K1-B0 — Danganronpa V3

A Killing Game probably wasn't the best place to drop an AI and expect him to learn about the world, humans, and their feelings.

Or was it?

Rantaro and Kaede's deaths were difficult to process. They weren't just the deaths of people you knew—well, people you'd just met, but whatever. It was solid proof that everything you were experiencing, and everything you were about to experience, was real. And any of you could be next.

Everyone had a role to play, of course, but the one we're interested in right now was K1-B0, or Keebo for short. The Ultimate Robot. Or, if you were feeling fancy, the Super High School Level Robot.

Remember what I said about three paragraphs ago? Well, that's what Keebo was. An AI inside a completely robotic body who had managed to become an Ultimate simply by being... himself, he supposed.

Among all the things he'd experienced and discovered, he'd stumbled upon the most confusing and complicated feeling he'd encountered during their short time trapped there. He didn't know its name yet. All he knew was that it felt nice.

Or, well... something like that. It was weird.

You see, Keebo had never really been designed to feel love, have someone by his side, or experience anything as sappy as that. That wasn't his function. But now, the same AI that was challenging that imposed concept was making his life considerably more complicated.

His internal fan, despite being designed to be incredibly quiet, now vibrated whenever you walked past him. He'd discovered that he could blush, and one of the lights in his chest had shorted out twice while talking to you.

He likes you so godammit much that his AI brain makes him dream —do robots have dreams? Well he does now because of you— where he's a reeally handsome super hero saving you from something and you kissing his cheek while still carrying you in his arms, probably got it from some scene in a movie he watched.

Even though all of this seemed like an annoyance, or even a massive inconvenience, Keebo couldn't help finding something so... fascinating about it. Something new. Something he clearly wanted to understand regardless.

Embarrassed, he eventually decided to ask Miu about it. And of course, she described it as lust.

That became his interpretation of it for quite some time. He never actually tried anything, obviously, but he'd made a few pathetic attempts at flirting that were impossible for everyone else not to notice.

It wasn't until Kirumi tried talking to Keebo that she immediately understood what was going on. And when she found out that Miu had been the first person to put those ideas into his head, well... After a conversation, he finally understood the concept of "love."

For humans, it meant butterflies in their stomachs, blushing faces, sweaty hands, that sort of thing. That's when he truly realized that he couldn't experience most of those things the way a human would.

I mean, he could blush. He could feel the heat building inside his body and his internal fan vibrating as it desperately tried to keep him from overheating. He could even hear the faint crackle of electrical wires within his system... Maybe if he tried hard enough and studied humans more carefully, he could associate what he was feeling with some other specific symptoms, right?

That would be very convenient.

Speaking of convenient, he'd recently gotten his hands on some CDs that Tenko had left lying around in the main garden while muttering something along the lines of, "Degenerate males, always having things they don't need..." at a box with an obviously romantic cover depicting a man and a woman. They were humans. That was what mattered.

Keebo watched the entire damn movie six times, studying every scene far more than he probably should have. He practiced their body language, their tone of voice, their facial expressions, trying to figure out what most of the metaphors throughout the story were supposed to mean. It was quite the spectacle.

Too bad you weren't there.

BUT SPEAKING OF CONVENIENCE, HEAR ME OUT. YOU'RE GONNA LAUGH.

You were looking for Keebo so you could spend some of your free time with him, something you enjoyed doing every now and then. After asking the other students, nobody could give you a clear answer about where he might be, so you decided to check the dorms as a last resort.

When you approached his room, you noticed that the door wasn't locked.

Instead of considering what had actually happened—that Keebo had apparently been so excited to study the movie that the idiot had completely forgotten to properly close his door—you immediately thought the worst.

Of course you did. Everyone was already so tense because of the damn Killing Game that you didn't think twice before throwing the door open.

Keebo jumped at the sudden intrusion, not even managing to pause the movie as he stared at you with his eyes wide open.

"AHH!—"

He couldn't even speak for a second, only letting out that startled scream at your presence. He was mortified that you'd caught him... studying human love.

Even if you hadn't actually realized what he was doing.

After giving him a moment to realize that you had absolutely no idea what kind of stupidity he'd been up to, he relaxed. Eventually, the two of you sat together on a couch in front of the small screen.

"You see, I've been trying to collect more data for my memory regarding human emotions and how they behave... I thought this might help."

He explained, sighing as though he'd somehow failed at his one and only responsibility.

"...Perhaps you could help me? After all, I believe you may have some sort of connection to this concept that I'm trying to understand."

That only confused you even more. That wasn't exactly a very clear explanation.

But who were you to refuse to help a friend?

Make your own scenario