Chapter 1: Seat 27 is Occupied
"What…is that?"
Those were the first words to leave Nagisa Shiota's lips as he entered the classroom. For once, he'd decided he'd come to the miserable satellite campus early.
But his gaze was locked onto an immense abnormality in the very back of the room.
Sitting right there, a short distance behind Karma's seat, was a massive chrome-colored steel pod that looked like it could take a nuclear bomb from point blank and come out unscathed. That, or Ultron was creating The Vision inside the Class E's very own classroom. Wires and coils of all sorts ran to and from it, and they
Then again, we have a teacher here who can defuse a missile loaded with a nuke while drinking a milkshake from Jamba Juice.
"Ah, Nagisa. Good to see an early bird in the classroom today."
That signature laugh of his and the way he addressed the middle school student, plus the very faint sound of slithering that Nagisa could hear from behind him confirmed the fact.
"Good morning, Koro-Sensei." He said, turning around to face his homeroom, science, math and…well, the teacher for every single subject except for English and Physical Education.
The massive yellow octopus stared down back at him with his signature, ever-present smile. "Are you interested in that pod, Nagisa?"
"Yes…" Nagisa turned back around to gaze curiously at the oval-shaped hull that stood in the classroom sticking out like a polar bear in the Bahamas. "What is that thing doing there?"
Nagisa walked into the room, depositing his bag into the chair where his table stood before hesitantly drawing closer to the steel. As he walked forward, his hand brushing Karma's desk, he realized that a number of wires ran into Ritsu's terminal.
"Um, Koro-Sen…" Nagisa turned around to ask a question that had come to his mind, but fell silent in shock as he realized that his teacher had somehow managed to leave the room and return wearing a white labcoat while holding a number of laptops in his tentacles. "What's with the labcoat and the gadgets?"
"I'll be explaining the circumstances surrounding the pod when the rest of the class arrives." He replied, walking forward and past Nagisa, resting a tentacle onto the top of the pod.
Forty Five Minutes Later…
"Alright, everyone's present! Good morning, class!" Koro-Sensei's face went bright red as he put down the attendance sheet. "Now, I have a very important announcement to make."
"It's about time!" Kayano complained as she stood up and pointed at the pod. "Come on, tell us what's in there already! I wanna know~!"
"Now, now, calm down. Kayano, have a seat. I'm sure you're going to need it once we're done here." Koro-Sensei replied, snickering a bit before pointing at the pod in the back. "I'm already 100% sure you all have noticed the pod in the back of the room. If you hadn't noticed it yet, that means you get extra homework for having poor observation skills as my future killers!"
"No one's not gonna notice that thing!" Terasaka replied, slamming a fist into his desk to end the conversation before it could get out of hand. "Get to the point, octopus!"
"Alright, alright." Koro-Sensei disappeared for a moment, reappearing next to Ritsu's monitor. "To tell you the truth, Ritsu has been researching and preparing for a project a few days after I gave her the software and hardware upgrade that turned her into the student she is now."
"So?" Karma asked, leaning back into his chair. He looked as relaxed as always, with the constant glint of mischief present in his eyes.
"So…within the next few seconds, you are going to see-"
Suddenly, the loud noise that was the whirring of machinery suddenly exploded from the pod and forced half of the class to cover their ears in reply. The others stood up in alarm save for Karma, who just stared at the pod. The red haired student glanced at the steel oval and then stared at the terminal, and then grinned. "I get it."
Steam poured out of the machine with a violent, angry hiss that pierced the ears of those who didn't cover them. After a few moments of the steam clouding their vision, the students removed their hands from their ears and tried to squint through the dissipating white smoke that blocked their view.
As it cleared, they saw that a hatch had opened in the pod.
An instant after seeing that, the class rushed forward to see what was inside.
Silence reigned for ten seconds.
And the first to speak was Okajima. "Holy crap, 2D went 3D!"
The next reaction was for every boy there to turn around with the reddest face they'd ever managed to create in their human lives.
The hatch revealed an opening much like a mold that was shaped exactly like a human being. It looked like someone could pour in iron and close the hatch, and opening it an hour later would present you with a statue of steel.
But resting inside the pod was a familiar face. With long purple hair and skin that looked to smooth to be real, The Fixed Artillery's lovable mascot had been given form.
In other words, they were staring at Ritsu in what seemed to be the flesh.
And in her birthday suit, too.
"What's going on, Koro-Sensei?!" Kurahashi asked, still in shock. "What did you do?! Why does Ritsu have a body?!"
"And why does she have big boobs?!" Kayano pointed accusingly at Ritsu's chest. "Those are not the measurement she told me! For sure!"
Is that really what you have to say, Kayano? Nagisa thought to himself, unsure if he should laugh or pat her on the back comfortingly as he averted his gaze from the purple-haired girl lying unconscious with her eyes closed in the pod next to him.
Koro-Sensei delivered his signature laugh before he replied. "That is for her to explain, not me."
The monitor then turned to face the students crowding the pod, and the screen booted up to see Ritsu looking at them with a smile.
"Good morning, everyone!" She said merrily. "Now, I'm going to explain what's going on."
She pointed at the pod, and one of her guns emerged from the monitor and pointed at it like a finger. "You see, after running scans on the information through the software that Koro-Sensei had given me, I have come to the conclusion that teamwork will be made much easier if I have a physical form with which to move around in and manipulate."
Koro-Sensei raised his own tentacle, drawing the class' attention to him. "She performed the upgrades herself. I simply brought her the materials, the blueprints and the information. Therefore, I did not violate the new terms of my teaching contract."
"You're a sneaky one." Karma grinned.
"Where did you get the parts for this? Rather…what's she made of?" Isogai asked, his face still a slight red. "You didn't go grave hunting for these, did you?"
"No, not at all." Koro-Sensei replied, wagging his finger. "Ritsu herself designed her body using a machine designed to produce experimental bio-matter that can be altered by machine to reproduce the appearance of most any biological creature. Her body is very human, but every single part of her, down to the molecular level, has also been altered to accommodate nanomachines. She has more processing power than any other supercomputer in the planet."
Koro-Sensei's tentacle snaked all the way from where he was over to Ritsu's pod and tapped the body's head. "The crown jewel of her design is over here, in her brain. It is the central focus of her processing power, a total of several hundred terabytes of RAM."
"That's…a little over the top." Sugino uttered his words of amazement while gaping at the sheer prospect of Ritsu's processing capabilities.
"Impressive." Nagisa muttered, looking back at Ritsu through her terminal's LCD. "You must have really gone really far to do this."
"Yes, I have, and it was worth the effort." Ritsu replied, smiling. But her smile suddenly dulled, and she sighed. "But I have to get past the most difficult part now."
"Which one is?" Karma asked, standing up from his chair and pointing at the pod that everyone else still refused to gaze inside. "Getting you clothes?"
"Oh, did I forget to do that?!" The virtual avatar's face reddened like a ripe tomato in the middle of summer, and she quickly waved her hand. Instantly, a set of Kunugigaoka Uniform clothes popped out of the back of the monitor. "I'm sorry to trouble you all, but could someone please clothe my physical body?!"
"Alright, alright." Yada stepped forward, picking up the clothes and walking back to the hatch where the body was. She bent down and picked up one of the articles of clothing, and her eyes widened at the black lace lingerie in between her fingers. "…your choice of underwear is quite daring, Ritsu."
"Please ignore that. I had no other kinds of data to reference, so I had to scan through Koro-Sensei's library."
All eyes were on the octopus.
"Don't look at me like that! I didn't intend for her to use the data!" The destroyer of the moon replied in a panic, waving his tentacles back and forth.
Five Minutes Later…
"So, with this in mind, I would like for everyone to help me with my body now that it has been…clothed."
"Help? How?" Nagisa asked curiously. He was very certain that no matter what she asked them for, she could probably do it better than anyone there.
"You see…it is exponentially difficult to gather any data on how to actually operate the body." Ritsu confessed, sighing. "It is a troublesome matter."
"So…you can't use the body yet?" Karma asked, glancing at the pod.
"Yes." Ritsu's avatar nodded. "Thankfully, it has been implanted with a chip in the artificial brain that allows for the body to link to my terminal in a similar manner to Bluetooth."
"That's a very dumbed down, easy-to-understand reference." Maehara muttered, snickering.
"That said, she requires assistance in learning the motor skills required to pilot the body." Koro-Sensei said, gazing at the pod from afar. He'd retreated back to the teacher's podium after a three-minute long assassination attempt earlier after the class had gotten angry. "So, she needs someone to help her, in short."
"Everyone can help her." Isogai replied, glancing back at the pod. "But if you mean for someone to stay with her around the clock, then that's a different story."
"It'd be easier if the girls could take care of it." Maehara commented, one eye closed. "I don't think it's good for a guy to stay around her 24/7. Especially if it's someone like Okajima."
"Hey!" The boy in question objected, but he remained seated.
"Who should take care of it, then? I can't do it." Nakamura sighed, resting her chin on her palm. "I've got some afterschool lessons and studying to take care of."
"I can't, either." Megu added. "I also have some studying to do."
"I don't think it's safe for me to do it." Kaede groaned, and she turned to face Okuda. "How about you do it?"
"I-I can't!" She replied, yelping shyly. "I also have to study, and I'm still developing poisons for Koro-Sensei."
"So, pretty much every girl who should be able to do it can't." Isogai muttered. "And I don't think Koro-Sensei should do it. He might insert more needless data."
The class continued to talk amongst themselves, completely ignoring their teacher's protests.
"…this is turning out to be a bigger problem than I thought it would be." Nakamura muttered, irritated. She messed up her own hair in her aggravation. Her eyes suddenly widened and she pointed her gaze at Nagisa. "Hey, Nagisa. You're, like, the missing link here we need."
"Why am I the missing link?"
"Because you're…y'know, you don't look like a man."
"At least look at me when you're trying to insult me."
"Anyway, that's beside the point." Nakamura replied, pointing at Nagisa. A wicked grin that spelled trouble appeared on her face. "You'll be Ritsu's…maid."
"Wait, why am I the maid?!" Nagisa objected, standing up.
But no one was listening to him anymore.
"Ritsu, quickly! Make a maid outfit, stat!" Nakamura shouted back at the terminal. She dashed over to Okajima's table, stuck her hand into the shelf below it and pulled out a magazine. She flipped through it at lightning speed, stopped at a page and showed it to Ritsu. It was a model picture of a girl wearing a maid outfit. "Something like this!"
"Hang on! Can I at least get a butler uniform?!" Nagisa begged, running over to Nakamura and trying to grab the magazine.
"Here, Ritsu. These are Nagisa's three sizes." Karma says, tossing a piece of paper over to the terminal.
"What the heck are you showing her?!" Nagisa freaked out, balling his fists and yelling at Karma who just stuck his tongue out at Nagisa.
"Roger that, Karma." Ritsu replied, sucking in the paper with a vacuum of air. After a second of silence, she spoke up again. "…why are there nothing but zeroes?"
"No, turn the paper around."
"…Karma, I am capable of unparalleled realtime calculations. With that in mind, do you think I will believe that Nagisa is not a G cup?"
"Don't worry, Ritsu." Karma winked playfully, shooting a mischievous glance at his victim. "Those numbers aren't for his chest. They're for something else."
Everyone immediately threw a Sensei-Knife in Karma's general direction. Nagisa tossed two of them, but he dodged them all with ease.
"Let's put this matter aside for a second." Nagisa said, raising his hand up. "How about we try to teach Ritsu how to use her body, like we're supposed to?"
Everyone nodded and returned their attention to the terminal and the pod.
"So, Ritsu. Can you describe to us what difficulty you're having with your body?" Nagisa asked. He figured that since he'd been more or less forced into the role of a caretaker, he should be active.
"Hmm…attempting to put effort into the body is quite strenuous even with the RAM in my terminal." She confessed, sounding worried. "I think I will have to prioritize the body just to be able to properly attempt using it."
"Alright, then let's try that." Nagisa nodded readily, and he walked over to the pod and close to Ritsu's bio-android body. "Go ahead. Just talk through my phone or something if something happens."
"Affirmative, Nagisa." She said, and the terminal screen powered off.
It was silent. Everyone stared at the female body that lay in the iron casket and waited expectantly. They were all wondering what was gonna happen. If the body would start moving immediately, if she would let out a yawn or something, or whatever.
Nagisa gulped down a bit of saliva when he saw Ritsu's eyes open and focus directly on his own. It sent a strange feeling down his spine, knowing that Ritsu, the Autonomous Thinking Fixed Artillery girl that had been driven by an artificial intelligence up until this point and technically still is driven by one, was staring at him like any normal person would.
Normal had been thrown out of the window the instant the teacher had introduced himself.
He took a step back in reflex when he saw the bio-android's body move for a bit. Her eyelids twitched once before her eyes opened.
Everyone looked at her with expressions of nervousness and wonder.
"Nagisa." The terminal faced the blue-haired androgynous boy, and the display booted up again with the words Audio Only on the screen. "I must report to you the state in which my body is in so that you can better assess the situation."
"Um…okay." He nodded, unsure of what else he could possibly say.
"As of now, I am capable of perceiving information through five different information gathering points." She began, and Nagisa couldn't help but feel reminded of a lecture. "The synthetic body can process audio well, so speaking to me and having it understand you will not prove to be any problem."
"Can you speak?" Hara asked, poking the bio-android's cheek. The instant her finger touched Ritsu's artificially reproduced skin, her eyebrows scrunched together. "Whoa, your smooth is so unbelievably smooth and soft!"
"I cannot speak as of now." Ritsu replied. "Unfortunately, I am not accustomed to moving the body as I please. There is very little simulation data to use, so I must force the program to move it as I wish."
"That's alright." Isogai replied, shaking his head. "You'll just have to learn it bit by bit. Come on, try it."
"Affirmative."
Terasaka and Yoshida suddenly burst out laughing, and everyone held back their own chuckle when they saw Ritsu's body move her lips as if it had been injected with a dentist's anesthesia in more than five places.
"Ritsu?" Nagisa asked. "What are you doing?"
"Experimenting with the movement of my lips in order to ascertain my ability to speak."
"Awawarawabuh." A large amount of fluent nonsense proceeded to exit her lips, and Muramatsu joined Yoshida and Terasaka while they fell to their knees and clutched at their stomachs while busting out their extremely obnoxious laughs.
"My apologies for creating such an embarrassing noise." Ritsu apologized.
"Actually…can she feel embarrassment?" Ryuunosuke wondered out loud.
"You fool!" Okajima replied, stomping his foot passionately into the ground and pointed his finger at Ryuunosuke. "Embarrassment is the essence of 2D!"
"…Nagisa." Rtisu's body suddenly spoke with crystal clear precision and enunciation, and everyone's jaw dropped at the suddenness of the change.
"Hey, that's too much of a leap when she didn't know how to talk less than five minutes ago!" Maehara exclaimed in shock, staring at Ritsu.
"Why was her first word your name?!" Okajima just shot a death glare mixed with envy at Nagisa, who took a step away from him when he noticed it.
"You will prove a most capable student in my class in this body, Ritsu." Koro-Sensei gloated, his grin looking boastful with his face now a mixture of yellow and green stripes. "Your learning capabilities are top notch."
"Anyway, we need to teach her like a person if that's how this works." Nagisa said, walking over to the hatch and standing in front of the bio-android. "Ritsu, we're going to try walking next. You'll have to learn this through trial and error, but we're all here to help you."
"See? Appointing Nagisa was the right choice." Nakamura remarked, grinning. She glanced at the rest of her classmates, as if urging them to agree with her.
"Yeah, he's really acting the part." Kanzaki agreed, giggling. "Kinda like a dad."
"I shall attempt to have my body move." Ritsu suddenly said, and everyone immediately turned their attention to the pod.
The bio-android's eyes opened wide again, the same light blue as her virtual avatar. After taking a few hesitant blinks, her arm twitched twice before her fingers began clenching and opening.
"Analyzing methodology behind muscle movements…performing required calculations and preparations." Ritsu recited like a mathematician would recite Pi. "Compensating for gravity and weight…"
"She's like a toddler." Sugino muttered as he watched. "A really, really smart toddler."
She suddenly rose into a sitting position and faced Nagisa, her still lips slowly curling into a faint smile. Despite this, it felt surreal for everyone present to hear her speak yet for her physical body's lips to not speak. The audio was still playing from her terminal. "Movement successful. Now attempting to exit-"
As she attempted to clamber out of the steel pod, she suddenly lost her grip and tumbled out of it much to everyone's alarm.
"Ritsu!" Nagisa cried out, managing to catch her and keep her from hitting the floor. "…nice catch" uttered Yoshida as he lowered the hand that he'd lifted out of concern and reflex.
"Damn you, Nagisa!" Okajima wept, tearing apart one of his magazines in despair. "You're triggering all of the flags! Even though you're a trap!"
I'm going to ignore that. Nagisa decided, and he turned his attention back to Ritsu. "Hey, are you-"
It took him that long to realize that several sensations were bombarding him all at once. He'd caught Ritsu in his arms, so they were in a position where her chin was resting on his shoulder. His arms were encircling her waist, and he could feel the back of his head throbbing from making contact with the floor. In that position, however, he could feel the unmistakeable sensation of her smooth and soft skin that was not only in his hands, but was also touching his cheek.
A mix of lavender and lilacs made his brain melt, and he realized that the scent was coming from Ritsu's neck as if her sweat had been mixed with flowers. There was also an extraordinarily soft sensation pressing into his chest, which he was trying his best not to think about.
And above all, beyond the feeling of frailty that he was getting from her body, he sensed a very faint warmth like that of a real person's. It wasn't a feeling he was expecting from an artificially produced synthetic body.
She felt so human that he'd forgotten it for a moment.
The only thing that was processing for him then was the notion that he was embracing a girl in his arms.
And that knowledge only made his face heat and his heartbeat suddenly skip.
"Nagisa, I'm detecting an abnormality in your temperature and your pulse." Ritsu recited, her tone edged with worry. "It has escalated to thirty-eight degrees Celsius, and your heartbeat has reached an estimate of 170 BPM. Are you feeling ill?"
"Whew, it's getting hot in here!" Nakamura sneered mischievously, fanning herself with a textbook. "You go, Nagisa!"
"N-no, I'm fine!" Nagisa stuttered an answer to Ritsu's question, sitting Ritsu up and making distance between them. He scrambled a good two feet away and tried to regain his composure. "…why do you smell like lavender and lilacs, Ritsu?"
Suddenly, a loud thud and the sound of wood splintering startled everyone and forced them to turn in the direction of the noise.
But it was just Okajima standing next to Takebayashi, both of them with their hands slammed into the nearest desk and their heads planted into the wood.
Okajima let out a curse and slammed his fist again, and he sank to his knees. "…dear God, I want to kill him…"
Takebayashi rose back into a standing position, his glasses reflecting what seemed to be so much light that his eyes were rendered unseeable. "…for a real lifer to trigger those kinds of flags…is he even human?"
"To answer your question, Nagisa," Ritsu began, and the rest of the class decided to ignore Okajima and Takebayashi. "I used the information of flowers that I had gathered previously and decided to incorporate them into the body's natural scent. I'd gathered this information via the Light Novels that Koro-Sensei provided for me."
"Aside from the fact that we'll be killing this idiot later, people don't naturally smell like flowers, Ritsu." Karma commented, casually swiping his knife again and again with Koro-Sensei dodging each blow with ease. "Maybe you should change it so that you're not that out of place."
"Affirmative, but I have a lack of data concerning the smell of a human." Ritsu replied worriedly. "Hmm…" Her body suddenly turned to face Nagisa. "Nagisa, I apologize for bothering you, but would you do me a favor by allowing me to copy your scent?"
Never before in his life did the middle-school student turn as bright red as he did that moment.
"W-w-wait, what?! What are you talking about?!" Nagisa stood up and he shook his head and waved his arms simultaneously. "I d-don't think that's a good idea!"
"What's the problem, Nagisa?" Karma suddenly stepped forward, his grin looking so wicked that anyone could describe it as evil. "We're trying to help her out."
"Wouldn't it be better if she got the scent of a girl instead?" Nagisa complained in reply, and he turned to the girls desperately.
"Uh…" Not a single one of them moved to help him. Nakamura just winked in half-sincere apology.
"Anyway, let's get back on topic and leave the scent thing for another time." Nagisa replied, sighing and turning back to Ritsu. "Ritsu, can you try walking? I'll help you out."
"Alright, Nagisa." She nodded cautiously. It really looked like she was trying to get used to the motion of her head moving up an down, as well as everything she was already doing.
She began pushing herself off of the floor, and she slowly and unsteadily rose to her feet. Wobbling a bit, she leaned onto a desk next to her and tried to balance herself. Nagisa walked over to her, preparing his mind and heart as he waited for her to take the few steps forward.
Ritsu took a very cautious step forward, and she suddenly pitched forward so quickly that Nagisa felt himself moving purely by reflex as he caught her by the hand, with his other arm encircling her waist to stop her from falling.
"My, you're bolder than I thought." Nakamura teased, a sly grin on her face that clearly looked like she plotting all sorts of things.
"I didn't do it on purpose!" Nagisa cried out in reply, and he helped Ritsu back to her feet. "Here, can you try walking again? I'll hold your hand while you do, so that you can balance more easily."
"Thank you, Nagisa." She said gratefully, smiling radiantly enough to make Okajima bleed tears of joy.
…even if she is a bio-android, why are her hands so soft? I practically can't tell the difference anymore! Nagisa thought to himself as his fingers melded with Ritsu's.
And that marked the first day Student 27 of Class E got herself a body.
In the words of Nagisa Shiota, the transfer student's development has taken an odd turn.