After leaving Jordan seething with anger, Sam felt somewhat refreshed as he headed for the library.
The forty sixth base had many recreational facilities where soldiers could go to unwind. After all, the stress of not knowing when the monsters would attack built up quite fast.
One such facility was the library. In this day and age, everyone preferred the much more convenient eBooks, but Sam still took a liking to the good old paper and ink so he always grabbed a physical copy whenever one was available. After the Calamities ran rampant through the world a lot of libraries were destroyed and many books were lost. The ones in the military bases were what's still left intact, found by the soldiers who would bring back a few whenever they went scavenging in the abandoned cities.
Sam entered the building and a smile immediately formed on his face. As usual, the entire place was empty. Very few came here which made it the best place to relax and read. For someone who had very few friends, this was a sanctuary where he could hide from the unpleasantness of the Human Resistance's military bases.
'Ah, this is heaven!' He thought as he took a deep breath, enjoying the scent of peace.
The first thing in order was to find another book for Shizuru. He went to the computers placed near the entrance and searched the author's name, spawning a list showing all the books under their name that had been recovered.
"Alright then…"
Picking a title at random, he was about to go to its place on the shelves to retrieve it when someone entered the building; a Male soldier he didn't recognize. From the way he carried himself, he didn't seem to be that much into books.
Letting out a sigh, Sam decided to ignore the stranger and went on with what he had come for. First, he got the book he had picked earlier, then he went around checking random titles to see if anything sounded interesting. As he skimmed through the titles he came to a stop, having found one that sparked his curiosity.
"Valkyrie… Smash…?"
Not far from the book he had just picked was a rather thin and small paperback with a strange title. Something compelled him to reach for it, and soon he found himself looking at the cover.
To his surprise, it was something printed rather recently, which was quite strange in this world where scarce resources didn't allow for such luxuries.
Sam quickly flipped through the pages, and just as expected, it was one of those erotica where the main character gets his hands on the humanoid weapons and does whatever he wants to them.
It was obvious for such things to be made at some point. The Valkyries were treated as idols by a lot of people, and all of them were extremely gorgeous women. He was sure fanfiction sites were flooded with this type of story.
"Damn, this guy's writing sucks."
Just from the few first pages alone Sam began to notice typos and spelling mistakes. The whole thing looked like something made by someone who'd learned a little bit of English and went directly to writing novels. From the lack of editing, Sam began to wonder if this was just one of those fanfics in print format. Still, he didn't understand why they'd do something like this for such worthless work.
"This is disgusting…" he said, unable to keep a smile from forming on his face.
"What is?" Someone asked.
Startled by the voice Sam jumped away, almost losing his balance and falling.
"Huh? N-N-Nine!? What are you doing here?" He said, feeling blood draining from his face.
Standing behind him was someone he had never expected to meet outside his lab; the blond haired Valkyrie Nine.
"Well…" she started, shifting her gaze awkwardly. "I had some free time…"
"Aren't you supposed to be on standby in case of an attack?" He asked.
"I got bored so... I decided to take a walk..."
Once again Sam found himself faced with another strange occurrence. While they didn't have feelings, being androids and all, the Valkyries had preprogrammed personalities that dictated how they'd behave. The patterns of their actions were predictable once one got enough time to observe them, and that's what made it so strange when they diverged from what they usually do.
Going to the library wasn't something Nine would do. Whenever she had free time she'd take care of the small garden beside the Valkyries' residence or hide in her room, drinking tea and eating snacks. He'd never heard of her passing time in any other way.
So far she has never shown an interest in books so her coming all the way here was a problem in more than one way.
"You know you can't be moving around like this," He shifted left and right checking their surroundings. "What'll you do if someone sees you?"
While they had access to almost all parts of the base, the Valkyries were instructed to limit themselves to their residence, a place that was restricted to normal staff and soldiers. Celebrities walking around like they're normal people would cause a lot of chaos that'd hinder the proper way the base worked, that's why separating them was a necessity.
"Don't worry." Nine said, proudly puffing her enormous chest with her hands on her hips. "As you can see, I've made sure to disguise myself!"
Sam stared at her for a few seconds, trying to figure out what part of what she did could be considered a disguise.
She wore one of the female military uniforms, most likely stolen as shown by how tight the chest area looked. Her long golden hair was made into one big braid, and the final touch was the pair of glasses on her face.
"Nine, you do realize this won't be fooling anyone, don't you?"
He couldn't believe someone could be so stupid, especially a super weapon with a highly advanced AI capable of mimicking human behavior almost perfectly.
"Eh!? It won't!?" The Valkyrie backed away looking utterly shocked.
"What did you expect?" Putting a hand on his forehead, Sam leaned against the bookcase. "Even if you change your clothes and hairstyles, people would still recognize you from your silhouette alone."
'Who would miss such an erotic body?' He thought, his eyes on the gigantic breasts fighting to free themselves from the tight uniform.
"I… I see…" Nine replied with a nervous smile, her eyes sliding from one corner to the other. "G-glad I made sure to stay out of sight, then…"
"Really?"
With Sam's suspicion-filled eyes on her, the blonde Valkyrie nodded repeatedly trying to convince him that she was saying the truth.
"I stayed out of sight just in case the disguise doesn't work. I'm positive no one saw me on the way here."
"If that's the case then… it's fine, I guess. Just make sure you don't get caught."
After thinking about it for a moment Sam realized that there was nothing wrong with her coming here, as long as no one found out, of course. Still, it felt somewhat unacceptable for a weapon such as her to be moving around unsupervised.
'Well, I got to see something nice so…'
The uniform Nine wore was a little small for her. It truly clung to her body emphasizing her curves, especially her huge melons and thick thighs which were covered in stockings.
If it weren't for the restrictions that would lead to his death, Sam would've taken her to some corner around here and done all sorts of things to her. Just imagining it caused his wood to rise.
"Yay!"
Nine hopped in her place with a joy filled expression. The movements of her bouncing chest were hypnotizing, but thankfully they stopped as she noticed how noisy she was being.
"By the way, Doctor." Taking a step toward him, Nine leaned down peeking at the books in his hand. "What were you reading?"
Backing away, Sam hid the books behind his back. The first one was fine, but he couldn't just tell her about the one where her kind gets used as sex dolls, even if she was incapable of understanding those things.
"They're some mystery books I've been enjoying recently." He said. "What about you? If you came all the way here then you must have something you want to read, right?"
Though it'd be strange for her to suddenly start reading books, it wasn't as if she was incapable of doing so. That said, since it would be a big problem if the data collected through reading affected their programming, the things Valkyries were allowed to collect data from were limited, with anything that doesn't meet certain criteria being censored or blocked. That meant even if she does pick a book and read it, depending on the contents she might not be able to decipher it at all, failing to understand it no matter how many times she tries.
The same went for other media, be it visual or audible. One way people could differentiate between humans and Valkyries is by showing the latter something outside their programming and asking them questions about it.
"Well, I usually come here because not many people are around." Said Nine with a beaming smile. She then put a hand in front of her face and whispered. "But lately I've found something interesting to watch."
Raising an eyebrow, Sam wondered what could it be that managed to catch the Valkyrie's interest so much that she'd started coming here.
"Come, Doctor." Turning around, the blond Valkyrie waved for him to follow her. "I will show you."