like Nuku Nuku, Ryuu's 'sister,' Eimi-chan was an android. Both androids had been created within the laboratories of Mishima Heavy Industries, a military manufacturing corporation that was by far the largest of his mother's holdings. But Nuku Nuku had a biological brain, transplanted from a stray cat dying of its injuries to the sophisticated NK-1124 android mech. Considering his father hadn't even had life support in mind when he designed the NK-1124, the transplant was an amazing success by any measure, and the patient was still healthy and happy today. Eimi's brain, on the other hand, was entirely artificial. Ryuunosuke could appreciate the scope of Dr. Yohikawa's technical achievement, but Eimi's behavior had always been... erratic. Marked by very poor planning. Ryuu suspected that if the doctor's research notes were ever recovered, the brain design would turn out to be unicameral: designed to replicate step-by-step thought well, but missing crucial abilities to synthesize information, to put it in context and proportion. Maybe a better balance was one of the things Dr. Yohikawa had been working on when he passed away. He heard the refrigerator open, and the sounds of someone rummaging, followed by a pleased little purr. Nuku Nuku was probably finishing the last of the fried anchovies; he was glad it wasn't him who had to. A few minutes later, she entered his room, forgetting as always to knock, and curled up next to him on the futon. He wrinkled his nose a bit at her fishy kiss on his cheek. "You finished the anchovies, didn't you?" She ran her pink tongue over her lips, brushing away a strand of magenta hair. "Yum. Papa-san's new taste bud array works even better than the old one did." She tipped her head to the side, studying his face. "You're upset about something, aren't you?" He nodded. "Did you want the anchovies?" He laughed. "No, nothing to do with the anchovies." He hesitated. "I just saw someone today I haven't seen in a long time. And that someone -- she's making some mistakes that I think she's really going to regret." Nuku Nuku gazed at him with sad, wide eyes. She was incredibly sympathetic to anyone in pain. She would still be concerned even if she discovered it was Eimi, who had tried more than a few times to kill her. Even more so if she knew it was Eimi. "Poor woman," she whispered. "Is there anything you can do to help her?" Ryuu's crotch stirred, thinking of all the blatant hints Eimi had dropped about what she'd like him to do to her. "Um, no," he said. "Nothing that would actually help, I think." Nuku Nuku rested her head, with its lovely magenta hair, on his chest. "Too bad." After a while, her fingers tickled their way down to the growing bulge in his pants. "Is it okay if I cheer you up? The way you like?" She gave him an impish grin. He grinned and lifted his hips. Soon she had his cock exposed and fully stiff, and her tender lips and tongue worked on it in a way that made him squirm and buck. He could feel her smiling at his pleasure. And that was yet another difference. The only person Eimi had ever had as an emotional contact, up until she escaped from MHI, was Dr. Yohikawa, whom even his father described as somewhat distant and odd. But Nuku Nuku, all her life as an android, had always had the warm love of her creator/father, "Papa-san," and Ryuunosuke's own love, which had gone from that of brother to that of brother/lover. She moaned softly around his cock, and he shuddered at the warm breath on the very sensitive tip of his organ. She curled her body to push her pelvis towards his hands. He lifted her skirt and pulled her panties to mid-thigh; soon she was gasping, as his fingers delved between her tight lips and his thumb found her clit among her curls of synthetic hair. His relationship with Nuku Nuku had always been beautiful; each had been sibling when the other needed a sibling, lover when the other needed a lover. He found it strange to contemplate, though, that he'd never yet been with a biological woman. Or in a relationship that didn't have to be kept a secret. Or in a relationship that he didn't know would someday have to be ended. How different would his life be if the two android women he knew had switched places? If his beautiful, adored Nuku Nuku wasn't his sister to the rest of the world's knowledge, could he have hoped to spend the rest of his life with her? If Eimi had had love she could count on from a father and a brother, might it have compensated for her personality extremes? He didn't think about it again until later, after they had both been satisfied. Nuku Nuku had giggled about how even his semen had tasted better through the new taste bud array, and later had drowsed off with her head on his shoulder. Before closing his own eyes, he checked the clock on the wall. Plenty of time before Dad came home, thank God. He gave a quiet sigh; it was just as well that things had gone the way they had. Nuku Nuku's loving nature might have been stunted and frustrated, if she had been raised in the cold, impersonal environment of Dr. Yohikawa's laboratory. And Eimi... well, who knew if, with some sense of security and stability to anchor her, she might not have turned into someone he could fall for? * * * "Hey, Ryuunosuke!" Hikaru rapped the door of Ryuu's locker with his knuckles. "How's it hanging? Hey, what were you so pissed off about the other day?" "You know what pissed me off. What you always piss me off with." Ryuu spun the lock dial very slowly; the tumblers had developed a tendency to stick, and it often required several tries to get through the whole combination. "You just don't want to listen, so you keep asking for something else." "Jesus, it's not a big deal. How can you get so upset over a little sex talk?" Hikaru shook his head. "Sex is natural, Ryuu -- and girls want it just as much as we do, they just can't say so." He grinned suddenly. "With exceptions like your hot little friend Eimi. She's never had a problem being clear about what she wants." The dial came unstuck suddenly, and Ryuu overshot his number. He glared at Hikaru. "Look, let me give you advice. Eimi isn't what she seems to be, and no matter what she says, she's not ready for what you're looking for. Stay away from Eimi, Hikaru, and tell everyone else she's off-limits, too." "Now hold on..." Hikaru quickly dropped his voice, as a few curious gazes turned on them. "Hold on a fucking second! You've got some frigging nerve, trying to talk for her, tell everyone what she really wants. Let me guess: Eimi doesn't know what she wants, until she decides she wants to sleep with you? You think you're the hot shit, just because she was running her hand up and down your thigh?" "Oh, right, you've got it all figured out. I'm hot to sleep with her. That's why you saw me ditch her at the restaurant!" Ryuu rolled his eyes. "She's not stable; she's not well; taking her up on her offers would be like taking advantage of a -- what the hell am I telling you for? Whenever you don't like what you hear, you don't listen; you just pretend it's something else." "You know what I hear?" Hikaru said. "I hear a virgin talking. A virgin who wants everyone else to stop having sex until he can catch up." He ignored the bird Ryuu flipped him. "And you know what? It's none of your goddamn business, anyways. Her life, her decisions." Ryuu responded with a short blunt word, one he rarely used. Hikaru stared at him, turned and walked away, hands in his jacket pockets. The dial jogged too far in Ryuu's fingers again, and he had to start over yet again. To hell with Hikaru. He opened the door, finally, just as the bell for class rang. He sighed. The class was physics, anyways, where he was well ahead. Reaching in for the physics textbook that should have been on top of the stack, he stopped when his fingers encountered soft fabric instead. He slowly drew out a piece of silky lingerie with a scrap of paper wrapped inside it. After a moment, he unfolded the brief garment and hung it from the coathook in his locker. The teddy was a confection of scarlet lace and silk, the breast cups made of the see-through lace, the body made of silk. The garment had been severely folded, apparently to squeeze it through the vents in the locker. Ryuu unpinned the scrap of paper from the vertical slit in the teddy's crotch. Hey Ryuu -- Can you just imagine seeing me in this? Who knows, maybe you'll get to see me in it, if you play your cards right! Anyways, when you're ready to return it, you can come to my apartment anytime. I think I can guarantee you a lot of hospitality, cute stuff. Love, Eimi Ryuu crumpled the note and said under his breath the same word he'd said before. He let his head rest on the cool metal of the locker's door-frame. The tempting idea was to give the garment to Tetsuo and tell him to return it; Tetsuo knew where she lived. But even aside from the awkward and painful situation that would put Tetsuo in, it just wouldn't work. No subtle approach would work; Eimi would keep on pursuing him until he confronted her. _I don't enjoy being manipulated._ That's exactly what he should say to her. _Eimi, I don't enjoy being manipulated._ Ryuu folded the garment carefully and got his books for classes. After school -- assuming he didn't get a detention for being late -- he'd take the trip out to Eimi's place, and confront her. * * * Eimi bent at the waist in front of him to pour him more green tea. Predictably, the motion caused her blouse with its plunging neckline to fall forward and expose her breasts. Ryuu felt horribly embarassed because she had nearly no breast to expose. Ryuu could understand how her figure might look merely unusually petite, her features merely unusually soft and youthful, to a viewer who thought he was looking at an adult. But the knowledge that she was designed to look like a child, coupled with her clumsy attempts to be seductive, gave him the creeps. She straightened up, and he knew exactly what she was going to do a full second before she deliberately tilted the kettle too far towards herself, and poured a goodly amount onto her blouse. "Oops," she said, moving the kettle aside so that he could see the thin fabric clinging to her nipple. "How very clumsy of me! I hope you won't mind waiting while I take a shower, will you, Ryuu?" She wagged a finger at him. "And if you're thinking of slipping into the shower with me... you'd have to be a naughty boy to think of such a thing!" She winked at him as she attempted a hipshot walk from the room. The frozen smile on his face remained there even after he could hear the shower running. _Eimi, don't manipulate me._ What was so hard to say about that? Why hadn't he said it yet? Ryuu drank the last of his green tea, put down his empty cup and sighed. He had to take a good grip on the Formica-topped coffee table to lever himself upright from the purple couch. Obviously there had been no forethought, or even afterthought, on whether the furnishings of the room would go together. He crossed over to the Hello Kitty bookcase to see what Eimi was reading. There were no actual books there. There were men's magazines, and manga comics in both the "telephone book" size and the smaller collected volumes. Some of them were the syrupy shoujo romance kind; others were the most extreme pornography. There was even a small pile of dojinshi; Ryuu picked up one of the thin, cheaply-produced booklets and started flipping through it. He recognized the show it parodied, though he'd never watched it and couldn't name it; it was some show about giant robots fighting monsters invading from inside the Earth. In the dojinshi, of course, the robots were equipped with super-high-tech genitalia instead of high-tech weapons, and the monsters were being sexually assaulted rather than pummelled. On the inside of the back cover, there was a handwritten note: Tetsuo -- I thought you'd get a kick out of this -- or maybe a few ideas, ha ha! Come by anytime to return it; I'm almost always home. Can't wait to show you a lot more, too! Eimi Ryuu wasn't surprised by what he had found, so he didn't know why he should be depressed. He wondered just how many horny teenage boys Eimi had brought up to her apartment, and what she had thought would be the end result of each encounter. Hikaru was right that she was clearly after sex, but Ryuu was afraid that the soap operas and sappy romance stories had deluded Eimi into thinking that sexual encounters would naturally turn into lasting loving relationships. It would be just like Eimi not to question that basic assumption even as the number of one-night-stands climbed into double-digits. "Oooh! Reading something to get you in the mood, tiger?" Eimi asked. Ryuu turned to see Eimi standing in the doorway, a big bath-towel wrapped around her. Almost all the black had washed out of her hair; dyes designed for human hair tended not to bond well to the synthetic substitutes that Nuku Nuku and Eimi had. Her hand twitched at the edge of the towel. Ryuu had a feeling of deja vu, knowing before it happened what would happen. "Ooops!" Sure enough, the towel slipped downward, and fell into a pile around her feet. She giggled, standing there without a stitch covering her small breasts, her slim hips, or her hairless pussy. "Eimi --" Ryuu rubbed his forehead. "Can you cover yourself?" She giggled again, and walked towards him. "You think you might not be able to control yourself? Oh my, Ryuunosuke, that makes me tremble, thinking of you losing control and ravishing my tight --" "Eimi, stop --" "It's okay, Ryuu," she whispered, pressing her breasts against his forearm. "You don't have to worry about getting me pregnant or anything." That stopped him cold. "Of course not!" he roared. "Eimi, I'm not one of those other high school boys you've seduced. I've known you longer; I've known for over half a decade that you're an android! Remember?" Eimi stopped short. _Was she forgetting that I knew that? Or was she forgetting it herself?_ Then she shrugged it off and laughed, tugging at his arm. "It's okay, then. You can fuck me, Ryuu, I want you to fuck me." "I don't want to fuck you," he said. The words hung there in the air. She managed an uncertain smile. "That sounds so hard-boiled, Ryuu. You want me to beg, don't you?" She started descending to her knees, her arms wrapped around his legs. "I can do that; I'll beg you, beg you to take me like a --" "I don't want that," he said. "Eimi, listen to me. I don't want to get into bed with you." The sudden image of her slim legs embracing his waist flashed through his head; he pushed the vision ruthlessly aside, knowing it could not be as simple as that. All expression disappeared from her face. Slowly she turned her face to the side, and stared at a patch of floor several feet away. "Is it because... is it because you know there have been others?" "No. Yes. Eimi -- I think you're making a mistake. I don't want to be part of that mistake." She pushed him away suddenly. "Good old Ryuunosuke! He always knows what's best for everybody, doesn't he?" "I didn't say that --" She put her hands on her hips as she sneered. "I'm so glad you're willing to give me the benefit of your vast experience. So how many women have you slept with, anyways? Smart guy!" Stung, and aware of just how little he could afford to answer the question, Ryuu put his hands on her shoulders. She wouldn't look him in the eye. "Eimi, listen to me! You know that I've never wanted to see you hurt. Not even when you were trying to hurt Nuku Nuku!" Eimi jerked at the mention of her rival -- her rival in Eimi's mind. "And you know that your plans aren't... your plans often overlook important details. Like when you were planning to steal Nuku Nuku's body for yourself, and didn't even consider how you'd get your brain into her body..." The breath in his lungs stopped as everything fell into place. He could barely see in front of him for rage; he could barely resist the temptation to put his hands around her neck and squeeze. He shoved her away, and she tumbled back, falling on her naked rump. She stared up at him, wide-eyed, and opened her mouth. She closed it again when she saw how he was looking at her. "You goddamn bitch," he said. "You goddamn stupid android bitch. That's been it all along. And to think it took so long for me to put the pieces together." He bent over her, pushing his face an inch from hers. Her android strength was such that she could have risen and beaten him bloody, but she just stared up at him in fear. He felt cold, furious, and tired. "You've always hated Nuku Nuku. For no better reason than jealousy, and envy. You wanted her body. You wanted her face. You wanted her home. You wanted all the love and attention she receives. It doesn't matter that all the people you used trying to get those things trusted you, even Nuku Nuku." He turned his back on her. "So what do you do? You try to score off her by collecting the things that she can't have: sexual love from her family members. Were you planning to fuck my Dad next? Just to have something that Nuku Nuku can't and won't have?" He turned her back on her. "Once again, using people loses you everything you could have had." He walked towards the closet where she had hung up his jacket. "No!" she cried out, bursting into tears. "It's not like that! I swear it! Ryuunosuke, I swear it!" Her voice broke. He stopped and waited. "At least... that's not how it started." Her sobs raked at his heart, but so did the feeling of being used -- not even being used for love, as he had first believed, but used for hate. "I just wanted to be loved... when I saw you, I remembered how much you cared for me even way back when... and I wanted you. And I didn't realize until later that... that maybe you could be only mine, but mine alone." "You've got to believe me, Ryuu. I... when I ran away all those years ago, I was so terribly lonely. You know how I used to think my body would explode if I pushed it too hard?" Ryuu didn't know until now that she had overcome that delusion, but he nodded his head. "I went through about half a year of trying to overwork myself. Trying to destroy myself, because the loneliness was so bad. That's how I found out my body wasn't defective after all, because I tried to self-destruct and I survived anyways." He could hear her stand up and walk slowly back towards him. "I didn't know what to do. I didn't think I could come back here, after the ways I'd treated you all. But I couldn't think of another single being in the world who'd be willing to love me. I thought I had figured out what to give people to get them to love me, but..." She put her arms around his waist, and this time he didn't move away. "As you pointed out, Ryuu, I'm no good at making plans." Her voice was muffled by her tears and the pressing of her face against his side. He turned towards her, shifting in her arms. "You're far from the first or the last to make that mistake." He ran his fingers gently through her hair, still damp from the shower. "Even a lot of people who know the difference between sex and love still haven't learned the difference between sex and intimacy." His finger tenderly brushed a tear from her cheek. "Intimacy," she whispered. "All the things I read trying to figure out... I thought that was just a euphemism for sex." She hugged him a little tighter. "What does intimacy mean, then?" "That's a hard one," he said slowly. "Sometimes it's more emotional. Sometimes it's more physical." He cradled her head against his belly, feeling his shirt get damp and warm where she pressed against it. "It's about letting people be close to you. It's about letting them know things about you." "Like what?" Her hands began rubbing the small of his back. "Like... how your heart beats when you're excited. Or when you're content and drowsy. What you lie awake at night and worry about. The smell of your skin. What your dreams are, even the silly ones. Where the sensitive spots are. How you react when that little spot between your neck and shoulder is nipped... so very gently..." Eimi's hands had stopped rubbing his back, and held his sides. She slowly lifted her head, and looked up into his eyes. His own breath was coming slow, as his heart seemed to race ahead. Without speaking, he knelt down to her, lowered his head and met her lips with his. Her tongue darted into his mouth, as he ran his hands down from the sharpness of her shoulders over the simulated muscles of her back. Her occasional gasps for breath sounded into his ear, and each time she'd dive back into the kiss as fully intense as before. Closing his eyes, he stroked her thighs as she wrapped them around his hips. He breathed in the not-unpleasant smell of damp synthetic hair, as she kissed and licked the spot between his neck and shoulder. He moaned, and held her tighter to him, and felt her warm groin pressing more insistently on the thickening erection in his pants. His hands slid down, stroking the plump cheeks of her bottom and delving further underneath. "Oh, Ryuunosuke," she whispered in his ear, when she lifted her mouth from his neck. "Push your fingers deep into my pussy." That gave him pause. "I already am." She rocked her pelvis, rubbing her breasts on his chest and her mound on the fastener of his jeans. "Not just around the entrance, sweet Ryuu. Push them deep, all the way in, as far as they'll go. I want to know what your fingers feel like inside me." Ryuu bit his lip. "Eimi. They're already in. Two of them. Up to my knuckle." She leaned back from him, staring at his face, and then wiggled herself backwards on his thighs until she rested on his knees. She looked down at her cleft, to confirm that his fingers were as deep in her sex as they could be; she even uncurled his other fingers, as if to check that they were all of normal length. For Ryuu, the moment was half erotic charge at seeing his fingers enveloped deep between a pair of soft thighs, cancelled out by a growing suspicion that he knew what was going wrong. "Eimi?" he said, gently. "Um... Dr. Yohikawa designed you to pass as his daughter, didn't he?" She was still staring down at her crotch, and she watched her own finger intently as she squeezed it in beside his two fingers. "Uh-hunh." Ryuu cleared his throat. "Do you suppose it's possible... that he, uh, never anticipated your eventual need for functioning equipment?" She looked up at him, puzzled, and started to speak. Just before the first word came out, she got the implication. Her eyes widened, her mouth opened -- and she flung herself backwards, slipping off her seat on his knees. His fingers slipped out of her pussy. She hadn't really been moist internally either, he realized, just still wet from her shower. He caught the word "defective" in her crying as she turned and ran from the room. "Eimi, wait!" he said. He followed her and found her huddled on the floor of the bathroom, wrapped into a tight ball, her fingernails digging deeply into the flesh of her shoulders -- so deeply Ryuu thought she might actually peel it off. He tried to loosen her death grip. Her sobbing voice continued. "Stupid, defective droid! Everything wrong on the insides." Her body shook with sobs. "So that's why. They were telling the truth; they did have it in after all." Ryuu quickly clamped down on every last trace of a smile. There was nothing funny about the situation; there was nothing funny about the painful self-hate tormenting the android before him. There wasn't even anything funny, though his brain kept trying to tell him there was, in horny teenage boys targeting what they thought of as an "easy lay" to pump up their egos, and instead receiving crippling blows to those egos as she demanded that they stop teasing and put it in her. "Eimi, shhh," he whispered. He gave up on trying to uncurl her fingers, and simply wrapped his arms around her instead. "Eimi, please stop and listen to me. It's not a permanent problem, if you think about it. Dad's just as smart as Dr. Yohikawa was; I'm sure he could have all the technical aspects solved and fixed for you in no time." He stopped to consider that for a while. "Though damned if I can think right now of a good way to present the problem to him." "It doesn't matter, Ryuu," she said. She shuddered in his arms. "I'm just always going to be defective, one way or another. There's always going to be something wrong with me." "No more than the rest of us." He traced the curve of her spine. "Eimi, there isn't a one of us that doesn't have something wrong, or imperfect, about them. Dad's off in his own world most of the time, Mom's power-hungry, and even Nuku ... er, you-know-who... she can't concentrate all that well. She's always forgetting her chores, and believe me, I get sick of doing the laundry every time she goes off to chase butterflies instead." "So what's your point?" Eimi turned her tired face to him. "I can concentrate. Should I feel better because I have something she doesn't? I thought you said I shouldn't do that." "That's not my point at all." Ryuu touched her cheek with his fingertips. "Each of those people whose flaws I just told you about, I love as deeply as I love life itself. Each of them has a place in my heart, a place from which no one else can ever remove them. And they didn't have to be perfect to have that place." She slowly unwrapped her arms from around her knees, and as slowly, she wrapped them around his chest. "Oh, Ryuu. Are you saying that... I could... have a place in your heart, someday?" "You already do," he whispered. She cried in his arms then, but he knew those tears, from having cried them himself. They were tears of relief at knowing that the loneliness was not all there was. Much later, they made love in her narrow bed. Ryuu thought that she had never looked as lovely as when her hair fell back on the pillow, framing her face like a halo, and her face was for the first time unlined by fear. She softly stroked his shoulders and smiled up at him as his cock moved in her. "As hard as you want to, Ryuu. I may be the only girl who you'll never have to hold back with; you can fuck me as hard and deep as you like, and it won't hurt me." He slowed his thrusting to kiss her lips, softly. "I promise you, Eimi, you'll get the best organs technology can make," he gasped. "You'll be able to make love ... get the complete sensations ... it'll bring you the pleasure it's meant to." "But until then," she whispered in his ear, "this is a pleasure I can give to you. And I want to give it to you. And I can feel you, Ryuu-kun, really I can... I can feel you in my arms, I can feel the hair on your chest tickling my nipples, the hair on your legs against my thighs... I can even feel how thick your cock is, with the outer edge of my lips, I can feel it there when your cock throbs... Oh, that's it, my darling Ryuu, you're going to come, aren't you? Oh, please, yes, give me your come, Ryuu, don't hold back, let me hold your sweet come in my cunt, please, yes, please yourself on me, sweet.... oh God, yes..." He buried his face in her shoulder, and shuddered as his cock buried itself forcefully between her thighs and stayed there while it throbbed out its heavy liquid inside her. She whispered in his ear, words he could barely hear above the fierce pounding of blood through his body. "... a gift for my sweet, patient Ryuu..." -30- ************************* 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. * -jc IS *NOW* feldspar@cryogen.com * Home page: http://members.tripod.com/~afeldspar/index.html * The home of >>Failed Pilots Playhouse<< * "Better you hold me close than understand..." Thomas Dolby