A Special Manual for Lazy Heroes
Whether Sonia had already seen through Luce's ulterior motive in bringing up party members and asking for help, she was deftly steering the conversation away from the subject.
Luce had considered pulling out the "certain item" she'd prepared as her secret weapon from the start, but she knew that springing it on Sonia cold would only get her rejected. So she resolved to approach slowly, naturally.
Of course, that was why Luce had come to Sonia's nest in the first place — but for now, they were just what they'd always been: a hero and an adventurer, friends in Sky City, trading peaceful, utterly unproductive small talk.
Neither of them had the slightest interest in the latest fashion trends, the songs currently topping the charts, or whatever product was supposedly selling out everywhere. That shared indifference, if anything, was what made them click so well.
Before long, Luce had casually rolled herself into the thin blanket sprawled across the floor alongside Sonia, and the two of them lay side by side, killing meaningless time on their portable terminals.
The cool breath of the air conditioner gently teased their hair. The chill made the texture of the blanket against their skin feel all the sharper, sealing them off completely from the sweltering heat of the outside world — a tiny kingdom of two, perfectly complete.
Gleam… gleam…?
Then something strange entered the field of vision of the purple eyes belonging to Luce, who was lying next to Sonia, and made them sparkle.
An unidentified white material — rubber, or maybe leather. The oddly lustrous object caught the living-room LED light and threw it back like liquid, making Luce's eyes sting. It looked almost like a garment sculpted from living white slime.
Sonia already knew that the white bodysuit draped carelessly over a dining chair was no ordinary piece of clothing. At the Association she'd seen everything from sample pieces to photos of models posing in them, and she'd even handled one herself. It looked like a lewd fetish outfit that left the navel and cleavage completely bare — but in reality it was cutting-edge armor whose molecular structure rearranged under heavy impact, hardening to the toughness of steel. Luce, who knew none of that, naturally had no choice but to ask the homeowner about the peculiar thing.
Sss… crinkle-crinkle… squeak-squeak…
Luce got up, approached the bodysuit, and rubbed its surface between her fingers. Smooth yet faintly grippy, it produced a clean, glass-polishing squeak.
The material was cold and inorganic, yet at the same time it held a soft elasticity like human skin — a thoroughly uncanny sensation.
"This is… weirdly slick… Sonya. What is this? The squeaky feel is so weird. Hehe…"
"It's So… Sonia… That feels strange, Luce… Ah, that's, um. That."
"Saying 'that' doesn't tell anyone anything, Sonia? …Oh! I've seen this somewhere. Last time at a dungeon entrance there were people wearing something similar… theirs was black, though. Do you… know them?"
"Probably heroes from the same Association…? They wouldn't be Association staff…"
Figures in black bodysuits of a design similar to the one Sonia had received, appearing at a dungeon entrance. Sonia had no idea who they might be, but she answered that they probably weren't anyone she knew.
She went on to explain, step by step, everything from the old Association's midnight-flight scandal that Luce's adventurer instincts had correctly predicted, to the MegaCorp Association she'd been forced to join afterward, and the fact that the bodysuit was the official uniform she'd received there. There was no real need to mention it, but Sonia cheerfully tacked on the useless detail that there were two types — Type A in black latex and Type B in white.
"And… also… I still haven't been told what functions it actually has…!"
The only times Sonia ever bloomed into this kind of animated storytelling were when there was the scent of money in the air, or when a new flavor of potato chips and cola hit the shelves.
Luce still didn't know the full story, but she could at least grasp that the Association her Sky City hero friend Sonia had newly joined was handing out these strange bodysuits to everyone from staff to affiliated heroes.
"Uh… sooo… Sonia? The chest part here… the top is just… completely missing… and the navel too… I mean… what I'm saying is…"
The adventurer's pointed look said it all: this looked less like armor and more like fetish wear. Luce kept circling around the point, essentially saying it was the kind of outfit you'd only see in a brothel run by succubi.
Sonia, catching the implication buried in those words, startled and rushed to answer.
She hadn't tried it on even once yet — but she also hadn't decided she would never wear it. She needed to drive a firm stake into the ground so Luce wouldn't walk away thinking something like, Sonia's a pervert who runs around in lewd fetish gear…
"Ah… no, it's not…?! The weirder part is, if you hit it hard, it hardens instantly. It looks like that, sure, but… it's armor. Armor! You said you saw people walking around in them, right…? Ah! Luce, those people you saw — how were they wearing 'this'?"
"Sonia! I've told you a dozen times, nobody knows what you mean when you just say 'this'… Are you still teasing me about that time I blew up the gas range?"
"You caught me…? Jokes aside, I mean this. I haven't actually put it on even once… I don't know how you're supposed to use it…"
Sss. Sonia dashed into her room and came back out holding something for Luce to see — a strangely rounded additional part that came with the Association-issued hero bodysuit.
A small fluorescent lamp that looked like it ought to light up was attached to it, currently dark. Depending on how you looked at it, it seemed split into two pieces; if you set it on your head like a headband, it would look like a pair of mechanical robot ears — a thoroughly peculiar accessory.
"How were they wearing it again… hang on…"
What remained in Luce's memory was mostly the deliberately glossy material and the blatantly exposed cleavage, but she dug hard to recall more.
—…press… press… tick… press… pop…!
"Ah… ah! This? You just press it onto your head and the light goes pop… You really haven't tried it on even once? Hmm…"
"So you just press it on top of your head…? It doesn't stick on its own. Maybe because it's a set with the bodysuit…"
Sonia tried pressing the part onto her own head, then let go. It dropped to the floor with a limp plop, utterly without grip.
"Why don't you try it on right now, Sonia? It's such a weirdly slick outfit… Mm… you know those things. The staff robots that stand in the convenience store up the street every day. Huma… human-something…"
—If you put it on, you might look kinda… similar…?
Si… similar…? To a… ro… robot…?
"A… robot…♡ Like a convenience-store humanoid… you mean…? Hn… hnn…♡ If you say I look like a humanoid… nn…♡"
That single remark, born of pure curiosity, had struck the most sensitive nerve of a Sonia whose eyes had already been opened to bizarre modification fetishes by Nebulix's fiction-stuffed videos.
It lit a fire in the heart of a girl who got aroused by situations of being "handled," of being "ordered."
A walking household appliance. A convenient automaton. The idea of resembling something treated that way sent heat flooding through Sonia's lower belly.
—If she puts this on… will she look like a robot…? A humanoid…? Or is that a little different…? …Sonia?
If Luce had known about Sonia's secret sexual walls, she might have been steering her deliberately. Instead, knowing nothing, she had accidentally pressed the lewd switch deep inside Sonia's mind with a firm click.
And for no reason other than that the strange switch in her heart had been flipped, Sonia slowly rose from the floor, ready to try on for the first time the white glossy latex bodysuit the Association had issued her — the one with the midriff cut wide open and the upper chest left completely bare.
Luce's motives were a mix of pure curiosity about seeing Sonia in the bodysuit, and the earnest adventurer's desire to gather information on this new type of armor that had recently started appearing around Sky City. From what little she'd heard without any specialist knowledge, it was supposed to be outstandingly effective against energy damage — magic, lasers, plasma, that sort of thing.
"Hehe… Sonia… what are you doing…?"
"Th… those eyes are scary, Luce…? Kyaa~♡"
Click… A crisp shutter sound rang from Luce's terminal.
"Like this…? Or this way…? It's going to slip again…"
"No, no. Sonia. Feel it. It's like it's being pulled in by a magnet and you're just holding it back, see? Look."
The look in Luce's eyes as she approached step by step with the Association-issued bodysuit felt a little strange, but Sonia's head was already full of the videos she'd watched on Nebulix.
Like the lively girl who got modified into an emotionless robot, a Slave Walker Unit, and met her bad ending. Unconsciously, Sonia was reenacting the very first thing that girl had done upon entering the Slave Walker training facility.
—As a Slave Walker Unit, for the purpose of receiving instruction… I hereby declare, in this place, that I renounce my own human rights…! As proof, I cast off everything… that a Slave Walker Unit will have no need for… Ahaat…♡
Sss… press-press… plop.
Just like the protagonist girl in the middle of that lewd Nebulix video, Hacking a Slave Walker!, who renounced her human rights and entered the training facility, Sonia took the house clothes she'd been wearing and stuffed them — not into the laundry basket, not onto the living-room floor, but straight into the ordinary trash bag she'd only just emptied.
"So… Sonia? Wait… Sonia! What are you doing? Why are you throwing that away…? Did you mix it up with the laundry basket…? Or are you drunk…? Are you wasted?"
"…? Why, Luce…? Ah! It's fine! It won't take long. I can just buy a new one, right?"
It wasn't that she lacked a perverted desire to reenact the lewd video — but Sonia's usual attitude of casually discarding whatever she'd been using and simply buying a replacement played its part as well.
Once Sonia had slowly finished putting on the entire bodysuit, Luce, as if ready, brought the additional part near Sonia's head. The part was drawn toward the top of Sonia's head as if by a magnet.
"Okay, I'm letting go, Sonia? It's weirdly hard… but it should be fine, right?"
"It's from the Association, so what could go wrong…? You just said I look like a robot, so I started thinking… thinking… nn… why did you have to say that again… Luce…"
"What did I even say…"
When Luce gently set the part on top of Sonia's head, it shifted minutely as if finding its own place, then locked on with a perfect click!
"Uh… Sonia…? You okay?"
"…Why? Is something wrong?"
"You look fine, but… is there a mirror?"
Following Luce, who was asking where the mirror was, Sonia went with her into the storage room.
"Oh… uh… I look completely different… right, Luce?"
"Click… I took a before shot just in case. Hehehe…"
Luce triumphantly held out her terminal screen to Sonia. The two of them started flipping back and forth between the before-and-after images of the bodysuit, checking what had changed.
"…Huh…? What's that barcode…? Like a product for sale…?"
"A barcode…? Where? …???"
She had only changed clothes — and yet on Sonia's lower belly in the photo, a sharp barcode that hadn't been there before was clearly printed. The two of them stared at each other with matching looks of bewilderment.
"Whoa… this is… me?"
In front of the large full-length mirror fixed to the wardrobe, Sonia stood blankly in the official hero uniform she had just received from the Association.
