Aurora Over a Dead World

"...D-Daughter, what happened?!" Tanya’s ’mother’ runs over to her, seeing the blatant slap mark on her face.

"...It’s nothing..." She speaks sullenly and frustrated as she walks past her "mother," climbing the stairs of the mansion where she lives.

"Daughter, you’re bleeding!" She calls out to Tanya, who stops on the stairs.

"...Shut up, Neo. I don’t have the patience for this today, you stupid AI." She throws a flower vase at her "mother." The vase hits and emits a metallic sound as [Neo], a highly advanced AI, makes a sad expression.

"Daughter..."

"Don’t call me daughter. I’m not okay! Don’t you understand that I don’t want to talk right now?..." Neo is a private AI system separate from Nexus. She started as just another one of the NEXUS variants.

However, she was so heavily modified and altered by the company that developed her new systems that she became a private AI for influential people, completely disconnected from the government. So, everything done with her is totally secret from the eyes of others.

Tanya’s family simply abandoned her after some time, because her talent is frightening. At first, her parents adored her and praised her for everything she did, but as she grew up, her power scared her relatives.

They simply left her in a house of her own and set Neo up as Tanya’s "mother." So, to a certain extent, Zenith was right. Tanya grew up in a house where she was only praised, but from her adolescence onward, Tanya lived almost entirely alone, with only Neo looking after her.

And Neo, as an AI, can’t discipline Tanya because she wasn’t programmed for that.

"..." Tanya keeps climbing while Neo runs to a cabinet, grabbing a medical kit. She runs toward Tanya, who has already locked herself in her room.

"Daughter, you need to treat this..." Neo says, knocking on the door to Tanya, who looks down at her own hands, not understanding why she feels so frustrated by Zenith’s opinion.

"Damn useless teacher... she doesn’t know anything..." Tanya runs a hand over her cheek, feeling the sting of the slap she received. It’s the first time anyone has ever slapped her; she had never been slapped before.

"NEO, STOP KNOCKING ON THE DOOR!!" Tanya throws a pillow at the door because of Neo’s insistent knocking.

"Daughter, I need to treat your wounds."

"You stupid AI! I don’t need this much insistence over a slap. I’m not going to die because someone hit me... I don’t need help from someone who’ll just bang on a door and then spend hours trying to move properly afterward."

"Daughter, do you want help with something? You seem so sad. You can talk to Mom."

"...You can’t help me!! No one can help me!! No one understands me!! How could anyone even understand me?! You!! My parents, that tin-can teacher!! None of you make the slightest effort to understand me!! Zenith and you—"

"[You said Zenith?]" Neo’s voice changes, making Tanya stiffen. It’s the first time Neo has spoken in such a cold, robotic tone. She was programmed to always sound gentle and have a loving voice, so the shift catches Tanya off guard.

"...Is there a problem?"

"[Zenith is in my private database. Why do you know her?]"

’Private database?’

"What do you mean by that? Explain yourself."

"[Commander Zenith, head of several monster-hunting divisions. Currently, her records are part of my database. She was once flagged as a possible elimination target, but that was removed after certain cases showed her to be trustworthy.]"

"H-Huh?! What the hell are you talking about?" Tanya gets up from her bed, going to the door and opening it. Neo’s eyes, normally green, are now black with countless numbers scrolling across the display.

"[Commander Zenith. Your family has already collected data on her, though it’s unexpected for you to have direct contact with her.]"

"...?"

"What the hell does that tin woman have to do with my family?"

"[Your family’s businesses depended on one of her successes.]"

"Explain yourself!"

"[It occurred 14 years ago. Currently, my data indicates Zenith is around 37 years old, which means this happened when she was about 23 years of age.]"

"[The island’s floaters ruptured after an event named Grand Horizon. A monster of an extremely dangerous classification and type attacked the island from below upwards. This monster had the ability to multiply extremely quickly.]"

"[Because of this, an entire piece of Aurora Island fell. A piece far too large. There are no public records of this because everything was quickly concealed by the government, so only private data remains.]"

’An entire piece of the island fell, and they not only managed to hide it but also fix it?!’ Tanya is shocked at how they can hide things like this.

"[And the piece in question was recovered. As it was a piece far too large, its recovery was mandatory. Various teams had to get involved, but there were many monsters and no one could freely dispose of them because they had to protect the part of the island that had fallen.]"

"[On that day, Zenith sacrificed her legs and arms to reconnect the island back.]"

"W-What? W-What do you mean? She lost her arms and legs that day? How did that happen?"

"[From my data, Zenith’s power consists of moving space with her hands. From the records, Zenith used her hands and legs as conduits while she pulled the entire island through space. She was even buried because she remained inside the island.]"

"[I see your confusion. In more detail, she shoved one hand into the broken part of the island, grabbed the cables, and using space, began pulling the entire island. When she managed to lift the first piece, she grabbed the cables of the island that were still airborne and began dragging space to lock the pieces together.]"

"[She was stuck between the two pieces, and she lost her limbs due to the extensive spatial manipulation, which caused space to destroy her limbs. This piece in question held many of your family’s businesses; that’s why she was relatively investigated.]"

"...W-Why are you telling me this?"

"[Because you asked. It’s not restricted data, and you’ve never tried to find out more about what your family does... but your family is grateful to her.]"

"T-That doesn’t make sense. Why didn’t someone else do it? Like Director Astrid, who has a power far more incredible than Zenith!"

"[The island’s floaters greatly resist vector manipulation and also make other parts of the island resistant to it. That means most powers are unable to affect the island directly. Zenith was one of the only ones capable of such a feat, because she wasn’t dragging the island; she was using her power on the space around the large piece of the island that fell.]"

"[It’s like using a bag. You don’t touch the things inside the bag; you just drag the bag and everything inside it is dragged along.]"

"...She... sacrificed her limbs for a piece of the island?"

"[It was a very important part. There were factories on the surface, an operations base on the inside, and several of the city’s power source cables. Not to mention it was a total area of several kilometers. Losing that would have generated a terrible crisis, increasing hunger and affecting water and energy distribution. Thanks to her, the effects lasted only a few months instead of years of problems.]"

"...You’re lying... that selfish woman wouldn’t sacrifice her own life for something like that... she... she could have died." Tanya doesn’t believe a proud woman like Zenith would do such a thing.

"[It was a joint effort. She only managed to do it because everyone else was holding off the monsters while thinking of how to bring the piece of the island back. Besides, according to our data, she did this more for one person than specifically for the island.]"

"[If the situation had continued like that, many would have died. Thanks to her, we were able to move the island just one hour after the incident, which greatly reduced the casualties.]"

"...I don’t believe this. Are you lying to me?"

"[...]" Neo displays a hologram. In it, an enormous piece of the island is visibly missing. The piece in question is on the ground atop various ruins, while some kind of black, swarm-like thing advances toward the piece.

Then she changes the image to the island reconnected. An immense crack can be seen being repaired by floaters.

"[During this image, Zenith was still below ground. She was buried because she was in the middle of the island when she reconnected it. She survived by using her powers to open a space while obtaining oxygen from small fissures.]"

"[She had to stay there for quite some time so the piece wouldn’t fall while it was repaired... Honestly, it’s surprising she managed to survive nearly an entire day trapped in that place with her limbs destroyed.]"

"[Your family is entirely grateful to her, since they would have gone bankrupt if they’d lost that part of the island or if it had suffered too much damage. Zenith saved years of military progress, myself included. The system I use was in progress at that time in one of the bases.]"

"...W-Whatever..." Neo returns to normal, regaining her previously worried tone of voice as she opens the medical kit to help Tanya.

"..." She applies ointment to Tanya’s face, who ends up allowing it, being more focused on what she has just learned.

’If she’s this hero... why does she act like this with us?...’ She can’t understand how someone who did that can be so cruel and insensitive to what she feels.

"Neo, I’ve been putting in effort... why doesn’t she praise me? She’s my teacher; she should see my progress!! She only praises Rouge or Eirwen!! Even though I have more talent than both of them and—"

"If you have more talent, isn’t it natural that what you accomplish needs to be greater than what the others accomplish?" When Neo asks this simply, Tanya is more confused than ever.

"W-W-What?"

"If you have more talent, doesn’t that mean what others manage through effort, you achieve easily? And if it’s easy for you, then for you to be praised, wouldn’t it have to be something harder, something that required effort?"

"...But... I am making an effort..."

"But you’ve always said the course content is easy, though you’ve never mentioned that your teacher is Commander Zenith."

"So, to her, it seems like I’m not making an effort? Is that it?"

"Perhaps. I’m really not suited to opine on what others feel... there, are you better?" Neo smiles at Tanya after having applied ointment to the slap mark.

"...I want to be alone... and... do you have recordings from that day?... I want to see if she’s as incredible as you tried to make her seem..."

"[Of course I have recordings. Actually, we have recordings from very close up because she, as a novice, used a suit recording system to judge if she was suitable for the post she’d just received.]"

"Okay..."

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