Ito Ai: A New Dawn

"Okay, that should do it. It took a bit longer than I expected." Ai said as she wiped the water dripping down her forehead. Her hair was soaked and matted to her head. Green beads of water trailed down her skin as she stood there looking at her handy work in satisfaction. 

Eiji, on the other hand, was unable to look away from Ai. To him, her smile was just too captivating. "Eiji? I know you like staring at me, but we need to get back to work." Ai shook her head, walked over, and flicked a certain part of his body before walking away. Only when he felt the pain did he come back to his senses and blush from ear to ear. 

"Ahem.. what's next!?" Eiji did his best to hide his embarrassment and chased after Ai.

"We will take apart the big guy. We need to get the parts it uses to make a barrier. With how big this thing is, we can at least cover our main building. At least I hope" Ai answered as she hopped up on top of the new type machina. She bent down and, with her hands, ripped the top plating off, exposing the insides. She quickly found the two radio dishes that worked in tandem to create the barrier around the machina. "Eiji, see that there on the other side. Can you follow those wires to its power source and remove everything from the power source except the wires attached to the dish. I will be removing the dish on this side. Just be careful to break its container. If it gets wet, we lose the barrier's power source."

"On it." Eiji quickly went to work. With how heavy the rain was, it was not making the job easy. They had to be careful with not getting the wrong things wet, or it might short out the power source altogether.

---

Inside the base, Mai was having issues of her own. Because Ai had given her the task of getting over her shyness, she was not sitting in her underwear in her room with Shogo sitting in front of her in the buff. "Ummm… Mai, how long do we have to do this for?" Shogo was very uncomfortable. He kept his hands covering his manhood because he was not able to control what it was doing.

"Ai said we will need to do this for two hours a day. Trust me; I know this is strange. I am very embarrassed myself but, Ai is right about the reasonings on why this must be done. We may need to abandon this base at some point in the future, and with that may come public bathing. You will see many women just trying to wash themselves, and if you stare too much, they may shoot you dead. Sadly Ai put me in charge of taking care of you, or you would not even get to see me in this state." Mai gritted her teeth. She hated this more than anyone, but she wanted to get over her shyness as well. She, for one, did not wish to be stuck being the only smelly one of the group if they ever had to become nomads. 

Shogo lowered his head and stared at the floor, his cheeks burning red. He did not know if he could handle doing this every day for two hours. Mai looked at him, furrowed her brow, and tossed a book at him. "Don't look at the floor!" Although she did not want him looking, she also felt angry when he did not look! It hurt her pride as a woman!

---

After almost four hours of work, Eiji and Ai had finally set up the barrier. "It covers more than I expected. Although I have no idea how long this power source will last. To be honest, until I open one of these up, I will probably never know. I will have to try to get my hands on one the next time I see a new type. Now, all that is left is to dismantle the weapons off of it and store the big weapons for now. We can take the smaller machina that have beam weapons and create some new weapons for everyone else. We have our work cut out for us today. Let's gather what we can and place it under cover from the rain, and leave it out for a few days. Once we finish that, we will wash up, put on some clothes, and head back in." 

"I really would like to see what kind of damage a beam weapon will do to one of these machines." Eiji said excitedly.

"Well, I am sure in time we will find out. I plan to leave these for now until I can make sure the metal can be cleaned of all the radiation on it. So we will do as we planned earlier. And begin bringing cargo trucks back." Ai said explained. She wanted to start rebuilding their walls. With the metal plating from the new type machina, she could even make a large metal gate on one side of the base.

"Sounds like a plan, but Ai… Do we need to walk around naked outside the base? Can we at least put some clothes on for that… I mean, I feel weird just being out here like this, never mind running down a highway." Eiji scratched his head as he spoke. He felt embarrassed to even be saying all this.

"Yeah, I was planning on it. You never know what we will find in these cargo trucks. People may even be hiding out in them. The last thing I want is to show up without anything on. I may not seem like I care who sees me like this, but in truth, I would prefer not to expose myself if I do not need to. If I had to take a shower in the rain or bathe in a river, I wouldn't hesitate to strip, but for everything else, I would prefer to be clothed. The only reason we are out here like this now is because it would be a waste of clothes." Ai explained as he picked up a stack of machina. 

Eiji let out a sigh of relief. "Thanks..." In truth, he wasn't so much concerned about himself but Ai. No man would want others seeing his woman in such a state if they could help it.

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