Chat, My Friend is a Literal God. What Do I Do?

Rippa changed the slide to the second question and waited for the Twitch ad break to be over.

“Now we have some idea of what you are, let’s move on to the next question. Why are you guys here?” Rippa got to the point right away.

Buttons shrugged. “I could, of course, go live on Mars myself, but that’d defeat the whole point of me being Buttons.”

It took some seconds for Rippa to realize what the kid meant. “You mean living as the Scottish girl?” Her avatar quickly faced the audience. “By the way, chat, Buttons is Scottish.”

That information confused the hell out of her chat, but Rippa continued, “So basically, you are here because you want to pretend you are the girl—”

“No pretend!” Buttons huffed.

“‘Continuing’ would be a better wording,” Goggles said.

This felt… personal, Rippa thought. She didn’t want to upset Buttons on stream, so she moved on to Goggles.

“What about you, Goggles? The other day, you told me you came sometime around the 16th century.”

“Yes, around that time,” Goggles nodded. “I am here because Buttons is here.”

“Where were you before then?”

“I wasn’t.”

Rippa blinked. “Wasn’t what?”

Her chat was also spamming the question mark.

“Ah, I see,” Goggles nodded to himself as if he had just realized why Rippa was having a hard time understanding him. Had he not stopped reading her mind, he would have realized sooner.

He continued, “It is very simple. Buttons had been at the lowest of the low on the societal ladder for thousands of years, so she just could not even imagine something like me.”

Rippa blinked again. ‘Fuck, there’s a lot to unpack here.’ She studied the two video feeds on her monitor. Buttons was blushing and fidgeting.

“Granted, there always had been roles similar to mine,” Goggles went on, “but it was during the Italian Renaissance that she could finally conceptualize… servitude not bound by slavery, serfdom, or bloodline.”

“What do you even mean?” Rippa demanded. This was confusing as fuck.

“Such as bankers, accountants, lawyers, majordomos—”

“Butler!”

Goggles nodded. “Obligations, not imposed, but taken.”

“Wait, wait, wait…” Rippa held her hands up, but the avatar hadn’t been rigged to do that, so it didn’t show on stream. “You are saying… Buttons made you? That Buttons?”

Buttons’ face went beet red. “I was lonely and tired.”

But Goggles objected to that notion. “Not exactly, Miss Rippa. Buttons did not create me. She made what I am.”

“So Buttons is the god?”

Buttons and Goggles sighed at the same time.

“Miss Rippa, we are circling back to that question.”

“And, no, Rippa. I’m not a god.”

Rippa took a deep breath in. She glanced at her chat. There was a heated battle between armchair philosophers amidst wild reactions. She decided to ignore the ongoing chaos. She took another deep breath.

“Right… So Goggles is here because Buttons is here. And Buttons is here because… the girl.”

“Yes!” Buttons beamed. “You got it, Rippa!”

“That’s it?”

“Yeah, that’s it.”

“No other reasons?”

“Nope.”

Rippa frowned and scratched her cheek. Surely, there had to be more than that? “So… what do you want from us humans?”

Buttons looked puzzled. “Why would I want anything from humans? I’m already busy being Buttons.”

Goggles frowned. “Buttons, that came off rather condescending.”

“Oh, sorry, chat. Didn’t mean to belittle you.”

Rippa’s chat face-palmed as one. This kid was a menace.

“Okay… I guess that’s it then.”

Rippa changed the slide. She, as a member of mankind, also felt her ego bruised a little. She made a mental note to tell Buttons to be mindful of how she worded things.

The third page read, ‘What’s your plan going forward?’

“Buttons. Goggles. What now?” Rippa asked bluntly. “Are you guys gonna hang around? Study humans and that kinda thing?”

Buttons laughed. “Rippa, I’ve lived among humans for… for…”

“Three thousand,” Goggles came to the rescue.

“Yes, for three thousand years. I probably know about humanity more than you guys.”

“OK, then. What’s the plan?”

The kid shrugged. “I don’t have any particular plan.”

“Why not? Not even Disneyland?”

“Ah, that kind of plan? Sure. Let’s go. But what I meant is I don’t have any goals.”

“Goals?”

“Goggles, take over, please.” Buttons offloaded the job.

“What Buttons means is,” Goggles slid in immediately, “a plan generally comes with an end state, and often some schedule, no matter how vague. But when you live as long as she does, none of that applies.”

“Why not?” Rippa asked, but she couldn’t help but feel a sense of something deep and unsettling.

“Things come and go,” said Buttons, forgetting that she had tasked Goggles to handle the question. “I make something, it’s gone the next day. I do something, I can do it again and again anytime I want.”

‘Meaningless!’ Rippa finally put her finger on it. ‘She feels meaningless!’ Then she remembered what Buttons had said during the meal at the Indian restaurant. ‘God, she meant it that way.’

“So, I think I’ll just wing it,” Buttons was saying, “and just enjoy every moment as best as I can.” She then flashed a smile. “It’s actually quite liberating.”

“Liberating how?” asked Rippa.

Buttons was now back to her excited kid self. “I mean, now I don’t have to worry about being discovered! No more walking on eggshells! Can you imagine doing that for thousands of years?”

“No… I can’t.” Rippa shook her head.

“And Madam J.D. can now accompany me, and you’ll just go, ‘Oh, that’s that Buttons kid,’ and move on.” She was smiling so big, even thinking about such freedom. She looked straight into the camera. “So, chat, when you see me, please don’t mind me. I’m just taking a stroll.”

Goggles chimed in, too. “I, too, am very much relieved. To be honest, every second she was out there was a nail-biting moment for me.”

“I can see why.” Rippa nodded.

“Now that Miss Pendrake could just level a city block with her Noble Phantasm, we no longer need to resort to brawls. Buttons is now much safer than ever before.”

“Oh, by the way, chat,” said Rippa, feeling the need to provide context. “Miss Pendrake is the bodyguard. The other Racist Taco Truck Girl. The blond one.”

Those who had only tuned in to watch the Q&A stream, who made up the vast majority of the current viewers, were completely puzzled as to why Rippa’s chat was spamming ‘Hayasaka!’

Rippa noticed Buttons yawning. The kid needed to rest.

“I guess we wrap it up here. Maybe do another one in the future?”

“Oh, absolutely,” said Goggles, nodding and answering for Buttons. “We are not going anywhere soon. Besides, this streaming thing has been quite an amusing experience.”

“So, guys, any final words?”

Buttons smiled and looked into her camera. “Everyone, Yoroshiku onegaishimasu!

Rippa burst out laughing. “Hahaha. OK, Goggles?”

“It has been fun. Miss Rippa, you have done a fantastic job today.”

“Thank you.”

“I hope this… what she is… does not come between your friendship.”

“No, it won’t, Goggles,” Rippa said firmly. “I promise.”

The butler gave a genuine smile.

“Goggles, we are OK. We will be OK,” Rippa assured him.

“Yes, Goggles, we will be fine,” Buttons chimed in.

“Right. Buttons, Miss Rippa, I look forward to exciting days ahead. Let’s keep going. Good luck.”

Rippa ended the call. Her friends’ faces disappeared from the screen. She exhaled deeply, suddenly feeling drained. After all, this had been a huge stream.

VTuber Rippin’ Rippa addressed her audience. “That’ll be all for today, chat. I’m taking a break this week. I will be back on Monday with regular streams.”

Rippa paused for a moment. ‘What a day.’

“So, yeah. Chat, my friend is a literal god. What do I do?”

Her chat, at first, just spammed LOL. But then someone wrote ‘Good luck. Have fun.’ It spread like wildfire, and eventually, everyone was typing GLHF.

Rippa smiled, changed the OBS scene to her stream-ending scene, and played the outro song.

“Tilde scampers away~ tilde~”

***

As soon as Rippa ended the stream, she immediately opened Twitch in a new browser tab and went straight to Asmongold’s channel.

‘Oh my god, oh my god, he watched my channel!’ She was so excited, her heart was racing.

“-That’s right. Listen, boys, here’s what’s going to happen,” one of the biggest streamers on Twitch was saying to his chat.

On his main screen, Rippa’s YouTube channel was open. His cam on the bottom left showed him sipping Capri Sun through a straw.

“Clip it and come back in a few months, and you all will know I was right. I’m always right. And— oh, yeah, most humble, yeah, that, too.”

After taking another sip of Capri Sun, he continued, “I guarantee you there’ll be porn of the kid on Bluesky. Absolutely. 100%. Two, activists and religious nutjobs will claim she’s theirs. Mark my words, there will be cults.”

‘What the fuck?’ Rippa was stunned.

The Twitch streamer continued with his predictions. “Reddit will open a change-dot-org petition and demand the kid free Palestine, oh yeah, they will. Crypto bros gonna launch meme coins and scam a shit ton of your money.”

Rippa was speechless. ‘No way, that’s gonna happen,’ she thought. She listened to the man’s predictions for a few more seconds, but couldn’t watch anymore. She closed the tab.

‘Why are his predictions all so cynical?’

***

DeAndre and Jamal had just finished watching the stream together. They were speechless, to say the least.

“The kid was a literal god?” Jamal couldn’t believe it.

“Come on, let’s see what FOX says,” DeAndre urged, but picked up the remote himself and switched the input source on Jamal’s smart TV.

“-But, Jessy, the Capri Sun—,” a woman’s off-screen voice was talking to a man’s face.

“Look, anyone can post a photo of Capri Sun on X and caption it ‘I got it, too,’” said the man named Jessy dismissively.

“But the virtual YouTuber teleported behind the girl?”

“Pre-recorded clip. Heck, I’m sure our production team can do a better job than that. Look, why should we believe a person who doesn’t even show their face?”

DeAndre and Jamal exchanged looks.

Jessy on TV continued, “Look, it’s obvious to me. This virtual YouTuber and the man, Goggles, are clearly exploiting the little girl. She’s likable, yes, so by posting some AI videos and this interview, they are manufacturing the virality—”

“Bullshit!” DeAndre couldn’t take it anymore. He stood up, shaking. “We saw it with our own eyes, didn’t we, bro? I was pushed by the Jedi Force! I felt it with my own body!”

Without a word, Jamal just changed the channel to CNN.

“-The girl just proved that Christianity is a fake narrative made up by white men to suppress women and people of color—”

Jamal switched the channel again.

“-And he just brushed off the impotence joke, which means he’s non-binary coded—”

Jamal turned off the TV.

The two remained silent for a good ten seconds, and then DeAndre finally opened his mouth.

“Bro, are we all insane?”

***

To Rippa’s dismay, her Q&A stream received a boatload of criticism from all corners of the internet. Only her fans were saying nice things about how she handled the interview, for which she was grateful.

The biggest complaint was about the amount of time she spent on Buttons, when Goggles was clearly the one with the superpower. Rippa felt that was unfair. The interview was never about supernatural powers, and if someone was more interested in a power fantasy, then they were missing the whole point. As far as Rippa was concerned, Buttons and Goggles were a two-in-one package. And since the kid was the face of the two, Rippa felt it was appropriate that Buttons got more airtime.

‘Dude, god-tier cosmic visitors are going by ridiculous names like Buttons and Goggles, and you didn’t think to ask them why?’ OK, Rippa conceded to that. That was a valid criticism. She made a mental note to ask Buttons about it.

Another big complaint came from her haters. ‘Gods are coming out of the closet, and the first thing they meet is a Nazi? Is that how we want us to be represented?’ Rippa, of course, paid no attention to them, for, one, she wasn’t a Nazi to begin with, and, two, it was pointless arguing with these people.

The pattern-recognition crowd was also unhappy about the stream. They didn’t say it outright, but Rippa could pick up from the nuances that they had wanted the disabled, vulnerable child to cry on stream and talk about how she had feared for her life at the hands of the violent mob. Rippa was especially bitter about this one.

Overall, Rippa was quite disappointed. Yes, the stream was big. Everyone was talking about it, but nobody was talking about the real Buttons and Goggles. They only talked about what they wanted. This was disheartening. She had thought others would also love her friends, for Rippa generally tried to be a decent person, and a decent person shared good stuff with others.