((this was a gag ending I wrote when I wasn't sure how to actually end this thing, decided I might as well post it))

"Kululu, Kululu, Kululu..."

Kululu took hold of Dororo's face and took a good, long look. Then he kissed Dororo right back.

The feeling was mutual. The argument didn't matter now. Only Dororo. Only each other.

–

It was now that Keroro realized, for about the fiftieth time, just how corny this story was.

This wasn't the kind of thing that happened in real life. This was the sort of thing found in romance novels that you hid under your bed so no one would know you read them. This was the sort of thing dateless teenagers daydreamed about when they should have been working on other things.

But as far as assignments went, it would have to do.

It had been an odd assignment. Apparently the people back on Keron who worked on their television show had done a recent survey, saying that audiences wanted more romance. And not just one-sided crushes that never went anywhere, actual romance. So they'd told Keroro to make some for them.

Keroro wasn't much in the way of matchmaker, and all the confusing love triangles around him were too complicated to mess with. (Or at least the TV Executives said there were love triangles everywhere. Keroro thought they were just making things up for ratings. Lady Moa having a thing for him! Ridiculous.)

So he'd asked them if it would be all right to just make something up for their show, rather than making anything actually happen in real life. It wasn't worth getting mixed up in. Thankfully, they'd agreed.

Looking at the relationship chart they'd sent him, Keroro had chosen two of the very few people who seemed to have no romantic ties yet, and had just thrown them together to see what would happen. It had turned into fifteen pages of dramatic nonsense scattered all over his table. Not just dramatic nonsense, but nearly NC-17 dramatic nonsense. If he was a more easily embarrassed kind of guy, he'd never have been able to face his teammates again. Imagine, writing soft-core porn about his coworkers, and on orders, no less.

He sighed and chewed the end of his pencil. At least it was almost done. Next time, he'd just tell the TV executives to deal with it themselves.

He started tapping his pencil against his desk, resting his chin in his other hand. But how to end it? Stopping here just didn't seem to fit. You don't end an episode with two people kissing, at least not if it isn't their first mutual kiss. That was basic. No, the end had to be something good, something solid. No twists, no copouts, no humorous reveals. Those were techniques for amateurs and cowards.

Keroro thought and thought for what may have been a good five minutes, when at last, it came to him. With a delighted grin, he wrote the final lines with a speed that nearly tore through the paper.

His pencil rolled away to rest. With a satisfied smirk, Keroro straightened up the pages and looked at his work.

Fifteen pages of bullshit. All to be played on intergalactic television.

A wonderful accomplishment indeed.

Now, though, he needed a nap. He slipped a paperclip over the pages, tossed them back on the desk, and went to bed.

An hour or so later, Dororo leapt to the floor from an air vent. Keroro was in too deep of sleep to hear him.

"Captain, sir, I—oh." He sighed. It hadn't been anything too important, but still he'd hoped to speak with Keroro for a while. "I guess I'll come back later..."

"Ku ku! You too, eh?" said Kululu, slipping up through the floor from one of his secret tunnels. "And the Captain asked me to come here himself. Figures... kuu ku ku ku..."

"Oh, uh... yes..." Dororo and Kululu didn't speak much, and when they did, Dororo was never sure what to say. He decided for now it would be best just to retreat. "Uh, I guess I'll see you later, then..."

But Kululu wasn't paying attention to him anymore. Instead, the grinning sergeant major had picked up a stack of papers from Keroro's desk. "Well, hello, ku ku..."

"Kululu! Those are Keroro-kun's private papers, and you should not be... is... is that my name?" Kululu passed him the first page. One look at the first sentence, and Dororo's face rivaled a ripe Red Delicious. "W... what is this!"

"Ku ku! This is terrible," said Kululu, scanning some of the end pages. "He wrote me crying. Crying! Ku ku ku ku!"

"This... This is so..." Dororo grabbed at a few more pages, his face still burning. He scanned over a particular passage and swallowed. "...Ah..."

Dororo glanced at Kululu. Before he could stop them, his eyes had flickered over Kululu's figure. He hastily shook himself out of it and returned to skimming.

"Is there even a plot to this thing? Ku ku... ku..." His laughter trailed off, and for a moment Kululu just read in silence, his attention caught by something Dororo wasn't sure he wanted to read. Now even Kululu's cheeks were red.

Dororo offered a nervous chuckle. "And these ideas, I don't... I mean, a robot just for..." He tried to ignore how the thought made his mouth go dry.

Kululu glanced over his shoulder to read the sentence he was talking about. "Actually, ku," he said, "I have a machine like that. Ku ku!"

Dororo could feel his mind crackle. "Y... you do?"

"Ku ku, yea...h..." Kululu turned to Dororo and had to pause. Dororo was looking at him, but at the same time at something far away. It occurred to him now that they were both seeing each other very differently.

Kululu swallowed away an odd lump in his throat and leaned in closer. "You know... ku... if you ever wanted to see it..."

"KERORO!"

Both Dororo and Kululu visibly jumped as Giroro slammed open the door. Dororo threw the pages together and slapped them back on the table while Kululu disappeared back down into the floor. Giroro paid no attention to either of them, stalking straight to Keroro to throttle him over something or other.

Seeing that Giroro was distracted, Dororo didn't bother to escape into the ceiling. Instead, he used the door.

In the hallway, a section of wall rotated to reveal a monitor. It displayed Kululu in his lab, grin more devilish than before.

"Ku ku! So," he said, "Meet me downstairs, maybe...?"

Dororo took a moment's pause, but in the end there wasn't much to think about. Sure it was unprofessional, but since when had professionalism mattered so much, anyway?

He smiled. "See you soon."