Lesson 9: What we found there was…

"Momoi, I want to go home," Midori spoke up in a small voice as the pair trudged through the rubble of another ruined, empty street. Words were left unsaid, but Momoi understood plainly what her twin did not voice aloud. Midori was scared. For a moment, Momoi felt a twisting pang of guilt at bringing her younger sister along, but she quickly shook it off. Guilt would help neither of them now.

"We'll go back soon, I promise!" Momoi replied, putting on a veneer of cheer into her voice for the sake of her sibling. The oppressive, all-consuming silence of the ruins was getting to her too, but she would never let Midori know that. "We just need to find the G. Bible first so we can save the clubroom."

G. Bible, the holy grail of all game developers in Kivotos. A program said to contain the secrets of making the perfect game. Veritas, Millennium's preeminent hacker's club, had done Momoi a favor and tracked it to a location within these ruins. With G. Bible on their side, they'd be able to make a revolutionary game to silence all their naysayers, win the Millennium Prize, and protect Yuzu's sanctuary. Just a bit more perseverance and they'd be able to use it to save the Game Development Department from that heartless accountant. Facing ahead, the pink garbed twin merrily fiddled with her phone for a moment before nodding with satisfaction. "Come on, it's this way!"

"Momoi…"

"Hm? What's up?" The older twin turned around to find her younger sister still rooted at the same spot as before. The girl who she shared her face with looked distraught and on the verge of tears, and Momoi's guilt returned with a vengeance. With great difficulty, she fought it off again. Because they couldn't turn back. Not now. Not with G. Bible so close. Faced with that immutable reality, Saiba Momoi did the only reasonable thing she could.

"Want me to hold your hand?" she asked her younger sister with a broad and toothy grin that was as wide as it was honest.

Midori hesitated for a second before replying shyly. "Yeah."

The older twin nodded, slung her cutely decorated pink rifle over her shoulder as she took her sister's hand in her own. Together they walked deeper into the dead city.

Complete and utter silence was not the only foe striking at the pair's nerves. Rubble, craters, and overgrown vegetation unsteadied their steps and slowed down their pace. Crumbling, forgotten walls collapsed after countless years of neglect to pelt them with debris and dust. Gaping holes in the pavement bared the city's darkened underground maw at them, forcing them into long abandoned buildings to find other ways around. It was this forced exploration that revealed to them perhaps the most unsettling thing about the ruins aside from the overbearing silence.

The lifeless metropolis was utterly ordinary.

They walked through the innards of what resembled a grocery store, past the bones of what might have been a library, in front of the shadow of a likely train station. Were it not for the decay and deterioration of ages that surrounded them, it would have been no different from taking a stroll through any neighborhood in Millennium.

The thought of a civilization so alike their own disappearing in some forgotten calamity and leaving nothing behind aside from faintly familiar echoes sent a shiver down the girls' spines.

"We're almost at the coordinates that Veritas gave me," Momoi spoke up, cutting through the heavy silence that mercilessly weighed down upon them both. Injecting as much pep as she could into her voice, she continued, "We'll have the G. Bible and be back at the clubroom before lunch time!"

At the mention of their clubroom, Midori squeezed her sister's hand and the slightly older girl stopped, turning around with a look of mild confusion on her face.

"The clubroom," Midori spoke up in a voice that trembled slightly with a mixture of uncertainty and fear, "Why did you make up that ridiculous excuse? We waited for SCHALE to arrive and then we just ran." Exasperation at her twin's antics finally overcame both uncertainty and fear as she continued, "What were you thinking?"

Momoi hummed softly under her breath and her features took on a rare pensive cast before she replied, "Well, the SCHALE girl didn't have a halo, you know? It wouldn't have felt right to bring her along. What if she got hurt?"

Midori nodded at her sister's explanation. It made sense. Regardless of how disturbing and frightening she found the ruins to be, the both of them were going to be safe no matter what. Their haloes would protect them from all but the most egregious injuries. Neither of them could, however, vouch for the safety of a girl without a halo. The green-eyed twin shook her head with disbelief. How could such a person even exist? It was beyond imagining.

"Besides, we haven't run into any GSC guards, have we?" the older twin continued happily even as Midori's face turned to shock, "Everything's working out anyways!"

"No, don't say that! You're gonna jinx-"

"Shh! Did you hear that?"

"You jinxed us!"

"Ssh! Quiet!" Momoi insisted as she pulled her twin to crouch behind a large piece of wreckage that had been dislodged from the crumbling remnants of a towering building in some distant past. No sooner had the pair of strawberry-blonde girls hidden, nervously clutching their weapons to their chest, that the silence which had frayed their nerves was broken by the steps of unexpected intruders. Not far from their hiding spot, a small group of strange looking robots lumbered into view from out of a street corner and unto the wider streetway ahead of them. Robotic citizens were something common in Kivotos, but the things that ambled into view were altogether something that neither twin had ever seen before.

Like the other robots that inhabited Kivotos, they were humanoid in shape and size with sleek, metallic bodies but those were the only similarities that they shared. The strange things that shambled forward wore no clothes, had too long, gangly limbs and an arched, animalistic posture that had their digits practically dragging on the floor. The cranium was elongated as well, almost akin to a canine's muzzle, and a long, crimson togue lolled forth from the jagged and uneven teeth of an otherwise featureless face. Their plating was also uneven on their torso, covering only certain portions and giving the impression of ribs poking through emaciated skin. The gaunt things halted, raised their heads in unison as if they were a bizarre pack of utterly mute wolves, and then, just as silently, shuffled forward to disappear into the alleys between abandoned buildings leaving behind nothing but the fading sound of their footsteps.

The twins looked at each other.

"Momoi, I want to go home…"

"Yeah," Momoi finally agreed, "Me too."

It took them a moment to gather their courage before they once again moved towards their destination. Terrified though they were, they were too close to give up now. Their best friend depended on their success and so they put their fear aside and moved onward again.

The coordinates that Veritas had given them led the twins to the crumbling carcass of what appeared to be a factory. Portions of the walls and floors were missing, holes having been blasted in every surface in some conflict vanished into the haze of time. The twins walked cautiously, attempting to keep their footsteps from ringing upon the metallic catwalks and attempting to keep the corroded portions from crumbling beneath their feet. It was a mercifully swift and intruder-less search before they arrived at what should have been their destination.

"We're practically above it," Momoi spoke in an uncommonly low and hushed tone as she ran her hand over the dusty surface of the wall barring their way. "Let's look for a way down."

Midori simply nodded, still unwilling to speak up after their frightening encounter.

Their search led them to a gaping hole in an isolated hallway. The rubble had formed a tightly packed slope that they could use to reach the lower levels of the facility with ease. Reorienting themselves, the sisters walked hand in hand once again, glancing cautiously at the shadows dancing in the distance and peeking warily around corners. In this fashion, they arrived at the specified coordinates, and they gasped in unison at what they found there.

What they found there was a circular room where the ceiling had disappeared long ago, allowing sunlight to stream inside unimpeded. Broken computers and terminals and all manner of corroded wires and cables lined the walls which were slowly being overtaken by creeping vegetation. In a similar fashion, strange geometric patterns and drawings that neither could recognize were visible on the parts of the floor where nature had yet to regain its dominance.

What they found there was a solitary girl, asleep upon some strange contraption that vaguely resembled a chair at the center of a raised dais in the middle of the room. More terminals stood in silent vigil around the girl, and a veritable web of wiring, cables and smaller devices crossed the room to end like prone, mechanical supplicants at her feet.

What they found there was the haloed robot girl that they had rescued and brought back to their clubroom refuge, and who was now clawing futilely at the strange blue barrier of interlocking triangles that had shimmered into existence a second before she could get her hands on the stunned SCHALE representative.

A moment prior to the attack, Rei had scooted back on the sofa when the dark-haired girl had started speaking and reached into the schoolbag she had placed there earlier in the day when she first arrived at the clubroom. Her fingers accidentally brushed against the Shittim Chest before retrieving the firearm that Commander Ikari had ordered her to carry as a precaution in case she ever needed to defend herself: a CZ-75D Compact. The moment that the strange girl had lunged, Rei had attempted to raise the firearm and aim it, but the girl's words had struck a chord within her and made her hesitate.

Seed of Life?

Then, before the girl could reach her, the blue barrier had suddenly appeared, defending Rei in her moment of distraction.

Initial reactions varied wildly between the girls gathered in the dimly lit Game Development Department clubroom.

"She has Protect?!" The twins cried in unison, their eyes going wide with shock upon seeing the unexpected defensive matrix while Yuzu shut her eyes and whimpered softly, seeming to fold in on herself at the sudden violence that had erupted in her sanctuary.

The haloed robot girl had scratched and scraped at the barrier uselessly before halting her assault in momentary confusion. She had then winded back her arm and punched at the triangular formation. The barrier held, but the resulting surge of light and horrific cracking sound jolted everyone else out of their stupor and into action.

As one, the members of the Game Development Department leapt at the robotic girl and held her arms to prevent her from striking again. It was a struggle that was equal parts futile as it was effective: the robotic girl struck the barrier again, but they managed to hinder her movements to such an extent that the horrific force of the first blow was absent.

"Stop!" Momoi sobbed as the robotic girl attempted to wind up for a third strike. "Stop, please! Why are you doing this?!"

At those words, the robot girl jerked back as if she had been hit and ceased her aggression. She shook her head, long black hair trailing the motion, and her whole body seemed to twitch. The girl's blue eyes expanded and contracted slightly, refocusing like the mechanical lenses that they were.

"Error: Mission purpose not found. Error: Self not found. Error: Memory not found. Diagnostics: All green. Error. Retrieve Seed of Life?" she asked sounding as confused as a robot could.

"NO!" the Game Development Department shouted together as one.

"What are you even talking about? What's a Seed of Life?" Midori asked warily.

"Error: Data not found. Retrieve Seed of Life?"

"N-no!" Yuzu simpered tearily, still holding on to the girl that was no longer aggressive. "No re-retrieving in the clubroom. No fighting at all…" The redhead trailed off into small sobs, but the robotic girl lowered her arms in compliance and proceeded to sit perfectly straight on the sofa's middle seat. Ayanami Rei took the opportunity to pick up her schoolbag, sedately standing up and moving to the other side of the room, near the windows; she kept her firearm pointed at the sofa's sole occupant all the while. The robotic girl's eyes tracked her movements, but she did not stand up from her spot.

"Momoi," Midori whispered urgently, "we have to take her back." Her tone was grave, and it brooked no argument. Her older sister, however, shook her head and Midori could already tell she was going to say something ridiculous and migraine inducing.

"Not happening," Momoi argued, crossing her arms in defiance. "Take Aris back to that scary place? Nuh-uh. Besides, look at her! She's just as confused as we are! No way can I just dump someone that looks like that."

Midori looked at the robot girl's blank expression and somehow resisted the urge to throttle her twin.

"Momoi, no. You can't just name her and keep her like a stray cat! She just assaulted a federal officer! We gotta take her back before-"

"Before what, pray tell."

The General Student Council was at the door.

Two of them, in fact.

Iwabitsu Ayumu had a cross expression on her normally gentle features. Her eyes scoured all the occupants in the room before finally settling on the girl by the window with a melancholy look.

Nanagami Rin, Vice-President and Chief Administrative Officer of Kivotos' General Student Council, adjusted her glasses, and her voice was fit to freeze the blood in their veins as she spoke, "I would like to hear all the details about this 'assault on a federal officer' that you just mentioned."

Lesson 9: End

What did we learn today, class?

Yes, that's correct!

Fighting on school grounds is prohibited.

Join us again next time for Lesson 10: be Human. We'll have: Talking. More talking. Lots of talking. And a truly SHOCKING development.

Don't be late!

AN: Oct 29, 2023. Normally I would try to avoid retreading off-screen events, but the twins' adventure in the ruins was too important to leave out. I hope that you'll agree with me in that regard and excuse my going over events that had "already happened" again for this chapter. The next chapter will be on Nov 5, with the usual caveat that it might be delayed an extra week. See you then! -Kero