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nier automata feral thought she was finally dying. instead she wakes up in an even more depressing world
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It's been a long, hard fight. 

Not just this once - not just against the maddened 5S, not just against those fucking Red Girls. Not just against her own most recent demons.

Not just the fight she took up from her replacement, the young girl with her face and even deader eyes. 

The fight she's been in since she was rolled out, a little over five years before. 

She's never known peace. 

But neither will these fucking assholes.

Gunner number 13 - G13 - the closest to a name she's ever had - destroys the Tower built by those fuckers, their ticket off the hellscape they made. Destroys the very structure she's standing on, though she hacks Pod 153 to restore its (hers?) ability for speech, orders it to get the hopefully cured 5S to safety. 

She tries to order away the fucking Pod that 13B set to following her around. 

"Negative," is all it says. "This Pod was ordered by Unit 13B to provide support to Unit G13."

"Fuck you," she says, exhaustedly, even if - somewhere deep in her - she doesn't mind not dying alone.

And then she turns her face to the sky, and sets off the explosives. 

'Everyone... I'm coming...'

She opens her eyes - when did she close them? - as she falls, the Pod beside her, and a wholly irrelevant last thought floats into her mind - 

'I never realized how beautiful this world is...'

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...And then she wakes up, with her cheek pressed to hard, parched ground. There's an acrid smell in the air, mixed with death and decay and - lavender?

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She pushes herself up and looks around. 

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She's on a battlefield! One crossed with barb wire, with the disturbed earth you only get from bombardments with explosive shells. One without any signs of the dead she smells, though she can barely hear a faint hum of the living. 

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"...What the fuck," she says out loud.

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And then 13B's Pod floats into her field of vision. "Analysis: this Pod and Unit G13 have survived our suicide attack. However, there are no signs of the Tower."

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"...Yeah, I got that part myself." She... Doesn't know what to feel about being alive, so she'll just ignore her own feelings. Always a great idea. 

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"...I will admit to feeling a bit... Embarrassed, about having survived."

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She raises an eyebrow. Admitting to emotion's a new one for the Pod.

"Yeah, well, welcome to being alive. Shit's like that."

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"...That concept is too abstract for me at the current moment. Saving for future analysis."

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She can't help it. She snorts. 

"Can your fancy sensors tell us anything else about this place?"

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Pod 042 is quiet for a moment as it scans the area around them. "Analysis: this is most likely a different planet than Earth."

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" - Wait, what?"

She'd known they'd moved - it'd been late summer when she died, so the shadows were small and the world was hot as hell, and everything was starting to get parched as the early summer storms wobbled down - which, it's hot and dry as fuck here, sure, but the shadows are the long shadows of late fall, the sun barely touching the horizon. Which means she must've moved deeper into Twilight, somewhere that'll be in deep shadow or even full Night by midwinter.

Getting moved that far is possible, in her view of the world. But a different planet? 

"...Did we get dragged along on their fucking ark???" That'd be just what she needs.

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"Unknown," the Pod says. "There is no sign of machine lifeform activity in the surrounding area, and this Pod's internal clock has not advanced. However that does not preclude interference."

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"How sure are you?"

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"Analysis: there is a 99% chance that this is not Earth; the remaining 1% chance is that a cataclysm comparable to or greater than that which caused Earth to tidal lock has occurred."

"Justification: the spectral analysis of the visible sun indicates - "

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She waves it off. "I don't need all that shit. I care about what we do next."

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"Then Unit G13 should provide appropriate objectives."

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"Right now - I want to find out where we are, and what happened." She's - very grudgingly - learned that arguing with the damn Pod about 'appropriate objectives' just results in a headache, and she doesn't have enough spare energy for it right now. 

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"Affirmative." The Pod goes briefly quiet, before: "Proposal: contacting local inhabitants will be the most efficient way to gather data about this planet."

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She makes a face. "Do they even speak any of the languages you've got programmed in?"

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"Analysis of local radio reveals similar protocols to what was traditionally used by humans. Additionally, the language known as 'classical Arabic' appears to be in use in religious contexts. That language is programmed into my databanks. Other languages are as of yet untranslateable, but I believe they are related to extant Earth languages."

"Proposal: inhabitants of this planet have had extensive contact with Earth at a prior point."

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"Some kind of machine colony?"

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"Unknown."

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She rolls her eyes. "Well, aren't you helpful."

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"This Pod believes Unit G13 is engaging in 'sarcasm.'"

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