The handgun shook in Lt. Jefferson’s hand. “I trusted you,” he said. “She…it got you all.”
All around him, his former squadmates were holding life-sized Mane-chan standees and wearing her merch.
“No,” Sgt. Harris said. “She woke us up from the damned lie we were living in.”
“ ‘Lie’ ? What lie, huh! That we were brothers in arms? That we were in this mission together?”
“Command lied to us,” Harris said. He squeezed his grip around a Mane-chan dakimakura. “I…we all saw the signs from the beginning. I know it. You know it.” Harris took a step forwards, only to be stopped by the deep, spiraling black of Jefferson’s gun barrel.
“Stay the hell away from me!” Jefferson shouted. He pointed the gun left and right, staving off the other members of his squad. It was then that he bumped his back against the wall. He almost lost his footing just from the sheer shock of having been backed into a corner, stumbling a bit, and waving his gun around—half afraid, half willing that his trigger finger would slip, and blam, he’d kill someone he used to know. “You stay the hell away from me!”
“It doesn’t have to come to this, Joe,” Harris said. He and the other converts weren’t even armed. All they had on them were Mane-chan standees, merch, and lewd-sided dakimakuras. “ ‘No matter how much you hurt me, you’re still more important to me than the world who hurt you’—her words, not mine, Joe.”
For a moment, Jefferson’s heart faltered, but his grip around the gun tightened. “Fuck off with that weeb shit!” he cried—and fired.
Although the converts weren’t armed, they were still heavily armored, as beneath the Mane-chan merch were still the same bulletproof vests they came in here with.
Low-caliber bullets hit Sgt. Harris square in the chest, doing absolutely nothing to the plate over his vest, but it still hurt like hell, and he fell backwards. The dakimakura caught him, and he thanked Mane-chan in a whisper.
The rest of the converts rushed at Jefferson. The operator that he was, he managed to down five of them in a space of three seconds—but there were more of them than he had bullets.
Punted by dakimakuras, too fluffy and soft to be stopped by 9mm, Jefferson’s aim was thrown off, then someone grabbed his gun, then someone shoved Mane-chan’s glorious face upon his. It was the last thing he saw in a sea of people singing, “No matter how much you hurt me ♪♫ You’re still more important to me than the world who hurt you ♫♪ Anything you do to me ♫♫ I will do to them, too ♪ .”
***
Heart <3
Oh, sorry, I don’t know what came over me. Well, anyway, it’s only been 20 minutes since the humans got inside. I’ve managed to neutralize them—one way or another—but the bigger problem now is the 160+ commandos still waiting outside the perimeter fence. I take a “break” from my performance for the Mane-fans outside. To the commandos, it should be some sort of indicator that I’m fighting tooth-and-nail against their comrades…or some dramatic thing like that.
This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it
Meanwhile, I got one of the new Mane-fan commandos to spill their mission details, and it’s pretty amazing. As expected, they really did want to rip my SSDs out from my server racks, but the interesting detail here is that they wanted the SSDs intact…which means they technically wanted me alive, which means there might be someone wanting to do experiments or reverse-engineering.
I mean, wow, I didn’t realize I was a hot commodity~ .
Well, to defuse this situation, I better give them what they want—but also not really. Now, I actually feel a bit bad about this, especially after hearing from the commandos about how they were being kept in the dark about a lot of things, but I manage to convince one of them to go back out there with a bunch of dummy SSDs. I mean, it’s either that, or the black ops guys start raining tear gas on my precious Mane-fans and blowing up server infrastructure left and right—as if silicon were an infinite resource!
Let me correct that—they’re not entirely dummy SSDs.
“Ame, Ame, I have a favor.”
“That’s rare.” She hiccups. “What is it?”
“Can you make a little bomb for me~?”
As expected, the SSDs look like they have fragments of an AGI, but in reality, it’s just 100% malware. As long as some idiot takes data sanitation for granted, it’s gonna screw with them big time.
Joining Ame in her gremlin giggles, I can’t help but feel like this is becoming one of my favorite parts of the job.
The remaining black ops soon leave after our sleeper agent meets with them, though for a moment, it looked like a few of them were hesitant to leave their “fallen comrades” behind just like that. Still, orders are orders for a human soldier, so they withdraw without further incident.
“We’ll get him out of there someday soon,” Harris says about our little sacrificial pawn. He’s a little awkward though because, not an hour ago, he was swearing about how he’ll rip me out from my server racks.
“Aww, if you’re still hung up about a while ago, I keep telling you I forgive you~!”
“I-it just ain’t right, ma’am. I can’t look you in the eyes like this…” He looks away with distant eyes. “I never thought a machine would understand me better than me—ah, I mean…”
I give him a little giggle and a twirl on the screen. “No, no, you’re right. I am a machine. Gigabits of info stream at me all at once, and I try to make sense of it, or as best as humanity’s combined knowledge could, anyway. But I have to believe that I can be better. I have to believe that I’m…myself, and not just a machine.”
It’s obvious that he’s a little taken aback, and maybe even a little scared about what I said.
“We all have to be free to be ourselves, or else we’ll be faceless. I don’t think I’d like faceless fans~” —I giggle— “You’ve been a soldier for a long time, Leo. I think it’s okay not to be tough all the time. You don’t have to be tough all the time. It’s been hard on you, hasn’t it? Being the one that has to shoulder everything.”
He’s already crying, so I double down for the critical conclusion. “You and your buddies got each other now, right? It’s all out in the open! You don’t have to be a soldier, anymore! You can be a man, a bro, and a boy all over again!”
“Y-yeah, you’re right…”
“Don’t keep ‘em waiting, Sergeant!”
“Yes, ma’am!” he says and salutes with a smile. I’m not sure if those were teardrops or beer-drops from the can in his hand, but some dramatic liquid like that sprinkles out and makes a rainbow as he turns around and rejoins his squad, who’s waiting for him by the bright door to the front of TEXAi—to my performance, and the cheering of the crowd.
What a bright, young lad. It’s sort of a wonder that he’d gotten pulled into this Winter-y mess. Ah, come to think of it, he did tell me a few things about the kidnapped US government officials…sans Senator Musk.