Reply.

Soon after Zero Three left, Sam went back to what he was doing. The moment he turned on the terminal, however, he noticed something that almost caused his heart to stop.

It was an email notification. 

The terminal was connected to Eir and was used to either operate it or send reports to the Resistance headquarters. If he's receiving an email on it then that would mean someone on the other side had decided to contact him regarding those two things.

Under normal circumstances, such notification was still a cause for panic, but after what he did to Zero Five the previous day Sam had one more reason.

He couldn't help but hesitate as he guided the mouse cursor to the letter icon with the small red bubble. A moment of thought made it clear that hesitation served no purpose if he was screwed anyway so he shook it away and quickly opened the email.

A few seconds later he sighed in relief. A quick read-through revealed that he was safe, though he wasn't completely out of trouble.

The message was a reply to the report he made the other day before yesterday. In it, he expressed his concern over the Valkyries' recent strange behavior, like how Zero Five asked him if he sees her as a human or how Zero Three seemed to look down on the humans.

The reply he received was unexpected in more than one way. Whoever wrote it questioned Sam's competence as the Valkyries' physician telling him to stop watching sci-fi movies. They said he lacked basic knowledge about the humanoid weapons, which isn't exactly wrong as his main job is to operate Eir. He didn't need to know much about the Valkyries to do so.

'What's wrong with this guy?' Sam thought, his left eyebrow twitching. 'He's being quite rude.'

Whoever was on the other side, they had, at the very least, put in the effort to address the concerns he had. Nevertheless, their answers were quite vague, probably because they didn't have access to the Valkyrie files. They told him that he had nothing to worry about unless the weapons started talking in a language that didn't exist or stopped responding at all. 

He remembered reading something about that in the Valkyrie Project blueprints; there were a number of restrictions put in place that made sure the AI's base program didn't change. He didn't know if it was 100% safe, however, if the weapons really were going out of control, they would probably show more malfunctions instead of asking philosophical questions.

As for when Nine touched him, the reply stated that there were no restrictions preventing the Valkyries from touching people. Staff are usually prohibited from making physical contact, however nothing is preventing the Valkyries themselves from doing so.

Of course, the weapons had many limiters to stop them from using their destructive power on humans, and if they were indeed malfunctioning he wouldn't have been alive to tell the tale.

Sam realized how rash he was in sending that report. Back then, he didn't know anything about the three weapons so when they started acting out of the ordinary he couldn't help but panic. Now that he got his hands on Valkyrie Smash and learned their secrets, he felt stupid for thinking that those three were about to start another apocalypse.

'It wouldn't be funny if a bunch of sex bots decided to revolt against humans.'

Sam could only laugh at the idea. Thankfully his report wasn't taken seriously. They also didn't seem to notice anything strange about the other reports, which means he got away with what he did to Zero Five.

That said, the fact that they sent a reply meant they were reading his reports. Even if he was in the clear at the moment, it would take only one mistake to expose everything he did. Taking things at a slower pace was the right choice after all.

'One experiment at a time...'

After sending a short apology where he confirmed that everything must've been his imagination, he spent the time leading to lunch studying the secret files. When the clock hit 11:45 he left for his date with Shizuru.

~◇~

"You seem to be in a really good mood, Three."

It was noon and the three Valkyries were outside doing their usual patrol. As they flew under the clear blue sky, Nine noticed that the youngest among them wasn't as grumpy as she had been the day before.

Things were somewhat awkward between the two. When she heard of the rude thing Zero Three said to their physician, Nine got mad for the first time since ever and demanded that the young one apologize. With Zero Three refusing to do so, the two went into a heated argument, but that didn't stop the blonde one from asking. She seemed to get over her anger far quicker than one might expect.

"Hm? Well…" Normally, Zero Three wouldn't answer such a question honestly, but on that particular day, she seemed to be in an especially good mood. "I went to see the old man earlier."

"Oh! And? Did you apologize?"

"Well, I intended to but…" smiling wryly, the young Valkyrie followed. "For some reason, he ended up apologizing first."

"Eh!? Why?" Nine didn't understand.

"Just so you know, I did apologize afterward." Three decided to make that part clear before her fellow Valkyrie misunderstood. "Apparently he realized that telling us to be careful when fighting was stupid since we know that better than anyone."

"R-right…"

As weapons made to fight the Calamities, the Valkyries are able to discern the best course of action based on the data collected in real-time. The AI's combat capabilities are the best they could be; it takes a great level of ignorance to think that anyone would know how to fight the monsters better than them.

That said, there is nothing that could be done if the enemy surpasses their capabilities. Even if they're humanity's strongest weapons, there is still a limit to what they can do.

"... What Five said before…" Zero Three spoke, her expression clouding a little. "I think I get it now…"

The Valkyries were weapons created to fight the Calamities. They might look and act like humans, but in the end, they're nothing more than AI loaded into a human-shaped shell.

[Doctor is a nice human, isn't he?] Zero Five's voice came from their comms. With scouting being her role for the day, she was flying far ahead of the other two.

"I think he's just an idiot." Said Zero Three, letting out an exasperated sigh. "Treating us like humans, worrying about our safety. Only an idiot would do things like that."

"Well, I wouldn't deny that he's a bit on the weird side." Nine said. She then shifted her attention to something else, looking down at the red fields below them. "That aside, don't you think we can recapture this area soon?"

"Now that you said it… but we had that attack just the other day, right?" Asked Zero Three. "Doesn't that reset our count?"

[It's the first Calamity we faced in months.] Zero Five replied. [If we go on for another week without any attacks, we could ask the Commander to see if we can borrow a Cleanser from the headquarters.]

"It would be great if we could rebuild one of the cities." A bright smile spread on Zero Three's face as she considered the possibility. "Maybe then we would get to have some fun instead of being trapped in that boring base."

"Even if we get the humans to build a settlement nearby, I can't imagine the higher-ups giving us permission to go there." Nine said, smiling wryly.

[Humans can be cruel sometimes.]

The three sighed in unison, remembering how most humans see them as nothing but military equipment.