"All right, the experiment's done. So what did you want me to help you with?"
As she walked over, Twiggy peeled off her disposable gloves and hung up her lab coat along the way.
Brushing back her slightly messy hair, she dropped onto the sofa too, sprawling out with none of a lady's poise.
The emerald earrings Alice had given her swayed along with their owner's movements, catching Geno's eye.
"Hey, still staring? Didn't you get enough of that at home?"
Twiggy looked a little bashful. In front of outsiders, or when they were alone, she didn't really mind Geno's gaze, but here in the lab—to keep her dignity and to avoid giving those two blabbermouths something to gossip about all day—it was better to stay proper.
"Oh, no. I just realized I've never really given you any gifts."
Looking at the earrings Twiggy had barely taken off since the day he bought them, Geno felt, for a moment, that he'd been a rather negligent boyfriend.
But Twiggy was hardly the type to care about such things. She just let out a small sigh. "All right, enough of that talk. You've been watching too many short videos. We're practically an old married couple and you're still fussing over this. What did you actually come to me for?"
Geno's behavior really was a bit oblivious, but Twiggy herself wasn't much better.
Before Alice gave her the earrings, she had never worn any jewelry at all, and the only time she'd even put on makeup was as a disguise, right after they came out of the Hollow.
After all, back then, just staying alive was enough.
"Ahem. Here's the thing—could you take a look and see if you can fix this?" Geno cleared his throat awkwardly a couple of times to ease the mood, then handed her the tablet in his hand.
Twiggy didn't call him out on it. She just quietly took the tablet and started examining it.
"This is... Fairy? No, not quite the same. And it looks damaged, too..."
The longer she studied it, the more she slipped into researcher mode, poring over it with total focus.
Geno was in no hurry. He strolled over to the pantry like he'd done it a hundred times, brewed a pot of fragrant tea, and pulled a few desserts from the fridge to enjoy in a while.
"Hey, Alice. How are things going over here?"
Passing by the little rabbit's workstation, Geno poured her a cup of tea, along with a small strawberry cake.
Alice's favorite flavor.
"Ah, yes, Geno, thank you. I'm settling in pretty well. Little Fifth and Little Sixth have both been really kind."
Absorbed in her work, Alice hadn't noticed Geno arrive at all; only when he set the teacup down on the desk did she realize he was there.
"Is that so. Those two really are easy to get along with—it's just that sometimes they get so wrapped up in each other that no one else can squeeze a word in."
Thinking back on his time with the Silver Sisters, Number Five and Number Six had always been the easiest to deal with, the way Geno remembered it; the rest of the sisters were either all muscle or far too silent.
Still, they were all good people, and they got along well enough with Geno.
"Mm, I feel that way sometimes too, but I can understand it. If I had a sister like that—older or younger—I'd probably want to cling to her all day as well."
Alice scooped up a bite of cake and ate it happily, a blissful look spreading across her face.
Hearing her answer, Geno drifted off in thought.
"A sister... huh?"
It wasn't a feeling Geno really understood—yet something like it, he might just understand after all.
And while the two of them chatted, things over on Twiggy's end seemed to be making no small progress.
"Mm, this should work. Geno! Got it done."
"Done already? As expected of the all-purpose Twiggy-emon! Now that's efficiency!"
"What the heck is a 'Twiggy-emon'?!"
At Geno's nonsense, Twiggy's lips twitched, and she couldn't be bothered to respond.
Then she handed the tablet back to him and laid out her solution.
"This thing is probably something similar to Fairy. At our current level, there's simply no way to repair it at the source."
Geno was a bit stunned—that wasn't what she'd said a moment ago.
Twiggy, who saw right through what he was thinking, didn't stop there. She went on.
"I know what you want to say, but hear me out first."
"We can't repair it, but from my diagnostic results, the only damaged parts are the intelligent processing module and the emotion-related database. Every other functional module looks completely intact."
In simple terms, the suspected AI now in Geno's hands was essentially a 'vegetable' of the digital world—it had lost its conscious, intelligent control, but every one of its functions could still be used.
"That works too, huh. Truly a medical—no, an electronics miracle."
Silently marveling at the sheer absurdity of it, Geno gave the tablet a little shake, then asked about Twiggy's solution.
"Ahem. As for solutions, I've got two. The first is to just take this AI apart and separate its functional modules from its intelligence module—that way we can use it without repairing it at all."
Even as she said it, Twiggy wasn't too fond of the plan. After all, they didn't understand this thing all that well, and if something slipped and the whole thing got wrecked, it wouldn't be worth the loss.
"And the other one?" Geno asked about her second method—even he could tell the first was far too risky.
Twiggy held up two fingers and spelled out her Plan Two.
"The other is to use the Filth energy we're currently researching to Corrupt this AI, and through that, achieve the goal of controlling it."
Twiggy made it sound easy, but it was anything but. Just those few sentences carried so much information that Geno nearly couldn't keep up.
"Hold on—what do you mean the Filth energy can Corrupt an AI? And how are we supposed to control that power in the first place?"
He knew the Filth could manipulate Ether and manipulate memories, but since when had this stuff broken into the electronics field?
"At the end of the day, the Filth is just a form of energy, and any energy is bound to produce fluctuations. That being the case, it stands to reason the Filth can latch onto intelligent machinery too—just like that fusion monster we ran into before."
Thinking back to the Sacrifice monster they'd encountered in the Old Capital square, wasn't the power it wielded also born of the Filth, drawn from the Filth?
"So here's the question: where do we find Filth this obedient?"
Geno took a sip of tea to settle his rather shaken nerves, then turned to ask about her approach.
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