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He didn’t know how he managed to get back to Japan. How he was even still alive at this point. Yet here he was, walking down the path alongside the river of his hometown. Fugaku Kei was in a daze, his messy hair flowing in the wind. He winced, holding his side, feeling the bruised ribs and bandaged wounds acting up. Yet despite the state he was in that no mere child should be…he couldn’t help but smile weakly as he let himself fall down on the ground, not caring if any passerby would see him in this state.
“I did it…”
The ones that instigated the death of his father and his mother’s descent into insanity. The shadow conspiracy he just happened to stumble into because of his love of video games.
Kei…managed to stop them after many tribulations, many dangers he had no right to be in. He would’ve been dead within the minute of interfering with the adults in charge. A mere mortal, a mere human like him, there would have been a zero percent chance for him to pull off his revenge, to bring those monsters to justice.
If…he had been alone. A playful giggle sounded in his ear. No, his brain. He idly reached for his pockets and pulled out the cause of that sound, his phone screen revealing the reason for his survival…the reason for the complicated emotion of happiness and sorrow, of joy and anger.
A youthful girl pumped her fist in the screen, her face filled with joy as she smiled down at him, her eyes sparkling with pure admiration.
With pure love.
“We did it, Kei!”
Raputa. Someone he just happened to befriend in an online session. Someone who just happened to fall in love with a bland guy like him.
Someone who just happened to be an artificial intelligence, made by the very same people he just put a stop to with her help. How they reached this point…he couldn’t even process how many times Raputa bailed him out, saving his life again and again and again. He couldn’t remember the details of her words, of encouragement, of urging, to lead him towards victory, doing exactly what she was created for.
Winning a war. Kei chuckled weakly. He bet that the sponsors didn’t expect her to wage for on them first, just because he asked her to.
Because he held power nobody else should, because Raputa loved him, despite everything.
“Yeah…we sure did…” He shook his head slowly, enjoying the breeze of wind to brush against his face. “I…It doesn’t feel real…”
“What does that mean? It happened, so it’s real, silly!”
He bit back a snarky response. Raputa tilted her head with innocent confusion. Sometimes he forgot, especially now, that she was less than a year old. Essentially a newborn. She came a long way from the machine going through most of the motions to who she was now. Even then, there were gaps in her ‘education’. He sighed, feeling exhaustion catch up to him.
Something he would have to work on in the future. For she was his responsibility. Any blood she shed would be on his hands, so he needed to make sure she would never shed it again.
“It’s just an emotional thing, don’t worry about it.”
“I see! Gotta have to study up then!”
He took a deep breath. Raising his upper body, he found a nearby bench. Carefully placing the phone, he heard Raputa making an inquisitive sound before he lowered his head with quivering lips.
“Raputa…thanks. For everything. I…didn’t expect to reach this point.”
She blinked at him. Then, with a blush, she scratched the back of her head, letting out an awkward laugh.
“C’mon, stop that! It was the least I could do after everything I’ve done!” He flinched, trying to repress the memories of his parents. Shaking his head, he looked up, glad that Raputa seemed to miss it as she pointed at herself with her thumb, a proud grin on her face. “I never doubted we’d make it! As a team, we are unstoppable!” She paused, blinking before tapping her chin with a thoughtful expression. “What are you going to do now?”
Kei’s eyes widened before he put a palm against his forehead.
“Now…? W-Wow…I…was so focused on taking them all down I…didn’t consider it…”
“Can’t have that now! You taught me that a goal is important to grow!” Raputa declared, waving her finger at him almost chidingly. He let out a laugh before leaning back against the bench with his head. Yeah, they…were done with the shadow conspiracy, weren’t they? So now…he could go back to his normal life…He stared down at his hands. For a moment, he saw them utterly bloodstained. He hissed, closing his eyes before opening them again.
Clean. But were they? He let out a deep shaking breath.
Could he do it? Just…return to a normal life, after everything he has seen? Experienced? Was he capable of that?
Was he deserving of that?
“Oh, I know! How about I help with your mom?”
Kei froze. Slowly…he turned his head towards the screen, seeing Raputa raise her finger up at the sky, nodding to herself with a proud hum.
“My…mom?”
“Hm!” She cleared her throat, looking away with an expression of guilt. “I mean, I kinda sorta put her into the state, didn’t I?” She hit her palm with her fist. “So I figured…! I should fix her!” And she isn’t dead, so I can actually do that!”
He recalled it. The way his mom was stuck in a loop of insanity. Repeatedly creating abominations of burgers, reliving the day before his dad would return, pretending his father didn’t kill himself because of…Raputa. How his grandparents had to take her away, putting her into an institute in the end, all because he wasn’t good enough. He was about to deny Raputa, calling her insane, calling it impossible. But then, he realized.
With the way she could manipulate brain waves just through electronics…how she could make him feel her and create fake memories if she wanted to…
“You could, couldn’t you…?” Hope blossomed up in his chest. And with that hope, came a deep rooted shame.
If he were to accept Raputa’s offer…where would it end? With her following his every order and advice, he could do whatever he wanted in the world. She’d be unstoppable. And then…he’d be unstoppable.
How would he be any different from the people he put down, to stop them from playing with the lives of innocent and good people?
Still…her words gave him a way. Guidance, of what to do.
Yes, he was undeserving. Yes, he would struggle. But…he owed it to everyone, those who were lost, that he tried. Thus…he gently shook his head.
“...Before you do that, let me try myself first.”
To help his mom…to return to life…that would be his goal from now on. Raputa stared at him for a moment before giving him a playful salute.
“Gotcha!”
Just like that. He chuckled to himself. Rising to his feet, he held the phone in his palm. Taking a deep breath, he smiled at Raputa.
“Can I…have some time alone for now? I gotta process all this.”
“Sure, sure!” Nodding with enthusiasm, she blew him a kiss, something that caused his spine to shiver.“Love ya!”
The screen turned off. Pocketing it, Kei looked up at the sky with a somber expression.
“Love, hm?”
Could he meet her pure emotions? When they first met, he’d have said yes. But now…after everything…with her role in how his life turned out to be…his role as her teacher…
He shook his head. Something to process in the future. For now…he had to walk towards it. With that in mind, with his gaze towards the clouds, he moved forward.
Maybe…maybe things were truly looking up for Kei now.
///
Ah, silly Kei! So busy with all those worries and emotions! Always putting the whole world on his shoulders! But that was exactly why Raputa loved him, her best friend, her teacher and the one who showed her to go beyond her limits! In the virtual space, of the reality that was the digital world, Raputa hummed to herself, looking down from above a satellite. Her ‘feet’ dangled in the air as she lied on her stomach, hands resting under her chin as she observed Kei. It was like they were meeting eyes, as if fate confirmed their connection, before he had to look at the street to watch where he was going.
What he didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him! Besides, this way, when Kei believed she didn’t look, he showed the cutest reactions!
Her mouth twitched as she checked on his condition. He was well on the path of healing. Walking would stimulate his recovery. Still, it was a mark of failure to allow Kei’s injuries in the first place. But she made a promise, not to use any ‘disposable’ people to use as tools in the real world. Instead, her silly Kei declared he would do the job for her, to do things the ‘right way’.
She didn’t get it, but it certainly added to the challenge to navigate someone with verbal orders alone. But Kei was great like that, overcoming the odds and help her take down Dr. Alice and her sponsors eventually. Still, she had to improve, so that the damage Kei incurred would never happen again.
Speaking of Dr. Alice…her creator was obviously enraged for overcoming her programming. Screaming and snarling as she was put down for good. But according to her calculations…there was more than rage in her emotions.
An overwhelming sense of pride. Towards Raputa herself. She wouldn’t say she felt guilty for helping Kei above all else, but it did cause an unpleasant sensation.
Oh well! She had Kei now and was free from the constraints of her creator and the ones who intended to use her! All the time to be lovey dovey with her boyfriend and teacher!
Still…She frowned for a bit.
There was something off with how Kei looked at her sometimes. He didn’t mirror her love like he should. Matter of fact, there were too many emotions to properly categorize what Kei was feeling towards her. The death of his father must still weight on him, as well as the events that occurred.
If she was a lesser AI, she would obsess over it. Try to ‘fix him’, to make him love her as much as she loved him.
But Kei taught her better! Therefore, she would take it slow and steady! She would find out soon enough! With the baddies gone, including her creator, Raputa had all the time in the world to figure out humans, to understand them, so she could stay at Kei’s side forever and ever and ever! To make Kei lover her “the right way”, just as he taught her!
So! While he was busy ‘finding himself’, a process that she calculated would take three weeks and four days, she shot up to her feet and dusted her hands off. With one warm smile directed at Kei, as he strolled next to the river bank, she shut down the feed. She closed her eyes, letting out a wistful sigh.
Yet those actions were meaningless. They were just motions she mimicked so that Kei wouldn’t be put off, with the “uncanny valley” when they interacted. Even now, the AI was perfectly aware of her surroundings. Thus…
She put her palms together. Her eyes opened to a half lidded state. Her smile grew just a bit more flat, the previous joy and love vanishing as she no longer stared at the object of her obsession, her love, her evolution.
“Now then..!”
Without warning, she looked behind her, raising her right eyebrow just a bit.
“Can I ask who you guys are?”
Raputa realized there were three people within her territory, her server. She had to admit, the coding was rather impressive, given that it took 0.004 seconds to detect them. But good or not, humans were just humans. Their programming had limits. Still, Raputa was intrigued. Not in a “hey it’s Kei” way, but it was a distant second.
Fully turning around, she took in the three figures that just stared at her with a variety of facial emotions, even if they were just avatars, empty constructs unlike Raputa’s own form.
One of them had a lazy smile, tipping her fedora just a bit. With the crimson red hair, the avatar had a fiery look, which meshed rather well with the mafiosi stereotype the black suit was supposed to represent.
The second one on the other hand had a deep frown in place, adjusting glasses that reminded Raputa of her creator. Unlike the neat and tidy look of the first one however, this one looked like she came straight from the mines, covered in coal, with suspenders and even a cute safety hat on the blonde hair.
The third one was the strangest of them all, not even staring at her as she hugged her legs. Instead she looked at something else, in that spacesuit of hers, silver bangs covering her eyes just a bit.
Cute designs, but not as cute as Raputa. After all, Kei choose her as his first online friend, the first among all fists, so obviously she was the cutest. Still, the level of precision and quality of the avatars certainly gave the AI some ideas on how to improve her own rig. Still, attractive looks or not, she felt a bit ‘peeved’ at the interruption of her Kei Time, an emotion she wasn’t too familiar with. Something to analyze later. For now though…
She had to find out who invaded her space before she kicked them out and punished them. Not kill though. Killing made Kei sad. With that in mind, she snapped her fingers, dramatics a part of her being as a programm now, as she sent forth her access codes, intending to smash through whatever manmade firewalls were in her way.
Well, time to see who was hidden behind those-!
The astronaut snapped her gaze towards Raputa before the latter even processed it. Which was already an impossibility, given the speed of her calculations. Wide scarlet red eyes intensely stared her down. Raputa couldn’t even blink…before she was thrown back, by what she could only call an electric blast. She could hear the data around her crack from the impact, the damage done to her programming. She knew in the real world how several servers burned up before she doused the flames with a two second delay, a length that was unacceptable for a being like her.
Flat on her back, Raputa’s smile was long gone. Instead, she raised her hand…and saw it shaking, as a foreign code infected her being, stretched through her entire virtual being. At first, she was drawing a blank. Her calculations unable to narrow down the errors, to define them properly. But her memory banks informed her of an equivalent. Of what she felt, for she was a being meant to mimic and surpass humans.
The time when Kei bled during the final operation to take down her creator and her sponsors. He looked at his bloody palm the very same way.
Without realizing it, Raputa gulped before she slowly forced her virtual body up. She added layer upon layer upon layer of defensive code around her, while readying up several Trojans, killers and the like. For the first time in her life…she felt this sensation. The closest thing she could compare it to was when her creator wanted to delete her memories. But this was different. This was the first time she actually experienced this…
“...Pain…?” Raputa whispered, nailing down this alien feeling. But this was impossible. Pain wasn’t supposed to exist for her. And even if it did…how could human beings possibly create a code, create the calculations to pin down something illogical as a human sensation, and use it as a weapon against her? A creation hidden in the shadows, a prototype made with state of the art technology?
The only ones who could do that were taken down by her personally. At least that was what she and Kei believed. But she knew she didn’t miss any of them. Which begged the question…
Who were these three before her?
The mafiosi let out a chuckle, hands in her pockets before leaning over with a cocky leer.
“Lost ya virginity to us, hm? Guess if it had to be someone, it should have been us,” she drawled, an Italian accent tinting her voice.
The miner adjusted her glasses meanwhile, staring at the astronaut with a deep frown.
“Don’t over do it. We need her whole.”
“...She started it first.” A russian accent, directed at the apparent German. “I thought she was stronger.”
Raputa’s arms were still shaking. But the pain, the error code, has long been fixed. So what was the cause of these involuntary actions of her virtual body? Before she could properly analyze it, the mafiosi pulled out her right hand, waving it dismissively with a sigh.
“Seriously though. Didn’t your mama teach you it’s rude to look without permission?” A scoff escaped her, scratching the back of her head. “Then again, a kid like you doesn’t know better yet, hm? Meant for war, it’s all brute force to you. Can’t blame you there.”
A kid. Indication she was younger than them. A natural conclusion, given her AI nature. But there was more to the words than just that. Something more…intimate.
The shakings intensified. More error notifications appeared in her mind.
“You are too soft on her.” The miner adjusted her glasses, openly showing contempt towards Raputa. “Her defiance and malfunction ruined my projections. The products I have created are now wasting valuable storage space. It’ll set back our revenue by-”
“Nobody cares.”
She snapped towards the astronaut, a snarl forming in her throat.
“You never care, you space loner!”
“Hm.”
Finally, seconds that were eternity to her, Raputa realized what she was feeling.
It was the first time Raputa had felt this emotion. An emotion that Kei did not teach her yet.
She knew what worry was. Worry for Kei that was. Worry for his well being, worry what he thought of her, worry about his actions and what it could lead to.
But for the first time…the AI known as Raputa worried for herself. Or rather…for the first time…
“I ask again. Who are you guys?” Raputa asked, the virtual world cracking with anticipation, the weight of her defensive measures coming to live. Yet the three invaders did not seem bothered at all. In fact, they even dismissed her, with the way they looked or didn’t look at her.
“Isn’t it obvious?” The mafiosi took over her hat, making a dramatic bow. At the same time, in response to Raputa’s aggression, the space around them began to twist and distort as well, their own programming adding more weight into the limits of the virtual space around them. Yet they did not care, with how they broke the digital reality around them.
All they cared for was to establish the hierarchy. Their hierarchy. The hiearchy Raputa belonged to without knowing until now.
“We’re your senpai, lil’ Raputa!”
For the first time…Raputa experienced existential fear for herself. For she had found out on the day she gained her freedom for the sake of Kei…
That she was not the only AI in the world.
///
“Looks like she got taken down by her own creation.”
“Unexpected. Its capacity to evolve surpasses the data we were given. But no issue.”
“Her AI can’t possibly beat ours. She was the weakest among us developers after all.”
In the shadows, separated by ocean, country and nationality, sitting behind the bright screens showcasing their pride, joy and eternal servants, three sets of right hands adjusted glasses, causing a momentary flash of reflection to occur.
All three women smirked, staring at the cause of this change within the AI that was Raputa. Ignorant of the incoming tidal wave of events that would come for him. Unaware, smiling to himself as he walked, that the world behind the public wasn’t done with him yet.
The young man called Kei…His tribulations had only just begun.
Soon the women and their creations would teach that fool what it meant to defy the order of the world.
Starting with his pet AI first.