"For someone who claims to be patient, you sure like to speed things up," Mayu said, sticking out her tongue playfully, poking the rabbit's forehead.
"We cannot force you into a contract, but if you are uncooperative, we will have no reason to continue the offer," the rabbit replied telepathically, its mouth unmoving. "Rabbit" was a term that simply described the creature's shape, because, in reality, it wasn't a rabbit. It was different from a rabbit, due to the long, fluffy tail it had, and there was something alien about it, with its purple dotted eyes and idle snout. The creature was instead an Incubator, something it had revealed to her in their first meetings.
Mayu looked into the rabbit's purple eyes and pouted. "You know, your eyes are weird, Asubey. I think they would be great if they were red."
"There are some of my brethren that have red eyes, but I cannot understand your fixation with mine. The color of my eyes is irrelevant to you or our mission," Asubey responded, its mouth still unmoving.
"I also don't like your tail," she continued, crossing her arms. "Rabbits shouldn't have long tails."
"When I first arrived on your planet, they did," Asubey replied, its tail flickering behind, as if to emphasize the point, and jumped on the bench.
"You've been in the business for a long time, right?" Mayu asked, sitting down on the bench as she reached out to pat Asubey's head, its fur so soft she felt she could go on petting him for a long time.
The Incubator blinked while Mayu smiled. "More than your human mind can imagine," it stated flatly; there was no bragging, no emotion, just cold fact.
"You seem to forget that I'm not human," she said, playing with one of the locks of her rainbow hair.
"A vocaloid is merely an artificial being whose design is based on a human, created for the sole purpose of entertainment," it deadpanned. It reminded her of one of those hard-to-read scientific volumes, devoid of humor, of emotion. "As an artificial being, you should not have emotions, you should not have a soul, and yet your kind defies all expectations. You are an anachronism."
"Excuse me, anachro-what?" Mayu questioned, raising an eyebrow.
"An anachronism. Humanity did not even reach Type One in the Kardashev scale, and yet they managed to create and automaton of such complexity as yours."
"Stops using big words." She said, again poking the forehead of the creature.
"As you wish. What I am trying to tell you-" Before the Incubator could continue, Mayu lifted her palm. Asubey stopped talking immediately as three girls approached the vocaloid.
"Ohmigosh, it's Mayu!" the first girl cried, in between squeals of delight.
"I can't believe it! Mayu, I'm you biggest fan," the second girl said, taking a good look at her.
"See, I told you she'd be here!" the last one said, proudly pointing a thumb to herself.
"Thank you for your patronage. How may I serve you?" Mayu said as she stood from the bench and curtsied. Asubey just stared at the humans, tilting its head, glad they couldn't see it.
"Well, uh," the second girl murmured, placing her had into her purse, searching for something. Excited as she was, she fumbled about, taking longer than she should in the seemingly endless abyss of her purse. With an embarrassed look on her face, she finally pulled out a notebook and pen. "P-please, can you give me your autograph?"
"Can I get your autograph as well?" asked the first girl, holding a CD case. "I have a collector's edition of your songs, and they're amazing!"
"Of course! It'll be a pleasure serving my fans," Mayu replied warmly, smiling wide, making the girls squeal again. Picking up the pen, she then proceeded to sign both the notebook and the CD presented.
"Thank you! Thank you!" they both said in unison.
"And you. Would you like an autograph as well?" Mayu asked the third and final girl.
"Actually..." She looked to the sides, seemingly embarrassed of what she was about to ask. Then, she grabbed her bag, pulling out a round, think log small enough to fit inside. "Can you hit this with your ax?"
Mayu blinked, and then placed her hands on her hips. Amused, she said, "Heh, this isn't the first time a fan asked." She moved her rainbow hair with one hand, and pulled her ax from its case, usually strapped onto her back, with the other. It was a simple ax, with a wooden handle and a gray blade like any other. The only difference was the red bow attached to the opposite face of the ax head.
The third girl placed the log on the ground. Mayu approached it, holding her ax by the handle, letting it almost touch the floor. Placing a foot on the small piece of wood, she raised her ax above her head with both hands. She held it there for a while, up above her head, with a resigned expression on her face.
"Is something wrong, Mayu?" one of the girls asked.
"No, no," the vocaloid replied. She plastered a wicked grin onto her face (all the while one of the girls filmed Mayu with her cellphone) and dropped the ax, hitting right above where there was the first stump of a branch. They applauded, and Mayu handed over the log to its owner.
After exchanging words of farewell, the girls left.
"And don't forget, do everything necessary for your loved ones!" Mayu said, waving goodbye.
"It seems they are gone," Asubey said, jumping to walk beside Mayu. "It is better that way. Humans cannot think in universal terms, so they have to build distractions."
"They are my fans," Mayu said, poking the Incubator's forehead with the handle of her ax before replacing it in its sheath on her back. "It's better you don't badmouth my fans." She still used the same dull tone she saved for when she talked with the Incubator, but her expression was showed more annoyance than usual.
"We cannot comprehend the human necessity of entertainment." Asubey stared into her eyes, purple meeting with yellow. "If humans did not stop to listen to music, watch television and read books, they would have achieved a greater level of progress. Perhaps they could have even forsaken their emotions and come closer to perfection, like we as Incubators have." It paused, thinking over what it had just said. "However, you then could not generate energy to deter entropy anymore, and that would be a shame."
Mayu just stared again at the weird, purple-eyed rabbit. She thought of ditching it, returning to the VOCALOiD Mansion, hanging out with her brethren, scaring Piko and Oliver, and then recharging for the day.
"And your kind-"
"Again, you talk about us like we were some sort of anomaly," Mayu said, interrupting it and getting increasingly annoyed with the Incubator.
"You could be more perfect than humans. Humans could use their knowledge to fix the flaws in their own designs. Instead, they transferred their diseases to their own creations," the Incubator said. There was a passion in his voice, even though it lacked all and any emotion. It explained Incubators shared a link in which all of them could understand each other. There were no secrets between them, only truth, but they still had a space for individuality. Even if they were all the same thing, a single Incubator could be different from another Incubator. Asubey, for example, considered its kind to be above most species, especially over the "mad ones" like humans, and thus introduced itself as an alien, a being from the depths of the galaxy, looking for human girls to make a contract with.
Mayu sighed. "Again that thing of emotions being diseases you explained on the fifth day."
"You are too inebriated in your own emotions to notice how it clouds your judgment."
Again, there was that judgmental tone. It may be thinking it's stating a cold, emotionless fact. She groaned and thought of dropping her ax on it to teach it good manners. She had to listen to it continue, though.
"However, because of their primitiveness and incomprehensibility, emotions are valuable to us. Emotions give origin to wishes, and wishes can stave off the entropy. That is the reason we have been studying your kind."
She blinked, surprised. She returned to the bench and say down, crossing her legs and cupping her head into one hand.
"What do you know?"
"The question is, 'what do we think we know?'"
"Don't you know?"
"We are not gods, Mayu," the Incubator said, beginning to pace back and forth. "There are things we still do not understand. We do not need to understand, though, we only need to know. And one thing we need to know is if we can harvest the emotion of a vocaloid."
Mayu continued to simply stare at the creature.
"Before those girls came, I was about to explain how much of an anachronism your kind are. Humanity should not have the technology to create an artificial being as complex as you, and yet here you are. Your existence is a miracle, a miracle only possible by magic."
Now Mayu was truly shocked, eyes opening wide, mouth half-opened even when no words came out of it.
"We theorized that your existence is the product of a wish, but we have no means by which to confirm this hypothesis. If it is true, then we suspect this wish was powerful enough to rewrite the past."
"How...how is that possible?" Mayu asked, placing her hands over her knees.
"We had cases of wishes powerful enough to rewrite the past. Your existence, the existence of vocaloids, may be one of them."
Mayu blinked again. Vocaloids knew they were artificial beings, but this was still too much to understand. In other words, she shouldn't exist.
"You are artificial and yet you have emotions. That, or are they are very good imitations of real emotion? The fact you can enter in a Witch's labyrinth is also a mystery for us as well."
Mayu still had the memories from the time she entered into a Witch's labyrinth.
She was walking in the streets of the residential villa at sunset when she saw an oddly shaped thing blinking at a wall. When she looked closer, the thing had the shape of a hollow sphere, with serrated lines around it. It also had a needle-like end strong enough to make cracks in the wall in was in. She stared at the glowing thing, almost hypnotized by the faintly pulsing lavender light and then it disappeared.
After it disappeared, her mind turned back to her reality. However, that wasn't the reality she remembered. The sky was foggy, the building were turned into a dark stone. Yet there was something familiar in those colors. They suspiciously resembled a vocaloid console, part of the software sold the samples of their voices for producers around the world.
Her hunch was confirmed when it started to play. She could see green squares over the black background and the line started running. However, the songs it produced were awful. The vocals were wrong, the tempo was off, everything at any level was wrong. It seemed like a really amateur producer decided to drop random vocals and see what happened.
Mayu couldn't even identify which vocaloid was singing. It was as if all vocaloids decided to sing at the same time, but without order. It wasn't music. It was just noise. Even in their anarchic sounds, though, Mayu identified the reason they lacked synchrony.
Grief.
That was the only emotion her processors could identify. Mayu, like any vocaloid, learned emotions through the songs she sang, whether they were ones she created or the ones producers from all over the world wrote. The first songs she created had lacked emotions, but they had improved, thanks to her fans and producers. At that moment, she felt an emotion she didn't feel frequently.
Fear.
Usually, in her songs, she was the one whom people feared. Mayu always thought it was amusing, how her fans liked to hear those songs, as if they enjoyed the fear she produced in them. Now, she remembered one song she felt fear in. Escape from Dystopia. It was different form her usual songs, telling the story of two lovebirds escaping from a dystopia that tries to suppress all vestiges of individuality. The fear of losing herself, the fear of not escaping, she experienced it all. However, she also experienced their relief when they made it out in the end.
My life isn't worthless... Remembering the phrase of the song she thought most about, fear started welling up in her being as something approached, flying between the buildings. Its shape defied any law of physics she knew about: it was the size of a bus, and a shape resembling one. Mayu was paralyzed and the creature grew closer. It seemed to have a face, a giant metallic face. Its eyes were stage illumination lights and its mouth was open, its teeth microphones. Speakers were around its body, protruding like they were lumps – the noise came from them. More microphones extended from its body, as if they were legs.
In that song, Mayu learned that lack of control was a source of fear. If nothing unexpected happens, if plans progress exactly as expected, there was no reason to fear because there is control. Control, however, was something so frail, that a small problem in a plan would allow doubt to infest the mind and create fear. And now, Mayu had absolutely no control of the situation. The creature had cornered her.
Her fear began to grow stronger, threatening her self-control. She could even hear her artificial brain buzzing in her head. Perhaps if she didn't react, the creature would go away. But the creature continued staring, extending one of its microphone-legs to her.
A single wrong, random synapse was enough to make Mayu lose control, and chop away the appendage with her ax. Realizing what she had just done, she looked at the creature, gritting her teeth, closing her eyes, knowing her life had reached its end. What actually happened, however, was completely different.
The cacophony slowly gave away to a more organized voice. To Mayu's astonishment, she could hear it singing now. She couldn't understand what it was they were singing; perhaps they were singing in the language of that creature. However, she knew by the rhythm and its longer cadences that it was a sad song. Even so, for a moment, grief wasn't the only thing the atmosphere radiated. There was a myriad of emotions: happiness, sadness, hope, love, all mixed up in a memory, like a fragile fragrance that disperses seconds after touching the air, the only thing remaining a memory of how good it was. Still, after a few moments, the song returned to its cacophony. The creature, however, just flew away from where it came and the song ended.
Mayu, still stunned, walked away from the place, waiting for reality to reclaim its domain. Later, she would find Asubey, who would explain that that had been a Witch, a being created from the darkest desires of humanity, and that it had already called for a magical girl to exterminate that Witch.
"Your desires may allow you to become a magical. Perhaps a really powerful one." It jumped at the bench beside her. "There are so many possibilities, your imagination is the limit. You seem to enjoy the company of those loud human females you call fans. Why don't you fight for them?"
"They are my fans." Again, an annoyed look crossed Mayu's face.
"Whatever. Make the contract, attain your wish, fight Witches, stave off entropy. Those are the duties of a magical girl. Imagine all the good you will be doing for the ones you claim to love."
Mayu looked at the ground and curled her hands into fists. After a while, she stood and said, voice resolute: "Asubey, I am ready to make my contract."
The Incubator perked up, doubtlessly surprised with the suddenness of her decision.
"Would you like to declare your wish?"
"Not yet. Just make the contract."
Asubey stood in front of Mayu. It lifted its ears, and the ears stretched, defying the laws of mass conservation as they phase through her body. She stared blankly for a few moments, and when her senses returned, she saw an oval jewel floating around Asubey's ears. The jewel was colored a dark red, and it was held by a golden support.
"This is your Soul Gem. The contract is sealed. You can transform into a magical girl."
"You should pay attention to the jewel," Mayu replied. They both looked at the jewel, and it began to tremble and turn into a silver color, spikes protruding from the jewel before it finally exploded.
"What in the world happened?" Asubey asked, panic seeping into its voice. "But this should not happen, you should be a magical girl right now." Then, it looked at Mayu. Her expression was serious, unmoving, cold like an Incubator's. Her eyes, however, had a gleam of anger, and they looked straight at the rabbit creature.
Asubey stepped back.
"You didn't honor your part of the contract," she accused.
"It is not my fault that your soul cannot produce a stable soul gem."
"You granted me a wish through a contract. You granted a wish to all those girls before me. And then, thanks to you, their wishes became the object of grief," Mayu seethed, her fists trembling.
"It is not my fault if their selfish wishes cause their demise. The energy to stop entropy can only be harvested when magical girls metamorphose into Witches, this is the law!" Its voice lost its emotionless tone, like that of a piece of cloth that has its threads unraveled. Not even advanced beings like Incubators were immune to uncertainty.
"That Witch was my fan!" Mayu raged, her voice dripping with anger. The Incubator stared at her with fear. Now she was the source of fear, and the world was normal again.
[=Unit Asubey, we detected high levels of emotion in your Core. To avoid the contamination of other Incubator Cores, we have placed you in quarantine and thus relieve you of your abilities temporarily. When your emotions stabilize, we will grant you access to the Great Core again and then recall you for treatment.=]
They could hear the voice coming from Asubey's superiors. Without wasting time, the rabbit-shaped Incubator ran away like a frightened animal.
While it searched for a place to hide, it also heard something swinging in the air, and its running was interrupted suddenly when something pinned its tail to the ground. Upon turning its head, it saw that it was Mayu's ax that had pinned its tail down.
Mayu stood beside it, holding a knife. "Rabbits shouldn't have long tails." She cut the tail while the Incubator watched with its empty eyes. "No blood? This spoils the fun."
"You stop it, right now!" Asubey ordered, its voice louder than usual. "I have nothing to do with the misfortunes of lesser beings!"
She then picked it up by the throat and said: "Rabbits should have red eyes, instead of purple."
"What are you doing?" it demanded. Mayu raised her knife to the Incubator's eyes and started to gouge out the first one. "Stop it, you won't accomplish anything!" Ignoring its pleas, she removed the second one.
"You freak!" Asubey shrieked, continuing its screams as Mayu placed its eyeless body over the bench close to its eyes. "You heartless freak!" With her free hand, she reached for a hidden pocket in the back of her dress to pull out two red buttons, a needle, and a thread.
"Now you look more like a rabbit," she said with a smile on her face as she sowed the buttons onto its face. The creature still complained, but it didn't seem to feel any pain, only discomfort. But the creature had no control of the situation. It only experienced frustration, confusion, and fear.
Just like a little baby, Mayu thought with a smile. So old, and yet so immature. "I still need to tweak a few things. You said emotions are a disease. Perhaps you're not wrong." She squeezed its neck as she continued. "Love is both the most beautiful and terrifying thing that exists."
"What are you going to do with me?"
"Let's be sick together, Asubey-No." She suddenly stopped speaking, making the tip of the knife slide over its belly as she rethought what she said. "Usano Mimi."
"What are you?"
Mayu raised the newly-christened Usano Mimi close to her face and said: "I'm the dark angel."
"And that's how I got Usano Mimi," Mayu concluded, holding on tightly to her rabbit plushie. "Of course, I had to teach it some things. It was quite resistant, but in the end it started to love me! And thus I let it become my microphone." She squeezed the rabbit by the throat. "I had to open it," she said, showing the huge zipper in its belly. "How can I sing without it?"
Her fellow vocaloids, the ones present, stared blankly at her. Kaai Yuki almost regretted asking the origin of Mayu's plush rabbit. Maika blinked twice, her left arm wrapped around Yohioloid's right, whom looked pensive. Then, he spoke. "Wait, but why did your soul gem explode? Does it mean you have no soul?"
"No, no," Mayu said, waving her hand dismissively. "It's because Incubators have been extracting souls of humans for so long they aren't prepared to extract the souls of beings that are not human. Since we're based on humans, they thought they could." A smirk curved her lips. "I proved them wrong."
"I mean, seriously?" Lily cried, lifting her arms in the air in doubt, accidentally slapping Kaito and waking him. "How do you expect us to believe that? That critter-marshmallow-Satan things from outer space go to our planet to trick idiot girls into transforming them into creepy abominations in order to save the universe somehow?"
"Sis, you shouldn't be so harsh."
"Gumi, this looks like the plot of a retarded B-rated movie, worse than when Lapis and Merli told us they serve some legendary Pokémon! Meh, I'm going to my room!" Lily said, leaving the living room.
"Heheh," Gumi laughed weakly, smiling nervously, her hands over her knees. "You know Lily. Always assertive."
"You don't need to worry," Mayu soothed, hugging the plushie, which returned her hug. "Our world is filled with so many unbelievable things."
"There's still one question," Yohioloid said. "What was your wish?"
Mayu smiled and looked at Usano Mimi. "I wished for a friend."
After that, they returned to whatever they had been doing before, including Mayu. She left her seat with Usano Mimi tagging along, walking with its tiny legs.
Before she could enter her room, a certain tiny, blue-haired fairy waited for her in the front of her door, floating in midair, surrounded by a faint, blue dust. She seemed rather upset, judging from her crossed arms and frown.
"Lapis, what brings you here?"
"When Master Xerneas told me about how that Incubator kept you captive, I could barely believe it. And then you go around gloating about it," Lapis said sternly.
"Captive is such a strong word," Mayu replied, winking at her. "I'd rather call it my special friend."
"It doesn't matter," she retorted, flying around her. "What if the Incubators decide to 'check' this out? That creature is a danger!"
"You should relax, Lapis," Mayu said around a yawn she barely managed to suppress. "The Incubators will never even acknowledge this because they'll have to admit they were surprised. Surprise creates doubt, doubt creates fear, fear creates emotions, and they don't want to 'contaminate' their pure race with icky emotions." With a smile, she entered her room, closing the door.
Lapis blinked. Then a water balloon hit her.
"Send Yveltal's regards to Xerneas!" Merli yelled, flying away, Lapis on her trail.
A.N.: This is a semi-crack, semi-serious fic, that was based on a talk with my pal SDV about Vocaloid headcanons. I suggested that Mayu's Usano Mimi is actually a lobotomized incubator and thus I decided "Why Not?" and write a fic about it. Also, this talk involved talking other things like my other cracky crossover headcanon that involves the theory Lapis and Merli serves Xerneas and Yveltal (c'mon, their powers even reflect both legendaries). Also, they're not in Pokémon world, Lapis and Merli can go to both worlds because of Xerneas and Yveltal, and Arceus banished Incubators from the Pokémon world.
Also, I like to imagine that, while Incubators are a hive mind, they allow for individuality - we have Kyuubey, Jyubey in the manga, they are all emotionless, unless they get "sick", but they have different methods of approaching their mission and other species. Asubey decided to consider themselves as superiors, but I can imagine some incubators considering humans as their equals because they have a role in saving the universe as well.
Also thanks to SDV and Kigurou-Enkou for test-reading my fic and Blood of Alice for her wonderful beta services!