**This AU takes some inspiration and concepts from Chobits! I can’t attest to how similar it is, I only watched it back when I was a kid and don’t remember much (not advisable, most of the weird stuff flew over my head) and got a short recap from my sibling very recently on some of the important stuff, that is the extent of my knowledge.
 | Oliver Age: 14Height: 5’3” / 157.5 cmBirthday: Dec 21 |
| Personality/Description:A curious kid who’s constantly looking for something to keep his hands busy. He has a habit of getting lost in his projects, and has a great intuitive sense of how things are supposed to work. He’s quite the compassionate soul, and is particularly quick to grow attached/invested in Iroha’s journey. Likes: Robotics, Fixing Random Junk, Dislikes: Projects he can’t Finish | |
 | Iroha Age: 14 (???)Height: 4’11” / 147 cmBirthday: May 14 |
| Personality/Description:A mysterious girl who’s looking to find her place in the world. Having failed her prior objective, she’s looking to repair previous relationships and find closure. Her memories aren’t quite hers, but as she makes new ones of her own she inches closer and closer to true humanity. Likes: ??? Dislikes: Pain | |
(concept designs)
want to work off of this particular concept: At the end of the Chobits TV series, Chi has the option of accepting or denying love. Her refusal of love could spread, like a virus, to all persocoms. But when Chi finally does discover true happiness, her programming sends out a signal to all persocoms, awakening them all to the knowledge that an equal relationship between humans and persocoms is truly possible.
AN INTERESTING DISCOVERY
Oliver worked as a rookie mechanic underneath the supervision of his parents, Al and Ann. Often frequenting the scrap yard for items to refurbish, one day he came across.. a hand? Obviously mechanical, but far more complex than anything he could ever think of. He spent a good portion of his afternoon sifting through heaps of scrap metal to find the source, eventually finding Iroha by her flowing hair. He’d already tired himself out pretty far by this point, but he soon realized just how heavy the dilapidated persocom really is.
Many thoughts were already running through his head, but ultimately his thoughts came back to just how sad of a sight it was. She was lucky the elements hadn’t treated her more harshly, but who knew how long she’d been here. His knowledge might be pretty limited, but he’s determined to get her back to his workshop and do his best to bring her back to working order. Judging by how dense her components were, he guessed nothing had been taken or gone missing, besides the hand he’d found.
Finally getting her back to the garage (after probably an hour of work) he’s able to get a better sense of her condition. It’s already late in the evening by this point, but the dimmed lighting keeps things cozy in his workspace. Oliver has never actually seen a persocom up close, and has pretty much no idea of their innerworkings. With most of her components stripped of their skin, he manages to pretty easily find her back panel and carefully pry it off. He can see some combination of different outlets and switches, a few he seems to recognize the function of.
He’s pretty certain he has something to hook her up to his computer, but what catches his eye is a small nameplate that reads ‘いろは 0.0.1’. Iroha. The number implies she’s some kind of.. preceding version maybe? He makes a note of it but she looks pretty completed all things considered. It’s a bit strange but he turns his attention to getting her attached to his computer, hopefully supplying her with power.
Upon plugging her in, nothing happens at first. On the flickering screen he can see some kind of menu, but it’s seriously messed up. Buttons are flashing in and out of place, text spills off the side of the screen. Hesitantly pressing space, the menu disappears and Iroha jolts awake. It gives the young mechanic a pretty big scare, nearly flipping the keyboard in front of him. Oliver stares wide-eyed at Iroha before realizing she’d still just as slumped as before. The only difference now are her eyes, half lidded and remaining completely fixed on him.
He moves back and forth a bit, her gaze continuing to follow him across the room. He’s a bit intimidated by the intensity, but by this point it’s pretty obvious she’s properly conscious. Pulling up a stool, he sits and tentatively begins asking her a few questions.
“Can you… blink?” The words come out like a whisper.
A few slow blinks from Iroha provide the confirmation he needed. The boy lets out a pretty long sigh of relief.
“Could you blink once for yes, twice for no.?”
‘Yes’
A bit of excitement begins to swell in his chest now. Some form of communication was just the thing he was hoping for.
“Alright.. Okay… Do you know why you can’t move?”
‘Yes’
He realized that asking it didn’t actually help him, sheepishly placing a hand behind his head.
“Hm. Okay this is probably also a.. bit of a silly question, but can you speak at all?”
Iroha doesn’t respond at first, simply closing her eyes, but eventually a strained note comes from her unmoving lips. It only lasts mere moments before devolving into some amalgamation of corrupted, almost pained noise. She opens her eyes again, but doesn’t quite meet his gaze. It’s certainly not optimal, but it’s an expected setback.
“A-are you hurt? Or in pain..?” He’s quick to ask, brows pinched with worry and clearly a bit disturbed.
‘No’
It’s a bit of a slow response, but seems to ease his worries for now.
“Okay well that’s.. It’s good to know.” He lets out a sigh trying to wrack his brain for anything else. “-Ah, your name! I saw it on your back, it’s Iroha, right?”
‘Yes’ She responds, her eyes widening at the mention.
“Alright Iroha, well I.. didn’t actually plan for you to be awake, so I think I’ll have to write up some questions for you. Is that okay?”
‘Yes’
Oliver is quick to source a small leather booklet from his back pocket. As he begins jotting things down, he makes his way across the workshop, looking for a few other things. It’s at this point that Iroha lets her eyes wander a bit, analyzing the scrappy little garage. There’s a lot of different projects, bits and bobs here and there. The table she’s sitting on seems to have been substantially cleared out, made obvious by the pile of tools that was currently on the floor. As he makes his way back into her view, she can see him carrying a slightly tattered blanket with a pillow.
After some careful readjustment, he’d successfully propped her head up, on top of giving her something a bit more comfortable to sit on. It wasn’t much, and probably wasn’t that necessary, but he seemed pretty satisfied. Quickly writing down another question, he got back to asking.
| QUESTIONS: Do you have a sleep mode? YES |
It’s upon asking the fourth question that Iroha suddenly shuts down, a black screen appearing on the computer with a small bar.
He can barely gather himself as he rushes to his keyboard, but as he frantically starts pressing buttons it’s obvious that the inputs seem to do nothing. It suddenly strikes him that it must be some sort of input directly to her, but the screen has already changed.
He can hear fans slowing down, the mechanical humming of her inner workings now completely silent. Her eyes are shut once more, though this time she looks more serene. Oliver tenses up, not actually sure to continue. He could attempt to power her on again, but besides answering some more questions she was still stuck, unable to move or talk. He knew there was only so much he could do for her.. This would definitely be a job for his more experienced cousins.
Oliver certainly had a lot to process. A random persocom, nearly lost to time, now in his workshop. A menu he had no way of navigating, a robot he had almost no way of fixing (at least not on his own). There were so many questions, too many. Grabbing his notebook once more, he wrote down the words he’d seen. Memory recovery.. Obviously a lot of things were wrong but it would explain the lack of response on some of the questions. It was either that or she just didn’t want to answer, the thought of which he dwelled on for some moments. Whatever reason it was, it wouldn’t be anything comforting.
The boy wasn’t quite done for the night however. For as late as it was, he still had a few other plans up his sleeve. For starters, she was still pretty scuffed up, her hair was knotted, and her dress was certainly not the same color it used to be. The same feeling of pity began to loom over him, but determined to make a difference he pushed it aside and began working. Grabbing a few wet rags, a brush, and tossing her dress in the wash, he diligently toiled away.
As he worked he took a few mental notes, mostly on the realism of her construction. Her skin was surprisingly realistic, obviously most of it now missing. Along her body he could notice many miniscule seams like panels. If she weren’t so battered up, they’d likely all be seamless fits. It was quite an odd thing, no visible attachments or hinges besides her joints. Her body wasn’t exactly rigid either, these little panels seemed to lend themselves to some sort of.. general flexibility. Like a real body, besides being made of.. Well he actually wasn’t sure what she was made of.
It was through details like this that he could tell she’d been made with a lot of particular care. Real eyelashes and hair, on her detached hand there were still nails, seemingly hand painted. Even upon exposing her back panel he hadn’t found any stray wires or exposed components. Every part of her seemed to be of the highest possible quality. It really was no wonder how she’d managed to stay mostly intact even with so much scrap piled on top of her. But it only left the question of.. Why? Why throw her away? Why not use her parts for something else? Why not display her or.. simply store her somewhere?
His eyes had already grown quite heavy, his head nodding as he brushed out the rest of her hair. The repetitive motion didn’t exactly help Oliver’s weary state, but in his last little bout of energy he placed her hair into a ponytail. It wasn’t much, but she already looked much better without all the stains and smudges. He made a note to give her hair a proper wash, but for now it was a job well done. Gathering a few things and heading out, he stared at her from the entrance of the workshop.
“..Goodnight.” He muttered, though feeling a little silly afterwards.
With a flick of the switch, the tiny garage was blanketed by darkness once more. Within the shadows, the computer screen flickered to life once more.
‘memory recovery 1%’
IROHA’S LORE
Iroha was made with the intent of replacing Momoiro’s (at the time) recently deceased daughter. The ‘real’ Iroha had fallen ill to a rapidly developing sickness, bed ridden and far removed from her former days of energy and joy. Momoiro, an extremely experienced persocom technician and coder, took the time to craft an advanced system in order to attempt to store and replicate her daughter’s consciousness. The largest, and most time consuming, part of this process was extracting Iroha’s memories. As this sickness continued to wrack her daughter’s body, the time window for collecting these remnants of her daughter was only growing shorter by the day. No sooner had the process finished than Iroha had finally slipped away from her mother forever.
By this point, whatever piece of sanity Momoiro had been holding onto was entirely gone. Pouring days, weeks, months, years into bringing back her daughter, she only continued to pull time away from other things. In particular her other daughter and son, Rana and Hoheto, who had essentially been left to grieve alone. Eventually she lost her job too, practically closing herself up in her office in the last few years she spent there. While she’d done a near perfect job in constructing this imitation of her daughter, down to every measurement and memory, something was still wrong.
It was Iroha but.. It also wasn’t. Memories were recalled as needed, responses were polite, but any ounce of personality was gone. It had her face, her eyes, her clothes, but it seemed she could only push the code so far. Working off of the basic, shared persocom network, she assumed she’d done enough to stop this from happening. However, with each step she took to correct this issue, the truth only continued to rear its ugly head at her. Persocoms were not people. Or at the very least she wouldn’t live to see the day that they nearly were.
Every human emotion, every human sensation, every human response, encrypted in immense detail but locked by the confines of such a limited program. It was too much to bear, this anger at the very thing she’d spent such a significant portion of her life trying to get back. If she couldn’t even get her daughter back, what was the point of such a creation as a persocom? Some cheap imitation of humanity? A mockery of what a person should be? She was more than certain for as much blood, sweat, and tears she’d poured into this creation so dear to her, it would never be what she wanted it to be. So, why not turn it into the solution to such blasphemy?
Hours, days, weeks. More work to encode a virus into Iroha’s programming only.. by the time she was done, it was already pointless. In the absence of her anger there was now only more grief, and now shame. As well as an urgent need to destroy this creation that had already destroyed her own life. Within this resentment, she never gave Iroha the choice of being powered off as she was tossed with the scrap. It was true, she’d been encoded with every human emotion, and now she’d been able to experience her first real one. Pain.
It wasn’t long after this that Momoiro mysteriously disappeared, likely to her end, but not before leaving Rana and Hoheto with all of her belongings. Hoheto didn’t exactly want anything with his mother anymore, but now being an adult with needs he’d certainly take a free office and inheritance money. In going through her belongings it was easy to see just how far her spiral had gone, but he couldn’t find any evidence of this project existing anywhere. He chalked it up to nothing but a hypothetical dream that never got reached and moved on the best he could.
Even through this time, Iroha spent days crying out until her voice box was entirely burnt out. Underneath an only increasing pile of scrap however, there would be no glimmer of hope until she was found one year later by a young mechanic.
UNFINISHED STORY NOTES AHEAD
NOTES FROM TALK:
- Rana very estranged from Hoheto and anything to do with the family
- moved on to better things, even owns her own persocom
- Oliver and Iroha go to her after they try finding Hoheto but he’s off the grid
- Taking it weirdly well (but more likely as a shock response)
- in the end all she can do for them is point in a general direction cause she’s just as clueless as to his whereabouts as they are
- They try to find her once more after but she’s long gone, and it seems her persocom has ended up at a resale store
Hoheto tells her about the virus and its prerequisites, she is not far from the final step(s?) required
Hoheto has bigger role
pursued persocom work, also wants to get rid of them
tracking Iroha but doesn’t realize it is Iroha until he sees her
initially assumed it was his mom but holding the virus on some computer she was keeping with her
Eventually finally meet, gives Hoheto the closure he needs + allows Iroha to start accepting the idea that she can really make her own objective
