Chapter Text
Kiibo's processes started up again rather slowly, able to hear the subtle buzzing in his head, internal hardware humming, the whirring of mechanisms clicking into place as though he were being brought back online after a long period of being offline. The weight of his own body started registering in his mind: feeling how the sides of his feet made contact with the ground, how his arms hung helplessly at his sides, his neck and spine crooked, head hanging off to the side as if he had fallen asleep.
And the feeling of waking up in this way, gradually feeling these sensations in his body and his senses slowly coming back online, he thought that this must’ve been how humans felt when they were at the tail end of a dream; perhaps coming to the realization they were dreaming, trapped and trying to escape a dream or trying desperately to stay in a subconscious paradise before their something in their bodies or minds jolted them awake.
But no such jolt of alertness or electricity went through him, instead waking up like a cyberpunk ball-jointed doll having life slowly stir within him, wondering if humans experienced waking up in the same way: little to no energy, hearing gradually increasing, other senses following one at time.
The buzzing within him faded away, the sound of piano music and a voice fading in. The music being played he couldn’t name, the gentle tune likely not in his dataset and therefore unrecognizable. And the voice – a somewhat hushed female voice – seemed to be having a jovial once-sided conversation with itself. When his eyes fluttered open, his vision was unfocused, nothing but a blurry picture. But even through the blur: he realized he’d been seated at a table for two, the smell of warm ginger tea and lemons in the air. Across the table sat a the most likely owner of the voice, but currently they were nothing more than a fuzzy teal-colored shadow in Kiibo’s eyes; and if that was the person talking to him, he wondered if they were really talking to themselves, or if they were trying to give him some verbal diagnostic he couldn’t hear in it’s entirety.
He tried to move, signals from his brain traveling to the actuators throughout his body, testing his degrees of freedom. In his face, he cycled through hundreds of micro expressions; subtle movements of his mouth, nose and eyes to register what parts of his face still worked. His head and neck twisted and arched in random directions, despite him wanting – demanding – that his body straighten itself out and practice proper posture. His arms could barely move; fingers tapping the air, the wrists capable of linear and rotational movement, the elbow joints stiff but still functional, yet the shoulders felt like they were locked up for the most part – leaving him unable to lift himself up to straighten himself out. The legs too had their own problems, feeling heavy as lead, able to feel them and know they still existed, attached to him, feet on the floor, but he couldn’t move them…
And every time he tried to move or adjust himself, he slipped further and further into a helpless, crooked posture; posed like a broken doll in a leather chair too large for his frame that felt like it might consume him. That might’ve been the scariest thing of all: the possibility of being broken, an object instead of a person.
“So interesting… watching you move like that…” the voice projected, almost teasingly. “I could help you… if you wanted me to…”
A groan vibrated in his throat, desperately trying to summon his voice back into existence; feeling the fingers move, the wrist bending slightly, then the elbow joint lifted the forearm, shoulder joint unlocking, allowing his hand to touch his neck. The first few sounds out of his mouth were mechanical, like grinding gears through rusty speakers, some high-pitched squeaks like a bad microphone with too much feedback.
But then he found it… “W-Why can’t I move? Why i-is it so… ha-ard to move? To speak? To… F-F-Function properl-l-ly?” he begged, eyes that could not cry welling up as if tears were guaranteed to follow.
“Do you think being reset would help?” asked the voice, it’s shadow getting up out of it’s seat.
“I-I d-don’t… know…T-T-This doesn’t feel normal…” he sighed, though it came out more like an audio glitch, a flat ‘ahh’ sound mixed with static. “I-I-s this something that can e-e-ven be fixed just by resetting my AI?”
“I’ve never seen you like this before, so…” the voice paused, before prompting: “Does it feel like a normal malfunction to you? Is it similar to any you’ve had at any point in the past?”
“N-N-No… I feel strange…” he struggled, the end of his sentence almost entirely drowned out by static. “I feel heavy. And. I’m… still me. Just currently u-u-u-unstable.”
“Unstable how?” prompted the voice. “Take your time and focus on what you’re feeling, and explain it to me in as much detail as you can. Run a hardware scan on yourself if necessary.”
Grimacing, he reflected on his condition: how signals sent from his brain to his actuators weren’t always resulting in the appropriate actions, the stiffness in his joints, how heavy he felt, as if being crushed by gravity for every small movement he tried to make. It felt like no other malfunction he’d ever experienced before, even if those memories of previous malfunctions were fake.
He contemplated such memories while scanning his internal hardware (something he wasn’t even aware he could do) – wondering if this overall sense of weakness and helplessness was something more human than machine while the buzzing in him grew louder. His vision went black momentarily, results popping up in plain white text on the screen around his collar, and on the screens that were part of his eyes for his prompter to see:
He was running at a normal temperature, fully charged battery, voice mode switched on, voice bank selected listed as “K1-B0-Male” out of three possible options, all actuators accounted and degree of freedom accounted for, every body part still attached, all optional features and upgrades still installed, limiters on spinal chord and core strength still in place, no memory or memories coming up as corrupted (with more than sufficient memory and RAM to function as an embodied AI at that).
Connection to server? Not available. No servers detected.
Connection to internet via Wi-Fi? Not available. No internet detected.
Recording? Functional and stable, camera eyes ready and able to capture video, microphones capable of capturing audio from all possible directions.
Streaming? Currently offline. No internet connection, no connection to server: therefore, unable to stream or broadcast anything to an audience.
The only notable thing out of place was that the bomb within him came up as missing, but that wasn’t a surprise to him; nor was the bomb vital to how he functioned day to day.
On paper: the result of this scan yielded nothing that could immediately indicate why he’d have trouble moving or seeing… The missing bomb was of no concern. It wasn’t as though he planned on self-destructing again any time soon.
And yet as the buzzing within him died down as soon as the scan came to an end and his vision faded back to a blurred reality where he still couldn’t move, there were footsteps drawing closer to him – slow and scarce footsteps walking toward him as though he had activated his self-destruct feature and was no better than an incendiary device that needed to be tossed in a fireproof bin.
“Results of the scan seem entirely normal.” he replied in a monotone voice with hints of static. “And… I-I’m not sure if anything else I-I’m experiencing can be explained by these resu-u-u-ults. If everything is coming back normal then… W-Why…?”
“How strange… If everything’s coming back normal and you’re still like this, then I’m afraid that resetting you might actually kill you.” the voice wavered, the sound of footsteps drawing closer to where Kiibo lay with slightly more haste. “But to be honest: I’m surprised by the fact you even survived the partition placed on your personality and ended up here. I didn’t think you would… And, I wonder whether you survived due to certainty or some kind of miracle? What’s your take on that?”
“Perhaps… It was just me in the e-e-end. But…” he could feel a smile growing on his face, thinking of how, despite the partition and being told his original personality was completely erased to his friends and an audience that sought to hurt and harm them, he persisted.
He had witnessed it all, even if he no longer had total freedom: reduced to a voice in his own head, no control over his body, vision tainted by a bright blue light indicating he was no more than an automaton that could only respond to prompts. Stationary he stood, hearing himself, in his voice, but the words weren’t his – not really – just his voice bank responding to a prompt automatically. Obeying orders. Truly a machine, a tool for a sadistic mastermind, the audience’s mouthpiece simply regurgitating their voices; not even reflecting them, just speaking their will verbatim: “Hope. Despair. Hope. Despair. Despair. Despair. Hope. Hope. Hope. Despair. Hope. Despair.”
Kiibo, not just as a robot, but as a person who just so happened to be a robot, was gone. That’s how it was presented; what Tsumugi insisted on to force the others into despair at yet another death – not a physical death, but a form of character death nonetheless. And for the brief moment he could hack away at the firewall in his mind and regain full control? Even if those moments were fleeting, he still tried to instill hope in others, as well as feel hope himself… And against all odds: he was alive again.
How could he not smile after surviving all of that, even if control over his body was minimal at best? His body wasn’t a vessel for an audience right now, it was a vessel for his soul and his soul alone – digital or otherwise.
Through the smile, he tried to laugh in a teasing tone only for a very flat and slowed down ‘he-he’ to come out instead, and yet? He didn’t mind the glitch, feeling a sense of pride just for existing in the moment. And if he had eyes capable of crying, he might’ve even shed a tear of joy or two to celebrate still being alive after all was said and done. “This is what you were hoping for, wasn’t it Tsumugi?”
The voice sighed, the teal colored shadow growing in clarity as it towered over his crooked body, his 20/13 vision being fully restored as if her presence alone repaired something within him he couldn’t fix alone. Of course it had been Tsumugi hovering over him, wearing her uniform and a facial expression that seemed both incredibly concerned and uncannily overjoyed for the former mastermind, for it wasn’t the sadistic and increasingly unhinged joy she’d performed during the final trial at all! It was just… Perhaps it was the kind of joy humans experienced when they were reunited with a lost loved one? That particular combination of happiness mixed with sadness as a result of a reunion, especially an unexpected one?
That was his only guess based on the data in his memory bank…
“I-I’m sorry… To burden you with m-my current condition; a robot that can’t perform their own ma-a-aitenance.” he continued to smile even through the silence and the oncoming guilt of not being able to repair himself. “But… You do know how to fix my body, is that correct?”
The former mastermind remained silent as she towered over him, though he couldn’t tell why. Arms crossed, her eyes trying to dodge his gaze, scanning his body up and down – possibly looking for visible signs of damage, silently evaluating her findings in her head?
“Um… I-If there’s anything you’d like to say, then please say it.” he suggested, trying to break the silence. “Perhaps I’m used to talking during maintenance; my memories of Miu, and my memories of Professor Idabashi – whether those were a lie or not – have made me associate maintenance on my body with social activity.”
“Is that how you remember it?” prompted the former mastermind, avoiding the machine’s eyes.
“Yes…” he responded. “A-And I’d like to know what you see. Tha-a-at way I can know what’s happening to me, and what repairs I might need.”
“Well, you don’t look broken from the outside… I’m assuming you’ve been able to feel your body in terms of detecting what parts are attached to you, but you just can’t move those parts well?” she prompted again. “You didn’t go into detail before, so please be as detailed as possible now.”
“You’re correct in your assumption. I can detect all of my actuators and none of them have come up defective, or rewritten to perform a different action. I can also feel and detect all of my limbs, which is how I know I’m still in-tact; no hardware – and presumably no software – modifications have been done to my body without my knowledge…” he explained, the clinical discussion filling him with a sense of nostalgia. “For instance, I know my legs are connected to me, but no matter how hard I try, I can’t seem to move anything below my waist. A-And other parts of my body feel stiff or immovable when signals are still getting through to them. It all feels abnormally heavy… And so far: my face is the only part of my body where I haven’t experienced any issues regarding movement; allowing me to be expressive to the fullest extent I can.”
“When you say your body feels heavy, does it cause you pain like the back pain you experience when lifting anything heavy?” prompted Tsumugi.
“No actually… I’m not in any pain, but the feeling of my body being heavy, um… I-It doesn’t feel like anything I can explain with science. I… I actually don’t know how to explain this feeling away with science. I don’t think I have the words in my dataset for it…” Kiibo groaned, the sound clearly disgruntled and confused in tone. “I keep wondering if what I’m currently experiencing is too human for a robot to put into words.”
“And does this uncertainty in what you’re physically feeling make you think you are human?” prompted Tsumugi, concern evident in her tone.
“I am under no impression that I’m human, or that I ever could’ve been human.” Kiibo answered flatly. “My mind is clear, my responses to you only indicate that I’m missing information and context, leaving me unable to describe my current symptoms, or take a guess at what would be causing my current condition using a more scientific or technological explanation – but I’ve still been speaking concisely despite my technical difficulties.”
“Speaking of which: while you have had some glitches with your speech and audio generation, those seem to be getting better the more we keep talking! So those might be glitches independent of whatever’s happening to the rest of your body, and might resolve itself with time.” said the former mastermind. “I’ll examine your body first, see if a little physical therapy fixes anything, and if it doesn’t: I’ll check through your code and debug you if necessary – see if I can catch anything your scan didn’t turn up, you know?”
“Tha-a-at sounds… Sufficient…” Kiibo could feel his face shifting, corners of his mouth slightly drooping, the ridges above his eyes shifting down. Mechanical contentment shifting toward unease.
“What’s the matter, Kiibo?” she asked, looking down at him, that same happiness mixed with sadness in her eyes while wearing a smile with a hint of condescension in it’s corners. “Me knowing anything about robotics isn’t that weird, is it?”
“It’s… Not something I’m used to. But, you were the mastermind, so you might be the only other person who knows anything about my body or… Me.” he sighed, and it was human-like in tone and delivery: nervous, a little shakey, even slightly embarrassed – the lights under his cheeks starting to glow a faint shade of red. “Um… Tsumugi?”
“Yeah?” she asked again, kneeling slightly and slipping an arm under the robot, her arm pressing against his back. “You don’t distrust me just because I was the mastermind, do you?”
“Under these uncertain circumstances, it’s not like I have a choice… But…” he paused, feeling himself lifted up, carefully and clinically positioned to sit upright in the chair, the very act only increasing his sense of unease – even if he was thankful for it. He closed his eyes, red fading from his face, finding himself wanting to sigh to reduce the social tension building within him, but also finding himself unable to make that sound.
“Are we alone…?” he asked, plainly and directly, the question coming out a bit rushed.
“Yeah… As far as I can tell.” answered the former mastermind, her tone just as direct; her hands resting on his shoulders. “What about your inner voice?”
“I haven’t heard it at all, despite the antenna on my head being attached.” he answered, “Streaming status listed as ‘currently offline’, and according to the scan: there aren’t any devices I can connect to at all, so streaming to an external source – whether there’s an audience there to watch or otherwise – is impossible.”
“Even if you were trying and failing to connect to available servers and other devices that could connect you to the internet: with how much memory and RAM you have installed, you shouldn’t have any resource issues at all! And that doesn’t explain the impact on your speech or tone, let alone the fact you can’t move very well.” she hypothesized aloud, her hands resting on Kiibo’s shoulders, her palms on the external plating that could pass for clothing. “Oh, I uh… I might need to take some of this plating off…”
“That’s alright.” he responded matter-of-factually, feeling hands gently circling the collar around his neck. “Please, do what you must.”
“Alright… Just let me know if you feel anything new, whether it’s painful or otherwise.” said Tsumugi as she clicked Kiibo’s collar out of place, the screen shutting off instantly once disconnected. “You may also start feeling lighter, but that’s normal. The plating does add some additional weight to your overall frame.”
“But, it wouldn’t make sense for the plating to effect my ability to move. I should’ve been re-calibrated on start-up, so my current weight shouldn’t be a factor.” Kiibo hypothesized aloud, hearing his detached collar being placed on the table; the sound of it making contact with the cloth-covered wooden table sounding louder than it should’ve.
“And with no signs of external damage, the issue has to be something internal you couldn’t detect, or…” Tsumugi trailed off, detaching more of the plating from Kiibo’s shoulders and upper arms, gathering the pieces in her own.
“Or…?” asked Kiibo. “Do you have another theory?”
“I have a few, actually…” a hint of melancholy was evident in her tone, and reflected in the sound of her slow and seemingly hesitant footsteps toward the table, dumping the metal plating she’d taken off on it’s surface. Even her sigh sounded tired, though perhaps it was just a side effect of her doing this sort of maintenance on a machine? Perhaps it was something more personal?
Kiibo couldn’t really tell, not because he was lacking in being able to analyze tone in human voices, but simply because he just didn’t know her – especially not in this brand new context.
“Let’s just stick to finding a more scientific explanation for now, and if we can’t: we’ll worry about my theories then.” she said, gently laying Kiibo’s frozen hand that stayed hovering over his neck down to the side before grabbing the larger plates on either side of Kiibo’s chest. “Moving your hand just now didn’t hurt, did it?”
“It did not.” he confirmed.
“That’s good.” she’d moved onto the plating around his waist and upper back, taking each piece off one at a time; maneuvering her free hand around the robot rather than repositioning him, dumping all of the newly collected pieces on the table once she was done.
He did feel slightly lighter than before, having been partially stripped of plating, now partially “shirtless” in a sense, chest, back, shoulders and upper arms completely bare, leaving only semi-wrinkled textiles behind like smooth, slightly loosened skin free from supports and constraints – giving way to gravity and freely resting over his slender frame. The one clothing-like aspect of his chest that couldn’t be removed without taking off all of the textiles, getting down to the metal and carefully removing it from his frame were the buttons on his chest, all four of them glowing brightly.
Looking down at his chest and seeing how the plating on his legs was still perfectly in place, this level of “nudity” a newfound curiosity, sparking social and ethical questions of what would be considered nudity for a robot like himself. He hadn’t considered it before, but perhaps the new lease on life had unknowingly made him a bit bolder to even consider the concept, but then again: when was the last time he’d even been partially stripped of his plating? When was the last time his “skin” was taken off to reveal the raw metal frame and components that lay underneath? The more he thought about it all, the more questioned it sparked about his body as a whole, questioning just what other functions and parts might exist that he wasn’t aware of.
But actually asking those questions and possibly debating the subject of nudity in the context of machine person-hood questions would have to wait, because the only human he could currently interact with walked toward him once more, causing him to quickly turn his head and look away, face glowing a light shade of red.
“You don’t have to be embarrassed, you know. Not about your body, and not about me looking at it.” she teased, placing her hands on his cheeks, pressing the flesh of her palms firmly against soft silicone with plating underneath. She carefully turned his head to face her, even though his eyes continued to dart away. “If it makes you feel any better, I’ve seen your body in several stages of development, and various states of ‘dressed’ and ‘undressed’, so for me this is all just business as usual and isn’t sexual at all.”
“T-That doesn’t make me feel better…” he stuttered, not as the result of a glitch in his voice bank, but purely out of embarrassment; desperately trying to keep his eyes shut, moving his head and neck to avoid Tsumugi’s eyes practically beaming at him when she physically forced his open, the hushed whirring of his head and neck accompanying the occasional uncomfortable groan and grunt. “P-Please stop looking at me like that. Y-Your earlier remark implying I see this as s-s-something sexual was bad enough, but…”
“Still as shy as ever when it comes to anything even remotely lewd, huh?” she laughed, joy evident in her tone; especially in the very contented sigh that followed as she tried to maneuver the robot’s face, gently holding his eyes open with her thumbs in a calm yet eager attempt to make direct eye contact. “I’m really glad that part of your personality survived the partition too.”
Unaware of how to respond to such an oddly flattering and appreciate comment, he remained silent and his face grew even redder – the only sounds escaping him being uncomfortable whimpers as he moved his eyes, head and neck away to escape Tsumugi’s own eyes (practically beaming at him); making him uncomfortable whenever she forcefully moved his head and neck to look back at her. An odd little game of sorts… Though if this was her trying to examine him for maintenance purposes, the attempts at forced eyesight were feeling far too intimate; her silence and lack of clarification for whether or not this was an exam making it even more awkward…
And then she let go of his face and allowed his eyes to rest. Just like that.
“Your eyes look good. Not a scratch or dead pixel on the display, and the cameras underneath seem fine too. And the fact you tried so hard to resist shows you still have your free will; your neck and head movements were pretty smooth too. Next I’ll need you to follow my finger with your eyes.” she prompted politely, positioning her right hand further away from him at eye level, one finger held up and pointing at the ceiling. “And we can still talk if you want to, y’know.”
“I uh… It’s just that… the way you examined my eyes before was rather forceful.” he looked down, watching as his hands moved slowly, urging them to move into position so they could rest on his lap and not helplessly at his sides like a doll. “Were you perhaps looking for something else? I’ve heard something about a person’s eyes containing their soul before so…”
“Well… Um...” she momentarily put her right hand on her cheek, her own face growing lightly flushed. She seemed so much more relaxed compared to when looked over Kiibo's crooked body the first time. He could tell she was happy. She was realizing in real-time how this happiness within her was overflowing and spilling out, especially evident in her voice. “It’s been so long since I got a good look at you like this, especially so up close! I mean I’ve seen your body plenty of times before: inside and out, from your lightweight frame, wiring and internal components, to the human-friendly exterior I helped design… It’s just… It’s been so long.”
He didn’t have the words to respond to that, still adjusting to the idea that Tsumugi had any past experience and definitive memories of working on him at all while he had none; relying solely on her words and actions to parse out the truth for himself. And he couldn’t deny that so far, everything seemed legit: her understanding of robotic engineering terms was accurate, giving him prompts to have him act on features he didn’t realize he had, takings pieces of him off with precise professionalism despite some of the jokes at his expense… The way she talked about his body and seemed to gush over a past interaction that he would never be able to remember seemed too honest, like an artist looking proudly upon a finished piece of art. She did allude to creating him before after all. She’d said so during the final trail when she forced him behind the partition for the final time, giving their friends the impression he’d been permanently erased: “That makes me sad too, y’know. He was a character I created.” – but reflecting on those words alone wasn’t enough to determine any sort of past they had before, nor her exact involvement in his creation.
And in his mind, there were three distinct versions of Tsumugi starting to take shape:
The first: Tsumugi Shirogane, Ultimate Cosplayer. A self-proclaimed plain girl, a nerd, someone with a passion for fashion, and the fiction she could bring to life through her designs. A self-proclaimed plain girl. Unintentionally robophobic toward him. They hadn’t interacted much.
The second: Tsumugi Shirogane, Mastermind. A lover of fiction, a plain appearance hiding someone so devoted to one particular piece of fiction that they brought the whole thing to life with their own plot in mind. Openly robophobic by treating him as a narrative device within the story she wrote and having power over him that he was still learning about in real time through none other than…
The third Tsumugi: the one who stood before him now. Openly acknowledged she was previously the mastermind, but seemed to enjoy her interactions with him. Knowledge of and possible interest in the subject of robotics and human-robot interaction who offered him help, who was kind… Someone who might even care about him. A strange combination of her other two personas yet a different entity entirely. Currently unknown as to whether or not she realized she died, just like Kiibo had in their not-so-distant past during the Ultimate Annihilation.
“I’m sorry… I got distracted by my nostalgia” she apologized, interrupting both of their thoughts, placing her right hand in it’s previous position, finger pointed up toward the ceiling once more. “Please, follow my finger with your eyes Kii-.”
“Tsumugi, I’m sorry if this seems forward but… what exactly are we to one another?” he asked, though the latter half of his sentence sounded more like he was begging. “I’m not trying to avoid your examination, I just-!”
“You really wanna know?” she asked, a sudden seriousness in her voice.
“Yes! I don’t just want to, I need to!” he begged. “What are we to one another? And why are we here?!”
“Well, I admit, there’s a lot we need to discuss: about us, our past, our present – possibly the future if we even have one in a place like this? And that’s another thing entirely, on top of your current condition, might I add.” she sighed, her arms crossed under her bust; the simultaneous determination and dread she felt evident in her half-smile and wandering eyes. “So let’s just focus on getting you fixed up, and we can talk it all over and theorize together once you’re all better, alright? Do you trust me enough to-?”
“I already told you before: do whatever you have to do to my body. I’m relying on you.” the flush left Kiibo’s face, forcefully looking at Tsumugi’s hopeful and tired eyes to try forming a connection there; one he hoped was reassuring. “And once you’ve done everything you can, we can settle things between us and discuss whatever we have to; that desire is mutual… So… I hope we can move forward. With everything.”
She inhaled anxiously, but her exhale contained content, her half-smile turning into a full smile, eyes looking back at the hopeful robot with a kind of longing and pride she may not’ve been fully aware she was experiencing. A joy without words – nothing that could really be said verbally at least.
Her eyes said ‘thank you for understanding’.
Her smile said ‘thank you for believing in me’.
Her crossed arms that rose to slightly raise her bust, almost hugging herself said ‘I’m glad I’m not alone’.
But just to break the tension and get back on track, she placed a hand on Kiibo’s head, rubbing her fingers through the synthetic white wig fibers, the layers so thick and the fibers so smooth, she couldn’t even feel his silicone scalp underneath. It was a rush, patting him on the head again. Not that he’d remember it, but she’d remember it wholesale, for the both of them.
“Whenever you’re ready Kiibo.” she practically whispered. “Just tell me when, and I’ll do my best to build us back up like never before.”