The Mistress And Her Minion free porn video

The Mistress and her Minion by Erin Tyler I had counted 98 days from the time I woke up in The Mistress' junk- strewn lab to the day I walked out of it. 98 days -- that's 14 weeks -- she had kept me trapped in that poorly-lit scrap heap with her broken anime character-wannabe of a robot sidekick, Natsuko. She had kept me stuck in a busted robot body, and I had to rely on my own ingenuity to get it into working order. It had been a stroke of luck that I had been able to steal Natsuko's body, which I now used as my own. I was free to leave, to find the nearest door out of The Mistress' labs and use it. But I didn't want to use it, not yet. Not until I got some payback. Natsuko's body still felt a little odd as I stepped outside -- whoever I had been before, I had been male, and taller. Still, I couldn't complain, since it was such a huge upgrade from my previous robot body. I quietly looked around and saw that I was in a shadowed, decrepit hallway. At the far ends of the hall, to my left and right, were two windows. The window to my right was broken, and I felt a gust blow through it, although I couldn't tell if it was warm or cold -- I could feel pressure, but not temperature. I padded over to the window, stepping on the broken plaster that littered the floor with my new android-girl feet, and squinted against the blinding light of the mid- day sun. Holding on to both sides of the broken window, I stuck my head outside. I immediately recoiled in shock. I was high off the ground, extremely high. As my eyes adjusted to the light, I realized that I had to be at least a thousand feet in the air, likely many more. Then, when I looked out across the landscape, I received a far, far greater shock than my mere height. The city that stretched before me was in ruins. The vast concrete jungle that I knew I would find familiar was long abandoned. Though everything before me was still, Mother Nature was working to crumble everything to dust. Weather had pounded out windows and flooded roads. Plants and trees had torn their way through cracks in sidewalks and gripped the sides of buildings as they grew upwards in their quest for light and rainwater. Birds and cats and other animals were nesting in burnt-out cars and wind-strewn offices. All paint was washed away, all metal ruddy orange and corroded. I was clearly in a skyscraper, but all other skyscrapers around me had long since collapsed, leaving nothing but piles of debris and their broken metal skeletons. I was devastated. Natsuko had described the outside to me a little, but never like this. I knew it was the year 2450, and that I was from 2015, and I had figured out that times were tough now, but this... I sank to the floor in despair and cradled my legs. I have... to take a moment, I thought as I shivered. This is too much. Too much. Jesus Christ. It's all gone. I wanted to cry, but I didn't have tear ducts. Instead, I glubbed and buried my head in my arms. I thought I had been in a bad situation back in my old robot body, but this discovery hit hard. Everyone I know is dead, and I can't remember anything about any of them. I don't even know who I am, or what I looked like. I'm just a disembodied human brain in a world I can't begin to understand. I wallowed there in miserable self-pity for a little while... ...And then I felt angry. The Mistress... that rotten bitch! She kept me trapped in that room just so... just so she could... she could... I couldn't articulate how any of this was her fault; I just strongly felt that, somehow, it was her fault. Far to my left, down another, even dimmer hallway and through a wall on the other end, I could hear what sounded like the inside of an auto mechanic's garage. She was down there: The Mistress, the one who ran this place. I bristled and stood up. She wouldn't know that I had stolen Natsuko's body, so if I walked in, she wouldn't know I was her now. She would think I was just her crazy, stupid little toy, so that's what I would give her. I would play her crazy, stupid little toy for as long as I needed, and I would use that time to study her and figure out her weaknesses. And then, when she least expected it, I'd strike. I took a deep breath (even though I didn't need to breathe in this body) and strode down the hallway purposefully. Midway down, a person popped out of a doorway in front of me to my left, and I jumped and squealed like a frightened schoolgirl. He was red-faced and breathing heavily. When he noticed me, he let out a frightened cry. He was just a boy, probably about 13 or 14. He was a little grungy- looking, with blue eyes, crooked teeth, and worn leather pants. His nose had once been broken and set, but it was still a bit bent. He was also a hell of a lot more scared of me than I was of him. Holy shit, I thought, a human!! Praise be!! "-Oh!" I chirped. "No, no! Please don't be frightened! It's okay, I won't hurt you!" That didn't seem to make him any less scared. He took a step back, getting ready to run. "Please, I promise I won't hurt you!" I begged. "Are you okay? What happened to you?" His eye twitched. "Ahn... ah..." To comfort him, I stood up straight and smiled warmly. "My name is Natsuko," I said formally. That's right, that's who I am now, I thought, and this poor kid is probably another victim of The Mistress. "What's your name?" He seemed a little calmer, but he was still shaking a little. "Ahn... um, Gary..." "Gary..." I looked up and heard what sounded like power drills. "We should get you out of here, Gary." The kid inhaled sharply. "N-no!" he declared. "But-!" I started to say, when he puffed out his chest and thrust one hand in front of himself. "M-m-metal devil!" he proclaimed clearly and loudly. "I-I'm here to see The Metal Mistress of the Sky Tower!" I was momentarily taken aback. This kid wants to see The Mistress?! Suddenly, I heard a groan to my left, and I jumped in fear again. There was another person standing there in the doorway, red-faced and breathing hard. It was an older, taller man, with thick muscles and a dusty beard. He wore a flannel shirt and leather pants, like Gary. When he saw me standing by the boy, he glared at me and balled his fists. "Leave him the hell alone!!" he roared. I shrank before him. "Dad!" Gary cried. "Gary Jerome Carson, you're coming back home with me right now!!" "We need to speak to her, Dad! We need to ask her-!" The father shoved me aside and grabbed his son by the forearm. "We don't need one thing from that witch! Now you're either walking out or I'm carrying you out!!" The noises from the other side of the wall ceased. "Who's out there?!" The Mistress called out. Gary and his father went dead silent. "Natsuko, who's out there?! Bring them in here!!" The father's gaze on me was deadly. I wasn't in any position to tell him to go anywhere. "...Please?" I squeaked. He let out a heavy breath. "Stay behind me," he growled at his son, then pointed at me with enough force to spear me. "You're in front!" I nodded, then shuffled past them and walked toward the sound of The Mistress' voice. Well, I thought, I lost control of this situation pretty damn quick. I walked robotically down the hall (and yes, I realize the irony in that statement, but I was terrified) and around the far wall. Beyond the wall was a wide, open space, the floor of which was covered in billowing, clear plastic. The far wall was completely gone, leaving nothing but a thin sheet of cloudy plastic between anyone on this floor and a thousand-foot drop. To my left was an open door to an elevator shaft that was partly blocked off by a metal gate. Surrounding the remaining scuffed white walls were power tools, metal cabinets, coils of rope and wire, glider wings, batteries of all voltages, and metallic bric-a-brac from robots and cars and tables and pretty much anything else that could set off a metal detector. Hell, the whole floor would have made a TSA agent nervous, or even a firefighter -- I could just make out, in one corner, behind a broken and overturned metal desk, a loose handful of oily rags piled on top of a leaky keg of kerosene and a blowtorch. My revenge-sense tingled. No, too obvious, I thought. In the middle of the room was The Mistress, clad in her usual mass of clothing that obscured every inch of her skin, age, and gender-specific detail. She was holding a socket wrench and standing on top of a stepladder while reaching into a small opening in the top of a large, dull-gray robot that was four times her size. The machine looked like the love child of a VW Beetle and a Cylon, with two arms at its sides and four wheeled, spidery legs stretching out from below. When we entered, she stood up straight and stepped down the stepladder. "Alan! What the fuck are you doing here?!" she barked with a gruff voice that made it sound like she needed a lozenge. I stepped out of the way. The father smiled insincerely. "Mmmy... son came here," he said, in measured tones. "He... wanted... to see if... he could climb your tower." The Mistress shook her head. "Wow, Alan. Wow. Natsuko? Pat him down." I looked at her, then at him. He glared at me. Had he ever stopped? I had no idea. "Sometime today, Natsuko!" The Mistress said, her voice rising. I hesitated, then reached out and touched his arm. Yeah, I thought, it's all gone! All my control: Gone! I gently patted his arm, then his chest. His big chest. His strong chest. Don't get me wrong: I like women. I liked women when I was a man, and I liked women as a female android. But I focus on the "strong" aspect of his chest because he felt like he could rip me in half. "Faster, Natsuko!" C'mon, I thought, the cops do this all the time. I patted his shoulders, and under his arms, and his waist, then his legs. "Don't forget the taint!" The Mistress snarled. I looked into Alan's eyes. He looked into mine. Dude, I am so sorry, I thought, hoping I could reach him telepathically. I owe you all the beers. I winced and cupped the area between his legs. I momentarily brushed against something dangling between them, and felt the desperate need to wash off everything that composed my physical being with a mixture of bleach, hydrochloric acid, and fire. "And the ankles! I can't believe I have to remind you again!!" That's where I felt it: something hard and metal pressed to his calf. I pulled up the leg of his pants, revealing a handgun big enough to punch a hole in an elephant. "There we are!" she sang. "On the table, Natsuko!" I removed the gun and put it on a table behind me. "And the boy!" Are you freaking serious, I wanted to shout. Her hands were on her hips. I quietly sighed and turned to Gary. Without prompting, he pulled an automatic pistol out from under his flannel shirt and pointed it straight at my chest. It's a good thing I didn't have a colon, because I would have voided it at that moment. Okay, I'm dead, I thought. He spun it professionally in his hand, pointing the butt toward me. I gingerly removed it and put it on the table next to his father's gun. Then he produced the shiv: a foot long piece of sharpened metal, with one end wrapped in a leather strip. I nearly blurted, You were afraid of me?! I controlled myself and put it on the table, too. "You're a leader, Alan," The Mistress said. "You should learn to lie. Why are you really here?" "We're here by mistake," Alan replied. "Dad," Gary said urgently. "No, Gary. We're not asking her." "Dad, it's-!" "No, Gary!" "Dad, it's the only way!" He turned to The Mistress. "You have to help us, Metal Mistress!" The Mistress laughed out loud. "I don't think your son understands our relationship, Alan!" Alan groaned. "I'm being serious!" Gary cried. "President Bellows is coming, and you have to help us fight him off!" The Mistress stood silent for a second. "President...?" "Bellows," Alan grumbled. "He's another... 'president'," he said with a wiggle of his fingers. "...Ohhhh. Another president, huh?" She took a couple steps back up the stepladder. "What is he, the sixth one?" "Seventh that we know of. Seventh on the east coast, anyway." The Mistress chuckled as she leaned back into her robot's head. "All these little warlords and their love of the old titles. God bless 'em." "He's not the same!" Gary said. "He's coming here!!" "We received a messenger earlier this morning," Alan explained, "from out by Lake Erie. This Bellows fella has his own little kingdom carved out, from Grand Rapids to Toronto." "Impressive!" "Yeah, well, he's looking to expand. He's giving Rochester and Albany the sweats, and he's making his way to the coast so he can build himself a navy." "A navy! Very ambitious!" "He's hoping to set up a port, then use it as a base of operations to take control of the east coast. The only problem is, everything north of us is controlled by The Republic of the North, and everything south of us by the Coalition of Independent States. That leaves only one route to the ocean: through us." "He's gonna destroy Parkside!" Gary cried. "Destroy or conquer," his father corrected him. It didn't look like The Mistress was paying attention. "Either way, we're... pretty screwed." "I'll say!" The Mistress chirped. "Parkside is just one big farm! I didn't think it had an army!" "We don't." "Mmm! Why come to me then?" Alan rubbed his eyes. "Build us an army!" Gary pleaded. "Send your metal devils out to fight him! His army is nothing but rapists and cowards!" "We're pretty sure his main force is made up of a large religious commune he conquered out near Flint. Those types tend to be pretty superstitious." The Mistress whipped her head out and stepped onto the floor in one fluid motion. "Oh? And what are you?!" Alan put his hands up in front of him in a conciliatory gesture. "We're just simple, good folks-" "-Simple!" The Mistress crowed. "Good!" She crowed again. "You've been harassing me for 80 years! Eighty... years!!" "We've... had our differences-" She got up close to his face and shook with anger. "Differences, yeah!! Like the difference between a lynch mob on my first floor and a bounty on my head!! You stay the fuck down there, Alan, and I'll keep the fuck up here!!" Alan was speaking slowly and calmly, but through clenched teeth. "What you do... up here... may not be... natural, but-" The Mistress brushed him off and strode back to the side of her robot. "-But we may find that... we need to... cooperate... in this situation." "Bellows murders witches!" Gary declared. Alan reached into his pocket and pulled out a small circular pendant. It was painted like a bulls-eye. "The messenger brought this with him, to let us know he was being serious. He said Bellows burned the owner alive." The Mistress peeked at him, then did a double-take. She walked back over to him and snatched the pendant away. "I've seen this before." "He said it belonged to the Gun Witch of Detroit. He brought several more of her effects. They include high-quality, hand-crafted weapons that only a witch could make." The Mistress whispered something. She had her back turned to Gary and Alan to stare at the pendant as it dangled from her gloved hand, so I don't think they heard what she said. I did, though: "Kathryn's dead?" She snapped out of her reverie and shook her head. "No, no," she said out loud. "This means nothing. Someone pinched Gunny's stuff. Big deal." "They were very bloody," Alan said in a low tone. The Mistress stood still. Alan and Gary said nothing. I said nothing. Somewhere in an adjoining room, I heard a fan running. The Mistress turned back to face Alan. "Fight your own battles, Alan." "This is your battle, too." "I'm up here, he's down there. Simple as that." "He won't be afraid-" The Mistress waved her hand dismissively. "-He won't be afraid to throw his entire force at this tower, if he needs to! That'll happen after he crushes Parkside, and after he's cut off all your means of escape!" "Whatever, Alan. Whatever. You bore me. Your shit bores me. Grab your shit and go." "Mistress-" "Grab-your-shit-and-go," she said emphatically. Gary had been getting jittery, and he could no longer stand still. He snatched his gun off the table and pointed it at The Mistress' head. "Gary, no!!" Alan cried. "If you won't help us, I'll make you help us!!" Gary screamed. His eyes were wild, his hands shaking. The Mistress slowly turned and faced him. "Awww. How cute." The Mistress sounded serene. Although I couldn't see her face, I could tell she was smiling. Alan slowly reached out. "Gary... put... the gun-" It went off. In less time than a heartbeat, the bullet soared through the air towards The Mistress' head. But it didn't land there. Her robot got it. In a split second, the robot she had been repairing extended one arm into the air. The bullet, which was just a foot from her head, ricocheted off its metal arm and into a nearby wall. She didn't move an inch as a red light flickered on its front and it hummed to life, its top access panel still open. The metal monster pushed itself off the floor with its wheeled spider legs and turned to face Alan and Gary. Two panels split open along its sides, revealing a pair of fearsome miniguns that pointed directly at the man and his son. Gary dropped the gun. Alan, pale white terror washing over his face, covered his son as best he could. "To be honest, I didn't even know he was on," The Mistress quipped casually. "Lancelot? Down, boy." The red light on the front of the monster switched off, and the miniguns slid back into its body. Gary was openly crying. Urine dribbled out of the hem of his pants. Alan was holding him, saying something soft and low like, "it's okay, it's okay, son." "Teeny! Tiny!" The Mistress barked. Lancelot's two bigger brothers rolled out of opposite rooms behind her. "Alan Carson and his idiot son were just leaving! Show them to the elevator!" Behind her, Teeny suddenly folded out into a high, box-like structure, and two sets of wheels sprouted out of its sides. The gate to the elevator shaft opened and Teeny slid in, where he fit perfectly. A cavity big enough for two people opened in his chest. "Alan Carson," Tiny said in a deep electronic voice. "Idiot Son. Please step into the shaft." Alan and Gary didn't move. "Please step into the shaft." Miniguns popped out of his sides. "This is your final warning: please step-" "Okay, okay!" Alan cried, lifting Gary in his arms. "We're going! We'll go!" He cautiously put one foot into Teeny's cavity, then the other. "It's fine," he whispered to Gary, who was still sobbing. "There's no tricks, okay? We're just... going downstairs. C'mon." He pulled Gary in and held him tight to his chest. As Teeny started to slowly roll down the shaft, Alan defiantly raised his head at The Mistress and scowled. "Three months, the messenger said. He'll be here by the thaw." The fence closed, and he and his son were gone. I was frozen. Did that just fucking happen, I thought. My neck felt as stiff as when I awoke for the first time in Miki-chan, but I somehow managed to turn it back to look at The Mistress. She was arms-deep in Lancelot's head, just like I found her. "Natsuko, hand me the 3/16ths," she said like nothing happened, "then throw the weapons in the pile." Oh, fuck me. And so that's how I became the unwilling minion of a post-apocalyptic supervillain. That'd make sense, right? It's the typical evil minion story: The Mistress gives me an order, backs it up with a threat, I do her vile deeds and come back, and she punishes me anyway, because of reasons. Actually, that didn't happen. After I found the surprisingly small gun pile and placed Alan and Gary's weapons on it, I went straight back to her. And she told me to do... nothing. Plain, simple nothing. Nothing good and nothing evil. "Don't wreck my stuff," she said, with a low rumble. And that was it. It made sense: she thought I was a broken android. I went into another room and fell to the floor. Once I had calmed down, I decided the best thing I could do was suss out my environment. I went into the staircase from which Gary and Alan had emerged and went up one story, and found myself on the roof of the skyscraper (or "Sky Tower," as Gary had called it, which made sense because it was the tallest thing around). On the roof was a colossal satellite-shaped array of solar panels that pointed straight up into the sky. I walked to the edge and looked out to the west. There were people on the ground far below me. I went down to a lower floor, which was completely empty, and looked out over the edge again. I could see a large park surrounded by a decaying road. On the outer edges of the park was what looked like a gentrified commercial district. As I watched, it soon became obvious that people were living there. The buildings, which had been converted to townhouses, had been kept in good condition, with fresh paint and new construction on most of them. The inside of the park had been mostly converted to farmland, with only a sparse bit of shrub left near the skyscraper. On the road surrounding the park were vendor stalls and hundreds of people walking around, buying and selling, and just generally going about their lives. Everything beyond that little square of civilization, which was only a quarter-mile away, was in ruin. That's Parkside, I thought. It's on our front lawn. Jesus. When I crossed over to the east edge of the building, where there were still windows left, I could see the Atlantic Ocean beyond the ruins. A port on the edge of the city was littered with rusted hulks of old ships. And that's what this Bellows guy wants. Two floors below the lab, I found a large hydroponic garden that took up most of the level. The Mistress was growing fruits, vegetables, and even some pretty flowering plants of all different varieties. Actually, I should say The Mistress' robots were growing the food -- a dozen faceless, slightly dirty androids made the rounds between the rows, regulating the water flow over the plants and tending to their roots. The Mistress had lots of food and only one mouth to feed. That was the other thing I saw: nobody else. No matter where I went in those first few upper stories, I saw no other humans, or even signs of other humans. She didn't have anyone or anything else to talk to, besides Natsuko. She had a dirty, unkempt queen bed next to a wall opposite her lab, but nobody else was sleeping in it. She had piles of old, yellowing books, both fiction and non-fiction, but nobody else was reading them. Instead, she had junk. Piles of junk on the floor around her bed. Piles of junk in a closet in the rear hallway, near the junk- lab. A large, dusty, gray box without any seams in one corner of a room, with a note taped to it that read, "N -- HANDS OFF!!!!!! --T.M." Around the box, a hurricane-level mess of electronics, robotics, scrap, and junk. Rusty, discolored, bent and broken junk. Jagged, crooked, metallic and plastic and glass junk. I thought the junk-lab was her scrap-yard, but I was wrong. Her whole home was a scrap-yard. Holy crap, I thought. The Mistress is a hoarder. Natsuko's forays to the outside world suddenly seemed a lot more sensible. I cautiously approached The Mistress, who was still repairing Lancelot, and asked, "ah, Mistress... sama, I was wondering if I could borrow Teeny-" "-You wanna leave? Fine!" she snapped with more ferocity than necessary. "Teeny!" Once again, the middle of the three Cylon-Beetle children rolled into the room. "Elevator!" He folded up and out and into the shaft. Just as I approached him, she stopped me with, "Ut-ut! Natsuko? What're the rules again?" I paused. "Ahh..." She sighed. "Mem-or-ize the rules, Natsuko!! I swear to God-!" She huffed. "Don't go more than a block, don't go into town, and be back by nightfall. Repeat." I hesitated. "Repeat!!" she barked. I jumped a little. "D-don't go more than a block, don't go into town, be back by nightfall." "Very good." She brushed me away, and away I went into Teeny's chest cavity. "Oh, and Natsuko!" She quickly threw a couple of large batteries at me, almost pelting me in the face. "Change the lobby guards' batteries while you're down there, unless the townies have been using them for target practice again." Teeny started rolling, and The Mistress disappeared over the edge of the shaft. Every encounter I had with the woman made me want to collapse. How could I hope to get my revenge? The black marble floors of the lobby were covered with leaf, paper, and plastic litter that had blown through the broken glass doors facing west. I imagined the busy bustle that had engulfed those streets centuries before. Now it was gone, with only casual foot traffic further down the road. Where had that bustle gone? Why did it leave? From the top of the skyscraper, I couldn't see any craters in the middle of the city or quarantined buildings covered in tents or eternally traffic-clogged roads or crashed flying saucers, or anything else that could explain why or how my people had left. My people. Were those people, out there in Parkside, my people? I wasn't sure. I found two faceless androids, similar to the ones in the hydroponic garden (but wearing spiffy guard hats) bent over the front guard desk. One was stuttering, and the lights in his optical sensors were blinking erratically. The other was off completely. There were bullet holes in their chests that had been patched long ago. "Hold on, buddy," I said to the stuttering android as I searched his torso and found a panel in his back. I opened it, swapped the new battery for the old, and closed the panel. He hummed back to working order. I followed suit with his compatriot, and the desk was soon manned (robotted?) again. I looked sideways at Teeny as I leaned in close to the two androids. "I don't suppose you guys have a little... robot uprising in the works, do you?" I muttered. If they did, they didn't tell me; they simply sat there and watched the front door, and at irregular intervals turned and watched the back. "Great. Thanks. You're a real help." I thumped the desk with the palm of my hand and took off for a stroll. It was mid-afternoon, and the sky was overcast. The leaves in the trees nearby had long since turned different shades of yellow, red, and orange, and they had mostly fallen off to gather in large piles all over the roads. I wasn't sure of the exact day or month, but my best guess was it was sometime in late November or early December. That got me thinking of what Alan had said: "Three months, the messenger said. He'll be here by the thaw." I figured he was talking about the thaw just before spring, so that put the arrival of this Bellows guy in mid- to late March, and it put the current date at about the middle of December. I looked down at my sailor fuku and realized I wasn't dressed for this weather. Not that it mattered, since I couldn't feel cold; plus, I couldn't see my "breath" (i.e., air I puffed out of my mouth), so it was a mild winter anyway. Actually, I thought, I really want to get out of this fucking fuku. I considered walking to the market in Parkside, but my clothing wasn't really... family-friendly, and I didn't have any money. Maybe I can scavenge something up, I thought. There must be something I can wear in the ruins. I took a deep breath. Time to get my post-apocalypse on. The wind wasn't as bad on the street level as it was on the top story of the skyscraper. I walked into the street, looked straight up, and counted 70 stories total. The name and logo of the building where The Mistress lived had been lost, and in the heart of this nearly-dead burg, it now served as a nameless monument to the civilization that built it. I walked past it toward a theater on the far end of this road. When I got close, I saw that one of its doors was open. Something was shuffling around within. I hung back and stepped onto the sidewalk, as if that could somehow mask my presence. I saw something long and black- tipped stick out of the darkness, then a deer's head popped out. It saw me and sprinted out of the door as fast as it could. Its ribs were sticking out from its body -- it was starving, and desperate enough to take the risk. I caught my reflection in the side of the building to my right, and looked at it. There was Natsuko in her fuku and panties, but without the bubbly demeanor. Instead, she looked cautious. Tense. Scared. I was scared. Of course I'm scared, I thought. I'm five-foot- nothing and I probably weigh a hundred pounds soaking wet. There are animals living out here. Predators. And, probably, likely, other humans that I don't want to meet. I closed my eyes (for a brief moment) and took deep breaths. I rubbed my neck a little. I don't know why, but this helped. Maybe it was my old animal instincts working to calm me down and keep me alive, and not caring that it didn't have the same hardware to work with as it usually did. Natsuko has been out here before, I thought, unless she totally made all those stupid stories up. No, that can't be true -- she and The Mistress have a set of rules in place for this sort of thing. That means she's done this before, or has planned to. Plus, with Parkside nearby, the locals would probably keep things clean, even out here, lest trouble finds its way back to them. Me being out here is good -- if I'm going to survive in this world, I need to figure out how to get around. Without any idea of who I had once been, I had little idea of how I reacted under stress. I can be really jittery, I thought, but I've got a good head on my shoulders. I chuckled. Gone was the manic pixie with the hyperactive child-laughter; now her lips parted in a thin, wry grin. I rubbed my neck a little more and kept walking as I did so. Around the corner and across the street was a collapsed skyscraper that still had some steel struts from its skeleton crookedly reaching up to the sky. On the street level, there were only two stores underneath that had been spared complete destruction. One looked like it had been a gardening store -- now, the plants were nothing but dust, and the dirt was dry in the pots. Everything that was a seed or a bulb had been pulled from the racks. The large front window was broken, leaving it, too, nameless. The other store, which was on the far corner of the collapsed skyscraper, just opposite The Mistress' home, was a clothing store. I could tell because it still had a sign above its door, and an intact window. It read, "MARIEL'S CLOTHIER" in faded pink letters that had been spared the fate of most paint in the area by a small, ripped canopy overhanging it. The mannequins in the window were naked, but it looked like there was still a little cloth left on one of the shelves. I didn't go for it first thing, though, because there was a wide open door in the back of the store that led to darkness. This is how it always happens in movies, I thought. The heroine (holy shit, that's me) or one of her girl friends gets distracted by something pretty, and she turns it over and over in her hands like, "la-la-la, oh I'm so girly and easily distracted by the shiny-shiny despite all the death and chaos around me because women am I right fellas," and the bad guy sneaks up behind her and does something awful to her. Well, fuck that. There was one broken window, which provided a handy piece of jagged glass for one weapon, and the wooden stand of a broken mannequin provided another. With the glass tucked in the line of my panties (I always feel a little weird saying "my panties") and the stand in my hands, I quietly crept through the store, peeking under the changing-room doors and moving toward the dark stockroom in back. When I reached the door, I didn't touch it -- I glanced behind it to make sure Jason Krueger/Freddy Voorhees wasn't hiding behind it with his chainsaw-machete or whatever, then I scanned the room to see if there were any shadowy figures lurking within. The worst thing I found was a raccoon munching on dead insects and expired snack food. Its beady little eyes glowed with reflected light as it hissed at me. "Yah! Yah!" I shouted, jabbing my stand toward the creature. "I'm bigger than you!! Yah!!" The raccoon cowered, then dashed past me and out into the main store, then out the front door. That was my first big post-apocalyptic adventure: chasing off a raccoon with a stick. Still, at the time, I felt big. Strong. Impressive. Manly. Let's take a look at the pretty dresses, I thought. Unfortunately, I could tell the dresses were unsalvageable from the moment I touched the top one and it crumbled. Everything in the front of the store had been exposed to the elements for too long. I had hastily scanned the stockroom without paying attention to any of the goods it contained, so it was my best bet. But it was dark in there -- how could I get some light? I found a flashlight behind the counter, but the batteries were dead. I needed power. Where could I get power? Where can I get some batteries, I thought. I thought about going back to the androids behind the guard desk for their batteries when I thought, wait... I'm an android. Can I spare some juice? Or, maybe... "Hmm," I said, "uh... flashlight on?" Two bright circles of light appeared on the wall in front of me. I turned to a nearby mirror and saw light shooting out of my eyes. I had only guessed I could do that. "Nyahaha!" I yelled. "Cool!!" After a thorough search of the stockroom, I found a stack of flat, plastic bundles wrapped in a blanket in a corner of the room. They looked promising -- whatever they were, someone had obviously gone out of their way to keep them from being exposed to light, heat, water, and air (i.e., anything and everything that could damage and/or destroy them). When I got them to the front room and had a closer look, I saw that they were vacuum-sealed, and contained clothing. I carefully slit the topmost bag open with my piece of glass and pulled the plastic apart. As I did so, an envelope fell out of it onto the floor. "Flashlight off," I said in passing. The light from my eyes disappeared. "Nyeh-heh!" I picked up the envelope, turned it over in my hands, then opened it and read the hastily-scrawled note within: Tina, This nieghborhood is 2 dangerous. Was robbed yesterday. Police never came. Going 2 my mom's upstate. Left behind clothes 4U n Lois. Stay Safe. Mari I looked around at the decrepitude of the store. It must have been many decades since it was abandoned. "I don't think Tina's coming for these, Mariel," I mumbled. The clothes within were as fresh and clean as the day they had been wrapped up. The first bag contained clothes that were too big, but the next three worked out well for me. I polished off the store's full- length mirror and put on a little fashion show for myself as I admired Mariel's strange tastes in accoutrements during the breakdown of society: A casual but stylish girl's babydoll tee, pattered with wreaths of flowers around the hem and neckline, and a pair of skinny jeans and sneakers (a size too big for me). A red one-shoulder evening dress with silver high-heeled pumps (which fit). A sleek classic: the little black dress, which just barely covered my ass, and the same pumps from before. A simple but lovely blue sundress, which I thought looked great on me, and brown sandals that fit perfectly (and good thing, too, because it was the last of the three pairs of shoes from the bags, and after falling on my face and ass six times, I wasn't about to walk around the post-apocalyptic ruins of America in fucking high heels). A white embroidered blouse with sleeves that went to my elbows and a comfy black skirt that ended just below my knees. The blouse also looked good with the jeans, which, along with the fact that it hid my skinless upper right arm, made it my favorite piece of clothing. I couldn't find a bra anywhere within the bags that fit me -- I may not have mentioned this before, but I was pretty flat-chested. My body only had an A-cup, and it didn't look like whoever had packed these bags had anything below a C. I left the blouse, skirt, and sandals on, and put together a bag full of the other clothes that I liked. I was about to leave the ones that I either didn't like or didn't fit me behind when I had a flash of inspiration: I could sell them for cash! If I took them to the market in Parkside and pawned them, I could make a little scratch on the side for... whatever. New panties? Robot Health Insurance (i.e., Robamacare)? A retirement plan for evil minions? I knew I'd figure it out. As I was getting ready to leave, I turned and saw a young woman. I was alone, so it was me in the mirror, of course, but... for a moment, I thought I saw a total stranger looking back at me. I paused and looked myself over. I mentioned before that when I looked at my reflection in the side of the building, I saw a Natsuko that was no longer a bubbly, manic pixie. This Natsuko was a serious, real young woman. She looked like the kind of girl who I would see on the street and smile at, then who would make me feel great if she smiled back. She looked like the kind of girl who I would see in the coffee shop every couple days, and maybe one day I'd work up the nerve to ask her name, and she'd give it to me, and I'd give her mine, and we'd casually greet each other every time we saw each other after that and be on our way. The kind of girl who I would develop a crush on, but the crush wouldn't really lead anywhere, and would be forgotten not long after she stopped coming to the coffee shop. In other words... she wasn't me. Don't get me wrong: I have absolutely nothing against transgender people. Looking in that mirror, I could see how somebody could feel that they were in the wrong body. I understood perfectly. I had enjoyed becoming Natsuko, and after 14 weeks of immobility, I was grateful I could be Natsuko, but... I wasn't Natsuko. I had tried to psych myself up to the prospect of being a girl for the rest of my life, but it wouldn't stick. I was a boy, plain and simple. When I wasn't looking in a mirror, I was still thinking of myself as a guy; I was still referring to Natsuko in the third person, not the first. I'd never be able to pass Natsuko off as a convincing man, I thought. I need a new body. A male body. But I can't just go to The Mistress and say, "Hey, Mistress! I'm the brain you found! Care to build me a male robot body?" She'd blow me to pieces with those miniguns of hers. No, I gotta build this thing myself. I was so overcome with the scope of my task, I had to sit down: years of teaching myself robotics while remaining in the employ of The Mistress so I could have access to her tools and equipment, while simultaneously keeping her, a super-genius, ignorant of my actions? What'll I do the next time she wants to open up Natsuko's head? What if the real Natsuko manages to get a message to her the next time she shows up in her junk-lab? What if she's waiting for me to come home right now? My trip outside suddenly turned sour. I carried my bags down the street with both hands while feeling paranoid for multiple reasons. A shadow moved somewhere in a wrecked store to my right, and I nearly jumped out of my sandals. Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ, I thought. I needed to lay down. I had to go home. But I was too afraid to go home. But I had to. ...Since when have I started referring to The Mistress' place as home?! Jesus Christ!! I thought about shacking up somewhere in Parkside. Maybe they have a hotel, I thought. Maybe I can sell my clothes, make some scratch, and use it to get my own place, or find some work that will take me out of town. I... I don't know what I can do, but... I walked around the corner and jogged directly toward to the road to Parkside. As I jogged with the bags in hand, I learned that although a standard robot can't get tired, one with artificial muscles can. The fabricated muscles in my body stretched and contracted like real muscles, and as a result, also got heated and fatigued like real muscles. Small sensors were tripping in my body as I got close to town, telling me "SLOW DOWN" in bright red letters across my field of vision. Coolant wasn't being delivered fast enough. My power core was heating beyond safe levels. I was having a panic attack. Calm down, me, I thought. Calm down, Natsuko. If The Mistress wanted to come after you, she'd come after you, and there's nothing you could do about it. Just accept that fact and calm down. Panic in the absence of immediate danger does nothing useful and everything stupid. I looked behind me and up at the tower. I didn't hear power tools or voices or anything to signify that anyone was up there. However, I was standing in front of the building and nothing emerged from the lobby. Within, I could just make out the shadows of the two guard robots doing their usual guard-robot thing, and I thought, they're not pointing at me. They're not running toward me. They're not on their walkie-talkies going, "There she is! Get her!" They're not suspicious of me. I took deep breaths and rubbed my neck. Thank you, animal instincts. Don't mention it, higher brain functions. I might have been some kind of survivalist before I lost my memory; however, I'll never know for certain. I turned back to the town and kept walking. The sun was setting on the horizon ahead of me, so I momentarily could not see the market or the people shopping there. As I got closer, however, and the sun was overshadowed by the houses surrounding the park, I could see the people, and they could see me. At first, I thought that some people were just giving me the sort of momentary glances that total strangers will share on the street: eyes will lock, and maybe heads will nod in a neutral gesture of acknowledgement, before they go on their separate ways. However, these people weren't taking their eyes off me. First there was one person looking at me, then two, then five and ten. Fingers pointed. People whispered to each other. I didn't see the man in the red suspenders leaning against the nearest stall until he lifted himself out of his chair and briskly walked into my path. He had a mean look about him: he was slightly hunched, with his legs spread wide like an old west gunslinger. As I got a little closer, I slowed down. I noticed the leather strap slung across his right shoulder and over his chest. He reached and pulled an assault rifle out of the leather holster on his back, then aimed it directly at me. I took two steps back. "Go back," he ordered, "now." I froze. He lifted the gun in the air and let out a shot. The sound echoed loudly, causing the entire market to pause and take notice. The gun was trained on me again. "Go back to your fucking tower, demon whore!!" he snarled. I turned and ran like hell. I ignored the warning lights. I didn't care if my power core was something-something degrees Fahrenheit, and that's really bad. I looked over my shoulder as I ran and saw the man, with rifle slung over one shoulder, walking toward me with a swift, stern gait. I'm having a panic attack again, I thought. Fuck you, higher brain functions!! I'm being chased by a guy with an assault rifle!! I ran screaming into the lobby of the building. The two guard-bots stood up and directed their gaze down the road. I ducked down and hid behind the corner of their desk. After a few silent seconds went by in the lobby, I peeked around the corner. The man didn't go very far from the market; he had merely been chasing me off. He turned and walked back toward Parkside, where people had already gone back to doing what they had been doing before. The guard-bots must have assessed the danger to be minimal on their own, because they sat down and went back to doing their usual guard-bot routine. They didn't mind my company as I leaned against the back of the desk. I was feeling... empty. Drained. Despondent. Whoever they are, I thought, I'm not one of them, nor will I ever be. I'll be trapped in this tower forever. I saw something move by the east doors. The guard-bots stood at attention again. I looked around the desk and saw it was something small and furry. It was that goddamn raccoon from Mariel's. It stood on its hind paws, let out a little laugh-like chattering sound, then turned and took a dump on the lobby floor before scampering off. They say the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards raccoons, apparently. "Fuck you, raccoon," I muttered. I realized just then that I had lost both bags of clothes in my escape. I couldn't go back to The Mistress wearing my blouse and skirt because that would be too un-Natsuko-like, so I left them folded and hidden in a drawer behind the guard-bots' desk. They didn't care one whit about it. Fortunately, I had left my fuku and panties on underneath my new clothes. Teeny was nowhere nearby. I looked around for a button that said, "SUMMON TEENY," but I couldn't find anything of the sort. I was dreading climbing 70 stories to reach The Mistress' home (lair?), when I considered that maybe the answer to my problem could be simple. So, I pushed the call button for the elevator car, which had crashed into the basement ages ago. Surprisingly, it seemed to work: Teeny came rolling down, and he opened up when he reached the bottom. But had it really worked? I turned to the guards and asked, "Did I call him, or did you?" They said nothing. "Right. Party on, you guys." I threw them the horns, climbed into Teeny's chest, and rode him back up. The Mistress wasn't in her shop when I arrived on the 70th floor. Most of the floor was dark, except for a couple lights in a corner room on the opposite end of the floor from her bedroom. I took two steps in an attempt to sneak back to the junk-lab undetected. "Natsuko," I heard her call from the lit room, "come in here." I sighed and walked toward the sound of her voice. "Step on it, Natsuko!" she called out impatiently. Okay already, you evil bitch, I thought as I quickened my pace. I found The Mistress inside a small room with a hot plate and a mini fridge. She was sitting at a small table, just barely big enough for two people, with one leg crossed and an open book in her lap. On the table were the remains of a salad. She put a fork on her plate, then rubbed the scarf covering her face, presumably to wipe her mouth. I wanted to ask, How do you eat like that? She snuffled. "Get a little shopping done?" she asked dryly. "Wh-" I started to ask her what she meant, then I looked down. I was still wearing the sandals. "-I! I-I j-just... found them..." "You found them." "Y-yes..." She glanced at them. "They look nice," she mumbled. "Ah... thank- uh, domo." "Hm." She snuffled again. She hadn't quite removed her eyes from her book. "It's after dark. What were the rules again?" "...Uh-" "Hasten, Natsuko!" she snapped. Give me a fucking second, lady. "Don't go more than a block, don't go into town, and don't... uh, no, it's-" She clapped her book shut. "-Be back by nightfall! Jesus, Natsuko, what's with you today?! You forgot how to pat someone down, you bugged me about Teeny, you disobeyed my rules...!!" She trailed off, then just shook her head in disbelief. Good, she doesn't know, I thought. "S-sorry, Mistress-sama. I'll do better." "You better do better, or I'll disassemble you and use you to make an android who can take an order! Here!" She reached across the table, grabbed a small plastic bottle that contained what looked like crushed pepper flakes, and shoved it toward me. "Go feed and clean it!" I slowly took the unlabeled bottle from her hands and looked at it. Red, green, and orange flakes of some indeterminate substance were mixed together within. "Ahhh..." "Oh, Jesus frick. Don't tell me you haven't been feeding and cleaning the brain." I quickly thought, The brain? Me? Do I have to be fed and cleaned? "Ah... yes, I have, Mistress-sama." "Ev-er-y day?" What?! When the hell did this happen?! "Ye-yes, Mistress-sama." She grumbled and leaned against the table. "You begged me -- begged me -- for the chance to take care of it. If that thing dies, it'll be your fault!" My imaginary gut wrenched. "Yes, Mistress-sama. I understand, Mistress-sama." "And since when have you started calling me Mistress-sama?! It's just Mistress!!" My imaginary gut wrenched several extra degrees. I could hear the blare of miniguns right then and there. "Yes, Mistress!" "Ugh! Fucking android! Just go!" She waved me off, and I dashed out of the makeshift kitchen as fast as I could. I made my way to the junk lab as fast as I could walk. Once I got there, I tried to shut the door. Finding that there was debris in the way, I quickly tried kicking it out of the path of the door, scuffing my new sandals in the process. I got the door shut, and stood there facing the wall. I'm panicking again, I thought. There's no need to panic. The Mistress clearly knows nothing. There's no immediate danger. Oh, like hell there's no immediate danger. How do I feed and clean myself? Natsuko, the real Natsuko -- she knows. She's in Miki-chan behind me. And she's got one hell of a bargaining chip. I turned slowly and faced my broken old robot body. She didn't thrash or squirm or anything; she merely tilted her head a little to one side. "...Hhhhhiii, Miki-chan!" I laughed. I brushed some hair out of my eye, then quickly realized I was doing it with the hand holding the bottle and hid it behind my back. "...Uhhh... how-how was... your day?" Miki-chan started moving her head and torso around, wiggling it back and forth and side-to-side. It wasn't in an urgent or frightened way; instead, it seemed casual. It took me a minute to realize what she was doing. "Uh... you know I can't hear you, right?" She paused, then looked down at the speaker, then back up at me. Her shoulders hunched a little, like she was saying, Heh-heh... whoops. Oh, don't 'whoops' me, I thought. "I'll plug you back in... if you promise not to make too much noise." Like I can tell her to do anything. All she has to do is play the waiting game, and she'll win. Even someone as dumb as Natsuko can figure that out. Surprisingly, she nodded. Okay, I thought, maybe I can trick her. Maybe I can get her to give away the secret to how to use this bottle, and what this "cleaning" thing is. I plugged her speaker back into her robotic skull. "Hiiii, Natsuko-sama!" she squealed. "Did you want to ask me how to feed and clean your human brain so you don't die?!" ... Fuck. I felt even more drained than when I had been chased by the man with the assault rifle. I was about to lose all my freedom forever. My brain was going to be kept alive in a jar by an insane robot and her despotic owner until the end of time. Maybe I'll get lucky, I thought, maybe that Bellows guy will come along and put me out of my misery. Yeah. That'll be nice. That'll be really nice. I'll be right here eagerly waiting for you, Mr. President. "Do you see that thingy behind me?" Miki-chan asked. Something in me clicked. "...Wh-wait, what?" Miki-chan twisted her head to her left. "There's a big tubey-thingy behind me, with two tubes on top of a much bigger tube! Do you see it?" I looked a little past her, and saw what looked like a tall, cylindrical, black and gray shop-vac with two hoses coming out of its top. "Mistress calls it a, ah... a neuronal gel recyclo-mo-something! Resusi... resize..." "...Recycler?" I asked tentatively. "Yeah! A neuronal gel recycler! That stuff in your bubble, that's called 'neuronal gel!' It absorbs all the ooky-bad stuff outta your brain, and stores it until it can go through the resusimofobber and get clean again! Wheel it over here!" I did so, and I noticed an electrical plug coming out of its bottom. I plugged the machine into a nearby socket, and several lights blinked on its top. "Okay! Next, you gotta take off your face and unscrew the top of your skull, so you can get to your brain!" I looked to the door -- nobody was coming in. I sighed, then pulled off my wig and gently peeled off my rubber mask, exposing my robotic skull. I grabbed a screwdriver off a workbench and carefully unscrewed the top plate of my skull. One by one, I removed the screws, undid my skull- cap, then plunked the screws within and put it on the table. I looked in the mirror -- my human brain, the only part of me that was left after centuries, was fully exposed. "Okay, good!" Miki-chan continued. "Now, you see those two little circular thingies in the bubble around your brain? The ones with the little metal ring around them?" I could -- there were two ports, wider than any others, one on top of my brain-bubble and one in back. They were clearly designed to only interact with the fluid in the bubble surrounding my brain and not my brain itself, as they weren't actually attached to my gray matter. "The input hose of the recyclofibrillator goes in the back, and the output in the top!" I could see markings next to the hoses in the recycler that read "input" and "output" in small letters. I was about to plug them into my bubble, when Miki-chan said, "Wait... or maybe it's input in the top, and output in the back... maybe...?" I stiffened. Is this thing gonna vacuum out my brain?! "Which is it, Miki-chan?!" "Ehhh... input in top, output in back! I'm certain of it!" I wasn't. I took a second look at the ports, and I noticed something written in black marker on my bubble: "I" next to my top port, and "O" next to the back. I'd better sit down for this, I thought. The hoses clicked onto the ports and stayed on without pulling on my bubble too much. "Okay, now what?" "You just turn it on. There's an automated program that runs the reinsinuator for 10 minutes, then it's all done! You do that once a day, every day, for the rest of your life!" She paused. "Actually, I've missed days for you." Another pause. "Like, a lot." My finger hovered over the switch on the top of the recycler. If this works and keeps me alive, I thought, then... good? If it kills me, then goodbye, sucky post-apocalyptic world. I flipped the switch. The machine buzzed, then hummed, then I heard a sucking sound. After a few seconds, I felt strange: my vision went blurry, and I felt pins and needles all over, even without a sense of touch. "Gabblebibblefizzwonk- burp," I said intelligently. "I always did this while you were asleep," Miki-chan said. "Dumbo Gorbachev!" I replied. "Gerg!" Suddenly, I felt okay. Actually, I felt pretty darn good. The pins and needles went away, and my vision cleared. I didn't feel like getting up and dancing; it was more like that feeling you get after your hair grows too long and you visit the barber, and he cuts it and you pay, then when you step outside you feel... lighter. Cleaner. It was a lot like that. I smiled and leaned back a little, and the recycler chugged away. "...Mmm," was all I could think at the moment to say. "Feeling better?" "Actually, yes. Thank you, Natsuko." "I'm not Natsuko, you are. I'm Miki-chan. Do you still have that bottle?" I did. "After this is done, you unscrew the bottle, pour out a capful of those little flaky-bitty things, then open the little porty- thingy in the top of your bubble and dump it all in." "What is it?" "It's what Mistress calls 'neuronal nutrition flakes.' It's brain food!" I jiggled the bottle and looked in it. "What's it made of?" "The Mistress says it's plant stuff and veggie stuff, good stuff to keep your brain healthy. I think there might be some fish in there, too." "This contains fish?" "Yeah! Because I once heard that fish is brain food!" That made me chuckle. "What?" I was a little dumbstruck, and not because my brain was in the middle of being vacuum-cleaned. "...You were actually doing this for me, all this time?" I asked humbly. "Oh, yeah! Well, The Mistress did it herself for a few days after she found you, but I begged her to let me do it, because I always wanted a pet!" I felt a little annoyed about being compared to a pet. Who am I kidding, I thought. I'm helpless, I'm in a bowl, I'm being fed flakes... I'm a goldfish, only my kid is actually taking care of me. "But why are you doing this now, after I stole your body? You had the ultimate leverage." "What do you mean?" I sputtered. "You could have demanded I return your body, or you'd let me die!!" She hesitated, then said quietly, "I don't want you to die, Natsuko- sama." "You could have withheld this information and forced me to switch back with you!! Why is this so hard for you to understand?!" "I understand." There was a strange calm in her voice that I had never heard before. She looked down at the ground, then around the room a little, as I awaited her response, but she gave none. After a minute of waiting, I gave up. Then, she spoke: "Natsuko-sama, can I ask you a question?" "Miki-chan, you can... what... yeah, sure." "Am I... bad?" I looked over at her. "What?" "Am I bad?" She leaned closer to me. "I've been reviewing some of the optical sensor data from this body, and I realized something: I've been really mean." She leaned in even closer, nearly to the point where she could've tipped over. "Like, really, really super-duper mean! I've been baka hentai! So... am I... bad?" "...You've been pretty awful to me, yes." "Oh!" she cooed, sounding hurt, and leaned back so she could bend down. "I'm sorry, Natsuko-sama." It was the strangest thing I had heard up to that point: she sounded genuinely sorry. I hadn't noticed up until then, but she wasn't babbling, or talking about crap she saw around the lab. She was holding an actual conversation with me. She didn't just pass the Turing Test, she did laps around it and blew it out of the water. I winced. "...Doing bad doesn't make you bad, though." She tilted her head. "It doesn't?" "No, it doesn't. There's more subtlety to who you are than just that. Plus, I don't think you're at fault, because I think The Mistress screwed up your programming." "My programming?" "Yeah. Do you remember anything in the past where she made changes to you, and you were operating worse afterwards?" "Hmm... I remember..." I heard a fizzle come from her head. "I remember... at my last patch-patch-patch-patch-" She started twitching rapidly. An electric arc shot out of her to a grounded wire on the table behind her. I sat up quickly. "Miki-chan, stop! Don't try to remember anything!" "Aaaahh!" Her head shook wildly, then stopped. "Wow! I'm messed up!" "Yeah, I'll say! But you seem okay now." "That's another thing: I feel... better in this body. I feel more... ah, what's the word?" "Clear-headed?" "Yeah! I'm not getting much sensory input in here, and I think that's forcing my environmental interaction processes into power-save mode. That's activated my... hmm, what are these things called again... em-pa- thet-ic and in-tro-spec-tive con-sid-er-a-tion matrices... hm." "You're becoming empathetic and introspective." "Yeah! Empa-chip and Intro-potato!" I laughed again. "Anyway, these are really super-duper new to me, and... I actually kind of like it. I want to stay in this body, Natsuko-sama, or at least keep out of that one. So you can have it!" "Are you going to tell The Mistress?" "Hmm..." She tilted her head upwards. "If she found out, she might not like it. She does act kinda... funny when she talks about you." "She was torturing me. She's a sadist and a monster." "Meehhh," she said ambiguously. "I think she was... mmm... I dunno... avoiding you, maybe?" "She's avoiding me to torture me. How do you think I felt getting tossed into your broken Miki-chan body?" "Pretty bad," she admitted. "Exactly! You don't do that to people! I just saw proof earlier today, she doesn't give a shit about others! She hates people! She's a bitter, violent misanthrope! Hell... she probably screwed up your programming intentionally just so she could have someone to be angry at! You're Pinky to her Brain, Miki-chan!" "Mmm," Miki-chan mumbled, not in disagreement, but out of stress. "She needs to be taught a lesson. I'm going to pay her back." "-Ah! You can't do that! She's my Mistress! Our Mistress!" "Not my Mistress. I want her to hurt." "But she's my Mistress! I can't do anything that could harm her!" "I don't expect you to help me, but don't get in my way." That seemed to shake her a little; I probably said it too rough, and I realized that at the time. "She needs to learn this, Miki-chan, for her own good. Her bitterness is going to get her killed. Let me tell you what happened after I left this morning." I recounted the story of Alan and Gary, and what they had told The Mistress about President Bellows, and her reaction. "If The Mistress doesn't change her mind and help Parkside, they might live under Bellows' rule, but she's definitely going to be killed. The only thing holding her back from helping them is her anger towards them. Do you have any idea where that came from?" "No. I know the townies have done some bad things, but... I never learned what." "Do you understand that helping me will help her?" "No." "What?! Why not?!" "How will hurting her help her?" "It'll-!" I hesitated. I didn't really have a good answer for that. Holy shit, I thought. I've been out-argued by Miki-chan. I momentarily considered that the recycler was doing something to my brain. I held up the mirror, but my lobes were still attached and in their bubble. "I don't know," I said. "I just want a little payback for what she did." "Are you going to... kill her?" "What?! No!! God, no!!" "Then what are you going to do?" "...I don't know." "You don't sound like you want revenge very badly." There was a moment of silence between us. I stared at the floor, feeling that old empty feeling I felt downstairs. I hated The Mistress and what she had done, but I wasn't about to poison her cereal or drop her off the roof or even stick her hand in a bowl of warm water while she slept. I wanted her to see what she had done and realize how awful it was. I wanted her to see how she was responsible for the terrible situation she put me in, and that she was deeply in the wrong for doing so. I lifted my head and said aloud, "I want a fucking apology." "Is that all?" Miki-chan asked. "That doesn't seem like much." I scoffed. "Oh, yeah? What're the chances I'll get that from a supervillain?" "She's not-!" She paused. "She's usually-" Another pause. Then, "Oh..." "Again, I can't force you to help me." "I dunno... The Mistress can be pretty mean to me, too... Do you really think she programmed me wrong on purpose?" "It's possible. She is evil." She electronically hummed, then said, "But that can't be right. Good people can do evil, but evil people do evil, too, correct?" "Yeah." "Well... she can't be evil because she doesn't do evil. She spends most of her time up here, building and repairing things. Isn't that good?" "You should have seen her this morning after Gary pulled the gun on her. She might not terrorize people frequently, but when she gets the chance, she revels in it." Miki-chan let out another little stressed "mmm," then went quiet. I was nearing the end of my cycle. "For the third time, Miki