Silence isn't golden
Miku strolled through the long, white-painted halls of the Vocaloid house, a small army of cardboard boxes balancing uneasily in her hands. After KAITO and MEIKO had asked her to pick something up from the basement, the Vocaloid had happily accepted, not knowing that she would be carrying enough boxes to build a fort with. They hadn't even told her what they needed them for, MEIKO simply begged for the younger singer to fetch them and that was that. As she strolled, the idol couldn't help but think about all the other things she could be doing. There was that new anime she wanted to watch, there was the vegetable juice with her name on it that she needed to drink and worst of all, it was sunny.
Scratch that, it was absolutely beautiful outside, like a scene from a Disney movie. The sun was shining, there wasn't a cloud in the sky and the birds were singing a lovely choir for all the world to hear. The last thing she wanted to do on a day like this was to stay in the house all day. Despite this, Miku carried onwards towards the tech room. Being an idol wasn't all glammer and singing; she'd learned that the hard way well enough. Still, it was always nice to be on stage, countless fans cheering and waving a rainbow of glow sticks as you sang... Seeing their smiling faces made it all worth the while. Even better, the master had called last week and given her a brand new song to sing! Miku had been practising all week long, the lyrics both stuck in her head and written down on a sheet of paper, which had made its home in her skirt pocket. She could hardly wait...
"Miku! Miku! Miku! Miku!" Cheered the largest audience that Miku had ever seen. All of them were swishing green glow-sticks back and forth, jumping up and down with joy. As their favourite singer walked on stage, the entire stadium let out a scream of delight. Miku bowed faithfully and waved.
"Hello, everyone! I'm Hatsune Miku!" She announced.
The crowd once again erupted. Miku adjusted her mic and got ready to sing. This was her life and she was glad for it. There was nothing better than...
"Careful!"
Miku snapped back to reality and proceeded to stumble and fall to the ground to avoid walking straight into Neru. The boxes flew up into the air. Miku gasped. Then, with reflexes that normal humans like you and I could only dream of, she caught them all, breathing a sigh of relief as the tower of cardboard resumed its rightful position in her hands.
"Sorry!" Miku smiled, poking her head around the cardboard wall. "I wasn't looking!"
"Yeah, yeah, yeah," Neru mumbled, rolling her amber eyes and walking away.
The green-haired girl was worried that she'd upset her friend. Then she remembered that Neru was always angry about something. If she stopped being angry, hell might freeze over. Letting out a sigh, Miku continued to walk, her pigtails swishing this way and that as she ventured through the large house.
It only took a minute or two for her to make it to the tech room, where KAITO and MEIKO were waiting for her. Both of them had volunteered to be the house's resident technicians, which made sense since they were the oldest out of all of them (Even though MEIKO had volunteered both herself and KAITO without his permission). The room was covered with black wallpaper and was full of screens showing various programs, flashing lights of all hues and other pieces of technology the teenager didn't know the name of. Both of the older idols were working away, tapping buttons furiously.
"Oh, there you are," MEIKO said, looking over her shoulder.
Miku nodded and placed the boxes down, fighting to stop them falling over. Thinking quickly, she set them down into three smaller piles.
"We really need to clean out the basement more often," She sighed, giving herself a well-deserved sit-down.
MEIKO didn't reply, simply searching through each of the boxes. Each one was full of both old and new machine parts, computer chips and memory sticks. The basement, believe or not was full of stuff like this, the only reason these parts were down was that the tech room was already full of technological equipment.
KAITO soon joined in the search, searching each box carefully and carefully, rather than giving the contents a quick glance and throwing the box to the side like his partner was doing. Miku watched, hoping that the part they needed was there. If not, that would mean another trip down to the basement and she was not ready for something like that.
"Found it!" KAITO cheered, holding up a small, silver memory stick. Before he could get another word out of his mouth, MEIKO reached over, yoinked the stick out of his hands and shoved it into a computer with slightly more force than necessary. Data flowed into the system, the large silver box flooding with blue light as it filled up.
"What's it doing?" Miku asked.
"You'll see! MEIKO smiled.
In no time at all, the young woman's hand was at the mouse, clicking away. The screen flashed a few times before a small hatch on the computer module opened up. A small black card stuck out of a pocket, MEIKO snatching it up and giving it to Miku.
"You've been sounding a little flat lately. This oughta fix it," She smiled.
At that moment, Miku immediately knew what it was: a new voice chip. All of the Vocaloid's were somewhat mysterious when it came to their body; not entirely human yet not entirely robot either. Rather, they were a mix of the two, having the body and mind of a human but the voice of a machine. Very advanced and beautifully sounding machines but still machines none the less.
"Oh, right! Thanks!" Miku smiled, giving a little bow. Then, she turned out of the room and went to her room to put it in.
"Phew, I'm beat!" The other female sighed, stretching her arm out and letting it drop. "KAITO, can you clean up in here please?"
"B...But I...You..." KAITO stuttered, watching as the woman left the room, cards, wires and other pieces of machinery littering the once nice, clean floor. He could argue all he wanted but he knew that neither of the girls were coming back. Kneeling down, the poor man began to clean up, knowing that no one else was going to do it.
Miku sat down on her plush bed, the green covers crushed under her weight as she put the card down beside her. Pressing on her neck, a small flap opened up. Before the air around her could bring her insides any discomfort, she pressed down on the small card inside her neck. It popped up, allowing her to take it out and fling it in the small bin not too far away from her. All she had to do now was plug in her new voice card and...
Her eyes opened. A breath escaped her mouth. Someone... Somewhere... Was touching her vegetable juice. Pouncing off the bed, Miku ran downstairs, desperate to catch the would-be attacker in the act. She didn't know how she could sense this, she just could. Still, she wasn't going to question her instincts. What she hadn't realized what that she'd forgotten to take her voice chip with her, leaving it alone on her bed. Even worse, the old voice chip had NOT landed in the dustbin as intended but instead had landed just behind it, tucked out of sight.
Not a million miles away, a pink-haired young woman dragged a large vacuum cleaner behind her.
"I don't know why I always have to do this..." Luka mumbled to herself, dragging the device into Miku's room and pressing the large power button.
The vacuum whirred into life and began to suck at the cream-coloured carpet, any traces of dirt unlucky enough to be there getting sucked into the drum. An expert at cleaning (Since either her or KAITO were always left to do it), Luka directed the cleaning utensil around all the corners of the carpet, not bumping into any of the four walls, a constant whirring noise filling her ears.
"I really need to get MEIKO to do this sometime..." She sighed, hoovering the space next to Miku's bed.
No matter what position her name was on the chore list that week, MEIKO managed to somehow wiggle her way out of every task she was given. Last week when she was to do the dusting, she complained of having a cold and left Len to do it. The week before that, she'd managed to dodge doing the washing-up by twisting her ankle. (So she said anyway) It was no use fighting her on it: She'd always scowl and say that since she was the eldest, she was the one in charge. That was the only time she was proud of that fact, other times acting like the biggest child in the house.
With one hand, Luka held up Miku's dustbin, pushing the vacuum back and forth skillfully with the other.
"Vroooom..." Went the vacuum.
"Click!"
The old card was sucked up by the large device, landing with a quiet clunking noise into the drum.
Looking around the room, Luka admired her hard work. Miku was quite a tidy person by nature so there wasn't much need for her to do much else except straighten out her bed sheets. Giving herself a mental pat on the back, she turned the vacuum off, left the room and went downstairs to empty the drum into the bin. She'd have loved nothing more but a bit of time to herself but then she remembered she'd still to empty the bins.
"What's the point of having a chore list if no one's going to follow it?" She mumbled to herself.
It was a few minutes later when Miku returned to her room, a half-empty bottle of vegetable juice in hand. Tidying up her bangs with her free hand, she clenched the plastic bottle tightly. How dare Rin try to steal her drink? She had countless bottles of fizzy orange drink to gulp down!
"Come on! I don't see your name on it!" She'd complained, trying to pull it from her senpai's hand a few minutes ago.
Miku had wanted to tell her that she HAD labelled it thank you very much but due to her lack of voice chip, the best she could do was to point at the label and wriggle it free from her friend.
"That Rin..." Miku thought to herself, wandering back into her room.
Placing the bottle cap back on the juice and placing it on her bed, she reached for the chip...And found herself grasping at empty air. That was weird. Maybe it was on the floor? Nope. Under the covers? Nada. The voice chip was gone without a trace. Miku wanted to cry out but could only manage to open her mouth widely, doing a rather good impression of a screaming gorilla.
Then, she laid her head on her pillow and silently screamed. Her juice bottle fell to the floor.
Wait, what about her old one? Surely that was here somewhere?! The girl leapt from her bed and crash-landed in front of her bin before digging through it like a racoon.
Nope, it was gone too.
Miku could have burst into tears at that very moment. What would MEIKO say? There was no way that she could keep this a secret, she had to tell her. Needless to say, she was not looking forward to doing so.
"You lost it?!"
"YES, I'M VERY SORRY."
MEIKO was taking the news a lot better than the younger idol had imagined. So far, she'd only screamed once and not thrown anything across the room. It seems that the stress ball she'd gotten at Christmas was coming in handy, seeing as how she squeezing the hell out of it with both hands. Any more pressure and it would burst into several red pieces and litter the floor.
"I SWEAR IT WAS ON MY BED WHEN I LEFT IT," Came the sound of Siri, Miku being forced to use her phone as a method of communication.
The woman sighed and took a sip from her cola bottle, secretly wishing it was ten times larger and containing sake. Placing it down, she looked down at Miku, her eyes trying their best to not shoot daggers at her.
"Well, can't you just use your old one?"
"THAT'S LOST TOO."
The stress ball silently burst, transforming into several small, rubbery pieces. The woman downed her cola in one swift gulp and let out a groan, face held nicely in her palms.
"Urgh..." MEIKO groaned, the noise echoing throughout the large house. Why couldn't things be simple? Why did everything have to go wrong literally all the time?!
"And you two can stop snooping!"
A fist was heavily brought down on the table, causing Miku to jump and a duo of gasps to come from behind the wall, complimenting the banging noise in perfect harmony. Rin Kagamine, expert snooper and generally lovable yet nosy girl poked her head around the door, followed by brother/clone/mirror image Len. (No one was sure what the two's connection were, not even them)
"We...We're sorry!" The two pleaded, kneeling down on the floor and bowing simultaneously. Both of them knew what MEIKO was capable of when she was angry. When she was angry, she could do terrible things. Terrible, terrible things.
"Yeah, yeah, alright," MEIKO was not in the mood to scold the twin(?) singers. "At least things can't get worse."
Rin and Len's faces screwed up like they'd just heard every swear word in the dictionary and promptly went into a huddle. Eventually, they disbanded and stared at the two elder girls.
"Actually...We've got a message from the master," Rin mumbled.
"He wants...Uh...Um..." Len stuttered, looking to Rin for direction.
"He wants Miku to sing!" They both shouted, desperate to get it over with.
Was it today?
No, that couldn't be right, she wasn't due to sing until tomorrow. She'd made a note in her diary and checked it at least twice every day just to be sure.
"IT'S NOT TODAY, I CHECKED!"
"Master's changed the schedule," Rin mumbled. "He said you either do it today or not all."
Miku's face fell into a frown. To think that'd she have to miss out on singing? All of her practice would be for nought! Saying nothing, she looked down, her eyes tearing up. Singing was her passion: to deprive her of it would be like telling a bird not to fly.
MEIKO was also not taking it well, evidenced by her clenching her fist as tight as she could and gritting her teeth. Someday, she'd be able to retire to some island somewhere, where nothing would ever go wrong and she could drink all the sake she wanted. But until then...
"Len, go stall the master as long as you can. Stall him any way you can, us girls need to fix this."
Len shivered, a cold sweat running down his brow.
"Eh?! How am I supposed to do that?"
"I don't know! Just do something! Anything! We need all the time we can get!" Shouted the adult in the room.
Len nodded and walked away quickly, accelerating into a sprint as soon he reached the hallway.
"Now what?" Rin asked. "We can't just leave Miku like this, can we?"
"No, we can't," MEIKO replied. "You two head to the sitting room, I'll gather the troops."
A few minutes later, Miku, Rin, MEIKO, Neru and KAITO were all in the small, clean sitting room, brainstorming a solution to their little problem. A large easel was propped up in the middle of the room, along with several brightly coloured markers in several hues so they could jot down ideas.
"Alright, we're all here," MEIKO sighed, tapping the board with a red marker to get everyone's attention.
"SAVE MIKU'S VOICE!" Was written on the easel in bright red, a small picture of the girl's head drawn on for good measure.
"Except for Luka," Neru mumbled, not looking up from her golden phone.
A long arm swooped in and snatched the device away from her, placing it in the pocket of a short red skirt.
"You can have it back at the end of the meeting," The owner of the arm stated before Neru could argue.
"Come to think of it, where is Luka?" Rin asked.
"I think she's still cleaning the house," KAITO replied.
"Only because MEIKO wiggled her way out of doing it, again," Rin continued.
MEIKO chose to ignore that comment.
"Right. Now, how are we going to solve this problem?" KAITO chimed in.
Everybody began to think, a strong aura of doubt coming into the room. It seemed like no one knew what to do. This sort of thing had never happened before. They'd had a fire in the living room, Kaito getting stuck in the chimney while pretending to be Santa and even...Well, it's best to save THAT incident for another time. The point was: something like this had never happened before.
"Why doesn't someone else just sing the song?" Neru snapped, growing impatient.
"Because the master said very clearly that he wanted Miku to sing it," Rin replied.
Neru sank down on the cream-coloured sofa. She could argue the pants off of anyone else in the house but she'd never dare to question the master. God only knows what would happen if she did.
"How about if we use voice clips from Miku's past songs?" KAITO asked.
The source of the problem shook her head and handed the man the lyrics to the song. Everyone else crowded around him to get a peek at the paper.
"She's right, that wouldn't work," Rin sighed.
The lyrics were not only plentiful but also contained a lot of words that no one could remember Miku ever singing. Even for the words that were plentiful in her previous songs, it would take ages to hunt them all down. Then there was also the problem of pitch: Instead of changing accordingly, the words would be mish-mashed together to make something barely resembling music.
"Well, has anyone else got a better idea?" KAITO asked.
No one had one, evidenced by another silence that fell throughout the room.
At that moment, Luka walked into the room, stretching out her arms after a hard day's work.
"Hello everyone, what's going on?" She smiled.
Five pairs of eyes stared at her, each clouded with worry.
"Where have you been?" Neru asked, scowling.
"I've just been emptying the vacuum cleaner," Luka replied. "Oh, and Miku...Please try not to leave your spare chips scattered on the floor." She continued.
At that moment, the penny dropped. Everyone stared at Luka like she'd just grown a second head. Then, a constant beeping caught everyone's attention. The beeping was followed by a large rumble and then a thud.
"Oh no..." MEIKO mumbled.
"It can't be..." Rin gasped.
Miku didn't even have the time to type anything.
Everyone (Sans Luka), ran outside, screaming for the garbage truck to stop at the top of their lungs. As soon as they reached the great outdoors, they were met with the awful shock of the large, dirty vehicle moving away.
"STOP!" Screamed the idols but the truck kept moving.
"COME BACK!" Siri screamed, Miku having turned her phone as loud as it could go.
The truck drove out of sight. The Vocaloids fell down in defeat.
"Now what are we going to do?" Rin moaned, slamming her fist onto the ground in defeat. "The master's probably getting sick of waiting by now..."
"I guess...I guess we just tell him what happened." MEIKO gasped, trying her hardest to get her breath back.
"Would somebody please tell me what's going on?" Came a voice from inside the house.
"You vacuumed up both of Miku's voice chips, that's what happened!"
Luka jumped in surprise. She was used to MEIKO yelling at her but it still scared her to high heaven whenever she did so. it also didn't help that she was the cause of this predicament.
"Both of them?"
"Yes, both of them! I'd just made her a new one and she had to go and lose it!"
Miku was met with an angry glare and bowed down to apologize, face meeting the cold, hard concrete of the driveway.
"I...I apologize." Luka mumbled, also bowing down from the hallway.
The rest of the Vocaloids sat there in dumb silence, no one sure what to do next.
"Can I have my phone back now?" Came a voice.
Everyone looked at Neru, then they looked at each other, then they looked at Neru again.
"Uh...What's going on?" Neru asked, slightly unnerved.
"NERU-SAN, PLEASE HELP US." Miku typed.
"Please Neru-san..." Rin begged.
'you'd be doing us such a big favour.." KAITO whined.
"We'll owe you one..." MEIKO whimpered.
Neru sighed and slumped her shoulders. Years of living with these idiots had taught her that it was better for everyone to owe YOU a favour than for you to owe them one.
"Alright, what do you want me to do?"
"How's it coming, MEIKO?" Rin asked, leaning over the eldest idols shoulder.
"This is a lot easier than I imagined! Her voice is more similar to Miku's than I thought!" Came a cheer of glee and relief. "I just gotta click this and..."
"My name is Hatsune Miku!" Sang the computer, sounding just like the real thing.
That did it. MEIKO ejected the voice chip from the computer and placed it into Miku, closing the flap of skin that covered it.
"La, la, la, la, la!" she sang, testing it out.
Perfect.
"Thanks so much MEIKO!" Miku smiled, giving her friend a thumbs up.
"WHAT ABOUT ME?" Asked SIRI, this time coming from Neru's phone. "THAT'S MY CHIP YOU'RE USING!"
"Oh, right! Thanks, Neru!" Miku added, bringing the blonde girl in for a big hug.
"Don't worry, you'll get your voice back soon enough." MEIKO smiled.
Come to think of it, it'd be a lot easier to just make a new one for Neru, rather than readjust her voice chip and then have to make Miku yet another one. The woman smiled, knowing that she'd just saved herself a lot of bother.
"Right, I'm going!" Miku announced, letting go of Neru and dashing down the hall to sing her song and rescue Len.
"Have fun!" Rin smiled waving her off.
Meiko stretched her arms, cracking her knuckles as she did so.
"Now I've got to make Neru a new voice chip..." She mumbled, trying not to think about too much. "Right after I've had a drink!"
And before anyone could stop her, MEIKO ran off own the hallway to the kitchen. KAITO, Luka and Rin ran after her. They all knew what she was like when drunk (Trust me, it's not a pretty picture). Watching the chaos unfold in front of her, Neru got off the couch and strolled back to her room, not wanting to hang around.
"I'm surrounded by idiots..." She thought to herself, returning her attention down to her beloved phone.