Asuna had gotten tired of Evangeline and not being able to get a straight answer out of the vampire. It was extra frustrating because most of the time, the immortal blonde was blunt to the point of being irritating; now she was evading every question Asuna tried to ask her. The pigtailed girl had enough, unknowingly leaving Eva to be a bimbo until someone uninfected came along. Which had been Yue for about four seconds, until a slip of Eva's lips gave the bookworm a set of suckers that could make a popsicle melt just by pouting at it.
It was one of those funny things. Asuna usually found Evangeline's arrogance and posturing really annoying, but compared to this new behaviour? Well, this must be what they meant by "the grass is always greener on the other side". Whatever was going on she wanted no part of it until someone actually told her what was going on!
"Stupid Evangeline can keep her stupid secrets," Asuna muttered under her breath. "I'm just trying to help out, but no. Got to keep that all to themselves. I bet it's all some big practical -"
Then she turned a corner in the library and discovered where Chachamaru had gotten off to with Nodoka. Namely, with Chachamaru on her hands and knees, laying across Nodoka's lap while the shy girl's hand was raised into the air as if going to spank the cyborg girl on her artificial ass.
"Uh..." Asuna mumbled, blinking a few times in quick succession as if all of a sudden the sight before her might evaporate, disappear into the ether. Instead it seemed as though Nodoka was doing an impersonation of a statue. Even when Chachamaru rolled off her lap, dusted herself off and got back onto her feet Nodoka stayed exactly where she was, barely blinking, minimal movement, body running purely on automatic. "I didn't interrupt something, did I?"
The question seemed to inject new life into Nodoka, whose head snapped up, mouth opened as if to say something, and then Chachamaru slapped her hand across the shy girl's mouth.
"Hello, Miss Asuna," Chachamaru calmly said while Nodoka mumbled unintelligibly into the hand. "Is all well with Mistress Evangeline?"
"Never mind her," Asuna scowled. She crossed her arms and began to impatiently tap her feet. "You can't just pretend like nothing happened! Tell me what's going on right now!"
"Mmmph!" Nodoka yelled into the palm firmly across her lips. She tugged at the mechanical wrist to try to budge it. To no avail.
As for Chachamaru, it was like Asuna could almost see the gears turning in her head. All that was missing was a sign over her head saying something like "running lie.exe".
"The truth is out," Chachamaru said. She picked Nodoka up with one arm, while her other hand was still across Nodoka's mouth. She then pulled the pair closely together, and lay her head on the smaller girl's shoulder. "We are secretly lovers. You have walked in on our secret tryst."
Finally, Nodoka was able to wrench the hand away from her mouth. "No, we're not!" she yelled "It's a lie, actually what happened was we -"
Which was when she was silenced by a pair of lips meeting hers, and then being picked up and pushed up against a wall. It really did look like an intensely erotic smooch... If it weren't for the way in which Chachamaru's eyes were blatantly focused on Asuna rather than her supposed secret lover.
"Not buying it," Asuna said, tapping her feet a little more quickly, a lot less patiently. In response, Chachamaru dumped her skirt. "Come on, stop this already! Put her down!" Which she did not. Why that... Urgh! This was so impossibly frustrating! "I'm not leaving until I hear what Nodoka has to say about this, so you might as well cut it out right now."
Hah. That seemed to do the trick. Chachamaru let Nodoka back down to earth, disengaged lips and stepped back with due care. Of course, Asuna hadn't the faintest idea of what she'd just done, nor the consequences of what she was trying to do. That was what made this outbreak so thoroughly dangerous: To the curious outsiders wondering at their friends and their strange behaviour, that concern battled with the secrecy keeping them out of it. They genuinely thought things like "If only they would let me in, I could help them," when the truth was that knowing would make the situation just a little bit worse than it was already.
And then of course there was Nodoka, who hadn't had the chance to properly digest any of this yet. Certainly, Chachamaru had told her the explicit details but the android wasn't yet certain that the shy bookworm had properly had the opportunity to digest it. The two of them had been caught playing "returning the library book a year late" when Asuna had caught up to them, and in between being told and that instant they had both been too bimbo to think properly. Under these conditions she might say anything.
That was the explanation for her strange behaviour just now: Time. She had to play for time any way that she could. Chachamaru had gambled that Asuna would leave, allowing them to transform yet again, and the next time an uninfected came along there was a slightly better chance that Nodoka would better understand what was going on and so not say anything aloud that she would surely regret. Unfortunately Asuna was more stubborn than calculated, and so she had to take a risk. Otherwise Asuna would draw much more attention upon them, which could easily result in more people being infected.
All perfectly logical. It happens quite often in game theory, where the purely logical approach in the short term is far from the best long-term strategy.
So it was that Chachamaru was watching with the cybernetic equivalent of bated breath, while Asuna looked Nodoka over, and Nodoka herself studied her feet with great interest. Neither of them knew what would happen, what she would say. Would it be the truth, or...
"I'm hungry," Nodoka finally said, blushing furiously. "Sk-Skipped breakfast."
Asuna let out a resigned sigh, while internally Chachamaru was performing a series of perfectly logical backflips. The meme would spread no further in the immediate future!
"Alright then," Asuna slowly said. "Let's head over to Chao Bao Zi, while you go back and help Evangeline do... Whatever the hell she's doing!" Hmph! It was obvious to Asuna now. Nodoka knew something about what was going on and Chachamaru was trying her best to keep the girl quiet. Trying to find out from Chisame, Evangeline or Chachamaru was a non-starter, they were all extremely stubborn girls. But Nodoka? She'd snap soon enough and spill the beans.
It was the perfect plan... Except Asuna hadn't considered that this was a secret she would rather not be let in on.
- Nodoka is surprisingly deflective of interrogation attempts, frustrating Asuna even more.
- Asuna mentions to Satsuki that she's noticed weird behaviour, and Satsuki can't help but mention...
- Bimbo Chachamaru looks for her mistress, finds her with a new playmate.
- Bimbo Chao has a plan to make more horny bimbos. Can regular Chao stop her?
- Something else
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