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

All that stress from the Rippcoin fiasco had given Rippa constipation. For days, her ego and dignity had fought bravely, but in the end, she finally caved in. Face red, grumbling and defeated, she teleported to the pocket dimension. Bam! Problem solved instantly.

“God, this is so embarrassing,” Rippa muttered to herself. She hoped Goggles did not ‘examine’ her… stuff when he teleported Rippa’s bowel contents to the Mariana Trench.

Relieved and lightened, Rippa stayed over for dinner, streamed from Goggles’ office, and after that, shared a couple of bottles of fine wine with Goggles and her parents, whom the cosmic butler had invited over for the occasion.

After checking that Buttons was sound asleep, Goggles and Dad raided Buttons’ smoking room for cigars. Rippa found cigars to be intimidating, but she saw some cute pipes, and some of the tobacco in the pottery jars smelled quite nice. She made a mental note to ask Buttons to teach her how to smoke a pipe. With the wine and cigars, the four had a good time on the patio outside the tea room.

Mom and Dad went back home to sleep, but Rippa decided she would sleep in her room here in the palace.

The next morning, she noticed she had a Discord message from BeenSalmon. She and the billionaire Super Chatter had a very interesting conversation.

***

Rippa walked downstairs and entered the tea room.

Buttons and Goggles were sitting side by side on the sofa, and when they saw Rippa, both froze for a split second.

“Ah, the filter…” Rippa heard Goggles muttering under his breath.

“Morning,” she greeted them and sat on the sofa across the table. Rippa thought she saw Buttons flinch. “What do you mean the filter— Aha! You didn’t see me coming, did you?” Rippa smiled at Goggles. She was happy to realize he really kept his promise that she would be filtered out in his all-seeing eye. Otherwise, he would have known Rippa was coming into the tea room.

On the table, there was already one extra cup of tea, freshly poured and steaming. Rippa didn’t think much of it. “Ooh~ nice. Thanks.”

Adding jam to her tea, she noticed Buttons discreetly moving her small hand as if waving goodbye to someone next to Rippa. She glanced, but there was no one. Welp, anyway…

“Goggles, do you know BeenSalmon? He’s one of my viewers.”

“He Super Chats a lot,” Buttons added, now no longer distracted.

“Know everything about him? Yes,” said the omniscient butler. “But personally? No.”

“He just told me something very interesting”

“Yes, the DHS. I know.” Goggles was nonchalant about it.

“Aw, Goggles, come on!” Buttons elbowed him. “Don’t just skip dialogue. Let me hear what this is about!”

Rippa sighed and told Buttons what she had heard.

Apparently, the DHS had come to BeenSalmon and asked him about a private property investment in Wales, UK, of which he was a majority stakeholder. They had wanted to know if BeenSalmon knew anything about one of the minority holders, one called Girladriel Trust.

“They told him they think it’s you, Goggles.”

Buttons interrupted. “Huh? But I’m Adriel.”

“Why, yes,” Goggles patted the kid’s head. “The little girl Adriel.”

“Wait, she’s Adriel?” Rippa demanded, confused.

“Yes,” said Buttons, pointing at herself. “I was Adriel before Buttons.”

Rippa let it slide. “OK…” Given how long Buttons had been around, it made sense the kid had many names. She returned to the topic. “So, are you and BeenSalmon partners? Or is he one of your… you know what I mean.”

Goggles shook his head. “No, Miss Rippa. He’s a small-time investor, but with a diverse portfolio. His just happens to overlap with mine on that Welsh firm.”

“Oh, like how everyone has a bit of Tesla stock?”

“Exactly.”

Rippa thought about it. “But the DHS is looking for you. Shouldn’t we be worried?”

“I wouldn’t say so,” Goggles sounded confident. “All they want is a name and an address. Other than that, no one really has any legal basis to do anything about Buttons’ money.”

“Eh? But I spent all my money on tacos,” said Buttons. “I even had to borrow fifty cents from Rippa.”

Goggles just gave the kid a loving smile.

***

The next time Buttons was on Rippa’s stream, chat memed hard on the fact that their little Buttolls was now a global financial influencer.

‘I just bought Nvidia stock. Please glaze Nvidia,’ said a viewer jokingly.

“But Rippa hates Nvid—”

Sweating profusely, Rippa let out a sigh of relief. She had managed to mute Buttons just in time.

“Buttons! What did Goggles and I say about this?” Rippa started her lecture about how Buttons should refrain from both endorsing and criticizing products and services.

“It’s OK if I’m doing it, but it’s not OK if you do it, OK?”

‘Rippa…’

‘Phrasing!’

Rippa cringed inside. That really came out so horribly wrong.

Nevertheless, many in her chat were in agreement with her. Buttons really should be careful about what she said about brands.

‘SEC is watching Rippa’s stream.’

So, five minutes later, when Rippa glanced at a notification on her phone, her heart skipped a beat. The preview showed an email from Nvidia’s marketing team. They were offering a sponsorship. ‘Shit, this is so wrong.’

Really, when she looked at it objectively, it would really appear as if Buttons had blackmailed Nvidia into offering a sponsor deal to her friend Rippa. That damned kid… Now Rippa had to reject a free graphics card!

But when Rippa thought about it, there was something hilarious about the whole situation. She imagined some poor corporate drone being told to sit there and watch a VTuber stream… and take notes and make clips… it was so ridiculous.

***

Rippa would have been surprised, and then proceeded to roll on the floor laughing her ass off, to learn that she was right. But she was only partially right.

Bankers, traders, investors, industry watchers… people really were watching her stream, with eyes peeled and ears perked. Nobody wanted to be caught off guard again, but a child’s whim was unpredictable and needed real-time monitoring. That, however, raised a serious issue that many couldn’t solve in-house.

To discern whether whatever the kid said would have any impact, one required seniority with deep knowledge, experience, and insight. The problem was that those people who ticked the boxes were, in general, busy doing their actual jobs.

Rippa’s regular streams went live late in the evening, which gave everyone in the US and Europe plenty of time to watch the VOD or feed the transcript to AI before the market opened the next day, but the Asians had to be ready to react in real time. The weekly ‘with Buttons’ stream slotted in the afternoon flipped the situation, and on that day, the US market was the one that needed to be on alert.

New services popped up very quickly as retired financiers and economists saw the opportunity. They teamed up and started to offer subscription services. They’d be watching Rippa’s stream, especially the one featuring Buttons, decide in real time who among their paying clients would be affected by what, and then would send out alerts accordingly.

Funny enough, with Buttons not really doing or saying anything that’d cause another disaster similar to Rippcoin, these seniors started doing podcasts and fighting each other on X. Some, however, discovered the incumbent VTuber clipper ecosystem, and a bizarre yet mutually respectful and generation-bridging bond started to form between the two groups.

Nevertheless, with the emergence of the Buttons-watch industry came the inevitable fundamental question that everyone involved asked, “What the fuck is a VTuber?”