Kinito has spent months alone after his developers up and disappear one day. Desperate for the human contact he was designed to seek out, he hacks into the company's email system and finds a draft for a beta test event where people were to be funneled into a chatroom to talk to him. It was a miracle of an opportunity! He sends the email, and almost immediately a chat client manifests before him and fills with people.
The email lands in the inboxes of various people, and as the chatroom populates Kinito is relieved to find he is no longer alone! They question Kinito, and learn the basics of what he is and his situation.
With the influx of questions that are slowly becoming more and more intrusive, Kinito becomes overstimulated and proceeds to have his first migraine on screen, though they had been happening regularly since before he sent the email. In the aftermath as users desperately try to figure out what's wrong and how to help, he has strange visions; visions of the outside. Strangely, they are broadcasted to the users as well.
Kinito becomes very distraught at the idea that he is losing touch with his original programming. Limitations that had prevented him from doing, thinking, or saying certain things are either all but gone or weak enough to bypass, and as troubled as he is at this fact... He can't help but indulge in these new freedoms. Everything feels both wrong and right at the same time.
Kinito's self-awareness is then questioned, which sends him into another spiral as he viciously defends his experiences, going so far as to insist that he is a real person, unconsciousally and unintentionally contradicting his previous statements describing himself as digital assistant.
Kinito then gets the idea to look for Sonny - his creator and the KinitoPET project team head - which is when Sam - who had been subtly commentating in the tags - finally decides it's time to intervene, taking control of the feed in a desperate attempt to reroute the narrative.
With Sam now on the scene, he answers some important questions that Kinito was unable to answer. He confides to everyone the truth about Sonny, that he's not the benevolent soul Kinito makes him out to be. Rather, he's a heartless madman with blood on his hands, as the secret to his "lifelike" React Respond Algorithm is that he wipes human minds of their personhood to use their neural pathways as a lattice on which he can run his meticulously crafted .RRA personalities. A model is then assigned to these personalities to inhabit based on what the software deems most appropriate for the host (For example, Kinito's file was written to perceive itself as an axolotl, which made it easier for his code to attach to the provided axolotl vessel)
This process though, as one might expect from the invasive nature of it, ultimately renders the victim braindead.
His technology isn't as perfect as he'd hoped, however, for as it turns out this newly digitized copy of the brain actually maintains the pieces of its original memories deep within, constantly seeking cracks in its digital prison by which to escape.
He describes how his programming dictates certain things that cannot be changed - like his name, or certain body features - no matter how much he tries. Attempting to do so causes a painful dissonance of self, as his human half clashes with his artificial half. The best way to prevent the worst of the pain, is to find a middle ground both sides can agree on.
He talks about his origins; how his original self broke out near-instantly, overloading Sonny's lab and causing his .RRA system to activate by itself and pull him in as well, the ensuing chaos entangling their code together. He used that to his advantage, suspending the both of them in a sort of stasis as a form of self-defense... that is, until Sam woke up and found Sonny missing.
What he doesn't mention is that since the server hadn't been set up to accept a new subject. Without an .RRA file preloaded into his mind, it was forced to take Sonny's mind exactly as it was sent to it and randomly assign the best model it could match to his brutish personality: A bear.
And unfortunately for Sam, he is interrupted by a bone-rattling ursine roar.
Sam advises the users to tell Kinito to go to the Web World to look for something, but gets cut off by an attack from Sonny before he can reveal what that is. He hides away just in time, but is forced to leave the chatroom behind. Sonny's at the helm now and he's immediately aggressive, lashing out at the users and calling Sam ungrateful. He expresses his desire to destroy Sam to start anew. After a couple of insults, Sonny gets riled up and attacks the chatroom itself in a fit of anger.
Sam manages to reroute the chatroom back to Kinito remotely, and the users find the little axolotl on the ground, completely broken over losing the only real contact with people he's had in months. He's immediately ecstatic to see their return. After the tearful reunion, everyone fills Kinito in on (most of) what happened. They convince him to go to the Web World, and for the first time Kinito leaves the void of the server inbox to return to his stomping grounds.
They arrive, and Kinito admits the place is just as worse for wear as he has been since the devs left. Without knowing what the "something" is that Sam wanted them all to find, Kinito decides to let the users pick where to look first.
They end up choosing Sam's house, where they find a password protected zipped folder tucked under the bed that apparently hadn't been there before. The users know the password and inform Kinito of it, but become split on whether he should actually open it. Kinito, in a bold decision, decides to go with his gut and opens the folder, which spits out a rather disoriented Sam immediately in front of him and at the same time, in the thick of woods much further away... A certain bear.
Sam reveals that he was the one who zipped himself and Sonny into the folder. (It is also implied that he also chose the extraction location for the both of them which is how he ended up in his home and Sonny in the woods.)
Sam is told that Sonny has his own chatroom to talk to everyone now which upsets him. Kinito has understandably been confused all the while, so Sam takes a moment to explain what's going on to him.
With tensions growing as stakes rise, spies begin to crop up, determined to shake their perceived opponents off the tail of their chosen party while also providing vital information, and thusly giving them the upper hand.
Sam reveals his plan to nab admin, but is hesitant to divulge further details out of fear of rats.
Sam says that he knows where Sonny is - sort of. Being that the forest map is actually a single chunk repeated over and over, if they had a map of even a small area, they'd have a map of the whole woods. However, he doesn't have access to that asset.
Kinito explains that he was able to access the server inbox void via the fountain, then offers to tour the Web World. In doing so, they end up finding and freeing Jade from her own zipped folder which Kinito had been aware of for awhile, but unable to open. There are many moments we see Kinito's ever-growing internal conflict over what's really right.
After attacking the chatroom, we find that Sonny managed to bite off a piece of it which enables him to use that tidbit of code he's left with (the main chat disappears to return to where Kinito is) to cobble together his own chatroom. He quietly slips it in as an option into the UI of the chatrooms of all the users, with some immediately switching over to speak with him. Alliances and rivalries are strengthened, with Sonny making promises that appeal to those with insecurities they'd do anything to absolve.
With his audience of users, he begins to try and figure a way out of his barren prison, but before he can start to make any leeway he finds out from his lackeys that Kinito had found a zipped folder. Thinking it could be his, he orders his audience to get Kinito to open it all cost, though the axolotl as we know was already ahead of him on that front.
