Chapter 16:

Hina X Yasu

The Hoshinauts


Kibou had become a maelstrom of cloth, with Maeko sitting calmly at its center. With only a pair of scissors and a handheld sewing machine, she transformed bolts of fabric into T-shirts, shorts, socks, and underwear. The others kept sneaking peeks at her throughout the day. Clothing in the Federation was produced by specialized machines on an industrial scale. They’d never seen anyone sew in person.

Sachiko had an additional reason for wanting to observe Maeko.

“Going to see the topless robot again?” Hina jibed as Sachiko made her way through Destiny.

In order to power the sewing machine, Maeko had plugged it into the charging port on her upper back. This required her to unzip the top of her jumpsuit and tie the arms around her waist.

Sachiko rolled her eyes. “Like you weren’t in there five minutes ago.”

“Her bad habits are rubbing off on you.”

“How so?”

“You avoided my question.”

“OK, fine. Yes, I’m going to go take another look. That sewing machine must be custom-made, and where do you think she got all that cloth? She planned this ahead of time, and I want to figure out why.”

“You could just ask her.”

Sachiko ignored the suggestion and continued on her way. When she arrived at Kibou, she found that Yasu had set the cameras up around Maeko and was busy sketching drawings of the gynoid on her tablet.

“How’s it going?” Sachiko asked as she entered the module.

“You’re just in time,” Maeko said. “What do you think of this?” She held up a light pink dress with long sleeves and a short, frilly skirt.

“Not my style. Besides, dresses aren’t practical up here.”

“You don’t have to worry about that. It’s not actually a dress. There are separate legs, and it’s for Yasu, not you.”

“For Yasu? Too cutesy, don’t you think?”

At that comment, Yasu looked up from her tablet. “What do you mean by that? I’m not cute?”

“No! It’s just… You know how people always say we look like sisters? We’ve got similar body types, and this kind of dress—”

“I get it,” Yasu sighed. “We’re not dainty enough to look cute.”

“I believe you are both selling yourselves short,” Maeko said, tossing the jumpsuit to Yasu. “You have just as much right to your femininity as any other young woman. Try it on. I think you’ll like it. More importantly, Hina will like it.”

“Well, since you took the trouble to make it…” As soon as Sachiko and Maeko returned their attention to each other, Yasu quickly changed into her new dress-like jumpsuit. It fit perfectly, but she had one concern. “Doesn’t this show off a bit too much leg?”

Maeko gave her a thumbs-up. “I would say it shows exactly the right amount.”

As if on cue, Hina poked her head into the module. “Hey guys, mission control wants—Whoa.”

Yasu smiled. “Does it look good on me?”

“Yeah. Uh, yeah, it, uh, I didn’t realize you had such great—I mean, it looks kinda like the dresses you wore at the orphanage.”

Yasu brought her hands up to her cheeks to hide her blushing. “Is that a bad thing?”

“No. Well, but maybe something more mature might look better on you…”

“Hey,” Sachiko interrupted, “no flirting on the station.”

“Would you rather we flirt on the shuttle then?” Yasu asked.

“No—” Sachiko was going to tell them to wait until they got back to Earth, but then she remembered that they probably weren’t going to make it back. If they wanted to flirt a little before they died, was it really right to stop them?

The ISS was also due to be decommissioned. Nobody would be using it after them. It was no longer humanity’s first step into the stars: It was the world’s most expensive TV set. Nothing they did up here mattered in the long run, so they might as well do whatever they wanted.

Except, that kind of thinking would lead to a breakdown in discipline. There still needed to be a line of acceptable behavior.

“As commander of this station, I’ll allow a little flirting,” Hina declared, a mischievous smile on her face, “but let’s keep it at a reasonable level, OK? Especially you, Sachiko.”

“I would never,” Sachiko scoffed.

Hina looked at Maeko as if to ask, “hasn’t she been flirting with you?” but Maeko just shrugged her shoulders. “Anyway, mission control wants us to be ready for another shoot tomorrow morning.”

“I thought we were done filming,” Sachiko said.

“You’ll never believe it, but we’re drawing a huge audience. Way bigger than our wildest expectations. Turns out people think we’re not affected by the war, and they’re craving all the normalcy they can get.”

Sachiko frowned. “That’s bleak. If people are trying to live vicariously through us, what’s going to happen when we… you know.”

“I think that’s why they want us to film some more scenes, to make it clear what the things are really like. Anyway, I have to get back to work.”

“I should get back to work too,” Sachiko said. “How about you, Yasu?”

“I already finished my work for the day. I’m going to stay here and draw.”

From anyone else, Sachiko would have doubted it, or expected that they hadn’t done a thorough job. Yasu was a fast worker though. She wouldn’t have been able to catch up to Hina otherwise.

Left to her own devices, Yasu popped in a pair of earbuds and continued drawing. Some of the shippers were holding a voice chat to do live readings of their stories. Since the internet delay to the station was so long, she couldn’t participate, but she could at least listen in and occasionally post quick sketches in the chat.

The stories were humorous and fluffy, And Yasu was having a good time. The mood quickly got to her, and her drawings began to emphasize humor over realism, becoming little more than stick figures with big eyes and lips.

Near the end of the chat, a newer member played an audio file he had put together. It was a raunchy Sachiko x Maeko fic, and the dialogue was all cut together using sound clips from the show. Yasu usually shied away from the explicit stories, but everyone kept saying this was a funny one. When they got to the sex scene, mechanical sounds—buzzing, clicking, bleeps, and bloops—played over the dialogue. As it escalated, more industrial sounds were added, becoming ever more absurd. Pounding, drilling, even sawing.

It was all Yasu could do to keep herself from cracking up. Drawing was out of the question. When the guy announced that he had one more, Yasu didn’t know if she could hold it together, but when it started, her good mood evaporated.

“Come on, Hina, push.” Yasu heard her own voice.

“I can’t,” Hina groaned.

“Puuush. You can do it. Come on, harder. Harder!”

It was audio from the footage of Hina working out, only lightly edited. It fit right in with the other stories, only it wasn’t a story at all: It was real. These people were using the real lives of the real Yasu and Hina as fodder.

Heavy breathing came next, both Hina and Yasu’s, sourced from recordings of them exercising.

“Yasu. “Yasu. “Yasu.”

“Hina. Harder. Please, do… me… harder.”

“Feels… good. I’m… close.”

“Me too. Keep going. Harder. I’m—”

“Coming.”

A cacophony of sound clips followed. Grunting, squealing, sharp intakes of breath, and a surprised shout. Yasu couldn’t identify all of them, but they were doubtlessly recordings of her and Hina.

At the end, she heard her own voice. “That was… the best.”

“You’re… really cute… Yasu.”

That was the rotten cherry atop the festering pile. It wasn’t Yasu that Hina had originally called cute, it was Claire. As much as she hated Claire for stealing Hina’s affections from her, it didn’t feel right to fraudulently bend those feelings back towards herself.

She could no longer delude herself into believing the hoshinauts in the shipping stories were just fictional characters. They were all real, and now people on the internet were using them to fuel their perverted fantasies.

And it was all her fault.

Sachiko chose that exact moment to return to the module. “Hey, I just wanted to say thanks for making all these. This is my last jumpsuit, and—” She cut herself short when she noticed Yasu heaving on the other side of the room, desperately trying to prevent herself from throwing up. Rushing quickly to her side, Sachiko grabbed a barf bag from the wall and held it in front of Yasu’s face. She made it just in time.

As Yasu grabbed the bag, her tablet floated towards Sachiko, who got a glimpse of the screen.

Nutting on Her Bolts by SachikoIsMyWaifu
Hoshinauts

Creator chose not to use archive warnings, Sachiko/Maeko, Hoshinauts, Sachiko Cook, R. Maeko, Gynoid, Gynoid (Kink), Fluff, Smut, Futanari, Electrocution, I want Sachiko to step on me

“What the hell is this?” Sachiko demanded. She grabbed the tablet and scrolled through pages and pages of Sachiko x Maeko fics. “I thought OCOMM shut this down.”

But that wasn’t what she was really concerned about. Although many of the stories were filthy, most were wholesome. One in particular brought tears to Sachiko’s eyes.

Sachiko and Maeko’s First Kiss
Hoshinauts

No archive warnings apply, Sachiko/Maeko, Hoshinauts, Sachiko Cook, R. Maeko, Gynoid, Girls Love, Gynoid Love, Developing Relationship, True Love, I just want them to be happy, They deserve it

She had never considered the possibility of a romantic relationship with Maeko. Gynoids couldn’t love, and even if she’d fantasized about Maeko, she never planned to act on those fantasies. The more she thought about an actual relationship with Maeko though, the more she liked the idea. Maeko seemed to prefer being around Sachiko, and Sachiko enjoyed her presence. Continuing to stay together after they left the station—if that ever happened—was surprisingly appealing.

“I never told OCOMM,” Yasu admitted as she sealed the barf bag. Unable to look Sachiko in the eyes, she cast her gaze down as she explained how she had nurtured and grown the shipping community herself. She didn’t notice when both Hina and Erika entered the module halfway through her speech. “Until then, there was a separation in my mind between us and the characters in the stories. After all, I knew Hina and I could never be like that, so it was all just fantasy, but when they started using sound clips of us, it suddenly became real. Real, but wrong. My feelings for Hina are pure, not sexual. That’s gross!”

“You think sex is gross?” Hina asked, causing Yasu to jerk her head up in surprise. There was a hint of disappointment in her voice.

“It’s disgusting. All those fluids, and the rubbing… You have to believe me, I was never after your body. I love you.”

“That’s not love,” Hina sighed, “that’s nostalgia. You just want things to go back to how they were before I left.”

Yasu was crying now. “Why won’t you believe me? How many times have you just brushed it off when I told you to your face? It’s not fair. If you’re going to reject me, at least acknowledge my feelings.”

“If I may,” Maeko interjected. “I believe the feelings between you are mutual, but you have different conceptions of what love is. Both of you claim to love the other, but that the other does not love you in return.”

“Hina never said she loved me.”

“Perhaps not to your face, but she confided in me in the airlock.”

When Maeko’s mouth next opened, Hina’s voice came out. “Everyone has it backwards. They think I don’t love Yasu but wish I did, but really, I love Yasu and wish I didn’t. She’s amazing, and cute, and I want to be with her, but I would only hold her back from her true potential. She doesn’t really love me anyway. She just wants me to take care of her like I did when we were kids, but that’s not healthy for either of us.”

“That’s not true,” Yasu protested. “I don’t want to go back to how it was, and even if I did, that would be impossible. People change and grow. We’re not the same as we used to be, but even still, I want to be with you. Is that so wrong?”

“I want to be with you too, but love eventually leads to sex, you know? Maybe not now, but some day.”

Yasu shook her head violently. It was too much to process. They weren’t mad about the shipping, and even better, Hina loved her, but she wanted to do that. She couldn’t imagine herself doing it with anyone, let alone Hina, but maybe she could put up with it for the sake of love…

“You told me you weren’t interested because she was your childhood friend,” Erika pointed out. Her voice was dispassionate, but Hina still detected some hurt. Was it because she had lied to Erika, or because Erika was jealous? She could probably figure it out without too much effort, but perhaps she should let it drop.

“I do feel that way. I don’t like that I just so happened to grow up with the person I came to love, when there are so many people I haven’t met. It’s frustrating, and it would make a relationship between us more difficult, but I still want to try despite that. That’s how much I love her.”

Yasu was now smiling, crying, and blushing all at once. “I need some time to think about this.” Pushing past the others, she fled towards the Russian segment.

Hina reached an arm after her, but froze, unsure whether she should pursue Yasu or allow her some space. Retracting her arm, she turned to Maeko. “That was a shitty thing to do. How would you like it if I told Sachiko your secret?”

“Go ahead. I knew that you might when I confided in you.”

“Now who’s unfair?” Hina smirked. “Nah, I’m not doing your dirty work for you. I’ve got a space station to run. Thanks for the clothes, by the way.”

“I can’t count on you for anything,” Maeko quipped as Hina left the module, Erika following closely behind.

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