Let us take our eyes off Geno for just a little while.
HAND Headquarters, the office of Anti-Air Section Six.
Today, as always, Miss Miyabi was deep in a very special form of training.
"Boss, what are you doing?"
Soukaku, the pale-blue-skinned little girl with a pair of horns on her head, had a pair of chopsticks in hand and was nom-nom-ing her way through a boxed lunch. Beside her, the stack of emptied lunch boxes had grown until it was nearly as tall as she was.
"I am training to process official documents through sheer force of will."
"That sort of thing is impossible, Section Chief."
At the desk beside Soukaku, Yanagi Tsukishiro shot down Hoshimi Miyabi's absurd training without so much as raising her head, her hands never pausing for a moment.
"Paperwork does not finish itself. You should get to work, Section Chief."
With that, Yanagi nudged her glasses up the bridge of her nose, then flicked the pen in her hand and sent it whistling off toward her upper right.
"Ow! Tsukishiro, what was that for!" Harumasa whined, clutching the spot on his head where the pen had struck, and denounced her breach of manners.
"Mr. Asaba, these are working hours. If you continue to slack off like this, I may have to reconsider the sick-leave request you submitted for tonight's shift."
"Uh, I, I understand. I'll work hard."
Whatever resentment had been simmering in Asaba Harumasa's eyes cleared away in an instant. No anger, no complaints, nothing left but a very well-behaved young man.
"And Soukaku, if you have finished eating, study quietly. Do not disturb Section Chief Miyabi's work."
"Okay, got it, Sis Yanagi."
Soukaku's innocent voice reached Yanagi's ears a little muffled.
She had just swallowed her last mouthful of rice. She promptly pulled out a napkin, wiped her mouth, went and washed her hands, then settled down obediently at her own workstation to begin the day's reading practice.
Watching all this, Hoshimi Miyabi's ears gave a twitch. She had the nagging feeling that her authority as Section Chief of Section Six was slipping a little more every day.
Still, looking at Yanagi's blank face and the light glinting off her lenses, Miyabi decided it wasn't so bad after all.
With a Deputy Section Chief who never complained and thought of every last detail for her, what more could she possibly ask for?
"By the way, Section Chief, regarding tomorrow's schedule. You still have a Section Chief's performance review and the debriefing meeting for the last mission to attend."
"..."
Miyabi's hand froze. Her ears drooped on the spot, from one meter seventy down to one meter sixty.
"Also, the request from HIA. They are finalizing construction of their new VR system and want trial personnel to enter the virtual space and test the system's performance. That is tomorrow as well."
At that, a light kindled in Miyabi's eyes, and her ears stood straight up again.
"If I take part in that, does it mean I get out of the meetings?"
"It does not. The event takes place after the meetings conclude."
Miyabi shrank back down to one meter sixty.
On this matter, our Mr. Harumasa also had a thing or two to say.
"Section Chief, you and Tsukishiro go on ahead and don't worry about a thing. We'll hold down the fort."
Harumasa was already gloating to himself. Tomorrow the Section Chief and Tsukishiro would both be gone, Tsukishiro above all, which meant he could loaf around the office to his heart's content.
Yanagi's answer, however, shattered that last shred of fantasy.
"Tomorrow's event requires the attendance of all Section Six personnel."
"No!!"
The S.S. Asaba Harumasa, sunk with all hands.
"Don't cry, Harumasa. At least, at least HIA should have lots of tasty snacks."
For someone as simple as Soukaku, food alone was enough for happiness.
"True. At the very least, we get to skip tomorrow's work."
Miyabi's ears signaled their agreement.
"Out of the question. To avoid falling behind, the two of you will complete tomorrow's share of the work today."
"..." x2
The S.S. Hoshimi Miyabi and the S.S. Asaba Harumasa, sunk together.
In response, Yanagi merely adjusted her glasses in silence. She had work of her own to finish, after all.
As things stood, the [To Be Processed Before End of Day Today] pile still held 22 documents, and together with [To Be Processed Before End of Day Tomorrow], the total came to 56.
In other words, she had a full 56 documents to clear today, and that was before counting the leftovers she would have to handle for those two slacking monsters, Hoshimi Miyabi and Asaba Harumasa.
Soukaku? Sitting there quietly was the greatest help she could possibly offer.
Colleagues passing by outside the office glanced at the racket going on inside Section Six and thought nothing of it. They had long since stopped finding it strange.
The facts spoke for themselves. Yanagi Tsukishiro was the most dependable and the most commanding presence in all of Anti-Air Section Six.
Today, Section Six was as peaceful as ever.
The next day, while the Section Six crew headed off to Lumina Square for the event, over on Sixth Street not far from there, Geno and Twiggy were busy with business of their own.
"So the helper you mentioned turned out to be Uncle Enzo."
"That's right. Who's better at this kind of thing than Uncle Enzo?"
Twiggy wore a wicked little grin. The thought that she was about to see Little Geno's new body was more than she could contain.
"All right, give it a try. Tell me if anything feels off."
Enzo rotated his mechanical right hand until the joints creaked, then dripped two drops of high-grade machine oil onto it and worked the lubricant in.
As his voice trailed off, a small, round little figure came pattering out of the inner room.
"Whoa, so cute!"
"As long as you two are happy with it. I'll get back to my work then. As for the paint job, you can wander around the city center. Looks like there are quite a few new coatings out lately."
"Okay, thanks, Uncle Enzo!"
Geno and Twiggy were satisfied, but Little Geno himself seemed to have a few objections.
"Why does it have to be a Bangboo body, un-na!"
Looking at Little Geno's utterly exasperated face, electronic eyes narrowed down to thin slits, Geno pressed the smile off the corners of his mouth and said, "Well, is it an Intelligent Construct or isn't it?"
"You *** — huh? Why did that get censored, un-na?"
Little Geno, in the middle of warmly inquiring after relatives Geno did not actually possess, discovered that his voice hadn't come out at all.
"Little Bangboos aren't allowed to swear, you know. That's why I loaded a civilized-speech module into this body along with the common language module!"
Sitting off to the side, Uncle Enzo took a smug pull from his pipe, the very picture of a man who does the deed, walks away, and leaves his name and his merit buried behind him.
"Don't go doing pointless things like that, un-na!"
Waving his clumsy little stubby arms, Little Geno's puffed-up fury paired with that round Bangboo body only made him look cuter, which made Geno want to tease him all the more.
"Isn't this pretty good? At least now you count as halfway to a free man."
"Free how! Un-na! I don't even have an ID card! Un-na!"
____
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