Orbiting the Earth, a teenage girl tried very hard to pretend she was deaf.
"Yonah, it's time for breakfast."
She groaned. Clearly, it wasn't working.
"I'm dead."
"It's still time for breakfast."
"I have a lethal disease."
"That can't be transmitted to androids. It's still time for breakfast."
"I bet none of the other humans have to come down for breakfast."
"The other humans are in cryogenic suspension. They'd be happy to be able to have breakfast."
"Then find one of them."
"Yonah."
Yonah sighed and rolled out of bed.
"I'm up, I'm up. Geeze, sorry mom. I'll be right over."
"I'm glad to hear it. I'm sure everyone will be eager to see you again."
Yonah tossed her pillow out towards the door. She knew 15H would dodge, but it was the principle of the thing. It also meant she wouldn't have anyone looking for half a second so she could duck into her closet and get dressed. Nothing against androids in general, save for the fact they were slave driving monsters, but she preferred to have some privacy.
How little she had meant Yonah had learned to get dressed fast.
That done, she stumbled out into the hall, 15 behind her, watching for any real or imagined threat.
"That's a very pretty skirt, Yonah. I'm pleased to see you ready for the day."
"Not like I had a choice."
"You can always choose your attitude, Yonah. You represent humanity for all of us, almost as much as the council. And if you can keep it together, that makes it easier to remember what we're fighting for."
"Which is why I'm only grouchy and awful with you."
Yonah opened the door to the "breakfast room", something she was pretty sure humans didn't have before the aliens invaded and left androids having to sort everything out themselves.
Her "family" was waiting inside, hosts of younger sisters, a few brothers, and den mother White herself in front of the the room, waiting for the latest broadcast from the council to finish.
"To all our brave android forces on the surface, do not lose heart. Even today, YoRHa prepares for the final strike. Every human waits for your success. And…"
Yonah felt her heart freeze. No. No no no no no. She prayed to every god humanity had ever worshipped that the next lines wouldn't follow that pattern.
"Reunion with our scattered brethren. Little Yonah is alone, cut off from the rest of her kind and her ancient home as long as the machines hold her home hostage."
The baby pictures showed on the screen. Again.
She silently wondered if she would ever see the old gods in person. If so, she was definitely going to kill them.
"YoRHa is the weapon that will drive off the machines. But they need your help. They need your courage. The end is in sight. As long as you hold onto hope.
Glory to mankind!"
The room echoed with the response. At least, until 15H coughed.
The commander turned away from the screen and towards Yonah.
"...I'm sorry you had to see that."
"I'm used to it by now. Keeps up morale, right? People need something to believe in."
Yonah yanked the chair out and slid into her usual position.
"Besides. They're fighting and dying. The rest of humanity is locked away in cold sleep, only let out to check in on a losing war. Meanwhile, I'm getting an embarrassing baby picture shown off every once in a while. Can't say I'm doing too bad."
"I'm glad you can see it that way."
15H shook her head and smiled.
"And yet, when I ask you to wake up five minutes earlier…"
Yonah shot back a glare, and turned to face mo… Commander White again.
"Anyway, what's for breakfast? The usual?"
"Not today. Our scouting parties found something special. Herring."
"...Herring?"
"A kind of fish. From Earth. Humans called them 'Kippers', according to the pod database. They thought you'd appreciate a taste of… your home."
Yonah smiled as best she could and tried to think positively. Sometimes these things went well. Astronaut ice cream? Good! Despite the emergency substitute ingredients, it was still one of the best things she'd ever tasted.
On the other hand, the attempts at more "authentic" human cuisine were more often… not good. She knew from the thousand yard stares that mom and her kid siblings on Earth had seen and done worse than they'd ever mention to her, but until she saw the war a little closer, 6O's attempts at making "lobster thermidor" from the usual ingredients would have to stay at the gold standard for crime against all that was once sacred.
The fact 6O was carrying the plate forward, probably smiling under her veil, was not a very promising sign.
Still, she nodded and took her fork to pick up a small, oddly cut little thing that had once been alive and swimming on her homeworld. Something that humans of old and the resistance alike probably thought of as a nothing food, the kind of thing that you could have every day.
And maybe they'd have it again. Maybe she could have this again if she liked it, a big meal with Commander White and some of her friends on Earth. Like Jackass. Jackass sounded fun, if half the stories the Comomder had when she had a little too much to drink were true. She could introduce the other humans to them, and they'd all be impressed how well she knew the new world, and then… well. That was still at least a little ways off. For now, she had to find out if she liked kippers, or if she'd have to 'explain' that humans didn't really like them and that the old documents were just making jokes.
Yonah took a bite. Not bad. Not great, and a pretty distinct flavor, but not bad at all, assuming you didn't mind a bit of an oily taste.
"Thank you. It's delicious."
Yonah thought 6O was smiling earlier. Now she knew for sure.
"I'll tell 2B next time we talk. She's going to be thrilled. Not that she'll say anything, but she will be."
6O's eyes darted to the commander for a second, and back.
"I mean, I'll tell her when it's not interrupting official communications. And when it won't use bandwidth, which I have been very careful with."
"I know you will. So, how's everyone doing on Earth?"
Yonah smiled and nodded at the endless babbling brook of a conversation emerging from the Operator's mouth. Between operational security and 6O's general areas of interest, she knew there wasn't going to be anything actually useful in the stream. But that was fine. It was pleasant, it wasn't anything she'd have to remember later, and it meant she'd escape any kind of questioning White might produce on plans for the day.
Living in the Bunker was limiting enough already. Best to preserve the little freedom she had as well as she could.
Before too long, the meal was done, the plate was slid away, and White was deep enough in some datastream or other from the council that Yonah could slip away with a polite thank you.
If she could just duck 15, the day would be hers. She was in the hall before anyone could catch her or ask about plans. Maybe she'd be able to get to the low gravity areas, snatch bubbles of water out of the air. The operators sometimes had stories, that would be a decent way to handle the pre…
"The commander had some books she'd like you to study, when you have time."
She didn't have time. Probably because she didn't manage to duck 15.
"Ugghhh. Come on! You know there's not going to be anything new."
"Maybe not, but it's best that you can say it with confidence. You don't want to appear uneducated compared to the other humans. It would make me look bad."
"And how you look when the humans come back is the most important thing."
15H smiled.
"Of course. Combat models might have an excuse to be uncouth, but I plan to be dealing with the rest of you on a regular basis. If I don't prove myself with you, how can I expect to spend any time with the civilized humans?"
"I'm sorry for suspecting anything. You're obviously looking out for me purely out of the goodness of your heart."
"Exactly. Today, we're focusing on art history, focusing on the late middle ages."
"Not like I'm ever going to see them."
"Of course not. Earth's been occupied by the enemy for thousands of years, and the machines have no more appreciation for art than for anything else. But androids still have a duty to remember so things can be rebuilt once the war is won."
Yonah snatched the book out of the air and wished she was in the hangar. Some things were easier in low g.
"Uh-huh. You know, I'm technically older than you."
"Yes."
"And I'm a human. You're supposed to obey humans."
"Close. If you were paying attention, you might remember that we're meant to protect and aid humanity. If obedience would mean we couldn't do our jobs, then that would be a problem. We'd be no better than the machines."
"But I'm still older than you."
"Yes. And the Commander is older than you, and the Commander trusts me to keep you from making any mistakes that could negatively impact the war effort. Considering how much effort that's been, I'm surprised that you survived long enough for YoRHa to form."
Yonah shook her head and opened the book. She'd seen a little old Earth art before. What humans thought was important enough to pass onto future generations, and what they hadn't been able to protect.
She liked it anyway. Honestly, she might have liked it more for being gone. Liked it more for giving a cost to the war, giving it a scale.
It was dead friends, of course. Family that never came back, or lost time without an answer for what happened. But that was all new. And it killed humans, but she'd never met another human. The ones who'd been frozen knew what they'd lost, but for her it was just numbers and graphs.
Art? Pictures of what the war lost her? That let her feel sad without feeling like she'd break down. It made the war real enough without forcing her into the middle of it.
"As nice as it is to see you enthusiastic for a subject for once, you probably shouldn't be reading in the middle of a hallway."
Yonah rolled her eyes, but moved all the same. 15 was right. Impeding YoRHa was pretty low on the list of her life goals. Not on her list at all, if she was honest.
She paused.
"Uh, question."
"Go on."
"Can I study in the center ring? I think there are studies suggesting that the brain learns easier in low gravity."
"The pods didn't have those studies on file when I cross referenced them."
"Why did you even check?"
"I don't get deployed with the landing parties. We don't often have someone come back in good enough shape that I'm needed. Which means my job is watching after you, and I should do it right."
Yonah looked down. Then paused.
"That's not a no."
15H smiled.
"I suppose not. Which might be why I cleared some space for you to study in low gravity, despite the complete lack of evidence it will do any good."
"Thank you!"
"Just don't…"
But Yonah was already running for the center ring. She jumped off the wall, exalting in the freedom of space, the small gift that came closest to compensating for never knowing her homeworld.
She flipped through the book and felt the weight of the world fall back to the world. 15H occasionally coughed when her eyes drifted away from the page, but her eyes weren't the important part of the exercise. It wasn't like she'd forget about the book when and if she was quizzed on art history. She was just more interested in everything else. The silence. (Well, mostly the silence. There was a blaring alarm and a brief few words from one of the operators, but they weren't saying anything right now.) The weightlessness. The solitude.
...The solitude.
Yonah's eyes darted around the room.
Apparently, her minder was part of whatever emergency merited a siren, and assumed that Yonah either could be trusted to manage herself for the duration, or wouldn't notice that she was alone until the crisis had passed. Not the worst assumptions in the world, not with the art of the lost Earth and the freedom of space holding her between them. A rather sensible one, really, one that wasn't any kind of mark against good old number fifteen who had provided such excellent service to YoRHa in the past.
Just this once, it happened to be a wrong one. But if Yonah hurried, it wouldn't be one likely to cause either of them any harm. Yonah, after all, had just the place in mind, and just the route mapped out for just this kind of occasion, the kind of opportunity she'd never seen in her life and might never see again until she was, what, thirty? Old enough that the war would be won and she'd be passed about between her fellow human beings, and the bunker might well be decommissioned.
She didn't have that long a life, on a grand scale. Why waste it ignoring such an interesting opportunity?
Five minutes later, Yonah was confident there were several very good reasons to "waste" her life that way. For one thing, she'd probably have much more life to waste. The route seemed simple enough when you heard about it. A few quick leaps, some cut corners, nothing too fancy. But the problem was she'd heard about it from YoRHa androids. As in the cutting edge ultimate weapons built to win the war, where even the non-combat scanners and operators were more durable and capable than the average resistance model on Earth. As in the resistance models who were built based on thousands of years of design iteration on an initial template that made baseline humans look rather useless on a combat front.
In fewer words, she was exposing her fragile little wad of meat to a lot of ways to die that none of the people she'd used to work out the plan would have even noticed.
Vacuum. Radiation. Electrical pulses. So many ways to die, and she'd only get to try one before the whole thing would come to an end. Unfair, when you thought about it. All the combat models got to try dozens without coming to a final decision. But she and mo… White were stuck with one life each.
If getting back wasn't as much work as it had been to get that far, she would have turned back. But taking all that risk again with nothing to show for it would have been embarrassing. She was human, after all. One of the maniacs and explorers who opened the door between worlds and took the moon for a home when their old world betrayed them. What would they say if she quit early?
Her hand slid over the panel, keyed to a password the Commander had left in reach of a scanner for a little too long. Nines forgot not long after he told her (Nines was so forgetful. You'd think 2B would like a little joke about that, but alas. Her sense of humor seemed to have vanished that day.), but Yonah had kept it close. Just in case.
The door whined back, and Yonah stepped inside. In the glistening dark, she could see the promise of… something. Tubes? File cabinets storing old world data too sensitive and too delicate to even trust to the most sophisticated security systems? Valuable YoRHa information servers? Some combination of all the above?
Yonah took a breath. She'd find the truth soon enough. Have a story good enough to make everyone else regret what they missed while they were sleeping.
"Yonah."
"Mom!"
Behind Yonah, or at least somewhere that was behind Yonah when she opened the door, White's face froze in something that wasn't quite shock.
Yonah coughed.
"Err… Commander. And… 15H."
15 was frowning from the sound of things, even with her face directed away.
"I was worried. You know we can't replace you. And I don't know how we'd face the council if you were gone."
"I just…"
"I don't care. You're my responsibility. You're humanity. And you could have died because I was careless."
"It's my fault. You had an emergency. Lives were on the line."
"Android lives! Hardly anything! If every single member of YoRHa had to die for you to live, it would be the right choice."
"And the Commander? You?"
15H didn't blink.
"Of course! If we had to wipe out every android on Earth to leave you a road, if… I understand my model should be decommissioned, Commander. I just want enough time to prepare a guide for my replacement."
White slowly shook her head.
"We can discuss the matter later. You're dismissed."
15H turned.
White drew a pistol and blew her case open. Her body slumped to the ground, lifeless.
She turned back to face Yonah, and waved off the look of shock on the young woman's face.
"Her backups are up to date."
"You shot her!"
"How much did you see?"
"I just saw you shoot 15, mom!"
"What did you see before that? How much do you know?"
Yonah said nothing. After a moment, White sighed.
"I suppose it doesn't matter. I should have done something a long time ago. No matter how this happened. Step inside."
Yonah crossed the threshold. White followed.
The door slammed shut behind them, and Yonah tried to convince herself she knew the closest thing she had to a mother well enough to trust her.
It wasn't as easy as it should have been. The Commander had been The Commander longer than she'd been anything to Yonah, longer than Yonah had been alive. She fought to reclaim the Earth for decades, well enough that she'd been given her current command as the last order from Number 2. When a human was found, miraculously preserved on Earth, one of the first YoRHa strike teams was wiped out to the last to protect it and bring it to the safety of orbit. White's orders.
A lot of strike teams were wiped out to the last on her orders. She was a killer, and she sent people to die. People she cared about. Why should it be a surprise they sometimes died at her hands. Yonah's mind chased after imagined horrors.
It was interrupted by a real one. A human body, a girl half her age suspended in a tank of liquid.
Very, very dead.
White sighed again. Yonah felt her spine freeze and thaw and freeze again in an instant.
"Where should I begin?"
"What?"
"I was always planning to tell you everything. When the time was right. And you nearly died because of the delay."
"Tell me what?"
"Nothing you can tell anyone else. Our burden, and one you never chose. If it means anything, I'm sorry."
"You still shot…"
White's mouth smiled, but her eyes mocked the idea she'd ever been happy. Maybe mocked Yonah for thinking otherwise.
"I've killed more androids than the station could ever support. One more or less won't damn my soul. She'll come back tomorrow, no worse for the wear and free of any guilt over her negligence. We aren't as lucky."
Yonah looked around the room. Looked at more bodies, human and machine.
The humans all seemed to have a familiar face.
"Why not?"
"You've listened to the council of humanity broadcasts your whole life. You have to wonder why you've never seen them. Why you weren't moved to safety."
"...The war was at too much of a crisis point. Risking transportation would… I mean, non-essential data is limited."
"And we couldn't manage one picture from the moon, while 6O floods the channels with videos of cats. You aren't stupid. I know that as well as anyone."
"The broadcasts are created by YoRHa."
"Close enough, yes. We were losing the war. Spiraling into despair as we died to hold ground. Command knew we needed something more than this to survive. Hope. And a God worth dying for."
She looked over the room.
"They had something to build on. Even after all these years, there were still rumors, and odd castoffs. A story of sealed vaults in America, rumors of forgotten shades holding onto some memory in the tunnels below Russia, and the occasional castoff Hamelin institute project that held on far past its original purpose. No real humans. No real hope. But enough to build a story on."
"And you lied to everyone until you found me."
"Found."
"...On Earth. The only survivor… you've put the story in broadcasts. You told me it when I was growing up, before anyone else was here, about a thousand times."
Her eyes darted to the tanks. It wasn't a complicated leap, not when every horrible possibility was screaming at the top of her mind, but it wasn't true.
Not for any solid reason. It was just a way to keep from screaming.
"You think the founders of YoRHa left everything to chance. That the messiah was born just when one was needed, and one miracle child outlived her entire species."
"The tanks."
"Yes. You aren't the first. The founders of YoRHa weren't content to build up rumors. They made a symbol. Unto us, a child was born."
White grimaced.
"And unto me, a child died. Over. And over. And over again. Sometimes she made it a few years. A decade once. But you kept falling. Kept dashing any hope we had that we could ever make up for what Devola and her sister lost us."
"Who?"
"Old androids, who were probably just unlucky enough to be blamed when everything fell apart. I suppose I'd look even worse. They only damned mankind once."
Yonah looked at the tanks. At the many, many tanks.
"Oh."
"I never told them this. I always meant to. But before I did, they were gone. Every time."
"Are you going to kill me, then?"
I was more spilled out than said. A nightmare given voice.
Judging from the look on White's face, it was a nightmare for her as well. Just of a slightly different variety.
"No. Never."
A little fear shifted into guilt, and Yonah looked away.
"Thank you."
"You shouldn't need to ask."
White looked down.
"I've been more of a monster than I thought. And I'm forcing the same thing onto you."
"How?"
White slapped the top of the table with her hand.
"I've just given you information that androids are killed for getting close to. You know facts that could leave the entire war effort in shambles, destroy the heavens and bring down the god who promised us victory. And there's more to come."
Yonah looked at a screen, if only to stop looking at all the bodies that could have easily been hers. The same pattern, resurrected over and over because nothing else worked.
The screens all had the word "CLASSIFIED" prominently. Not much of an escape.
"Taking up the family trade, huh?"
The Commander turned away.
"If it comes to that. Not yet. But you should know. Any…"
She paused.
"Mom?"
"What?"
"You called me that earlier. I thought we'd broken that habit years ago."
"...I didn't stop thinking it."
"Oh."
Yonah looked at the screens again. Tried to keep breathing.
"Closest thing I have, apparently, so it's not like I was wrong."
White closed her eyes. Took a breath.
"...hmm. Well. Any… daughter of mine deserves the truth."
Neither said anything for a few moments.
White forced herself to smile.
"We might win before you have to do anything with this. Victory covers a multitude of sins. For now, our would-be chef remembered your compliments this morning, and has prepared the rest of the shipment for an evening meal. You'll attend."
"Of course."
"If anyone asks, 15H succumbed to a logic virus variant contracted when repairing YoRHa forces returning from Earth. As the only person on site not at risk for it, you helped her safely delete her consciousness data and restore to an earlier backup. I might not be there with you, so a pod will escort you back to a safer part of the Bunker while I clean up the mess here. Say it back."
"Logic virus, I helped with cleanup, pod takes me to dinner."
White nodded.
"Good. Glory to mankind."
"Glory to mankind."
It sounded hollow.
Yonah followed a pod out of the chamber of horrors to the main station. She'd soon be surrounded by fellow children of the war, built for a cause they didn't truly understand, by others fighting a war so long that the prize was lost. She'd smile and cry, every gesture and word drawing a response from the people who cared for her, every lie given in the spirit of the greater good, and taken in pure trust.
Yonah was about to be surrounded by the only family she'd ever had, in the service to the cause she was born to.
Yonah had never felt so alone.
(Author's notes: Hey. Been a while.
First off, I'd like to take a moment to thank you for reading this far. Or, I suppose, to acknowledge your habit of skipping straight to the author's notes to get a general idea of the chapter. Either way, though, you're here now and that's what's important. Hope I didn't disappoint.
So. Nier. Gotta admit, writing this, even for strangers on the internet who tend to have,{no offense intended, I'm sure I don't mean you} terrible taste, is intimidating as hell because Nier Automata is so good.
Then ABC made a sequel to Romeo and Juliet as a TV show and I realized no matter how badly I did, someone else will always shit on great art, so!
As for the story, figured that a spin on "Humans! Real ones this time!" might be worth a go. And I thought that it was much more likely that the androids would try to make a god with their own hands than that someone would survive the long millenia. Plus, it seemed much more thematic. The whole game is about people trying to create meaning in a world that continually crushes it. Just having the androids get what they want handed to them hardly seems fitting.
Not sure when, if, or what's coming to follow this up, but until then, take care.)