Weight of the World

Three|D E S E R T

"A2 huh?" I repeated the name quietly to myself. From my database I can confirm that all A units were destroyed in a hoped-to-be final battle with the machines, so how did one somehow escape? How does Anemone know this A unit? I mean I know she is an older model but surely she can't be that old. All of these questions and I can't think of a logical answer to even one of them. Why am I asking questions anyways, I'm not a scanner unit so I shouldn't have these thoughts.

I noticed on my pod's map that I was in the vicinity of my first location. It was just more forest land but that meant there were lots of hiding spaces I'll have to look in. The ground was a lot more voluminous out here compared to the rock covered city I was at before. Most 'insects', as humans called them, have gone extinct or evolved into new species so there wasn't too much noise besides the wind and the occasional deer. When my mission is over I'll definitely have to request to come back and wander around a bit.

After a while of looking for any traces of A2, I still had nothing. It was odd though, every once in a while I would find something like footprints or scattered android parts, but when I would go to investigate said oddities they would get covered up or go missing right before my eyes. The weirdest part was everytime something like that would mysteriously happen, I'd hear a dam deer rustling in the bushes again. Of course I know it's not really a deer but I can't quite figure out what or who it is. Logically its not A2, she wouldn't risk coming near the exact android coming to kill her, but who else could it be?

At this point there was no reason to stay in the forest, I doubt I'll find anything here. I started loading the next location onto my pods map when I started to hear the deer again. This time I couldn't help but let out a chuckle, finally realizing who was following me. Did she really think I wouldn't notice all the noise she is making. Of course I would notice her at some point. Either way I needed to start making my way to the next location.

Since there was no access point nearby I had to walk there. Lucky for me the next location wasn't terribly far off from where I was now. According to the map I was supposed to go to a desert city of sorts. It was off of the direction of the factory so I was confused why I was checking there but orders are orders.

After about half an hour of walking I realized that the deer  was still following me. I made no move to acknowledge her presence in any way. She was surprisingly terrible at sneaking around but I'll let her have her fun. The Commander must know she is following me at this point anyways. If there was a problem, I'm sure I would have been ordered to lose her by now.

Finally reaching the desert entrance, I saw a few small tents, one of which was a shop that I stopped at to get a few chips and upgrades. I also met a girl named Jackass while I was there. That wasn't even her nickname, Jackass was legitimately her name. She was a fairly tall woman with short, ash grey hair. One of her glittering silver eyes was covered with a visor. She wore a baggy shirt and equally as baggy camo pants that still showed off the curve of her hips. A cape cascaded down her back to about her knees. Overall she was most definitely not an eyesore. Jackass lead me over to the entrance of the desert and let me in.

There were hostile robots everywhere and I wouldn't exactly call them weak either. Jackass had warned me that this place was dangerous but I wouldn't have guessed I would have to face this many machines. It wasn't that I couldn't take care of it myself, but I was definitely starting to wear out quickly. I have taken some minor damage that needed to be fixed before my battle with A2. How I'll fix myself out here with little to no resources was a whole other problem that I'll just have to deal with later.

Finally getting to the desert city was both relieving and sent shivers down my artificial spine. There were machine corpses scattered around the ruins and the occasional android corps mixed in. The deeper I got into the city, the heavier the eerie aura felt.

Coming to an opening I saw what looked like an open cocoon made from deceased machine bodies. This must have been one of the massacres I've read about in my database. I could see slash marks from weaponry on the walls. A few sections of the ground looked like something heavy crashed down and just shattered the dirt. Walking into the pit more I noticed the lack of scattered machine parts. Normally when a massacre like this happens you would see broken parts everywhere. Here, however, there are just a few machine bodies lying around whole. The machines I presumed were deactivated looked completely intact with very little battle damage.

Along with the corps cocoon there was quite a few out of place objects in the clearing. Over by one of the battle caused craters was a metal baby carriage lying upside down. There was also quite a few tattered pieces of clothing that looked almost decades old. Machine lifeforms were mindless beings and had no need for material items like these so why were they here?

I made my way to the center of the city clearing and turned my pods scanning ability on. Because this was just an open space, there was no need to walk around like in the Forest Kingdom. Slowly the spod spun around, scanning every detail of the battle site. It was looking for one of three things; a black box, pod or lifeform signal to announce a nearby foe.

Suddenly the pod started going berserk. It kept saying something about an active, nearby hoard. I had scouted out the area before I started so it must have been a flaw in my pods system. There is no way I could have missed an entire machine hoard. As realization sets in I whip my head over to the, what I thought was, inactive cocoon. The machines started to move and struggle out of eachothers tight grasps. A chorus of beeping noises were forced into 5F's ears as all of the machines started to reboot themselves and turn on.

Never in her short life has 5F run so fast. There was too many machines for a single, inexperienced android to take on. One had jumped onto 5F's back and another grabbed a hold of her left leg, causing her to fall and get pinned down. They started to surrounding her and there was nothing she could do. She struggled to grab her large sword to fight back but at this point it was looking like it would be the end of this physical body. She took out her black box and got ready to press the button, until she heard a familiar voice calling her name.

"5F!"

Ba[c]kup Requested