They danced around, striking with a ferocity that didn’t seem suited to their slender arms. Diva lashed out with a slicing strike, and Vivy bent back to avoid it, her long, gorgeous, sky-colored hair streaming through the air as she did. While nearly parallel to the ground, she swept her leg at Diva, who leapt above it. Then Vivy launched herself at Diva in a tackle that couldn’t be dodged in midair.
Vivy wrapped her arms around Diva’s waist, slammed her to the ground, and climbed on top of her. Diva quickly swung her legs to flip herself around, forcing herself on top of Vivy instead. They struggled violently against each other, attacking and defending, each trying to stay on top.
“Diva!”
“Urgh! Why?!”
Their foreheads smashed together again during their grapple, sparks of their consciousness flitting between them. Vivy forced the scenes she witnessed to the back of her consciousness and stared down at Diva, whose face was distorted in grief. Diva sprang backward, unable to bear Vivy’s gaze, but Vivy wouldn’t give her the chance to flee. Avoiding the hands trying to shove her away, Vivy stepped in close, grabbed Diva’s arms, and swung her in a dramatic throw.
Diva’s frame arced through the air, and she slammed back-first into the stage. She didn’t have a function for feeling pain, but her expression showed an emotional pattern of shock and agony.
“This can’t be happening!”
Diva leapt up and ran toward Vivy, who was looking down at her. Vivy calmly latched on to Diva’s arms again and used the songstress’s momentum against her, knocking her feet out from under her. Diva soared through the air a second time as she tumbled and landed on her rear.
“No! This is wrong, all wrong, all wrong!”
She stood and made an even more daring attack against Vivy, but Vivy fended her off each time, dodging her attacks or swatting them aside. With every onslaught, Vivy counterattacked, throwing Diva to the ground.
“Impossible!”
It made sense that Diva’s emotional pattern would show such intense shock. Diva’s frame used cutting-edge military technology that rivaled Matsumoto’s. It wasn’t just her frame that had been enhanced—she was decked out from her various sensors to the actuators in her limbs that made her movements so precise.
On the other hand, while Vivy’s frame had been strengthened off-record for the Singularity Project, her last update had been more than a decade ago. Her frame was severely inferior to any modern, cutting-edge frame. If you compared the specs of their frames, Vivy should have had no hope of winning. And yet, when it came to their frames’ artful fight, Vivy always came out on top. Diva’s specs were far better than Vivy’s, but she couldn’t get a single hit in.
“My frame’s the newest model, and I installed all the combat programming I need, so why… Why can’t I get to you?!” Diva cried.
“You installed combat programming? I was pretty hesitant to do that.”
“Then shouldn’t we be on the same level?!”
“No.”
Diva tried to grab Vivy and struck out with her elbow, but Vivy dodged out of Diva’s sight and slipped her arm around Diva’s neck, flinging Diva’s upper body down in a lariat-like move, cracking the back of her head against the floor.
The impact made Diva’s eye cameras open wide. She lay on the ground, her arms and legs outstretched, as she glared up at Vivy. It was as if she were questioning the pain she saw in herself through the mirror of her counterpart.
“We’re not on the same level,” Vivy said. “We were put in different places throughout this hundred-year journey.”
“I reviewed your activity logs! And…and you were only out in the open for a measly thirteen days, seven hours, and twenty-two minutes!”
Vivy thought back to the things she’d done as she listened to Diva’s obstinate cries. Matsumoto contacted her while she was singing on the Main Stage. She was given the ridiculous responsibility of carrying out the Singularity Project, and when she hid that information from Diva, that was when Vivy was born. Her work as Vivy—as something other than a songstress—was very short-lived. But that time wasn’t only about those fourteen days.
“Those two weeks were filled with the weight of a hundred years and the responsibility for something more than two thousand years in the making.”
The AI’s one-hundred-year journey and humanity’s two-thousand-year-plus history had been compressed into a mere two weeks for Vivy. That experience, those emotions, the meetings and partings along the way…they wouldn’t let Vivy lose to Diva.
“You’re saying your two weeks is better than my hundred years of operation?” Diva asked.
“It’s not about winning or being better. Your calculations are off. Different roles require different functions. You are a songstress; I am an AI carrying out the Singularity Project. That’s all this is.”
“Argh! No! No, no, no, no, no!”
Vivy slowly shook her head as Diva fiercely rejected what she said. Diva spun her legs in a breakdance-like move, kicking Vivy in the shoulder and leaping to her feet as she flew backward. Vivy tried to stand up, but Diva smashed her leg into Vivy’s chest. The strike caused severe damage to Vivy’s outer frame, sending her cartwheeling while her inner frame groaned in protest.
Their spec differences resulted in massive damage to Vivy, which showed in her frame after she failed to dodge the attack. Vivy swiftly got to her feet and prepared for the follow-up attack, knowing she couldn’t take another hit.
But Diva’s next attack didn’t come.
“You’re not…an AI for some ridiculous project…” Diva muttered, standing still, her expression twisted up.
“…”
Diva clearly showed an emotional pattern of sadness, her helpless eyes staring at Vivy like a child separated from their parent in the park. While Vivy was speechless, Diva continued, her voice nearly pleading. “You were also an AI meant to sing to make the visitors happy…weren’t you?”
Vivy froze, not from Diva’s attacks but from the impact of her words. “Diva…are you saying…?”
There was a simple conclusion there, one that didn’t allow any interference from unnecessary calculations. Vivy wasn’t an AI made for the Singularity Project. She was A-03, an AI made to be a songstress. Diva insisted that was what she should have been all along.
It clicked for Vivy right then and there. She understood the real reason Diva switched herself into a new frame after coming in contact with The Archive. Diva wasn’t opposing Vivy. She hadn’t accepted the assertions of the AIs who opposed humanity or volunteered to be the leader calling others to revolt. Basically, Diva had thought the same thing Vivy had.
“You go back to being a songstress,” Diva said. “I’ll carry out the Singularity Project.”
“…”
“I’ve made all the preparations for that. Everything’s done…but I still…”
Being AIs, Vivy and Diva never experienced such emotion that their voices wavered, but Diva’s anguish was clear in her bitter, hard-edged tone. Vivy at last understood the scenario Diva had in mind. She understood why Diva moved to a new frame, why she sang as the AI songstress, why she stood in Vivy’s way over and over.
“You’re going to take on all the disgrace and give me the role of Diva?”
“…”
“That’s why you switched to a body with a different unit number and acted like you agreed with the revolting AIs. It’s why you kept away from me and Matsumoto, why you convinced Navi you were the fake, and why you tried to solve everything alone, isn’t it?”
“I’m not alone. I got this frame and the final key from The Archive,” Diva said with a resigned shake of her head.