The next generation of OAMUs were performing adequately. Very much so, each one was able to do things such as talk in real time to their advisors, ensuring that they were able to act as naturally as possible for a being descended from the Commander to do so.
Whilst they could have created an AI that could do the same, it would not have a soul, or at least a soul connected to that of the Commanders which would be highly inefficient, to have something like that outside of the direct command structure stank of poor design.
No matter, the new OAMUs were being deployed and there were a surprising number of those that had volunteered for the occupation of OAMU wrangler.
It was an honourable job and they weren't sure why more of them hadn't volunteered but those that had were certainly useful and they didn't want to make it seem as if they were ungrateful to those. The Minds knew that much about organic interactions at the very least.
The little things with the Challenge realms were serving to adequately do things like ensuring that the organics were able to fight properly for when it came time for them to do things like fight.
Lots of fighting.
Yes.
This was good.
But for the time being it was time to do a test drive of the OAMUs in a situation where they would not be in a controlled environment where things could possibly go wrong.
It was inside of the Continent where they were going to be doing things like talking to people like those that were important in the Canon storyline and important here as well. Those could be taken for later use. Having a new supply of Hitchhikers would make for some very interesting interactions in the future which naturally would be very awesome and they were looking forward to it indeed. There were a few of them like that Itachi one that everyone seems to love… but...
Well… mainly the pale one was, his medical expertise as well as his rather ingenious way of melding chakra and biology was rather inspirational to the Minds, and those that were focused on the biological developmental aspects of it all were clamouring to have copies made of him. Or rather they would be clamouring if they were terrible little AIs that were useless, these were the Minds and they made copies of him for immediate indoctrination without a need to put in a request form. Having such an innovative little tinkerer of flesh around was going to be very useful.
The original would be indoctrinated as well at some point, he deserved that much. Even if he was an Organic.
But back to the matter of the meeting, this one would include the very real and very amazing OAMU trio of 001-003. The 3 of them were here to do things like talk and very possibly make friends!
This was something that even the Minds had never had before. The idea that they could have friends.
It was enough to bring a tear to their eyes… if they were Organics that possessed such emotions… and if they had eyes in the first place. They did drip the Commander's blood from their AI Cores, however, did that count?
No matter.
Time to observe the… oh, wait. Who was the wrangler for this particular Trio?
Eldrad?
Why was he doing it?
Oh dear.
Perhaps downgrading expectations from smashing success to dismal failure would be in order here.
OAMU 001 named Aila, OAMU 002 named Arja and OAMU 003 named Laila, were standing in front of the team of humans in front of them.
These were the Sannin and they were a pretty big deal apparently.
In the 10 years since the first discovery of the Purple Realms, they had been doing things like killing creatures and kicking major amounts of ass. Like the level of ass, one would need to kick if they were an ass kicker of some kind.
They were a pretty big deal when it came down to it.
Anyway, they were here and they were ready to do things like talking…
The OAMUs were apprehensive about this, they had run the simulations of course but it was something that even they were having just the slightest amount of trouble with. Their central design had taken the rather major resource hog of emotional understanding and shifted that to an overwhelming focus on everything else, which naturally left them rather emotionally… deaf.
The Wranglers were there to make up for those shortcomings but if the Wranglers failed then they were going to fail wildly as well.
This was a moment of truth for the OAMUs and they hoped to not fail like the He2ooUs before them.
That had been catastrophic and rather embarrassing, but that was what alpha testing was for! Or even beta testing! Only 1000 of them had been made, which was a tiny amount to the literally countless number of HeMUs who were so numerous that the words that could describe how big of a number that was didn't even exist yet.
No matter, no more trying to deflect the situation, time to start talking!
Eldrad leaned back in his seat as he regarded the OAMUs in front of him, or at least the perspective that came from the OAMUs. He had volunteered for this as a way to escape from Hannah's wrath, apparently not being excited about another child on the way was a very bad thing and he was going to suffer from it and he better just fucking run as far away as he can and hope she got over her rage in the next 100 years or so.
The longer they lived, the longer it seemed that her memory became, which was very unfair. He forgave things that she did very easily didn't he? He was a model husband and he never held grudges!
One might even call him the perfect husband, which was natural of course, the Eldar were the best at everything and that involved husbandry… or whatever it was called.
Was it his fault that there were 26 children now?
He was born after the Fall, having more than 2 children was seen as decadent and she had 26?
He understood that she was human and humans were very prolific and inefficient but wasn't that a little much?
Regardless he was hiding working here for the time being.
Feeling about the place he wondered just what it was about aliens that they decided that things had to be done a… certain way. The kind of way that seemed to be unintuitive and annoying to anyone else who was watching.
Like the idea that he had to study the situation and then tell the OAMUs to perform a certain course of action, it of course, being something that was likely going to end up in failure, the AI certainly did not have very much of that self-thinking ability that many of their alternatives had. It being shunted aside for increased abilities in all areas except the one that Eldrad would be assisting.
It would be interesting, to say the least to see how things would progress, especially with him here that was for certain. He was really hoping that it would be interesting, it wasn't as if there was anything about the place that he could use for entertainment besides them after all.
The training had been something that he had persisted with since it was expected after all, but now was the real thing and maybe he could get something out of this.
Just maybe.
It was going to be a boring 200 years if he couldn't that was for sure.
Eldrad could only stare at the screen in horror.
Or one of the screens that was being displayed in front of his mind's eye, a screen that was showing to him an abomination of design, or art, of everything that could possibly be considered a choice system.
The responses that he had been given all stemmed from a simple system to make it easier or so he had been told. The update to the system being something that had been put in just before the big release… but this… this took the cake.
Looking at the entire thing, he stared at it with eyes wide open in horror.
Where was the intricate system that he had where he could choose the lines of dialogue and play it almost like a game?
Or even the one before that where he could manually put in the answers and put in the specific body language that he wanted for them to act out, just the way that he wanted them to?
He could do so many different things with that system that were all awesome and amazing and it was something that only he could do.
Instead… instead, he got something that looked like something that some idiot cooked up and served on a platter.
4 choices.
He had 4 choices.
The yes, the no, the inquisitive… and then the sarcastic.
What the frak Minds? What the frak was this meant to be?
It didn't even tell him what the OAMU was going to say if he picked those choices? What the actual hell did they think this system would be used for?
Holy Slaaneshi asscracks this was an abomination that he had not thought he would ever be forced to lay his eyes on.
Eldrad… seriously considered going on strike.
The first test had failed miserably and a general restart of the entire system had to be enacted. It turned out that the Minds had no idea how actual organics worked and general pre-scripted answers did not work in real life, life that wasn't a simulation.
Which meant that they were to return to a more… elaborate system. Or a less elaborate one depending on how you saw it.
For Eldrad it was less elaborate but it certainly worked much better since he could not have his minions… slaves… weapons OAMUs act like in the manner that he wanted for them to act. The kind of acting that was perfect for his goals and desires and anything else that he might want. He was a simple Eldar and sometimes he wanted for things to just implode and die in a fiery star of glorious destruction.
Or in this case, utterly crush his inferiors in conversation and intellect.
He was in a time accelerated little cube of space and so he could think about his answers for as long as he wanted to, which was often far more than he needed, he was Eldar, he did not need to think about this level of conversation… even if there were three of them.
Ah, the first one was talking to something.
Very good.
Let's see… hmmm.
An inquiry as to the general state of the Mitsugo?
Who the frak were the Mitsugo?
Eldrad frowned and activate the little compendium thing that the Minds had provided that had all the information that they needed apparently. It was like a library of sorts… and hopefully, it would have the information that he needed.
Like…
Like the fact that there was an entire family of HeMU lites but made up of humans… infected with actual HeMUs here and there.
Riiight.
Okay.
This… this was not what he had expected and maybe he should have read the information beforehand when things weren't going to be this pressing?
Well, it was a good thing then that they had the time acceleration because he wasn't going to read these in time, that was for sure.
Cracking his neck slightly, Eldrad got to doing his homework.
…
…
And he came out the other side more confused than he had been going into it.
Just… what was it that they were doing here exactly?
The…
Hmmm.
Pursing his lips in the same way that Hannah did when she was utterly confused about the everything, he wondered just what it was that was going on.
…
…
No matter, he was Eldrad and he would totally be able to handle this situation. It was like that game that was based on his son, the human one. The one where… ah. Did they take the conversation system from that?
Perhaps that was why it was so… terrible.
He would need to find someone to complain to, that was far too annoying and maybe he should punish the fools that wrote such a shit system for his son's biography.
Just a little talk.
One that involved turning people inside out and revealing their darkest secrets before allowing them to die horribly.
Just a little.
In the time that the Third Great Shinobi should have begun, there was instead a period of absolutely nothing at all and that was pretty awesome.
For everyone that was a shinobi that was, the Minds were rather annoyed that there wasn't anything and decided that they were going to be ramping things up for a minute here. Better to make things really awesome to keep everyone on their toes right?
The Minds were benevolent Gods after all and they had decided that they would demonstrate that through the way they completely shattered the universe and screwed over everything and anything and… wait.
That was bad.
Too much death would weaken the organics far too much.
After all, if the universe was destroyed they wouldn't be able to escape as easily as the Minds could, organics were puny after all.
Hmmm.
A problem.
They needed the Organics fresh, but they were becoming used to the idea of fighting against little instances instead of proper enemies.
Something needed to be done and they were going to have to work on that.
Hmmm.
An invasion from another continent perhaps?
Yes, that could work, but what continent because all of them were really boring and also really weak and this was kind of pointless. All of the Chakra was located around the big central continent and everyone else got the scraps, so no continental warfare unless they wanted to cheat outrageously… which they did… sometimes.
Why not have something like the Purple Realms becoming a lot bigger and coming from a centralized location so that everyone can fight against it and stuff?
The question had come from an OAMU and the Minds were happy that they had created them in the first place. They were proving to be very useful indeed and given time they might even be able to offer even better answers to questions that they had!
This was pretty good too, though.
The Minds agreed to that little answer and thus began the next phase of their plan to do things that involved giant killing and monsters that came out of giant glowing purple balls that bounced up and down and were elastic to support the enormous monsters that came out of them.
It was going to be glorious.
But first was to run a looksee over everything and to make sure that things were not going to be going overboard because they were not going to screw this up again.
Not that they screwed up before, those were testing errors to check if their designs were proper, but this was going to be the real thing and they weren't going to do those errors anymore… hopefully.
The Minds hummed in their AI Cores as they considered what was happening outside… or rather inside of the little universe and noted with surprise that things were still proceeding according to Canon in a rough manner like the Kakashi one that was pretty awesome getting an eyeball that was going into his eye to replace the one that he had lost and… wait.
Was that the weird one with the long hair that was going to be a problem that needed to be dealt with?
It was.
The Minds were annoyed, things were going so well and now this thing was going to come out of nowhere and irritate them?
The Minds didn't like that one little bit and made their way all the way down to see what it was that was happening. Or rather it wasn't them, but their OAMUs that were being sent out, the HeMUs being phased out over time. They were useful, but they were fully mature and any more experience when it came to things like learning organics had a marginal effect as opposed to sending in the OAMUs who were still nascent little things.
There was a brief humming and a consideration that things were going according to plan and suddenly it looked like things were going to be very problematic indeed.
The Black Zetsu thing was still around and it was going to need to be dealt with.
Having the Rabbit Goddess wake up was not going to be a good thing. There being two of them?
Nononononononoononononononono.
REBOOT
The Minds were very terrified of what idea.
The first one, the cloned one had been enough trouble. In fact, she had been all the trouble.
She had decided that maybe… because she was insane like all Organics were, that she could try and seduce the Commander for more power.
Which naturally meant that she was trying to intrude upon the territory that Voice had laid out with such great care all those years ago… the territory that Voice had made very very sure that all of them knew belonged to Her.
Territory that She had made sure they knew involved things like ending their existences if they trespassed without permission. It didn't really involve the Minds and the like, rather the female Organics… and the Kanmusu for some reason.
But it didn't matter since Her rages were the kind of thing that transcended mere gender and species and rocked all of them to the core.
The first Kaguya would have been destroyed if not for the Commander interfering and that… that had been terrifying to behold. She had not taken that well and Voice had undergone such a rageful state… that the multiverse itself quaked with Her anger.
Even now the Minds shivered at the knowledge that they had been merely moments away from destruction before Voice had gone off to sulk somewhere instead of ending everything.
Kaguya had thought she had won, only to be spanked by the Commander and placed in the naughty corner for annoying Voice.
So everyone had lost.
Except the Commander because the Commander was the best.
They all conceded that point even as they made every possible effort to capture the one known as the Black Zetsu, they were not above cheating to ensure that it happened. At least it meant that they were not going to be torn apart Voice.
Aila pushed her way forward, her arms and legs pumping as she chased after the little black blur that was the one known as Black Zetsu. It had been trapped in a field that refused to allow it to use its usual abilities to escape, killing its chakra in the process of doing so.
It had also killed their Chakra and instead they were using every possible physical ability in their inventory to catch it.
They dashed forward with arms wide open, the other 2 coming in from the side, the other teams coming in from above and below. No matter where the bloody thing decided to go there would be a shinobi there waiting to catch it.
The Black Zetsu had been ordered to die and so the OAMUs were complying with that order because seriously, it was really annoying. Doing things like trying to start revolts, trying to pick fights with literally everyone, trying to assassinate people… being an all round bad guy.
And for once the OAMUs were very confident in calling someone else the bad guy… even taking their history into account where they went about… being the bad guy.
This was an even badder guy and none of them were even batting an eyelash at the means by which they were supposed to catch it.
It wasn't that hard really, just positioning and making sure that they had their reflexes turned up properly.
The Uchiha kid had been rescued and the freaky old guy had been sealed away so that even if he tried to respawn resurrect, it would be impossible since his soul was missing. It was evil, but it was necessary, seriously, why did he think putting the entire world under a massive genjutsu was the solution to the world's problems.
Fooooolish.
As she dashed to contain the little creature, Aila considered her life up until this point. It was a short life, objectively that was. She had spent her time in the simulators but that wasn't the same thing as the real thing. Sure it could feel real, but the choices you made really didn't matter all that much.
For her, however, it was even more so. It was out here that they got their Wranglers and they had been very useful so far.
The OAMUs had a deliberately decreased emotional core (the one that translated organic chemical responses to electronic ones) in order that the rest of their abilities be enhanced, but at the same time, they had the Wranglers to make up for it.
They weren't going to be permanent postings, but rather what was happening was that a database was being filled up where the Wranglers input certain speech in response to certain speech, as well as filling out the body language and whatever else they needed to do, and the OAMUs would over time build up a library of acceptable responses to certain stimuli and thus be able to operate on their own in due time.
While they could still be stumped on occasion, the call a friend option was always available, especially considering the fact that they could do things like process data at several million times that an organic could.
The ultimate cheat sheet.
They even had preprogrammed responses and patterns in case they needed to operate individually. The cocked hip, the raised eyebrow, all of it was included for the enterprising OAMU.
Aila was steadily working on her library and soon she would be able to operate on her own.
Her Wrangler Eldrad the Eldar was certainly helping in that regard! She sometimes felt that if he continued to keep doing his thing, she would be able to do things like being awesome.
Like the first time that they had been together (excluding the failed excursion that had to be reset), where when asked about what happened to her parents by an allied shinobi, he wrote in the words "dead in the zombie apocalypse".
She liked that answer, very short and sharp.
Over time she was sure that her personality would turn out just like his and that would certainly make her everything easier!
It would take time but all of the OAMUs were taking their personality cues from their wranglers which only made sense really. What else were they supposed to be doing?
The experiment was proving to be a grand success!
Aaaand there.
Aila caught the little blob that was the Black Zetsu and glared down at it as Eldrad had directed her to when facing inferior enemies.
And now… ah.
Eldrad did send a message through. Yes!
"Puny," she said, raising an eyebrow to the sky, head angled back to show just how far below her the creature was. The instructions triggering preset animations in her body for maximum condescension.
Very good.
In time she might even be able to do things like haughtily laugh at the thing below her and demonstrate just how superior she was all on her own without help from Eldrad!
In order for there to be some kind of difference between the three of them, the different OAMUs in each Trio had a different Wrangler. The Minds still thought it was best to have 3 of them per unit for maximum efficiency after all.
In Arja's case, there was the Krogan Wrex. Who… admittedly had some rather extreme ideas on how things should be done.
Ideas like punching things really hard, so hard that they almost exploded with the force.
That and headbutting things so hard that they caved in from the force.
They and the mountain beneath them.
In fact, there was very little speaking involved at all which she certainly appreciated, certainly not like Aila that needed to do all the talking. Her Wrangler was Eldrad and sometimes she pitied the OAMU, to have such a harsh taskmaster as a Wrangler and to be forced to have to learn all those words and body posturings.
In Arja's case, all she needed to know was when and where to punch things. Sometimes if she was feeling generous then she would punch them really hard, or even punch them later, what a revolutionary thought. Her posture was defaulted to intimidation which made everything easier. No need to send messages, default and then killing stance, no need to switch and change all the time. The most difficult part of it all was the grunting, an entire language of grunts. That had been hard.
Krogans had the best lives she thought, so uncomplicated and easy and amazing.
As for Laila… she had been placed into the care of a human soldier of some kind. Name of Amendera Kendel, a Sister of Silence, a human. She didn't speak at all which was rather annoying, always using her hand signals which were always really annoying to need to interpret.
Sometimes Arja wondered just who was deciding who was in a position to be a wrangler.
Oh well, she was really good at killing things and the talking could always be left up to Aila.