She was a fighter, he was a scanner. They were each built for their role.
Sure, there was some overlap between the two of them. 9S was certainly a capable combatant in his own right, and 2B could do her fair share of scouting out in the field. But there would always be things one or the other excelled at.
Today, it was 9S's proficiency in hacking that came in handy. 2B watched him intently as he held a broken-down pod in both his hands, an expression of total concentration on his face. She couldn't visualize the process of hacking the same way he could. Were it not for her familiarity with him, and the absolute stillness of his pose, she might not even have guessed he was doing anything other than looking at the pod. She wondered briefly if it was liberating for him to be able to delve so casually into the minds of others.
9S twitched ever so slightly, then breathed in. A single light flickered to life on the pod in his hands. "I think I've got it," He said. As he spoke, that single light projected an image into the air, in much the same way their own pods did whenever one of them received a message.
A red-haired android, a member of the resistance, took a step closer from her spot in the corner. "This is it?" She asked.
"This is the last entry contained in the life log…" 9S explained, before falling silent as the image resolved itself before their eyes.
The picture seemed to have been taken in the very spot where they now stood. A figure in a red cloak and hood, with the distinctly humanoid figure of an android, was driving a long blade viciously through another android's midsection. The attacker was faced away from the camera, making it difficult to identify them. But the victim's identity was clear enough.
"I could be wrong, but it looks like two resistance members fighting each other." 9S's voice carried a note of worry as he stared at the pod's last recording.
The resistance member said something, but 2B didn't quite pick it up. She was focused on the image. There was something about it that set a feeling of deep unease in the back of her mind. It was the victim's face, her posture - she looked so surprised.
Why shouldn't she be? She's being killed by someone she thought was her comrade.
2B sucked in a breath as that feeling of unease intensified into a bitter pit of cold in her chest. She tore her eyes away from the picture. It wasn't worth dwelling on, not in the slightest.
"Wait!" 9S's urgent voice brought her attention back to the discussion taking place before her. The woman from the resistance had begun to walk away from them, toward the stairwell, but had stopped at 9S's prompting.
"What is it?" The woman snapped bitterly.
"Where are you going?"
"To kill the bastard who murdered my friend!"
"Just slow down, alright? We need more data about what happened." 9S lifted his hands in a placating gesture, and some of the tension faded from the woman's posture. "Besides," he continued, "It's dangerous. The killer could be watching you right now, for all we know."
The woman closed her eyes for a moment as she considered, then opened them again. Her stare was intense and full of fire, but at least she didn't seem quite so tightly-wound now. "Fine then. What do YOU think I should do?"
"Let me ask around the resistance camp before you go running off. There can't be that many people in red hoods, after all. Someone must know something."
Another pause as the woman stared at him. Finally, she nodded. "All right. I can wait for a little while."
2B saw the relief in 9S as his shoulders sagged. He took a step past the woman before she stopped him with a hand on his arm. "Hey, and… thanks," she said.
9S nodded awkwardly to her, giving her his best reassuring smile. "Yeah." His head turned to look in 2B's direction. "Let's go, 2B."
She followed him down the dilapidated stairwell out of the building, feeling an unusual reluctance.
He didn't often take the initiative like this. And yet, as they jogged out into the grassy fields of the city ruins, he seemed to move with a very distinct purpose. It bothered her.
"Well, aren't we generous?" She murmured.
"Hmm?" 9S slowed down, turning to look at her over his shoulder.
She hesitated. She hadn't intended for him to hear her - but maybe he needed a reminder of his place, after all. "All this help for no personal gain? I know she's pretty, but…"
He suddenly came to a full stop, turning to shake his head vigorously at her. "Whoa, whoa! It's not like that!" He looked away from her and heaved a sigh. "I mean, she IS pretty. But that's… it's not…"
2B wanted to chastise him. No - more than that, even, she wanted to slap him. But she didn't. She walked past him, giving the best disaffected air of boredom she could. "Whatever."
"What…? 2B, wait up!" 9S's footsteps crunched in the grass and loose dirt as he hurried after her.
"If you want to help her so badly, we'll help her."
"I told you, it's not like that!"
"It wouldn't matter if it was," She said with a slight shrug of her shoulders, before breaking into a run again. "Let's go. I want to get this over with."
9S's protests died on his lips as he reached out uselessly towards her retreating figure. He let his arm fall back to his side with another sigh before moving to catch up with her.
Though they quickly found a red-cloaked figure at the resistance camp, it wasn't their killer. Their search took them to the desert, hunting for the one who'd given the cloak to its current owner.
It quickly became apparent that their current suspect was none other than Jackass, the abrasive woman who helped to manage the desert outpost. She wasn't at the outpost, however, and the direction of the outpost's sole remaining occupant ended up sending them into the caves beneath the desert outskirts.
The two of them both landed smoothly on the floor of the cave. Their pods immediately began to project light ahead of them in the relative darkness of the confined space. "Oh, great. It's dark and it's labyrinthine," 9S groaned.
"You're a scanner model. Aren't you tracking her?" 2B suggested.
"That's… a fair point," He mumbled in reply, looking a little embarrassed not to have thought of it himself. Again, he was suffused with that eerie stillness, but when it faded, the low light of the pods' flashlights illuminated an expression of irritation on his face. "She's not even in the caves. She's on the surface. We'll have to find which route she took."
"Lead the way," She offered.
9S seemingly chose a direction at random, and the two of them set off through the winding caverns. They'd gone less than a hundred feet before they were beset by a swarm of smaller machines, all of them hopping towards them with an angry red glow in their eyes. "Tch," 9S growled as he drew his sword and rushed forward to dispatch the nearest of them. "Jackass better have a great explanation for us when we find her."
2B went in the other direction, protecting his blind spot from the machines that were clamoring to strike at it. Her twin swords blurred as she manipulated them in smooth, elegant motions that carved her enemies into scrap metal. "Anger is just as useless to you as any other emotion right now," She chastised him.
9S flicked his sword at another machine, splitting it into two halves. "Yeah, yeah."
He always said that. How he managed to remain so petulant, even in the middle of a battle, always amazed her. A small part of her wanted to get back at him. For once, she indulged it. "One affirmation will suffice, Nines."
"Whatev- wait, what did you say?" He abruptly stopped what he was doing and turned to gawk at her. As he did so, a larger machine began stomping towards his backside from around a bend.
2B immediately chastised herself for her choice. She whirled the larger of her swords around her, clearing out what remained of the smaller machines before rushing past 9S to intercept the newcomer's swing. She caught it on one of her blades before forcing it back. "Stay focused!" She snapped.
"R-right!" 9S dove in to take advantage of the opening she'd created, neatly slashing the head off his would-be attacker. The head tumbled down a sandy slope while the rest of the body crumpled with a metallic clatter.
2B resettled her weapons on her back as she turned to her partner with a smirk. "See how your emotions get the better of you?"
He crossed his arms over his chest with a huff. "That's not fair! I've been trying to get you to call me Nines for ages. I'm pretty sure you did that on purpose."
She shrugged at him. "It's just a name. It shouldn't have that much of an effect on you."
"Yeah, well…" He kicked at some of the sand by his feet as he stared down at the ground. "It's something only my friends call me. So, for you to use that name…"
She suddenly felt a little bad for teasing him. "I'll… think about using it more often. No promises."
"I'll take it," He said, beaming at her. She didn't feel like she deserved that smile.
"Let's keep moving. Are we any closer to Jackass?" She asked, looking away from him, down the tunnel.
"Uh, yeah," 9S said, taking a moment to process the sudden change in topic. "This way, I think." He motioned to her as he led the both of them further along, up a gently sloping tunnel until they emerged onto the surface. True to his word, a familiar female resistance member was there, toying with some explosives near what looked like the sight of a recent landslide.
"Jackass?" 9S's slightly uncertain tone got a response from the woman, and she straightened up and turned towards them.
"Who wants to know?"
"We're with YoRHa," He explained. "We're conducting a field investigation. Did you happen to give a red hood to a friend earlier?"
"That old piece of crap?" Jackass wore an expression of distaste. "Yeah, I gave it to her. Hell, I never wanted it in the first place."
9S fidgeted. "Er, so it came from someone else originally?"
Jackass gave him a flat look. "Did I stutter? Yeah, it came from someone else. I bought the stupid thing right after that explosion in the city ruins."
2B felt herself stiffen as she recalled the image of the murder. She'd been mulling it over, quietly, ever since they'd taken on this little job. She was finally starting to understand what it was that had unsettled her so greatly about it.
"Some resistance lady with red hair practically tackled me trying to get me to buy it," Jackass continued.
"A red-haired resistance member…" 9S echoed.
Pod 153's feminine monotone completed 2B's thought in that moment. "The same color as our client's hair."
9S and Jackass kept talking, but 2B's mind was somewhere else. She finally understood what it was she'd seen on the victim's face. It wasn't just the shock of an ally striking her down.
No, this was a much more personal form of betrayal.
They returned to the city ruins. 2B watched as 9S delivered their findings to their client. There was a defensiveness to his posture that hadn't been there back when he'd first accepted her request. Now that he knew the crime she might have committed, he saw her in a totally different light.
"Look, you said there were still some records left in this pod, right?" The woman asked, frantic. "Then we have to look at them right now!"
"Think about this for a second. I want you to understand what you're asking," 9S cautioned. "You may have killed your own friend. I don't know why or how, but it's possible."
"I don't care," She pleaded. "I have to know the truth. Please!"
9S went silent for a moment, looking between her and the pod lying on the floor. "All right. I'm heading in," He said, making up his mind as he picked up the pod once more.
He went still again before 2B's eyes, delving into the deepest recesses of the broken pod's memories. A part of her wanted to stop him from seeing what doubtless dwelt in the pod's recordings, but she knew it wouldn't help. 9S's curiosity was second to none. He would find out, one way or another. She smiled bitterly as she listened to him reporting his progress.
"Examining storage circuits. 88 percent… 92 percent… 98 percent…"
Again, the light at the front of the pod came to life, projecting an image into the air for all of them to see. The woman with red hair stood tall over the corpse of her friend, sword in hand. A red cloak saddled her shoulders, spots of blood almost invisible against the fabric.
"Ah…" The woman gasped, a hand going to her forehead. She momentarily looked like she was in pain, but it resolved quickly. "I… I'm a type-E... A YoRHa type-E…"
9S froze. "YoRHa?"
The woman nodded woodenly. "My function is to seek out and execute deserters and traitors. I disguise myself so I can approach my targets and kill without warning. But one day, I was ordered to kill my friend…"
2B recalled the first image the pod had shown them - the pain, the shock, and the betrayal on the victim's face. Slowly, the lines, the colors, the details of the image shifted. Red became black, and the victim's face became 9S's. A dozen different recollections flashed through her mind of times she'd run him through, just like that. He'd always worn that exact expression as it happened. She'd tried apologizing, the first few times, but not anymore. She wasn't due any forgiveness.
The red-haired woman had devolved into mad laughter and babbling. 9S took an uncertain step away from her. 2B quickly took his hand and led him towards the stairwell. "Let's go," She said.
Silence hung heavy between the two of them as they descended to the ground floor again. As they stepped out into the sunshine again, 9S spoke up, sounding pensive. "Type-E… I didn't know there was such a thing." He turned to look at her. "Did you, 2B?"
Her breath caught in her throat. Of course she knew. But that was the last thing she could tell him. Her voice wavered almost imperceptibly as she replied, "Some things are better left unknown."
"...Yeah. I suppose so," He admitted. He shook his head, as if to clear it of dark thoughts, before offering her another smile she didn't deserve. "Let's get back to the resistance camp and see if they need any more help."
"Right. Let's go, 9S," She said, keeping her voice as level and calm as she could as she walked past him.
"Nine… uh, nevermind." 9S's disappointed tone only lasted a moment before he settled in to follow her.
He wouldn't listen, she knew. Even told that there were things he was better off not knowing, he'd still end up looking for them. That was his way; curiosity was his greatest flaw.
And when the time came that he knew too much, she would doubtless be sent after him once more, as she had always been. She wouldn't hesitate. It was in her programming to see her duty through to the end. But it would still hurt.
At least he wouldn't remember. That was her punishment; to remember all of the times she'd betrayed him. That was why she kept that careful distance between the two of them. Let herself get too close, and she would end up just like the red-haired woman had - completely deranged. And then she would be of no use to anyone.
This was her purpose, after all.
He was the prisoner, and she was his warden. They were each built for their role.