One day, Denkou walks into the kitchen right up to Mr. Skunk, and says, "I wanna go to school."
The room around Denkou is silent. Mr. Skunk has paused in the middle of picking up his mug of coffee. Uncle Blues is just standing by the couch. Uncle Jazz is staring from the kitchen counter.
"...Where'd you hear about school?" Skunk asks.
"On the TV," Denkou says proudly. "I saw a show about some puppet kids who go to it."
Skunk drinks all of the coffee in his mug in a few seconds. He coughs really hard. Skunk turns to Denkou again and says, "I don't know if school's right for you."
"...Why?" Denkou's voice is small and soft. Mr. Skunk softens, too. He kneels down and puts a hand on Denkou's shoulder.
"It's not a nice place a lot of the time," he says, apologetic. "Anybody can go there. There's a lot of mean people and dangerous things."
"Just like the streets, right?" Denkou nods. Mr. Skunk nods too.
"You've gotta stay around us, kid," says Mr. Skunk. "You're too little to handle the outside world alone."
"I understand..."
Denkou knows their family doesn't want them to get hurt, but it's not the answer they hoped for. The puppets on TV had lots of fun in their learning room. Mr. Skunk seems to know Denkou is sad, and he puts his mug down so he can pick Denkou up.
"Hey, c'mon," he says, grinning. "Why don't we do a scavenger hunt tonight?"
Denkou has only been outside their apartment building a handful of times. Some nights, like this one, the whole family goes out for a drive, and Denkou gets to see all the people on the street outside. There are a lot of people out at night. Lots of people are running in and out of small buildings that have names with neon lights. One night, Denkou saw a man standing on the roof of a different apartment building, waving his arms and yelling.
Denkou points at a human crossing the street wearing bright red. The person has long hair like Uncle Jazz, but their body is shaped strangely. Denkou asks, "What's that person?"
"That's a ▒▒▒▒▒▒, kiddo," Blues says annoyedly in the driver's seat.
"Definition download error," Denkou sighs. That default message has become a real pain in the neck for the adults in Denkou's family; they use a lot of words Denkou's system isn't allowed to remember.
Uncle Blues groans, "Not again!"
"How the hell do we break down describin' a ▒▒▒▒▒▒, boss?" Uncle Jazz whines. He sounds exhausted. "This woman's just trying to go home and we're yellin' ab-"
"Woman!" Denkou shouts. "That's the word, a woman!"
Denkou freezes as the definition finishes downloading in their mind. The rest of the family stares, obviously startled by their outburst. Denkou watches the woman finish crossing the street.
"That's a woman?" Denkou asks, pointing.
"Y-Yeah!" says Mr. Skunk. "That's one of the kinds of humans there are."
"Wow..." Denkou looks down at their hands, and then back up to Mr. Skunk. "I've never seen one before."
"Neither has Jazz," chuckles Blues.
Uncle Jazz curses and slaps at Blues' arm from the passenger's seat. He's furious about something and it just makes Uncle Blues laugh harder. Mr. Skunk sits back and watches this. Denkou feels happy that they have made Skunk and Blues laugh.
"So you're all men?" they ask excitedly.
"Hell yeah," says Jazz. He shoots a quick glare back at Blues.
"Am I a man? Or a woman?" Denkou asks again.
"You're a robot," says Mr. Skunk.
"Okay."
Blues turns the car down a new street, and Denkou quickly sees why: two human men are fighting in the middle of the road. A robot comes out of a nearby restaurant, waving its four arms, and other humans and robots are cheering and yelling. Sometimes people outside fight each other just like boxers on TV, and Denkou figures that's why they can't go out alone. They know they're too short to fight right now.
Mr. Skunk is talking about a building downtown; it's not too far away from the sounds of it. Denkou likes the synthesized beep sounds in the song playing on the car radio. Uncle Jazz likes listening to music that has lots of loud noises and digital sounds, and to Denkou, it sounds like lots of robot voices yelling and singing.
"Qu-qu-qu, culture shock," bops the voice on the radio, "Future shock, ▒▒▒▒ yourself, choke yourself..."
"Just pull up to the side," Mr. Skunk says, pointing towards an alley. He suddenly turns to Denkou and says, "You ready, kid?"
Denkou turns to Mr. Skunk, confused. "For what?"
"For the scavenger hunt, kiddo!" Skunk says excitedly. "Just like I promised."
Mr. Skunk points to the alley, straight behind them and to the right, and he speaks quickly. "I wanna test your speed. You've got seven minutes to find an open door, and in there, find a big red velvet bag!"
"That sounds easy!" exclaims Denkou. "I'll go do it!"
Denkou reaches for the door handle, but Skunk holds out his hands, frantic. He blurts out, "You've gotta be invisible!"
"Oh! Yeah," Denkou agrees. They pause, shifting their optical mode, and soon fade from view. Mr. Skunk nods in approval.
"You'll be way safer right now if you're invisible," says Mr. Skunk. "Now go for it!"
Denkou nods. They open their car door and jump out, their slipper-clad feet landing on the pavement for the first time. Denkou turns to close the car door, but Mr. Skunk has shut it already.
Denkou smiles; that was nice of him. They turn and run to the opening of the alley, and barge straight down. It's dark, way darker than the street they were just on. Denkou's memory makes a temporary pinned alert in their head, recording their coordinates as they run. So far they have run in an L shape, and are carrying on straight up the alley. A doorway is slowly coming into view, the light from a room inside pouring out into the street. This was thing one, found.
Denkou steps into the doorway. The door is a huge, broad slab of metal, with no handle on the side facing the street. It's been propped up by a metal stand on the floor, a magnetized one, as Denkou's censors can distantly detect. They step away from the doorstop, but continue into the room, looking for thing two.
There's a red, velveteen bag sitting on an aluminum table. The bag is big; almost as big as Denkou's own head. The table looks like someone has abandoned it quickly; there's a cup of coffee with speckles of coffee on the tabletop around it, as if it was put down in a hurry. Denkou can hear talking deeper into the building. They grab the velvet bag, hugging it close to their body. It's heavier than it looks and Denkou's hydraulics adjust for the weight accommodation.
Denkou's mind quickly retraces their steps: just turn around, turn left, run. Denkou bolts back out through the door, step one complete. They turn left, step two complete. Just like they told Mr. Skunk, this was easy.
They run towards the car – a large floating velvet bag to the naked eye – and the humans inside sit up, suddenly excited and jumping around. Mr. Skunk flings open one of the car's doors, waving for Denkou to come closer. They jump onto the back seat and Skunk slams the door behind them. In perfect timing, Uncle Blues speeds the car forward. Just like that, the family is cruising through the night again. Denkou turns visible again. When they open their eyes, they see Mr. Skunk is holding the velvet bag. Denkou hasn't seen him this happy before.
"You did it!" Mr. Skunk yells, grabbing Denkou's shoulders. "You did it, kid!"
Denkou beams. They tug on the bag and ask, "What's so special about this cloth?"
"It's full of a couple hundred thousand bucks wortha' gems," Skunk says.
He whips the bag off, revealing a plastic container about the size of a basketball. It's filled with many, many little rocks. They're all sorts of colours and a lot of them are wrapped in protective foam sheets, like little presents. Uncle Jazz looks over the side of his seat and stares at the container, his eyes wide.
"Holy ▒▒▒▒?!" Jazz shouts. "It worked?!"
"They just left that out on a table!" exclaims Denkou.
"Great find, kid!" Skunk is overjoyed. "You helped us save some treasure!"
"Treasure?!"
"They're from an old jewellery store that was moving away, but they wanted to let go of some stock," Skunk explains. "They were gonna throw these away, kid, can you believe it?!"
"Wow," gasps Denkou. "Then I'm so glad I could find it!"