“Mmmmm!” Dagger-chan hummed, still enjoying her steak.
Anytime now, I silently urged. No need to let me know how good it is! In fact, the longer you enjoy it, the less believable the memory loss is going to be!
She flashed me a thumbs-up.
No! No thumbs-up! Hurry up and say the line! I know you like the steak, stop just making a face like it’s the best thing you’ve ever eaten! What was this girl doing? Don’t tell me the only thing she’d forgotten was the plan!
I looked at her, making a face to say, Come on! What are you doing?!
She held out a forkful my way. “Say, ‘Aaah.’”
“No!” I yelled. I added my arms to the effort, gesturing wildly in an effort to get her to understand.
“O-Oh! M-My head! My memories! Wh-What’s happening?!”
Finally, with only a little bit of finagling, Dagger-chan managed to reclaim and revert to her most comfortable, memory-deficient state.
: WHAT
: they fkin got us again boys
: i am dying LMAOOO
: hol up
: I knew something was up
As expected, the chat did not take the twist lying down, but as the stream progressed and their surprise wore off, they comfortably settled into a state of contentment as they watched over their adorable mascot, Dagger-chan.
In the end, the ultimate Hamburg steak plan was what we in the industry called a smashing success.
Dagger-chan still not normal, though.
After the stream ended, Dagger-chan approached me as I was getting ready to leave and apologized. “This is probably too little, too late, but I’m sorry for dragging you into my mess, Master.”
“Too late, yes. Too little, no,” I reassured her. “I told you it’s fine. I’m partially responsible, after all.”
She looked relieved. “You really are a master, Master! I’ve always been like this, you know. When I find something I want to do, I just hyperfixate and get tunnel vision...”
“I’m well aware.”
“Oh...”
“I don’t think that’s a bad thing. It just means you have drive.”
“But I make so much trouble for everyone.”
“It’s not trouble. Think about it—did I, Tadasu-chan, Sensei, or even the viewers seem even slightly upset about how everything turned out?”
“I guess not...”
There was a brief pause.
“Master?”
“Oh, sorry. I was just thinking,” I said, jarred back to reality. Specifically, I’d been thinking about how recent events, today’s stream, and my remarks just now had brought me one step closer to my other goal: uncovering exactly what made Dagger-chan tick.
Dagger-chan was no normal girl. That had already been evident the moment she’d made it into Live-On. But what specifically set her apart? What was that unique talent that earned her a place here? I felt like I was on the verge of answering this question, just one puzzle piece away.
Just then, Dagger-chan glanced at her phone. “Oh! My manager just texted me. She said, ‘Good job, Little Miss Chaos!’” She tilted the screen towards me. “All right! Guess who’s not getting fired today!”
At that moment, the final puzzle piece clicked into place, delivered unexpectedly by the very men and women Dagger-chan had feared would discard her.
“Little Miss...Chaos?” I said.
“Yeah! She calls me that whenever she has something nice to say about me. I don’t really get it. Seems like a weird turn of phrase.”
Of course. How had I missed it?
“Dagger-chan,” I said. “I finally figured it out.”
“Ah? Figured what out?”
“The reason you’re here—in Live-On.”
“What? We’ve been over this. I don’t have anything like that. That’s why we went to such lengths to do something as inexplicable as recover my amnesia in the first place, remember?”
“Yes, but no! I get it now—after seeing that text! You, Dagger-chan, are warm and fuzzy chaos!”
Her eyes shot open. “Ah?”
...And she tilted her head in confusion. Darn. Really thought that would’ve been a proper eureka moment. Oh, well. My bad for trying to sound dramatic.
“L-Let me explain,” I said. “First, you’re here in Live-On because you embody ‘chaos,’ like so many of your peers.”
“Huh? But I’m not like you with StroZero. I’m not like Sei-sama with her filthy humor. And I’m definitely not like Alice-chan with her complete rejection of reality!”
“Yes, but you have your own brand of chaos, no less potent or unique than any of theirs. The only difference is in how it manifests.”
“M-Manifests?”
“That’s right. You, Dagger-chan, have the all-important ability to leverage your chaos to create heartwarmingness!”
Her eyes shot open again. “Leverage my what to create what?!”
“Heartwarmingness! Unlike the rest of us, who are only capable of leveraging chaos to create other things—mainly comedy—you’re different! That makes you not only deserving of your place here, but utterly irreplaceable!”
She paused for a moment. “I think Tadasu-chan and Sensei also said something similar once...” She gestured towards her phone again. “So this text that I thought was praising me for keeping up my act...”
“Is actually praising you for being you! She’s saying, ‘Great Live-Onning, Live-Onner!’ I’m sure of it!”
“Heartwarmingness, huh? I’m not sure how I feel about that.”
“Why? What’s wrong with heartwarmingness?”
“You’re right... You’re right!!!” Her voice jumped an octave, and she started bouncing on the balls of her feet like a little bunny.
Good. It seemed she’d finally begun to recognize her worth. “But don’t just take my word for it. Talk with your genmates, your manager. You might be surprised to hear what they have to say.”
“Now that I think about it, I don’t think I’ve actually ever discussed this with them before. My genmates are...well, they’re them. And discussing the whole ‘getting fired’ thing with my manager really wasn’t going to happen.”
“Right...”
“So should I still talk to them?”
“Absolutely,” I answered immediately, as if to give her a swift shove from behind. “Because this is Live-On, isn’t it? Your beloved, dearest Live-On!”
“True!”
That smile that spread across Dagger-chan’s face as she embraced herself was blinding, radiant—a blessing upon this poor, tired soul.
“Wait.” She paused. “Doesn’t this mean I can stop pretending to have amnesia?”
“It...might,” I said hesitantly. “Yeah. I guess it does.” I felt a pang of disappointment. “Are you going to?”
“Nope!” she said decisively, as if to cut through my dismay with her resolve. She followed up with a vigorous shake of her head. “Call me sentimental, but the amnesia’s what got me into Live-On, so I’m sticking with it. Plus, accepting it completely means I can now have fun with it, instead of dancing around it like some kind of land mine. But most importantly,” she added, her voice swelling with gratitude, “it’s something Tadasu-chan, Sensei, and you, Master, have worked so hard to protect! How could I just throw something like that away?”
There it was. That cheat ability from Dagger-chan I’d come to expect. The uncanny capability to carry out precision strikes on my emotions every time. In a good way, of course.
I remembered Dagger-chan had once said that joining Live-On was a dream come true. That had made me worry. It’d made me worry that when the initial high wore off, when the honeymoon began to lose its luster, that she would find herself in a tough position. But now, with her newfound attitude, she’d be all right. And while that day might still come—no one knows when tribulation will rear its ugly head—I was confident that when it did, Dagger-chan could now meet it with her head held high, whipping together some more of her chaos to bring the matter to a warm and fuzzy ending.
Dagger-chan was a whirlwind of chaos, warmth, and wholesomeness. A whirlwind that, as gen five had so aptly put it during their debut, would take Live-On by storm.