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R A I S I N G ◦ A N ◦ N P C !

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▶ BOOK 1: M A K I N G ◦ A N ◦ N P C !
▶ CHAPTERS: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 |

⊹˚₊·‧Chapter 7: $: man hurtbox

Pierrosie mewled helplessly, trying to coax the portal out of hiding.
It didn’t listen to her.
Did it even listen to the others?
She couldn’t remember.
Or hadn’t she learned that yet?
Had the Papa made it appear before? The Mama? And if so, how had they done it?

She tried to think hard. But her head wouldn’t let her remember.
She only remembered the scary one using it.
But he was impossible to imitate.

Pierrosie blinked nervously, as everything was becoming harder to see.
Why were the graphics changing? The contrast dropping? Everything fading into a similar colorcode? How was she supposed to find the portal like this?

She looked around and understood.
The sun was going down. It was becoming dark. She knew what dark was. She had learned that. And she had also learned what helped against the dark.

---

“She’s WHAT!?” Pomni yelled at Caine.

“She’s an AI.” Caine repeated, almost ashamed.

“I—— I don’t even… What… what’s the difference!?”

“What Caine means,” Kinger intervened, “is that she is not a product of an AI — she’s her own whole artifical intelligence system.”

“How is this even possible…?” Zooble asked. “Isn’t everything inside the circus, per default, a product of the circus AI?”

“Technically, you’re correct, Zooble,” Caine explained, “But for some reason I do not quite understand, instead of a simple NPC, she grew into her own, isolated, self-modifying, deep neural architecture system.”

“Say what now?” Zooble asked.

“She’s detached from me. That’s why she’s a little” Caine rotated his finger next to his gums, pointing at where his brain would presumably be, “coo-coo. She builds her own library. Which also means that I cannot control her. That’s why I can’t bring her back.”

“Why… why haven’t you told us…?” Ragatha asked with a shaking breath.

“Because… well… you see…” Caine began and kicked away an imaginary stone, “I wanted to be your only AI… and I… I was afraid that you would prefer her over me if you knew…”

“We don’t have f !%&? g time for your ego issues, Caine! F !% k! Just get us to her!” Pomni shouted.

Caine wanted to answer, but he paused and fidgeted his fingers.

Ragatha came closer to him, and when she spoke, she sounded desperate and pleading. “Caine… please… I… I promise she won’t replace you in any way. Just… just let me get to her. She’s all alone over there… She has trouble understanding the world around her…”

Gangle touched her shoulder, compassionately. “She will be ok. The world isn’t hostile, after all.”

Caine mumbled something.

“What’s that?” Pomni asked, distinctly harsher than Ragatha.

He repeated his words, but it was still hard to understand.

“Speak. Up.” Pomni pushed him.

“At daylight!” Caine called out.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Jax asked, but Pomni and Ragatha immediately understood, their faces a display of pure shock.

“Wasn’t… wasn’t it just getting dark…” Ragatha whispered in pure terror.

---

Pierrosie managed to push open the door to the old store. Unfortunately, the brightening tools were lying on a higher shelf, very much out of her reach. She looked around and found a chair behind the counter. It was double her size, but with a bit of work she managed to manipulate its position towards the shelf to reach for the tools.

It was exhausting. She was so very tired. But she managed to grab the object.

Once she was holding it, she looked at the code. The asset was programmed to function for at least 2 hours. But what had the Papa said? Always bring more batteries than you need.
So Pierrosie took a couple of batteries with her.

Just as she got off the chair, she heard something.

It sounded tinny. And was very faint. Or… no… no, it wasn’t faint. It was loud, but far away. The overlapping sound - echoes, they were called? - suggested that.
It sounded as if something metal had fallen on the ground.

She looked around, trying to understand.
Then she looked at her hands.
And she noticed that something had changed.

The hitboxes of her body had changed into hurtboxes.
She could be damaged now.

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