I had an idea, and still do, That no character is wasted and can have
all of their traits exploited. Anyone. So I decided to write a tory
about Eimi from NUKUNUKU series anime after I saw all of Rich's Nukunuku
work. I let him see it, and asked to use his time line first. He said he
liked it, but It lacks direction. Mostly a hodgepodge of ideas about the
character. Before he left, he recommended that I post what I had. I was
edgey about doing this...but here it comes.

It takes place before 'Cold Breast' and will eventually branch off from
his time line. The title is flexible, and like I said, I don't have a
clue where I'm going with it, but if you have anything to say, Tell Me!


Takada Yuzo Sama,(creator), Hontoni Gomenasai. :\
Richard-kun, Sorry about this(even if you said you liked it.I'm very
insecure.)
=========================



Eimi woke up confused.

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

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

10:21.45.78942AM.

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 oneechan. 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 Database was given too many
variable to worry about her voice calibration.

Ryu had almost jumped back at the robotic growl 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 psuedoskin made him edgy,
but not anymore. "Hey your not cold!"

Eimi's AI showed affirmation of a task undertaken.

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 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, oneechan?

"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. "Whats 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
highschool 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 workspace. 

"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 highschool. 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, 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.

"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
photoalbum 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 steele alloy, and
the shell not being pseudoflesh, but some kind of hybrid, pseudoskin.

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 grizled, 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 remebered bemusedly when he threw out a coffe 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 briliant 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 asistance, 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 guage 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 experince 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
'ingenous' and 'the finest, most error free in the world.' Kyusaku held
him in the highest reguard 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 etate 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..Whats this?" Kyu noticed an
-very complex- command string on his friend's monitor. "Wow,
Impressive." Kyu heard Yoshi grumble in dissapproval. "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 acitve
girl? "It's..."

"How? From what?"

"Its a peculiar neurological disorder. Its had a history in our familiy
for killing in adolesence mysteriously before we had medicine. Even now,
they know very little about the malody. 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 reconstrucive 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 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 dissapearing from mine?"

"Yes. You see you aren't the only one whos 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 prgrams 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.

"Watcha doin', Papasan?"

"Just remembering, Nukunuku. Thats all. I envy you, Nukunuku." He looked
up from the album to see her bright face and wild hair. "You can remeber
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. Along 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 forsee.
Well, it worked for that cyborg...

"Proffessor 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. 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.

-- 
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