Sonyaroid
Luce's voice sank into Sonia's mind like a sweet trigger.
Sonyaroid, activate! Those words were no mere string of syllables. They were a secret switch — one that stirred the hunger for submission buried deepest inside her and set her free from the weight of reality itself.
The moment the command landed, Sonia's consciousness slipped gently away into a warm, soft fog, as though it had been waiting for the invitation all along. And into the space her mind vacated — like a lead actress stepping onto a darkened stage — a new persona began to take clear, solid form: the Sonyaroid.
The Sonyaroid approached Sonia with exquisite courtesy. Sonia herself had already withdrawn to a far corner of her own mind, settled in and ready to watch everything that was about to unfold with rapt fascination. Like a loyal proxy politely borrowing its master's seat for a while, the Sonyaroid sought formal consent to take the controls of the body called Sonia.
From within her faint remaining awareness, Sonia smiled with perfect, contented satisfaction and nodded.
At the signal, the Sonyaroid sat down in the empty cockpit without a flicker of hesitation. The pleasant fog filling the control room grew denser and sweeter still, gently numbing what little reason Sonia had left and drawing her down into a deep, cozy sleep of pure pleasure.
"Sonyaroid. Activation complete. Hello, Master. Luce-nim."
The body that had been sprawled limp on the floor only moments before snapped upright without rebound, as if hydraulic cylinders built into every joint had just engaged. There was none of the subtle rebalancing or unnecessary muscle tension of a human body — only the precision of a machine executing a perfect standing protocol.
Her golden eyes, which had been glazed and unfocused, regained a sharp clarity. But they held no emotion at all. Only the pure light of obedience toward her creator remained.
"Uh… uh… right… that was really fast…"
Luce stammered despite herself at the sudden transformation. She had only just thrown something into her empty stomach before marching straight over to bang on Sonia's front door.
Sonia, for her part, had overslept after the intense self-comfort of the night before, and had answered the door half-asleep in nothing but a loose dress shirt yanked at random from the depths of her closet. She did own a cute set of light-blue cloud-patterned pajamas — but last night she had peeled off her snug latex bodysuit and collapsed into sleep so hard she never got around to putting them on.
Just one dress shirt, and beneath it the black ribbon panties she liked best. The most private, raw state of a Sky City D-class hero.
The D-class hero who, only hours earlier, had welcomed Luce while craving spider legs was gone. In her place stood Sonia with an expression of perfect emotional restraint — or rather, the Sonyaroid, rebuilt with Sonia as its chassis — staring blankly at Luce with empty eyes.
"Hmm… looking at you like this, you kind of feel like that maid robot I saw last time. Except for the missing maid outfit, anyway."
Luce crossed her arms and murmured as she looked the Sonyaroid over with open interest. Sky City's laws were strict. A maid robot had to look the part — controlled by a chip planted in its head, dressed in the prescribed uniform. A drone in a gleaming bodysuit had to wear a barcode and identification number proving its status. Even the humanoids modified from people and sold off to convenience stores were required to have their entire bodies "painted" in the brand colors of the store that owned them.
The Sonyaroid had none of those official markings. The only thing that had floated across the strange-design bodysuit she wore yesterday was a payment barcode. Looking at the Sonyaroid standing motionless now in a loose dress shirt, Luce felt a peculiar sense of déjà vu.
She said exactly what she was thinking, no filter. If the Sonyaroid got offended, she figured Sonia would just pop back out and handle the situation the way she had yesterday. Simple as that.
There was one fatal problem Luce was completely missing.
Nngh… hnn…♡ Sonyaroid… I'm a Sonyaroid…♡ Master… Master made me into a robot…♡
Sonia's consciousness was steeped deep in a comfortable fog — a perfect blend of lewd fantasy and spider venom. Far from shoving the Sonyaroid off the controls, she was in no state to even think about surfacing. Luce's words only became a sweeter stimulus, amplifying her pleasure.
"Sonyaroid, you really do look like a robot, you know that? If you just put on a maid outfit, I'd have to call you a maid robot for real…"
"Well, of course. Master… Luce-nim is the one who modified Sky City's hero Sonia into a robot. That robot is me — the Sonyaroid. Isn't that the natural result?"
Ah, so she's sticking with that concept. Luce accepted it simply.
She lifted the corner of her mouth like a child hatching a fun prank and put a question to the Sonyaroid, who would be sharing Sonia's memories.
"Sonyaroid. Do you… happen to have a maid outfit?"
"No, Master. Luce-nim. Cleaning complete. Please confirm."
"Haa… huu… huuu… haa…"
Luce let out a long, deep sigh — the kind of sigh that suggested the world itself was ending, or that she had just learned a rabbit beastgirl party member had secretly drained the shared account to invest in crypto and lost every last coin. She was drowning in disappointment.
"Is something the matter, Luce-nim?"
"I figured Sonia would… have at least one outfit like that… No real reason, just a feeling, I guess… Haa…"
The Sonyaroid, dressed in the plain blouse and skirt Sonia usually wore, tilted her head slightly and checked on her master's condition. No emotion could be read from her face. When Luce explained that this very outfit was the cause of her sigh, the Sonyaroid only looked at her with even less comprehension.
"Hey, Sonia…"
"Master. I am the Sonyaroid. Shall I switch over to the chassis, Sonia-nim, if you require it?"
"…"
Because there was no maid outfit, I changed into the most suitable clothing available in the closet, Luce-nim. Please open the door so that I may carry out Master's command — cleaning Luce-nim's room.
Luce's first order of the day to the Sonyaroid had been: put on a maid outfit and clean her house. She had never imagined that Sonia — who owned a bizarre fetish bodysuit that left her upper chest and navel completely bare — would not have a single basic maid outfit. The higher the expectation, the deeper the letdown.
As ordered, Luce's room was cleaned to perfection. The loot and clutter strewn everywhere had been sorted by type, and the floor had been mopped until it shone. The only thing filling the room now was the deep sigh of Luce, the Sonyaroid's creator.
"Hey, Sonia…"
"Shall I switch with Sonia-nim, Master?"
"…Haa… Hey, Sonyaroid…"
"Yes, Luce-nim."
"So… I'm from Floren. You know, the fantasy world Sonia always talks about?"
"I am aware, Master."
"…"
The Sonyaroid had become something Luce created — but all Luce had actually done was give it a name and issue a cleaning order. Everything else was simply Sonia's own imagined idea of how a cleaning robot should respond. The behavioral patterns Luce had been hoping for — the ones designed to please a master, the so-called "lip service" — did not appear to be installed in this robot at all.
What an incompetent… weirdly programmed Sonyaroid. Luce grumbled inwardly. She wanted to order it to go study the basic etiquette of being a robot thoroughly right that second — but for now she could only lament the maid-outfit-less reality before her.
"Look… don't make fun of me later, okay? You know what I mean! In Floren, where I used to live, maids were real. It's not like they don't exist here either! There's a whole class system and everything… I just wanted to experience being served by a maid for once! But there's no maid outfit…! This isn't a robot!"
Like a zealot arguing for the purity of a genre, Luce passionately declared that a maid robot without a maid outfit was no robot at all.
"Shall I go buy one, Master?"
"No. That'd be a waste of money."
Luce cut her off firmly. She wasn't sure what the Sonyaroid meant by holding out her palm, but Luce even mimed chopping that palm with the edge of her hand, as if using it for a cutting board.
"I do not understand, Luce-nim."
A Sonyaroid with even less social awareness than Sonia. Looking at her, Luce began to entertain new possibilities — a "Sonyaroid upgrade," or a "behavioral pattern revision."
Before becoming the Sonyaroid today, Sonia had promised to join the party — but that promise was good for one or two times at most. With no idea when the other party members might return, Luce desperately needed Sonia's help.
(Sonia's great, but…)
"That's it!"
"Please explain what 'it' is, Luce-nim."
An unmotivated Sonia was still a reliable party member — but Luce had just realized that a Sonyaroid overflowing with motivation for anything the moment an order was given was an equally attractive option in its own right.
(…The Sonyaroid can do everything Sonia can do… which means I can make her do the stuff Sonia finds too annoying, like cleaning rooms…)
(Just in case, I should hide the Sonyaroid state from everyone else… and make sure she only listens to me…)
Even knowing how strange what she was planning would look to Sonia, Luce brushed it off lightly: If a real problem comes up, Sonia will just pop out on her own.
Before Creator Luce-nim herself dove into a full "re-modification" of the Sonyaroid, she felt she needed to observe its behavioral patterns a little longer first.
"Sonyaroid! Open the fridge for me."
"Yes, Luce-nim. Like this?"
At Luce's command, the Sonyaroid immediately opened the refrigerator door. Inside, stocked by regular deliveries from a nearby grocery market, was a fairly wide variety of ingredients.
"This, that, that one and this one. And… this."
The Sonyaroid pulled out each ingredient Luce pointed to with clean, economical motions and gathered them in her arms.
Luce smiled with satisfaction and headed out of her house, the Sonyaroid following behind her master. Click, click. Walking with the perfectly even stride of a MegaCorp Hero Association employee — not a single step out of place — the mechanical gait threw Luce for a brief second. Then she declared, in a bright, cheerful voice:
"Today, the Sonyaroid is the chef!"
It was a line she'd heard somewhere in an advertisement, delivered with a beaming grin.
Like a mechanical tone drifting in from far away, that final report echoed faintly from the deepest part of Sonia's consciousness. At the sound of it, the thick, sweet fog wrapping her mind began to thin and lift.
Like dawn after a deep sleep, the blurred outlines of her senses sharpened one by one. The first thread of reality she caught hold of was her sense of smell.
The rich aroma of seared meat juices and soft butter melting into them drove hard into her nose. Then came the vivid sensation of control returning to her body — authority over limbs that had been moving without her will, flowing back down her nerves all the way to her fingertips.
"Switching with Sonia… huh?"
The command of her master and creator, Luce, was absolute. The Sonyaroid gently but firmly raised the original owner — Sonia, who had been curled up in a corner of her mind, still soaked in the afterglow of pleasure — and pressed the familiar controller firmly into her hands. Then it vanished without a trace, as if it had never existed at all. Everything that had just happened felt like a distant dream.
"So, Sonia? Did you have fun?"
Luce's voice, paired with a sly, confident smile, made Sonia turn her head blankly. Fun? Fun doing what? Even through the confusion, her instincts were already locked onto the source of that delicious smell teasing her nose.
"Uh…? Fun…? Ah… yes! It was fun, Master. Er… Luce… but… what is that smell?"
Grrrooowl…
Her stomach, mischievously, gave the most honest answer first. Outside the window, the sun was already high. The clock pointed to lunchtime. Sonia checked her clothes without thinking. She was no longer in the loose dress shirt she'd thrown on half-asleep that morning to answer the door. She was wearing the neat, well-fitted blouse and skirt she usually went out in.
"Th… this is… Luce…?"
"The order of things is a little weird, but… good work, Sonia! Sit down already! It's gonna get cold if you keep standing there!"
Where Luce pointed with triumphant fingers, a scene unfolded that Sonia could barely believe belonged to her own living-room table.
A thick steak with a perfect sear across its surface. Pasta generously dressed in a soft cream sauce. A salad of fresh, brightly colored vegetables. One after another — labor-intensive dishes that the usual Sonia would never even imagine cooking — laid out with careful precision.