38. The New Normal
Unlike in anime and manga, Rippa’s life did not revolve around Buttons. She had her own stuff to take care of on top of VTuber-related business. Chores, groceries, picking up parcels from her P.O. box, and mowing the lawn. All of which needed to be done before dinner time so she could be ready for her daily stream at nine.
When her stream ended around midnight, Rippa would spend an hour or two chilling in her bed before falling asleep. Or she would pop into the beach lounge for a late-night tropical cocktail, or visit the palace’s tea room for a cup of black tea and jam. She would then take a bath and sleep in her ‘guest’ room for the night. Sometimes Dad would come over, too, and have a beer or two with Goggles. Much to Dad’s delight, he found Buttons’ pipe-smoking room not only contained pipes and tobacco, but also cigars.
For Rippa’s convenience, Goggles added an Ethernet connection in the pocket dimension. Rippa would just ask a maid, who would then spawn a small, bright jelly ball. It was bright so as to maximize visibility and prevent Rippa or Buttons from accidentally kicking it or tripping over it. That had actually happened, hence the bright color. To use it, Rippa would just plug her LAN cable into the jelly, and the rest would be taken care of by magic.
Whatever magic Goggles employed, he also took care of Rippa’s batteries. Laptops, phones, tablets, and even adult toys would never run out of juice. Mom would occasionally pop in for a few seconds just to top up her phone’s battery.
It was during this time that Rippa got Buttons’ news mostly from X and TikTok, not the kid herself. Whenever Rippa had some time to spare and chill in the pocket dimension, on about half the occasions, it was either past Buttons’ bedtime, or the kid was out for an adventure in the real people’s world. But they did hang out and chat when Buttons was awake and around.
“See, Rippa? People really leave me alone,” Buttons gloated one day, but the evidence told a different story.
Some random person would post a photo of Buttons walking down the street, accompanied by either Madam J.D., Miss Pendrake, or Goggles himself. Sometimes it was a photo of Buttons slumped on a park bench, taking a nap. Or a short video edit of various clips of dogs and cats, and even pigeons, standing at attention and saluting the child as she passed by. With dramatic music, of course.
“You don’t mind all these people surrounding you and filming you?” asked Rippa.
“Huh? They do that?”
Goggles chimed in with an explanation. “Well, Miss Rippa, when you go out on a picnic and sit down to have a snack, do you pay attention to a column of ants watching you?”
“Bruh…”
But the butler went on, “You likely won’t even register their presence until they get up on your sandwich.”
“Goggles, stop.”
“Similarly, when you visit a chicken farm, the chickens are just the background, unless there is one special chicken that stands out.”
Rippa took great offense to that. “So, I’m the special chicken?”
And here, much to Rippa’s joy, Goggles lost his composure. “No, no, no. Let’s not put it like that.”
And, of course, subreddits were created. Both Buttons and Goggles had one each. Whereas the kid’s subreddit was more along the lines of ‘Ooh, kawaiii~’ and ‘So cute,’ Goggles’ was about fifty percent simping and fifty percent ‘bro is Gigachad.’
Unsurprisingly, Buttons_NSFW had also been created, only to be nuked within thirty minutes, but the very fact that it had spawned sparked an intense discourse, precisely because Buttons was not a human. It was the anime loli debate all over again. Rippa, being a VTuber piloting an anime character herself, made the wise decision and stayed out of the shitshow. Of course, nobody paid attention to the fact that Buttons_NSFW was a parody subreddit for literal buttons.
When NASA caved under public pressure and released the photo from Curiosity, another round of debate kicked off. The image of a child greeting humanity from Mars was surreal, to say the least, but the discourse centered around the need for space programs.
The pro side argued about the net positive effects on science, engineering, and technological advancement, which Rippa thought was quite reasonable.
The opposition argued about the time and money spent on sending stuff out into space, which was also quite reasonable in Rippa’s opinion, but the central argument, ‘What’s the point when Goggles can just teleport?’ rubbed her the wrong way. She was very disappointed, and embarrassed even, that nobody questioned whether Goggles would actually comply with requests and teleport shit into space for mankind.
When Rippa apologized to Goggles for such an entitled attitude from her fellow humans, he looked at her with a straight face.
“Miss Rippa, I do understand the embarrassment, but I will not accept the apology. Please do not let anyone, including yourself, shoehorn you into the role of a representative.”
“Yeah,” Buttons also agreed. “I talk to Filippa the Rippa, not Filippa the messenger.”
Setting Mars aside, the kid was everywhere. On the streets, in the parks, at anime conventions… She even popped up in Beijing and Tokyo.
Wherever she went, X and TikTok and Instagram would document every second of her presence. The photos of Buttons hugging DeAndre and Jamal, and Miss Pendrake politely bowing to the two, went viral and were warmly received by many.
One man, in particular, struck gold when a portal opened smack-dab right in front of him while he was taking a video of two street pigeons fighting. He filmed Buttons all the way up until the moment the portal closed behind her. It was through this video posted on X that Rippa learned what Buttons actually did when she was out in the world.
In this particular video, filmed in a city far away from Rippa’s, Buttons stepped out of the portal with Miss Pendrake. The kid was, once again, in her hiking getup. Sweater, coat, hat, muffler, the crossbody bag, and all. Paying no attention to the cameras surrounding her, Buttons then returned the salute from the two pigeons and walked down the sidewalk. She would frequently stop to allow Miss Pendrake some time to examine parked cars. The blond girl seemed especially satisfied with Aston Martins and Jaguars, but somewhat disapproving of Minis.
The two then came across a big shopping mall. Buttons and Miss Pendrake went up the escalator to the second floor and then immediately came back down. They repeated this a dozen times and left the mall.
Buttons then found a park and sat on a bench with her bodyguard. There, she fished out a thermos and two sandwiches wrapped in oiled paper from her bag. They sat there and ate the sandwiches with tea from the thermos. Once done eating, Madam J.D. walked out of a portal with two maids in tow. One was carrying a water jug, and the other a porcelain bowl. There, the Jedi nanny held Buttons’ jaw firmly and brushed the kid’s teeth. Buttons washed her mouth and chin with the water from the jug and spat it out into the bowl. The doll maids then left through a portal.
At this point, people had gathered the courage and asked for selfies, and Buttons allowed people to sit beside her and take photos of themselves. A couple of police officers came, but they didn’t do much. They nevertheless stayed so the crowd wouldn’t do anything stupid like stomping on a disabled child’s head or that sort of thing.
As people lined up to take selfies with the god child, the child in question started to doze off, and within minutes fell asleep, her head slumped against Miss Pendrake. The bodyguard stayed perfectly still for the next thirty minutes, except for one time when somebody approached her and showed his Fate/Grand Order roster. Miss Pendrake looked at the phone screen, looked back up, and gave a thumbs-up before returning to being a statue. The cameraman had the mind to speed up the napping segment by 8x before uploading it to X, and when Buttons woke up, the video slowed back down to show the kid yawning and stretching. And then Buttons left through a portal.
Needless to say, Rippa was underwhelmed. ‘That’s it? That’s all she does?’