Ito Ai: A New Dawn

"Ai, what should we do with the machinas?" Mai asked as she looked at the broken first type machinas on the ground.

"MMm… hold on. I am not sure if all of them have used their last stand yet." Ai replied as she looked at them. She stood there for a moment while contemplating on what to do. "Grab a metal pole and stand on guard. If they jump at you just thrust the pole into their belly or whack it. That should suffice to deal with it." 

Luckily they did not lose anything. The bag of weapons were all there along with the books. Although, some books were covered in blood. But that was mainly the outside covers. Ai was very happy that they could recover their weapons and ammo. It would be a necessity later on. Especially now that it was just the two of them. Two young girls were prime targets by the slave traders and other sinister people. Without proper protection, they could easily end up in a bad spot. 

"Alright, stand back a little, I will try to trigger the two machinas that do not look like their last stands have been set off." Ai said as she readied her metal pole. She would have preferred something sharp like a sword or something along those lines but right now she actually wanted the parts to be intact as much as possible.

"Ai… The sky..." Mai suddenly spoke up grabbing Ai's attention.

Ai looked up at the sky and frowned. She lowered her metal pipe and shouted: "Quick, grab everything! We need to get down below quickly!" 

Dark green clouds were forming overhead. This was what was called a radiation storm. After all the nuclear bombs went off a new weather phenomenon appeared. They were large thunderstorms that rained dense radiation. These were mainly only ever seen in the northern part of Japan. Areas that were affected by the fallout of the original nuclear explosion had long lasting storms that would last months or even years. Storms like the one brewing overhead were rare in the radiation free zones and could last days or even weeks. Areas that were rained on would become mildly radioactive. 

Mai did not hesitate to follow Ai's words and quickly grabbed one of the bags of books and weapons while Ai grabbed the rest, the two quickly ran as fast as they could back to the bunker. Luckily they were close to the bunker, otherwise, they would have had to find shelter somewhere else. It did not take long to get to the hatch which, Ai had Mai go down first in order to catch the bags. Once everything was down below, only then did she climb down herself. 

Ai locked the hatch and even closed and locked the secondary hatch. Mai who was below asked: "Ai what was with the sky just now?"

"Radiation storm. The rain that falls is highly radiated. Sometimes it can be so radiated that it will melt the skin right off your body. At least we got our things and two of the broken machina. With the one, we had before the parts can be put to good use." Ai explained.

"I see, so what happens now? Are we stuck down here? Will we be okay?" Mai was nervous when she heard radiation. She couldn't believe besides robots and people they had to deal with random radiation storms.

"Mhm for the time being. We will be fine though since we are deep underground. The water will already be filtered before it reaches the outer casing of the bunker. We just need to get the geiger counters out to make sure. The thing about radiation is that it can be diluted so it is not as harmful. So the radiation in normal rainstorms is no problem. But when a radiation storm forms or passes through it can be very deadly since the clouds themselves are highly composed of radiation. But I am confused about one thing… In my past life, radiation storms did not begin to show up in this area for almost four years. And the one that was forming was rather big... " Ai was really confused by this fact.

"Maybe a freak incident..." Mai mumbled as she got lost in thought.

"Well, it doesn't matter. We will be stuck down here for a while. So we can hit the books and study." Ai said as she began taking her shirt off which cause Mai to feel confused.

"Why are you stripping down?" 

"We can not wash our clothes or bathe for a while. It will just be the two of us so sitting around in our underwear is fine for now. I have no idea how long the storm will last and it is best to not use water for anything but drinking and cooking. Being in a confined space will make us sweat so wearing clothes defeats the purpose." Ai explained.

"Then I guess I will do the same then..." Mia said She found what Ai said was reasonable, so she did as Ai did and stripped down to her underwear as well. After she was done, Mai looked over at Ai who was getting a few jars out and pouring vinegar into them. "This is for?"

"I dug the eyes out of the two people I killed the other day. Luckily no birds got to them before I did. I need a reference for when I do my research and so do you. Although I am not sure how long vinegar will keep them preserved." As Ai said this she reached into the bag next to her and pulled out a bloody pouch. She then pulled out four eyes and dropped an eye into each jar and covered it tightly. 

At this time seeing the eyes floating in the jars, Mai kind of wished she never asked Ai what she was doing.

***

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