Shabel Tonya Reads Nikke’s Anniversary Story Blind, From First Maria Death to Cliffhanger

CHROMASHIFT — Shabel Tonya, a virtual singer with ChromaSHIFT’s ENCORE branch, read Story 1 of Maria-n, the fourth-anniversary event story for Goddess of Victory: Nikke, blind on her stream, working through it from the opening scene to the point where the story stops. The stream ran just over three and a half hours. She warned viewers who wanted to avoid spoilers to mute or cover their screens, and said she had stayed off Twitter all day so nothing would be spoiled.

The story follows Maria, a Nikke whose creator, Dr. Maria, sends one copy of her after another to the surface and loses each to the Raptures. The first, Maria 2, was killed by a shell moments after stepping off the transport ship, and the count climbed past 200 before one Maria brought down a Lord-class Rapture. Tonya remarked that each new Maria carries the memory of her earlier deaths, and later, as Dr. Maria’s attempts continued, that the project had become a game to the Marias, one they approached as if they could come back at any time. Another turn came when Maria 311 watched two other Marias die in front of her, after which Dr. Maria took a pistol and shot a Maria who could not pull the trigger herself.

“So, we’re just going to see Maria die and die and die, over and over and over again.” — Shabel Tonya, after the first Maria died

The story’s lore reveals drew some of her loudest reactions. A scene she took to show Dr. Maria’s mother as the person who made the Rapture Queen left her saying that humans had done this to themselves, and a later scene showed what became of one Maria under Chatterbox’s hands. She also followed the Marias who were sent out with a string of commanders, most of whom died or fled, until the seventh, who called himself Number Seven. He offered Maria a blue rose from a flower meadow and gave her the name Marian. He died when a Rapture exploded, and the story ended with Marian facing the same man again, who greeted her by name.

Afterward Tonya said she was not ready for Story 2, which she said viewers would have to wait for, and that she wanted to go back to the first prologue once the context was known. She praised the writers for turning small details into later payoffs. She said she would open waiting rooms for the coming days, with the Maria pulls and the event’s mini game set for the next day, and that there would be many Nikke streams that week.