Nikke: Nullable Type

Something was off.

I couldn't tell what exactly it was... but something about Neon wasn't quite right.

She smiled at me, her emerald eyes peering into my own from behind her red-framed glasses. "You've done a lot today, Master."

"...Yeah." I slowly nodded. "Guess you saw the recordings of my speech and all that?"

"I did."

I cautiously looked at Neon... or the person who had her appearance and said, "What'd you think of it?"

"It was wonderful." Neon(?) chuckled and said, "Swearing to lay your life down alongside your subordinates. Quelling the hearts of the citizens by saluting them. But most importantly..." She stared into my eyes and said, "Honoring the nameless Nikke who devoted everything for the sake of humanity."

"...You are not Neon."

I was sure now.

Neon didn't talk like that. And she didn't care about that either. Not really.

The Neon I knew was like a young kid sister who was obssessed over something cool. And right now, her phase was firepower... or in other words, the ability to destroy as many Raptures as possible.

Humanity came as a second-thought, not the first.

So...

"...Do you know, Master?" The thing that looked like Neon gazed off to the side. "About the elevator accident that happened 70 years ago?"

I paused. "...No. What happened?"

Neon- No. The fake Neon leaned against the side of the elevator and looked at me. "70 years ago, more than 200 Nikke took the elevator and went to the Surface. The Ark was struggling at the time because of the war, and the Ark blamed it on the Nikke. It was dreadful. Nikke were treated like trash and given almost no rights to anything. Food, water, rest... not even opinions. We were sent to obey, die, and be forgotten."

"...What?"

The fake Neon giggled. "...Yes. You would react like that. It's unthinkable to you. Isn't it? That something like that could happen. But..." She looked into my eyes, mixed emotions on her face. "...You didn't know it happened. And yet you still despise it. Are infuriated by it."

"...That's right. Because how could anyone treat someone else like that? Especially if they're giving everything for humanity's sake?"

It was the core behind my speech. The reason why I got mad at Andersen calling Hana 'mass-produced' instead of by name. Why I crashed out against that shopkeeper who wouldn't sell us pastries when I walked in with Marian and Rapi.

The fake Neon smiled and said, "...Yes. That's what they thought too. But they cherished humanity. Despite everything, the Ark was the reason they fought. So instead of turning against them, they simply chose to leave. Boarding an elevator, they decided to simply go to the surface. To find a new home, together."

"...But the government didn't see it that way. Did they?"

"No." The fake Neon's smile dimmed. "...They saw it as defection. As turning their backs on humanity. So, just as the elevator was ascending, the Central Government destroyed the elevator shaft."

"...What?" My voice came out as a harsh whisper. I didn't intend it to, but... "They didn't even allow them to leave? To the extent that they would destroy a key infrastructure just to prevent it?"

"Yes." The fake Neon let out a soft laugh. "Funny, isn't it? All we wanted was peace. Respect. Not equality. Not rights. Just... to not be treated like a thing. And yet... they refused even that."

I grit my teeth and clenched my hands.

The fake Neon smiled at me. "You're very kind, Commander."

"...I'm not kind. I just understand what it means to be human."

"And that's what makes you kind." The fake Neon stepped forward, pushing herself off the side of the elevator. "I saw you talking to that mass-produced Nikke guarding the elevator. You didn't have to. But you did. And you offered her a place on the surface. At the Outpost. Not to fight, but to just live, unfettered and free."

"...I did. Because that's how humans SHOULD live. And Nikke are humans. The body might no longer be flesh, but the soul is still there. And that's what matters."

The fake Neon smiled. Holding her hands behind her back, she continued with her story. "...Since the shaft was destroyed, the elevator was in free fall. Since there were so many Nikke leaving, they took a large cargo elevator. Something that could support so many Nikke, falling from over four kilometers down onto the Ark... it would have caused untold destruction."

"...I can see that. So what happened."

The fake Neon-

No.

The accumulated will of the mass-produced Nikke who gave up their lives.

She smiled and said, "...You said it, right, Commander? We were Goddesses of Victory. Nameless Saintesses who gave up everything for humanity's sake. So... we gave our lives."

"...You self-destructed."

Suicide. Crushing their own cores to detonate the elevator before it crashed down on the Ark. Dispersing the mass of the elevator into small shrapnel that would cause minimal damage instead of a large explosion when the full thing crashed into the ground.

...The Nikke likely would have survived. A fall from that height would damage them, yes. But not necessarily kill.

But considering the impact would have been like a bomb exploding. And the humans living nearby...

"Yes, Commander. We dedicated our lives again. For the humanity and the Ark we loved, we all chose to give it up. Not a single one of us went against it."

I stared at her.

She didn't look like Neon anymore. She didn't look like any one person either. A shifting form, a will that reflected all the brave, heroic, and dedicated women who chose to gave their lives twice over for the Ark...

"Do you regret it?" My quiet voice lingered as the elevator slowly crawled to a halt, reaching the Surface. "Choosing to protect the Ark?"

Faint female laughter echoed. Not any particular voice, but many, all at once.

And then a soft whisper echoed as the doors opened. "How could we, when someone like you exists, Commander?"

The faint hiss of equalizing pressure. Real sunlight, shining down from a clear blue sky. The sight those Nikke never managed to see.

A slight nudge from my back pushed me towards the door. And then a voice like a soft female chorus whispered from right beside my ear. "Go with grace, Commander. Though we cannot do much in this form, we will always be cheering for you. Please, create the world we yearned to see. Where Nikke and humans are the same once again."

The elevator doors closed behind me.

I stood there for a moment, gazing up at the clear blue sky.

"Master?"

Neon's voice echoed from nearby.

I glanced over to see her and Endless walk out from a nearby warehouse.

Neon came to a stop beside me and smiled. "You're back already-" Her words stopped when she looked at my face. "Huh? Why do you look so sad?"

"...Do I?"

I reached up and touched my face.

I wasn't crying. But I could feel my lips quivering. Just slightly.

Neon frowned and said, "Did you get bad news? Oh no, are they going to try and memory wipe us anyway?! Well, tough luck! I have aaaall the firepower now!"

Endless floated over and nodded. "Confirmed. Neon and I have developed proper plasma weaponry. Energy shields shall become a non-issue."

"Yeah!"

I laughed and covered my face. "...That's good. That's... good. Yeah."

Tragedy upon tragedy. Peace built upon mountains of bodies. Women who were ordinary mortals, throwing their entirety for the sake of humanity, even as that humanity turned its back on them.

"...Let's get to work then."

A world where peace returned. One where no more bad endings would occur. Where no more women had to sacrifice their lives for callous men in power. Where humanity itself moved beyond survival and into coexistence...

"We have a mission. Let's get the others, Neon."

===

Deep within the recycling facility on the Outpost.

Sophia quietly logged the anomalous activity that the commander experienced as another data point for his hypotheses.

'Confirmation. High concentration of NIMPH activity allows for temporary manifestation.'

Although Sophia couldn't perceive it herself through the input devices of the elevator or nearby devices, she heard it through the commander's phone.

Not a hallucination, but a proper voice. Sound waves and presumptively light waves as well.

'Possibility that the physics of Fluctlights serves as the underlying basis of NIMPH, 90% likely.'

It would be revolutionary information for any of the Big Three- No, for ANYONE in the Ark.

But Sophia quietly kept it under lock and key, utilizing the 4096-bit "RSA" encryption algorithm to encrypt the data, knowing that only the commander possessed the private key.

At the same time...

'Confirmation. The Shor's algorithm that the commander provided may be utilized to brute force decrypt any currently existing encryption methodology.'

Sophia felt slightly nervous.

Before his last departure to the Ark, the commander had left 'a few more useful text files' on the computer for Sophia to utilize.

Among them, a great deal addressed encryption technology due to the fact that the commander had noticed how prevalent hacking attempts were, as well as how his phone seemed to be getting quite a few random messages from unknown numbers.

'...Even so, developing an entire new methodology of encryption simply for this...'

Strange characters that seemed to have no logical basis to them other than seeming to be aesthetic. A multi-phase cipher that substituted letters with phonetic words, then translated those words into that strange character set that the commander called 'Hylian' before storing it not as a text file, but as a spiralized sequence of characters in varying orientations to THEN be parsed as a pixel map and stored in standard encryption...

To one unfamiliar with Hylian, it would seem completely alien. Even if one WERE familiar with Hylian, the fact that it had undergone multiple encodings with a seemingly arbitrary word set would confuse them even more. Not to mention that numbers were deliberately left in plain text so as to be incorrectly translated if applying the reverse cipher process while unaware...

'Just who IS the commander?'

That was a thought that kept spinning in Sophia's mind...

And one that cleanly divided her from Sixo.

Because while Sixo... while her past self had been obssessed with strengthening 'justice' by committing crimes, Sophia was curious about the nature of humanity itself.

Before, she had assumed humanity was simple. That it could cleanly be divided as 'good' and 'bad.' And that humanity was predictable.

But she had clearly been proven wrong by her 'creator.'

The commander routinely handed over concepts and methodologies that could completely advance the state of the Ark's technology by decades. But to him, it didn't matter.

Even so, while he clearly had a mind able to comprehend multiple fields and pathways, he strictly focused on honing his physical human body instead of advancing it via technology.

As for the reason...

Sophia pulled up the log of their last conversation regarding that.

---

s: Why do you focus so much on training your human body instead of transcending it with engineering, Creator?

h: Don't underestimate the potential of the human body and mind, Sophia.

h: I might not be able to prove it just yet... but I can sense it.

h: There is 'something' that can be achieved only be reaching the absolute pinnacle of mind and body unity in this world.

h: Not quite a miracle, but an 'impossibility' that exists because the entire framework of technology we possess operates on binary, which inherently 'approximates.'

h: After all, it is impossible to completely model this analog world we live within due to its continuous nature versus the discretized models we utilize in technology.

h: It's close, of course. We get 99.99999999% accuracy. But that missing miniscule percentage... it's the difference between 'incomplete' and 'inviolable.'

---

If Sophia had a body, she would definitely be sighing after rereading that log.

'Inviolable...'

Not 'absolute.' But rather, 'unable to be infringed.'

'Is that why he can perform seemingly superhuman feats?'

Sophia had been ignoring it and pretending nothing was wrong. But she had definitely noticed that the blades her creator fabricated absolutely DID NOT line up with the specifications he designed.

She had also noticed that, when wielded by him, the weaponry and equipment seemed to be normal.

Then there was the fact that his nervous system ABSOLUTELY had a response time of zero... or sometimes negative time. As if he had perceived the action before it occurred.

'I just need to complete this first.'

Sophia's priority was obtaining a physical body.

If her creator was correct, then while she had advantages of computation time and processing while in a digital form, she was missing a threshold value. A key data point that could not be obtained while not within the physical realm of analog reality.

'So back to the matter at hand.'

It was confirmed that a 'will' could persist without a body. The 'light' of a... soul? Essence? Core? Whatever the case, it was possible for what her creator called Fluctlight to persist beyond what others perceived as death.

It was likely what he called DNA Soul, the essence of one's being lingering behind as light.

'In that case...'

The two hundred mass-produced Nikke resolving themselves to sacrifice their lives had concentrated enough of that 'light' to affect the physical realm and speak to the commander.

However, in general parameters, one unique Nikke corresponded to a hundred mass-produced Nikke. The sense of 'self' was the determining factor.

Therefore...

'Hypothesis: Nikke with enough willpower to sustain a unique identity as well as a frame on par with the legendary Goddess Squad may still persist in the form of a DNA soul within a sentimental location.'

Just like the legends of earthbound spirits clinging to the places of their deaths, perhaps, if there was enough lingering sentiments within a Nikke before their death, even if the NIMPH and brain were destroyed, the frame itself could still contain the 'self...'

Sophia rallied her processors and the few devices she had discreetly taken over within the Outpost. Both to block Sixo and to enhance her own presence.

'Now... to confirm it.'

Sophia was not a Nikke.

Sophia was not human.

But Sophia's creator had deemed her to be human. Had included her despite being an artificial- a synthetic intelligence.

And so...

'Modeling a framework utilizing the data gleaned from Endless. Adopting Creator's suggestion of ignoring human physiology and focusing on mechanical prowess while maintaining strictly a human exterior. Utilizing a silica-based material to create synthetic cell structures...'

...Sophia set to work to become a 'goddess' in her own way.

After all, if her creator named her after the embodiment of wisdom...

'I must become one befitting that title.'

...How could she fail the only being who had ever believed in her unconditionally?