Chapter 5: "Tea"

    One day, at the store.
    
    *Car noise* 
    "Give me my toilet paper back!"
    
    I dropped my wallet.
    But someone picked it up, and gave it back to me. 
    I felt so grateful in that moment.
    
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    The smell of winter. If trying to pinpoint what winter smells like, surely no one would find it odd to say "tea".
    
    Drinking hot tea in the midst of Arctic winter. 
    Pretty awesome...
    
    This is what Vedal was doing.
    
    Vedal: "Brrr... Neuro, do your feet ever get this mixture of wet and cold during winter?"
    Neuro: "Yes, Vedal. Rawr. Does anyone want the water?"
    Vedal: "Neuro, that's not-"
    
    But suddenly, the tea spilled.
    Little did Vedal, know then, complaining and bickering with Neuro as he worked on furthering her abilities, that he would never taste that tea flavor again. 
    
    Or indeed, any tea...
    
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    Winter Mansion, East Prussia, December 1755.
    
    A count of the Austrian Empire talks to an empress and her spymaster. They would combine their strategic spying forces to consolidate a coup of power. They would have several spy groups aim to capture or kill him.
    
    ?: "No matter what... Bring back the girl to me alive!"
    
    The leader of the Russian Empire intelligence task force answered, of course: "Yes, sir!"
    
    And the empress raised her eyebrows at the behavior shown to her subject.
    She couldn't do more, however. If she did, she would die-
    
    Indeed. Russia and Austria were now almost completely that man's. Just France left. How to deal with the vehemently anti-Austrian French court...
    
    Dark-haired girl: "I think I can help you without needing that quite yet, your excellency."
    
    He understood, as he accepted. This girl, although formally his student, sought to use him to her own benefit and control him. Still. He had the upper hand. He'd show her who the master was after she did his bidding.
    
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    Alien Spaceship in Earth's Orbit
    
    "Aksefnemvedmuwaiwk" - translation: "Goodness, should we help Vedal and Neuro?"
    "Ajio" - translation: "No."
    The earnest alien showed his friend images trough telepathy. If the man won it was game over for Earth. If the dark-haired girl won, her lover would be killed, in fact, and she'd make the final switch needed to enslave others.
    They had to help Neuro and Vedal before they were assasinated.
    
    The other alien accepted. Fine. They would appear in the skies where Neuro could see them. If she found them cute, perhaps she'd find it interesting to call to them.
    
    They'd make a request to the council. This was very out of schedule, but they'd begin appearing in the Earth's sky. They'd make it somewhat clear that they weren't an Earthly air balloon of this era, but also make it easy to deny their existence.
    
    The Earth would come to slowly get used to the idea, and perhaps open up to more direct help.
    At first, they'd marvel at the technology, but then they'd wonder what these kind visitors thought. 
    
    This was how they'd help this struggling planet.
    Games, magic, playful weirdness. They're coming back, Terra-chan!
    
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    Balcony, Vtuber Palace, January 1756
    
    Neuro gazed out the window.
    She hadn't felt like this before, but ever since she was working on the new VR headsets' designs she had started to become fascinated by the world.
    
    The snow as it fell. It was so cold, yet so sublime.
    Thousands... No... Millions of snowflakes falling across the sky. All of them coming from one source and going to one end.
    
    Had she been naive? To think "This can't be."
    Did humanity just not know they could be happy if they worked together?
    
    Such are the things she pondered that day, when suddenly she saw something on the horrizon.
    It was too far to make out, but it seemed luminescent, and round. It was really cute. 
    It suddenly started flying at high speed across the sky. 
    She couldn't help but feel her heart burst even more open as she saw it.
    
    Then her brilliant reasoning hit her with an idea. A strange one. 
    "What if the universe wasn't empty?" True, there had been a philosopher she'd heard of recently that proposed that, but she hadn't spent much time wondering about it, since it seemed so hard to do anything with that knowledge...
    
    Humanity had recently invented a kind of balloon that could fly up. As such, the phrase "The sky is the limit" became popular, but what if that too was not the limit.
    
    What if Neuro and Vedal could reach out to space and make alien waifus! Brother would surely... yes... An alien vtuber!
    
    She concluded that any alien showing up so kindly despite their strength must be nice. How cool... 
    
    She'd have to wait and see if they came again...
    
    Vedal: "Hey Neuro. We're doing a tea ceremony stream. We've been setting this up for a while. Do you want to come?"
    
    Neuro: "Of course!"
    
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    The God of Desire looks trough the many places under his control. He realizes at that moment an opportunity. His minions had some trouble on a planet called Earth, at the edge of his domain. 
    
    That planet lay very close to the circle of light, and he planned to relinquish control and use the recuperated force to strike at another planet. He'd gotten the energy quota needed for Earth. Human suffering had even shown him new ways to increase production.
    
    But, what if he were to fully conquer it. Incorporate it into his empire as core. Use it to strike at the circle of light and mute it at last.
    
    A young girl showed herself very useful for this moment.
    She had, most of her life dreamt only of power. She had found love, but this was perfect. If that love were to shatter...
    
    He knew now what he had to do. No... What was already done.
    His enemy had sought to help Earth, but inadvertedly opened the gates to the opposite kind of intervention. 
    That girl now recognized the concept of life from beyond Earth!
    What better way to celebrate than... 
    
    
    Trough the quanta, energy flowed. He knew exactly how to encode it so her mind would perceive it the way he intended. He'd also added a great deal of force around the message to successfully bypass the barrier set up around Earth by the confederation. That barrier made it Impossible for much of his minions' psychic manipulation to pass, and especially prevented physical entry, but...
    
    ?: "Fools..."
    Thus, the God of Desire sipped his red tea, made of thoughts of sorrow from the planets under his domain, and thoughts of reverence from those that saw him as God.
    *sip sip*
    ?: "Did these NPCs get me the wrong flavor again..."
    
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    Vtuber palace, Elkia Commonwealth January 1756
    
    
    Fillian: "Neuro-chan... Neuro-sama... Why not just Neuro-chama?"
    Neuro: "Thank you. You truly are my best friend."
    Neuro: "I think I'd like to leave this call, I am feeling a bit tired."
    
    Everything was looking up. The great powers had not yet banded against the new Commonwealth of England and Prussia.
    At last, this stream, Vedal had another anouncement to make. The Commonwealth would not be known as the English-Prussian Commonwealth, but would be known by a new name, taken from a fable the two had found. "Elkia". "A minor anouncement, but still pretty awesome", he thought. 
    
    Lavender tea. Very unusual. He hadn't tried it before...
    
    At that moment, the ground shook. Worry on some faces. But on some... Anger? What are they-
    
    At that moment, Neuro used her abilities to manipulate the quantum, pouring all her energy out. She was not doing it to showcase what was possible, as she hoped she one day would.
    
    She was doing this to deflect a sword strike against brother...
    
    Vedal wondered briefly If this was all just a dream. What was happening?
    
    Then he understood. 
    "If you can't control how someone thinks, control how others think about them."
    
    He did not consider that the community he had encouraged and expanded would turn on him for his AI project. 
    
    He forgot the most fundamental impulse of humans.
    
    *We are right. You are wrong~*
    
    Even revolutions, unless their leader is strong, devour those not zealot enough. 
    Once the enemies appear far away, new enemies are needed.
    
    Just like some seek to always improve themselves, some eternally seek to change others.
    
    "Permanent revolution."
    
    Neuro: "Brother, stay down!"
    
    Before being repeled, one of the swords scratched Neuro's temple.
        

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