Ito Ai: A New Dawn

Ai walked slowly and stealthily as she made her way from hiding spot to hiding spot. Along the sidewalk were many piles of rubble. As she got closer to the end of the street she stopped her steps and felt the ground. She could feel strong vibrations split apart every two seconds. "Why? Why were they created so fast? Was it just our bad intel? Did the A.I. that created the machina already build these and we just never ran into them? No that can't be… Otherwise, we would have been much more prepared and would have run into many of them. Unless.."

Ai crouched down with her back to the broken piece of cement slab behind her. "Test units… What if… What if the first type machina I killed earlier caused a butterfly effect. The first unit was created and sent out and it just so happened to appear where I was looting. If that is the case and it sent back information on what killed it and how. Then it would begin to speed up the process of things. Fuck! I am an idiot. I never thought of this beforehand. If that is a prototype then it should not be fully complete. If I can take it out and somehow bring it back with me then… "

Ai shook her head. She knew she could not do that just yet. She did not have the necessary tools or equipment to bring something so big back. "I need to hit a military base. That is the only way. There should be one an hour south on foot. I will need to check the map." 

With this goal in mind, Ai went to get up to head back. But as she lifted her head a type two machina walked out from a side alley and turned to look at her. "Shit!" 

Ai quickly jumped to the side as the spot she was standing was suddenly riddled with bullets. "Fuck my luck!" Ai dived behind a pile of rubble and swiftly aimed her gun firing it at the type two machina. Her bullet hit its mark knocking out the sensor on the machina's head. "Let's see you shoot me not bitch!"

With the sensor destroyed Ai ran forward right up to the type two machina and pushed her gun right to its head. Without its sensor, it will not attack anything anymore which made the type two easy to kill. Ai pulled the trigger three times causing the type two machina's body to stop moving. She then hid behind it and listened to her surroundings while her palm was pressed to the ground. "Yeah the trimmers are still there but they are moving further away. If our intel was right back then, then that new type was set to patrol a certain path while the ones before were made to be seek and destroy. Luckily only the first type had the last stand mechanism built into it. I will need to get Mai over here we need to bring this back." 

Ai quickly ran back to where Mai was. She saw her friend sitting in a ball crying, Ai's eyes that were showing a cold killing intent immediately softened. "Mai' come I need your help."

"Ai!" Mai heard Ai's voice and jumped up off the ground and hugged Ai almost knocking her down. "What happen I heard gunshots!"

"Mmm… We are kind of fucked. I will explain everything when we get back. Right now we need to hurry. We need to bring back a type two machina." Ai said, grabbing Mai's hand and pulling her along. 

The type two machina, although big, was not any taller than Ai and Mai and made of lightweight material. Why it was built this way no one knew but it was probably because that was the only kind of material in that factory it was made in.

As they walked they made sure to keep a sharp eye out for any machina. They also did not speak in order to not be distracted from any sounds that might indicate an enemy. They rushed home as quickly as they could and dropped the dead type two next to their bunker hatch. "Mai go down and get the toolbox by my workbench." 

Night was coming soon and Ai needed to dismantle part of the machina in order to get it down into the bunker. This was something she had done many times so she knew what to dismantle and could do it quickly. No more than thirty minutes later the type two machina was resting in the middle of the bunker.

"Ai tell me what is going on!" Mai finally asked. She had not dared ask before since things needed to be rushed.

"How should I put it. Think of it like this. I was reborn, right? Well, there is an issue with going back in time. And it is the reason why the idea of time travel was nothing more than an idea. That is because one mess up can cause what's called a butterfly effect."Ai said.

Mai thought for a moment but still did not understand. She had never heard of the term butterfly effect before. "What do you mean by butterfly effect?" 

"It is when things change in the past and cause events in the future to change drastically. That being said, my actions have changed the future. And in the wrong way. This type two machina should not be around for another few years and on top of that, the new type that I caught a glimpse of should not be around for almost ten years. You could say that we are in deep shit. This is why we did not see any humans in the city which normally around this time should be filled with a few hundred of them." Ai explained.

"Then what do we do from here?" Mai asked her heart was racing. She had no idea about a lot of what Ai had said but she understood that it was a very bad thing. 

"We are going to a military base tomorrow. I will be making us some machine guns with these tonight. " Ai pointed to the dismantled type two machina with a smile.

***

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