What do you wear on a date to a park when you are then going to be working with your date on cosplay the rest of the day?

I have absolutely no clue what I am doing right now besides staring into my closet, I have no experience doing this as a guy let alone as a girl. Are you supposed to do something conservative, risqué, practical, or are you supposed to even dress up at all? Maybe I should just be wearing what I already have on, these leggings and this tank top aren’t exactly dirty or worn after all, but that feels way too lazy.

Pretty sure I am bad at this.

Let’s try a different angle what might Anna like? I don’t really know her well enough to say really. I know she finds it interesting that I am a robot, beyond that I guess she had admitted to looking at me lean over.

Hmm.

Well, this white crop top shows some midriff and that’s pretty clearly robotic looking on me so that might be a start. I haven’t worn it before other than trying it on, but this dark blue skirt should do the swishy side-to-side thing when I walk. I remember liking that on other girls in my memories, so maybe Anna will like it too. It sort of looked like I had too little on for this weather even if I don’t notice it and I think showing less is more impactful or something, so I threw on an unbuttoned blue dress shirt over top.

I needed something for my phone and stuff, so I found the small grey handbag. it took a few tries to figure out where to have it before deciding to put it under the dress shirt so as to not crinkle the shirt with the strap.

I don’t really have anything to put over my bare legs as I don’t have stockings or something, so I guess bare mechanical limbs it is. Thinking about it, top ridiculous would be thigh highs for absolute territory but I don’t have those so just regular socks it is.

I stared at myself in the mirror for a bit, I think it works. The colors don’t look too wonky, and I don’t feel like I will be uncomfortable if people look at me either.

It kinda started me evaluating my looks though.

I wonder was she thinks of my skin? It looks pale because it’s basically slightly pink-tinted skin textured plastic or rubber over shiny metal without any blood or tissues to make it look… human.

Is it weird to wear this top? it does point out I don’t exactly have big boobs. They just about fill my hands if I cup them, but I have small hands now.

Would she actually want to look at my midriff? I have an implication of a belly button and whoever designed me didn’t make me overweight, but it’s also segmented and not buff or particularly sculpted looking or anything.

In general, I don’t really look particularly shapely just kinda average. I guess I was supposed to be an actual maid, not an anime waifu one so that makes sense. Ok well, my hair is very much anime.

Pulling myself away from considering my reflection I checked my phone, it looks like I am out of time so I hope this get-up works as I can’t really change it anymore. I didn’t even leave enough time to consult with my roommates on any of this date stuff, so uh time to wing it.

Heading downstairs, I grabbed my remaining pair of runners before tying them quickly and rushing out the door. I need to get more shoes, I have zero style choices and based on the fate of my other pair the capability to easily destroy them.

I spent the bus ride over to her place getting increasingly nervous, I was so confident before when proposing this but now I have no idea what I am doing. What if she doesn’t like the park? It’s still early spring so it could be pretty ugly. Can I talk about things she is interested in? I know I could listen to Anna’s enthusiasm for cosplay forever, she’s so cute when she’s happy like that and it’s genuinely interesting. I can’t talk about what I learned at the Department, I guess I can talk about the changee meeting last week but then I am blathering about the other changees and disrespecting their privacy. After that my remaining topics are schoolwork or roommates or…

The brutal bodily harm I committed a week ago

I need to tell her about it because I don’t want her to learn of it some other way, it wouldn’t be fair to her.

Great, I’m wonderful.

My thoughts swirled away across similar topics the remainder of the way, distracting me from any reactions of those around me.

----------------------------------------

OK.

No putting it off, I’m at her door, at the right time.

I don’t know if I’m the right me though.

I press the bell.

It almost immediately opens to a nervous-looking Anna.

She’s wearing a somewhat faded t-shirt with an abstract design on it, a pair of not quite fitting jeans, and a worn-out cloth jacket. Her mousey face is surrounded by her usual messy light blue hair, I don’t even really know if it’s intentionally styled that way or not.

She’s beautiful.

I don’t know what I am supposed to say, but my eyes are glued to her face trying to figure out her reaction. To see if I’m rejected.

Her eyes started at my face before wandering down, she got increasingly red as they went on their journey. Her eyes stopped, I am pretty sure she is looking at my belly, after just a moment they jerked back up to meet mine.

“Hi Anna, you look nice.” I manage to get out.

“You have a belly button.” She squeaked before developing a look of horror, and then she tried again. “Hi Sam, you look, um, pretty.”

I don’t think anyone had given me a bigger compliment.

I pulled her into a hug, trying not to get caught up in how nice she felt.

“Oh, I love you Anna.” I said only a bit muffled because of the differences in our heights.

“Can I say I love you too?” She asked uncertainly while returning the embrace.

“Of course you can!” I said overjoyed at the possibility.

“I love you Sam.”

We stood there for a bit, then a voice interrupted us.

“Are you two going on your walk together or were you just gonna let the cold air in?” Reiko asked sardonically from behind Anna.

We awkwardly released each other, and Anna turned a bit so she could look back into the house, which gave me a view of Reiko giving us a wide grin and making a shoo-ing motion. Rather than remain with an audience we bundled out into the spring day, awkwardly walking hand in hand towards the park.

----

This is a nice little stream; it’s got the right number of rocks that have just the right number of green plants among them with the nice clear water running through them. A few nice willows line the river, but they don’t completely obscure the lake down past where it turns into the marshy land with last year’s cattails still standing proud. No one is around but the two of us on the little bridge over the river, to the silence is only broken by my sounds, the wind in the trees, and the occasional chickadee or cardinal call.

It's probably also the best place to let Anna know a bit about what happened last week. We’ve had some nice conversations that meandered between cosplay, the possibility of my using magic for feeling, school, and roommates’ antics.

But we would be heading back from this point on, and I don’t know that putting it off will make it any better.

“Is something wrong Sam? You’re looking upset.” Anna asked with concern, causing me to sigh.

“Sorta, I do need to have a conversation with you that might be a bit uncomfortable.” I admitted, not looking away from the water.

“Did I-“ she started.

“No Anna, it’s nothing you did. It’s something I did.” I said while rubbing a finger on the wood of the bridge in front of me for a moment before turning to look at her. “Do you remember that guess you had on Monday?”

“What guess?” She asked confused, then paused for a moment before she got a slight frown. “About the kidnapping and you being involved?”

“Yeah, you were right.” I admitted quietly.

“You were kidnapped?!” She asked startled. “But how is that about something you did?”

“Well, turns out the attempt didn’t go as they planned, otherwise I would be dead along with a friend,” Then before she could say anything I asked her a question. “Hey Anna, what am I?”

“You’re Sam.” She responded.

“But what is my body?” I asked while pointing at the back of my head with my left and leaning against the other on the bridge.

“Oh, you’re a Battle-Maid!” She said eyes widening.

“Yeah,” I said with a sad smile. “And when I heard my friend start to scream, I… tried to stop them.”

“Anna, I hurt some people r-really badly,” I said tears in my eyes. “I-I’m …”

I trailed off not sure what to say, my vision obscured by tears. She stood silently for a moment, then stepped forward and wrapped me in a hug.

“Did you save your friend?” She asked quietly around my sobs.

“Y-yeah.”

“Did you want to hurt those people?”

“N-no.”

“Was it dangerous?” Her questions continued.

“Yeah.“ I said a bit less shakily. “I got shot.”

“You go-“ She stopped with a breath and then asked another question. “You fought a bunch of armed kidnappers, who intended to kill you, to save your friend and you didn’t want to hurt them?”

I nodded, not sure where she was going.

“Isn’t that what heroes do?” She asked a grin tinting her voice.

How do you respond to that?

“But I hurt them so easily, what if I hurt you?” I still hadn’t returned the hug, my hands clutched into fists at my sides, as I was remembering the crunch of broken bones from my actions.

“Do you intend to?”

“No, of course not!”

“Sam, look at me.” She said pulling away a bit, and I looked up to meet her eyes. “You’ve been incredibly gentle with me even when I have been completely insensitive. Never once have I been worried you might hurt me, and I don’t see that changing.”

“So, trust yourself, and know that I’m not the least bit scared of you.” She got a wide grin, then continued in a conspiratorial whisper. “Besides not only do I have a robot girlfriend but they are a hero too.”

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I steamed up a bit.

“Oh, why would you put it that way, now the other thing is just going to sound cringy.” I mumbled.

“Oooh?” She asked mischievously.

“I got… recruited to try and help people, and they were going to train me how to fight,” I said awkwardly. “So I don’t injure people, you know.”

“Then why are you so worried about all this you silly girl?” She asked with a laugh.

“Because I thought you might hate me because I-I’m… dangerous.” I mumbled.

“Not to me, and not to those who mean you no harm.” She said still smiling, then pulled my back into a hug. “Now are you going to hug me back or not?”

I shakily released the fists my hands were in and brought them back around her trying to be gentle.

“I’m not that delicate Sam!” She laughed into my hair.

I hugged her back properly this time.

“There we are.” She said, then brought her head down, gently pushing against me so she could rest her cheek against mine.

Ahhhh.

I’m pretty sure I tried to say something, but it was incomprehensible.

I don’t know how long passed like that, but eventually, she started to pull away. Just as I was starting to come back, I felt something soft against my lips and my eyes fluttered open. It was just a brief kiss, but her face in mine, her breath on me, and the feel of her contact were wonderful.

She pulled away then opened her green eyes and gave me a grin. “Gotta make progress right?”

----------------------------------------

I don’t think I was any good at conversation on the way back to her place, I was too distracted by well, her, but she didn’t seem to mind. Anna brought me down to her room excitedly speaking of the stuff that had arrived, we wouldn’t have everything, but the main fabric was here for the dress and shirt along with the pattern.

We spent a long time with just the pattern, its crinkly tissue paper sheets laid out on her sowing desk as she pointed out how the sizing was determined. Fortunately, I had the measurements my mom had made of me back on the second day of having this body saved on my phone. We ended up redoing a few of them, as Anna was more specific in what she was looking for but that didn’t take too long.

Once we had the right sizes roughly figured out, to which she mentioned that it would never be right until we had fitted it to me, we marked the areas to cut before she found me some scissors and I started into it. I worked she moved to her other desk, where the desktop and monitor had been pushed back to allow her to work on the scythe I had seen on Tuesday.

“Out of curiosity, I don’t remember Alita having a red and black mechanical scythe, were you going to work on a different costume for the con?” I asked after curiosity got the best of me a few minutes later.

“Ah no, this is actually a commission. I make stuff for people I know to help pay for the materials and stuff for my projects.” She held up the scythe head for a moment. “This is the main character’s weapon from RWBY, it’s not really a show I’m into but it’s for a friend and they are paying me.”

“That’s cool, do you do a lot of commissions?”

“Not really, mostly enough to make the hobby not feel too expensive.” She shrugged.

“Makes sense. Oh yeah, I am gonna be getting some money from the uh stuff I am doing, so I’m going to buy you materials and stuff for teaching me.”

“Oh, you don’t have to!” She said turning towards me. “I’m just glad you want to learn.”

“It’s the least I can do for borrowing your space and expertise.” I insisted, then paused in my cutting to give her a grin. “Plus, then I get to see more of what you want to do for yourself.”

She reddened a bit.

“… I might take you up on that then.” She mumbled back, then went back to working on the scythe.

A bit later, she stood up and stretched. “I’m just gonna grab some water and some snacks, I’ll be right back.”

Crinkle, crinkle.

“OK.” I answered still focused on the pattern as she went upstairs.

Crinkle, crinkle.

The cuff of this shirt keeps on catching against the patterns. I distractedly shucked out of the shirt and tossed it onto her bed to have somewhere it would be safe and went back to cutting.

A few minutes later I could hear her coming down the stairs again and her voice filtered down ahead of her.

“I got something I hope you might like from what you said last ti-“ She cut off with a choking sound.

“Are you OK?” I asked looking up from the pattern towards her with concern.

She was looking at me wide-eyed and turning red with a couple of stacked bowls of stuff and two glasses of water on a tray.

“Anna, what’s wrong?” I asked worriedly.

“Nothing” She squeaked out hurrying over to put the tray down on the computer desk.

“There’s no way it’s nothing-“ I paused and looked down, without the dress shirt what I was wearing was pretty minimal up top.

I looked back up at her while trying to think of what to say.

“Enjoying the view?” I said lamely after not coming up with anything better.

“…Yes.” She said with a swallow.

“Oh.”

“Sorry.” She said looking away.

I kinda like how she’d been looking at me, am I weird for thinking that?

“Nah it’s fine… I uh…” I trailed and looked down. “I don’t really know what I’m doing, I just wore what I thought you might like.”

She awkwardly laughed.

“You weren’t wrong, but you don’t need to wear something you wouldn’t otherwise for me.” She said trying to reassure me.

“I uh… kinda like them?” I admitted quietly. “They’re cute.”

She giggled.

“I uh realized I need to get long socks though, so I can do the gap thing, absolute territory right?” I said with a crooked grin at her.

She was rolling with laughter at this point, and I felt the smile turn genuine.

“Did you notice the swish? The skirt should be the right length for that, but I don’t know that I walk in a way for it to work.”

“Oooh yes, I noticed.” She said breathlessly between bouts of laughter. “Look at what I wore! I don’t even have anything for a date, I haven’t been on one since first year and none of it fits anymore.”

“I don’t mind in the least though!” I countered.

“Really?” She asked with a gentle flush.

“Yeah, you’re beautiful!” I chirped.

She startled, then gave me a steady look and after a moment’s delay, I started steaming up realizing what I had been saying.

“You’re adorable.” She said with a laugh wrapping her arms around my shoulders, giving me a hug while avoiding the pattern still in my lap. Once she released me a moment or two later, she went back to the tray and unstacked the bowls, looking over I realized one had wood chips to her actual chips. Huh, she also had chopsticks too, wonder what’s up with that.

“Thank you!” I said gratefully accepting the bowl of wood chips, then looked a bit confused at the chopsticks she also offered but accepted them.

“I don’t know that you need the chopsticks with the wood, but the idea is so you can eat without getting grease or dust on your fingers.” She said demonstrating with a chip.

“Huh, hadn’t thought of that.” I said while trying it out, it worked pretty well.

“It’s not the best with stuff that can break like chips but as long as you’re careful it’s fine.”

After a few chips, she set her bowl aside and went to look at the patterns I had finished cutting out.

“Huh, these are really good cuts, you haven’t been spending too long on them right?” She asked. “It’s not super precise.”

“Uh, I have really good hand-eye coordination now and stuff like this is really easy for me.” I admitted pausing with a wood chip in my chopsticks.

“I don’t think your margin is more than a millimeter other than where the scissors were turning, that’s wild.” She said while rotating one of the sheets.

“I am a machine.” I said with a sardonic grin

“Are you OK with saying that?” She asked looking away from the pattern to me.

“I’m not really sure, to be honest,” I said with a shrug. “It’s the truth, but it feels… not great. Dehumanizing. Which isn’t wrong per say…”

I don’t really have words for it, I guess.

“Kinda seems like a slur to say it of a person.” She said nodding. “OK that word is out as a description of yourself, you good with that?”

“Yeah. Thanks.” I said a bit uncomfortable.

“Well either way it’s cool how precise you are, it took me ages to get accurate cutting stuff!” She gave me a grin.

I smiled back, then placed the bowl of wood chips on the counter and went back to cutting the patterns out.

A few minutes later another thought crossed my mind. “Hey Anna, are patterns like these common? That seems like it would take a lot of time out of projects if you don’t need to figure it out from scratch for everything.”

“In a word, no,” she said spinning her chair in place while taking a break from the scythe. “Popular stuff yeah, but if you get into anything uncommon you might find people’s own pattern or nothing at all. If nothing else, copyright gets awkward, so there are people that do close enough versions they sell or partner with companies.”

“You might get a rough base without any sizing figured out and then have to dial it in to exactly what you want.” She finished. “Maid dresses though, that’s easy.”

“Huh, neat. What about for that Alita one you want to do?” I asked.

“Nothing that I could find, so I am going to be starting with a generic jacket and jumpsuit patterns and then modify them to get the details I want.”

“Bummer.”

“Eh, it’s not too bad as I have some patterns roughly fitted for me already to start as a base.” She gave me a grin. “Besides some of the fun is figuring out how to do it yourself, other people’s work will never quite match how you picture it.”

“Yeah, I can see that.” I admitted. “OK, I think this is the last of these.”

“Alright, let’s clear some floor space and get to laying out the patterns on the fabric.”

We spent a while trying to get just the patterns for the black right, she pointed out not only maximizing the obvious efficiency but also making useful scraps.

“I sometimes prefer to be less efficient overall so I get pieces I know I can use later,” She said carefully stepping between the patterns and pointing at spots on the way. “Like here is a nice large bit that could be for a pocket or something but that little strip is not much good for anything.”

“OK, makes sense, so would you move this here?” I said while pointing between some pieces.

I was not much good at this, and I didn’t have any advantages offered by being a… synthetic. If anything, I think I might be worse at evaluating the space quickly, I’m pretty sure its harder to picture the shapes in my head.

“That could work, it’s mostly not a big deal in this case as it’s not too expensive fabric and we got lots.” She answered with a shrug. “I’m mostly trying to get you thinking on it, for when you get into really pricy materials.”

“Cool.” I tried walking back and forth around the laid-out fabric and patterns. “Would you say this is good enough overall?”

“Yep, you’ll just get better from repetition so don’t worry about it.” She said with a nod after a quick survey herself

“So, you could do a few different ways of cutting accurate pieces, chalk lines, and pins being the main ones I use.” She started before turning to open a drawer in the sowing desk and offering me a small plastic bin of assorted pins. “Some patterns have a single piece reused or folded to make additional shapes, in which case I would use chalk, but here they gave you a complete set so I would just pin the pieces on.”

“They don’t need to be down perfectly either, mostly just enough to keep them from flopping around when you’re cutting.” She said after I took them.

An indeterminate time later and they are all hooked on, a more annoying task than I was expecting after I noticed that it wouldn’t be hard to have them be pulling the fabric in weird ways.

“Yeah, that is an advantage to chalk, it doesn’t mess with the fabric.” She confirmed when I finished “Don’t worry about it though, it looks fine.”

She then pulled a pair of scissors from a different drawer, this pair was clearly of a different make from the ones I had been using earlier.

“Now these are super sharp and only for normal fabric, using them on anything else could dull them, and getting them sharpened is a pain.” She warned me before handing them over, she then gave me a grin. “If you don’t mind, I will watch for a bit. I am curious to see if your fabric cutting is as accurate as with the patterns.”

Yep, really good at precise cuts here too. It felt more natural than the paper and it sort of reminded me of chopping vegetables-

“Ah, shit.” I said aloud as the thought crossed my mind.

“What’s up?” Anna asked setting the nearly complete scythe down.

“It’s another weird being a maid robot thing, remember me telling you about cooking earlier?”

“Yeah, you said you were enjoying it way more than you would have before.” She said with a slight frown.

“Yeah, my brain has different reward processes than a human, and I think it really likes getting into this.” I said while rubbing my chin and looking at the scissors in my hand.

“…is it why you started getting interested in cosplay?” She asked a tone of sadness in her voice.

“Hmm? Oh no, I don’t think that reward system got involved at all until this point.” I answered a bit distracted still. “I’m pretty sure this more means that I might actually enjoy doing this in a physical sense humans don’t have. Which feels weird not gonna lie, but it’s not a bad thing.”

I shrugged and looked up to give her a lopsided grin.

“Depending on how strong this one gets you might have difficulty keeping me away.” I said, and her face went through a complex set of expressions.

“Are you OK with your emotions being… manipulated like that.” She asked a bit pained.

I considered it relative to my ‘Am I the same person chain’ for a few seconds.

“Yep, it’s more like getting satisfaction from exercise rather than feeling like my mind is being manipulated, it’s just that I have a different set of imperatives to the usual biological ones.” I said once I had a decent description thought out.

She studied me for a few seconds and then sighed.

“Just as long as you’re happy, I guess.” She said dissatisfied but turned back anyway.

I put down the scissors and walked over having to her chair having to step around the patterns on the fabric.

“Anna, I’m ok with this change,” I said while hugging her from behind the chair. “There’s things I don’t know if I will ever fully reconcile, but this isn’t one of them.”

“There’s nothing forcing me to do anything, my brain can encourage me to do something but it’s just that,” I said gently. “I might want to do things more because I have positive feelings associated with memories of doing them.”

“That isn’t unique to me though, people’s tastes and desires change over their life, and they discover they like things they didn’t even consider.” I continued. “It’s more I just had a lot of life happen at once.”

“Ok.” She said with a sniffle. “But I get to use that on you if you get worried like you did earlier today.”

I startled, then chuckled.

“Sure thing Anna.”

----------------------------------------

There’s a lot of fabric that goes into even a small dress, like a lot, well it’s all cut out at least.

“I don’t think there’s enough time to start cutting out the blouse.” I commented to Anna after checking the time.

“Probably not.” She agrees as she was vaguely swinging the completed scythe around and checking it wasn’t flexing in weird ways. “How about I show you sewing by hand and machine instead?”

The sewing machine turned out to be some reasonably fancy one she got off an old lady who had upgraded a few years ago. She mentioned a bunch of things it could do, but it mostly went over my head, and she dismissed them as mostly not being a big deal anyway besides the various feet that made specific tasks easier.

Honestly, it’s not that hard to use, although the foot peddles sensitivity was kinda weird to get used to. She had me doing various ways of hiding joins, most of which was more straightforward than I was expecting. She did have a list of warnings about what the needles can and can’t go through, along with little lessons on when you might want this type of thread or that kind.

She kept it basic with hand sewing for now since it’d mostly for attaching awkward pieces, nothing too complex. I was pretty good at getting consistent-looking stitches, so that’s a plus. The small pile of scraps I generated ended up quite useful in the end, my practice becoming odd fabric boxes or other nonsensical shapes.

Once we ran out of time, she pulled what seemed like a giant paper binder out from under her bed to stick pieces of the skirt into. She had no clue if they were a standard thing, it was something her mom made her back in high school and they help keep stuff organized and flat.

Then after a few blissful moments where she touched her face to mine, it was time for me to head back, grab a late dinner and work on assignments until bed. The others mostly were out or working on assignments, so I never really got an opinion on my choice of clothes from anyone other than Anna.

Neat.