17. Shit Teleporting and Mind Reading
‘Rippa, your little ojousama…’
As soon as Rippa started her stream, her chat demanded her side of the story.
“-And so, yeah, my friend picked up Buttons, and we got the fuck out of the place,” Rippa explained.
She had rehearsed her version of the event. In it, there were four people in the group standing in line at the taco truck. Rippa herself, Buttons, Buttons’ blond bodyguard girl, and a high school friend, the one with the mask. Rippa wasn’t going to name her friend, for obvious reasons, which her viewers accepted.
The high school friend was, of course, completely made up, but Rippa thought that it would throw people off the right track in identifying who in the video was Rippin’ Rippa. She was, of course, aware that if people scrutinized DeAndre’s full video really carefully, they would notice Buttons had been in a group of three, not four. That was, in its own way, good so. More confusion, more questions.
Her chat ate it up. They were now berating Rippa and her friend, two grown-ass women, for letting two kids they were responsible for get into a brawl. Rippa got extra flak for the ‘fact’ that it was her high school friend, not Rippa herself, who plucked Buttons out of the scene and ran away. Now, Rippa could live with that criticism.
‘Rippa, you were supposed to be the kid’s babysitter! Not your friend,’ a viewer wrote in chat.
‘Fail!’
“Yeah, yeah, I’m sorry. But I was scared!” Rippa felt she was regaining control. Well, not of the whole shitshow regarding Buttons being labeled a white supremacist neo-Nazi, but at least she had her identity under control.
Thankfully, Rippa didn’t have to fight with her chat about the Racist Taco Truck Girl narrative. They were overwhelmingly of the opinion that Buttons acted in self-defense and did nothing wrong. After all, someone who would think Buttons’ actions were a hate crime wouldn’t have been a Rippa viewer to begin with.
And her chat inevitably gravitated toward Miss Pendrake. The idea of a pretty yet deadly middle schooler being a bodyguard for a little one-legged ojousama was… it was so fucking anime.
“Look, chat, yes, she’s an employee. No, I’m not gonna name her,” Rippa told her viewers.
Chat even gave Miss Pendrake a nickname, Hayasaka. And when one artist in Rippa’s Discord uploaded fan art and said, “Guys, it’s super easy. Just draw Saber, and you are done,” the Discord server experienced a brief fad of the Hayasaka Fanart Challenge. Everyone just copy-pasted whatever Saber fan art they could find, but captioned it ‘Hayasaka,’ which confused the heck out of those who had somehow managed to miss the whole Racist Taco Truck Girl incident. Moderators stepped in and put a stop to it when people started uploading doujin pages.
***
Rippa quickly got used to streaming from Goggles’ office in the palace. Goggles was kind enough to spawn another duplicate of her streaming setup in the beach lounge, which let Rippa stream from a much cozier and more relaxed setting. The sound of the waves was a bit problematic, though, and Rippa fiddled with audio settings and plug-ins to filter out the background noise. All that tinkering, however, couldn’t handle Buttons.
The little kid loved watching Rippa streaming, and more often than not, she laughed too loudly, or blurted out comments, or pointed at something on the screen.
Rippa’s chat was initially confused by this sudden addition of child noises in the background, but they soon realized it was the little ojousama. Thereafter, whenever they heard Buttons in the background, Rippa’s chat would spam ‘Ojousama!’ or ‘Buttolls!’ in the same way they spammed ‘Mamapin!’ or ‘Papapin!’
Rippa usually streamed after dinner, starting around nine in the evening. Buttons would either watch the stream on YouTube or sit behind Rippa, but at around ten, Madam J.D. would come, and the kid would say good night and go to bed. She would then catch the rest of the stream by watching the VOD or clips in the morning. And when Buttons bid goodnight, Rippa and her chat would also say ‘Good night, Buttolls.’
Rippa herself made the mistake of audibly thanking Goggles for bringing a glass of water. Buttons made it worse by immediately pointing it out.
“Rippa! Now chat’s going to ask you who Goggles is!”
‘Who’s Goggles?’
“Why, thank you, Buttons,” Rippa sighed. “Well, chat, yes, he’s the butler.”
***
On the fourth night at the palace, after ending the stream, Rippa was getting ready for bed when somebody knocked on her door.
“Come in,” said Rippa, curious as to who it was.
A wooden doll maid walked in with a silk pouch in her hand. She gave a polite semi-bow, walked straight into the bathroom, and put the pouch in the mirror cabinet above the sink. The maid then bowed and left.
Rippa was, naturally, immensely curious, and she rushed to check what was in the pouch. Inside was a wad of clean menstrual pads.
‘Oh…’ Rippa blinked. ‘Wait, hang on, it’s about time.’
So she sat on the toilet and peeled the backing off the pad, and then—
‘Wait!’
Rippa gasped. She just realized one very important detail that she had paid no attention to.
From the very first day she came to play with Buttons. Meals. Drinks. Snacks. At the beach and in the palace. She had never visited the toilet. There had simply been… no need.
She rushed out of the room and barged into Goggles’ office. She was so focused, she didn’t even notice the marble soldier moving his spear out of the way and opening the door for her.
Goggles was sitting at the desk. He was in the middle of signing a dozen or so separate taxable income reports. He stopped and looked up from the documents.
“Goggles!” Rippa shook her fist clutching a pad. “What are you doing to me?”
Goggles put a finger to his lips. “Miss Rippa, Buttons is sleeping in the next room.”
Rippa lowered her volume by a notch. “Why does a doll know I need this?”
For some seconds, Goggles looked at the pad in Rippa’s fist. He leaned back in his chair. “I see everything.”
“What do you mean? Like an X-ray?”
“Well, that, too.” He shrugged. “But in a more… broader sense.”
“Please! What do you mean?” Rippa demanded.
Goggles seemed reluctant to answer, but he sighed and decided Rippa deserved to know. “Miss Rippa, I see everything. Literally.”
“Like what?”
“Like… in an all-seeing-eye way. Ah!” He just found a good analogy. “Like Sauron—, wait, no, give me a second…”
But that was enough for Rippa to understand what he meant. And, to be honest, it kinda made sense. How else would he run the place, or beam Rippa up and down?
“Well, hrmph, but this is quite embarrassing!” Rippa shook her fist again, saw the pad, and shoved it in her pants pocket.
“Ah, please do not worry about that. It is not as if I looked inside your uterus. I would not need to do that. I just detected the hormonal shift, that is all.”
‘What the…’ Rippa opened her mouth, but was at a loss for words. “Okay… thanks, I guess?” she tried, not fully convinced whether to be OK with it. “Ah, there’s one more thing.”
“Yes, Miss Rippa?”
“Have you been doing something to…” Here, Rippa had to pause. Now, how was she supposed to word this without mentioning shit, piss, and toilets? “To my body?” Rippa settled on that.
“Such as?”
Rippa gave up. “Look, I haven’t been to the toilet for a while. I didn’t even pee or… poop.”
“Ah, that,” Goggles nodded knowingly, “I just do what I do with Buttons. I teleport the… waste to the Mariana Trench.”
“You teleport my shit?” Rippa yelled but hushed down quickly. “You teleport it straight out of my body?”
“Would you rather sit on the toilet?” Goggles asked in return.
“No, but it’s… embarrassing!”
Goggles just looked at her.
“So… you will stop doing that, yes?” Rippa ventured.
“Hmm, well, if that is what you want… But mind you, Miss Rippa, you will be the only person in this place that actually uses the toilet, and the maids clean every—”
“Yeah, never mind.” Rippa gave up. “But please… promise me you won’t look, OK?”
***
Having returned to her room and padded up for the imminent monthly event, Rippa lay in bed, thinking.
When she thought about it, Goggles teleporting shit and piss straight from Rippa’s belly to the Mariana Trench sounded quite plausible. After all, if Goggles could beam Rippa up and down at will, surely he could do the same in a more localized way with excrement.
In hindsight, she also realized she had never seen Buttons visit a bathroom. In fact, the whole place had lacked toilets up until Rippa asked about it when Buttons and Goggles were showing her her room. Goggles not only spawned one in Rippa’s room, but also in other guest rooms and all over the place, which nobody really used except when Mom and Dad came to check up on Rippa. She decided not to tell her parents about the shit-teleporting stuff because… well, they’d freak out.
She came to the conclusion that by giving Rippa the same convenience Buttons enjoyed, Goggles was just doing her a favor out of goodwill, despite being very intrusive at the same time. She also realized Goggles had been limiting that ‘favor’ to during Rippa’s visit only, because she went to the toilet as usual when she was at home.
‘This could be quite useful,’ Rippa thought. If she were ever constipated, she could just pay a visit to Buttons’ palace, and Goggles would take care of—
‘Fuck, what am I thinking!’
From then on, Rippa started to pay closer attention. Small, mundane things that one would normally overlook, but thinking about them would reveal an immense power, and, more importantly, care.
The first of those things that she immediately noticed was the maids. They just popped up or appeared, without Buttons ever calling them. For example, Buttons would be playing in the sand, filling a toy truck with sand, but then a maid, seemingly unprompted, would walk up to her with a glass of pineapple juice, and Buttons would, without even looking, just take a big sip through a straw. Rippa at first suspected Buttons called the maid through telepathy, but the more she observed, the more it looked as if the maids were reading Buttons’ mind at all times.
The more Rippa observed, the surer she became. Buttons did not even need to articulate what she wanted or needed. The whole place… just knew what the kid needed even before Buttons knew it herself.
And that led to Rippa realizing she herself had been taken care of in the same manner. Up until she had invited Buttons to her room. Up to then, maids would just pop up and give her the exact soda she had been craving. Or snacks. Or a tissue to blow her nose. Now, thinking about it, all that vanished after Buttons came to play in Rippa’s room. Since that day, the maids just offered a menu on an iPad. Or Rippa had to specifically tell them what she wanted.
‘They stopped reading my mind!’ Rippa concluded.
But what did it mean? Why did they stop? She confronted Goggles about it.
“Your family thought we were dangerous aliens. Yet Buttons was not only welcomed in your home, but your mother also took her to the playground and allowed Buttons to mingle with human children,” Goggles explained. “Such trust should be reciprocated, don’t you agree?”
Rippa thought about it for some seconds. Goggles stopped reading her mind because he had come to trust her. ‘Wait, so my privacy isn’t the reason?’
“You stopped reading my mind because you trust I won’t be a threat?”
Goggles shrugged. “Well, you did come armed with guns. Oh, by the way,” Goggles extended his hand. On his palm, two firing pins appeared. “I forgot to give these back. Here you go.”
Rippa gulped and took them. ‘Motherfucker… Hang on!’
“Wait, you know we think you are aliens?” Rippa then regretted asking the obvious. If Goggles had read her mind, of course, he would have known it.
“Well, Miss Rippa, even without reading your mind, it would have been a pretty natural assumption to make, no?”
Rippa conceded. Any human person would have automatically concluded they were encountering aliens.
“What’s more important to me is that you, Mamapin, and Papapin all treat Buttons as if she were a real human child. For that, I am very grateful.”
‘Sleek. Very sleek,’ Rippa thought. “So… are you? Are you guys aliens? Which planet are you from?”
“What do you think?”
“What do I think?”
Goggles grinned, which was rare. “How would I know?”