A tense truce

She was a wallflower. A timid little girl that rarely butted heads. Just someone that blended into the background. That quiet little girl you always knew in your work place.

Most of the time.

But even Kendra Gray had a limit to what she could put up with. Usually she'd throw herself into work, or enjoy time with her cats, both something far more therapeutic than what she was doing now. But if she didn't have something to soothe her nerves...., well she went a little overboard. It was something from her father's side, this obsessive focus/rage when that threshold was crossed. Usually it didn't make her lash out or go 'crazy', but a more objective focus. One time she couldn't find something in her room as a kid and when her parents returned, the room was stripped down to basically anything a small child COULDN'T move all for the sake of finding the thing. Another time was when she 'snapped' at a co worker and worked overtime, drawing the same pose till she ran out of paper in her office and was close to looting the public printer.

Her mother called it 'Getting her dander up'.

So this bombshell of a revelation, combined with her NEVER being a morning person along with no easily reached outlet; well it's no surprise to her that she 'got her dander up'.

So that's why Kendra Gray found herself in a rather fancy high tech kitchen, dressed in a robe, making toast. While drinking from a mug that had mostly coffee... and maybe a drop or two of rum in it. It was going to be a Loooooooong day.

"Medically speaking, mixing those are bad for you."

And there it was. Kendra just absentmindly glared at her 'wife'. XJ9, Jennifer Wakeman aka Jenny to her friends. Which Kendra was probably not at this point. The robot(Android? Gynoid?) had taken a seat at the high counter top. While Kendra was looting the kitchen, she'd looked around a bit before returning. She didn't trust the human just yet or this place so she didn't want to go too far off.

Jenny had gone off for awhile, returning with a clean t-shirt on, and not tightly wrapped and warped around her. Combined with her sweet pants, she'd look just like your normal college girl. Save for being metal. Right now she was busy combing her hair. Well..., combing was a weird term for it. She had the plastic comb one would expect but instead of plastic 'teeth' it was metal. And as they passed through Jenny's 'hair' it shifted the threads into a cleaner state. If Kendra was more willing to think about it, the device was probably a type of magnet.

"Medically speaking, mixing a lot of things are bad for you. Humans do it anyway." Kendra muttered as she put another drop into her cup before taking a long swing. That really did hit the spot. The cartoonist had few vices, mainly caffeine these days, but sometimes you just need a shot of ****.

"Besides you're one to talk. I saw you mix something into your can."

Jenny's face flushed dark blue on her checks and glared at the human, moving her can of oil off to the side. "It's not the same and you know it Ms Gray." Jenny snapped back as she pulled down hard with her comb. That side of her hair seemed done, the robot paused and seemed to focus. In just an instant her hair reformed into the classic pig tail style she wore on the show.

"Always kinda wondered how that worked."

"Used to be just extra attachments but mom thought to make a few changes rather than making a new model.... wait why am I telling you this?" came the irked response.

"Because we're both strung up. Talking helps to let it out. But if you don't want to talk about yourself," Kendra paused to remove the toast, spread her toppings on it and fully sit down at the counter, "You walked around the house I'm assuming. Where are we, what's the house, and have you found any fuzzy creatures?"

"Do I look like a house system check?"

".... Please." Kendra had to pause and take a breather before adding the 'magic word'.

Jenny took this time to take a breath too(did she even need to breathe?), and put her arm on the countertop. Her hand expanded and flew apart, the sections of her metal fingers flying to pre determined points before turning and shining a light. Combined with the glow from her palm, a 3d light image of the house appeared. It was a three or four story mansion, probably styled after Jenny's own home mostly. Three floors above ground, one below. Did basements count as a floor?

"That's ... new."

"I'm gonna have to ask how you seem to know me. But first..., by fuzzy creatures I think you mean your cats." Jenny stated. On the map three orange cat face decals showed up. One on each floor. Kendra breathed a sigh of relief. At least one part of this crazy dream/nightmare/mental break was okay.

"Your little friends don't quite seem to like me. Only the tabby seemed to be interested in me but in a 'I'ma fite' sort of way."

"Sorry about that. Bella is an attention seeker, and Felix is kinda a lazy bones. Vinny, the tabby, is a bit of a firecracker." Kendra shily explained. With food and drink in her, she was starting to wind down from her moment. She'd collect hugs from her cats after finishing breakfast though.

"For the building, bit like home. Three stories, basement lab/tinker space. Kitchen and main living room on the ground floor, main bedroom and bathroom on the second floor, large rec room on the top floor and another small tinker spot. Couple bath rooms and utility closets here and there. One car, two bikes in the garage."

"Weird...., one car makes a little sense cause you can fly..., but why two bikes?"

"Hey I like riding bikes!" Jenny snapped, folding her one remaining arm to her side, "And why do you seem to know so much about me or think you do?"

Kendra started to try and figure out just HOW to explain this. It would either come off as completely creepy or insane..., but given that they were standing here now, the idea of explaining 'you are a cartoon' to said character wasn't THAT insane. She started to weigh the pros and cons of just blurting it out when she noticed something. A small smirk on Jenny's face and a glint in her eye.

".....you already know?"

"That I'm a cartoon? Yeah."

"HOW!?!?!?"

Jenny chuckled as she brought up her other hand, palm configured to be a screen. It started to play the opening to her own show. Kendra was put off and confused a bit more as Jenny laughed.

"While the weird announcer voice was talking to us, I wasn't fully frozen. Couldn't move but my WiFi systems still worked. I took the time to hack into the house's system. Also got online. Googled my name to see about 'missing hero' or some news story and found my web page. Real wake up call if you ask me." with a wave, Jenny stopped the clip and had her hand shift back to a normal state. "Suppose this makes the whole multiverse thing real huh."

Kendra was about to snap a question when Jenny rolled her eyes hard enough to let Kendra hear the gears. "Oh don't get mad with me. This is actually pretty exciting, save for the 'wife' part. New worlds to see, new experiences! Only thing I want to do now is get back home to mom and then go exploring. Oooh I wonder what fanshion they have here!" her eyes started to sparkle at the thought.

"Oh help me..." Kendra sighed as she took another long drink. She didn't watch the show that much but from what she recalled; Jenny was a tomboyish reckless but caring girl. Prone to seeking out new experiences, usually based around teenage activities and desires. Having a whole new world, if not Worlds, to explore probably set her into hype overdrive a bit.

"So about 'what they have here'..., where is here?"

"Dunno." Kendra shot a glare, "Okay okay. The local city is named Thaelos." Jenny's 3d model shifted from the house to a rather large city, focusing on the built up down town section... or maybe up town? It was hard to tell where one stopped and the other started, with sprawling sky scrappers, hotels, large casinos, parks, malls, buisness centers, etc etc. It actually kinda reminded Kendra of how future Gotham looked like(She was a big fan of Batman Beyond). Just a few levels built on top of each other while growing smaller as you got to the further out districts.

"This IS Earth, or at least An earth. About 500 years in the future compared to my time, and they jumped up the tech tree sooner if articles are correct. World War 1 was moved up by 30 years as an example" Jenny explained, one of her eyes seemingly reflecting a wiki article where her iris should be, "Right now we're in west Unified Continental States or UCS. Or if you want something to focus on, Northern Califorina near the coast."

"There's a coastline? I thought it was mainly hills up that way."

"So you're from a similar earth then, cool. Yeah from this wiki seems like they extended the beaches for more tourism." Jenny replied with a smirk.

"What's that grin for? What you think you need to pull info from me? Please, I'll tell you but it'd be rude to explain with my mount full." Kendra shot back, her dander getting back up again. This girl was gonna be such a pain to put up with.

"Alright alright geeze, don't have a cow." Jenny muttered, rolling her eyes again and going back to surfing the net. Few special deals in town for clothes, couple events at clubs, human and robot inter living; this world was looking pretty cool to her. Too bad Cupid Wish stuck her with someone. And such a wet blanket too by the sound of it.

The two sat in silence for a bit as Kendra finished her food. She then neatly put her dishes away before sitting back down to chat with Jenny. "Well as you saw, the kitchen's well stocked. Mostly organic food but there's some.... things for you."

"That seems to be the theme of the house yeah. Bathroom has 2 tubs, one for water one for oil as an example. Closet has a machine that probably works to attache different parts to me but still houses your clothes. Kinda frumpy taste don't ya think?"

"I am comfortable with how I dress!"

"With a figure like that? Really now?" Jenny asked, eyebrows raised and a smug 'yeah right' smirk.

But the look on Kendra's face, while priceless, was also telling to the robot. She didn't know. Must have been up to the optimization the voice from before mentioned. Before Kendra could really get going, a panel opened up from Jenny's back and a large mechanical arm came out. The end of it spun around, growing larger with each rotation before stopping and showed that it had expanded out into a full length mirror which Jenny then moved right in front of the cartoonist. Along with booting up the 'record' function in her eyes.

Reflected back at her was..., well a FIGURE. Large breasts, wide hips, narrow waist; she looked a bit like Jenny save for maybe not as big or as toned. But it wasn't just that. Her skin looked far healthier, the lines under her eyes were gone, access body hair was seemingly waxed away. The biggest change was to her hair though. It was full on grey like her namesake but gray might not have been the right way to put it. It seemed fair brighter than that, making it more like silver than aged grey or old white. Her eyes too looked different, sharing the brighter color that her hair did which made her eyes look more amber than dim brown.

https://us.rule34.xxx//samples/4565/sample_4089c3c8ab542a2f448f8aacf6be7c58.jpg?5199484 -(Author) Close idea or just take the Jenny pic from before.

"What... what the.... what did they.." Kendra stated when she finally remembered to breath.

"I'm gussing you never looked like 'sexy librarian' before huh?" Jenny asked, her voice a mix of curious and mocking.

"No I didn't look like this...., fuck I look like weird fantasy..."

"Oh come on now, you have to be feeling better at least." came the reply.

That part was true. Kendra wasn't hurting in the usual places, felt lighter, and just had a buzz of energy to her now. She had previously chalked it up to her 'dander' and just the entire tense morning but this was something more. She hadn't felt this good in years but wasn't entirely happy with how this came to be.

"Well what about you? Don't you feel..."

"I'm a tad bothered that someone else besides mom did something like this to me. It's a personal thing but given that I'm used to switching body parts and chassis, doesn't bug me AS much." Jenny explained, her tone softening. Kendra hadn't really thought about it that way but it did make sense. Though maybe now was a good time to strike.

"Well look, I don't think either of us planned on getting married last night, oh don't look at me like that!" Kendra had cut off Jenny's eye roll, "But we have to make the best of it. And NO I'm not saying we go along with the Cupid's deal. We look for a way home, preferably yours as your mom can help us better than my family. And yes, I know about your mom, you are right I watched your show on my world." which got another 'I'm right' grin from Jenny.

"ANYWAY young lady, with my family we're all a bunch of cartoonists, book keepers and other non science based jobs. Your mom might have a better idea on how to work this out. I'm not saying we have to become best friends but...," Kendra extended a hand across the counter, "Can we at least work together like roommates?"

Jenny raised an eyebrow. She wasn't expecting a reaction like this. More yelling and or more 'seduction' was what she had mentally bet on. And by 'seduction' what she meant was Kendra either failing due to her own blunders or being one of those..., what did mom call them? Harlots? Tramps? The kind of woman you knew what they wanted and could just easily ignore. She'd have to check on Kendra's files when she could to know for sure but..., maybe this wouldn't be that bad.

Slowly, the metal hand came across the distance and gripped the flesh one. It was a warmer feeling than expected, and softer than Kendra expected for a metal hand.

"Roommates. For now. With some rules."

With a shake, the agreement was made. And so began the lives of Jenny Wakeman and Kendra Grey...., roommates.