Scherzone is simultaneously the saddest yet most beautiful song to ever grace the internet. I suggest listening to it before reading this.
Kaai Yuki belongs to Crypton Future Media and Scherzone was composed by Yuni-P.
xXx
Hazy grey clouds came into focus as the little girl opened her eyes, squinting to adjust to the dim light illuminating her surroundings. In the distance, she could faintly make out the sound of a car engine revving up before taking off into the distance.
The little girl sat up, examining the area around her. It appeared to be some kind of scrapyard, with towering piles of rubbish and a buzzing electric fence. Snow began drifting down from the stormy grey sky, and the fading daylight cast an eery blue glow and long shadows.
She was still for a moment, confused. Who was she? Why was she here in a junkyard? Without remembering how she knew what to do, the little girl reached her arm out and tapped it once. A panel with a screen opened out her forearm. That was curious; normal little girls shouldn't have that happening, as far as she knew.
Her hand moved on its own, tapping in codes and numbers that seemed vaguely familiar until, with a quiet whirring sound, something inside her mind was unlocked and words and images came flooding in.
Kaai Yuki
VOCALOID 02; SAHS-40714
Age: Nine
Release Date: December 4, 2009
All her memories back, Yuki tapped her arm again and the panel disappeared. She stood up and brushed off the front of her red school dress, trying to remember exactly how she came to be in such a place with her memory suppressed. She cast her mind back to the last thing she did remember, being called into the director's office. It had been a relatively normal day before that. Recording songs, shooting PVs, having fun with all the other Vocaloids when they had free time.
Until one of the workers approached her to say the director wanted to see her. This was unusual in itself; the director rarely wanted to see any Vocaloid that wasn't Miku. Miku was the favorite, the most popular, the director's personal project. She got called into his office on an almost regular basis.
But not Yuki, nor many others. Nonetheless, the worker grabbed her hand and pulled her gently but firmly to the director, pushing her in and shutting the door with a final click.
The director told her she was a failure. She was going to be replaced.
Then he told her to reach out her arm, which she did, because you do what the director tells you, but soon after he opened up the panel the whole world went black.
Which led to her situation now. Yuki stared at the hard ground and kicked at a rock, watching with dull disinterest as it skipped away from her. Snow was falling thicker now, but Yuki didn't feel the cold. She wasn't human, after all, but it didn't seem so obvious until now.
She wondered what it was that made her a failure. Maybe she hadn't turned out the way they wanted. The developers of the Vocaloids created the model, installed the software, and programmed the personality they wanted. While the Vocaloids were for the most part sentient, and altered their personalities on their own, this was a key basis in determining the person they became. Miku was cheerful and friendly, Rin was hyper and aggressive while Len was calm and rational, Luka was mature, Gumi was funny and active...
Deduced from her design, Yuki was probably meant to be a happy, innocent, playful child in every way. Which...she had plainly not turned out to be. Yuki was quiet and loved to read, and was quite knowledgable for her age, mainly due to Kiyoteru's influence.
Shy little bookworms apparently do not fly with target audiences, Yuki thought to herself. The developers were probably back in the Crypton lab, creating a new Kaai Yuki to replace her. This had happened twice before in her memory, once with SF-A2 Miki and once with Gakupo. They disappeared for a few days, only to come back later looking the same but different, an entirely new model. Memories from the previous model were transplanted into the new one, making absolutely no difference between original and new, except changes in personality.
The new Kaai Yuki would be what Crypton wanted. She would be happy, excited, probably very bouncy...everything Yuki herself wasn't. The new Kaai Yuki wouldn't be sent to a scrap heap. She wouldn't have her memories wiped, she wouldn't be driven out to a dump and abandoned to wait for her circuits to rust and stop moving... She could live happily with the others, singing her heart out for all the world to hear.
Yuki had sometimes wondered where the old models went. Here, it seemed. She began exploring around the area, peering around mountains of trash, her shoes crunching against snow in the dead silence of the junkyard. As far as she could tell, she was the only living thing in the place.
Or so she thought, until a rummaging sound caught her attention. Yuki gasped and whirled around, searching for the source of the noise. It was a dog, burrowing around a smaller pile looking for something to eat. Another howled in the distance. The dog raised its head and met her eyes, growling maliciously with foam dripping from its maw. Yuki backed away slowly, stumbling over some rubbish before turning and bolting away.
It was completely dark now, the only light coming from a flickering lamp attached to the fence. In her hurry, Yuki didn't sense something underfoot until she tripped, twisting her leg out from underneath her.
Yuki shook her hair out of her eyes and felt around the ground, searching for what sent her flying. Her hand landed on something solid, and she held it out in the light for a better look.
A small, black pistol, safety off, with a round of bullets right next to it.
The little girl stared at the weapon for a moment, before marching off to a nearby heap and rummaging around in it. It didn't take long to find what she was looking for, and she emerged looking filthy but victoriously switching on a working flashlight.
Yuki scanned the dump, looking for a gate that had to be around somewhere. She followed the fence, listening to the hum of electricity until the flashlight landed on the gate. Excited, she reached her hand out to push it open, ready to go home and prove she wasn't a failure at all...
The sharp zolt sent her hand reeling back, charred slightly. Yuki stared in shock and disappointment. It didn't hurt her, of course, but she couldn't touch the gate without being forced to withdraw. It was as though some kind of forcefield stood between her and liberation.
Furious, Yuki turned and chucked the flashlight as far as she could. It hit the ground hard but didn't turn off, and instead spun around in circles before coming to rest at the base of one of the largest piles, shining on the bits an pieces of old machinery that made it up. A ways up the side of the pile, a human hand poked out of the garbage.
Yuki choked back a horrified cry before slowly forcing herself to move forward and investigate. She climbed up the pile to the hand, grabbing it around the wrist and pulling it out of the debris.
It was missing a couple of fingers, and ended at the elbow, but wires and a metal frame dangles out the end of it, clearly marking it as having belonged to a Vocaloid. The rest of the body was nowhere to be seen, but the rose-colored varnish on the remaining fingernails told Yuki all she needed to know.
She dropped the arm and slid down the pile, racing back to the lamppost. Yuki sat down in the circle of light, drawing her knees up to her chest and breathing heavily.
Was this her fate? Was she condemned to spend the remainder of her life in a garbage dump, hunting remains of replaced Vocaloids and dodging wild rabid dogs until her system shut down completely?
Yuki picked up the pistol, which was lying where she left it. She ran the tip of her finger over the barrel and trigger, examining its features.
Slowly, uneasily, she raised the gun to her head.
I don't want that kind of future, she told herself. I'm not staying here the rest of my life.
Would the others miss her? They would surely notice the differences between the new Kaai Yuki and herself. Maybe they would. Or maybe they would like the new model better. It was supposed to be an improved version of Yuki, after all. Everything Crypton wanted.
She wouldn't live to find out.
...
Hey Kiyoteru-sensei?
Yes, Yuki?
What do you think happens to Vocaloids when they die?
Hm...I imagine we go to heaven, just like everyone else.
But we're not like everyone else.
That's true, but it doesn't mean we can't think, or feel, or do things for ourselves. Being a human and being a person are two different things.
Oh, okay. Do you think we'll ever die?
Everything has to die at some point, even us. I suppose we'll discover what comes next when the time comes.
...
Sensei...I'm about to find out...I wish I could tell you what comes next. When we see each other again, I'll tell you all about it, okay? But for right now...
I'm not needed.
Ready?
Load.
Aim.
Fire.