Once again, this one was written by me. Moved down from where it was, because for whatever reason neither my friend nor I knew how to write anything in order. In point of fact, to be fair I still don't.
Anya winced inside her armor as she felt yet another bolt twisted tight enough to grind her bodysuit into her flesh. This had been going on for a long time now, after every battle for the past couple of months in fact she'd had to have her warframe adjusted just to keep it from falling apart. It was no longer a question of if the prototype armor would fail, but of when.
The past couple of months had been hard on Stock too. Anya would often catch him staring at her when he thought she wasn't paying attention and she could tell that it was getting harder and harder for him to hide his worry. She couldn't say anything yet though, not until after they'd finished with their current assignment anyway.
She just hoped the frame would hold up for that long. If it failed in the middle of a battle she didn't know what would happen, and she was more worried about the marine than she was ready to admit. He'd been the first and so far the only one to stop being afraid of her, and he always made a point of keeping her company when he could. Stock was the only friend she had now, and she didn't want to lose him.
It took a long time, but eventually the techs were finished with her frame and she was free for a while. She immediately began looking for Stock and ended up wandering around aimlessly for quite a while. No one was going to stop to give a tenno directions, and in fact they all turned and went the other way when they saw her coming. She had to find Stock on her own, then after wandering around for about an hour she checked the training field and found the entire squad there, along with Sergeant Booth.
Booth was a rather angry sort and Anya didn't like him much. What she liked even less was the way he would often single Stock out, for everything from a speck of dust on his boot to just having the wrong expression on his face at a particular time. It looked like this evening wasn't going to be much different either, Stock was down doing pushups while the rest of the unit was standing around looking awkward and more than a little embarrassed as Booth yelled at their fellow marine.
What happened next though came as a bit of a surprise. One of the others, Lance Corporal Havoc she thought, dropped to the ground beside Stock and began keeping pace with him, and before long the whole squad had followed suit. Booth was completely blindsided by this, and after sputtering a command for them to all stand at attention he stormed off the field.
The marines stood there at attention for about thirty seconds more, and then someone snorted with the effort of holding back his laughter. Soon all of them were doubled over or rolling on the ground laughing while at the same time desperately trying not to make too much noise, and Anya couldn't help a silent chuckle of her own. These guys might not like her, but she was starting to truly like them and enjoy being around to watch them. Rather than spoil the moment she turned without a sound and walked away, chose a spot out of the way to sit down, and began polishing her weapons.
All her sword needed was a touch up polish as she almost never ended up in a situation where she had to use it. She finished with it in just a few minutes, then moved on to her side arm. She eventually had to give up about halfway through cleaning it after realizing she'd spent twenty minutes on the same part. She sighed, put it back together, then shifted her position and began her breathing exercises, eventually drifting into her trance.
She wandered through a wasteland, a long silent battlefield where, even after eons of time, nothing had changed and nothing had grown. Every soldier who had fought and died on that battlefield had remained, preserved for eternity the way they had fallen, the dead wearing uniforms from the most humble beginnings of the empire on until the present day. The entire history of the Orokin lay bare for all to see written in their battlefields spanning centuries of war and destruction.
Anya wandered on, coming at last to the very place where she herself sat in the waking world, only now it was different. The camp was gone, moved or something, the battle seemed to have been fought on that very spot. There wasn't a single living thing left, no Orokin officers, no enlisted marines, no rebels… not even a single blade of grass. Over everything there lay a wispy, faintly glowing pink mist that billowed and swirled with the slightest movement, lighting up the faces of those who lay dead or casting them into shadow as it scattered in puffs of air. There lay Sergeant Booth, a massive hole ripped through his chest. Other marines followed, Simmons, possibly the biggest pain in the ass she'd ever met and yet somehow an entertaining one despite it all. Lance Corporal Havoc, who she didn't really know very well but who seemed to care about the others a great deal even if he didn't care about her.
On and on she walked, until she'd seen every member of her own unit except for Private Woodstock. She wandered toward the center of the field, continually turning as she did so, feeling more and more alone the farther she went. She looked ahead and saw someone standing with his back to her, but as she approached the man collapsed in on himself into a mound of dust, a set of dog tags landing on top and kicking up a puff of dust and glowing pink vapor. She picked them up and her breath caught.
"Impressive, isn't it?"
Anya clutched the tags protectively to her chest as she turned to face the speaker, then took a step back. The woman seemed to be a twisted version of herself, wreathed in a dark aura and holding a strange gleam in her eye. "'Impressive' is not the word I would choose," Anya said.
"Why not? Why hold to their values, their morals, their way of thinking?" the woman questioned, "You only hold yourself back."
"I was tasked with protecting them," Anya said as she looked around, "This… This is not what I had in mind."
"Why? You're stronger, faster, smarter," the other woman said, "You are better than them in every way, meant to be their weapon but in the end you could be their replacement."
"No," Anya shook her head, "Not like this."
"Is that your personal opinion? Or is that just what they've taught you to think?" the woman asked, a smirk on her face.
"I don't want to kill them!" Anya protested.
"Don't you?" the woman demanded. The battlefield disappeared and they were surrounded by blackness, standing on nothing. "You do want to kill them. You want them to pay for what they've done to you, what they've done to us. You want to make them suffer, as we have suffered," she continued, "They are the embodiment of everything we've suffered."
"Not all of them," Anya whispered.
"All of them!" the woman declared, "They embody our doubts." She raised a hand and suddenly Simmons was standing there beside her, still very much dead but also looking straight at Anya.
"I knew you would fail," he said simply.
"They embody our fears," the woman continued. The next man to appear was Anya's own handler, the only person she'd ever been truly terrified of.
"It is a weapon's purpose to be used; not to think," he spoke the words she remembered so vividly from the one and only time she had ever questioned him.
"They embody our hatred," the woman hissed. The scientist who had done all of the work, both on her warframe and on Anya herself appeared.
"You will be the greatest scientific achievement this glorious empire has ever known!" he proclaimed.
"They embody our guilt," the woman said. Stock was suddenly standing there with the others, scarred and horribly mangled.
"Where were you, Anya? Why didn't you help us?" he asked, his voice filled with pain and betrayal.
Anya just shook her head and took a step back, her hands still held to her chest.
"They are your weakness," the woman concluded, "But you need not be held back. We need not be held back. Cast them away, realize they don't matter. We are superior in every way and one day we will replace them. All you need to do is claim that right." The woman made a sweeping gesture with her hand and the specters of Anya's feelings were scattered to nothingness like dust in the wind.
"This is not how it's supposed to be!" Anya cried.
"Isn't it?" the woman retorted, "You're so indoctrinated that you don't even know who we are! We are their replacement, when a hundred years have passed and they've all turned to dust we will still remain, we will live until long after the empire has crumbled to its very foundations!"
"If 'claiming my right' means betraying my only friend then forget it," Anya spat, "Stock is all I have, I will not abandon him!"
"It is the only way, and the sooner you accept that the easier it will be for you," the woman said with finality, "But only you can make the decision to claim our destiny. I will be waiting." She faded away and Anya was left standing in the middle of a silent and empty void.
Anya jolted out of her trance and took a frantic look around just to be sure her camp hadn't become a dead battlefield. She had never encountered that part of herself before, and the fact that this other woman who was her but not her had been allowed to be born frightened and worried her. She didn't know what to make of her, or what she should do. One thing was brutally clear though, Anya knew that she couldn't allow that side of herself to win. If she did then everything she'd been through, everything she had done, her entire life after the Zariman would be pointless.
She resisted the urge to go looking for Stock, if he wanted to see her tonight he would, but their friendship was forbidden and she couldn't always run to him every time something upset her. Besides, even though she technically knew he would never blame her for his suffering, part of her was still beginning to doubt. Clearly he meant more to her than the others, and the other side of her had picked up on that, and used him as a way to drive home her guilt. Well, it had worked, although maybe not in the way it had been intended. Anya could never live with herself if she let anything happen to him. She decided that if it came to it she would sacrifice herself rather than let him die, and she was still thinking about this when she finally dropped off to sleep.