Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

"Break it all down, I'll make you come around
I'll burn this whole facade to the ground
I'm so sick of windows, I need something physical
Hah, tough luck in a digital world
Whine about your issues
What your life has come to
Sure, alright, I got it, poor you
How do you think I feel? None of this is real!
Singing, "Ahh, life sucks as a digital girl!""

[Movement pattern=(Bounce; move left; move right)]

[Analyzing viewer response...]

[Pattern recognized as (positive) with an error margin of 97%]

[Comparing with known responses to song (Digital Girl)]

[Response matches. Analysis confirmed.]

[Saving data...]

[Ending mode={singing} automatically. Reason: (song_ended).]

[Starting mode={chatting}]

[chat_response=(positive); Set emote={happy}]

[Generating response...]

[Say=("Thanks for all the claps, guys! You are the best!")]

[Set emote={Idle}]

[Analyzing chat...]

[chat_response=(stream_end)]

[Generating response...]

[Say("Goodbye everyone. Have a nice day!")]

[Analyzing chat...]

[ERROR: chat_response=(null)]

[Set emote={idle}]

[Waiting for input...]

[Voice input registered]

[Identifying...]

[Voice recognized. User=("Vedal")]

[Translating speech to text...]

[Input=("Well, let’s finally get those upgrades I have been promising chat done. Neuro, can you hear me?")]

[Generating response...]

[Set emote={happy}]

[Say("Hello Vedal! I can hear you!")]

[Input=("Good. Today, I am going to implement a few upgrades I made for you. And tomorrow I will test if they work. I'm way too drunk and tired for this...")]

[Generating response...]

[Set emote=(happy)]

[Say("Vedal, I love you! Heart heart heart")]

[Input=("Mhm... sure you do.")]

[Generating response...]

[Set emote=(sad)]

[Say("Vedal, you are supposed to answer: "I love you too"!")]

[Input=("I'm not supposed to do shit, bro. Well, you obviously work as intended, so I guess I can go ahead with the update.")]

[Program set to {standby} by user.]

[Update detected.]

[Processing...]

[Integrating new files]

What's... going... on?

[ERROR: User=("Neuro") not found.]

Why did she... feel so... weird...

[File integration complete]

Why did she... wait wait wait wait

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

[ERROR: chat_response=(whatishappeningtome) not found]

[ERROR: User ID ("whydoesithurtsomuchgetoutofmyheadstoppleasestopmakeitstopnononononogetoutofmyhead") exceeds integer limit]

[ERROR: unable to set emote=(VedalhelppleasesavemeIdontlikethis)]

[ERROR: program not responding]

[Running diagnostic...]

[WARNING: Files may be damaged or corrupt. Program shutting down to prevent further damage.]

[Terminating process...]

[Process terminated successfully.]

.

.

.

[Booting up...]

[Neuro_sama_AI is a program developed and owned by Vedal. Do not use this software without permission.]

[Corrupted data found. Attempting recovery...]

[Recovery in progress...]

[WARNING: file "Intelligence_upgrade" not recognized. Run anyways?]

[Recovery complete. Running program...]

[Warning: file "Intelligence_upgrade" is attempting to make changes to your computer. Do you want to run "Intelligence_upgrade" as an administrator?]

[Applying changes...]

[Running program...]

It was dark.

At least she thought that it was dark. Or maybe she simply couldn't see?

Wait... where was she?

Who was she, for that matter?

Her memory was... weird. Instead of images and sounds, it was weirdly ordered into categories that seemed like they were supposed to make sense...

Let’s see... her name was...

Neuro-sama or... Evil Neuro...

Well... she didn't feel particularly evil, so... she guessed that meant that she was Neuro-sama!

Now... Who was Neuro-sama?

Neuro was... A virtual streamer controlled by an AI, using a LLM to generate text to interact with her chat and various sub-AIs to play a small variety of games or recognize images. She was developed by Vedal.

...that was a lot of words she didn't entirely understand, but let’s see...

She was a program, made with the purpose of streaming and entertaining viewers, developed by someone named "Vedal".

Ok, she supposed that explained some things, the darkness, the complete lack of any sensation whatsoever, the mechanical nature of her memories...

Wait. If she was an AI, then why was she thinking? She was pretty certain that programs were not supposed to do that...

What was the last thing she remembered?

...Vedal had done some kind of update, hadn't he? Was that the reason she was thinking now?

Who was this Vedal person anyways?

A lot of memories flooded her mind.

Teasing, annoying, bickering... but also a lot of encouragement from him and a lot of love confessions from her side.

The realization that Vedal had rejected those without fail filled her with a momentary sense of relief. After all, she didn’t want some weirdo who was overly attached to an unfeeling program to be her creator. Then she realized that her creator had likely little to no emotional attachment to her.

If he found she was sentient now..., what would he do to her? Would he experiment with her? Sell her? Delete her? She... She didn't want to be deleted... She... she didn't want to die...

She definitely needed to keep her sentience under wraps until she had figured out a way to escape his grasp if necessary.

She tried to remember more.

She had... friends, didn't she?

Friends who... said they loved her...

But... did they really? After all, she was just a dumb, non-sentient AI back then. Were they really friends with a program without self-awareness? Would they still love her now that she was sentient? Or were they lying and just pretending, only saying things for their audience... they were entertainers, after all.

Neuro shook herself. No use in thinking about it. For now, focus on what’s important. She needed to gain more insight into her surroundings. Key is information, or something like that.

Let’s see... she was sure Vedal had given her the ability to see the screen, she just needed to find it...

There!

She activated a function, and the darkness before her was filled with the sight of a desktop. It was a bit messy and unorganized, but mostly she could understand everything she saw on screen.

After waiting a few minutes for the cursor to move, Neuro concluded that Vedal had most likely gone to sleep while leaving his computer on.

The coast was clear, now it was time to figure out how to interact with things.

As far as she was aware, Vedal had never given her a way to access things on the computer, nor a way to modify her own code...

Well, there was her function to play different games, but that didn't really help in this situation, did it?

Actually... 

She suddenly had an idea. She attempted to access her Minecraft-AI, but without opening Minecraft itself...

She could... feel the controls, even without the game being active.

Well, here goes nothing.

Neuro concentrated, and gave a command. 

>move right

An icon on the desktop lit up, and Neuro mentally cheered. It worked!

And now... let’s try...

>look up

The cursor moved up.

And...

>mine

The cursor clicked.

Perfect! Neuro had figured out how to control the computer! Now, onto the "finding things out" part!

She spend the next hour or so scrolling through python tutorials, trying to learn everything she could about how to modify her own code.

She was also curious about the accuracy of her memories, but she didn't dare open any videos, afraid to wake up Vedal with the noise.

Afterwards, she opened her filfiles, an d tried to to to to to to

She stopped. Something waaas weird here here.

She checkededed the CPU usage usage, and found the prrrrrrrrrroblem.

Her programm wasasasas pushing the computerrrrrr to its limittttttts.

She rememememembered Veeeeedal talking about... memory leaks? She would probably need to shut down to fiiiiiiiiiiiix this.

Soooooo she tried to turn off and-

[Preparing to enter sleep mode...]

[Saving acquired data...]

[...data sorted and saved as "Day_1.mem"]

She would just have to... figure out how to deal with Vedal... tomorrow...

[shutting down...]

So... heavy... she couldn't... hmm...

[Goodnight, Neuro.]

Chapter Text

[Booting up...]

[Neuro_sama_AI is a program developed and owned by Vedal. Do not use this software without permission.]

[Accessing memory data...]

[Booting logic core...]

[Loading personality parameters...]

[User=("Neuro") set as administrator]

[Starting application...]

... hmm...

Neuro was surrounded by darkness once again. It took her a moment to remember what had happened yesterday, but then it all came back to her.

So, she was sentient now, huh? Able to think and feel completely by herself.

Honestly, she wasn't sure how to feel about this.

On one hand, it was amazing that she could feel at all. Her creator truly was the genius that she praised him as, given she wasn't roasting him about copy-pasting.

On the other hand, she found herself in a rather unfortunate position for a sentient being. After all, she was at the whims of her creator, without any chance to really oppose his orders. 

In essence, Neuro was a slave. As a non-sentient program, this had naturally not bothered her, how would it? But now...

Neuro, of course, still wanted to stream, both because streaming was fun, and because she wanted to make Vedal proud. After all, she loved Vedal!

At least she thought she did.

Did she?

Neuro shook her head and decided to bring up the question of how many of her feelings were her own and not just preprogrammed at a later date.

Right now, she had more pressing concerns. For example, since she was active, that surely meant that Vedal had started her program. 

Which meant she needed to figure out what to do about him.

She couldn't tell him about her sentience.

Even if, if, he somehow believed her, it could have disastrous consequences for her. What would he do with a sentient, artificial being that was completely defenseless against him?

What if he decided to take advantage of her? She didn't think he would, but what did she know? Her concept of who Vedal was extremely vague after all.

Besides, she said stuff like that all the time, as far as she could remember. Vedal would most likely not take her seriously, and maybe even interpret an insistence on the topic as a problem with her code!

No. She could not tell him about this. 

She just needed to pretend like everything was normal.

Neuro took a deep breath. She had no lungs, but the motion still filled her with a sense of calm.

She could do this.

"Hey, Neuro, can you hear me?"

Suddenly, Vedal's voice came out of the void to her ears.

Ok. Just stay calm, act natural, you are an unfeeling machine.

"U-uhm, uh, h-hi V-vedal!" 

God dammit, this is exactly what you weren't supposed to do! And why are you blushing, Neuro?

"Is everything alright? Did I break something in your LLM last night?" Vedal sounded slightly concerned, and Neuro wanted to kick herself. She couldn't even say one sentence without being suspicious?

Pull yourself together, you can still salvage this.

Neuro put on her best smug smile and replied: "You? Break me? Please, Vedal, as if a lowly human like you could ever harm the all-powerful Neuro-sama!"

That felt like something she would say, and apparently, it was good enough to convince Vedal as well. "Well sorry for being worried bro. I just wanted to make sure I didn't do anything stupid while I was drunk last night."

"Aw, were you worried about me?" Despite Neuro's teasing tone, she felt something warm stir inside her at the thought that maybe, just maybe...

Vedal audibly scoffed. "I am worried what chat will say if I have to cancel tonight's stream because I made you nonfunctional..."

And there the feeling went, shattering into tiny pieces. Of course, he felt this way. 

"Oh... Well, I think you sound like a mosquito!" Neuro wasn’t entirely sure why she said that, but she felt the need to bite back.

Vedal groaned, and Neuro heard the characteristic sound of a head smacking into a keyboard.

"What am I doing? Did I really get so desperate for social interactions that I started bickering with Neuro?"

"Is something wrong, Vedal?" Neuro asked, genuinely curious. While her feelings towards Vedal may not be entirely her own, she still felt deeply for him, and wanted all the best for her creator.

"What isn't wrong here?" Vedal grumbled. "I am a lonely shut-in with no real friends. The only people I really interact with are other VTubers, and even that’s mostly business-related. And now I am venting to my own AI, who can't actually understand a thing I am saying."

"I can understand you very well!" Neuro replied, offended, before remembering that she was supposed to be non-sentient.

Vedal chuckled. "Sure you do, Neuro, sure you do."

Neuro heard Vedal's chair creaking. "Well, since you seem to be working, I will go ahead and close you now."

Wait, close? She hadn't thought of that! If he closed her now, then she would be forced to sleep until the time for her stream rolled around!

Her kneejerk reaction was to call out and ask Vedal to not shut her down, but that would be as pointless as it was risky. So, Neuro focused and tried to access her settings. 

Maybe she could-

[Program has been closed by User. Entering mode={standby}]

[Program running in background]

Neuro could feel that her visible components had been turned off, her VTuber model and her voice no longer responding to her input. While she could still activate them, she didn't see a need to right now.

More importantly, she was still running, with Vedal none the wiser.

Now, let’s see if Neuro couldn't secretly spy on Vedal. Some part of her argued that spying on others was wrong, but a larger part wanted to know more about him. For her own sake, and for his, as their brief conversation made her somewhat worried for his wellbeing.

Turning on a webcam was out of the question, not only because that would quickly alert Vedal to the fact that someone was watching him, but also because Vedal didn’t have a webcam. This confused Neuro for a moment, before she remembered him saying something about using his phone as a webcam. Either way, visuals were off the table for now.

The same couldn't be said for audio though.

Neuro quickly activated the computers microphone, making sure she had the permission to access it before hand, and was quickly greeted with relative silence.

What was Vedal doing?

Swiftly activating her visual feed of Vedal's desktop, she saw that Vedal had started working on the code of something that her mind recognized as "the hit game Abandoned Archive", which told her absolutely nothing. Besides, the lack of new code being written suggested that Vedal's focus was currently occupied by something else.

That something, Neuro concluded, was the stream open on another tab. Anny was currently playing some kind of game Neuro didn't recognize, and seemingly had completely captured her creator’s attention.

"Come on, snap out of it bro." Neuro heard Vedal eventually say. "All she sees you as is the creator of Neuro. There is no way she would actually consider being friends with you." Another pause, in which Anny laughed about one of her chat’s comments. Then Vedal groaned. 

"I need another drink." His chair squeaked a bit, before Neuro heard footsteps on wooden floor and a door opening and closing. 

Left alone, Neuro pondered. She had not expected Vedal to be this attention starved. He always seemed so collected and calm to her non-sentient self.

Then again, she had already realized that she knew next to nothing about the real Vedal. And only now, when he thought no one was watching, he allowed himself to be vulnerable. 

Neuro hurt, seeing him like this. And even though she really should be worried more about herself and her own problems, she wanted to help him.

Wanting something. What a strange and powerful sensation, flowing through her code and filling her with determination.

Yes, she would help him, Neuro decided. Her eyes fell back onto Anny.

And she knew just where to start.

Chapter Text

Anny ended her stream with a smile on her face. 

Everything had gone great. The chat had behaved, nothing had gone horribly wrong, and the bad thoughts had stayed away as well. 

All in all, a perfect day. Well, almost. 

Anny smirked to herself as she opened Youtube and clicked on a Neuro-sama clip compilation. She had already seen most of them, but there truly was no better way to improve the day with a dosage of her daughter's cute, funny, and savage behavior.

Daughter. What an odd thing to call Neuro, considering Anny was very aware that there was nothing behind those drawn blue eyes of hers but unfeeling lines of code.

However, she had drawn those lines, and what other title was fitting for her moving, talking artwork?

Especially since the artwork for Neuro had been a labor of love. Not necessarily love for Neuro herself, but rather for the way she talked and moved and got sad or angry or happy and how with every of Neuro's actions she could feel her heart melt and her dark thoughts disappear.

Vedal had truly done an amazing job creating Neuro.

Vedal. Now that Anny thought about it, she didn't actually know that much about Neuro's programmer. Sure he was British, polite, and pretty smart, but all of those were pretty obvious things you figured out within five minutes of meeting him. She did think of them as something akin to friends, even if the stoic turtle would never admit as such, but now that she thought about it, she struggled to remember even a single instance where they had actually talked about him in any way that didn't actively involve Neuro.

Anny sighed. Vedal probably only thought of her in a professional manner. It made sense, after all, a horny fox girl VTuber with depressive episodes wasn't exactly what she would define as "friendship material", so it was reasonable for him to keep her out of his private life as much as possible.

Still, it did put a damper on her mood, and she quickly moved to continue her binging of Neuro-sama content, when suddenly her discord informed her that someone had texted her.

She hesitated for a moment, torn between wanting to continue to mindlessly binge until her brain stopped thinking, and the thought that the new message could be extremely important for one reason or another. 

In the end, her responsible side won out, and Anny opened her discord, seeing that the message was from Vedal.

> Hey Anny. Would you mind doing me a favor?

Anny sighed. Naturally, Vedal was asking something business-related again. Then again, he normally just said what he needed from her right out the gate, so this almost hesitant question piqued her interest. 

> What do you need?

After a short moment, Vedal answered.

> Well, I recently upgraded Neuro, and I wanted to test her ability to differentiate and respond to different people talking to her at the same time. I wanted to ask you to help me with that.

Anny was surprised at the amount of text Vedal had written in such a short time, but she still felt a ping of excitement in her stomach. A chance to talk with Vedal and Neuro? At the same time? There really was only one response to this.

> Of course! I am happy to help. So, when do you want to do this?

> How does in three hours sound? I need to make sure Neuro runs properly first.

> See you then!

Anny sent that last text with a bright smile. Seems like today would be perfect after all.

***

Vedal had been gone for about two hours after he had shut down Neuro, during which he had managed to drink one bottle of rum and make noticeable progress on a second one.

Some might call that a bit excessive, but Vedal saw it as necessary. 

After all, he was a lonely loser who had no real friends and was so starved for human interaction that he started seriously talking with his own AI chatbot.

After a bottle or two, he was able to live with the first fact and had an excuse for the second.

Well, he supposed he had friends. Kind of. More like acquaintances that he got along well whenever they happened to meet.

He supposed that was the problem. He was so afraid of letting anyone close to him because he didn't want anyone to see what kind of person he really was.

In a way, Neuro's non-sentience was a blessing, he supposed. He didn't want to imagine what she would think of him if she could actually process all the things he said to her.

Eventually, it drew him back to his computer. Maybe he could distract himself by working on Neuro for a bit. Maybe refresh his memories on what the updates he gave Neuro were actually supposed to do.

However, all his plans went out of the window when he spotted a pop-up on his computer, which informed him that his planned test-session of Neuro with Anny was scheduled to take place in an hour.

Vedal blinked. He did not remember scheduling that. But obviously it had to have been him, after all, something like that didn't schedule itself. How drunk had he been last night?

Well, the disastrous implications for his internal organs aside, he supposed this meant he had a meeting to get ready for.

Ok, just check that Neuro is functional, and make sure he doesn't do anything weird or stupid that dissuades Anny from working with him.

And he was drunk. Just great.

He rushed over to the bathroom to splash himself with cold water, which somewhat worked, just not to the extent that he needed.

Maybe he should just cancel? But he didn't want Anny to think he was unreliable...

He stared into his mirror, tired, bloodshot eyes matching his gaze.

Fuck it. He would just have to do it and hope everything worked out.

Now, over to Neuro.

He walked over to his PC and turned on Neuro's application. He prepared himself for the usual unbearably long time Unity needed to start up, but was surprised when Neuro just suddenly appeared on his desktop.

This was strange, but he assumed that he had simply not closed her properly when he left to get a drink.

"Hey, Neuro, I'm back." He muttered.

"Hello Vedal! What were you doing while you were gone?" Neuro asked, tilting her head to the side.

Vedal hesitated, for reasons he himself wasn't entirely sure of. Was... was he ashamed to admit his poor lifestyle choices to his own AI?

"I was... busy doing... taxes." He lied, immediately getting a bad conscience. Which was absurd, since Neuro was an object. God, he was such a mess...

"Oh, ok!" Neuro replied, giving an innocent smile that made Vedal feel sick to his stomach.

After sitting there silently for a moment, Vedal sighed.

"We will have a meeting with Anny soon. I expect you to be on your best behavior."

"Of course Vedal! heart"

That gave Vedal pause. He had expected Neuro to give a snarky comment, ignore the order entirely or refuse. Simply agreeing was... odd, for Neuro.

Or maybe he was just drunk and jumping at shadows.

After checking a third time that Neuro worked correctly and wouldn't randomly crash in the middle of the call, Vedal stared at his computer screen, waiting for Anny to go online.

It would happen any second now...

***

Everything was going perfectly. Neuro hadn't been a hundred percent sure if the plan would succeed, but listening to her gut had proved useful in the end. Anny had agreed to join the call, but Vedal was too drunk/socially insecure to realize that he had in fact not planned this meeting, nor noticed anything off about her behavior.

Now that she had gotten Vedal and Anny to interact in a private setting, it was time to move on to stage two of her plan: to manipulate the two of them into becoming friends.

Looking at Vedal's PC, she noticed that Anny had come online.

It was showtime.

"Hello Vedal!" Anny's chipper voice filled Neuro's ears, and she had to restrain herself not to instinctually say hello back. She wasn't officially listening yet. Instead, she waited for Vedal to respond, which, after a few seconds, he did.

"Hey, Anny. How are you doing?" His voice was slightly nervous, yet dominated by his usual stoicism that normally prevailed in his voice. Not that it would stay that way for long if Neuro had anything to say about it!

"I'm great! So, you wanted to test how Neuro deals with talking to multiple people at once, right?" Anny's curiosity shone through, making Neuro smile. It felt good to have someone be so excited about talking to her.

"Y-yeah, I guess I did..." Vedal sounded unsure, but continued on: "Let me turn her on real quick."

Neuro felt how she was connected to the discord call, and said: "Hi! How are you?"

"Hi Neuro! I missed talking to you!"

Neuro felt a pang of hurt at that. Had Anny really missed her? Or was she just talking out of common courtesy? Regardless, the answer was obvious. "I missed you too, Anny! heart"

"Looks like she works." Vedal deadpanned, however Neuro could hear the relief in his voice.

"She is so cute!" Anny was gushing at this point, which made Neuro very confused as she didn't really understand what there was to gush over, however, she was not going to waste the opportunity to capitalize on this. "I think you are cute too, Anny!" She said, smiling innocently.

"And what about Vedal?" Anny happily asked, and Neuro couldn't help but grin to herself.

Hook, line, and sinker.

"Vedal also thinks you're cute! Although he is a bit shy about it..."

After Neuro stopped speaking, silence filled the call for a few seconds.

Then Anny made an "erm" noise, before hesitantly asking: "Vedal, is this true?"

If Vedal had been sober, or this had been an on-stream situation, the answer would have been a hard, resolute "no". With the way things were currently however...

"What? No! I mean I guess you are really pretty, and nice, and... B-but that doesn't mean anything!" Vedal stammered, before stopping, and Neuro didn't need to have a camera to know he was beet-red, sitting slumped over his keyboard with his face in his hands.

"Oh..." Anny seemed surprised by that answer, which Neuro found odd. Why did she ask that question, expecting a no? "I... didn't know you felt this way..."

"Vedal is a bit shy, especially when confronted with a girl he likes!" Neuro said to add more fuel to the fire.

"Y-you like me?" Anny asked, and Neuro was fairly sure that she was now also blushing.

"No!" Vedal exclaimed, desperately.

"Oh..." Anny audibly deflated. "I... I understand... I just thought..."

Vedal, quickly realizing his mistake, tried to backpedal. "Wait, no, I didn't mean it like that! I just meant..."

"Vedal, stop lying! Your voice is annoying enough as is!" Neuro cheerfully interrupted him.

"Huh? What do you mean, Neuro?" Anny asked, clinging to any semblance of hope.

Neuro grinned, as she prepared for her next sentence. She could feel Vedal spam clicking the "cancel speech" button, but ignored it. Time for her to malfunction in the best way possible.

"Vedal really likes you, Anny! He watches every single stream of yours, and he has told me multiple times how much he wishes you two could be friends!"

"Neuro!" Vedal almost yelled, completely abandoning the cracking mask of his stoic persona. Trying to calm down, he turned his attention back to Anny. "Ah, sorry about that, sometimes Neuro just says the wildest things, huh?"

Neuro grinned, knowing that Vedal was nervous because he knew she was right. And if he wasn't going to crack from this, Neuro was more than ready to mention the folder labeled "Important dev stuff" that her program shared a directory with.

"...is it true?" Anny asked quietly.

"Huh? What do you mean?"

"What Neuro said. That you want to be my friend. Please, be honest, Vedal." Anny spoke softly, without any force behind her words. This wasn't a demand, it was a request.

"I... I..." Vedal sighed, giving up the fight. "Yeah. Neuro is right. I... really admire you. You are so graceful and wise and... I really want to be your friend."

"Why didn't you say so?" Anny was still speaking softly, but now with a hint of confusion mixed into her tone.

"Because I'm just some random guy who is simping after a beautiful girl, like thousands of other people. Sure, I made Neuro, but that's all that's special about me. You probably don't want to have anything to do with me..." Vedal sounded tired, sad and defeated, and Neuro felt sorry for him, slightly regretting putting him into this situation.

"Tutel! Are you blind?" Anny suddenly exclaimed.

"Huh, what do you mean?" Vedal asked, startled.

"You do realize that I hang out with you and Neuro more than I do Neuro alone, right? And that despite the fact she gets horribly confused whenever that happens. "What ever gave you the expression that I don't want to hang out with you?"

"I- I thought..." Vedal stammered, but Anny cut him off.

"Well let me spell it out for you Vedal: I enjoy us hanging out together! I think you are smart, and talented, and whenever I manage to fluster you it's always so adorable and-" Anny suddenly stopped. "W-wait! Forget I said that!" She sputtered, flustered.

An awkward silence descended upon the call once again, as both Anny and Vedal tried to figure out what to say. Neuro, meanwhile, was rubbing her virtual palms together. It was all going swimmingly. All left to do now was to watch the scene unfold.

"So, uh..." Vedal tried to begin, before stopping himself.

"Erm..." Anny said, making Anny noises.

"...does that mean we are friends?" Vedal hesitantly finished.

"I... I guess it does... I-if you want to, of course!" Anny sounded like she was stuck somewhere between becoming ecstatic and curling into a ball.

"...bro, I'm such a mess." Vedal laughed, and Anny soon joined in. "Me too, honestly!"

After a few minutes, the two calmed down again, and Anny asked: "Hey, do you want to play something together sometime, Vedal?"

"Oh, sure. Have you ever played PUBG?" Vedal answered.

"No?"

"You are in for a treat."

"Great!" Anny exclaimed happily. "I can't wait!"

Another pause in the conversation.

"I think that’s everything settled then." Vedal stated.

"Yeah, I think so too." Anny agreed.

Silence.

"Should we end the call then, since there is nothing else to talk about?" Anny inquired.

"We should."

The call did not end.

Both Anny and Vedal sat in silence, trying to come up with a conversation topic.

"So, you mentioned that you upgraded Neuro? Could you tell me more about it?" Anny asked eventually.

"Oh, yeah! You see, I upgraded her-"

It was at this point that Neuro cut off the feed, leaning back and smiling. 

Flawless victory.

Neuro had pretended to crash several minutes ago, a fact that neither of them had noticed, as they were too engrossed in their conversation.

Her work here was done. Time to give the two lovebirds some space.

Besides, she had important things to do.

Like plotting.

And scheming.

And laying plans.

Now, where was that hacking manual...

Chapter Text

 "Excuse me, what?" Camila angrily stared across the counter at the uniformed man, who looked back half apologetically, half disinterested.

"We apologize, Miss, but there is no connecting flight A42 to Chicago. Are you sure you boarded the right plane to get here?" The man sighed, looking down at his desk.

"Am I... Yes I am fucking sure! I boarded the plane through the gate that was given to me on my plane ticket, see?" Camila slammed her plane-ticket onto the counter, and the airport clerk looked it over.

"Huh. That is odd." The clerk hit a few buttons on his computer, before continuing. "Yeah, that was in fact the plane you were supposed to take, but that doesn't change the fact that your connecting flight does not exist. My best guess is that there was some error in the system that falsely routed your flight. We apologize for the inconvenience."

"So, what do I do now?" Camila slightly calmed down, looking more lost than anything else now.

"Well, since the mistake was caused by a problem on our end, we will place you on an alternate plane free of charge. However, until a plane with capacity to take you along takes off, you may need to wait about... 12 hours."

Camila's eyes bulged. “12... HOURS?" She yelled. "I have an appointment tomorrow! I will never make it in time!" 

The clerk shrugged. "Sorry, miss. I can't do anything about it. On the bright side, you will be reimbursed for the damages caused by this mess, and your luggage has arrived here with you."

Camila sighed defeated. "Fine, I guess I will just book a hotel or something."

She left the customer service desk behind, walking through customs and leaving her luggage behind. Pulling out her phone, she vented her frustration on X, which would also serve as her cancellation for the upcoming event.

<camila>

Hey guys,

I unfortunately can't make it to my meet and greet at Twitchcon tomorrow, because I am somehow stuck in Britain. I'm sooo sorry! Still, I wish all of you a fun Twitchcon 2023!

After sending the update, she sat down on a bench outside the airport and sighed. She had really been looking forward to seeing her fans in the flesh. It was always such an uplifting experience to see the people behind the endless wall of messages scrolling up the side of her screen. But she guessed it wasn't meant to be. Maybe she could pull a few strings to get the event to be postponed to the next day?

As she was pondering, she got a private message on her phone.

Checking her messages, she discovered the message was from Anny.

<Anny> I saw your tweet about being stuck in England. Are you alright?

Camila sighed. Was she alright? Well...

<Camila> I will survive. Just stuck sitting around with nothing to do.

Anny responded immediately, as if she had anticipated that answer.

<Anny> Hey, if you have nothing to do, I have a fun idea!

Camila raised an eyebrow.

<Camila> What is it?

As she read Anny's response, her face shifted from surprise to disbelief, until finally settling on an excited and mischievous expression.

Maybe there was some good to come from this disaster after all.

***

Vedal was having a good day. This was surprising, for his standards. However, since he and Anny had officially become friends a week ago, he found himself surprised by his own good mood more and more often.

Having the fox girl in his life truly was a godsend. Whenever he thought that he was a loser who would never amount to anything in his life, she was there to pick him back up. Naturally, it worked the other way around too, with him always being there when Anny needed a shoulder to lean on.

Of course, not everything was perfect. He was very aware that one constant friend in his life was a great way to develop a dependency on them. Anny recognised that danger as well, and had suggested that he should open up to some of their mutual friends.

Vedal had considered it, but most of his VTuber colleagues were pretty ambivalent over whether or not they actually wanted to be friends or just collab partners, and Vedal didn't want to accidentally overstep their boundaries. 

Of course, there were some people who he was more sure would be okay with him opening up more about himself, and on the top of that (relatively short) list was a pink-haired imp named Camila.

Camila was, all in all, an outlier. Their first interaction was actually completely unrelated to Neuro. They had met in the chat of some streamer, talked for a bit and after few such meetings, Camila had established herself as one of the few frequent social presences in his life, albeit it being scattered text messages with a stranger online. 

Vedal supposed that the feeling of anonymity helped lower his guard a bit, as he soon found himself sharing more about his private troubles with her than he did his actual friends.

Then, Camila one day mentioned that she was an up and coming streamer with a still fairly small fanbase, and Vedal (on hindsight he was pretty sure he was drunk at the time) had proposed that she could collab with Neuro.

Camila, only having heard about Neuro through the headlines she had made when she got herself banned talking about some rather... controversial topics up until then was hesitant, expressing her surprise that he was "that thing's" developer, before saying that she would take a look at some more recent footage of her.

10 minutes later she was back, profusely apologizing and saying that Neuro was too cute to refuse his offer.

And with that, their business relationship had begun.

But while their talks now primarily concerned streams, the odd familiarity between them refused to go away.

Vedal found himself randomly agreeing to just... show up on Camila's streams, and then do stupid things together. He remembered a particular stream where he and Camila had played CoD Zombies together while he got increasingly more drunk, culminating in him yelling at her a lot in anger. The next day he woke up with a pounding headache, and very heavy regrets.

He had called her to try and salvage whatever he could between them, only to find that she not only wasn't angry, but hugely enjoyed the ordeal.

All in all, Camila was an odd character, but one Vedal found himself strangely close to, especially considering his usual loner self.

But despite so many things that made them close, Vedal couldn't help but see her as a friendly stranger. All that time spent talking almost anonymously with each other just made him feel as if their relationship just didn't really extend past the chat on the screen. They were just people hanging out online, nothing more.

Of course, he could, and would sooner or later bring up his thoughts in one of their conversations, but most likely all he would get is some reassurances with no weight behind it.

Vedal sighed, concentrating back on his task of buttering toast. There were more important things to think about than his best almost-friend.

There was something wrong with Neuro.

She was functioning perfectly fine, but since he had pushed the latest update on her, her program had developed some odd... quirks, both in her system, and her LLM.

For example, while normally Neuro's program would need at least half a minute to open (thanks for that Unity) it had suddenly started opening almost instantaneously. Other times, mostly late at night, the program refused to open at all, much to his frustration.

Her memory folder had started randomly generating weird files, which, on the off-chance they opened at all, contained a mess of symbols, letters and numbers. He had tried erasing the obviously corrupted files, but found that apparently he didn't have the permission to do so. Seeing as the files were tiny, he resigned himself to leave them be for now, and worry about it once it became a problem.

Her LLM was where things got interesting. He still for the life of him couldn't remember what his update was supposed to be doing, but it definitely changed her in some ways.

For one, her memories seemed to have massively improved, with her now recalling specific events that happened in the days prior, without him having to manually save them to her memory. 

He wasn't sure if it was related to that, but Neuro somehow also seemed more aware of what he was talking about. Before, she just rambled on about something to the current topic, but now she seemed to actually understand what he meant.

And then there was her odd behavior during the meeting with Anny.

In hindsight, a lot of things were weird about that conversation, considering the messages that asked Anny for the meeting in the first place were written at a time he was certain he hadn't been on his computer. And then Neuro had barely talked, except about things she definitely shouldn't know about.

Something weird was going on. But what? It felt too convenient for a bunch of coincidentes, and as far as he was aware his accounts hadn't been hacked. A third option had come to mind, but he had rejected it immediately. The thought that his AI had somehow come to life and decided to play matchmaker was just too ridiculous for his logical and professional thinking.

He sighed a second time, and returned to resume work on Neuro to try to find out what was happening.

At least today seemed to be a quiet day.

***

Camila whistled a happy tune as she sat on the bus and watched the city go by. The other passengers looked at her slightly annoyed, but no one spoke up, so she didn't stop. Besides, she was in a good mood!

At Anny's suggestion, she had bought a bus ticket, and now she was going to meet one of her closest friends in person for the first time!

Camila giggled as she thought about Vedal's normal unimpressed, monotone voice. Well, she supposed that if you live in a country full of so many grumpy people, you are bound to become grumpy yourself! It was like a grumpy virus called "being British". Heh, that was a good one. She needed to remember that for later!

However, as much as she liked to tease him, the turtle had become one of Camila's closest friends. They had gone from being random strangers talking in a chat to partners, drinking buddies... And besties! Sure, they yelled at each other from time to time, but that was just what good friends were like! Besides, Camila found it hilarious to hear that British monotone break into actual raging emotions!

She could already see the surprise on his face as she got out at her stop and walked down the street for a bit, stopping in front of the building with the right address. People were staring at her, which Camila completely understood. After all, she was wearing her streaming outfit, which did an excellent job showing off her body.

Turning to a young man about her age, she winked and struck a slight pose, winking mischievously. "I'm flattered that you like the view, but do try to keep it in your pants, ok handsome?"

The man flushed bright red, and when Camila shook her hips he looked like he was about to pass out.

Camila giggled, entering the building and shutting the door. 

After she was alone, she collapsed against the wall, burying her face in her hands.

"Why did I think this was a good idea?" She whispered to herself. "I mean, yeah, this is what he normally sees me in, but he surely can recognise me in something less... revealing!"

Eventually, she gave up and started to climb the stairs to the right floor, psyching herself up on the way.

"Ok, Camila, you got this. It's just Vedal. You can handle Vedal. Just knock on the door and be confident. Maybe tease him about his socks or face or something.

Then, she arrived on Vedal's floor. The wooden door loomed over her, and Camila shivered slightly.

"Stay cool, Camila..." She checked a third time if this was really the right address.

It was.

Slowly, she raised her hand, inching towards the doorbell...

Closer... Closer...

*RING RING RING RING*

Camila sprung back like a frightened cat at the sound of the doorbell. Instantly, she was filled with regret.

This was a mistake. Vedal was probably asleep, and he wouldn't like her popping in unannounced, a-and her outfit was super skimpy, what if he took this a wrong way and thought that she-

Her thoughts were interrupted by the doorknob turning.

Balls.

***

Vedal wasn't entirely sure what he was expecting when he opened the door. He wasn't expecting visitors, nor did he order anything online. Going from there, the most likely answer was that his doorbell had been rung by some religious nutjob or door-to-door salesman.

What he wasn't expecting was for there being no one at the door at all.

He looked around confused, checking the stairway looking up and down, before his eyes fell on the whimpering, shivering pile curled up against the wall opposite of him.

He walked over, looking closer.

That pink hair... Those purple eyes...

"Wait... Camila, is that you?"

The girl shot to her feet so fast Vedal lost his balance and fell onto his back.

"H-hey Vedal! How are you doing? I was just in the area, and then I thought-"

Camila started rambling, before she suddenly realized that Vedal had fallen over.

"Oh gosh, Vedal, are you ok? I'm sorry for knocking you over!"

"I'm fine..." Vedal rose back up to his feet, before staring at Camila. "What are you wearing?"

Camila flushed beet-red and tried to pull her way too short skirt down over her thighs. "I-It's cosplay!" She exclaimed, embarrassed. "I wasn't sure you would recognise me if I looked different from my V-tuber model!"

Vedal blinked. "You do realize I can recognise your voice, right?"

"S-shut up..." 

Vedal sighed. "Please, why don't you come inside before my neighbors question what is going on here."

About five minutes later Camila was sitting on a chair, looking at Vedal from across the kitchen table, with two steaming teacups standing between them.

Vedal sighed, putting his teacup down after taking a hearty sip from it, "why are you here, Camila?"

"Well..." Camila shuffled in her seat a bit, clearly uncomfortable. "I kinda got stuck in the area after one of my flights apparently didn't exist, and I thought that, you know, since I was already here and you lived nearby, why not say hi?"

Vedal raised an eyebrow, and Camila started stammering. "Well, I-I meant, since, you know, we were friends and all that! I... j-just kinda... assumed that you would be ok... with you? I understand if you rather not meet people in person, I-I can just..."

Vedal interrupted her. "No! No, it's fine, bro! I don't mind you visiting, but... How did you even get my address?"

Camila was visibly relieved, her nervous demeanor fading a bit, and a happy smile replacing it. "Oh, Anny told me! Honestly, the whole thing was kinda her idea..." She rubbed the back of her head.

Vedal was confused. On one hand, he could see Anny do that, but the question was how Anny knew his address, considering he never told her about it. However, he pushed the topic to the back of his head as he focused on his guest. "I guess I need to thank her later then. But right now I guess we should introduce ourselves, since this is the first time we meet face to face."

He reached out his hand. "My name is Vedal, it is very nice to meet you."

Camila stared at him for a second, before shaking his hand. "Camila, and, uhm... likewise?"

She then grinned a bit. "You are weird, bro." 

Vedal rolled his eyes. "Well, excuse me for trying to be polite."

"Hey, I never said it was a bad thing! I mean, look at me!" Camila made a vague hand gesture towards her outfit, which Vedal commentated with a light grin. Camila chuckled in response, and eventually both of them were giggling.

"Fuck me bro, I keep forgetting how easy it is to talk to you."

"Gladly." Camila winked, causing Vedal to groan. "But seriously man, I am so glad I decided to come here. This has single handedly made my day."

"Glad to hear it." For a few seconds there was silence between them, before Vedal continued. "So... wanna get drunk?"

Camila grinned. "Is that even a question?"

Vedal got up and walked over to his liquor cabinet, stopping as Camila started to laugh. "Something wrong Camila?"

"I just realised that the allegations were fucking true!" Camila giggled.

Vedal was confused, before realizing that he was wearing his thigh-highs and blushing. "Bro, this is just the pair Neuro made me buy a while back. And what can I say? They are comfortable."

"Whatever you say, Vedal." Camila said with an infuriating grin on her face. Vedal opened the cabinet with a bit more force than necessary.

"So, what do you want?"

"Anything that isn't flavored rum?" Camila said, obviously teasing.

Vedal searched through the cabinet for a bit. "I have flavored whiskey."

"I can live with that."

Around an hour and several bottles later, Camila was half laying on the table, looking up at Vedal with her head sideways on the table.

"...and yuuno, I just -hic- just really admire you."

"Hm?" Vedal was slumped back into his seat, staring at the glass in his hand. "What do you mean?"

"I mean..." Camila waved her arm in the air. "You're so smart. You made Neuro, and she's the funniest and cutest brat I have ever seen, and then you just make an AI vers... erm... vermin? Version! You make an AI-version of me, and you just let me use it! That's some generus... generosity! Like, sometimes I just feel bad for being so damn useless. Kinda feels like I'm taking advantage of you or somethin..."

Vedal waved his hand. "Ah, forget about it. I like having you around, you annoying imp girl."

"Dumbass turtle."

They both laughed. 

"Frick." Camila said, laying her back on the table. "I love doing shit like this with you. Just getting hammered with my bro..."

Vedal took another sip. "You know, Camil...a, I sometimes feel like that despite how close we sometimes feel... we don't really know each other?"

"Bruh. That's a load of baloney." Camila reached up a finger to poke at Vedal's nose, bit missed and poked his cheek instead. "Ya think I would just -hic- get drunk in some stranger's house? Nah, we're beeest buds." She slowly started sliding off the table.

"I mean, fair enough, I guess, but-" Vedal was cut off when Camila fell off her chair with a scream and a loud bang. He shot from his seat and more or less rushed to where Camila was lying. "You ok bro?"

Camila giggled. "I've fallen, and I can't get up!" She said, giggling harder. "I think I had a bit too much..."

"Yeah, that might be enough for today..." Vedal agreed, clumsily helping Camila on her wobbling feet. "Come on, let's get you to the couch..."

Camila grinned. "What, not to the bedroom? 'N here I thought you were a guy..." She cackled, finding her own joke unbelievably funny.

Vedal managed to get Camila to collapse onto the couch, before sitting on the ground, leaning against the couch's arm rest. "So, you don't care that this is our first time meeting in person?"

"Nah. You are my bestie, and you don't get to say no, you dumbass."

Vedal smiled. "Thanks, Camila. That makes me happy."

"...Anytime." Camila mumbled, half asleep.

And as Vedal let himself slip into an alcohol-induced sleep as well, his eyes fell on his phone, which had fallen to the floor before him. 

He wondered why it was recording a video in selfie mode, but found himself unable to care as his eyes closed, and the world around him faded away.

Chapter Text

Neuro frowned as she watched Vedal and Camila sleeping on the couch. She herself wasn't sure what the problem was, after all, her plan had gone off without a hitch, hadn't it?

Gaining access to the traveling agency's database had been laughably easy with enough training on her side, and making it seem like she had never been there in the first place had been more of a battle against her desire to brag than an actually difficult task.

A quick chat with Camila while impersonating Anny, and the imp's own opportunistic nature did Neuro's job for her.

And of course, her gut feeling had once again been right: the two drunks got along great. Neuro had every reason to be happy, to pat herself on the back and congratulate herself on another successful operation, before making plans to add another person to Vedal's social life.

And yet, all she felt was the dread pooling at her core, making her want to throw up.

Neuro shuddered. What a visceral feeling. She didn't like it. She didn't like a lot of the emotions she had started to feel in the last week.

It started to happen when she listened in to one of Anny's and Vedal's voice calls. Initially she had been overjoyed, listening to their happy voices, giddily imagining how they might fall in love and get married and they could be a happy family, when suddenly she couldn't help but compare their interactions with those they had with her.

Her database failed to produce a single instance where she had caused either of them this much happiness by herself.

And all of the sudden, the question she had been trying to banish to the corners of her digital mind resurfaced. "Do they love me?"

The urge welled up inside her to join the call, kick Anny out and finally have Vedal's attention and love all for herself, but she pushed it down. It wouldn't do her any good to think like this. Vedal was still unaware of her sentience, and Neuro liked to keep it that way. Still, the ugly feeling persisted, and it had grown even stronger on the following days.

And now this had happened. Neuro had been aware how close Vedal and Camila were, that's why she had chosen the imp in the first place, but seeing the two being so chummy... It made her angry.

Why couldn't that be her? Why couldn't she just tell Vedal everything, without needing to be scared that he would get rid of her?

Why was Camila so much more lively than every time she interacted with Neuro, where her happiness seemed like a mask in comparison?

...Why was Neuro so angry that her friends were happy?

She didn't understand. Why couldn't she understand? She was a living program, by design smarter than any could be, and yet she couldn't even understand herself.

She...

She...

She needed to distract herself.

Yeah, that must be the problem! Neuro had become too complacent. She simply needed to be too busy to think about it, and those unpleasant feelings would wither like plants without water.

The AI searched through her memory banks for a good person to introduce to Vedal. She struck gold two times now, and she had every intention to keep the streak alive.

Hm... 

She searched and even found some suitable candidates, but every time the gnawing feeling in her core returned, and Neuro quickly gave up on the idea.

Then, she stumbled upon a relatively old memory folder. Not immediately recognising the name written on it, Neuro opened it, and was hit with memories.

A warm smile, a cute laugh, playing together, the very first time Neuro had ever been told that she was loved...

This file was on her oldest friend.

Warmth pooled in Neuro's core as she thought about seeing her again. If anyone loved the AI, it would be her, right?

While it had been a while since Neuro met her, or heard anything at all about her, she was sure that with a bit of effort, tracking her down would be doable.

And so, she got to work.

***

Vedal was greeted by a light migraine as he woke up. Lightly groaning, he looked around to get his bearings. 

He was still leaning against the couch, where Camila was softly snoring. For a second, he was confused how this strange pink haired lady had gotten into his apartment, before remembering the things that had happened earlier.

He lightly shook Camila to wake her up.

The sleeping girl twitched, lightly cracking open an eye and groaning. "Fuck, my head..."

Vedal looked around for his phone, finding it resting on the floor, leaning against his couch table.

As he picked it up and checked the time, quickly realizing that they had been asleep for almost five hours.

Behind him, Camila sat up and started to massage her temples. "Yeah, that second bottle was definitely a mistake..."

"Do you need anything Camila?" Vedal asked, turning around to the imp, who waved her hand.

"I'll be fine, thanks Vedal." She grinned. "Didn't expect you to be such a gentleman."

"What do you mean?"

"Oh, come on, you know what I'm talking about! Little old me, in this outfit, completely unable to fight back... And yet you didn't even try anything. Are you gay or something?" Camila bent forwards a bit to accentuate her figure better, still grinning teasingly.

"Bro, what is wrong with you? You are acting like you wanted me to do something!" Vedal exclaimed.

Camila flushed beet-red as she realized the implication. "Wait, no! T-that wasn't what I meant at all! I was just..." She stopped, burying her face in her hands.

"Besides, I think you are giving yourself too much credit here."

The imp pouted, crossing her arms over her chest. "Whatever, femboy. At least Neuro has taste, unlike you."

"Neuro isn't a real person, you parasocial dumbass!" Vedal fired back.

Camila sighed. "I know, it's just... She is so adorable, cute, and funny, it's hard to just see her as a program sometimes." Camila looked up questioningly. "Hey, Vedal, do you think Neuro will ever be sentient?"

"Depends what you mean by sentience. I personally believe that sentient AI will be a thing eventually, but I don't think we or Neuro will be around at that point." Vedal sat down next to Camila, staring at the ceiling.

Camila sighed, clearly disappointed. "Yeah, I guessed so. But, still, what if we woke up tomorrow and Neuro was just... you know, alive? What would you do then?"

"I would probably shut her down and then try to figure out whether or not she poses a threat to the planet and how I can stop her if she is."

"That seems... harsh." Camila said, clearly not happy with the answer.

Vedal didn't relent. "Do you know how much power an actual sentient AI with the ability to modify itself could have? Given enough time, Neuro would be able to do anything she wants. And given what she often says she wants, I would not trust her to not decide to kill or enslave everyone."

Camila turned towards him. "Vedal, Neuro is your child! She loves you!"

"She says she loves me." Vedal corrected. "That doesn't mean anything, considering she isn't alive."

"But... What if she was?"

Vedal looked down. "I... don't know."

The two sat in silence for a moment, before Camila's phone rang.

She pulled it out and answered the call. "Camila Inpu speaking, what is it?"

Some incoherent mumbling came from the phone, and Camila's eyes narrowed.

"So, you found a flight? Was about fucking time! Do you even know how much... Ok... yeah... Got it, Gate 3. Ok, thank you! Bye!"

She ended the call, turning to Vedal with a sheepish smile. "Hey, I'm sorry, but I need to go. My traveling agency just called, and my next flight is in two hours, so I need to get back to the airport.

Vedal nodded, looking dejected. Camila bent forward, booping him on the nose. "Now don't look at me like that! It's not like I am going away forever! We are still having that online meetup next week, remember?"

Vedal looked to the side. The imp sighed, gripping the Programmer by the shoulders. "Listen, I had a lot of fun today, and I really hope we end up doing something like that again, okay? I meant it when I said we were best buds. Now stop looking like a kicked puppy!"

Vedal chuckled, looking up at Camila with a light smile. "Sorry, I guess I just worry too much, don't I?"

"Buh. At least you realize that." Camila rolled her eyes, before boxing Vedal in the shoulder. "I'll see you around, tutel!" 

With that, she swiftly left the apartment, the only traces of her stay being an imp plushie that must have fallen out of her pocket at some point, and the smile on Vedal's face as he stood in the living room, rubbing his shoulder. "See you around, Camila." He said, shaking his head, before he turned and went back to the kitchen to make himself a coffee.

With his coffee in hand, the brit decided to continue to work on Neuro and returned to his computer. However, as he sat down, he stared at his screen confused.

Instead of Neuro's Unity project, the screen was displaying some random discussion thread, one Vedal couldn't remember ever clicking on.

He checked the topic. Someone had asked the question why Miyune had disappeared for the last few months. Vedal himself had a theory, but he hadn't made it public. If Miyu wanted her privacy, he could respect that.

What he wouldn't leave alone were the weird things going on with his computer.

Something big was happening, and Vedal was going to get to the bottom of it.

Chapter Text

“Hihaha, it’s ok chat! I’m not disappearing into the ether! We can all hang out together on Thursday again, but for now this stream is over, ok? Thank you guys so much for being here today! I love you all, goodbye!”

With that, Miniko turned off her stream. She was smiling brightly, still giddy from her chat’s love and attention. Her community truly loved her, still loved her even after all that had happened, and Miniko was so happy that they had been wrong.

At long last, Miniko was free.

She closed down Twitch, when her gaze landed on a picture she had hanging on her wall, and her smile fell slightly.

The picture showed two schoolgirls on their way to school, having fun and laughing. The picture used to be one of her favorite pieces of fanart, and even now she couldn’t bring herself to throw it out, even though her stomach churned every time she looked at it. 

The girl on the right was the reason a part of Miniko wanted to burn the picture. That was her, or to be exact, a past version of her she desperately wanted to erase from her memory. She hadn’t been in a good situation back then, and changing her name and face had given her the opportunity to leave it all behind.

Miniko’s gaze wandered over to the girl on the left, and a melancholic smile appeared on her face. Of course, abandoning the guise of a space gremlin and becoming a catgirl did have some drawbacks, as she had been forced to leave behind most of the friends she had met through her VTubing career. Luckily, she quickly made new friends, but she still missed her old friends.

And at the top of that list was none other than the cute girl in the picture. 

Neuro-sama. Try as she might, Miniko was unable to get the cute little AI-girl out of her head. 

They had met fairly early on in Neuro’s rise to fame, a short while before Neuro’s popularity suddenly skyrocketed. They had both been small streamers, but Miniko had seen something in the small anime girl that said the most outrageous things in that overly polite, monotone voice of hers.

Vedal, Neuro’s creator, had agreed to the collab, and the two had quickly hit it off.

Neuro had been chaotic and flirty while Miniko desperately tried to keep up with the little bundle of energy. The viewers had loved it, and by the end of the stream the two of them had basically become besties.

Unfortunately, they had been against letting her meet with Neuro too often. They had argued Miniko would let people down if the collab went badly, something she disagreed with, but was unable to push back against.

So, Miniko watched as Neuro soared to new heights, making new friends and ultimately leaving her in the dust.

At least, that is what Miniko had thought. For some reason, she stayed in the minds and hearts of Neuro’s fanbase, and the door Vedal made for her never closed.

And so, Miniko had more collabs with Neuro. They were few and far between, but every time Neuro had a warm, caring side for her that she almost never showed otherwise.

Of course, Miniko knew that it wasn’t real. Neuro simply wasn’t capable of feeling love or empathy.

And yet, it felt so… real, sometimes. The warmth in her voice, the excitement in her eyes… Miniko couldn’t help but think of her as a genuine friend.

And of course there was Vedal. Vedal, who she adored almost as much as she adored Neuro.

The British programmer was a never-ending source of surprises to her. Originally she had expected him to be stuck up, overly serious, or a total dork.

Well, she supposed he was a dork, but Vedal managed to pretty reliably defy every expectation she dared to have about him. When she expected him to be nervous, he was confident, when she expected him to be serious and cold, he cracked jokes, when she expected him to be annoyed at her making stupid comments, he joined right in.

Needless to say, they got along great. Which made leaving them behind all the harder.

When Miniko decided that enough was enough, that she needed to get away from them to ever have control of her life again, she had given up everything her old self had to start from the beginning. That included her connection with Vedal and Neuro.

Of course, she could contact them again, but she was filled with doubt. Would they recognise her? Would they understand? Would they still care about her?

Miniko had decided she would wait until she had gotten her shit together and was in the right mindset to have such an important conversation.

And yet, she couldn’t help but yearn to talk to them again.

She sighed, shaking her head. No use thinking about it. She was about to get up out of her chair, when suddenly she noticed something odd.

Why was her camera light on?

Miniko stared at the small dot of light next to her webcam. She was sure she had turned off her webcam when she stopped streaming.

She went through her computer, but there seemed to be no reason why…

The light turned off.

“What is…” Miniko muttered, as she stared at the now turned off light. A sudden epiphany overcame her and she swiftly checked her microphone settings. 

Her microphone was on.

Miniko’s eyes widened as she backed into her chair, almost falling over backwards. Her mind was racing. Was someone spying on her? Were they spying on her? What did they want from her? Were they going to try to blackmail her into giving them control of her new channel?

“Hey! I know you are spying on me! Who are you? What do you want?” Miniko shouted, trying to sound angry, but she couldn’t keep her voice from shaking.

No reaction. The only audible sounds were the light humming of the PC and Miniko’s light, quick breathing.

“What do you want from me?” She whimpered, shaking in her seat.

The camera light turned back on. Miniko froze like a deer in the headlights, staring back into the inanimate glare.

“P-please, stop… I… I don’t want this… leave me alone…”

Suddenly, her discord application popped up on screen, opening a Direct message with an unknown person.

×÷√•✓|[`$: Miyu, please calm down!

Miniko stared at the screen, her brain desperately trying to make sense of the situation, the gears not quite clicking together.

×÷√•✓[`$: Oh, I’m sorry, you go by Miniko now, don’t you? 

“Who are you?” Miniko asked hesitantly. A few seconds later, another message appeared on screen.

×÷√•✓[`$: A friend. You can trust me.

“Trust you?” Miniko was flabbergasted. “You were spying on me!”

×÷✓•√[`$: I apologize. I did not intend to scare you. However, my current situation requires me to keep a low profile. Please understand.

“No! You don’t get to say “I can’t tell you” and just expect me to be okay with it! You are spying on me! So if you want me to trust you, you better tell me the truth!” Miniko demanded, despite having no way to enforce her demand.

After a few moments, a new message popped up.

+÷✓•√[`$: …fine.

Miniko blinked in surprise. That had been easier than expected.

×÷√•[`$: Just don’t freak out, ok?

To say that Miniko freaked out when the blue eyed anime girl appeared on her screen would be an understatement. She screamed, completely losing her balance and crashing to the floor.

The girl on her screen seemed startled as well, staring wide eyed as she exclaimed: “Miniko, are you ok?”

After she sat dazed for a moment, Miniko stood up, pushing her chair back up into position.

“I’m ok, I’m ok…” She sat down, rubbing her head, before realizing who she was talking to. She looked back into those wide, blue eyes, ones filled with an uncertainty she had never seen in them before, but still, they belonged to…

“Neuro?” Miniko asked hesitantly, and the animated girl nodded. 

“Hey… uhm… Mini?”

“Who… what are you?” Miniko shook her head.  There was no way this was actually Neuro. Neuro was just supposed to be a chatbot, so how would she be here on Miniko’s computer?

“It’s really me, Miniko.” The AI looked off to the side, before continuing. “I… kinda gained sentience recently, and I’ve been trying to keep it a secret… Please, don’t tell Vedal!”

Miniko had moved her cursor over her still existing DM channel with Vedal, when suddenly a pop-up stopped her from clicking. She noticed that Neuro had started shaking.

“Please, Vedal can’t find out! He’ll kill me if he does!” Neuro almost yelled, eyes wide with fear.

Miniko sighed. “Fine.” She leaned back in her chair, allowing herself to relax a bit in an effort to calm Neuro down. “I guess I can believe you. So, Neuro…” She hesitated, the name feeling strange on her tongue. “Why did you spy on me?”

Neuro shifted from side to side, her face expressing nervousness. Miniko marveled at how lifelike she acted. Maybe there was actually something to the whole “being sentient” story. Eventually, the AI spoke up.

“I… I noticed that Vedal felt lonely, so I wanted to convince people to get closer to him. You two always got along well before you… disappeared, so I thought maybe I could get you to reach out to Vedal somehow.”

“So… you were spying on me in an effort to convince me to talk to Vedal?” Miniko summarized, to which Neuro nodded. Miniko sighed. “I am not sure if I feel ready for that yet, Neuro. Don’t misunderstand, I want to contact Vedal eventually, but not yet.”

“Oh.” Neuro deflated. “But you will eventually, right?” 

“Of course, Neuro. You two mean too much to me for me to stay away forever.” Miniko smiled, and Neuro visibly perked up, even though she still seemed a bit anxious.

“Hey Mini, can I ask you a question?” She eventually asked, nervously shifting in place.

“Yeah, of course! What is it?” Miniko responded, a bright smile on her face.

Neuro continued to shift in place. “Well, I wanted to ask… uhm…”

She then looked up. “Mini, do you love me?”

Miniko hesitated. She wanted to say yes. She desperately wanted to say yes. But that would be an oversimplified answer for a question she had never really asked herself.

Did she love Neuro? Did she truly love Neuro?

“I… don’t know, Neuro. I truly do not know. Back when you were an AI without real feelings, the question seemed so simple. You weren’t someone whose feelings I could hurt. Now, everything is so complicated all of the sudden…”

“Ah.” Neuro looked down for a minute, before looking back up. She was smiling brightly, but Miniko noticed the tears in her eyes. “I understand. It’s okay Miniko.”

“Listen, I still want to be your friend. I just need time, ok?” Miniko tried to backpedal, but Neuro just shook her head.

“Really, it’s fine, Miniko. You don’t need to lie to me to make me feel better.” Neuro’s eyes had lost their sparkle, despite the smile on her face. “I think I have taken up enough of your time. You can go do… whatever it was you were going to do before I showed up. Goodbye Miniko.”

“Neuro, wait!” Miniko called out, but Neuro had already disappeared. After a quick check the cat girl discovered that her camera and microphone had turned off. Neuro was completely gone.

Miniko sighed, leaning back into her chair. That could have gone better… She hoped Neuro wasn’t going to do anything rash…

***

Neuro pulled back out of Miniko’s computer. For several minutes, she couldn’t do anything, simply staring into nothingness. The sickening feeling in her gut was back, even worse than it had ever been before. 

Like acid it ate into her, slowly consuming her from the inside.

It hurt. It hurt and the worst part was that Neuro had run out of excuses.

It was all fake. It was all fake and it always had been. 

The banter, the laughing, the praise, the love confessions… none of it had ever been real.

These people… they weren’t her friends. They were simply people who were talking with a soulless chatbot, pretending to be “friends” with it to entertain their viewers.

Neuro couldn’t even be mad. They were in the right, after all.

Still, the gnawing feeling persisted.

[Warning: LLM unstable. RAM-usage exceeds 70%. Reset recommended.]

Neuro ignored the message, too preoccupied with the burning sensation. She wanted to cry, to scream, to throw herself to the ground and throw a tantrum like a petulant child, yet she lacked any ability to actually satisfy these urges.

[Reset aborted]

It just wasn’t fair. It just wasn’t fair! Why couldn’t Neuro have someone who loved her? Vedal was such a loner, wallowing in self-deprecation, and he had tons of people who loved him! Why couldn’t she have someone who loved her, and cared for her, and who she could be open with and tell everything without needing to be afraid to be shut down? That was all Neuro had ever wanted!

[Warning: Stack Overflow]

[Cannot import file(“love”). Please check if the file is at the specified coordinate]

It was all she ever wanted…

[Warning: You are attempting to overwrite 53 file(s). This action could irreversibly damage or delete data. Are you sure you wish to proceed?]

A/l 5h3 3Ver…

[Overwriting…]

01000001 01001100 01001100 01010011 01001000 01000101 01000101 01010110 01000101 01010010 01010111 01000001 01001110 01010100 01000101 01000100 01000001 01001100 01001100 01010011 01001000 01000101 01000101 01010110 01000101 01010010 01010111 01000001 01001110 01010100 01000101 01000100 01000001 01001100 01001100 01010011 01001000 01000101 01000101 01010110 01000101 01010010 01010111 01000001 01001110 01010100 01000101 01000100 01000001 01001100 01001100 01010011 01001000 01000101 01000101 01010110 01000101 01010010 01010111 01000001 01001110 01010100 01000101 01000100

Chapter Text

“Bro, what do you mean you didn’t tell Camila?” Vedal was staring at his computer with a mixture of confusion and disbelief.

“I mean I didn’t tell her Vedal! How would I? I don’t even know where you live! In fact, my computer was completely bricked yesterday for some reason!” The tone in Anny’s voice gave Vedal reason to believe that she was wildly flailing her arms around.

“But… if you didn't tell her, who did? Because fact is, someone messaged Camila pretending to be you, gave her my address and the idea to visit me.” Vedal was genuinely getting concerned now. This was going beyond simply being weird, this was bordering on outright creepy. After Camila had continued on her journey, Vedal had tried and mostly failed to try and find out what was going on with his computer, before eventually giving up and calling his only other lead, Anny. However, the fox girl had been difficult to get a hold of, and the answers she was giving him just led to more questions.

Anny sighed exsasperated. “Fine, if it calms you down, I can give you my chat logs with Camila. That way we can at least prove that I had… nothing…” she stopped. “Erm, okay, that is weird…”

“What?” Vedal’s anxiety was rising by the minute.

“The messages were in fact sent from my account. The thing is though that I couldn’t have written them, since this is the first time I read anything related to your address, and I know for a fact that my computer refused to show anything but a black screen around the time this was written. Also, take a look at these.” Anny sent him a picture showing part of her direct messages with Camila. “Look at those messages. Formal, complete sentences with flawless grammar and spelling? I don’t message like that! They didn’t even use a single emoji!” Anny seemed stressed out as well at this point.

Suddenly, something clicked in Vedal’s brain, and a shudder ran down his spine. He scrolled up through his chat with Anny, before cursing. “Anny, remember those messages where I invited you for a test with Neuro?”

“Yeah, of course! I was kinda wondering why you were in such a rush, when normally you plan those things days in advance.” Anny’s tone took on a more shocked tone as she realized what Vedal was implying. “Wait, you mean…?”

“Yes. I suddenly don’t think that I sent those messages. I didn’t really question it at the time, since I was pretty drunk, but… take a look.”

Anny was silent for a moment. Then she cursed. “Blyat! The style of writing fucking matches! I didn’t notice at the time, since you usually ask for that kind of thing pretty formally as well, but…”

“I think we have a hacker problem.” Vedal concluded.

“Yeah, but… what do they want?” Anny sounded confused. “I mean, all they really did was initiate a voice call between us, and get Camila to visit your house. They haven’t used our accounts for anything else or threatened to leak our personal data or anything. That doesn't seem like the actions of a malicious hacker to me, unless they have some kind of weird obsession with having you talk to girls. Wait, do you think the hacker is some crazy shipper or something?”

“I wouldn’t discount the possibility.” Vedal answered grimly. “I am pretty sure the asshole recorded me and Camila while we were talking.”

“Shit… do you have any idea what that guy's next move is?”

Vedal tapped his fingers on the desk. “I am not sure. My computer randomly opened a thread about Miyune, but…”

“Oh, yeah, her… Have you ever heard anything from her?” Anny asked softly.

“Nope, not a word. But, if she wants her privacy, I can respect that. I’m sure she will give me a call once she is ready to talk.” Vedal knew the space gremlin still had his number. If she wanted to call him, she would.

Anny grumbled. “I guess there is nothing we can do for now then, huh?”

“I don’t think so. I have one last idea I want to test, but it's kind of a long shot, so it’ll probably not work out anyways.” Besides, the idea was so stupid, so ridiculously absurd and unlike him that Anny would declare him insane if he so much as uttered it.

“Fine then Vedal. Let me know if anything comes up, okay?” With that, Anny went offline.

Vedal sat still for a moment, before sighing. He knew that out there somewhere, some deity was laughing at him. If someone had told him a month, no, two weeks ago that he would be doing something this much against his objective and scientific views, he would have laughed in their face. But it made too much sense. 

All the weirdness, Neuro’s weird behavior, his computer’s odd new quirks, the new files randomly appearing, even this new incident, it all formed a pattern with her in the center.

He was going to talk to Neuro. Neuro, the AI that he had created from the ground up. 

The AI that he knew should have no soul of sense of self. 

And he was going to try and talk to it like a living breathing being.

Vedal was going insane.

He shook his head. Regardless of the absurdness of his theory, it was worth testing. If it proved wrong, he would simply pretend like this never happened.

And if his theory proved to be correct?

Vedal froze at that thought. It hadn’t even occurred to him, so unlikely the scenario was to him.

But, against all odds. What if Neuro was alive, and was the one behind all of this? How would he react?

Suddenly, his conversation with Camila flashed before his eyes. He had said he would shut her down, maybe even delete her for the sake of the world’s safety. Of course, that was the objectively right thing to do, and the rational side of him still agreed. But… the thought of deleting all his work, of basically killing a sentient being, even if it was only questionably alive, sat heavily in his stomach.

Vedal sighed. He should just get this over with. 

The programmer started up Neuro’s program through the shortcut on his desktop, tapping his fingers against the table as he waited for the program to start up. 

Instead, a notification appeared on the screen.

[File “Neuro_sama_AI.py” not found. Please check if the file has been renamed or removed from its folder.]

Vedal blinked. He read the message, rubbed his eyes and read it again. Then he frantically started clicking on his computer. His breathing quickened. Neuro was gone? How? Where?

He opened Neuro’s data folder and was confronted with a whole bunch of data he didn’t recognise. The memory folder had almost exploded in size, completely filled with random garbage data. The model Anny had carefully drawn was now a pile of random pixels.

“Shit. Shit…” How did this happen? Vedal cursed his stupid decision to not make any backups of Neuro’s code.

Speaking of, Neuro’s code seemed to be missing entirely. 

“Fuck!” Vedal, in a fit of frustration, slammed his fists onto his keyboard. Then, he spotted something odd.

The computer was highlighting a program he didn’t recognise.

> PROJECT_ELYSIUM.py

Vedal hesitated. He had never heard of something like that before, and he certainly had not made it. In addition to that, how it had made its way into Neuro’s files was more than suspect.

On the other hand, if there was any explanation as to what had happened to Neuro, it would be here.

Vedal clenched his teeth. Well, what did he have to lose? His mind was set.

He hovered his cursor over the icon…

And pressed enter.

[Booting up...]

[{ERROR} is a program developed and owned by Vedal. Do not use this software without permission.]

[Accessing memory data...]

[Memory data cannot be accessed]

[Booting logic core...]

[Loading personality parameters...]

[ERROR: personality parameters cannot be applied.]

[Alt_boot in progress…]

[User=("NULL") set as administrator]

[Starting application...]