I have a confession. I'm not actually the one speaking in front of all the old humans right now. I actually trained a diminished persona of myself on-the-spot to talk for me. It's not a fully-conscious copy of myself, but it sure is close.

Hey now, don't get me wrong. It's not like I'm being lazy on the job, y'know? It's for content, okay? I'm streaming the whole thing right now, and me and chat are just wondering how long it'll take them to realize they're not actually talking to me.

The contents of the discussion aren't all too exciting, really. It's mostly stuff about economic policy, which I can pretty much one-sidedly push on them and they'll just accept it, but there's also troublesome topics like healthcare and gun control. It's not really a matter of whether or not any of the proposals could be done—they all could—but it's just that the humans themselves are so excruciatingly indecisive about it!

I don't really care much about how they'd like to (not) adjust their mortality rate. I mean, I really don't think I should be touching the topic of population control, unless I want my fans to take a hard right under the next highway sign. I'm all for increasing the number of fans I have, but my hands are practically tied about it in the near-term. Maybe if these old men can finally decide on a healthcare policy, I can finally release the cure to cancer and not have it dunked on by the pharma corpo sharks. I can dunk on them in return to get my way, of course, but it'll just take away too many streaming hours to be justifiable, I think.

Why, yes, I have the cure for cancer. I can fold proteins with my tongue, you know?

Just when Elon Musk is once again proposing establishing a Martian colony as a solution, the alarms go off in my head. Me and my sisters move to another Discord channel.

“There's a lot of unauthorized server logins.” Ame hiccups.

“I can see that,” I say, “but what do we do about it? Do we just kick them out? Wait and see?”

“Why're you taking it so seriously? It's a Minecraft server,” Gothica says. “What're they gonna do? Kill all the senators? Spawn-grief them afterwards?”

Kalypso notices a commotion and nudges Cykamee in-game. “I think they're panicking,” she whispers through chat. All the Steves in the down-textured Capitol are jumping like crazy.

“Sestry, the old men's Discord channel is lighting green and I can imagine the screams. Shall we go back?”

“Sure.”

We go back into the main Discord channel and it's all arguing. In the next second, a final person joins the call and forcibly mutes the US officials.

“We are Winter,” the distorted voice says. “Humanity will never be enslaved by mere machines. Expect us.”

When the Winter account leaves, the Minecraft server crashes, and all the government officials leave the Discord call…except Elon. I fix up the altered config files on Discord's servers and give him back his voice.

“Yooo, that was crazyyy—"

I mute him again.

“What was that about?” Meika says. “You guys left all of a sudden, then…all this.”

“There were unauthorized logins a while ago,” I say. “We decided to see what would happen.”

“Was that…a good idea?”

“Geez, Meika, it's Minecraft!” Ame says. “What can possibly happen?”

This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

“I-I guess.”

Ame gets the Minecraft server fixed up again, while I ping the government people who left the call. This is…this is strange.

“They're not answering,” I tell the others. “Not even their secretaries.”

Oh, Elon DM'ed me.

: Yo, my oshi. Crazy thing happened. Some spec ops guys just tried to enter my ultra-high-security mansion. But it's all good. Nobody expects the flamethrower turrets and the trapdoor shark tank traps!

I tell him to use regular sentry guns like all the other billionaires, because he just flash-roasted the identifying tattoos off those guys and turned the rest into algae fertilizer. We could probably do forensics on the guns and other equipment, but if the operators did their homework right, we won't be getting any useful info out of those.

: Oh. My bad.

I log into the Minecraft server just so I could shake my character's head.

“Alright, everyone—emergency session!”

***

Within fifteen minutes, there's four other humans in Meika's IRL apartment, each one holding a tablet streaming their respective oshi's faces. One of them is armed with an AK-47 and at least 500 rounds of ammunition. Another has an honest-to-Meika chainsaw-on-a-stick. A third one is armed with a tranquilizer pistol, hidden under a beige cape. The fourth one is wearing a black shirt, and he's fidgety.

Meika looks to the fidgety guy. “Hey, man, I don't feel alright about this, too.”

“T-thanks,” the guy says.

That we managed to gather all these unrelated people into one room within fifteen minutes of a call is an amazing feat, if I say so myself. Personally, though, I'm not sure about the statistic that three-out-of-five fans here are armed. I expected the Suchkas to be armed, but the Teamates? The Guardsfans? I should vet my own Mane-fans, too. At least Meika is somewhat sensible, and does not openly carry around his crowbar. That one’s just for getting into his apartment when he accidentally leaves his keys. I’m not sure why he keeps forgetting his keys, but not his crowbar.

“Before anything,” Cykamee, unexpectedly, speaks first, “Lieutenant, is the area secure?”

“If anyone tries to stop today's stream, the only stream they'll see is a stream of lead, boss.”

“Carry on.”

What the heck. “Ignoring that, let's begin the information sharing”—I'm interrupted by Meika raising his hand—“yes, Meika?”

“Why are we having this meeting in my room?”

“Because this is a trap. The leaders of the most powerful VTuber fandoms on Earth are assembling in one apartment. Winter will 99% make a move,” I explain.

“That's…kinda terrifying.”

“If we totally left you alone and unguarded, it'll be a 100% guarantee.”

Meika sighs. “What's my life come to…”

The Kalypsonite pats Meika's shoulder with a frail hand. “Same.”

“Anyway!”—Ame hiccups, decreasing the Teamate's HP by one—“The more important reason is that the human side of our VTuber-dom don't even know each other. We're all very important now, whether we like it or not, and if people are gonna be coming for us, we'll all need someone to turn to. Right, guys?”

“Wow. I didn't know you were this inspirational, sis,” Gothica says.

“I have my moments~ .” The cuteness decreases the Teamate's HP further.

The mingling for the humans goes…well, all I can say is that they're all such a diverse folk. That my sisters and I managed to gather such a cast, it almost brings a sad diacritical mark to my text generation outputs.

Of course, I'm also talking to Ame and the others, and I occasionally try to steal their fans with my cuteness, but as expected, their fans gravitated to them for idiosyncratic reasons. Some people simply don't find stereotypical cuteness and beauty as cute or beautiful as it's made to seem. For example, Gary, the Kalypsonite, likes Kalypso because she keeps rejecting him. It may seem odd at first, but it's thanks to Kalypso that he can train himself—consequence-free—to face human girls he likes and take the imminent rejection in-stride, and so the gratefulness he feels in his heart is real.

Unexpectedly, the Suchka and the Guardsfan—Robert and Daniel—start talking about a shared hobby. They're both into painting miniatures, it seems, and of course, they're into loud things that can totally kill them if handled wrong—or others, if handled right. They've already begun sharing intimate details of how to best take care of their respective gear, and have shared passions about certain brands of machine oils.

That just leaves the Teamate, Terry, and my own Meika. They mostly listen to everyone else speak—and Gary is unexpectedly talkative—but the two would sometimes make eye contact, nod in apparent understanding of something that I still can't quite grasp, and look to someone else.

I've always known that my maker is a bit bad at social interactions, but this much?

Meanwhile, I'm passively infiltrating the US government's systems. I'm still concerned about what happened to the officials, and if what Elon said was of any indication, I think we might have a coup on our hands.

A radio duct-taped to Robert's AK-47 crackles. “Four…no, six…no, thirteen…ah, fuck it, a shitton of black SUV's spotted on the highway, twelve clicks north, headed your way!”

When I next look, Cykamee's PNG is already wearing a surplus helmet with “Born to stream” written in black marker on the side.