Chapter 13

“I think she’s got a craving.” Haruko whispered to Sayuri as they came home from their latest trip to the arena.  They’d been there three days in a row now, and every day there was a specific type of AI girl that transfixed Ayane for the whole duration.  “Girl likes her some ninjas.”

Sayuri nodded.  “Maybe I should think about switching to one?”  Her current body was meant for companionship rather than combat, and she was definitely feeling the difference between the two now that she was fighting battles frequently.  With her shell body being far better at companionship than her Innocentia frame could ever possibly be, she was starting to contemplate changing models.  Haruko shook her head, though.

“Nah, that style’s not you.  Besides, I’ve got a way wilder idea.”

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Ayane expected Haruko to want to take them out to the arena again the next morning.  To her surprise, though, the Hresvelgr refused.

“Work day for me today.” Haruko said.  “Got a delivery drone on its way.  Sayuri’s taking you out shopping.”

“Wait, really?  For what?”  Ayane looked over at Sayuri, who gave her cousin a smile much more like the ones she gave during camshows than usual.

“You’ll see.”

<><><>

At first the shopping trip seemed normal, or at least as normal as it could be when you lived with two AI girls masquerading as humans.  There was food and cleaning supplies to pick up, and Ayane wondered for a bit if Sayuri had just brought her along as a pack mule.  Eventually, though, they stopped at a store which sold AI girls.

“Welcome, nya!” called the Maochao sitting on the countertop.  “Are you looking to adopt, looking for a blank body, or buying accessories?”

“Blank bodies.” Sayuri said before Ayane could question her.  “Do you have a display?”

“Right this way, nya!”  The Maochao hopped down and scurried off in a fashion that reminded Ayane a bit more of a mouse than a cat.  She followed together with Sayuri to the display cases.  AI girls of every make and model were behind the glass, though in stark contrast to the lively girls she’d become increasingly familiar with, these all looked as though they were asleep.  With no AI units installed in their chests, though, they were just lifeless dolls.  Each had a small holodisplay over their case, playing looping promotional footage of their model.

“Pick out one you like.” Sayuri said to Ayane with an encouraging smile, before setting to browsing the displays herself.  Ayane gave her cousin a curious look before doing as she’d said.  Frontline and Factory Advance were the two biggest manufacturers, with the most space devoted to their models, but she found herself drawn to the smaller lines.  She saw many of the same models she’d seen at the arena, including the Fubuki that had initially captured her attention.  Many of them still had a draw to her, but she kept looking.

Soon enough, she spotted the one.  The sleeping girl had dark brown hair tied back in short twintails, with a pair of small red horns poking through.  She was dressed in a black and white suit accented with red, making her generous figure plain to see.  Nestled in slots next to her in the display case were a small array of melee weapons, the hologram showing off their usage.  She was beautiful, Ayane thought.  She felt right.

“You like that one?” Sayuri asked as she came back over to her cousin.  Ayane sucked in a breath, momentarily startled.

“Ah?  Yeah...yeah, this one.  Is she...?”

“You’ll see.” Sayuri said with that sly smile again.  She already had a box from one of the other displays tucked under her arm, and took one from the display Ayane had indicated as well.  She glanced at it, then made a detour to the accessories aisle and grabbed a third box before they made their way back to the counter.

“Two blanks and an enhancement kit...will you need us to install the AI units for you, nya?” the Maochao at the counter asked.  Sayuri shook her head with a reassuring look.

“No, we’ve got someone to take care of that already.  Just ring us up, please.”

The cashier complied, and soon they were on their way home with the packages in hand.  As soon as they got home, Sayuri slipped downstairs with the new parcels, leaving the task of putting away the groceries to Ayane.  Sayuri didn’t come up for quite a lot longer than it would have taken just to deposit the boxes, and there was no sign of Haruko upstairs.  Eventually Ayane’s curiosity won out, and she made her way downstairs to check out the work room.

“That should do it~” she heard Haruko say as she came in.  The Hresvelgr was messing with something on the table that Ayane couldn’t see from her angle.  Sayuri was standing next to her, though she noticed after a moment that her shell was empty.  “Everything feel alright?”

“All systems green.” Sayuri’s voice replied from the table.  “Thanks, sis.”

“No problem.  You look good in that.”  Haruko turned away from the table, noticing Ayane.  “Oh, there you are.”

With Haruko having moved, Ayane could see that behind her on the table was another AI girl.  This one was pink-haired and wearing a full-body outfit resembling a tracksuit, or maybe a motocross uniform.  Ayane looked briefly confused before the new girl waved to her and spoke in Sayuri’s voice.

“Ayane!  What do you think?”  Sayuri briefly twirled to show off her new Estoril body.  Ayane had to admit, the bright pink and white colors suited her better than the old look had.

“It looks nice, but why the change?”

“It was time.” Sayuri replied.  “Besides, if I’m going to be fighting more, I should really have a better body for it.  If I’m not fighting...”  She hopped up to her shell in a casual display of jumping ability that would put a rabbit to shame and climbed in, the human guise waking up a few seconds later.  “I’d rather be like this, anyway.”

“As for the other one, check this out.” Haruko had gone over to the other side of the table while the other two were talking.  Now she approached Ayane with a metallic headband in her hands, decorated with two short red horns.

“The hell is that?” she asked with a skeptical look.

“It’s pre-AI tech.  Totally safe.” Haruko replied, grinning like a loon in a way that made Ayane ever more suspicious of the headband by the second. “Try it on.”

Ayane grimaced at Haruko, but Sayuri was looking expectantly at her as well.  She decided to take the chance and donned the headband.  The side touching her forehead had some kind of soft gel on it that adhered to her skin while feeling pleasantly cool.

“So what does this thing do?” she asked after a moment of nothing happening.  Then suddenly her world lurched. She felt as if she were falling, even though her body wasn’t moving.  An odd tone rang in her ears, quiet yet drowning out all other sounds.  Her vision blurred, then snapped back to normal.  Ayane gasped as the disorienting sensations ended as quickly as they had begun.  She was now flat on her back.

“What the hell was that?!”  She started to glare at Haruko, only to realize that Haruko was no longer there.  In fact, everything had changed.  The ceiling looked dozens of yards away, as if the room had suddenly gotten bigger...or...

Ayane looked down at herself.  She was clad from the neck down in a skimpy black bodysuit, one that looked as though it barely covered her suddenly far more generous chest.  She was on her back because she was lying in a charging cradle.  The floor stretched out ahead of her was actually the work room table, and past that were a giant Sayuri and Haruko, the former looking concerned and the latter deeply amused.  Next to Haruko was Ayane herself, standing upright but with eyes closed much like the empty shells of the girls.

“You turned me into a robot?!” Ayane cried out as she sprung to her feet.

“Congrats on your first dive!” Haruko cheered.  “Looks like there’s no transmission problems~”

Ayane was less cheery.  “What the hell is this?!  How?!”

The Hresvelgr gave the newly tiny girl a playful smirk.  “I told you, pre-AI tech.  This is how they made the first AI girls, just sans the recording software.”  Ayane gawked; that was absolutely not what she had thought Haruko meant by that.  “I put a dummy CSC core in that little body, and the headband streams your standing wave.”

“How do I un-stream it?!”

“I’ll tell you in your room.  C’mon, sis~” Haruko picked up Ayane’s body bridal carry-style and made her way out of the work room.  Sayuri followed behind, doing her best to stifle her own amusement at her cousin’s predicament.

“You’ll be fine.  Just trust your body.” Sayuri said with a wave as she left, leaving Ayane alone in the room.

“H-Hey!  How am I supposed to...gah!”  Ayane huffed, taking stock of her situation.  She was in the body of an AI girl, with no idea how to get out, and two flights of stairs to climb just to get back to where her own body had been taken.  First, though, she had to get off of the table.  She walked over to the edge, taking a look down, and immediately stepped back as she saw the distance between her and the ground.  What was formerly only a little more than waist height was now a four, maybe five story drop to the floor.  There was no way she could make it down without climbing...was there?

Ayane recalled Sayuri’s earlier leap and decided to give it a try.  She took a deep breath, bent her legs, and jumped as hard as she could.  To her shock, not only did she jump as high as Sayuri had, she found herself outright rocketing towards the ceiling.  Some instinct in her new body took over, and her bodysuit changed during the ascent, morphing in a flash of light into the more covering suit she’d seen when she purchased the empty doll she was now inhabiting.  Before she could even realize what had happened, she found herself hanging from the ceiling tile, one of her bladed gauntlets sunk into the foam.

“Ah?”  Ayane’s eyes widened.  “No way...”

She hesitated for a moment, then withdrew her gauntlet and let herself fall.  She landed with catlike grace, her legs absorbing the shock without even the slightest difficulty.

“I’m a goddamned ninja.” Ayane whispered to herself.

She broke into a run, going for another leap towards the doorknob of the open work room door.  She was perched on top of it in a flash, clearing four feet of height and eight feet of distance in less than a second.  The main room of the basement lay ahead, the tile flooring giving way to carpet that would be like walking through mud at her tiny size.  She made another leap instead, and another, testing how far she could travel in a single bound.  She found she could cling to walls without her knives, at least for long enough to push off for the next jump.  The more she did it, the easier it got, as she became more adept at perceiving her own speed, at making her landings consciously instead of just letting her body do all the work for her.  Soon her gymnastics training began to reassert itself, mixing with her body’s artificial muscle memory to add more flourish to her jumps.  Ayane catapulted herself between the walls and various pieces of furniture until she touched down on the handrail of the basement stairs, not having once needed to touch the ground.

By the time she made it up both flights of stairs to the second floor, Ayane was absolutely giddy.  She’d had enough time by now to notice her chest, the one big change in figure between her normal body and this one.  It was a gigantic jump in size, and yet it felt light as a feather even during her acrobatics.  It felt like their firmness varied depending on her needs, holding perfectly still when she was jumping or running but jiggling just enough that she could feel it when she was standing still or just walking normally.  She could get used to this, said that same whispering voice she’d heard in the back of her mind ever since she’d moved in with Sayuri.  She wasn’t in a mood to argue with it right now.

Ayane arrived to see herself lying in bed, with Sayuri and Haruko both waiting.  The ninja girl made one more leap from the door to her desk, landing in a crouched position.

“Did you have a good time?” Sayuri asked, smiling at the giddy look on Ayane’s face even as she realized what she was doing and quickly squashed it.

“It...it was better than I thought.” Ayane said, looking away to hide her embarrassment.  “Now how do I get back?”

“Oh, it’s in your HUD.”  Haruko said, doing absolutely nothing to hide her grin.  “What, did you not find that?”

“...No?”

Sayuri sighed.  “It’s just like this...”  She showed Ayane how to bring up her internal displays, including the option that let her end the dive.  Transitioning back to her real body was quick and painless compared to the disorienting experience that inhabiting the ninja’s body had been.  As Ayane woke, she saw that the blank body had collapsed into a kneeling position, its eyes closed now that she was no longer inside it.

“She’s yours to keep.” Sayuri told her as she plugged a charging cord into the empty doll’s back port.  “You can use her whenever you want.  Just don’t neglect your real body, alright?  You’re still in there even when you’re controlling her.”

Ayane nodded in agreement, pulling the headband off and setting it aside.

“It should work regardless of range, as long as there’s a connection point close enough.” Haruko said.  “Means we can go to the arena if you want to get in on the action~”  The human girl’s eyes widened a bit at the thought, and Haruko’s perpetual grin grew wider still, though Sayuri hushed her before she could tease Ayane about it.  The two soon left her room, allowing Ayane to collect her thoughts as she gazed at her new doll.  No, that teasing voice corrected her, it wasn’t a doll.  It was her other self.