√4

Yarrun XIX

√4. That's me, the girl winding the generator.

√8 is the android with the binocular head, huddling in the corner. √3 is the hulking machine with the turret platform, checking the support beams. √7 is the bundle of wires, gears and pylons on wheels, burning through the door with the welding torch arm.

We're all that's left. √5 is dead. √6 stayed behind to try and save √9 from the overloading reactor; who knows if they got out of range before the explosion. And √2 and √1...well, if everything goes well, they'd be dead soon enough.

Tre

boy, that escalated quickly

Yarrun XIX

26 years ago, 2 years before I was born, the AI Singularity occurred. Mankind was launched into a war against an army of independent robots, ruled by an AI (Our Lord and Emperor XY-XX-77) who had judged humans to be unfit to take care of the world. After 10 years of conflict, the humans bargained with XY-XX-77 for their survival, resulting in the creation of the Modern Alliance. One last chance for us to redeem ourselves.

Our unit works -- well, used to work -- for the Alliance. We were called the Roots of Base 10. 3 humans, 6 mechs: the first unit with humans in the Special Ops Division. We were created to deal with threats that affected both humankind and mechkind alike, ranging from terrorists to meteorites to invasive flora. We were also an experiment, a test to see if humans could learn to value mechs the same way that they valued their own. For me, √1, and √9, humanity's fate rested on every action that we made.

glennmagusharvey

> 2 years before I was born

> 2 years

> 2

Yarrun XIX

(?)

glennmagusharvey

√4 = 2

Yarrun XIX

(Oh, yeah, motifs; there'll be more of that).

Yarrun XIX

Before Base Root 10, I was a high-ranking member of Internal Affairs. √9 was an infiltration agent, trained to hack almost anything, and √1 was a soldier in the army before it was disbanded. The mechs -- √2, √3, √5, √6, √7, and √8 -- were specially designed and created for the team. It was both sides putting their best foot forward.

A loud creaking shook the small cavern. √3 grabbed the support beams and looked towards the rest of the group, his optics flashing an emergency signal. The roof wouldn't hold for much longer. √7 muttered something in lingua binarius -- the standard language for mechs -- and deployed another welding torch.