BAD ENDING 002 — OL Drone Sonia 4
The air hung thick with the damp, unventilated smell of days gone by, laced with a faint, sweet body scent of unknown origin.
Beneath that shaft of light, Sonia sat as still as a meticulously crafted wax doll.
Her abundant blonde hair, cascading to her waist, looked dry and neglected from days without care — yet under the sunlight it still seemed to scatter a faint dusting of gold.
Not a single scrap of clothing covered Sonia's body. Only at her chest, a black lace bra strained to contain her ample breasts.
The cups could not fully hold her, and the pale flesh that spilled halfway over the edges was revealed in a precarious display. Through the taut lace fabric, the faint contours of her nipples pressed visibly outward.
Her white, smooth skin had been thoroughly neglected through days of stress-relief sessions, yet the healthy vitality unique to a D-class hero still lingered — leaving her looking less frail than unnaturally, almost unrealistically, perfect.
Most alien of all was Sonia's face. Those lips that would normally have worn a languid smile hung slightly parted, limp and empty. Her expressionless features were so devoid of life that it was hard to believe they belonged to a living person.
And her eyes. Those pupils that had once glittered with brilliant gold were now unfocused and hollow. Like glass beads from which the soul had fled, they simply reflected the wallpaper opposite with vacant indifference.
Sonia's form was beautiful overall — and at the same time, chillingly empty.
"Um… Sonia? I'm here from the tester product company… Are you… all right?"
"I am… Lewd… Drone… Sonia…♥"
A thoroughly broken expression, as if her mind had slipped free of its moorings. Her eyes, having lost some of their luster, leaned closer to a dull yellow than to gold.
Dr. Yuri did not know enough to diagnose Sonia's precise condition with certainty, but if she had to put it into words: a thoroughly trained lewd sex slave. No — even those still retained a bare minimum of life in their eyes. This was worse.
(It looks like… some kind of sleepwalking state…)
Even when Yuri waved her fingers in front of those vacant, sunken eyes — even when she covered and uncovered Sonia's field of vision with her palm — Sonia showed no reaction at all.
As if Dr. Yuri simply did not exist, Sonia sat motionless in the dining chair. Cold sweat beaded and slid down Yuri's spine.
Sonia, D-class hero of Sky City. Sonia, citizen of Sky City.
"An accident caused by a tester product… This is… really bad… This is really bad…! Aaah… Ah! If this goes wrong, this is a genuine disaster…?!"
"…"
…Sonia, citizen of Sky City.
Dr. Yuri's sharp mind began to process the situation at lightning speed.
The mental disposition test results of tester Sonia… A critically vulnerable mental resistance rating… The program's characteristic of actively reflecting the user's preferences…
Had she been an ordinary person, the safety protocols would have triggered automatically the moment her vital signs dropped below the set threshold.
But this vacant hero sitting at the dining table in nothing but a black bra — covering only her nipples — was still a hero. Even as a D-class, her physical durability was incomparable to that of a civilian.
Whether she had remained inside the virtual reality device for the entire four days, or had come out intermittently, was impossible to know.
No matter how exhausted Sonia became, no matter how thoroughly the light drained from her eyes, her vital signs never fell low enough to trip the safety protocols calibrated for ordinary humans.
A hero who had absorbed, without rest for one hundred and two hours, a program built from tags catering to the most niche of tastes — masochism, suggestibility, submissiveness, hypnosis, brainwashing — staring blankly into empty space with vacant eyes was, perhaps, the only natural outcome.
"…A citizen of Sky City… Victim… Compensation… But… But… Aaaagh…?! This is bad… This is really bad…?! She has no family! She has no familyyy…?!"
In a world where buildings were smashed like children's toys on a daily basis, injuries were countless. And so Sky City had established a certain set of rules regarding victim compensation.
When a victim was incapable of expressing their own will, a system existed allowing their family to negotiate a settlement on their behalf. Of course, Sonia was a 'citizen of Sky City' who lived alone, with no known relatives and no family. There was no family with whom to settle.
"She has no family… Hero Sonia is… Ah… This can't be… If it's like this… If it's like this, there's no way to settle… She's a citizen… This is bad…"
In Sky City, when harm was inflicted upon a citizen of Sky City — especially in a situation where settlement was impossible — the result was invariably prosecution as a serious crime.
Dr. Yuri had a rough idea of what kind of 'processing' those who committed serious crimes in Sky City received. In the worst case, all assets could be seized and the body itself converted into a humanoid.
Had Dr. Yuri known the detailed process step by step, she might already have descended into full panic.
Because she only understood it as a vague 'you get sold off somehow,' she looked around desperately for some way to salvage the situation — and eventually found herself studying the vacant Sonia more carefully once again.
(Ah… Earlier she called herself a lewd drone… a drone… It looks like she experienced the program too many times…)
The result of an extraordinarily vulnerable mental resistance, combined with the performance of the VR stress-management device that Dr. Yuri herself took pride in as her masterpiece.
This hero named Sonia had likely experienced a program based on fictional videos of drone-training brainwashing, and due to that fragile mental resistance, had become a little too vacant… or else had suffered irreversible damage to her sense of self. Probably…
"…"
Flick. Whirl. Sonia's golden eyes — now yellowed — gazed at nothing in particular. Even when Dr. Yuri blocked her line of sight, even when she poked her cheeks, Sonia did not react.
As a professional, Dr. Yuri carefully took Sonia's wrist to check her condition. Her pulse was slow but stable. Her skin was cold.
"Hey, Sonia? Miss Sonia? Why are you wearing… No, not clothes. Why are you wearing a bra?"
Contrary to Dr. Yuri's assumption that she would find Sonia sprawled naked, Sonia — vacant and strange as her state clearly was — was wearing a black bra of a style that pushed her breasts tightly together.
The rule for using the VR device was that you went in completely undressed. So why was she sitting in a living-room dining chair wearing a black bra? To Dr. Yuri's question, Sonia… no, the thing that had been Sonia… answered.
"Master's voice… voice… That's because… if the nipples are touched… Lewd Drone Sonia… enters programming mode… That's… 'common sense'… Master…"
"Master? What on earth is that supposed to mean… Ah. Ah… Aaaah… Aagh… Aah…! Come to think of it, the guide AI is based on my hologram avatar from when I was a graduate student… Th… Ugh… Uuugh…"
"This voice… Master…? Are you Master…? Lewd Drone Sonia is ready to receive Master registration…? …I'll begin, Master…♡"
Ssshh…
Just as placing glasses and dark circles on the graduate-student model of Dr. Yuri would produce the sweat-drenched Dr. Yuri currently standing in Sonia's home, Sonia's reaction was instantaneous.
Having hypnotized herself into being 'Lewd Drone Sonia,' and having come to regard herself as a lewd drone through external erogenous stimulation — particularly nipple development — Sonia rose slowly from the dining chair where she had been sitting vacant and still, the moment she heard the voice of the hologram AI girl who was 'Lewd Drone Sonia's Master.'
The way she rose was less human than mechanical — smooth and fluid, as if precisely programmed.
The height difference between the smaller-than-average Dr. Yuri and the slightly taller-than-average Sonia. Looking up at the Sky City hero gazing down at her with a loving, languid expression, Dr. Yuri panicked.
"H… Hey? Sonia? Are you with me? If you… if you come any closer…"
"Master registration. Beginning…♥"
…Those were the last words Dr. Yuri would ever speak as 'Dr. Yuri,' the woman who had come looking for Sky City's 'Sonia.'
"Then I'll begin. Master~♥."
Thud.
It was a single motion. Sonia's eyes seemed to have no data input regarding who the small woman before her was, or why she had entered her home.
The only thing engraved into Sonia's mind was a single fact: that the being before her was her 'Master.'
Dr. Yuri was shoved to the floor before she could even think of resisting. Sonia moderated her strength so as not to injure her 'Master,' but even the bare minimum of a D-class hero's physical power was more than an ordinary person could withstand.
"Ghk…!"
A short cry burst from Dr. Yuri's back along with the air from her lungs.
The black office look she had carefully assembled to project authority crumpled helplessly against the cold living-room floor.
Rather than straddling the fallen Dr. Yuri, Sonia planted both knees on the floor and raised her upper body, trapping her counterpart in her shadow. The gaze that fell from above was nothing like a dominator's stare.
Sonia's pupils were unfocused and hazily unmoored. Like someone wandering through a deep dream, the boundary between reality and virtuality had completely collapsed.
The black bra, perched so precariously it seemed ready to slip free at any moment, struggled to support the weight of Sonia's enormous E-cup breasts.
That overwhelming volume filled the entirety of Dr. Yuri's field of vision from directly below.
"Wha—?! Wh… What are you doing, hey! This is our first time… No, that's not it! We've never even met before…! …Or rather, no no… What do you think you're doing to someone you've just met?!"
Dr. Yuri managed to spit out the words through her confusion. Unable to find the vocabulary to explain the present situation, her rambling voice trembled faintly.
"First… time…?"
Sonia tilted her head slightly, like a machine that had heard an incomprehensible language.
The circuits inside Sonia's mind began analyzing the meaning of the word 'first.' After a brief silence, a faint smile rose to Sonia's lips. An expression as if she had just realized something — Ah.
"First… time, you say? Aha… That's right. It is the first time. I'm sorry."
"Ahaha… I'm sorry for barging in through the balcony so suddenly! You'd been using the device for so long…"
Finally, they were communicating. Dr. Yuri exhaled a sigh of relief and, without thinking, gave an answer that went completely off-track.
Mere seconds earlier she had been painting a nightmare future of being hauled away by Sky City security as a serious criminal and socially buried. The tension drained by relief, Dr. Yuri completely missed the true meaning of the words Sonia had spoken.
Sonia's thoughts were different. 'First… time, you say? Aha… That's right. It is the first time. I'm sorry. This is Master's first time registering as Lewd Drone Sonia's Master, isn't it?' Sonia's distorted mind was interpreting every situation as an extension of the 'drone training protocol.'
"Then I'll begin, Master. You don't need those bothersome glasses, do you?"
It was not a question. It was a clear declaration that left no room for choice.