With the advent of the Seiyuu Surveillance Society, seiyuu lost all privacy. They were duty-bound to submit biological and positional data in real time via social media. Over time, seiyuu began publicizing information beyond that of their own accord. The more info they put out, the more it made them seem harmless, the more it showed they were up to nothing suspicious, and if you didn’t do these things you’d never get popular and be able to support yourself.
One thing this led to was a culture of yuri-baiting among the female seiyuu. “Yuri” referred to friendship and romance between two women. Same-sex relationships, as long as they had no impact on future arranged marriages, were approved by the Seiyuu Surveillance Society, and even encouraged as a way to let off steam. And it had a direct impact on popularity, so they formed parties with coworkers, and made it seem like they were close. These days, if you wanted to make it as a female seiyuu, you had to master the art of yuri-baiting.
Akane, of course, yuri-baited with the best of them. She was currently partnered with Sachii Amamiya, a girl five years her junior. They’d both graduated from the same training school, but it seemed Sachii took things far more seriously, and her feelings bordered on devotion.
“Sachii and I have a date at the banana gator garden! ♡”
Akane posted this to her social media, along with a picture of her and Sachii arm in arm in front of a goofy alligator mascot.
This was Higashiizu in Shizuoka, an onsen town at the tip of the Izu Peninsula. One of the main tourist attractions was the Atagawa Tropical and Alligator Garden. It was a conservatory kept warm using heat from the onsen, allowing visitors to see both bananas and gators year-round.
The two of them had taken a train here, taking advantage of some time off to rest their bones in the onsen waters. There was still time before they could check in, so they’d decided to check out the gators to kill some time.
“Senpai, let’s go in!” Sachii said, tugging Akane’s hand.
Sachii was short but curvy. She wore her hair in a short bob that bounced around a lot, which made Akane want to comb it for her. Her T-shirt had a picture of a female seiyuu with long silver hair and a cardigan on it. It was an early picture of Suzuka Himori, a seiyuu active during the War of Seiyuu Independence. As a seiyuu, her abilities had been on the low end of A Class, but her heroic work as a ship doctor had made her a bit of an icon in the counterculture.
Sachii was pulling Akane as hard as she could, but she was so tiny there wasn’t much force behind it. Her character was your classic ditz, and the more innocent she acted the more fans and staff liked her. Even at training school she’d been a big one for hugs.
The Garden had three main buildings, the first of which was a large dome that housed the gators. Inside, they were met by a wave of hot, humid air, and the sound of a man-made waterfall.
“I can’t remember the last time I saw gators!” Sachii ran off towards the tanks, but she didn’t let go of Akane’s hand, so she looked like a dog straining on its leash. “Ah ha ha ha! Gators are so lazy! They never move at all!”
As excited as only a warm-blooded animal could be, Sachii jeered at the cold-blooded reptiles. When Akane let go of her hand she started dashing around like a dog playing fetch and was soon out of sight.
But that heart-warming spectacle was soon overwritten by a thunderous noise.
All the glass in the conservatory started rattling. Akane looked outside and saw a black isosceles triangle landing outside. It was about five meters long, and Akane recognized it instantly. It was the unique small spacecraft she’d seen on the news a week before — The Black Swan.
The Black Swan’s hatch opened.
A short girl in a black hood and cloak emerged, a laryngeal sac at her throat. Akane would know that sac anywhere. It was the same one from the security footage the news had played.
This was the Dark Seiyuu.
Akane immediately headed towards the door, but the Dark Seiyuu stepped into the conservatory first. Seeing the real thing up close, she was even more sure of this laryngeal sac’s quality.
“There you are,” the Dark Seiyuu said. Her voice sounded tense. “You’re Akane Yomokura, right? You wrote on social media about the voice you hear.”
“Yes, that’s definitely me.” Akane, for her part, was flustered by this sudden development. She quite forgot to play nice and let her actual personality show. “Quite a dramatic entrance for a few rambling posts. What are you, an online stalker?”
“I don’t have much time. Let me test to see if you can really hear the voice!”
With that, the Dark Seiyuu immediately attacked. Her laryngeal sac swelled up and sounded a high-energy laser beam. Akane hastily vibrated the beam’s counter frequency, canceling it out.
“You wanna fight me, then? You got a lotta nerve! I’ll kick your ass and take that sac off you!”
The eleven sacs on Akane’s body swelled up. Blue lightning crackled from all of them. The lightning hovered in the air, running across the surface of her body.
“Interesting... You’ve transplanted sacs to your body. And not ape ones, but proper human sacs. I’d heard there’d been a number of seiyuu gone missing. Guess that was your doing.”
“I do what I have to, to get stronger. Whatever it takes!” Akane put her hands up, ready to fight. “I’ve been collecting the best seiyuu sacs around, making myself stronger. You’re the last one. I kill you, I’ll be the ultimate seiyuu!”
Blue lightning crackling all over her, Akane swung a fist at the Dark Seiyuu. This was the ultimate martial arts, Seiyuu Karate — her own invention. Vibrating the aether, generating a current, creating plasma, and burning anyone it came in contact with. Her moves were several times more powerful than traditional karate.
The Dark Seiyuu blocked Akane’s fist easily with both hands. Seemed like she had some martial arts training herself. But this was where Seiyuu Karate showed its true value. The electric current and plasma were absorbed into her opponent’s body.
Except — no smell of burning flesh came drifting through the air. The blue lightning passed through the Dark Seiyuu’s body, affecting only the floor beneath her.
Apparently she was controlling the flow of aether and redirecting the current.
“You’re strong,” Akane said, both surprised and elated by her opponent’s strength.
She felt like the Dark Seiyuu was grinning back.
“Hey! You! Hands off my senpai!”
Sachii tackled the Dark Seiyuu from her blind spot. She’d spotted some suspicious interloper attacking her beloved senpai and run in without a second thought.
But the Dark Seiyuu didn’t even budge. Instead, Sachii went flying, landing in the alligator pen. She must have manipulated gravity. Seiyuu who could control gravity solo, sans transistor, were rare these days, even among A Class seiyuu. That alone proved her opponent’s power.
Akane put some distance between them. Gravity manipulation was exhausting work. This was her chance to finish her opponent off. She reached both arms out, vibrating the laryngeal sacs she’d implanted on them. An aether wave spread out around her, filling the conservatory with rainbow light. A blue sphere of light appeared between her hands. Air turned to plasma by high-temperature electric current.
“Die!”
Pulsing with an intense blue light, the sphere shot towards the Dark Seiyuu. She’d created a flow of aether around both arms, generating a current, and used those coils to accelerate the plasma. This was Akane’s ultimate move, the Seiyu Plasma Gun.
But again, her opponent was uninjured. The plasma struck an invisible wall inches from the Dark Seiyuu and was deflected.
“An aether barrier. If that surprises you, you’re still an amateur.”
An aether barrier. Creating an artificial aether density discrepancy to reflect light, sound, or shockwaves. Wavelengths were affected by density, which meant you could use density changes to alter incoming wavelengths — that idea had led to the development of this technique. It had been widely used during the War of Seiyuu Independence, but Akane had never imagined anyone still in the solar system could use it without a transistor.
“Is that all the attacks you got?” the Dark Seiyuu asked. “Then I guess it’s my turn.”
Akane got ready to neutralize, but the attack came from a direction she wasn’t expecting. She felt herself suddenly pulled forcibly backwards. The floor tilted up, turning into a sheer cliff. No, wait. Gravity had changed direction, localized around her. The Dark Seiyuu was controlling gravity. But knowing that didn’t help her recover her balance. Akane was sent into an undignified roll.