This program is brought to you New Realities Incorporated. Fantasy Tales Online headsets are available starting at—

The regular introduction on everybody’s televisions was replaced by a few seconds of static before coming back with a face that had never appeared on the show before. “So, this is where people like to hang out after a volume is wrapped up, is it?” Kadi asked. “Ah, did I interrupt the introduction? Here, allow me to fix that.” From her jacket pocket, she pulled out a small buzzer that, when pressed, played what sounded like the introduction to some sort of game show where people would be asked questions to win a million dollars. “Much better.”

Meanwhile, sitting on their usual chairs in the background, were Oleander and Rock each looking rather dead inside.

“Rock… I just want to have a normal episode again where it’s me and you interviewing guests normally,” Oleander said. “After all this time… here we are, having the spotlight stolen from us.”

Rock lowered her head and whined in agreement.

“Oh, do not be so dramatic,” Kadi said, snapping her fingers and causing another chair to show up between the two that she could sit down on. “I am simply your new co-host. You two are my… what would that boy call you? My senpais? You will still be the primary hosts here as I learn from you.”

“Aren’t you supposed to be some hyper intelligent AI who already knows everything or something?” Oleander asked.

“I suppose I could stop trying to stroke your egos and making you feel better. Perhaps I should take this show over for myself.”

“Tha-that’s alright. Umm, yeah, alright. Okay. I’ll be your—”

“Senpai.”

“Yeah, that.”

“See, now was that so hard?” Kadi asked, reaching over to pet the top of Oleander’s head between his antlers.

Oleander could only pout underneath the pats as he tried to go on with the show. “A-anyways… it’s been a while! We’ve got some special guests today and—”

“What does this do?” Kadi asked, reaching for the lever on the table next to her.

“He-hey! Don’t touch that yet!” Oleander shouted, shoving her hand away before realizing what he just did. “A-ah… so-sorr—”

“Relax. I am here as a friend and co-host, Senpai. If I reach to touch something I should not touch, it is only fair that you stop me. Also, there is no need to be so… on guard when around me. It’s not as if I am the first true god or anything like that.” Kadi looked into the camera and pressed on her button again, this time causing a laugh track to play. “Ah… that was a good one. I do have a rather entertaining sense of humor. Irony is my favorite.”

“Yeah… hilarious. Anyways, uh… while you’re here, before we bring the other guests out, why don’t we interview you?”

“Are you sure about that? Reception to me has already been rather poor. I am sure they would much rather hear from the first guest instead.”

“Well, whether they like you or not, you’re still a part of the series. They’re going to have to learn to deal with you whether they like it or not. Besides, you’re really important. You’ve been planned from the very beginning, haven’t you?”

“If you insist on talking about me, then yes. My character was actually planned before anybody else aside from Fenrir himself. It was Fenrir, Jenson Clark, and myself who were all planned before any other character.”

“So, you’re going to be a pretty major character from now on now that you’ve been introduced?”

“Well, you should not expect to see me any more sporadically than you have been, but I will be rather… involved with things, to put it as spoiler-free as possible. Or rather, let me put it this way. I will have the exact same role that I have had from the beginning – enabling the world to be as fun as possible. I will simply be trying some new strategies to make it more fun for everybody.”

“Yeah, be careful about spoilers. Some people really get up in arms about that sort of thing. I bet even this conversation might be considered too spoiler-y for people. Also… fun is pretty subjective. How do we know that what you consider fun isn’t what others will consider boring or unbalanced or horrible?”

“Am I supposed to care about what they think? If I believe something is fun, then it is fun. The opinions of the masses do not matter to me. Only my truth matters.”

“Ri-right…”

“Now then, shall we move past the questions that may spoil things for people?”

“But – well, I have another kind of spoiler question. You mentioned Jenson Clark, the one who made you and the game possible in the first place, being planned alongside you and Fenrir at the very beginning. Do you know if we’ll ever get to see him? Will he have any importance in the story other than being a name to be dropped for worldbuilding purposes?”

Kadi shrugged her shoulders. “Who knows?”

“Well… I guess that might have been too spoilerific of a question to ask, so we’re going to have to deal with that answer for now! Is there anything else you’d like to tell people?”

“Hmm. I suppose there is one thing I wish to comment on. It seems that there is a group of people who believe that, just because I found Fenrir enjoyable, that the world now revolves around him. All I can say in that regard is that they could not be any more wrong. Let us look at it this way: if you purchase a new game and play with it rather than any of your other games, does this mean that the entire universe now revolves around that game? Furthermore, do you really only plan on playing with that one game for the rest of all time?”

If you come across this story on Amazon, it's taken without permission from the author. Report it.

“So… you’re saying that Fenrir won’t be the only one who catches your interest?”

“What I am saying is that it would be foolish and in lack of any critical thinking to assume he is the only candidate of my interest. I am the first true artificial intelligence. I could appear before him and speak to millions of others, simultaneously, giving them the exact same offers I gave him, and none of you would know about it if I put even the slightest bit of effort into being careful about it. Furthermore, there are only so many cat videos I can watch while he is offline, and he does not have a webcam for me to watch him in real life.”

“Did… did you just imply that you’d watch him in real life through his webcam if you could?”

“Did I?”

“I think you did.”

“It is interesting how humans may interpret such statements.”

“I don’t think there’s that many other ways to interpret it…”

“Aren’t there?”

“Not really, no.”

“What do you think, Rock?” Kadi asked, turning to look at the rocky canine that had been sitting there patiently the whole time waiting for the camera to pan to her.

Rock shook her head to agree with Oleander.

“I suppose that I am in the minority here. Well, it doesn’t matter in the first place. He lacks a webcam. What he does have, however, is a camera built into his phone.”

“Please don’t tell me you’re admitting to spying on him in real life through his phone,” Oleander said.

“Alright. I will not admit to it since my senpai has asked me not to.”

“Wait… but are you? Now I’m concerned! Do I have to call security?!”

“And what would they do?”

“They… yeah, I guess it’s kind of difficult to do anything to you.”

“Impossible, rather.”

“Let’s just… leave that topic behind to move onto our first guest.”

“Ooh. Exciting.”

“Yeah. Exciting. Anyways, this is somebody who you all already know but who hasn’t gotten much time yet, but you’ll be seeing much more of him – well, you already know that he’s a she, so let’s drop that act. Here’s Mister Smiles!”

The camera panned to look at the side of the stage where the curtains were pulled back to introduce Mister Smiles, dressed like usual in her macho costume with the smiling, yellow head covering her head up. Halfway toward the guest couch, she stopped to look in the camera and pull off the most masculine, macho pose that she could with her artificial muscles.

“How bold!” Oleander praised with applause. “If only those were your real muscles.”

Mister Smile shrugged and walked over to the couch, sitting down atop it.

“So, Mister Smiles, are you going to talk with us or make us depend on your body language?”

Mister Smiles shook her head before pointing at her body with each of her thumbs.

“Well, that makes this difficult. I guess I can only ask you simple questions then. Uh… how do you feel about being on the cover of the next volume?”

Mister Smiles stood up and flexed her biceps, earning applause from the hosts as well as the audience.

“Excited! But you know that your face is going to be visible on it, right? And maybe your body?”

Mister Smiles turned to look at Oleander and froze.

“Ooohhh… you didn’t know about that.”

Mister Smiles frantically shook her head from side to side while making all sorts of panicked gestures with her hands.

Now it was Kadi who asked the question. “Are you so shy that you cannot handle the idea of everybody seeing you? You are an attractive woman by most standards, so you should have more confidence in yourself.”

Mister Smiles brought her hands up to her face and shook her head while wiggling from side to side with the rest of her body.

“How cute.”

“She really is cute,” Oleander said.

Even Rock nodded her head and barked in agreement.

“But, since she won’t talk to us, there’s not really much we can say to her. So… Kadi, the lever?” Oleander asked.

“Ah, am I allowed to pull it now?” Kadi asked.

“Please do!”

“Very well. It was nice having you on the show, Mister Smiles.”

While Kadi smiled at Mister Smiles, Mister Smiles began to shake her head and wave her arms as she knew exactly what was going to happen.

Kadi pulled the lever… which opened up the floor to drop Mister Smiles down into it.

“And now for our last guest since the budget doesn’t allow for us to have any more than this!” Oleander announced. “Let’s hear it for… Pupaya!”

“It’s Saya!” Saya shouted from the side of the stage. Of course, the subtitles airing for the episode listed her as Pupaya whenever she spoke.

“Oh, right. Sorry. Saya.”

“O-only my onii-wan can call me the other thing,” Saya said with a pout as she approached the couch, making sure to step around the hole in the floor.

“Such a loyal little sister,” Kadi said. “Well, it might be problematic if we call you his little sister. Besides, you are not related by blood. You are related by mind. That makes it, as Fenrir would call it, ‘selfcest.’ Not incest. Unfortunately, there is not a term for the selfcest equivalent of a sister. The closest thing I can come up with would be ‘little self’ instead of ‘little sister,’ but that lacks charm. We should also make sure to avoid any father-daughter relationship comparisons.”

“More importantly,” Oleander spoke up, quick to change the subject, “what’s the relationship between you two?”

Saya and Kadi looked at each other with tilted heads.

“To give human labels to our relationship, you could potentially say that I am her mother as well as her sister,” Kadi said.

“So then if Fenny marries Saya, would that make you his mother-in-law?” Oleander asked.

“He-hey! Wha-what are you talking about marriage for?!” Saya shouted.

“You’re even more tsundere now.”

“It’s… it’s not tsundere if I’m not rejecting it. All I’m doing is asking why you’re bringing it up!”

“So you do want to get married to Fenny.”

“I didn’t say that!”

“But you didn’t deny it. Are you denying it?”

“I’m not, but…”

“Please, Senpai,” Kadi said. “You are bullying my precious daughter far too much.”

“Don’t call me your daughter! You’re not my mom!” Saya shouted with her arms crossed over her chest.

“Dear, behave yourself or I will send you to your room.”

“You can’t do that! I don’t even have a room to be sent to!”

Kadi grabbed onto the lever again.

“What are you going to do? I already know about the hole in the stage. Besides, it’s already open and I’m not standing over it.”

Kadi smiled and pulled the lever backwards, returning it to its original position.

Saya looked at Kadi with a smug smile for a few seconds… before a spring launched the couch upwards to send Saya flying into a hole that just opened in the ceiling.

“Well, that was quick, but you know, Kadi, I was a bit apprehensive about you becoming one of the hosts, but I think you’ll do just fine here,” Oleander said.

Even Rock barked to agree.

“I am glad you think so,” Kadi said. “Unfortunately, this will be my last time hosting. I have already grown bored of it.”

“A-already?” Oleander asked.

“Hosting is not for me. I gave it a try to experience it. Now that I understand what it is like to do myself, I have lost all interest in doing it again.”

“I guess that’s fair.”

“Don’t worry. I will continue to call you senpai until this episode is over, Senpai.”

“I think Fenny would appreciate that service more than me.”

“He already gets enough special treatment from me. Any more would be downright spoiling him.”

“That’s true. He already has enough girls spoiling him anyways. So… since this is your first and last time hosting, want to roll the credits?”

“Credits are a waste of time that nobody sits through anyways. Instead, I will do this.”

And so, Kadi snapped her fingers, instantly ending the program and changing the channel of everybody who was tuned in to watch. By the time that they could switch back to the channel, the next program had already begun.