The next morning, Miu made her way to the entrance hall early, while it was still dark outside. She wanted to see the look on Idabashi's face when he arrived.
She didn't have to wait long. About five minutes later Idabashi strode in, his lab coat sweeping up behind him to block the window and the sun as it crested the horizon. He swung his head around as he spotted Miu and glared at her. "Well, Iruma? This is your very last chance. Convince me now that you deserve the title of Ultimate Inventor, or see your false pretences stripped away from you!"
'Stripped'? Not for a pervy old geezer like him! "Oh, that challenge? I've got that all wrapped up!"
"Go on, that. Show me."
Miu smirked. "Oh, I don't need to. Shit, I don't need your approval or your guidance or whatever the fuck makes you think you get to boss me around; I don't need any of that shit anymore. 'Cause all your stuff…" Miu snapped her fingers. At her command the wall at the back of the entrance hall split into panels and opened up, revealing the hidden laboratory behind it. "All your stuff's mine now, baby!"
K1-B0 stood on the other side. The robot's eyes were lit up a dull grey, and when he looked at Miu the gaze was completely dispassionate. More improvements, maybe, for her to tinker with once they'd left.
"Come on, K1-B0!" Miu commanded, "Bring all the stuff I told you to, then let's boogie on out of here!" As K1-B0 turned around, obeying the instructions that Miu had programmed in the night before, Miu gave Idabashi a victorious thumbs-up. "What can I say? K1-B0 perked up with excitement the moment he saw me. With these good looks, it was bound to happen."
"How dare you…?" Idabashi hissed.
"I dare whatever the fuck I want! Take one last good look at the gorgeous golden genius who whooped your stupid ass. 'Cause once I'm through, you won't be seeing anything this neat for the rest of your life. Where's your 'single word' now, Idiot-abashi?"
"Heh… 'Override'," Professor Idabashi said.
K1-B0, halfway through picking up the laser cannon, froze.
"Hey! K1-B0! What the fuck are you waiting around for?!"
"It won't respond," Idabashi continued, "Every last snippet of contraband that you added to its code last night has been… excised. Hmm… to call your coding style merely 'eccentric' would be a leniency which I am no longer inclined to grant. It… was incompetent. You are incompetent.
"Fortunate, I suppose. A person with even the slightest amount of talent could have caused some actual damage. If the code you inserted had been integrated into the rest at all, removing it could have corrupted every program around it. A spontaneously-developing self-rewriting artificial intelligence, seven years in the making, nearly ruined because of a thoughtless, meaningless scheme."
"Hey! Wait!" Miu spluttered. She alternated between backing away and racing over to K1-B0, going nowhere. "Uh… uh… I was just testing you! You know, make sure you were qualified to judge me as Ultimate Inventor!"
"Youths always delude themselves into believing they see so much." Idabashi was barely even talking to Miu now, speaking only for his own benefit. "Remember this: that which you see, you see only by standing on the shoulders of giants. Giants lifted you up from where you scrabbled in the dirt and so the moment you face even the slightest hardship, you can think only of leaning on the creations of those who came before you even more. And now, when the giant deigns to shift their weight… Fall, Iruma."
"Please, Professor!" Miu shrieked, "Come on, give me another chance! You can't take my title from me! Please, don't…"
"K1-B0?"
"Yes, Professor?" the robot replied.
"Evict this interloper. Use lethal force if necessary."
"Yes, Professor."
o - 0 - O - 0 - o
K1-B0 shot towards Miu with perfectly engineered speed, stopping only when he was right in front of her face. Under other circumstance, that proximity to the most exquisitely well-built robot she had ever seen would be pleasurably sensual. As it was, Miu only extended her mechanical arms just in time to block K1-B0's attempt to restrain her.
"Please, Miu!" K1-B0 exclaimed, as he wrestled with the trunks of the arms, "Come quietly."
Any other day, Miu would have, quietly or loudly. But if she left the castle before she convinced Idabashi not to persuade every to take the Ultimate Inventor title from her… everything she'd worked for would be broken. She'd be broken. Miu snapped her mechanical arms apart forcing K1-B0 backwards and, in a deft manipulation of the controls that only someone with her pure talent would be capable of, used the arms to propel herself backwards towards a window, swinging through it and into the cold air beyond.
As Miu fell, a harsh blue light filled the space where she'd just been. The signature hum of a laser cooling down resounded from the entrance hall.
As Miu landed in the courtyard outside, she screamed back up at K1-B0 and Professor Idabashi, "What the fuck?!"
"I don't want to hurt you!" K1-B0 called back, "Please –"
"If you don't want to hurt me then don't fire terawatt lasers at me, you fucking moron!"
It wasn't any use: K1-B0 was programmed to obey Idabashi's commands to the letter. Miu could hear his feet clanging against the stone as he ran towards the window and scrambled for cover, again using the mechanical arms to accentuate her movements. Damn, she was glad she'd brought them.
Without them she would never have gotten to cover in time. K1-B0 leapt from the window, laser cannon in hand, and landed in the centre of the courtyard. The tiles he landed on shattered under their combined weight and velocity. As K1-B0 peered around the courtyard, Miu almost panicked, but she steadied her breathing and forced herself to recall that the robot's specifications that she'd read the night before had said that K1-B0 possessed sight and hearing no better than the average human's. Hiding among the trees and shrubbery would keep her safe, for now.
But she wasn't going to take her title back just by hiding. And she wasn't going to get anywhere with persuading Idabashi as long as K1-B0 was constantly pursuing her, as flattering as that attention was. If she could just get that laser cannon away from him, maybe she would have a chance.
Miu broke from cover. She ducked under a blast from the canon and sprinted for a door on the opposite side of the yard, making it inside just as the cannon fired again. She ran down the corridor on the other side, but as she reached the corner she didn't turn it. Instead, she extended the robotic arms to their fullest extent and used them to climb up the walls. She settled into the shadows below the ceiling, and waited.
Miu didn't have to wait long. K1-B0 wasn't exactly stealthy, and she'd recognise his exquisitely constructed body anywhere and from any angle, so it was easy to see when he passed beneath her. Miu waited until he was right underneath her, retracted the arms slightly, and dropped.
Miu landed right on K1-Bo's back, knocking him to the floor. She straddled K1-B0's back, trying to keep him down as they fought over the shaft of the laser canon. Just as K1-B0 managed to force his way out from under her, Miu found what she was looking for; she yanked the power cell out of the laser cannon, tossed it to the claws at the end of her left mechanical arm and crushed it.
Leaving the cannon aside, K1-B0 reached around to grab Miu's elbows. It didn't hurt at all – it could almost be described as tender – but Miu could feel him beginning to carefully restrain her movements. She couldn't let him do that, not just yet.
Miu used her mechanical arms to throw them both down the corridor. It was chaotic, uncontrolled, but when they landed K1-B0 was no longer wrapped around her and she was able to scramble to her feet and run. When she was far enough away, around a few more corners of the corridor, Miu let out a sigh of relief. That had been messy, and not the good kind of messy, but it had worked. One more ambush like that, and she'd be able to keep K1-B0 of her back long enough to talk some sense into Idabashi.
As she ran deeper into the castle, the lighting level fell. Damn, it was like this place really was Idabashi's creepy dungeon or something. At least there were more areas of shadow where Miu could prepare to surprise K1-B0 and finally finish this shit. She eventually decided on a place to set the trap as she entered the bottom of what had to be one of the castle's towers. The was a ledge above the door which she entered by, and Miu scrambled up there to wait for K1-B0. K1-B0 stepped through the door about half a minute after. Miu leapt at his back. K1-B0 turned around.
The one thing Miu saw, before the sheer blue light blinded her and the oxygen was blasted out of the tower's air, was the cable that connected the laser cannon – and the socket she'd ripped its power cell out of – to K1-B0's own power source.
o - 0 - O - 0 - o
Miu only escaped due to her amazing reflexes: that, and sheer damn good luck. She wasn't even aware of what she did, but she was the smartest gal in the world while conscious and she was pretty damn sure she was the smartest while unconscious as well. She tried to recall the last few moments before she'd blacked out, and realised three things:
First, that K1-B0 hadn't just missed. No damn way. That laser cannon had been pointed right at her face, just long enough to make it clear he could, and then he'd shifted it aside. The robot had intentionally spared her. Maybe he'd calculated that putting her to sleep would be enough: well, that would teach K1-B0 not to underestimate Miu Iruma in bed.
Second, that K1-B0 was learning. Oh gosh, was he learning! It wasn't just that he'd anticipated the trap this time around. That decision to use his own power source to power the laser… Miu couldn't describe it as any less than inspired. She'd read every line of his code, but she hadn't properly understood until now that K1-B0 had a beautiful mind to match his flawless body.
And third, she wondered how K1-B0 could possibly be learning like that given the tight leash Idabashi had bound him with. If K1-B0 was learning more and more the way Miu desperately hoped he was, there was no way the Professor's cautious code could force him to obey all those orders forever. And if Idabashi had foreseen every little contingency to make sure K1-B0 never escaped his grasp, then there was no way K1-B0 could grow…
Of course! Idabashi couldn't have bound him up so totally. K1-B0 himself was proof of that.
Miu saw a way to win.
She started by getting her bearings. She was lying in the middle of another courtyard, outside a tower. It was obvious which tower it was. The roof was still on fire.
"Hey! K1-B0!" Miu called out, "Come and get me!"
K1-B0 poked his head out of the nearest window of the tower. His eyes shone a little brighter than they had before. "Did I hurt you? I hope I didn't…" he asked.
"I'm coming quietly!" Miu lied. She backed away from the centre of the courtyard, beckoning K1-B0 onwards.
"I'm not sure… You've been running away so hard so far. Are you up to something, Miu?"
"What?!" Miu took longer than she would have liked to control her expression. "Of course not! I just… wanted to play with you a bit. What's the big deal with that?"
"You could have been severely injured…" K1-B0 paused, lost in thought. "Okay! I'm on my way!" He left the window he was calling down from. Then, a couple of moments later, the door from the tower to the courtyard opened, and K1-B0 stepped through. He was still holding the laser cannon – he didn't have much choice, now that it was attached to him – but it was only languishing at his side. "Please, Miu: hold there. I'll come and take you back to the entrance hall." With that, K1-B0 started walking towards her.
Miu waited until K1-B0 was right in front of her. Then, she leaned in until she was pressing right against him. "I'm sorry…" she whispered right into wear his audio receivers had to be.
"I'm sorry, too," K1-B0 replied, "I wouldn't be able to forgive myself if –"
Miu interrupted him with a quick kiss on the cheek. She plucked one of his hairs out of the back of his head. Then, she broke away and ran for the nearest door.
As she ran, she heard K1-B0 murmur, "Very well. If I must…" Miu had reached and closed the door before K1-B0 had a chance to lift the cannon, so she never saw if he fired it or not.
Miu grasped the strand of artificial white hair tightly as she ran. That step of the plan hadn't been… strictly necessary. But if there was a way for Miu to work her plan so that it meshed with K1-B0's impossibly good looks, she was going to take it.
o - 0 - O - 0 - o
It all came down to a matter of speed. Miu, versus K1-B0. K1-B0 wasn't the sort of jerk who'd go through things like this too fast, so Miu knew she had a chance.
She recognised where she was now: running down the corridors that led to the back entrance of Idabashi's laboratory. It was right where she needed to be.
She burst through the entrance door. The web of trip-lasers was still down from when she'd passed through the night before. She didn't know if there was a trap behind them, or just an alarm, but she raised the lever to turn then back on anyway. Just in case.
Miu had just reached the pressure plate for the second trap when she was proven right. A crackle of electricity rumbled from the corridor behind her, and K1-B0 cried out, "Agh! But how…?" Fucking hell: he was right behind her. She needed to delay him again, just a little bit
Miu wouldn't be able to fix the trap here to work as it did before. Maybe she would be able to break it even further, so that the swinging slicing blades were also active? Miu fished the Auto-Puncher out of her backpack and tossed it through the maintenance hatch, shouting, "K1:B0! If you keep chasing me like this, you're gonna need to get yourself some protection!" as she leapt across the pressure plate.
Boing! The blades shot out of the wall just missing Miu as she landed on the other side. As she ran further on, she heard K1-B0 collide against the blades and moan again. "No, why?!" Miu was just glad that the clang of metal on metal meant that K1-B0 wasn't actually being hurt.
Finally, Miu reached the locked door at the end. Unless Idabashi had been incredibly busy last night, the password was still the same as before. Miu entered the code quickly and forced open the door. It was time for her and K1-B0 to reach the climax.
As Miu burst in to the laboratory, she saw that the wall between it and the entrance hall was still opened up. Professor Idabashi still stood there, but he was facing the wrong way and hadn't seen Miu enter.
"Hey, Idiot-abashi!" Miu announced, "The gorgeous golden genius, the girl whose bountiful brain will rewrite history, the Ultimate Inventor herself, Miu Iruma!" Miu's thin smile grew just a little wider as she murmured, "I make my appearance."
"You," Idabashi spat, "When will you give up?"
Miu strode forwards. She reached the electronics workbench, snatched up the one item she needed – a long stiff strand of copper – and then vaulted over it. "Yep. I'm still here. I'm still going. And now I'm gonna do something an ancient withered-up fuck like you couldn't conceive of. I'm going to beat you."
Idabashi sneered. "True. I could never conceive of you achieving anything of the sort."
A crash from behind her reminded Miu that K1-B0 was still coming; she needed to move. Miu dived forward, putting Idabashi between herself and the laser cannon that K1-B0 was raising as he stepped into the laboratory. However his instructions worked, they couldn't possibly let him shoot at her through his professor.
"This is not a game, Miu!" K1-B0 said, "If you keep messing around like this, Professor Idabashi will order me to use lethal force against you, and I won't be able to stop myself. This has gone on long enough!"
K1-B0 lied quite convincingly for a still-developing AI, but he still lied. Idabashi had already demanded the use of lethal force, right back at the start. K1-B0 had definitely decided to ignore that, when he could. That was the bright shining hook on which Miu's plan hung.
Her mechanical arms leapt out from behind the cover provided by Professor Idabashi.
K1-B0 snapped his head to follow the movement. He aimed the laser cannon, pulled the trigger, and fired. They were vaporised instantly.
Miu wasn't. As the mechanical arms had gone flying one way, she'd dived the other. Even as she felt totally naked without wearing the arms she'd invented, she sidestepped around Idabashi and charged towards K1-B0. With one hand, she bent the copper wire roughly into the shape of an aerial – she could have done that with her eyes closed and her hand tied behind her back. Then, she threaded the wire through the strand of K1-B0's hair she had taken. Finally, running the last few steps to close the distance, Miu threw herself at K1-B0 and wrapped herself around his head.
"Agh! Miu?!" K1-B0 exclaimed. Miu could have sworn she saw him blush.
"Hey, K1-B0," Miu whispered, "It's time for you to open yourself up to some entirely new experiences." She plunged the bottom of the aerial into the connection port on the top of K1-B0's head.
Sparks flew. K1-B0 gasped, and his eyes glowed a brilliant blue. The laser cannon fell from his grip and fired uncontrollably into the air, deafening Miu and singeing the tips of her hair.
As Miu fell away from K1-B0, her head spinning, she heard him murmur to himself. "What is this? What am I seeing? It's… incomprehensible…"
"That's the internet," Miu replied with the last of her breath, "I'll show you where we can look at the really good stuff on there, when I… later…"
Miu fell completely unconscious before she got to hear K1-B0's reply.