By: GT-<ryougaecho@abraxis.com>
Story chronology set by Rich Lawson's APCCG NukuNuku fanfics.
Read after :Facets of Love: by Rich Lawson

Apologies to Yuzo Takada

a Colliding SYmphonies production. . .

Part One

Eimi woke up confused.

Of course, this was nothing new to her.

Every time she woke up, she was confused. She was never quite sure if she would be in the same place she fell asleep in.

Even if she was a robot.

Even if she weighed almost 250 pounds.

Her guided scopes came on line, her binocular vision calibrating.

>SYSTEM RESTART

She was still laying of her side. That was good, a voice told her. Her proximity radar lit up in her upper left vision, a compass calibrating at the bottom of her vision. Her optics flared to life.

>VISUALS ACTIVATED

She was still in bed. Her programming made her exhale a simulated sigh of relief. One could never be too sure, after all. She hated sleeping, as her alarm and emergency programming was so sensitive, much like her body construct.

> 12-05b TRIGGER SIMULATED REACTION

She faked a yawn as she sat up to check the room. Actually she was on the floor in front of Dr. Natsume's computer. Their small apartment had left few other places to keep her, save the closet which Eimi herself stupidly suggested.

Her human skills were still rusty.

Her chronometer synchronized with the transmitter in the computer she was now staring at.

>10:21.45.78942 AM.

Her approximated curiosity activating, she 'woke up' the computer in front of her from its idle activities. She grumbled a deep robotic growl as she saw the improvements that were still on the screen for the blasted Cyborg's body. Why didn't she lavish in this kind of attention? She overlooked the schematics, still amazed at how much Yoshikawa and Natsume's designs would coincide on certain levels. She just wished her databases were as large. More comprehensive.

She sat for a silent moment, then began hacking into MHI database and brought up her own schematic. A smaller, lightweight and faster android when compared to NK, but also constructed out of odd materials.

"Ohayo, O-neechan."

Eimi turned her head and adjusted her nightie. Ryunnosuke was on his hands and knees and crawling up to her. She liked Ryu. A lot. Especially when he called her O-neechan. Her programming memories of the real Eimi were still fresh in her database and AI, remembering how much she loved her family. "Ohayo, Ryu-chan."

She forgot to reset her voice box. Her small on task database was given too many variable to worry about her voice calibration.

Ryu had almost jumped back at the robotic growl quality to the voice. "Are you okay?"

"Oops!" she said, trying to feign embarrassment. "Sorry. I haven't fully initialized yet." Which was also true. Her power battery monitor came online in her view display.

"Oh." He came up to her side. "Whatcha doin`?" She put an arm around his shoulder. This used to make Ryu nervous because she was a full blown robot and was cold all of the time. Her cold pseudo-skin made him edgy, but not anymore. "Hey your not cold!"

Eimi's AI showed affirmation of a task undertaken.

>RECIEVED POSITIVE BACK-FEED REGUARDING THREAD 72531

Pride.

She had used a couple of spare relays in Natsume's lab and wired her gigavolt battery to relay a charge though her frame very intermittently so as not to bring her to red line. It effectively simulated a pulse, too.

"A little project...," she said with a great smile. "I'm looking at Grandpa's notes and designs."

"Why?" She smiled. Ryu was very bright, at least her reference cultural database told her that, as small as it was. Age seemed to be a deciding factor in life forms on their capacity to think, and as young as Ryu was, he was quite inquisitive.

"I don't know." She was glad that the real Eimi programmed into her AI was already capable of little white lies. She really didn't want to explain to Ryu. "Where's NukuNuku?"

"She took my new bike into town to get some groceries." Eimi's guided targeting system flared to life in her vision, aimed right at Ryu. She acked internally, happy not to wave a weapon in her hands and quickly idled the cross hairs. She hated how long it too her system to initialize. "Natsume-Sensei?"

"Still asleep. He had been going for 4 days before you visited."

"Really? On what?"

"Enhancement to NukuNuku's body."

Eimi scowled, her vision blurring with red for a second. She fought to control it. "Oh," she spat.

"Yeah, he's hooking up her skin to her brain."

"Is that so?"

"Something wrong, O-neechan?

"Nothing at all..."

"Jealous?"

(What an smart boy,) she thought sedately in one of her sub routines. "Yes," she hissed.

"I can talk Dad into fixing you up some..."

"I know you'd like to help me, Ryu. You are nice to all things, living or not." she hugged him. "But where would your father get his materials? I would need stuff from your mother's company, and as much as I have cost it and her, I would be really....really...stupid to go back there. I lied to her, I damaged her property...I endangered her life..."

Ryu looked up at her. "Are you feeling guilty?"

"I don't know how to feel guilty..," she corrected him. "My AI just says that she wants nothing to do with me..."

"Don't call it an AI. Call it your gut." Eimi considered this as a suggestion on how to act.

So she acted.

"My gut tells me that I am going to be like this for a long time."

"I'll fix you then!" Eimi's artificial humor and irony flared to life, causing her little body to shake in simulated mirth. "What's so funny?" He sounded so serious. "You. You are nice. You also don't know anything about robots." Eimi had almost considered letting him work on her.

Another process ran through her net. She was supposed to enroll in a high school today. She would have liked to stay local, but moving in with the already crowded Natsume left her with little options. She had decided to try to become more than her program in the only way she knew how.

Go to where they teach.

Made sense to her. She reached for her clothes. She only had one set, since she didn't sweat. Ryu watched her with a fury. "Who says I can't?"

"I do," Eimi answered calmly as she pulled the nightie off. Ryu looked away sharply to avoid being flashed as she buttoned up her white blouse.

"Where are you goin`?"

goin`-- short form of going. "To school. Probably NukuNuku's"

"She likes to be called Atsuko now. Except for Dad and me."

"Is that so?" She sounded very disinterested. She finished the blouse and tied a string of red around the collar into a limp bow. She then pulled on a knee high brown skirt. "You can look now." she said. Her -gut- was showing curiosity. "Where are you going today?"

Ryu lit up. "Dad promised to take me out to lunch or dinner. Lunch if he wakes up in time. Dinner if Mom can make it." Eimi stood up, and promptly smashed her head into the short ceiling over the work space.

"Ow!!!Itetete..." she clutched her head where the neural net's impulses were now skipping.

She vaguely wondered if this could equate as a headache. She crawled forward as Ryu moved out of the way of the hall. "Are you okay?"

"Yes." she lied again as she stood up in the hall way. She tried desperately to remember where she left her socks.

She was the most sophisticated product that Mishima had produced, finer than the NK in many respects. The only problem was that in the end, no program was yet as fast as an organic brain. It also had a extremely small number of complex instruction tasks and database to draw from.

In other words, she was thinking of too many things at once.

She tried to think in AI disgust and quickly overloaded her task base. Got dizzy, and fell over.

====

Eimi strolled the sidewalk in a subdued fashion. She was only allowed out of Mishima if 80 percent of her on-task intensity was in Calm mode. That greatly angered 90 percent of her on-task intensity, much to the dismay of Akiko. She didn't really care after her system cooled down. Any existence was better than that warehouse. She tugged down on her skirt.

The street was empty and the clouds were darkening. She took notice of this and a subroutine told her to grab her umbrella so she wouldn't appear out of place. She whipped out a Duckhead umbrella as she rounded the corner. Another condition was that she act like a human and not a machine, otherwise she would be put through the work of a machine again.

Her AI of the real Eimi told her that the CEO of Mishima was very generous and she should be thankful.

The SNK didn't take kindly to its own AI emotional database.

So to do the work of a human, she was going to enroll in high school. Her body would be considered a biological 14-15 year old by most, so she knew she'd end up in a freshman class if she applied. That agitated her, being forced to put up with immature and pointless humans.

There was always the warehouse, her AI told her. She winced reactively as she twirled the umbrella.

====

"Tadaima!" NukuNuku strolled into the door.

"Hi NukuNuku," Kyusaku said drearily from his computer. "Have you seen my mid voltage relay?" he was fumbling through equipment and papers in vain.

"No, Papa-san." NukuNuku looked around, surmising that Ryu was playing. "Have you seen Eimi-chan?"

"Nope," he said, lighting a cigarette. "She'd probably going to register at our school."

"She'll be going to school?" she said excitedly. She was eager at the thought of having another friend to talk to and play with. Ryu was the only one who would play with her. She liked socialising with her friends and Mariko, but she missed playing. Eimi was the only thing that could play her games, even if her games became destructive.

"Probably, if she really wants to stay out of Mishima." "Wonderful!" she put the vegetables in the fridge along with the liquor she purchased.

Kyusaku frowned at the screen. A schematic of the SNK was on the screen. The hardware design was comparable to NukuNuku, but fell short horribly in many mechanical aspects. Whoever picked up Yoshikawa's work for him after he died was cutting corners, which wasn't surprising as demanding as Akiko could be. Out of curiosity, he pulled up the matrix of the AI.

Yoshikawa was a genius. This program was absolutely incredible the first time he got a look at it and still was after someone else had streamlined it unnecessarily. It was easily beyond the scope of whoever tampered with it last.

"Papa-san? Could you help me with this Comprehensive on poetry?"

He continued to stare at the monitor. This program would make William Gates look stupid. Most of the strings required 256 bit processing, but whoever streamlined his code dithered it down to 64 bit for the hardware. It would also make MatsuShita seem like a kid corporation, the hardware required to run this.

"Papa-san?"

"NukuNuku, do you know where my photo albums are?"

"Yes, but..."

"Could you go and fetch them for me? I'll help you study in a minute."

She smiled brightly. "Sure!"

In short, the SNK was a rush job. He was surprised it worked as well as it did, fooling him at first. But then, he remembered, he was going his 78th hour he met her. It would have been pretty easy to convince him of anything in that state. The programming was holding everything together still, and managed to do it relatively well, most of the time. The cultural database was very small, however. Kyusaku remembered the night before, when she offered to deactivate herself to stay in the closet. He had thought is was pretty funny, but before he finally fell over last night, he had been going on his 80th hour and would have thought that a chair was funny.

"Is it cold in here?"

"Not to me," he said. "Ask Ryunnosuke." He watched her return with the photo album he had kept during his leaps and bounds in the technological field. "Thank you," he said, taking it from her. He took another look at the schematics before going to the album. Even the alloy and shell were corner cut, the skeleton made of some heavy kind of steel alloy, and the shell not being pseudo flesh, but some kind of hybrid, pseudo-skin. He turned off the monitor and lit up as he began his journey down memory lane....

====6 years ago

"Well I can't say that I blame you, Kyu. But I have a family to feed so I throw all of my ideas out."

A grizzled, but warm looking, and still handsome man of his 60's had spoke to a younger Kyusaku from across a small worktable in a lab. Kyu knew the kind of understatement his mentor was making. He had to support two generations of his family ever since his friends daughter left her husband. Yoshikawa had taken his daughter's break up well, and so did the granddaughter, but mother was not, still holding herself in a depressive state.

The other understatement was 'every Idea'. He threw out things that weren't even ideas hoping for the board to bite it. Everything from simple fuel source alternatives to new animatronics to an even better AI. He remembered bemusedly when he threw out a coffee machine idea for the board's and company's personal use, hoping to get an inkling out of it.

"I know, but I can't shake the feeling that something is going to catch up with me, no matter what Akiko says."

"Perhaps, but she has come through before, eh boy?" Kyu almost laughed. She blew him and Ryunnosuke off from the picnic yesterday because a big prospective bank had needed a security network for its building and she was too busy getting their favor.

"Yeah, good ol' Akiko."

"Now don't go too hard on her. You know she has to put up with chairman breathing down her neck like a father might."

Yoshikawa was in his 60's and still had a very sharp social mind. Kyusaku had met plenty of brilliant men and old scientists who would never see a dinner in his house, but Yoshikawa was different. When he was hired a year before with Akiko's assistance, Yoshikawa was intended to be an assistant for Kyu. Akiko had known him before but had never over seen any of Yoshi's work so she couldn't gauge his ability since she knew very little about robotics compared to those who worked for her. He hit it off with him, Yoshikawa quickly assuming the role of teacher with experience and Kyu being student with bright, fresh ideas. Yoshikawa had already established a strong hold in the Mishima Heavy Industries Computer Programming divisions, his programs labeled 'ingenious' and 'the finest, most error free in the world.' Kyusaku held him in the highest regard since day one, for a social person as much as a colleague. In fact, He has brought his daughter and grand daughter to a family dinner at Akiko's estate when Akiko's grandfather was visiting. It turns out that Yoshikawa had been one of the longest employed people ever at Mishima and Akiko's Grandfather had requested his presence. That had proved to be an interesting evening. Michie displayed her grief in several levels, but Eimi was an active, vital girl who was playing with Ryunnosuke after the dinner. Eimi seemed to care little about having four years on him, and neither did Ryu.

"Yes, but I've had too many run-ins with her in that state of mind."

A good, honest friend to the family who was trying to make ends meet in a mixed up world. "You must give her some credit, she's a hell of a business woman, Kyu-kun."

"And a lousy wife," Kyusaku muttered. "Hey..What's this?" Kyu noticed an -very complex- command string on his friend's monitor. "Wow, Impressive." Kyu heard Yoshi grumble in disapproval. "I, uh, didn't mean to invade your privacy."

Yoshi seemed beside himself, and started to say something, but stopped. He walked around the room, sealing the doors, and hacking into security long enough to set the camera on still playback.

"Kyu-kun, can I have your word to secrecy? On your honor?"

Kyusaku could see the intensity of the situation evolving. "I swear.."

"Not good enough. Swear on your fatherhood."

That caught him off guard. Whatever it was, it was just as important to Yoshi's family as Ryu was to his. "I so swear. Now speak, friend." Yoshi seemed to deflate into his work chair, looking much, much older.

"Kyu-san, I have been developing things without the knowledge of Mrs. CEO and using Mishima resources. But this is only the tip." Kyu carefully took a seat as well. "Eimi.....you are plainly aware of how depressed my daughter, Michie, has been." Kyu nodded. "Well, it's not over the breakup. Not entirely anyway...." He breathed deeply.

"Eimi is dying, Kyu." Kyusaku gulped. Eimi? Dying? That vibrant active girl? "It's..."

"How? From what?"

"Its a peculiar neurological disorder. Its had a history in our family for killing in adolescence mysteriously before we had medicine. Even now, they know very little about the malady. Its recessive and it came from my side of the tree. It is not curable. The doctors give her another year." He breathed a deep breath again. "I've been getting more than enough insurance from the company direct from the owner, but..."

"Is she in pain?"

"No, but she will be in the end stages. The disorder is in her immune and reconstructive systems. As her body replaces tissue, the systems are poisoned somehow into making and producing damaged or wrong tissue. She will loose mobility as it progresses and damages her nervous system."

"Dear god, Yoshi-kun. I had no idea. My deepest condolences." Kyu felt the need to be extremely formal on this matter when Yoshi had asked for his word. He couldn't begin to parallel to him, to think of loosing Ryu.

"The matter of the project runs in."

"Does this have anything to do with all the robotics that have begun appearing in your lab, and disappearing from mine?"

"Yes. You see you aren't the only one who's had ideas that they won't let go of. Before I tell you the rest, I'm going to send you a copy of several programs to be kept--just in case..."

"In case of what?"

"You'll know," he said easily as he began punching in file transfer command in his computer.

=====

(Has it been 6 years?) Kyu thought. He looked at the picture of himself, Yoshikawa, and Eimi hoisted up in Yoshikawa's arms holding a peace hand. He still had the original 256-bit program string that Yoshikawa gave him, and what he was staring at on the monitor was only a shadow of that masterpiece. The mainframe for the neural net required at least 3 gigabytes.

Prolong Eimi's memory...is there a price too high?

"Watcha doin', Papasan?"

The disease never claimed her.

"Just remembering, NukuNuku. That's all." A lab accident did that for her. "I envy you, NukuNuku." He looked up from the album to see her bright face and wild hair. "You can remember with perfect clarity." She blinked. "For normal people, it get harder and harder to remember."

Atsuko felt strangely obligated to point out something. "But Papasan, remember that I can't remember everything. A human can if they try hard enough."

"Touche`."

(Touche`--french expression, also slang for good point.) she thought.

"Now then, what did you need help with?" ===

Eimi looked around the school. She hadn't had much to do with the outside world. Her AI was a hodgepodge of memories and images the real Eimi gave her, but after that, she was clueless. She managed to direct herself to the principal before having too much problem.

"So you wish to enroll, huh? May I ask where your parents are?"

Eimi was dumb, but not that dumb. "They died. A long time ago," she said in a low voice. She looked down at the floor of the office to try to accentuate the point.

"You are an orphan? Whom is your guardian?"

Eimi thought for a moment, this being a problem she did not foresee. Well, it worked for that cyborg...

"Professor Natsume."

The principle raised a brow slightly. "Oh, really? Taking in another, eh?" he leaned conspicuously forward. "Do you like being with him and Atsuko?"

(Atsuko? Who's Atsuko?) she thought disgustedly. "I like NukuNuku just fine," she said calmly.

"Very well then." He turned to face his computer on his desk. "How old are you, miss Yoshikawa?"

"Fifteen." she was barely two.

"Do you have the records of your previous education, so we'll have some grounds to go by?"

(Uh-oh.)

==

Akiko looked out her window on the 27nth floor corner office suite. The day was quite morose looking, a thick overcast crumbling into view. (And I'm not working Sunday because...?) she wondered.

She hadn't taken a Sunday off in what seemed like years. Curious, she sat down at her computer and punched in a few inquiries.

4 years, 6 months.

(Damn.)

She had been on edge a little while after that dinner with Kyusaku and Ryu, but just as things seemed to calm down, that stupid little SNK project broke loose. She managed to detain it again but it wouldn't shut up until it had said everything it could about it's livelihood at Mishima.

Livelihood. It was a robot. It didn't have a livelihood. It had technical specs and a program. Atsuko had gotten the better of her that day, convincing her the virtues of the SNK. She wondered briefly why she had so much contempt for that little thing.

She sat back in her chair with a great exhale. She was going to miss the dinner they had planned this evening, which of course didn't surprise them. The accounting report for the last month was due on her desk by 4 today and she had to itemize it for records herself, since she personally oversaw many of the divisions herself.

(Why do I do this? It's not like there aren't people I could have do this....) She realised the answer quickly. It was her job to have her nose in everything this company did.

Maybe that's why the SNK bugged her. She didn't know about until after Yoshikawa's unfortunate demise.

It still threw her for a loop. She knew very little about Yoshikawa's drawing from his insurance pension so suddenly, but he was totally within his rights to claim it, and if anything his work output increased significantly, so she paid little attention to it.

She had found out about his grandchild's condition through a stray comment as she walked the halls of Mishima Prototype Distribution. Apparently, they had found out about it from a dinner conversation a weekend before. Funny. She vaguely remembered something about a weekend with Kyusaku earlier that month.

(How long has it been?) She looked out of her window to the street below, still thinking about this coming Sunday. She had Promised to make for a dinner this coming weekend. She was still uneasy about meeting outside of work.

Here she had authority. Here she had control...Outside, she had fear, contempt from others. Misunderstanding. Prejudice.

NukuNuku cut through that so intensely, it still burned to think of her face. Her bright...no, brilliant smile threatening her tight walls that were labeled 'emotional stability'. Her last dinner with the three of them proved to be quite helpful. Maybe she could still see eye to eye with Kyu. Maybe she hadn't wasted all the years with Ryu.

She blinked sharply as a ray of sun broke through the overcast, causing her to try to look up. (Maybe the light of the day has yet to shine for me...) The phone began to ring.

"You ruined my moment," she addressed the phone as she let the blinds fall and cover the windows.

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