While the MC is cradling our still cooling corpse crying. We'll tell him hi from Durga that's sitting next to it.
You. This is your fault. You just had to put this image in my head, didn't you?
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It was over. The breach was closed, the campaign had been a success. They had achieved victory, when all simulations said their chances had been a flat Zero. Their mad dash to destroy the Breach, the suicide mission they volunteered to take had succeeded beyond all expectations and gave Humanity the breathing room it needs to prepare to turn the tide against the Antagonists.
They would go down in history. A single flight had destroyed an army of Antagonists, a single squadron had managed to defeat a Class A Type-0 and turned the tide of the entire campaign.
They had been victorious... But if it really was victory, then why didn't it feel like it?
As Koujirou Cradled Anna's body in his arms and saw his tear fall on her face, he couldn't help but remember how she was the one who kept them all alive, how she killed more Antagonists than any of them, how she protected them from strikes that would have killed them with her own body, how she held the Type-0 in place long enough for him to prepare his strike to finish it off...
Anna Sanchez had saved their lives, and bought them this victory at the cost of her own life.
He wasn't the only one crying. Yukari was hugging Setsuna, who was still in shock, Unable to believe the blunt, weird and somewhat air headed girl who had been with them since they formed their squadron, the girl who was an absolute Monster in combat who had trained them until they became Aces, the girl who had become her friend, had passed away.
Sandra did her best to hold back her own tears and comfort a crying and raging Shuri, who couldn't believe she had lost her rival, lost yet another comrade, and was screaming denials and profanities at the heavens.
Now, all that was left of their friend was this corpse and her Valkyrie's actual Core, that desynchronized from her for the first time in years the moment she died.
Ignoring yet another request to open a Comm channel, he gently lowered Anna's body and reached with one trembling hand to grab the Core. He put it in the hands of it's now departed owner and crossed them over her chest and moved to stand up, only to stop when he noticed a strange glow coming from where he put the Core.
Suddenly, there was a bright flash, followed by his Valkyrie's warning that it was being hacked and the Comm channel he had been ignoring opening itself.
"I have spent the last five minutes attempting to speak with you Koujirou."
It was a voice Koujirou thought he would never hear again.
"It's unwise to ignore Communication attempts coming from your squadronmates, Koujirou. It could have been very dangerous if you did so during combat."
"Anna!?" His scream was loud enough to startle the others "How, but you're... You're alive!?" and that was enough to get even Shuri's attention.
"What the hell are you talking about, Koujirou!?" Setsuna shouted. His sister came closer and gently put a hand on Anna's neck.
"There's no pulse, Koujirou... I'm sorry, but..." She trailed off, but Koujirou quickly spoke.
"Umm... Girls? You might want to accept that Comms channel now."
Sandra looked confused for a moment and answered. "But there's no request on my-" The blonde heiress interrupted herself before scrunching her face in puzzlement, followed by widening her eyes in surprise. "How..."
The others accepted the requests that appeared on their screens and were similarly surprised when they saw who was on the other side of the call.
Coroner (A. Sanchez)
Yukari was the first to react. With a scream, she jumped back and crawled away from Anna's body as if she feared it would suddenly come back to life demanding to eat her brains. "I- But your pulse, I-" She stuttered and looked around frantically, before pointing at Anna and yelling "G-G-GHOST!"
"...No?" Answered the voice of her deceased friend, which only served to make her flinch in fear again.
"I'm still alive. sort of."
Shuri spoke next, anger clear in her voice "You bitch!" And also in her choice of words. "What is the meaning of this!? And what do you mean you're sort of alive, I can see the bullet holes in your fucking corpse!"
"Well, yes, my body is dead." Came the response.
"However, Durga made a destructive upload of my brain before I lost too much blood and couldn't oxigenate it properly." She said, before adding
"She says 'Sorry I didn't warn you guys, but I was kind of in a hurry.'"
There was a moment of stunned silence. No one seemed to know comprehend what happened nor understand how such a thing was possible, and Setsuna was the first to put this feeling into words.
"Wha- but, That's impossible!" Sadly, she wasn't very good with words right now. Thankfully, Sandra spoke up.
"That should be impossible, Anna. A Valkyrie Core shouldn't be able to contain an entire human's consciousness."
"Durga says she partitioned a part of her Storage capacity and Processing Power to store and run my consciousness, while using a few Computers I stored a couple years ago and which she improved over time to help supplement the computational power she needs." Anna explained.
"Durga also says, and I quote 'I laugh at your puny human concept of Impossible, Ohohohoho'." She added, in perfect deadpan.
Koujirou couldn't help but facepalm at this. "All right, You've uploaded your mind into your Valk Core. Okay, I can accept that. But what do we do with your... Um..." he gestured vaguely at Anna's corpse.
"Oh. Yes, I think I can fix it, eventually." There was another moment of silence, broken this time by a very confused Shuri. "What the are you talking about, Anna? how are you supposed to fix Being Dead?"
"I will just absorb my body and have Durga fix it." She answers as if it were the simplest thing in the world.
"The shrapnel, burns and ruptured organs should be the easiest part, Then I can just get a few blood bags to replenish what I lost."
No-one seems to know how to answer to that kind of outrageous statement. After a minute, Setsuna raises her hand like a child asking for the teacher's attention. "Question. Wasn't it a
Destructive upload? What are you going to do about your brain?"
For a moment, Anna was silent, before she answered in a slightly more digitized, but far more expressive voice.
"I'll just need research a bit while I rebuild the body. I'm sure I'll come up with something. Now, I'll need to expel some things to get the space I need to integrate the body and start fixing it. Do be careful with those Onium batteries, and if you see some weird grey goo anywhere nearby, Don't Touch It."
"Wait a minute, who's talking right now? Are you Dur-" but before he could continue all manner of things started to manifest around them, from stacks of missiles, weapons and strange devices to various electronic appliances, toys and books.
"Ah, It appears I still have some bread stored here." Anna spoke up again.
"It should still taste good, you all should eat it while you wait. Integrating something complex like my body will take a while." and just as she finished speaking plates filled with all kinds of bread appeared atop the laps of each of them with a twist of Space-time.
Koujirou looked long and hard at the plate before him, then took a glance at his squadronmates. After a minute looking at each other, he finally spoke. "Yeah, I got nothing. Extraction will take hours to get here anyway, so we might as well eat and think on how we'll explain this shit to our superiors." He then took a bite out of one of the many kinds of bread Anna had given him.
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Sweet merciful Lord, this grew out of control somewhere around the third paragraph and turned way longer than I expected. Sorry about this, really.
