Chapter - 4

Anastasia finished eating as Theresa got dressed and started following them much to Otto's delight. The Trio walked into a special training room which used fragments of memories to generate enemies, Otto walked to the console and gestured Anastasia to place herself in the arena.

Theresa was a bit skeptical and looked at the Overseer with an inquisitorial look on her face "Isn't too much for her?"

"No, I'm afraid she'll blast through everything I put in front of her" Otto replied with a smirk before turning on the intercom "Ana, I would like too see what your armor is capable of so please avoid using that ability of yours"

Anastasia looked at the console above her and nodded.

Otto was about to summon on of Schicksal's enemies when an Error Message appeared on his screen "What the...?" Otto whispered before a giant metal snake with drills attached to its face appeared in front of Anastasia.

Anastasia started screaming as she put her hands on her head as a voice filled her head

"We meet each other again, Prophet" The voice said as several other beings appeared around the giant snake, the code name CEPH appeared on the console.

Anastasia gritted her teeth as a weapon appeared in her hands, the console identified it as Typhoon. With a warcry, the pink-haired girl launched herself against the CEPHs unleashing a storm of bullets against them

"Still fierce as ever" The snake-like creature said as it lifted up the girl front the ground and tried to break her mind.

Anastasia, with something that can only be compared to a natural instinct, returned the attack to its owner causing it to drop her to the ground. A bow appeared in her hands and she started firing explosive arrows at the snake aiming at its eyes and drills. The arrows flew in the air and hit the target which launched an attack using some kind of energy beams and energy balls.

Maximum Speed

Anastasia blurred away from the attack and her speed increased exponentially. The snake then launched even more energy balls when he saw that Anastasia cornered herself.

Maximum Armor

The balls impacted but Anastasia was not injured, when the dust settled down there was no trace of Anastasia.

Cloak engaged

The snake and the other Cephs started looking around until they started to get hit by something invisible. Anastasia turned visible once again, now standing in front of the snake, she aimed her bow at the creature and fired one last explosive arrow which killed its target, who fell to the ground and exploded into millions of pixels.

Anastasia was panting, all of her vital readings were showing that all of her parameters were out of scale. The pink-haired girl felt her legs light but also unstable and almost painful as if the tension and the adrenaline had broken the muscles that kept the limb together.

Theresa and Otto were in pure shock, the white-haired girl quickly rushed to her sister's side to check her condition while Otto kept looking at the console where a list of things he never heard off had appeared-

Alpha Ceph

Ceph trooper

Hunters

Typhoon

Predator Bow

The list was fascinating, it was in English quite surprisingly but every time he tried to open the files about the creatures named Ceph a notification saying that he lacked the authority to access the files popped up on the screen and some sort of advanced IA named SECOND kept him from hacking his way through those files. The blonde man knew that what these files were hiding could reveal secrets that humanity never knew to possess, he felt curiosity filling his being but also frustration from being kept away by the answers...

In the meantime, Theresa had reached Anastasia who had already calmed down to some extent.

"Are you okay?!" Theresa asked as she grabbed Anastasia's hand, she felt like she had just grabbed a brick. Anastasia's skin was as hard as steel and just as cold, there was no longer any sign of softness in it.

Anastasia slowly looked at Theresa and her hand softened in an instant as the nanosuit turned in what looked like normal skin "Yeah...I'm okay" she muttered

Theresa was far from convinced due to Anastasia's way of talking and the fact she was hiding eye contact "Do you know what that thing was?"

"No...yes...I don't know...I-I never seen a thing like that but I just...I-I" Anastasia started speaking gibberish, she immediately started hyperventilating and her legs give in as the nightmarish voice of the alpha ceph kept calling her Prophet. The girl started putting her hands on her air as tears started falling from her eyes

Theresa hugged her newly acquired sister as tight as she could "It's okay, everything's fine, it's not here anymore" she whispered as Anastasia started sobbing

Theresa patted Anastasia's head and never broke the hug until her little sister had calmed down, she then threw a look at the console where Otto was and felt a chill going down her spine when she saw Otto expression. He was smiling, almost manically, that face told the white-haired girl that for Anastasia, this was just the beginning...

Several years later

Since that day many years had passed, Anastasia had partaken several of those training sessions aimed at studying the functions of her nanosuit. Schicksal discovered that when they put the Nanosuit on Anastasia, they basically replaced the whole body. After one month, Anastasia had no longer internal organs and things like breathing and eating became just a habit, they also discovered how she was naturally immune to Honkai corruption and any other type of gas and poisons that could potentially be used against Valkyries. Not only that but the nanomachines upon contact with the Honkai energy repurposes it into another kind of energy which is then used to supercharge the armor itself. The only instance where Honkai Energy seems to prevail over the nanosuit and her natural immunity is when Anastasia is submitted at extreme levels of Honkai Energy, the nanosuit has little time to react and repel the infection and Anastasia in the meantime feels incredible pain, though, with a lot of psychological training, Schicksal managed to teach her how to maintain control during these kinds of situation. Of course, Schicksal attempted to reverse-engineer the Nanosuit but they always lacked something though they did create several new battlesuits.

The scientists had discovered that Anastasia's vectors not only got stronger and longer but also more numerous as they had become 28 and capable of stopping rocket-propelled grenades at incredible speeds. Not only that but unlike her big sister, Anastasia showed to grow faster than any human.

They also tried to implement artificial stigmatas on her body but they were all rejected upon contact not by the nanosuit but by Anastasia's body itself. It was then that they found out that Anastasia already possessed a stigmata, a natural one. This came as a shock and caused a lot of excitement between the scientists which quickly died down when every attempt to get the stigmata to work failed.

This research was kept hidden and only a few people outside of scientists themselves knew of Anastasia's existence. She was kept from leaving the base just like the official 'Strongest Valkyrie' Cecilia with the main difference that Anastasia never went on a real mission. Unknown to Anastasia, there was a bomb placed inside of her which should be strong enough to blow her up completely, that was Otto's trump card that he placed just to be sure that he could keep his control over her.

Thanks to the fact that both were kept from leaving the base without permission, Cecilia and Anastasia bonded quite a lot, though they mostly talked of TV series and movies since it was the best thing that came close to what's like outside HQ. Theresa always spent her time with them whenever she wasn't on a mission, she truly loved to tell stories of her mission to her little sister especially she felt a bit anxious for her.

Cecilia also felt the same. At first, the pink-haired girl was scared of pretty much everything and had nightmares every single night. Theresa will always remember how she used the get up in the middle of the night after hearing Anastasia scream only to find her drenched in sweat muttering words like 'Raptor team' and so on. She even set aside her pride and begged Otto to do something. The blonde man gave Anastasia several drugs to help her but the Nanosuit nullified them.

Then suddenly, Anastasia just stopped, her initial shy behavior slowly disappeared and she became more like Cecilia but colder during the tests she was dead serious and she was always composed around everyone who wasn't Theresa or Cecilia. Otto said that was because she finally got used to the Nanosuit but Theresa just knew that something was wrong and there lots of times when she caught her little sister just staring at the nothingness.