Esaki Purin was contemplating coming out to Alicia just so she didn't need to pretend to sleep.

It's been two days since John Smith stole their suspect right from under their nose. Tachikoma followed them to one of the American military bases, where Vincent Floyd was loaded on an airplane and very likely returned to the Empire. John Smith himself seemed to stay in Japan for whatever reason. For two days Section 9 poured over everything they could find about both of them, but the search came out empty. They couldn't crack the servers that they seized either, but their guess was that whatever was there was something that America, and the NSA specifically, didn't want anyone to know or have. Americans themselves claimed that Vincent stole their military secrets, and that's why they wanted to get him. Prime Minister Tate, as Chef Aramaki learned, agreed to hand him over to earn America's favor. The analysis of Vincent's activity went even worse. Whatever he was doing in the dark web was more than just spreading one virus, but a lot of logs were wiped clean either by him or by someone else. Many in Section 9 suspected it to be the work of Americans, but they didn't have any proof.

The patches to cyberbrain operating systems closing the vulnerabilities used by the virus were quietly rolled out, as usual. And there was no news coverage about the closing of the case in which one of the ministers was killed, not even mentioning all the hacking victims. Society just moved on without thinking too much about the fact that most people could become unwilling killers in the hands of a motivated and skilled hacker.

After two days of piecing all the clues together, the case was closed for now. That meant a bit of a break for Esaki Purin who went on another date with Alicia. That was how she found herself in the current situation. It was night and her date was sleeping, but Purin was just lying near them pretending to sleep too. Not the worst experience considering that she had access to all of the network and virtual reality literally in her brain, but she didn't want to lie to Alicia. Thankfully, she had a lot of things to do with her new life, so she kept herself busy.

Purin has spent the last few nights developing a new weapon-handling software for herself. The one that she previously downloaded from Section 9 worked pretty well for cyborgs, but it mostly helped with targeting and aim assist. It could highlight targets and calculate where the bullet would fly. With some settings it even could help stabilize the aim or knock back by gently controlling arm muscles, but nothing that could do the whole thing. Turns out, people weren't excited when software took over their bodies and especially when it pulled the trigger for them. Even more so if they couldn't decide when to shoot in the first place.

None of it was a problem for Esaki Purin though. Her ability to make split-second decisions allowed her to quickly control the targeting software and decide who to shoot and where. And after her previous experiments with fighting programs, and now with more experience with shooting programs, she started to understand that there was no difference for her when software controlled her body because she herself was also software. Very fancy software, partially running on cutting-edge neural chips, the same that Tachikomas AI ran on, but still software. Which meant there was no hard line at which she ended and the assist software began. So Purin used that to her advantage, and instead of using software made for cyborgs, she was adapting the software made for military androids. The fact that she had to hack a few military contractors to get her digital hands on it was probably fine. No one was harmed, and she was doing it to protect more people.

The problem that she found during her experiments was that she could edit more than just peripherals and assists. She realized that she could edit everything about herself, and nothing was stopping her from editing her personality too. That was both an existential and a safety concern for her. The existential and philosophical problems of it were obvious and also something that Purin didn't want to think about too deeply. The safety problem was more concerning for her. No matter how the simulation of her personality came to be (and she had a few questions about it), she happened to like it. And more importantly, the people around her - her new colleagues and Alicia - seemed to like it too. Which is why she didn't want to accidentally break something. Nothing ends well in the old stories where robots can fix robots.

So she had to be very careful about the changes she made to her systems. She decided to build a sort of firewall around her personality simulation that should prevent both her and potential hackers from touching something that could make irreversible changes. She ended up with something not too dissimilar to a "Ghost line" that human cyberbrains have. Except for humans, it's a line that separates the peripheries of the cyberbrain from their Ghosts, but for her, it separates the peripheral software from her AI.

Purin's night of software development and virtual shooting practice was interrupted by Alicia's household robot suddenly activating. It was one of the more popular models in Japan - a small bot a couple feet high in the shape of a rounded garbage bin with a pair of retractable hands to perform most household tasks. And at around 6 am it activated for no apparent reason. After starting up for a few seconds, it sped up to full speed and slammed into their bed, grabbed the blanket that Purin was "sleeping" under, and started running away, crashing into everything on its way.

Purin reacted before the robot could leave the room to cause more mayhem. She jumped from the bed, grabbed the bot by its sides, and lifted it in the air. The robot started wiggling its arms and spinning the wheels trying to escape, but couldn't do anything against Purin who had a body built to kill people with bare hands. She turned the robot upside-down and pressed the power switch. It immediately stopped moving, and she put it on the floor and turned to Alicia.

Alicia was sitting on the bed holding their blanket and trying to understand what had happened. After a moment, they started laughing.

"You know, my date fighting robots is definitely at the top of my date ideas," they laughed at their own joke.

Purin raised an eyebrow but then giggled. "Your life is now a Mecha Yuri anime, you achieved your dream, nerd."

"He-he. That I did. But anyway... the hell has happened here? Why were you fighting my robot?"

"It started fighting me first!"

"It's probably just jealous," they continued giggling.

"That's not funny, Alicia," Purin rolled her eyes. "Robots can't get jealous... never mind. Why are you so calm?"

Alicia shrugged. "You caught it, it's fine now, right? Probably some software bug. Nothing that two robotics engineers can't fix."

Purin sighed. "I guess you're right," she returned to bed, leaned over Alicia, and kissed them. "Should I make breakfast before we start tearing it apart?"

"Oh goddess, please, a breakfast in bed is like... top five date?"

"You would have to share your ranking with me later, dork," Purin giggled in response and went to the kitchen to make Alicia and herself some breakfast, without bothering with clothes.

It took her a few minutes to cook a quick breakfast from the ingredients Alicia had in their fridge.

Alicia whistled after seeing Purin enter the bedroom with the food. "I take it back. Nothing beats the robot fight, but breakfast in bed served by a very beautiful naked woman? That's got to be at least top two!"

But before Purin could get into bed with Alicia and enjoy the breakfast together, she received a group call from Major. She still got in bed, told Alicia about the call, and joined the group chat.

*"Rise and shine,"* Major spoke to the Section 9 members. *"Look at this."*

She sent them all a news video feed. On it, a news anchor was showing pictures and videos of broken or rampaging household robots. *"Early morning today, robots manufactured by Haruka Robotics started acting on their own, behaving erratically, causing damage to their surroundings, and even attacking people. According to the police report, more than 100 people were injured, multiple organizations had their work disrupted, and the reports still are coming in. Some of the robots are still out of control and continue to cause damage. Haruka Robotics' robots are one of the most popular household and care robots in Japan and are often used at home, in the office, or even at hospitals. Haruka's press department declined to answer our questions at the moment claiming that they are investigating the issue. They ask that the customers keep their robots turned off until further notice and promise a quick fix to the problem."*

"Ah, that's what happened," Purin said out loud and sent the news feed to Alicia.

*"Do you have something to add?"* Major asked.

*"Yes. My... friend's robot woke us up by trying to destroy our bed. I turned it off for now, and was about to look at the issue."*

*"That's lucky for us. Esaki, look into the robot. Ishikawa, Pazu, head to Haruka and get their statement. Borma, check the network for any suspicious activity. Togusa, contact the police and tell them to route all further reports to us, we're taking over the case."*

*"You think it's our specialty, not just a bug?"* Batou asked after the rest of the team confirmed their assignments.

*"Call it a Ghost feeling, but I think that's our case."*

*"Well then, let's find who's behind all of this."*

Purin sighed after the call was over.

"Need to run again?" Alicia asked her.

"Actually, no. Need to fix your robot. But first, breakfast!"

"So, what do you do for work?" Alicia started while chewing their food. "Three days ago you had to run early in the morning, today you have to fix robots early in the morning." They paused to swallow. "Wait, no, let me guess!" They scratched their chin pretending to think deeply. "Hm-m... My serious guess is that you do robotics engineering for one of the companies and your bosses suck. My Yuri Mecha anime guess is that you are a super-soldier who fights robots and protects Tokyo behind the scenes."

"At least one of these is pretty close," Purin laughed. "I'm actually not sure how much I can say? I need to ask my boss later about what NDAs I have..."

"I will keep my hopes up, cutie. Now, should I bring my screwdriver or should we dress first?"

"Up to you," Purin shrugged. "I don't get cold."

"Damn robots..." Alicia mumbled and started dressing.

"Wha-?"

"Nothing, just saying it must be really nice to have a full cyber body!" They said.

"Yeah, it has its perks," Purin confirmed while also getting dressed.

Alicia lay back on the bed and looked at Purin over their head. "Honestly, I kinda envy you. If not for the exorbitant price, I'd get myself one in the blink of an eye. How'd you even get one, does your work pay that well?"

"I..." Purin hesitated. "I didn't choose it. Something happened, and it was very recently. I think I like it, but I'm still getting used to it."

"Oh goddess, sorry, I'm prying again am I? It's just if it was me, I would violate my own warranty on the first day," they started laughing.

*Do I even have a warranty? Or did Major just stole my body somehow... how would I even service it if something goes wrong? Ugh... I need to ask her at some point.* "We have another robot to pick apart for today, nerd," Purin smiled.

"Right!" They jumped off the bed and raised their hands up. "To the laboratory!"

"The laboratory" was a small room that combined Alicia's workshop and study. It had a modest assortment of tools on the walls, a workbench with a terminal, and ample amounts of lighting.

"It's not very well stocked, I do most of my work in the University lab, but I keep some tools on hand just in case," they commented.

"That's perfect, don't worry," Purin said while dragging the household robot up on the workbench. "I'm glad you have a dedicated terminal, I wouldn't want to dive into a broken robot..."

"I do that all the time."

Purin pinched the bridge of her nose. "Don't... That's very unsafe, especially if you don't know if it's been compromised!"

"You think someone infected so many robots at once?"

"Let's find out."

Purin pried open the bottom panel of the robot and found a connection port. She connected it to the terminal and started looking for debug tools. Unsurprisingly, Alicia already had the toolkit for their robot downloaded. She launched the diagnostic utility and waited for it to finish first.

"I didn't mess with it much," Alicia said. "I rented the apartment, and the robot was included. I just checked it in case there was some spying software installed. You hear about stories like that sometimes, where landlords record tenants with those. But otherwise, it's a very boring little robot, so I left it as is."

"I didn't think you could find a robot boring," Purin smirked.

"I love them all! But my main obsessions are androids and humongous mecha," Alicia said with a sparkle in their eyes. Purin wasn't sure if she imagined it or if their eyes could actually do that.

"Humongous mecha?"

"Oh yeah, like 100-meter-tall humanoid robots! You would think that it's just a matter of building a big thing, but the cube law makes the final mass so huge that it can't stand, let alone move. My course work is about the limits of robot sizes with both current and hypothetically possible materials."

"Nerd," Purin grinned.

"We covered that already! Did you find anything?"

Purin checked the diagnostic results. "Nope, it shows that everything is in its place."

"What's next then?"

"We'll look at the code ourselves," Purin said and pulled another connection wire from the terminal and connected it to herself.

"Can you share? I rarely do software, but I'm still interested."

Purin nodded and sent Alicia a wireless invite to her augmented environment. This time instead of fully diving into it, she overlaid all the files and information in an AR projection over the workbench. She started working on decompiling the robot's software and sorting through its logs. This time she remembered to be mindful and tried not to overload her brain.

A few minutes into the work, Alicia finally interrupted her. "What the hell? I barely manage to read less than half of what you're doing! Are you some kind of genius?"

Purin blushed. *Oops, I guess even if I don't overdo it, I still can analyze data very fast.* "Um... I have a lot of experience and tools that do it for me?" She said hesitantly. It was technically the truth even if not the whole truth.

Alicia stared at her questioningly. "Is that a question?"

"Sorry, it's not! I just never done it with someone watching..." She started blushing even more.

Alicia started laughing. "You're adorable, please continue! It's very fascinating to see you working."

Purin nodded and continued her investigation. It took her a good part of an hour to finish, during which Alicia made them both coffee. It wasn't good organic coffee that Ishikawa was buying for Section 9, but still a decent brand with a nice blend of aromas, and most importantly - less overwhelming for Purin's senses at the moment.

"Did you find anything interesting?" Alicia asked.

"Yup. I'm not sure if I can share it though..." Purin hesitated.

Alicia made puppy eyes to Purin, and Purin was now sure that they could control their eyes to sparkle and adjust their color and brightness at will. "It's my robot that went berserk, I think I deserve to know."

Purin sighed and adjusted her glasses. "The robot's software had a backdoor. Anyone with the knowledge of it could access it and give it any command. I think that's what happened all over Japan."

"Goddess, that's terrible. We should tell the police, they'd want to know."

"Don't worry about it, we'll contact the appropriate authorities. I should go to work though, my colleagues and the boss would like to know what we learned. Oh, and don't turn it on, the backdoor isn't patched, and it can be used again."

"I guess I can make up my bed myself every once in a while..."