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Makoto came home at 2:36 in the afternoon.
Her home wasn’t really a traditional home, anyway. It was a lab—lit by the glow of machines and the gentle whirr of contraptions that always seemed to be a permanent part of the building, and randomized liquids ranging from harmless (albeit slightly dubious) fruit smoothies to irradiated concoctions full of electricity that would probably kill the average person upon ingestion. Liquids that her father, Dr. F, had trained her to organize in alphabetical order so she could remind him where things were. That was when he even really cared if she were in the lab or not, considering he never really checked on her except for when he occasionally called her just to see what she was doing, and nothing more. He seldom worried for her safety, and she didn’t really care that he didn’t anymore. He’d made her well for a reason, after all—so that he’d never have to worry about her.
Despite that, Makoto came home at 2:36 in the afternoon. Because he asked her to. He rarely ever did.
She was able to count every single one of her steps as she’d gotten back from school. From what some people thought was a boarding school. 1785.6 steps in 11.2 minutes and 13 seconds. Despite the confusion, Makoto was able to collect enough information data from nearby conversations to discern that this school was different from The Royal Academy—which was indeed a boarding school that she considered going to at some point. Most of her friends had already graduated (and were slightly older than her), but one thing she knew about majority of them (excluding Derek, of course) is that they all went to the Academy before coming here.
But of course, she didn’t. She couldn’t. Not as a girl living a life where she had to play pretend with desires she didn’t even really know if she wanted for the sake of science that she began to doubt was really even crucial anymore. Every social interaction was a dance she’d learned before everyone had even known what the steps were, every accomplishment a mechanical effort easily achieved without any sense of difficulty or challenge, every sports extracurricular easy to the point of nearly boring her thanks to the super-strength she held in her body the moment she came to exist. It was exciting when she first started, and it never truly ceased to be exciting, (at least she thinks they never did) simply because she just thought they were the steps to being a high school girl. Makoto loved being a high school girl.
Makoto didn’t know what being a high school girl really meant past the superficial desires she believed every girl aspired for.
It was her final year at the school, and playing pretend was beginning to wear her.
It was no wonder she started to get into girls’ clubs—and started truly learning, with the help of her diary, what she really wanted (and liked) to do.
Her racing mind was interrupted by her father roughly grabbing her shoulder—as roughly as he was when he handled anything—and bringing her over to the table sitting in the middle of the lab. Her eyes land on a strange, girlish looking box—even while analyzing it, she couldn’t process what its contents were.
“I’ve received a very important package today!” He said enthusiastically, smile as insane and as bright as ever—so much so that it might’ve blinded her if not for her super-sight that may or may not have come with lasers that she may or may not have shot out of her eyes once or twice out of curiosity. “This box contains tools needed for very important science…EVEN IF THEY SEEM LIKE QUITE A WASTE OF TIME IN MY USUAL SCIENTIFIC CONTEXTS!!!”
His voice was loud. Very loud.
Her auxiliary sensors vibrated uncomfortably, and she rubbed her ear with slight irritation.
A silence followed.
“I suppose this will help you anyway.”
He handed the box over to her—it was a wonder that he didn’t shove it in her arms. “Hopefully, if the items in the box stimulate the dopamine chip I installed in you recently, I’ll be one step closer to MASTERING ROBOT EMOTION!!!! A CRUCIAL STEP FOR MY JOURNEY TO WORLD DOMINO-SHOES!!!!!”
Maniacal laughter rings through the room. Makoto turns around and sees Alexa—the purple haired, exhausted, logical assistant that rarely even ever paid mind to her before what happened recently. The sigh she let out was palpable, and by that alone she was able to calculate her exhaustion levels. 78.9% and rising. An impressive amount for her.
Makoto didn’t think much of her pre-programmed emotions anymore. She was starting to think she was breaking past them, and becoming something more.
“Understood, Father.” She said simply. She went upstairs, carrying up the box with minimal difficulty, and walked into her room. She didn’t have a room for a while, but she remembers what sparked it. Her father had a talk with someone—probably a relative of some kind—who talked him and Alexa into giving her a room. She enjoyed the privacy, truthfully. It made her happy.
She liked being happy. She liked doing things she enjoyed—truly enjoyed. She learned she enjoyed things recently. Her room was practically a shrine of things she enjoyed—typical for every girl, in her mind. Posters of cute cats and sticker jewels adorning the walls, and bracelets and makeup she’d recently learned how to use on her vanity—a thing she really enjoyed, because she could put more stickers on it. Her diary sat under her bed, which had blankets of her favorite color on them, and Beanie Babies on the sides of her pillow she’d gotten as gifts during a club event of some kind at her school. One of them in particular sat on her nightstand instead of her bed.
And in her closet…
Countless novels she hid from the public eye.
Girls Love novels, she heard them called. Or Yuri. She heard of it from Alexa first, and she ended up getting her hooked on it—one of the reasons they were beginning to talk more. It felt strange to read them, and made her oddly flustered, but for some reason, she couldn’t stop reading them, so she hid them in her closet most of the time, and she read them when she knew no one was visiting, since her father and Alexa rarely got any sleep anyways, so there was no point waiting for them to.
She’d recently got a computer, too—which, holding all the information she needed in her advanced information processing systems, she believed she didn’t need. Until she learned what blogging and offline internet games were. Then she very much needed it.
Today, she was going to add another thing to her room. Based on what was in this box, that is.
Before she did anything else, she slid out of her school uniform and immediately put on her typical home outfit, or more the home outfit that had become typical since she learned what her taste in supposed ‘home clothing’ was. A long t-shirt with a cutesy design of some kind on it, a pair of shorts, and socks that almost always had cats on them.
She put her school uniform in her laundry basket as neatly as she did every other week, and she quickly walked back over to the box, being just as quick to open it to see what was inside.
Easy to analyze.
A hairbrush, perfume, another bracelet kit, a bag of some kind of unclear fruit candy, and…
A CD.
Makoto pulled out every item quickly and was able to recognize immediately based on the fingerprints on the items who had sent these over.
Zsalynne.
Makoto knew Zsalynne. Zsalynne was that model girl that smelled constantly of cocoa butter lotion and some unique fragrance and seemed to know her father in some way or another. She recognized her by her laughter first, every time she came in—it was loud and full of all the joys of a carefree woman who had everything figured out and had nothing more to worry about in her life. She always brought her gifts one way or another whenever she came by.
She tried the perfume first while lost in thought—something she recently realized she could do. The smell was a bit strange and it irritated something in either her auxiliary or scent detection sensors—maybe both, considering the ears and nose were connected. Either way, she simply set it aside, trying not to make it too obvious that it didn’t interest her, even if no one was watching.
The other things could be put away—especially the bracelet kit. It was pretty and colorful and was in a plastic container that had 5 rows of beads in various variants of her favorite color, which she found especially pleasing because she usually only ever got bracelet kits in small bags from girls in her extracurriculars club, and they rarely ever had her favorite color in them.
The candy was nothing to write home about. It was okay. Not the best she ever had, but it was okay. She’d probably give it to T.O.B.O.R, if he even really cared for candy that way. She put that on her nightstand as she picked up the CD—no wording or labels on it, only some flower designs drawn on with pretty purple marker, and presumably burned by Zsalynne herself. Curiously, she went to her CD player, and put the disc in with anticipation.
…The first few notes of Retort came on. Nagisa Cosmetic.
She was hooked.
-
Dr. F eventually went up to her room, and witnessed the scene playing out in front of him.
Makoto, decorating the sides of her new hairbrush with the jeweled stickers she had sitting atop her vanity, Nagisa Cosmetic blasting at full volume, box still sitting on her bed alongside her computer that she was also decorating, smile as wide as anything on her face. He swears he saw her teeth—and it was all the indication he needed. That, and the defeat on T.O.B.O.R’s face—who was currently standing behind him—when he realized that he’d probably be hearing that music for the next week, at that exact volume. And it'd probably break his own auxiliary sensors. Again.
It was a grand success!