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Pintsize paced impatiently. "Marten… Marten! If you don't hurry, I'm going to be late."
His owner sighed. "Fine, Pintsize, but if I faint from lack of food and we crash and die, it's your fault."
Pintsize approximated a shrug, or the closest his chassis could get to it. "You'll last til you've dropped me off, at least. C'mon, c'mon, or I'm going to miss it!" He shepherded Marten towards the door.
"What's so important, anyway?" Marten asked as they got in the car. "I thought Thursday nights were Porn and Pretzels night with Winslow?"
"The pretzels can wait, and I have enough porn to tide me over for now." Pintsize patted the data storage unit in his torso contentedly. "No, this is a very important research mission for a top-secret project. I can't tell you what it is; you'd only want to come along."
Marten rolled his eyes. "Sure thing. Just don't go and piss off any more people, 'k? I still haven't recovered from being accosted by that DeathBot 9000 guy you offended on IRC."
"You worry too much," said Pintsize confidently. "Nothing's going to go wrong."
***
Pintsize sulked, and mentally calculated how long his onboard porn supply would sustain him. This was not part of the plan.
"I hope you are enjoying yourself, Pintsize!" Momo said brightly.
Pintsize's rejoinder was interrupted by a cavalcade of teenage girls with experimental makeup, who burst out of the bathroom back into the living room and draped themselves all over the furniture.
"So!" one of the girls exclaimed, "should we get this homework out of the way now?"
The girl who seemed to be the host nodded. "I guess so." All the girls pulled out textbooks, notebooks and pens.
Ugh, Pintsize thought. Analog.
And then, to Pintsize's horror, they proceeded to study.
They were wearing pajamas. One girl sported an oversized pair of slippers that looked like chicken feet. Pintsize felt totally cheated. He grumbled disconsolately.
"Pintsize? Are you malfunctioning?" Momo asked him, in a break between questions about differential calculus.
"Yes!" said Pintsize, "I'm being destroyed by the corrosive power of boredom and disappointment!"
"I do not understand," Momo said slowly. "You were very enthusiastic about this project. When I told you I was helping Fiiona and her owner with a study session, you begged to join us, and yet now you seem dissatisfied."
"This gathering is atypical!" Pintsize insisted. "My exhaustive and very thorough research indicates that a 'sleepover' should involve lingerie and/or nudity, pillow fights, and making out. By my calculations, there is 87% less anatomical exploration than I projected."
Momo looked confused. "I do not believe I ever indicated this was a biology study session," she said.
"The activities are independent of the sleepover's ostensible justification," Pintsize explained helpfully.
"I have not previously seen my owner engaging in anatomical exploration with any of these people," reasoned Fiiona, the other anthro-PC.
"Perhaps your research is faulty?" Momo suggested.
Pintsize was horrified. "It can't be! The weight of evidence is on my side. I've analyzed terabytes – no, petabytes – of video records. Perhaps they don't know what they're supposed to do at a sleepover?" He slumped disconsolately against the couch. All his hopes, all his dreams – shattered. Life was hard for a young anthro-PC.
Suddenly a face filled his field of view, and he hastily readjusted his optics to focus on the human. Female, seventeen, facial features corresponding to an aesthetic commonly called 'cute' … he called on the appropriate greeting subroutine. "Hey, baby, how you doin'?"
The face grinned. "Well aren't you just a little cutie? Tell me, you any good with games?"
Pintsize beeped enthusiastically. "I am excellent with games."
"I, too, am excellent with games," Fiiona interjected.
"Pipe down, Fii," the face said, "If I want to wave a remote around in an approximation of tennis, I'll call you." She picked Pintsize up, plonked him next to her on the couch, and dumped a controller in front of him. "Alright, short stuff. My name's Cathy, and I'll be the person pwning you in Counterstrike for the next hour."
"I'll try and go easy on you," Pintsize said smugly.
"Oh yeah?" said Cathy. "You and whose opposable thumbs?"
If he'd had lungs Pintsize would have sighed happily. This must be what love feels like.