Nobuo excitedly turned to face Hiroyo, who had since retreated behind the bar. "As defenders of Earth, who's our villain? Is it a child-hating witch like Zyuranger's Bandora? Or maybe a cult of academics like Volt in Liveman?!"
Hiroyo stared at him with wide eyes, before a helpless laugh bubbled up from the depths of her soul and gave the trio a shrug. "...I dunno."
"WHAAAAAAAAT?!"
The newly christened Sentai trio stormed the bar at Secret Base in baffled indignation. "You don't even have a clue?!" Mitsuki pressed. "That's absurd!"
"Right?!" Hiroyo enthusiastically agreed with a nod. "It's totally crazy!"
"You don't get to say that!" Nobuo punctuated his declaration with a stern pointer finger.
Buttoning up her lab coat as a barely-there shield from the trio's disappointment, Hiroyo quickly racked her brain for an answer. "Well, I'm sure there's an enemy somewhere around who needs you to defeat them. I just… got you all gathered together before they had a chance to show themselves, that's all!"
Nobuo, Mitsuki, and Yumeria shared an uneasy glance at her mollifying response, but nodded along and kept listening.
"I haven't got any details," Hiroyo continued with utmost seriousness, "but there's no telling of when they might appear, or in what form. If you encounter them in the city, be sure to contact me immediately."
Nobuo, getting back into the swing of things now that their little speed bump was in the past, snapped to a salute while Yumeria offered a cheerful thumbs-up.
"Roger!"
"Mew got it!"
"Okay, I guess that's fine…"
Wednesday, Nov 19: Evening.
"Ah jeez," an exhausted young man muttered to himself as he fumbled around in his pockets for his house keys, "this whole day was a rollercoaster."
Hitoshi Kobe, age 18, had finally returned from a day of legally-mandated formal education and gainful self-employment. His plain uniform - marred by scuffs and stains - hung from Hitoshi's frame like it too was exhausted, as he finally unlocked the front door and entered his two-story Western-style house. "I'm home," he tiredly called out for the sake of indulging himself in cliche.
As always, the empty home said nothing in response.
Heaving a sigh, Hitoshi kicked off his budget-value city shoes and brushed another few clumps of dirt from his shoulders, before switching to his officially licensed Schoolgirl Fantasy! 2 Sexy For Her Skirt house slippers that were adorned with busty coeds in sexy bikinis, and entering the house proper.
The formal dining room, of course, had been unused for three years, and Hitoshi had long since covered everything in plastic to keep from having to clean or maintain it regularly. His parents' and sister's bedrooms upstairs were the same way, with Hitoshi never having a reason to intrude into their spaces after they'd all moved to the United States.
The yellow-walled kitchen, being more commonly used, was open and neat… by the average teen bachelor's standards, at least. Mildly-dated appliances lined the room, all of them brand-new when they were first installed but having since weathered the wear of time and use admirably.
Too stressed and weary for food, Hitoshi just grabbed a can of tea from the fridge and shuffled up to his room. Idly debating which hentai he might fap to later, the youth shook his head clear of such thoughts when he plopped down at his desktop computer. "First things first…"
As he booted up his computer, Hitoshi's gaze drifted after a moment to a framed picture of his classmate, Kimika Asou.
"What are you doing down there?"
Hitoshi remembered dropping two thousand yen on that picture to a classmate who took photos for the school newspaper. The idea of being able to bask in her radiant smile even on days he didn't show up to school had felt like a stroke of genius at the time.
"Don't tell me… you forgot there was a test today?"
His lip quivered, and a tear hit the top of his desk as he reached out to grip the edge of the frame.
"The note might have said 'please wait', but it never said I'd be there!"
On any other day, Hitoshi might have thrown the picture across the room. He might have torn it into a thousand pieces, or set it on fire, or even both.
"I just… don't have it in me right now."
Hitoshi gently placed Asou's picture face-down so he wouldn't have to look at her anymore and, after a moment, used it as an impromptu coaster to set his tea on.
A few moments later, a chime played through his desktop's connected speaker system as the monitor lit up with a soft blue glow.
I suck at sports, I constantly get mediocre grades because I melt down in class… I've got the charm of a malnourished weed and the looks to match. I'm a totally pathetic joke of a guy – but even so, I still have this one skill that I'm proud of. This one and only positive trait that gives me strength to see another day…
A cascade of hexadecimal code rained down from the top of the screen for several seconds, before flowing into a pool of data at the bottom. Within that pool of numbers and letters, a white spot appeared, slowly taking shape as a beautiful young woman.
As the figure grew larger and clearer, as if floating to the surface of a lake from beneath its depths, Hitoshi brushed away his tears and smiled.
The culmination of almost a decade's work; of selling my soul to computers and teaching myself how to code and program whenever my parents weren't looking over my shoulder…
With her soft and gentle, almost motherly curves, the woman might at first have been taken for a manifested ideal of classical Japanese beauty if not for the radiant golden tresses flowing to her back.
An artificial intelligence beyond anything on the market today – capable not only of analysis, critical thinking, and self-evolution through learning and adapting to external stimuli, but also able to experience and convey a full range of human emotions and a personality indistinguishable from real people.
Rising from the lake of data like an old-school fantasy anime or fairytale princess, the beautiful blonde slowly drifted awake to reveal eyes of the gentlest blue.
My best and only friend, Artificial Intelligence Program Number 30 – or, as I prefer to call her…
"Good evening, Nambaa Saati."
On Hitoshi's monitor, Saati blinked once, before tilting her head with a lovely smile. "Good evening, Hitoshi! How was your day? …oh yes, that test you were studying for was today, wasn't it?"
An instant after the words left Saati's proverbial mouth, the desktop's connected camera and imaging software focused more tightly on Hitoshi's face before scanning numerous other indicators of his appearance and condition. He seems battered… should I not have asked? Oh no, what if he gets upset with me…
Hitoshi chuckled at Saati's faint mortification, even as he retreated a little behind his tea. An AI so human, she can even put her foot in her mouth and be embarrassed about it. "I just… had a really rough day today, that's all. But I'm feeling better now that I'm here with you again."
Saati didn't quite stop fretting, but Hitoshi could see from the relief in her eyes that she had at least taken his words to 'heart'. "Do you… do you want to talk about it?"
Hitoshi mulled that over for a long moment. …if I can't even trust Saati with my problems, then there's really no hope for me. "Well… the short version is I started out the morning as a total moron, and the afternoon got my mood up just enough for the walk home to catch me with my pants down."
And so, he spent the next hour telling Saati about how he easily fell victim to Kimika's practical joke and completely missed the test because of it; and of how one of his clients as a freelance programmer, a Professor Hakase, had summoned him on-site to check on her prototype Sentai VR game before having her assistant lock him in a glorified closet for who knows what reason – although the cash when she let him back out was enough to make up for it, along with the free cake and coffee he got as a bonus.
"...but when I was halfway home from the cafe," he explained with a sigh, "the rain started pouring again, and then it turned out I picked up the wrong umbrella from the stand – some ratty old thing with more holes in it than a fishnet stocking, probably because I got in a hurry after some of the customers were discussing rumors about some crazy chick running around and beating people up in the middle of the street."
Eyes wide, Saati slapped her cheeks in concern. "Oh my! You didn't run into her on the way home, did you?!"
"Not her, no… but I kind of lost my temper when I realized my mistake, and threw the trash umbrella into a dumpster as I passed by it… and then a stray dog came out of it and started chasing me."
Hitoshi let out a breath and knocked back a round of his tea, barely holding back a sneer at his own foolishness. "That's what I get for being careless, right?"
"But… but you didn't know the dog was in there, did you? I know you wouldn't just throw junk at a poor animal like that on purpose."
Something about the way Saati said that got Hitoshi's attention, as he stopped and stared for a moment at her face on the monitor. Is… is that faith I hear in her voice?
Heedless of Hitoshi's attention or sudden focus, Saati continued on with her train of thought. "I'm sure that if the dog would have stopped to listen and let you explain, the two of you could have made up and been the best of friends…"
Hitoshi's mouth curved up in a wry grin as he struggled not to laugh. Well, he sure wasn't that interested in diplomacy when he ran me up a telephone pole and kept me there in the rain for half an hour until someone finally called animal control…
"Hitoshi, did I say something funny? You have the most peculiar look on your face…"
Snapped out of his daze by the innocent question, Hitoshi realized that he'd been starting to stare. "Oh, well, uh… I just can't help but smile sometimes when I'm with you, Saati."
Saati beamed at him in response, and in that moment Hitoshi honestly would have been content to die happy. …for about half a second before he remembered that if he kept living, he could relive it over and over again.
"Hitoshi, can I ask you a question?"
"Sure, anything you want." Hitoshi raised his tea for a drink…
"That program you mentioned working on for Professor Hakase, what's it like? Is it fun? Can I be a Hentai too?"
…and immediately sprayed it all over his window.
"You mean a Sentai, Saati! Sentai!"
"Isn't that what I said?"
You… you're too irresistibly innocent!
"Sentai are fictional people who transform into superheroes with a watch or a phone-like thing and fight evil monsters and stuff," he hastily explained. "Hentai is…"
Hitoshi couldn't get another word out without imagining Saati in one lewd scenario after another, each hornier than the last as his face turned increasingly red. "...it's something else."
Swallowing before he could start to drool, he decided to clarify that. "Very definitely something else."
"I'm glad you're in such better spirits now, Hitoshi."
"...eh?"
"You seemed so down earlier, I didn't like it. I wanted to cheer you up, but…"
Saati paused for a moment, her cheeks darkening not from embarrassment or attraction but shame. "As a mere computer program, talking with you like this is all I can do. If only…"
Saati swallowed. "If only I were a real girl, I could really help and support you."
Hitoshi's heart broke all over again from the look of regret and guilt on her face. "No, Saati, you – you have no idea how much of a difference you already make in my life! You're not just some program I made, you're… you're someone precious to me, someone I could never replace."
No sooner had he said the words than he realized the way they must have sounded, not helped by the way Saati's face lit up. Oh geez, that sounded like some kind of stupid love confession…
"Hitoshi…"
Attention caught by his name on her trembling lips, Hitoshi took another pause from mocking himself to focus on the digital woman in front of him.
"If I ever did become a real girl," she asked, anxious and hesitant. Is it even okay for me to ask this, when just this morning that other girl played with his feelings? "Do you think I could…"
Hitoshi swallowed, feeling an odd sense of detachment as if he were watching an anime and had suddenly spotted the most unbelievable, world-shattering plot twist in the world literally two seconds before it happened.
"...would you let me be your girlfriend?"
The young man's heart clenched as tears fell from his face, staring at Saati in naked shock.
…this is reality, Hitoshi reminded himself with closed eyes, fighting to push back his painful memories enough to give Saati the fair answer she deserved. The world we live in is where hopes and dreams go to die. It'll never happen because computer programs don't come to life like they're Digimon, and a real girl would never give me a second glance.
Slowly, Hitoshi's lips curled up in an honest, fragile smile.
…but what's wrong with having a delusion if it lets me be happy for a while?
"Yes, Saati. I think I'd love that, more than you could ever imagine."
Elsewhere…
Nobuo Akagi distractedly walked with his bike through the streets of Akihabara, still crowded even late at night.
"You know it's some really lame bullshit in hindsight," the deliveryman complained aloud to an audience consisting entirely of himself. "Not only do the bad guys usually get an introduction in the first half of the episode, but they go around causing mayhem before the Sentai even team up for the first time, much less transform! It's like the script team barely knows what they're doing! …although," he slowly admitted, "I guess an occasional break from the formula can have some interesting enough results in its own right."
Trailing off as though only half-convinced of his own logic, Nobuo could only sigh in disappointed frustration. "Man, I've been psyching myself up for the dream of being a Sentai Red my whole life – but without an evil organization the world needs saving from, there's nothing I can do with it."
What need for the shepherd, when the wolves are all gone?
So wrapped up in his self-pitying reflection was he that, when a pretty girl wearing a black dress and a blonde wig deliriously limped out of a side street in front of him before dramatically falling to the pavement, Nobuo almost ran her over!
"What the–?! Hey miss, what happened?! You hurt or anything?!"
Propping his bike up by its kickstand, Nobuo quickly knelt down to the unconscious woman and turned her over as the rest of society collectively chose to fully abdicate responsibility by walking around them without a care.
As Nobuo cradled the woman in his arms to try and see if she could speak, a handful of business cards flopped out from her freely-swaying bosom. "Elegendtric Cafe," he read aloud with widening eyes. "A… a joint arcade and hostess club with cosplaying chicks?! Wow, I know some guys who'd live and die in a place like that!"
Although come to think of it, he mused while checking the woman out for injuries, wasn't there an old Squaresoft game that started with the heroine dressed like this?
His eyes drifting down the hostess's slender legs along the slit in her dress, Nobuo let out an audible groan of sympathetic pain when he saw what had happened. "That's one twisted ankle, she's gonna need a doctor for sure–"
Nobuo's mouth clicked shut as the facts of the case suddenly and perfectly fitted into place with each other in his mind.
She's twisted her ankle, and she works at a combination arcade and hostess club that's name is wordplay for electric power! COINCIDENCE?! I THINK NOT!
After calling medical services and leaving the woman somewhere reasonably safe, he immediately sent out a text. [Possible emergency, meet me at Elegendtric Cafe!]
Last to arrive at the scene, Mitsuki Aoyagi stoically looked from the uncharacteristically serious Akagi to the dimly-lit small business across the street. She then turned back to face him again, favoring the old creep with a skeptical glare. "...you think Akibaranger's enemy is attacking, of all places, a hostess club."
Yumeria enthusiastically pumped a fist in the air at Nobuo's side, her prosthetic catgirl tail frazzy and sticking straight up from adrenaline. "Mew never get a feel for how villains think until you start dealing with them!"
Mitsuki considered for a moment if she ought to ask why the other girl sounded like she had personal experience when she said that, before rolling her eyes and blowing it off as just more otaku nonsense. "Whatever…"
A hand clapped her shoulder, and the only thing stopping Mitsuki from flipping Akagi onto the asphalt was the hot blood she could feel in his eyes.
"There's a chance we might be fighting the Nezirejia here," he said. "And that especially means you need to keep your guard up. They can twist and warp the world itself to their whims, and I'm gonna be counting on you to back us up."
"We don't need paper tigers that get humiliated by middle schoolers around here!"
"It would have been nice of you to explain that you weren't really serious about fighting, we'd have been happy to send someone else instead…"
"Is making the rest of us look like losers all you're good for?!"
…if Akagi was going to insist on making a whole thing out of pretending to rely on her, then just walking off would have left a poor taste in Mitsuki's mouth.
Even if he is a delusional chuuni manchild.
"Tch, let's just get this over with. Some of us have school tomorrow, right Yumeria?"
Yumeria pointed a paw at herself in exaggerated confusion. "You mean meow?"
Hmph. She can play coy if she wants, acting like she's an adult just makes her look more immature.
"So what makes you think it's this… Nezire Empire or whatever anyway?"
Akagi gave her the most earnest, serious expression she'd ever seen on a person in real life. "I bumped into a hostess who works here and she had a twisted ankle."
And then he was running from one point of cover to the next towards the club entrance as if advancing through a warzone.
"...now wait just a minute, is that seriously your whole explanation?!"
"Come on, let's go!" Yumeria certainly wasn't asking any questions as she followed their self-appointed leader.
"H-hang on, wait for me!"
It was a matter of seconds for the trio to enter the allegedly besieged arcade-cum-hostess club, and within seconds of entering into a front hallway they were met with the sight of two worryingly-still women laid out on a plush bench: one with short black hair wearing tight white hotpants and a vest exposing two thirds of her cleavage, and the other styling her dark brown hair in a long ponytail and wearing equally tight booty shorts and a teal tank top.
Lounging atop was a perky blonde with spiky pigtails wearing a brown Western-style police or military uniform that, again involved tight shorts with the addition of sheer thigh-high stockings.
Of course, tight and sexy clothes weren't the only thing the hostesses all had in common…
Tch, all these women with boobs bigger than their heads just can't help but show off and act stupid for loser nerds with yen to burn.
"'Allo there loves! This 'ere bein' gun gal month," the blonde explained with a grin as she produced a frighteningly-realistic-looking automatic pistol and pulled back the slide on it, "we take our affection and shoot it into ya!"
Mitsuki recoiled, struggling not to panic as the barrel settled in their direction. "T-there's no way that's allowed!"
The police girl hostess made to respond, only to blink and then dodge out of the way as an ashtray flew through where her head had been an instant before.
"We're not getting fooled by a fake hostess!" Akagi, arm still outstretched from tossing his improvised weapon, promptly gave the police gal an accusing pointer finger.
"Wait, she's fake?!"
Yumeria nodded seriously. "Those two are cosplaying from Lara Croft from Tomb Raider and Lady from Devil Meow Cry, and the hostess Akagi meowntioned was doing Aya Brea from Parasite Eve – but Seras Victoria is from the Hellsing manga and anime, not a videogame! It'd be kitty weird for a club to let one of their workers break theme like that!"
The now-outed-as-fake hostess tilted her head in thought, before dropping the cheerful British accent altogether with a sinister sneer. "It doesn't matter. Games… anime… this entire vapid culture," she said with a wave to indicate the establishment around them. "By the time we're done, it will all be nothing more than a bitter memory."
A bright purple flame burst into being around "Seras", burning away the illusion that had concealed her true nature. Within seconds, the cosplay police uniform had been replaced by a dominatrix Nazi teacher stripper outfit consisting of a tight leotard covered by a latex jacket held shut only by a belt over the her slim waist, gloves, knee-high boots, and a commissar's cap, all in black.
The woman leered out at the trio behind yellow-lensed spectacles, shoulder-length light purple curls dramatically flaring out for an instant as the transformation completed. "Anyone who dares to object will be crushed, of course."
Mitsuki's first thought, in spite of the serious threat on their lives that she and her… colleagues? …acquaintances, had just been subjected to, was that the woman threatening them had to have just walked off the set of some weird, super-niche porno.
"An enemy commander if I've ever seen one," Nobuo declared as he dragged his eyes from their newfound foe's luscious cleavage and absolute territory. "She's entirely too sexy to be anything else!"
Mitsuki blinked and stared at the old perv in incredulousness, only to stop and double take when she actually processed what he'd said. "Wait, is this a normal thing in Sentai?!"
"Not so much the Nazi thing," Yumeria replied with a sagely nod, "but they do tend to have sexy villainesses as a side bonus for the parents watching with their kids."
"But just like a Nazi," Akagi boasted as he drew out his Moe Moe Z-cune, "she's about to end up on the wrong side of history!"
The enemy snickered at the threat, only the barest of curiosity about the trinket breaking through her absolute condescension. "And dirty my hands with disgusting otaku like yourselves? Perish the thought; you're fighting him."
Mitsuki opened her mouth to object that she was nothing like the two people she happened to be standing with, only to be interrupted as the club's ceiling violently twisted down towards the trio before the damaged electrical wiring in it went haywire and ignited a fire.
"Worthless scum," a monstrous figure intoned from amidst the flames...
TO BE CONTINUED