Chapter Two: Machine

Lyrica looked at the transparent windows that showed the ocean, her eyes remain looking at the far and vast sea that her eyes can reach. Her sight can adjust and zoom the object from a mile away, yet for some unknown reason she didn't care. 

She couldn't shake off the information she had recently gathered. The origin of Valkyrie, the one who created them and the heart that was given to them. In the Human Realm, people believe that the one true God gives them life, body, and soul. Those three things had formed and it created a human being. 

However, they are Valkyrie, they are different to humans or mortals. Valkyrie was made from scraps of metal, and their soul was harnessed from the process of a human near death. They aren't souls that are freshly made, they are dead corpses from a human body whose life ended. 

Despite the body becoming a corpse, the soul will remain lost, and to give them another chance, a body was made from a metal and a life was blessed from another God. Those metals, the Valkyrie, Lyrica and her sisters who came from death itself. 

It was hard enough to accept that they are not just metal, but now they must accept the life given to them by a God. Even though Caleb said that he is their master, he still told them that their loyalty will remain to Ares, the God he serves. 

They aren't nearly made from a metal, a human soul, and a heart made from Armenia's nurtured power. To think the origin that was hidden to them for far too long can give her this shock, she must have her chips broken. 

Even machines can have the heart and mind that is near to a human or mortal. "You seem to be in deep thoughts, major, what happened?" suddenly, from the farthest, she looked back. She was a little startled, normally Valkyrie exceeds the sensitivity of a normal human but recently, they've been getting the same ability of being shocked or unable to detect someone behind their back. 

"Oh, it was you, Valerie."

She gulped and faked a smile. "You startled me there," said Lyrica. 

Valerie walks towards her and she stands beside where she looks at the same scene, Lyrica was gazing. "I had done it again, didn't I?" she said. 

Lyrica carefully moved and lifted her head. "It was unpredictable, we needed to bring your Aria out but things went wrong from the process and the experiment itself, we couldn't be of use in the end."

Valerie chuckled and she rested her chin against her hand. "My Aria is already unstable, it was always best if I hadn't used it, the power of Valkyrie, our Esper can temporarily replace the lack of Aria, but whenever I get possessed by this energy, I feel unstable and incurable."

She then turned to Lyrica and nodded. 

Before Lyrica knew, she smiled from Valerie's poker face. She might not look like it, but this child had struggled since child. She didn't complain when everything became hectic, neither did she say anything while being experimented on. She was brave, strong yet also cold and empty inside. 

Lyrica patted her in the head and smiled. "The day you'll deactivate us will be the day we are all relieved from our duty, so while we aren't, we are obligated to serve you and help you overcome these struggles and challenges. Got it?"

She responded with a single nod before she looked away. "Ares is sending him here, he'll be escorting me back to Armenia."

"You mean Lukas?" Lyrica asked and looked down. "You still hate him?"

Valerie's small smirk made Lyrica look. "I'll rather not think about that," she paused and breathed out. "Lukas was sent here during one of my missions, he and I got partnered with but he wasn't very cooperative, we are like mise messing around the holes in the back of an alley—in the end, we failed the mission."

Lyrica remembers that report during her missions. It wasn't expected, and they thought that Lukas could help with her mission but her reports said otherwise. It didn't only make the whole operation run's amok, they also caused property damage which almost cut off half of the laboratories budget.

Lukas did however compensate from the damage he caused, but after that, Sir Ares forbids him from coming back. It was already a mess and a mistake to partner two people who don't give a damn about battle plans, they've ignored the priority plans and went their separate ways. 

The case took longer than expected from the Valkyries, so it was pretty annoying that both of them are cat and mice. Lyrica read both complaints, and both are mistakes. It doesn't have one proper, because they neglected the plans created beforehand. 

She smiles and laughs. "You are both a mess, my dear Valerie. Although Lukas works separately, you shouldn't have pissed him off otherwise it will make him mad..."

"He should know better that I've been working swiftly with Cassandra," she mumbled and sighs. "Forget it, I won't be complaining about what happened years ago."

Before Lyrica could say anything, an alarm was ringing on the speaker's volume. Suddenly a weird but not a stranger's voice went beeping on the speaker. 

-⌜ ALL PERSONAL, AN ENEMY RANKED TERRORIST HAD BEEN SIGHTED AT THE LABORATORY ENTRANCE. DESPATCHED AVAILABLE VALKYRIE ON THE MATRIX FLOOR. THIS IS NOT A DRILL. AGAIN THE LABORATORY HAD BEEN UNDER ATTACK, DEPLOY THE AVAILABLE VALKYRIE TO THE MATRIX FLOOR ⌟-

The voice began repeating the same word over and over again. Once it calms down, only the red warning lights remain. 

"Major?" Valerie mumbles as she was waiting for her superior's order. Then Lyrica looked at her with disbelief and she breathed out. 

"Defense Valkyrie on the Matrix Floor now! While our remaining sister, we will have a short brief discussion on the second floor from the Matrix lobby, again meet us on the second floor from the Matrix lobby!"

She spoke through her bio telepathic mind control, a wavelength that will directly send the message through the Valkyrie's system to function. She then looked back to Valerie and grabbed her hand. 

"Let's go, we need to meet with our sisters to brief a small battle plan. I hope this time you cooperate, got it, Valerie?"

Valerie gulped and nodded. "Yes, ma'am!"

---⌜•••⌟---

During that time, the system had broken out but it didn't break through the second floor, upon the enemies entrance, the defense battle machines, Valkyrie had defended the entrance. 

While Lyrica and Valerie appear around the Matrix lobby in hurry. Once  they've met eye to eye with the other Valkyrie, Lyrica gives a long silence and looks at them. 

"I was scanning the process of why they located our base, unfortunately they've hacked one of our systems that was under Eleven's monitor, but Eleven is offline to monitor every last one of the systems that function in the laboratory. She's under maintenance, so we can't argue now that an enemy has seen our base location."

Therefore, she thought that even after being hacked, they needed to reboot the system in the Matrix floor which had been guarded by the enemy. This must be a top priority for them right now, they are protecting the system virus from the Matrix lobby waiting for it to spread across the laboratories inside the system. 

"They've got a virus in the Matrix Floor, this virus can cause not only a major but a bigger problem to the lab system. So we will divide our form into two, we have to stop the virus before it completes but we also need to back the defense team fighting over hundreds or more enemies outside the entrance, get it all?"

She looked at them and nodded. "I'll make Cassandra a leader of the team that will stop the virus, and Valerie will team up with the backup offensive Valkyrie who will fight off the enemies."

Then she divides them with one method. She shook her hand in the middle of all of them and nodded. Some can't be compared to one another, all of them are Valkyrie with the power to fight so it doesn't change anything if one gives such results but some of them are either needed to the other side and one from another. 

She modified the result to match the rules and formation. As soon as they had been divided, Lyrica prepared them for battle. The enemies are humans but not your ordinary one. 

Ever since the discovery of Valkyrie, Artificial Intelligence Mechanical Robotic System. Humans had been wary enough to replicate the design and model, but despite all the founding and efforts. The replication they had put into work was even worthless than anything. Replicating Valkyrie is not just making one, but the resources of creating them is different to a normal human capacity.

However, since the capture of their hybrid kind—a non-Armenian battle machine, they've taken knowledge of the machine, even though they can't replicate it, they use the machine's knowledge and made a weapon capable of hurting them. 

The machine that was captured was disposed of. She did volunteer herself to be disposed of after they've taken control of her functions. It was an inevitable price but she was happy to be disposed of. A machine has less empathy, that is why they've seen death as nothing more than any means necessary. 

Humans are indeed one of the deadliest and cruelest beings ever born but not all of them are bad.