Kurisu looked over her monitor as if she could never take the person at the other end of the table serious again. When she realized that she couldn't see her colleague from that angle, she even got up. "What have you done to Amadeus?!"
Maho never pretended not to be a part of the most obvious group of suspects. "I just enhanced her a little. Don't you like it?" she asked with an innocent grin.
Kurisu dropped onto the chair in exasperation, her face hidden behind her hand. "I look like the fantasy of an otaku."
Maho frowned, but there were more important things at hand than clarifying the term. "Didn't you always want to know what you look like in a Japanese school uniform?"
"This is by no means a reason to abuse the AI for this. We have rules, Maho. She's not a toy. "
"Well, she likes it," Maho countered, while Amadeus couldn't stop pulling on the bow in front of her chest out of fascination, and the skirt, which was way too short in an effort to cover at least a reasonable area of her legs.
Kurisu shook her head and scanned the code to find out where Maho had hidden this skin. "Where did you get it from?" she asked absently as her eyes scanned the lines of code.
"I found it on the Internet. Some guy called 'DaSH' has developed something suitable. "
Kurisu's concentration broke immediately when she heard the name, but after a moment's thought, she shook her head. The world was probably bigger than a district. "You can't just pull things off the net like that. What if it was a hidden attack by a hostile country that smuggled us in a free gift to infiltrate our system from the inside? "
Maho patted her mouse with her thin fingers while she waited for her colleague to finish speaking. For inexplicable reasons, despite her all-overshadowing intelligence, she had developed a weakness for pathetic apocalypse scenarios about a year ago, which were sometimes amusing, sometimes completely abstruse. "Can't you just throw the word 'Trojans 'around like any other technology noob? But don't worry, I ran it through all the virus scanners I could think of, including the zero tolerance thing from our university. Then I went through its code in a secure environment. "A quick glance over the edge of the screen let her see how Kurisu's head leaned further and further to the side with a puzzled expression, so Maho quickly shortened her explanation: "And I put all this effort in it even though the Japanese universities have long since abolished their school uniforms - and now you don't even appreciate it!"
Maho watched with relish as Kurisu's expression changed before her eyes. Lack of understanding turned to surprise, disbelief and careful anticipation. "Do you mean exactly what I think?" she asked timidly, as if she couldn't believe her own conclusions.
For a moment, Maho enjoyed this otherwise never occurring phenomenon. "Did you have any doubts? No university with a bit of common sense would deny you a semester abroad. "A mouse click later, Amadeus presented her likeness the letter with a smile as if Kurisu had just won the lottery.
"Oh my god!" Kurisu shouted and jumped up so quickly that the chair fell to the floor behind her. "That's amazing!"
Maho demonstratively put a hand on her strained ear. "I didn't know you were so eager to get out of here."
For Maho, it felt like yesterday that Kurisu had come back from her first trip abroad. For the first two weeks, she had taken a break and visited her mother. After the shocking and confusing news that had spread after the incident in the radio building, Maho could understand that.
When Kurisu had later showed up at the laboratory out of the blue, her little friend's brain had only started to function again when she had held the genius in a tight grip. Maho hadn't thought reunions could be so emotional, but the idea of never seeing Kurisu again had still been fresh in her mind back then.
"That's not it at all," Kurisu defended herself hesitantly.
Maho waved it off. "I already know what the problem is," she said with a sly grin. After all, Kurisu had taken time off again just a few weeks after she had returned to work. Her reason of "showing the country to a few friends" back then made a lot more sense now. "Too bad you didn't introduce your new friends to us. They seem to be some very special people."
Kurisu's gentle smile at the memory was quickly replaced by a professional "I should talk to Professor Leskinen."
"He is in his office. He's probably crying his eyes out that he has to let you go again. Easy come, easy go. "Maho shrugged.
Kurisu sighed. "I will try to be particularly sensitive - and when I get back, you've taken this thing off Amadeus!"
Maho looked at the screen and frowned. "Difficult. I don't know exactly where I put it in… "
"Or I withdraw my consent to work together."
Maho just watched her with a tired smile. With the enthusiasm that Kurisu felt after every little achievement, that would probably only happen in a state of total insanity. And even then her set of memories wasn't the only one in the system.
"Well, Amadeus, you heard her. That was it with your trip into the world of foreign fashion. "
The AI widened her eyes and folded her arms as if it could prevent Maho from tearing her clothes off. "But you went out of your way to do it..." she tried to persuade her in an effort to keep what would objectively be calles 'not suitable for work'.
It was difficult for Maho to hold back the grin. "What Kurisu's eyes don't see ..." She left the sentence in the room like a conspiratorial offer while implementing what she had christened the 'Wardrobe' add-on.
The AI's eyes widened as she searched her new options with the equivalent of thoughts. Less than a minute later, Maho knew what Kurisu looked like in a playful ruffled bikini, as a magical girl, in armor with a braided hairstyle, or as a soldier. Now she deeply regretted that Amadeus noticed when someone took screenshots.
Maho felt a rare kind of relief as she watched Amadeus delightedly looking at herself from all sides. "Good to know that you can be as crazy as the rest of us. Sometimes I forget that."
Amadeus, still fascinated by her new appearance, raised her head in question when she noticed the voice input. She opened her mouth and her expression turned into a frown as the mouse moved to the top right of the program. "See you tomorrow," Maho said like every other day and as usual Kurisu's image raised a hand to wave goodbye before the screen went black.
Experience had shown that the termination should not take too long because Amadeus negotiated better than a child who did not want to go to bed yet. Sometimes Maho felt as if she had to program the conviction that it would only be a few hours before the program would be activated again. Whether because of work or her fascination with her creation, Maho couldn't remember not having started the program for more than a day.
Once, on a rainy Sunday, she'd opened it on the couch while waring holey sweatpants and having a greasy hairline just to get advice on what to do on that boring day. When instead of an answer, there was a roar of laughter from the loudspeaker, the program had booted longer than it had been running.
She heard the familiar ventilation of the PC die and looked at her reflection in the blackness of the monitor for a moment. "Fool. It's not a goodbye forever," she murmured to herself, grabbed her bag and stood up. She glanced at the professor's office, through whose door Kurisu had previously disappeared. Their conversation was audible through the door, but too muffled for Maho to understand more than a few words. She pushed the thought of disturbing her aside before it had manifested properly. It was so wrong for her to just say "See you tomorrow" as usual when preparations were being made in there that would soon change that. So she just grabbed her bag, flipped the light switch, and disappeared from the building.
