Chapter 8: Take Down the Monster at the Top

Every drop of blood drained out of me.

"Four point two million..."

I repeated the number in a shaking voice.

Which meant that I, with my four hundred thousand subscribers, had picked a fight with four point two million.

On the raw numbers the gap is over tenfold, but the difficulty of actually climbing there differs by an astronomical margin.

This was an ant declaring war on an elephant.

"Yui... I, I, I-I-I—"

"So, um, big sis... you've really gone and done it, huh."

Yui patted my shoulder, her own face pale.

But somewhere behind her eyes, something was glinting.

[The next morning]

Sure enough, the internet had lost its mind.

"Uuuugh... I want to die."

I had burrowed under the futon and was shaking like a leaf.

Lined up in the social media trends were

#CaptainVsYUICA,

#TopVsBottomOfTheVWorld,

and #GuardianOfThePigs.

It had never once crossed my mind that that roast would blow up into something this big.

"Yui, I'm going online right now to apologize to the Captain!"

"I'm so sorry, I had no idea, that kind of thing!"

I was poking a hand out from under the futon like a turtle out of its shell, reaching for my phone, when Yui grabbed my wrist.

"Wait! Calm down."

"Huh?"

"...This is an opportunity, big sis."

Yui's eyes were sparkling.

"An opportunity? How? In what possible way?"

"Think about it. A V at our level does not get to collab with the Captain. Normally that never happens."

"Is this even a collab, though? We insulted each other and both lost our tempers. That's basically Breaking D◯wn."

"If you get noticed, you win. And yeah, pretty much the same thing."

"What? What are you saying? She's the number one VTuber in the country."

"Hey, big sis. You actually went at it with the Captain. What was your impression?"

"Um... her patter and her vocabulary were like nothing I've heard. And her reaction speed was not normal. I think that thing is a monster!"

"True... talk skill, name recognition, raw spec as a VTuber. We lose on all of it."

"Right?! Last night was just a lucky strike. And I can't use the ignorance boost twice!"

I burrowed back under the futon and attempted to escape reality.

"Ten sheep, twenty sheep, four million two hundred thousand sheep. Aaaaaagh."

"It's fine, come out of the hole, big sis."

"Come on, over here. I'll explain the Captain to you. Come on."

Yui opened her laptop and pulled up Seira Hououin's channel.

Still wearing the futon, I shuffled over and looked at the screen.

"So the Captain, right, she's the top V in Japan, but she's actually really good to the people under her."

"What? But she was so full of herself."

"That's the bit. Every so often she just turns up in the stream of a rookie VTuber she's got her eye on and starts a deliberately provocative pro wrestling angle."

"So that's what she meant by pro wrestling..."

I had understood exactly none of it and sneered that it sounded like a middle schooler. I was the embarrassing one here.

Yui played a video. It showed the Captain laying into a different rookie VTuber.

"See? The Captain does her intimidating heckle, and then the rookie grovels. 'I'm so sorry!' 'My apologies!'"

"And then the Captain says, 'Very well. I shall take you into my command.'"

"Rookie gets exposure, Captain keeps her dignity, win-win. It's the standard industry routine."

Staring at the screen, I was slowly starting to grasp my situation.

"Bottom line, there's no question the Captain has taken an interest in you."

"Which means... I didn't know about the routine, and..."

"You genuinely rebelled. And on top of that you roasted her as lower than a pig. No VTuber in history has done that."

Yui gave a pained smile. I was in despair.

"Up to now the Captain has been such a huge deal that nobody has ever failed to play along. It's an honor, if anything."

"Oh god... I really did do something insane."

"But listen."

Yui's eyes lit up with ambition.

"That's exactly why it's an opportunity. Right now we're completely on top for buzz. If you win on the Captain's turf, you punch straight into the top tier."

"And even if you lose, it's 'she put up a good fight against the best in Japan.' It doesn't turn out badly either way."

Yui grabbed me by the shoulders.

"Also, your roast had justice behind it. You did it to protect the pigs."

"There is no way to manufacture that. A hard bond with your listeners can sometimes make a VTuber untouchable."

A bond, she says. It has had all of a week to deepen.

Still, something stirred in me. It was true that when the Captain mocked the pigs last night, I had been genuinely angry.

But wasn't that just me getting worked up...

"Oh, right."

Yui's face went suddenly serious.

"There's actually one more bad thing."

"What? There's more?"

"So, Seira Hououin..."

Yui opened the mailbox. On it was the offer email from the big agency we'd looked at yesterday.

"The largest VTuber agency in the country, Masters, the one that sounded us out yesterday. She's an executive there. And their ace."

"Eeeeeeeeek?!"

I put my head in my hands.

"So basically you picked a fight with the face of the agency, which means... joining Masters is probably off the table."

"I've done it now... I've gone and lost the whole lot in one move."

"Well, it locks in going independent, so maybe that's actually a good thing?"

Yui said it without a care in the world.

"Think about it. Do you think a V signed to Masters could ever have run a roast stream against the Captain?"

"Well..."

"The agency would have shut it down instantly. 'A little more politely, please.' 'Let's not start a firestorm.'"

She might have a point.

"Besides."

Yui smiled brightly.

"The Captain that night... say what you like, I think she was enjoying herself. It looked like the wildness she had back when she debuted had come back to life."

"Is that a good thing?"

"Yes! Getting to fight the Captain when she's genuinely serious is a chance that almost never comes."

That sounds like the worst possible outcome!

I couldn't decide what to do. But looking into Yui's eyes, strangely, courage started welling up.

That's right. I'd had fun on that stream too.

Someone said something unfair, and I got to say, clearly, "No." I protected the pigs.

I don't want to believe that was fake.

"Fine... at this point I've got nothing to lose. I'll try it."

"Good! Then it's time for a war council!"

Yui opened the laptop.

"We start by knowing your enemy."

[War Council: Begin]

So I could follow along, Yui put her briefing materials up on the screen.

"Seira Hououin. Four point two million subscribers, fifth year since debut. Singing, dancing, talking, all of it top tier."

"Her voice especially is one of the best in the industry. Her live streams pull over five hundred thousand concurrent viewers, every single time."

This is a genuine genius. No, a god. We are not even the same class of being.

"But."

Yui scrolled the screen.

"Even the Captain has weak points."

"Huh... this monster has weak points?"

"Her sense of responsibility and her love for her own lore are both too strong. Deny the world of the Galactic Opera Fleet and she sometimes goes off."

"Last night you called it cringe and she completely lost her composure, right?"

True. She started out totally at ease, and then her tone dropped and her language got rougher and rougher.

"Also, the Captain builds her whole character on looking down at people. But you picked a fight with her as an equal, didn't you."

"This kind of exchange has to be a first for her too. Which means her experience advantage doesn't apply."

"I see... so she was running her brain flat out in that moment too."

"Exactly. And the other thing that matters in a fight with the Captain—"

Yui looked me in the eye.

"—is your weapon. The amateur vibe!"

"Amateur vibe?"

What is that supposed to be. If anything that's a weakness.

"Yep. You don't know the industry's rules, you don't calculate, your reactions are pure."

"The Captain can't imitate that and she can't engineer it. Five years as a pro and that charm is gone for good."

I see. So my unpredictable "ignorance" is the weapon.

"But how do I actually fight? I can't sing and I can't dance."

"That's why you drag her onto your turf."

"My turf? But we're on hers? (I do not follow.)"

"Life advice."

Yui grinned.

"You make the Captain face you in life advice."

"Huh?"

"Her character is 'the summit of the galaxy,' right? But life advice is a genre that tests your life-sized humanity."

"Can she take a sincere problem seriously without breaking character? For someone who can't show her real self, that's a hard game."

Fair point. Last night the Captain was all "become my subordinate" and "the galaxy this, the galaxy that."

"You, on the other hand, are good at sitting with the person's feelings, right?"

"Am I, though..."

"Definitely. Last night, with the junior-coworker thing, you really did encourage her."

Ah, right... I advised her to put her junior firmly in their place, and then immediately went and bit my own senior. What even am I.

I want to die again, somehow.

"So life advice puts the Captain at a disadvantage on a bunch of fronts."

"Mind you, she's frighteningly versatile, so we can't get complacent."

Listening to Yui's analysis, I started to feel like we could actually make a match of it.

But is it really okay for it to be me?

"Hey, Yui."

"What?"

"If we fight on life advice, our own strong suit, and we lose... what happens to us?"

"Mm, in that case the subscriber count stops growing and this momentum stalls out."

"Basically we become fuel for the Captain and get eaten."

Yui said it lightly.

"But if you fight the Captain as an equal and eat her power instead... a million subscribers comes into view."

"And at that point YUICA♡ joins the top tier."

Yui took my hand.

"You won't lose. Not you."

"Why not?"

"Because you're the real thing."

"The real thing?"

"Not calculated. Not performed. A monster built out of despair and feeling that came up from the bottom of your heart."

"There's no human being alive who can beat that."

Yui's words landed in my chest.

That's right. I wasn't acting.

I was actually pissed off, so I got angry. The pigs actually matter to me, so I protected them.

That's all it was.

"Okay. I'll do it."

"Yes! On life advice we absolutely win!"

Yui said it with total confidence.

"Now we just wait to hear from the Captain. She's probably working out the format on her end too."

"She is the top V in Japan, after all. Scheduling and all that has to be a nightmare~"

That was the moment.

Somewhere we knew nothing about, an outrageous meeting was about to begin—

(To be continued)

Next time: "The Captain finally makes her move. And what assembles aboard the Galactic Opera Fleet is..."