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No Game For Old Men, a Sekirei tale	By : RykOakwine Category: -Misc Anime > Threesomes/Moresomes Views: 6808 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: I do not own Sekirei, nor the characters from it. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

Chapter List
- 4
- 5
- 6
No Game For Old Men
Book 2.1 – Ch 5 Changes
Author's Note: This chapter earns the M rating of this story. If you are allergic to citrus, please spare yourself the trouble and do not continue reading this story.

Bonus Material: Pictures (NSFW) and a Map of Locations from Book Two have been posted to the author's Tumblr. A link to the bonus material post can be found on the author's Profile page.
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o.0.O.0.o
{Farsense or other Metafaculties}

[Memories]

"Internal dialogue."
Saturday, December 21st, 2019

Yoyogi neighborhood, Shibuya Ward, Shin Tokyo
Gregory O'Donnell and his Sekirei, number 37 Madoka, walked away from the Yoyogi Post Office, the easiest Post Office to get to from the O'Donnell's apartment in west Shin Tokyo, and Gregory was speaking to the blonde girl in a low voice. "So, that's how you use a card to withdraw cash at an ATM. Here in Japan most ATM's are at post-offices and there are post-offices seemingly every ten meters or so, so you should be able to find easy access to funds at any time. It looks like the daily limit on your ATM withdrawals is ¥500,000, which is the normal limit for about every checking account card at any bank in Japan."
He slowed his pace as they approached the parking garage where his orange Jeep was parked. "The ¥500,000 a day thing always seemed kind of insane to me, as an American. I believe our bankcards in the States have a $500US per day limit, which is about ¥50,000. So, 10% as much as the ATM's here allow, but that's just the way it is in Japan. A lot more businesses here are cash-only so cash is more easily available than in the States. Japanese bank customers wouldn't put up with a low limit like U.S. banks typically have on their ATMs."
Madoka nodded, her blonde hair swirling about. "And the paper yen I get from the machine, the cash, can be used to buy goods. I do not know why, Gregory-kun, but for some reason I had not thought of money and cash to be the same thing."
Gregory laughed as they approached the Jeep. He'd told Madoka they needed to avoid talking about anything important in the Jeep or in the apartment, since MBI had already demonstrated how easily they could tap into any electronics Gregory owned, so they loitered in the parking garage before driving back home.
He responded to the hurt look Madoka gave him. "Hey, I'm not laughing at you, I'm laughing because of how crazy the situation is. I can't imagine the millions of everyday ideas and concepts that you have a completely different viewpoint on, due to the way MBI raised all of you. It's really kind of mind boggling."
Madoka expression did not change much, but Gregory could tell it was a playful scowl now. He continued, "I don't think of using cash much, anymore. Almost everything I buy I can use my card. However, there are many cash-only businesses here in Shin Tokyo, so it's a good idea to carry cash. It's just something I've gotten out of the habit of doing."
Gregory gestured at the handbag Madoka was clutching tightly, indicating the stack of five-hundred ¥1,000 notes contained within. "The ¥500,000 we just got from that ATM, that's about $5,000US. That's quite a bit of money, Mado-chan, and you can get that every single day. By comparison, if you combined my salary at the school plus the generous housing allowance they grant me it comes to about ¥375,000 a month. So, what you've got in your purse there is a lot more than I earn in a whole month at a professional job."
Madoka blinked then asked, "But you like your job so you do not have to be paid so much to do it, right?"
It was Gregory's turn to blink in astonishment. "That's an… interesting view of how jobs and pay works, and, you know, it should probably be more like that. But it's not, not really. I enjoy my work but that's simply my good luck that it ended up that way. I assure you, the teachers at Tokyo Metro High who have to drag themselves into the school every day and who can't stand being around kids get paid the same I do."
Madoka thought about that for a moment, then she asked, "And I can get that much every day out of the ATM things? Is that normal?"
"Yep. Well, like I said, it's normal that Japanese ATM's allow up to that much every day in withdrawals. It's not normal for someone to have an unlimited MBI Platinum Card. MBI told you that the cards were so you and your Ashikabi could focus on the 'game', so I'm guessing they meant unlimited when they said unlimited. In addition to pulling out that much cash every day we can use the card to buy stuff at businesses which take cards."
He looked down to meet the eyes of his barely-five-foot-tall Sekirei, "I do wonder how much you could actually ring up every day before MBI starts squealing about it. From now on, every single day, you need to go to one of the post-offices and pull out the max, the ¥500,000 that's allowed, from one of the ATMs and hide it. The time might come when we really need that money, so for now, just pull out the max and stash it at the apartment. After Christmas, we'll see about getting a place for you to live and I'm going to do some planning on how we can best use this resource."
Gregory did not notice the unhappy look on Madoka's face at the mention of getting her a place to live.
o.0.O.0.o
Sunday, December 22nd, 2019
"Looks like the London Jaguars are going to the AFC Championship game." Gregory O'Donnell said from the living room couch, to no one in particular.
His daughter Mishi, sitting at the dining table with her boyfriend, Yashiro Tomo, looked up from her lunch towards where her father was reading the sports news on his tablet. Looking to her left, she met her blonde-haired roomie's eyes. Madoka, a blank look of incomprehension on her gorgeous face, was no help, so Mishi looked to her right where Tomo was reading something on his phone. Tomo shrugged at Mishi but Mishi was not letting him get away with that. She glared at her boyfriend and gestured towards where her dad was sitting with her chin.
Tomo got the point; he was the guy, it was something about sports, so he had to respond.
"Ah, yeah, so it seems, Mr. Gregory. That's great. Right?" Tomo was floundering, he obviously had no idea what the conversation was even about. Mishi giggled at Tomo's predicament.
Gregory, still reading, just smirked and let Tomo twist in the wind for a moment. He was not sure what Tomo had done to upset Mishi last week but he was aware enough to know Tomo was in the doghouse and he figured he could do his part to make the young man suffer. And give Tomo a chance to score some positive points, if he was up to it.
"Sure, I guess it is, Tomo. I'm more a New England Patriots fan but I think it's a good thing the league is having some success with their UK experiment. And besides, don't you think the Jaguars revolutionary 2-5 defense will match up well against the Texans neo-run-and-shoot offense?"
Tomo turned to look at Mishi, his eyes wide, shrugging at her with an insistent look on his face for her to bail him out.
Mishi just looked at him, then very deliberately turned to Madoka and asked, "So, Mado, how are those new shoes working out for you? Did they end up fitting right?"
Tomo shot her a look of hurt betrayal then rallied with a reply to Gregory, "Ah, yes sir! I think they will eh… match up just perfectly. Yes."
Gregory chuckled and looked over at the three teens, "Yes, just so, Tomo. On the small chance you're still dating my daughter next Sunday, maybe you could come over and watch the game with us."
Mishi and Madoka both giggled at this and Tomo gamely replied, "I would be glad to, Mr. Gregory, thank you."
Mishi gave her boyfriend a small smile for his putting up with their teasing and Gregory returned to reading his tablet. There, he had done his part in giving Tomo a chance to score points and the kid rallied to do so. Gregory liked Tomo, even though the young man had passed on taking Gregory's senior English course in order to focus on more mathematics in this, his Senior year. Gregory forgave the snub since he knew Tomo was aiming for an engineering school after graduation in March.
He hoped Tomo attended a local university, otherwise he would be dealing with Mishi trying to sustain a long distance relationship and that was not something Gregory was looking forward to. While Gregory was not wild about the fact that Mishi and Tomo were having sex, he would rather deal with that than try to manage a daughter being distracted from her own senior year in high school by worrying about a boyfriend who was away at college.
Gregory tried to concentrate on reading the NFL news on his tablet and shake the subject of his daughter's love life out of his head. He already had enough grey hairs and that subject was guaranteed to give him more. It was so much easier when his son Mark had been sixteen. First, by the time Mark was that age he was living with Karen's parents in New Hampshire so he could keep attending school there while Gregory, Karen, and Mishi moved to Japan. Second, all Gregory had to do was make sure the pharmacist in town knew to quietly charge Gregory's credit card on file for any condoms Mark needed. Simple! All Gregory had to worry about was making sure the boy had all the free condoms he wanted, no matter what the Pope said about birth control.
Until the Pope volunteered to personally adopt all unplanned babies, Gregory was counting on latex to save him from premature grandfatherhood.
Raising the daughter was a completely different ballgame. Once Gregory got the word from his wife, Karen, that Mishi was likely sexually active with her boyfriend, Gregory had insisted that Tomo at least have the balls to assure Gregory that Tomo had access to all the latex he might need. Gregory wondered if Tomo had ever confided to Mishi that her father had cornered him at school under the pretense of a teacher-student conference and interrogated him about condoms.
Gregory sighed and tried, again, to focus on reading the sports page.
Mishi's conversation with Madoka distracted him further. "Mado, thank you for going with us to Mass this morning. You looked awesome in that dress! I'm so jealous; it never looked so good on me, that's for sure."
"Thank you, Mishi, for letting me borrow it, it was very nice. I do not think I have ever worn a dress before."
The look Madoka received from Mishi and Tomo let her know she had said something wrong. She looked back and forth between her tablemates, unsure how to retract the obviously ill placed comment.
"I'm sure," Gregory said, from the living room, "she meant she hadn't worn a dress like that one, not that she hadn't worn a dress at all before."
Madoka nodded, "Yes, just so."
Mishi, obviously not buying into the explanation but also obviously not willing to press the issue, returned to watching Tomo toying with his phone.
Madoka caught Gregory's eye and smiled at him in appreciation for the save.
When Gregory's wife walked through the living room and told Gregory she was going to the store, he was focused on his tablet instead of looking at Madoka at the dining table, though it was a close thing.
o.0.O.0.o
Gregory walked down the short hallway towards the master bedroom, noticing the bedroom door across the hall from the master was cracked open with the light on in the bedroom. He knew his daughter was watching the TV in the living room with her boyfriend, so he glanced through the six-inch open gap curiously. He was stopped in his tracks by what he saw.
Madoka, "My Sekirei," the thought came to him very strongly, was facing the large mirror on the back of the dresser, in front of the bedroom's one window, and was obviously changing clothes. At the very moment Gregory glanced through the open doorway, she was pulling the white t-shirt she had been wearing up and over her head.
Gregory's eyes grew wide as Madoka's bare breasts bounced free of the t-shirt. With her arms extended over her head, gripping the t-shirt, he had a completely unobstructed view of her magnificent breasts for just a second. A very long second, in which the view of the swell of pale skin and the small, pert, light-pink, nipples, was burned into his mind.
Too quickly, the t-shirt was off and tossed aside and then Gregory was looking right into Madoka's blue eyes in the dresser mirror. Gregory felt his face burning as he realized the pretty blonde was completely aware of him standing there in the hall and ogling her naked upper body. Just as Gregory turned and retreated to his own bedroom, he saw Madoka looking with sleepy, half-lidded, eyes into the mirror and then she actually winked at him.
"Oh, man, I am way too old for this. But...oh my god, those were awesome…"
o.0.O.0.o
Madoka lay on her back on Mishi's big comfy bed, wearing the tank top and shorts she liked to sleep in, with one leg pulled up and the other flat out and under the sheet, staring at the ceiling. She barely noticed Mishi moving around the room, getting her own sleeping clothes on.
She was trying to figure out why she had so deliberately flashed Gregory this evening. Each step along the way had seemed innocent enough, but in retrospect, she knew she had left the door open on purpose, knew she stood right where she stood on purpose, pulled the shirt over her head as soon as she sensed her Ashikabi lingering in the hallway.
She knew she had deliberately pulled the shirt against her chest so her boobs would bounce nicely when she pulled the shirt over her head.
The question was… why? Yes, Gregory was her Ashikabi now, but not because he was her first choice or even much of a choice at all. And yes, the kiss that finally connected the two of them was… well, it was something way beyond any of the kisses she'd experienced with Toyotama-onee-sama.
So her Ashikabi knew how to kiss, so what? He should; he was older than dirt and was married as well. Of course he knew how to kiss! But that's no excuse for flashing him!
The moment she had met his eyes in the mirror she could see the effect she'd had on him. He was stunned speechless, to her great amusement. In addition to being amused, she knew his very impressed expression had made her feel good. She realized she had liked what his appreciation and admiration felt like. Why? She certainly had never thought about teasing or flirting with the man before. In fact, she had kept her distance as best she could. She had put up with his glances with good grace but certainly had never courted them. She had found it a bit creepy even, though he had made every effort to be subtle with his ogling. But then today she deliberately bounced her boobs at him!
Why?
It had to be the bond, there was no other explanation. And if that was the case then she was even more grateful that she had avoided being captured by Katsuragi to be winged by Higa. What horrors being bonded to a man like that would inflict were beyond her imagination, but that did not stop her from knowing they would have been horrors.
She wondered what the bond was doing to her, other than making her like flashing her boobs at her Ashikabi.
Three days had passed since Gregory had kissed her, "So very, very, well," she could not help but think, and thereby saved her from a fate worse than death. At first she was upset about the loss of her chances to get a better Ashikabi and had been unhappy about fate forcing her to be bonded to such an older, boring, sort of person as Gregory O'Donnell.
Now she was less sure about how she felt.
"Mado! Are you asleep with your eyes open or something?" Mishi's voice snapped Madoka out of her reverie.
"What, Mishi? I am sorry, perhaps I did nod off. What did you ask?" Madoka made the effort to put her least confrontational tone into the question. For some reason she and Mishi had been getting on each other's nerves for the last few days, and Madoka could not figure out why. It just seemed that her American friend had been very pushy and nosey all weekend. She had been noticing many of Mishi's irritating traits over the last few days. "Really, just as well I avoided being bonded to her for life. I had no idea how irritating she could be!"
"I was asking," Mishi replied, as she climbed into bed and started hogging all of the covers, "if you thought Tomo had suffered enough for his being so rude to me when we went shopping last week. He really was minding himself this weekend, he was about as nice as he could be and paid all of his attention to me even when you were with us and that's not easy!"
The grin on the face of the other girl made Madoka want to turn over and ignore her. Another conversation about Tomo, with Mishi pointing out that he had been ignoring Madoka as though she was not even there all weekend. Why did Mishi think it was so important to remind Madoka that Mishi's boyfriend actually paid attention to Mishi, as he was supposed to? Madoka resisted the temptation to shut out her only female friend and tried to at least pretend to be interested in what Mishi so obviously wanted to talk about.
"Tomo seemed to genuinely be sorry for his behavior on the shopping trip, Mishi. And he certainly was being very kind and attentive to you this weekend." Madoka suppressed a sigh and turned to look the sixteen-year-old American girl. "I think that if you think he should be forgiven, then he should be forgiven."
Mishi pursed her lips, her face screwing up into an expression of intense thought. It was, Madoka had to admit, completely cute. Mishi got away with murder due to being so cute, at least where her father and boyfriend were concerned; they were both completely wrapped around the girl's finger. "Maybe so, Mado. But maybe he's just horny and pretending to be the good boyfriend just so he can get his dick wet, hmm?"
This time Madoka's blush was not nearly as intense as was usual from Mishi's blunt words. This time Madoka caught the look on Mishi's face, where Mishi shifted her eyes to look at Madoka and see how the blonde girl was reacting to the blatantly sexual comment. Madoka realized something at that moment. "She is doing it on purpose! Grrrr, that is so wrong!"
Mishi laughed at the growing expression of outrage on Madoka's idol-like-face. "Oh my god Mado, you're just too easy to wind up. I love you, you know that? We've really got to get you past the blushing virgin thing, though. It's cute, but you're going to end up fainting like Hinata in 'Naruto' the first time you get a real kiss! She even fainted when Naruto kissed her at their wedding. It was so sweet!"
"Hn," was all Madoka could reply, since she was biting her own tongue to keep from telling Mishi just exactly how well her first real kiss with a man had gone and exactly who it was who had kissed her, "So well, so thoroughly, so perfectly,".
No, better to let her friend enjoy her teasing. As Mishi settled into sleep in her (argh!) irritatingly clingy way, Madoka's thoughts returned to her Ashikabi, to what it felt like to kiss him. A subject she had been dwelling on every day and every night since it had happened.
o.0.O.0.o
Monday evening found the O'Donnell's and their houseguest enjoying Chinese take-out that Karen had picked up on the way home from her office at the Red Cross.
They got take-out twice a week usually, since it saved so much time and effort from preparing dinner and cleaning up afterwards. And it was almost as cheap to feed the three of them, or four of them now, with take-out than it cost to buy all the ingredients and prepare a meal from scratch. Besides, none of them were going to cook Chinese in the sort of variety and in the quality available at her favorite Chinese place. Karen could bring home enough to fill herself, Greg, Mishi, and Madoka, for less than ¥4,000.
"You should try the Mandarin Beef, Mado," Greg told their houseguest as they all filled their plates from the half dozen paper boxes on the kitchen counter. "Oh, and the Sweet and Sour Chicken. It's great, especially with the sauce."
Karen noticed that Madoka smiled up at Gregory from where she stood next to him at the kitchen counter, "I will do so. I do not think I have ever had Mandarin Beef, thank you for the suggestion, Gregory."
Karen sat at the table with her plate and her glass of tea, a scowl on her face. She asked, as Gregory was taking his seat, "Greg, how did the first day of finals go?"
"Good, good. Tomorrow is the last day of the semester, all the finals for the autumn semester will be done, and then it's off work until the 6th of January." Gregory sat at the table next to Karen then reached over and picked a piece of Tsung Pao Beef from her plate to sample.
Karen snarled, "Damnit Greg, I hate it when you do that. You know you could get your own if you had wanted some, right?"
Gregory held up his hands in mock surrender, "Sorry, sorry. I guess you failed 'sharing' in kindergarten, didn't you, dear?"
Karen did not reply, just glared at her husband and stabbed a piece of cabbage fiercely, ignoring Mishi's giggle at her father's quip. As she chewed the slice of cabbage, Karen glanced sideways at Madoka, watching for any sign the blonde girl was laughing too.
There was no laughter, the girl's face was completely neutral. Suspiciously so. Regardless, Karen did not like the way the young, beautiful, sexy, young, blonde, gorgeous, young, curvy, young, girl was looking at Greg. Karen angrily stood from the table, knocking the chair over behind her from the abruptness. "You know what, I'm not hungry. Just have all of it."
o.0.O.0.o
Gregory chewed his Mandarin Beef silently after Karen had stormed off to the bedroom, leaving the three at the table in an awkward stillness.
Mishi spoke up first, "Dad?"
Gregory glanced over at his sixteen-year-old daughter and shrugged. "I don't know, sweetie. Please put her plate in the microwave; maybe she'll eat later."
Mishi did so then resumed eating her own Sweet and Sour Pork without any more discussion. Gregory spotted an unusually intense expression on Madoka's face, an expression Gregory did not identify right off. And quickly enough the blonde girl was looking down at her plate, expertly moving rice from the plate to her mouth with her chopsticks.
It was later in the evening before Gregory recognized the look on Madoka's finely featured face, but… why she would be protective of him? He was positive she had been restraining herself from jumping up and putting herself between him and Karen.
Gregory hoped that was not going to become a problem. If quiet and reserved Madoka suddenly found not only the courage to get into Karen's face but also thought it was necessary, it would not end well at all for anyone.
o.0.O.0.o
Tuesday, 24 December, 2019

Shibuya Ward, Shin Tokyo
Tuesday afternoon found Gregory leaving work late, which was predictable given that the previous two days had been filled with semester exams and that tomorrow, Christmas, marked the start of the winter break for the schools in Shin Tokyo. He'd stayed until he had wrapped up the last of his work so that he could enjoy his time off over the holidays.
Sunset was still a bit off, but there were long shadows being cast by the late afternoon sun through the school's collection of ume trees. The line of plum trees across the back of the parking lot were bare of leaf or blossom this time of year but by spring they would bloom so beautifully that people from all around Shibuya Ward knew of Tokyo Metro High and its ume trees. The trees brought some esteem to the busy and crowded Ward and the residents were proud of them. And though Gregory preferred winter to the spring and summer, he was far from immune to the charms of the springtime ume blossoms or the more famous sakura flowering.
Gregory walked past the plum trees, discarding thoughts of spring and beautiful flowers, as he focused his thoughts on his domestic troubles. His wife, Karen, had been difficult and downright surly last night. Regrettably, he had no reason to believe her attitude would improve any time soon, Christmas tomorrow or no. He was not even sure what was wrong, though he also could not say what was right, if he was pressed.
He and Karen had been married for twenty years. They had raised a son, Mark, who was now twenty and in college, and who had chosen to remain in the States with Karen's parents when he was fifteen and Gregory and Karen had told him they intended to move to Japan. They had their sixteen-year-old daughter, Michelle, or Mishi, who they both loved very much and probably spoiled a bit. Especially Gregory, who certainly doted on the girl.
They had their separate careers, in which they were both successful. Gregory was very content with his position at the school as well as with the respect he had from his superiors. Karen had no complaints about the Red Cross office here in Shin Tokyo. She made more money than Gregory did and he knew she was an appreciated member of their executive team. He assumed Karen was happy about her job, though it had been quite some time since he had asked her about it.
It had been some time since he had asked her much of anything, now that he considered it. They lived together, raised their daughter, and worked at their jobs. They managed to be polite and even friendly to each other, usually. But that was about it. She had her pastimes and he had his. She certainly didn't want to spend evenings playing World of Guildwars III with him. And he had no interest in spending evenings watching the sort of melodrama television she liked.
He could not remember the last time they had sex. Six months ago? It certainly had not been more than twice in the last year.
Gregory supposed he still loved Karen, but it was not the passionate love of twenty years ago. It was not even the fond, appreciative, love of five years ago when she had supported his desire to move to Japan.
Gregory had never considered separating from Karen, in spite of the distance that existed between them. Why separate? They got along and they were able to live together. That was no easy thing, truth be known. Gregory understood and was able to tolerate Karen's prickly nature and she knew and was able to tolerate his quirks as well. That counted for a lot. Besides, he was forty years old. What would he be trying to prove, what would he be looking for, if he and Karen separated? Besides, divorce was out of the question. They might be casual Catholics but they were still Catholic.
Engrossed in his troubled thoughts, Gregory slowly crossed the parking lot and approached his orange Jeep Wrangler, near the fence of the school's parking lot. He was so inwardly focused that he did not at first notice the beautiful blonde girl sitting on the hood of his Jeep, her shapely legs dangling over the fender, her black-boot-covered feet tapping against the chrome bumper.
He looked up with a start when she called out, "Gregory-kun! Let us go get coffee!"
Gregory face broke into a smile at the sight of his gorgeous little Sekirei and he waved at her, worry and trouble clearing away from his face and his thoughts straightaway.
"Sure, that sounds good, Mado-chan!"
o.0.O.0.o
Gregory had chosen a Starbucks that was not directly "on the way" between Tokyo Metro High and the O'Donnell apartment, one in the trendy Harajuku district of Shibuya Ward, not even one hundred meters away as the crow flies from the Omotesandō avenue, Tokyo's Champs-Élysées. To say the Harajuku neighborhood of Shibuya Ward was trendy and swank was to engage in immense understatement.
The weather was reasonably pleasant and it had been a sunny afternoon, so Madoka suggested that they sit outside at one of the small, iron, patio tables that lined the front of the Starbucks. It was cool, but there was little in the way of a breeze, and sitting in the late sun with jackets on it was comfortable enough. This meant Gregory could indulge himself with a cigarette as well, while they were talking, which she knew he would appreciate.
"You're sure you aren't cold, Mado-chan? We can sit inside if you want." Gregory sipped his pumpkin spice latte carefully.
"I am fine, Gregory-kun, thank you. I have noticed that you enjoy being outside, with the cold air. Why is that?" Madoka tasted her peppermint mocha latte, purchased at Gregory's recommendation. Her eyebrows lifted upwards from her pleased surprise at how delicious the hot beverage was.
"Probably because the cold reminds me of home. New Hampshire is quite a bit colder than Shin Tokyo; this time of year back home in Manchester it is 22 degrees at night and it might only get up to 38 during the day. That's, ah… a low of -5 C and a high of… 3 C, I think." Gregory swirled his pumpkin spice latte in its cup, watching Madoka as she sipped carefully at her own drink. "Here in Shin Tokyo it only gets down to 38 degrees, or 3 C, at night and during the day it's around 53 degrees, or 12 C."
He grimaced then continued, "12 C might feel like a winter day to someone who has lived in Shin Tokyo for their whole life but to me it feels like the middle of April. So I'll take the cold air where I can."
Madoka laughed softly and shook her head, bemused. "I was going to say 17 and 36 sounds like a very hot day. But the United States uses a different measuring system than we use, Fahrenheit, right? I am not very familiar with it even though I studied American English. It sounds complicated."
Gregory shrugged, turning his attention to the people walking past the Starbucks along the narrow cobblestone alley-backstreet the coffee shop fronted. "I'll tell you, Mado-chan, temperature measurement is probably the one thing I've had the most difficulty adjusting to, moving from the States rather 'unique' measurement standards to the metric system, here. It didn't take long before I was thinking in terms of kilometers instead of miles, liters instead of gallons. Even meters instead of feet was easy to adapt to. But for some reason saying '35 degrees' doesn't have the same impact to me that '95 degrees' has. Even after five years living here, summer days of 35 C just don't feel like summer days of 95. To be clear, the system Japan uses is probably better; it's just not what I grew up with."
Watching Gregory as he spoke, Madoka took another sip of her hot drink. She loved the flavor and made a point to remember what Gregory had ordered for her. She looked around at the sparsely trafficked foot-traffic-only alley-backstreet and at the otherwise empty Starbucks patio, then asked, "So, Gregory-kun, do you think it is safe to talk about, you know, the other stuff, here?"
He nodded. "Yeah, it should be. I left my phone in the Jeep on purpose, so neither of us is carrying anything they can easily monitor. If they can spy on a conversation in an outdoor café that we picked on the spur of the moment then they have enough intelligence assets in place that it simply isn't reasonable that we'd ever avoid them. So we'll not worry about whether that's the case or not. There is a point of diminishing returns on paranoia; I hope to keep us on the smart side of that point, but if you ever wonder if something we're doing is effective, or if it seems overly cautious, let me know. I need a sanity check on my thought processes as much as anyone else does."
Madoka replied, "I do not know anything about any of this though. If you think something is necessary then I am sure it is, Gregory-kun."
Gregory took another sip of coffee then shook his head, "No, no, you shouldn't think like that, Mado-chan. You're smart and you have a completely different viewpoint than I do, so there's value in that. Just because I know more about certain things doesn't mean your opinion or guesses or instincts are invalid or worse than mine are. If you have a question or if you think something isn't a good idea, or if you have an idea you want to share, you make sure to speak up, okay? I might not always agree but I promise I will always listen."
Madoka gave Gregory a happy smile at this. Gregory wasted a half second wondering why Madoka thought she should be seen but not heard, then reminded himself that she was raised in Japan and from hints he'd gotten she'd been raised with an even more skewed, traditionalist, view of women than was common. And given how poorly women were viewed, in attitude if not in deed, by typical Japanese males, that was saying something.
"Tell me more about the MBI Sekirei Labs, Mado-chan. Your earliest memories are there? Even as a small child you were in a group dormitory with other Sekirei? You had no mother or father in your life, even then?"
Madoka shook her head, "No, no parents. I never met another Sekirei who said they had been raised by any kind of parent. I remember just the crèche when we were very small, and then we were moved to the dorms when we were, as best that I can guess, the same as a five year old child. To the best of our ability to tell, the story of us being found as embryos and fetuses in suspension tanks in our ship on Kamakura Island is the truth. At least, none of us ever found any suspicious memories of being kidnapped from our human families or something like that, and it did get spoken of between the Sekirei, when we felt we had some privacy away from the eyes and ears of the Administrators."
Gregory had taken the black wire-bound Notebook (as Madoka was already thinking of it, The Notebook, capital letters and all) out of his jacket pocket and was making notes. "And you don't have any idea of how many years you were there? The earliest you could have been born would be, what… 2000? Hiroto Minaka and his 'minions' discovered the ship in 1999, they found 107 embryos and one fully grown adult Sekirei, right?"
"Yes, the adult one was number 01. She was the one responsible for the rest of us, according to the stories Yosu and I heard when we were little. I think… I think it was 02 Matsu who told us and the other little ones in Group 11 the story first. I do not remember exactly, it was a long time ago. When we were small and if there was something that scared us we would hope 01 would come save us from the MBI people." Madoka looked off into the distance, continuing, "I do not know what it is like for children like Mishi but we spent a lot of our time very scared. I remember being terrified almost all of the time when I was small. There were scary scientists who did experiments on us and made us take off our clothes all the time and they would drag a Sekirei out of the dorms kicking and screaming for tests if the Sekirei tried to resist. Looking back from my perspective today I realize they were probably not deliberately trying to scare us but they also made no effort to make us feel safe or secure. If they wanted to draw blood for tests they just came in and took blood from us. There were no words of comfort or explanations to make us understand why it was needed. I do not think the MBI people hated us, I think they just did not care about us as people. We were treated like animals more than people, when I consider it now. Maybe that made it easier for them. I do not know."
Gregory looked at Madoka's pensive expression and frowned. He said, "I really can't imagine what that was like. I doubt very many of your fellow Sekirei came out of such an upbringing with what we would call a healthy mind. No, I'm not saying you are all crazy," You are not saying we are all sane, either, the thought came to her, "It's just… it takes a certain amount of care and nurturing to raise a child to be a healthy, well adjusted, adult. And it sounds like there wasn't much effort made in doing that with the Sekirei."
Madoka gave Gregory a small smile and nodded agreement. "There was no nurturing that I ever recognized as such. Maybe Group 11 was the group that received no care and other Groups did? I do not know. But we were scared a lot, me and Yosu-chan. And some of the other girls, like Katsuragi, they were scared a lot too. They came and went, so you never knew how long someone would be in Group 11. Katsuragi was with us for what was probably a month when we were all the size of the children in the 3rd grade photos you showed me."
"Yeah, about eight or nine years old. I'm glad that school yearbook I gave you is helping. Even if you aren't sure how old you were you at various times in your youth, you can at least guess at it based on what your peers looked like compared to the kids in the school yearbooks."
Madoka nodded. "Yes, that has turned out to be a very good idea, Gregory-kun, thank you. I have now mostly associated ages with my different memories of being a child. It is very helpful. I had no realization how disorienting it was not having any idea how old I was, growing up."
"I doubt that was by accident," Gregory mumbled, as he continued making notes. He spoke up, asking, "Were there other things that scared you and your friends? Or was it just being taken away?"
"Yes there were many things we were afraid of, all of the time. Not only the Researchers and Administrators, though they were scary enough. There were also the older Sekirei, the First Five, we called them. Sekirei 02 through 05, but never 01 in spite of the name 'First Five'. They were scarier than the MBI staff in some ways. They had the freedom to come and go from our dorms, none of us knew where they slept or where they spent the rest of their time, but they definitely had more freedom than we did."
Madoka thought back to her childhood as best she could, her eyes growing distant and her coffee forgotten in her hand. "We would see 02 Matsu working with the Researchers, taking notes or helping them with their experiments. She was one we were all scared of, even though she would sometimes tell us things no one else would share with us, like the story of where we came from, the spaceship, and Kamakura Island. Then there was 04 Karasuba, the black crow, everyone was scared of her, even the bigger girls like 14 Chiyo, who were never scared of the Researchers, or at least pretended to not be scared of them." Madoka visibly shuddered. "If 04 was around, either in the labs we were being tested in or around the Group 11 dorms, everyone kept quiet and made sure to not raise a fuss about anything at all."
Madoka tried to get a grip on herself, the remnants of old childhood fears having sent gooseflesh all over her arms. She continued, "Any time we saw 05 Mutsu he was this towering giant male and just being male and Sekirei made him very strange, and so made him unknown and unpredictable. And he would stare at us, all silent and foreboding. He scowled at us like we offended him somehow, just by being there. And since he was the only grown male Sekirei we ever saw and he was, like, over two meters tall, yes, we were scared of him. We told scary stories about all of them, really. Even 03, who was nice a lot of the time and acted like everyone's onee-san. But everyone in Group 11 knew that she would sell you out to the Administrators if you trusted her with too much, because she was always trying to impress the Professor. Only 10 Uzume ever really trusted her. Well, 10 Uzume and 67 Riko."
Madoka's eyes focused on her Ashikabi, who was carefully making notes still. "But 67 Riko was only in Group 11 after at least half of us had been through our Puberty Adjustments, so probably 4 years total? Maybe 3? It is very hard to guess at the passage of time during those years. But 67 Riko was an odd, anti-social, Sekirei who no one got along with, so her friendship with 03 was written off as just another one of her quirks. No one ever had any sort of relationships with the other First Five."
"None of you ever saw this 01 Sekirei, Mado-chan? Are you sure she was real, then?"
Madoka thought about the question while sipping her coffee. After a minute she replied, "I guess we could not be sure, since none of us in Group 11 ever actually saw her. But we all knew she was real even when we were very young, when we were toddlers in the crèche, my earliest memories. And it would be very odd for numbering to start at 02, yes?"
Gregory laughed, "Well, that's true. You said your earliest memories were when you were a toddler, in the crèche? The, ah, nursery? So you would be about, what, 3?"
"Yes, in the crèche we were all about the same size as three year old children, so that's my best guess. Then my next memories were at about five years old, in the Group 11 dorms. So there was some Adjustment between us being toddlers in the crèche and then being young children in the new Group 11 dorms."
Gregory's ink pen was furiously scratching in The Notebook and he was muttering in English. Madoka smiled at how interested Gregory was in these seemingly irrelevant details of her life. It was actually a good feeling that her Ashikabi was so interested in her; she had been raised to expect males to be interested in themselves and that she should focus on them instead of on her own life. Gregory was not what she had been raised to expect in an Ashikabi, in many ways.
Without looking up, he asked, "Were there any clues about what happened to 01?"
Madoka shook her head. "No. She was just not there. And any questions we asked were firmly discouraged. I had the feeling that the First Five knew where she was, but… I never had the courage to ask any of them. The Group 11 girls all had different ideas about her though. Some of us believed that she had been captured by MBI and was being held prisoner so that she could not save us from the Researchers. Others insisted she had been killed or even that she was secretly working with MBI."
Gregory looked up and met her eyes across the patio table. "What do you believe, Mado-chan?"
She looked down at her hands, her hair falling forward and hiding her eyes from Gregory's view. She answered, in a low voice, "I believed she was trying to get free from MBI, so she could find us, and save us. I still do. But, you know, it is getting to the time when maybe some of us cannot be saved anymore. Some, like 08 and 07 cannot be saved now. And some like 86 Katsuragi and Toyotama-onee-sama, it might be too late for them now too."
o.0.O.0.o
The last light of the day quickly disappearing, Gregory finished making a note to follow up about 07 and 08, as well as the honorific applied to Toyotama's name. His thoughts centered on this Sekirei 01 who no one ever knew or saw. Gregory wondered at how universal it was for people, Terran Human or Sekirei, to have faith in an unseen, absent, savior, who they believed would return some day and save them from torment.
He also wondered what the real story behind Sekirei 01 was. It was entirely likely, even probable, that this fully adult, likely-entirely-trained in the use of her Sekirei powers, protector and custodian of the 107 unborn Sekirei, would have been quickly and quietly eliminated by anyone who had their own plans for the Sekirei ship and its living cargo.
It surely was damn well unlikely a lunatic like Hiroto Minaka (or his "minions") could convince the protector Sekirei to cooperate with his lunatic plans.
His own Sekirei was already visibly upset due to the subject so it was time to change it. He would come back to the question of 01, the First Five Sekirei, and details of Group 11 at another time.
"Well, Mado-chan, now that you are out and about in the city, free from MBI at least somewhat, you get to do new things. The first new thing on the list is that tomorrow is Christmas and that means Mishi and I got you a Christmas present. You said they celebrated no such holidays in the dorms, so Merry Christmas. We also figured it was better to give it to you today than tomorrow, so Karen doesn't get all bent out of shape about it."
"Why would she do that, Gregory-kun?"
Gregory shook his head as he stood up from the café table and threw away his empty coffee cup, "Who knows? Better to avoid the problem at all. Mishi and I got you a new phone just for your own use. I know you've been to borrowing Mishi's tablet to do any reading at the apartment, but with the phone you can access the web without any restrictions and you can save any websites you want to read later as well as text and video and voice. I'll show you how to use it, come on, it's in the Jeep. Let's get home, it's getting dark out here."
The happy expression on his Sekirei's face brought out a cheerful smile from Gregory as they made to leave the café. Madoka wrapped her hand around Gregory's arm and walked closely beside him as they walked down the narrow, cobbled, backstreet-alley, towards the pay-lot where they had parked the Jeep.
Gregory realized he liked her being close. He liked it quite a lot.
o.0.O.0.o
"Mado! So do you like the phone?" Mishi asked, flopping onto the bed next to her new blonde roommate.
Mishi was dressed up for Midnight Mass, which all three O'Donnell's were attending. Madoka had begged off; even though she had found the one Sunday service she had attended interesting, she did not feel like spending time in a vehicle with Karen O'Donnell. Madoka's decision to not join them had frustrated Mishi; the teenager liked going out in public with Madoka because then everyone paid attention to them, wherever they went.
"Do you have any questions about it? It's the same kind I use, the new Samsung. It's awesome, you'll love it! I couldn't believe it when Dad said you didn't have a phone, I thought yours must have been stolen with your ID but he said you didn't have one even before!"
Giving Mishi a slight smile, Madoka nodded, "It is true; I did not have a phone before. I never needed one in the small town I grew up in. But I do very much like this one, Mishi. Thank you very much for helping Gregory pick it out for me."
Mishi watched Madoka's face as the pretty blonde answered, trying to figure out why the response did not satisfy her. For days now there was something about the way Madoka talked to her, answered her questions, interacted with her, which was just… off. Something had changed from last week when they were happily watching lesbian erotica together and now. Now, when every signal Mishi received from the gorgeous girl sharing her bed was… friendly? Friendly but… distant?
Friendly! Like Mishi had been put in the "Friend Zone"!
"Oh my god, that's what's happened! I've been friend zoned! Oh my god!" Mishi gaped, her eyes almost bugging out and her mouth hanging open, shocked to the core at the epiphany she'd just had. "So this is what that feels like? This sucks!"
Quickly schooling her features back to some semblance of normality, Mishi asked, "So, what are you reading about, Mado?" She needed to probe for more information. If she had been friend zoned, "Oh my god, this sucks! I've never been the one put in the friend zone!", then she had to find out why.
"I was reading the Wikipedia page about New Hampshire. Gregory mentioned that was where he was from and I was curious about it." Madoka held up the phone so Mishi could see the distinctive color scheme of Wikipedia's article pages.
Mishi looked at the phone then stared at Madoka. The blonde girl looked uncomfortable and asked, "What?"
Glancing at the bedroom door to make sure it was shut and no one was likely to be listening, Mishi scooted closer to Madoka and whispered, "Really, Mado? You have to ask what? Come on, what's going on with you and my Dad? Could you be any more obvious? Jesus Christ On A Bicycle, a person would have to be blind to miss the way you look at him lately and the way you talk to him, and here you are spending Christmas Eve just casually reading about New Hampshire? Just because Dad mentioned we're from there and that makes it so interesting that you had to look it up and read about it? Come on!"
Mishi could see Madoka withdrawing into herself, hunching up her shoulders defensively, but Mishi didn't care. She had to know what was going on! There had to be something going on between her Dad and Madoka, or, or, at least Madoka was suddenly interested in her Dad. And that didn't make any sense at all!
"Gregory is a decent and kind man. Why would I not be curious about where he is from? Why would that be a big deal?" Madoka responded to Mishi's whispered interrogation, reluctantly.
Rolling her eyes, Mishi pressed, "Mado, just the other night you were describing Dad as 'old' and 'creepy' and 'gross' and now you've been practically flirting with him and don't think I haven't seen how you reach out to touch his arm now and then and how you smile at him. Come on, it's not like I'm going to go tell my Mom or something, but you should tell me if you've got a thing for my Dad!"
Before Madoka could answer, there was a light tapping on the bedroom door. "Hey," Gregory's voice was muffled by the closed door, "I'm going to grab a shower, anyone need the bathroom first?"
"No, Gregory, thank you."
"No, Dad, I'm good, thanks."
o.0.O.0.o
Madoka let the silence grow after she and Mishi heard the hall bathroom door close and lock. She did not like that Mishi seemed to know that something had changed between Gregory and herself, but Madoka did not know what to do about it, either. Denying everything seemed the best course, but Mishi was not letting it go. She took after her father way too much in that regard!
"Come on Mado. Level with me, what's going on? I like you, I consider you a friend, I really do. I promise I won't tell anyone."
Looking at Mishi as the sixteen-year-old girl spoke so earnestly Madoka felt herself wavering. She was tempted to tell her the truth. After all, if 86 Katsuragi had not spotted her and Gregory from the middle of the street Thursday night, then Mishi could very well be her Ashikabi now and know the truth. Plus, having a girlfriend to talk to about everything would be such a relief for Madoka.
On the other hand… the five days since Gregory O'Donnell had become her Ashikabi had given Madoka an opportunity to see not only Gregory in a new light but Mishi as well.
Gregory's daughter was sweet, she was smart, and she was cute, but she was also shallow and vain. She was more than a bit of a drama queen, loving gossip and having no compunctions about shading her perceptions of events towards the most-drama-producing end. It might have been fun to have Mishi as her Ashikabi, but it also would have been very dangerous. Not just for Madoka, but for Mishi.
After less than a week of being in Gregory's confidence, of him speaking to her as an equal, of being a part of how he looked at the world, Madoka realized that she was very fortunate it had been Gregory who had kissed her, "So amazingly well", last Thursday night.
Old guy or not.
"I do not know, Mishi. What do you want me to say? That maybe I see Gregory differently now than I did a week ago?" Madoka sat her phone down and pulled herself up on the bed to sit with her back against the headboard and her knees pulled up in front of her. "But, Mishi, nothing is going on like you seem to suspect. I just think Gregory is a person with things about him that are not obvious at first glance; there is more to him than…than… um, than… ahhhhhh? Mmmmm! Oh, fuck yeah…"
"Mado?" Mishi blinked so hard it was almost audible and her eyebrows shot up her forehead. "Say again?"
{Madoka felt the hot water from the shower pelting her shoulders and head as she held herself away from the wall with one hand against the tile. She was looking down, water dripping from her nose and chin, looking at the blonde girl kneeling between her feet, thick wet hair pulled back away from the girls face and gripped in Madoka's other hand. The girl was so beautiful! Madoka had never imagined someone so desirable, had never felt anything like the overwhelming lust and hunger that filled her entire awareness from just looking at this girl who was kneeling, naked, before Madoka. The girl was stroking and sucking as hard as she could, happily if the pleased moans from the girl were any indication, on Madoka's rock hard erection…}
"Wait, what? Unh! AHHH!"
{Madoka felt muscles in her lower abdomen and her butt tensing and then strange muscles between her legs squeezed, clenching so hard that it was almost painful. Then an intense shock of pleasure came along with the squeezing! The feeling was beyond anything she had ever imagined possible for her body to produce, she could only shudder and thrust her hips forward, pushing herself deeper into the girl's hot, wet, mouth, the overwhelming need to push deeper and thrust harder were the only thoughts that could exist alongside the pulsing ecstasy.}
"UNNNNNH! Yessss, suck it!"
"Whatthefuck? Mado? Whatthefuck?" Mishi's startled exclamation barely registered with Madoka; she could barely feel Mishi's hands desperately holding down on Madoka's mouth, stifling her screams of…
"Mmmmmpph!"
{Another explosion of pleasure, and another, each spasm accompanied by a squeezing in her groin and a gush into the eager mouth of that divine girl, that beauty on her knees and wrapping her arms around Madoka's hips. She insistently pulled Madoka's lower abdomen flush against her lips, completely swallowing her…}
"Mphhh! AMH-hm-hm! EAaafff! Fffummmk mmma pamph!"
"Jesus Christ, Mado, hush! And... suck your what?!" Atop Madoka's thrusting hips and arching back, Mishi's petite body was in danger of being launched completely off the bed as she tried to hold her blonde roomie down while keeping her hands over the other girl's mouth to muffle her shouts.
{After what seemed an eternity of pleasure and lust, which had each burned the other as fuel for a bonfire that was surely destroying her entire body, Madoka felt the slow return of sanity, along with a tremor in her legs; legs which were now a bit weak in the knees. She looked through barely open eyes down at the angelic girl who was still lovingly stroking the length of Madoka's rapidly shrinking penis…}
Madoka's eyes opened wide, panic and fear zinging across her nervous system, competing with the remnants of the most powerful, and frightening, orgasm she had ever experienced. "Whaaaaaaa? My rapidly shrinking what?!"
Madoka realized she was still lying on Mishi's bed but her head was hanging off the edge, with Mishi straddling her torso and holding her hands over Madoka's mouth. Madoka's wide blue eyes stared up at Mishi, terribly confused and alarmed.
It didn't look as though Mishi would have any answers, since her eyes were bugging out in shock. The younger girl's expression was a mix of confusion, alarm, and some embarrassment as well, as she watched Madoka for signs that the blonde girl was done with the… fit… she had been in for the last thirty seconds or so.
"Mado?"
Madoka pulled Mishi's hands away from her mouth and rolled over onto her side, almost pushing Mishi off the bed, again. Madoka lay facing away from the teenage girl, gasping for air, her own hands covering her mouth. It seemed as though she could not catch her breath and for some reason she felt an almost overwhelming urge to cry.
"Mado, are you… okay?" Mishi sat next to her friend, her voice tentative, the confusion she was feeling quite clear.
Still panting for breath, Madoka swiped her now-sweaty hair out of her eyes and turned her head to look helplessly at the teenage girl. "No, I am not okay! Do I look okay?"
"Do you want me to get someone?" Mishi's expression said clearly she did not have any idea who that someone might be, but she had to at least offer to do something.
"Oh god no! I mean, oh… Mishi… I am sorry. No, I just… need to get some air. I will be back in a minute."
Madoka stood on shaky legs and made her way to the apartment patio door as quickly as she could. If she ran into Gregory, or worse, Karen, in the hallway before she could get outside she would probably die of embarrassment.
By the time she pulled the patio door closed behind her, that oddly insistent impulse to start crying overcame her self-control. The night air was cold, especially in just a thin tank top and her very wet barely-there-shorts, but it did help clear away the remnants of the fire that had burned her body and her mind so viciously, so delightfully.
Madoka sat on one of the patio chairs and pulled her legs up and hugged them to her chest, then gave into the emotional storm that demanded release, sobs shaking her shoulders.
o.0.O.0.o
Gregory stood in his best slacks and a soft cotton undershirt, his damp shower towel draped over a shoulder, in the doorway to Mishi's bedroom. "Where's Mado?"
Mishi was sitting in the middle of her large bed, in her church-dress clothes, with the blankets all messed up around her, looking blankly back at Gregory as though she didn't recognize who he was for a moment, before replying, "She, ah, she stepped out for a minute. She said she needed some air."
Gregory started to turn and go to the patio when his daughter's voice stopped him.
"No, Dad, she said she wanted to be alone to think, so, you know, she's fine. She just needed a minute alone. Really."
Looking back at Mishi, Gregory got the definite feeling he was missing something here. But he had learned from the hard experience of being a father that he really did not need to know everything that went on in his home. He was proud of learning that lesson, since almost every other father he knew completely failed to understand this important fact of life, clinging to some delusion that they had to be in control and in charge of everything that happened in their homes.
Idiots, the lot of them.
Regardless of the feeling that he had in the back of his head, where he had never had any sort of detectable feelings before, which told him Madoka was near, though under some emotional turmoil, he still felt uneasy. But, he made himself take his daughters word for the situation. Mishi deserved that much respect from him, a fact which made him glow with pride at the young woman his little girl was growing up to be.
"Okay. Well, we'll be leaving for Midnight Mass in about 15 minutes."
"Great, okay, thanks Dad." Mishi smiled at him, relieved he was listening to her.
But he did try to "keep an ear" on his feeling about Madoka in case it changed for the worse.
o.0.O.0.o
By the time the O'Donnell's had left the apartment, Madoka had mostly regained control of her emotions. She had even been able to reassure Gregory that there was no problem when he came to the patio door to check on her, just before leaving for their religious thing.
She did not think Gregory believed her insistence that she was fine, but he didn't argue it. He did advise against staying out in the December night air while wearing what she was barely wearing and he wished her goodnight before he shut the patio door.
Madoka heard Karen slam the front door of the apartment as she departed. Spending much effort figuring out why just did not interest the Sekirei, though.
After they were gone, Madoka sat and focused on calming down. The cold air cleared her head significantly and now she had privacy and silence, so she could think and consider what had just happened in Mishi's bedroom. Madoka replayed her memory of the incident, then filtered out the overwhelming physical sensations, put aside the emotional content and the… alien… urges that had made her want to do nothing more than push and thrust and go deeper… she separated all of that out and isolated just the visual-fantasy information. Then she was able to scrutinize what she'd seen. She recognized the shower in the hallway bathroom, which shared a wall with Mishi's bedroom. And she now recognized the blonde girl who had been so enthusiastically and expertly… servicing… her.
No, that girl had not been doing it to her; she'd been doing it to Gregory.
She understood now that what she had experienced in Mishi's bedroom had come through the bond with her Ashikabi. She had been living Gregory's experience. He had been in the shower in the room next to the bedroom, and he must have been… relieving… himself, and Madoka caught at least the… end of it. She had not only felt what he had been feeling but she had seen the fantasy his imagination had conjured for him and she had experienced his emotions… And he had been fantasizing about her!
Madoka saw that face every day in the mirror. But that wasn't what she looked like! Well, it was what she looked like, but it wasn't what Madoka saw when she looked at her face, which was why it took her so long to understand what she'd been seeing.
Was that what she looked like to Gregory, then? When he looked at her? Was she that beautiful to his eyes? Did he feel that alarming degree of adoration and lust when he looked at her? No, not possible, he could not! Living like that would drive someone insane. No one could be so helplessly, intolerably, drawn to touch, to kiss, to feel, to taste, another like that without going crazy!
Madoka closed her eyes and lost herself in thinking about the exquisiteness and perfection of that girl's face. Remembering what it had felt like to look down at that girl's large soap-slick breasts and the flawless curve of her ass as she knelt between Madoka's feet and…
No, it was just too much, far too much. She was momentarily tempted to tear off her clothes just so she could see that girl's body again. But she knew she wouldn't see it the same way now, wouldn't see what Gregory saw.
She hugged her knees to her chest and tried to remember her relationships in the MBI Sekirei Labs, to try to compare what she had seen through her Ashikabi's eyes tonight with what she had seen and felt with the other girls in Group 11.
Madoka had been 16 Toyotama's lover for quite a while, in the MBI Sekirei Labs. What Madoka now figured must have been more than a year. It was difficult to judge the post-puberty time in the Labs since everyone in Group 11 had been caught up to the same physical age so they weren't different sizes anymore. A few months after her Puberty Adjustment, she and Toyotama struck up the relationship that they continued until just recently, when Madoka was removed from the Group 11 Dorms for her final Adjustments, followed by several months of isolation from all the other Sekirei, then release into the city.
When Madoka had come out of her Puberty Adjustment her best friend 44 Yosuga had been away on another adjustment to fix her headaches, one that had taken Yosuga away for weeks. It seemed there were many weeks-long Adjustments for Yosuga then. During that difficult time, in the absence of her lifelong companion and with a new body which brought a great deal of uncomfortable attention to her, Madoka found that she needed a protector from some of the other girls, the ones who were prone to picking on the defenseless, pretty, blonde, Sekirei. They would pick on and push for physical intimacies that Madoka wasn't really ready for, no matter her sudden physiological age.
Other Group 11 girls. Like 14 Chiyo, who was one of the first Group 11 girls to have been through Puberty Adjustment, probably three years before Madoka's own, at Madoka's now-best-guess. Chiyo, who had grown very comfortable with her strong, muscular, body and the appetites it seemed to have come with. Ferocious 14, who had never lost a fight or spar to anyone in Group 11, going back to when they were all just barely older than toddlers.
There was also tall, slender, boyish, and strong-willed, 85 Oshino. Who had never let her hair grow long enough to be mistaken for a girl even before her Puberty Adjustment. Dark-eyed and clever Oshino, who used guile and flattery as well as a precise understanding of social standing and social weaknesses to get what she wanted. Oshino had played on her own general resemblance to 44 Yosuga's post-puberty physique to tempt Madoka into being her play-toy. But no matter how much Madoka missed Yosuga in those long weeks where her best friend was gone on endless Adjustments, 85 Oshino held no appeal. Madoka had seen how faithless 85 had been to her previous playthings and rejected her overtures. Not that Oshino was willing to take "no" for an answer.
Chiyo and Oshino, both of whom Toyotama-onee-sama dealt with, firmly, once number 16 had been adequately motivated.
Toyotama had been the best of Madoka's options. Of the almost twenty Sekirei in Group 11 (there were times where there were more, times when there were less, but at that point there were around twenty Group 11 residents), many were not interested in girls in a sexual way. At least not interested in more than isolated experiments or flings, and that wasn't what Madoka needed. Of those who were known to Madoka to have a sustained interest in females and who were mostly decent and kind and had not been prone to cruelty and bullying, there was 10 Uzume, 16 Toyotama, 18 Ichiya, 40 Shi, and 54 Kuruse. Madoka chose Toyotama. She was strong, she was confident, and she was very highly rated on the Badass Scale.
Madoka used affection, intimacy, and eventually sex itself to make sure her Toyotama-onee-sama was properly motivated and fully committed to protecting her. The small, blonde, Sekirei had no useful powers and couldn't match even the next weakest Sekirei in any sort of sparring contest or fight. Being Toyotama-onee-sama's "little sister" and lover gave Madoka more control over her own fate than she'd thought she would ever have.
And Madoka had picked Toyotama because she saw the same look in Toyotama's eyes that she'd seen in many of the male lab techs. The lab techs were younger, by and large, than the Administrators and Researchers, and as such their contact with the Sekirei was more carefully monitored and limited by the MBI Sekirei Labs Administration. This did not keep the lab techs from getting plenty of chances for leering at the skimpily dressed, nubile, beauties that MBI had captive. Madoka had never really understood what those looks meant. She called it "desire" but her own desires and her own appreciation for the beauty of her lover Toyotama and, indeed, all of the other girls in Group 11, was so different, so much milder, from what was hinted at in that… hungry… scary… look.
It turned out that 16 Toyotama had a deeply buried desire for pretty little things. An appetite Madoka helped Toyotama realize and Madoka had encouraged.
It took some effort and most of that was in learning how to best use the new tools her Puberty Adjustment had given her. But eventually Madoka had her way. She had turned 16 Toyotama, who'd been indifferent to the child Madoka, into the one person no one in Group 11 would cross when it came to Toyotama's "little sister".
Toyotama had been an eager lover, once she had been convinced it was okay to do what she wanted with Madoka's body and that Madoka would do whatever Toyotama wanted in return. Getting Toyotama to cross lines she could not easily step back over had taken time and effort but it had been worth it.
Madoka had even agreed to Toyotama-onee-sama sharing her with her best friend, 18 Ichiya, on several occasions. Doing so further committed Toyotama and it made Ichi-chan glad to watch out for Madoka too, even if not so devotedly as Toyotama. Ichi-chan had her own amusements and her own occasional pillow friends among the other girls, but she had never had the drive that Madoka sensed in number 16, did not have that same burning hunger for pretty little things. But the three of them had their fun, absolutely. Madoka had found both of the strong, older, girls attractive and sexy. She had very much enjoyed what it felt like to be wanted by both of them. But she had never felt lust for them.
After the revelations of tonight, Madoka doubted she had ever previously experienced lust at all.
Madoka both regretted and was glad that when 44 Yosuga was finally free of the headaches that had plagued her since her Puberty Adjustment that Yosu-chan had little interest in the pastimes Madoka and her big sister/lover enjoyed. Yosu-chan was still Madoka's best friend, they usually slept in the same dorm room and often the same bed (the cot-style beds in the dorms weren't nearly wide enough to allow Madoka to comfortably sleep with Toyotama) but Yosuga never quite understood the appeal of slippery body parts going bump over and over. It had bothered Yosuga that she couldn't be a part of that with Madoka, but Madoka had secretly felt that this odd lack on Yosuga's part had probably preserved their friendship through the turbulent and violent adolescence all the Sekirei seemed to experience, and it kept their relationship from becoming something… trivial.
Trivial, like how Madoka had ultimately felt about Toyotama. There was good reason why it was Yosuga and Madoka who had actually planned how to meet up after they were released into the city, and not Toyotama and Madoka.
But in all the experimenting and playing and sweaty lovemaking, Madoka had never felt anything like tonight… not even close! You could not even call the "clouds and the rain" Madoka had managed with Toyotama or Ichi-chan to be the same sort of thing as what she had caught through the bond, tonight, from Gregory. That was no "clouds and rain", that was a tsunami, a typhoon!
Madoka had never appreciated that someone could feel the lust she had felt when looking down at that girl while her eager mouth wrapped so…
What happened tonight had scared her. To lose control of herself, to have something pleasurable be inflicted on her, to have that kind of lust, and the mind numbing ecstasy that followed, hammered into her mind and her body? If she hadn't immediately realized that it had happened by accident, that Gregory had no awareness of what she had experienced, she would have been furious with him. Instead, she could not blame Gregory at all, and accepted that it had been just one of those things no one knew could happen between a Sekirei and their Ashikabi.
Right now Madoka was not sure if she was dreading, or looking forward to, the next time it happened.
Because, terrifying loss of control or not, it was narcotic looking at that girl's face, it was thrilling even thinking of touching her, thinking about tasting her…
Madoka shivered in the cold night air, suddenly and depressingly reminded that she was still sitting outside on the O'Donnell's patio, almost naked, and that the temperature was almost freezing. And that her pants were extremely soaked though. Again. And cold. Very very cold.
It was past time to go inside, get a hot shower, change clothes, and try to get some sleep.
o.0.O.0.o
o.0.O.0.o

From the Notebooks of Gregory O'Donnell
Sekirei –
The First Five – The Sekirei of Group 11 referred to the "grown" Sekirei which they knew of (Sekirei 01 through 05) as the First Five. Group 11 had no contact with 01, but they did see the other members of the First Five over the years. (See below: MBI Sekirei Labs - Sekirei Ages)
01 (No Name) – Madoka claims that the only adult in the ship was numbered 01 and was the Sekirei responsible for caring for the 107 unborn who were in the ship. Madoka never saw 01 nor did she ever meet anyone who claimed to have met 01, though it was strongly implied that 02 Matsu had.

This Sekirei took on a mythological status among the younger Sekirei, especially given the fearful and lonely lives they lived as children.

The MBI Researchers, Administrators, and the older Sekirei themselves, forbade any questions from the Group 11 Sekirei concerning any non-Group 11 Sekirei. Madoka says it was popularly considered that this rule existed only because they didn't want anyone asking about 01. A rule forbidding any non-Group 11 queries solved any problem MBI's staff might have had with keeping their stories straight, as well as preventing proof of Sekirei 01 by inference.

Madoka believes that 01 is out there, trying to get free from MBI so that she can rescue the 107 Sekirei upon who MBI has visited so much wrong. I find myself skeptical, but I am also reluctant to disabuse Madoka of a faith that has brought her at least some comfort in what has been a remarkably dark and difficult life so far.

If this Sekirei is truly still alive, I hope for Madoka's sake she is truly a prisoner of MBI or that Madoka never finds out otherwise. What trauma would it be for me, a stable adult, to discover the Christ of my faith was not only real but had sold out to the Devil instead of sacrificing himself for us?

As difficult as that would be to imagine, the reaction in the Sekirei who had faith in 01 would be far more extreme.

I truly do hope their faith is never proven wrong. Let this 01 be dead and long dissected in MBI's Labs, for the sake of all these poor girls.
02 Matsu – Red hair, glasses, a 'brain type', she was known to not having any combat abilities, much like 22 Kochou and 37 Madoka. Reported to have been a mature adult at the same time Madoka remembers herself and her Group 11 peers being approximately five years old, physiologically. The last time Madoka saw 02 Matsu was just over a year and a half before Phase One started and Madoka considered 02 Matsu to have not aged particularly noticeably, other than perhaps being more curvy and endowed than she had been when Madoka first saw her.

02 helped the MBI scientists in their work with the Sekirei, this much is clear. How much of this cooperation was actual collaboration and how much of it was motivated by seeking harm reduction is impossible to tell. She was the only person to make any effort to educate the younger Sekirei about their origins, according to Madoka.

According to the rumors in Group 11, 02 disappeared from the MBI Sekirei Labs several months before Madoka was separated from Group 11 into her own final adjustments (approx. October 2019), before the Sekirei Plan launched. If 02 parted ways with MBI at that point, it would have been sometime around July 2019.
03 Kazehana – Black hair, beautiful face and figure, she was reputed to be the most powerful of the Sekirei other than the mysterious 01. She was known to be fixated on the President of MBI, Hiroto Minaka, and constantly courting his attention. This well-known attraction 03 had for Hiroto Minaka compromised her in the view of most of the Group 11 Sekirei, even though 03 seems to have made efforts over the years at endearing herself to the younger Sekirei, playing up a "big sister" role with them on the occasions she spent time in the Group 11 dorms. The younger Sekirei believed (for good reason or not it is impossible to tell at this stage) that 03 would betray them to Minaka if doing so would put her in his good graces.

Only 10 Uzume and 67 Riko were trusting of 03 Kazehana, among the Group 11 Sekirei.

Like 02 Matsu, 03 seems to have disappeared from the MBI Sekirei Labs before the Sekirei Plan began. The last time she was seen by anyone in Group 11 was, best guess, sometime in mid-2017, a bit over two years before Phase One of the Sekirei Plan began. Given the rules which forbade questions about any non-Group 11 Sekirei only rumors followed 03's disappearance.
04 Karasuba – Grey-silver hair, slender, a katana always in her belt. She carried a distinct aura of menace around her, which impressed all of the Group 11 Sekirei into avoiding the "Black Crow" as much as possible. 04 seems to have had very little interaction with Group 11, at least from Madoka's point of view.
05 Mutsu – The only male Sekirei in the "older" group. Mutsu carried a Japanese sword at all times. He also has grey-silver hair and a general facial similarity to 04 Karasuba. Madoka reports that rumor had it 04 and 05 were twins.

Mutsu is very tall, two meters at least, broad of shoulder, and likely a powerful physical presence. He was a forbidding and unfriendly figure to the younger Sekirei of Group 11. They all felt as though 05 Mutsu did not like any of them, and as though he were offended by their very existence.

Madoka says he disappeared from the MBI Sekirei Labs long before any of the others in the First Five group.
MBI Sekirei Labs –
The Sekirei's ages – There is a noticeable problem with the ages of the Sekirei compared to the earliest they could have been born (no earlier than 1999).
Madoka says none of the Sekirei that she spoke to recalled any life before the labs. Given that Madoka remembers from about the age of three (toddlers) living in what were called "crèches" instead of the later residence in "Dorms" (and note that Terran Human's only record permanent memory from about the age of 5, not 3), Madoka remembers meeting and interacting with the "older" Sekirei (the First Five).

Those Sekirei were adults at that time, there is a definite problem with the time line.

Quizzing Madoka about the appearance of the older Sekirei, our best guess is that 02 Matsu, 03 Kazehana, 04 Karasuba, and 05 Mutsu were all approximately 20 years old, physiologically, at the time Madoka and her peers were five or six years old, physiologically. There's no way to know how old Madoka was by the calendar unfortunately.

If their ship was discovered in 1999 and the earliest the first Sekirei could be born was sometime in 2000, then assuming Madoka was 5 years old in 2005 (fitting her appearance of about nineteen today in 2019) then how could there be four Sekirei who were at least eighteen years old when Madoka was 5?

Madoka has mentioned "Adjustments", periods of time when a Sekirei was taken away and put unconscious for modifications to be done to them by MBI's Researchers. It appears that at least some part of these Adjustments was to artificially age the Sekirei. Otherwise it would be impossible for a five year old Madoka to remember encountering a twenty year old 04 Karasuba. Not if the earliest 04 Karasuba could have been born (gestated, whatever the correct term is) is 1999-2000!

Not all Adjustments were about aging the subject. But there were several that were, enough that it is impossible to estimate Madoka's calendar age.

The Sekirei in Group 11 made particular note of hallmark Adjustments, such as the Puberty Adjustment. In a Puberty Adjustment the Sekirei would depart the Dorms as a child (Madoka establishes them as all about the same as 8 or 9 year old children in this stage) and come back as an adolescent with notable breasts and wider hips, just one day later in some cases.

What sort of technology has MBI acquired from the Sekirei ship? Artificially aging a person? One assumes they must be able to use this technology to not only age the body but also to fill in at least some of what the Sekirei would learn in those missing, accelerated, years. Simulated experience? Education? Hard-copied algorithims or heuristics stamped onto the mind of the patient? Producing an infant mind in an adult body would be utterly useless for anything other than organ harvesting and organ harvesting was obviously not what MBI was doing in their Sekirei Labs program.

One sincerely hopes that they were able to provide the accelerated subjects with some emotional maturity in addition to whatever other mental aging was done, or all of the Sekirei will be walking time bombs, rife with emotional and mental instabilities that are almost guaranteed to go off at some point. Those who were artificially aged the most would likely have the most noticeable problems, the more extreme instabilities.

If so, that would explain why MBI spent so much effort having the Sekirei spend time as toddlers, then time as children, then more time as adolescents, instead of simply maturing all 107 unborn Sekirei to adulthood in one go.

What else could this technology do? What miracles of education, health, disease control, are MBI holding back from the rest of humanity?
And, most importantly, why?

Started Oct 6 2014

Completed Oct 9 2014

Final Edits May 10 2015

Posted May 16 2015

Crossposted to Adult-fanfiction.org Oct 10 2015
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No Game For Old Men, a Sekirei tale