A/N: Busy this weekend, so enjoy this chapter a little early.
The door slammed open so hard it nearly exploded into splitters against the concrete wall.
9S yelped and floundered off the bed, almost splitting himself in two on Virtuous Contract while 4S shouted at him to come quick over the sound of Jackass cursing so loud her speakers were on the verge of blowing out.
His drowsy mind chugged, throwing out a dozen possibilities as he stumbled into the overcast day. Machines? Another demon attack? Theta and Jackass finally getting in the fight that had been brewing between them since he first saw them? Above the ring of androids blocking his view of the commotion, he spotted a giant blue bird cackling from atop the shoulder of an exceptionally tall android.
Information overload slowed his thought routines to a crawl.
It was V. He was in the camp. Anthurium was with him. So was 8E. Her hands were tied up with ropes. Jackass was yelling at Griffon. Griffon was laughing at Jackass. Anemone was standing beside Jackass, half preventing her from doing anything rash and half trying to take in this latest weird thing to happen in her camp. Theta stood face to face with V. 9S couldn't quite put an emotion to her expression. V was giving her the same flat, dead-eyed stare she usually reserved for everyone else. It would have been enjoyable to see her get a taste of her own medicine if the mere fact of V's presence was not rapidly causing 9S to overheat.
As if overhearing this sizzle of his circuits, V turned his way. The crowd parted. If 9S hadn't been frozen in place before, he would have been by the sudden hush and the way the camp's eyes fell on him. They all watched him as he and V watched each other.
Except for Theta, whose eyes never left V for a second. "Old World Weapon, hm?"
"That is what I said, yes." V sounded relaxed. Like he'd been well fed and had a good night's sleep, and nobody had woken him up out of a pleasant sleep into a scene right out of a nightmare. "Shall we speak in private or did you wish to do business in front of this…tribe."
"9S," Gamma barked, making him nearly jump out of his skin. "You'll be joining us."
Anthurium swayed nervously between V and Gamma. "Do I need to come?"
"I'll handle it," Anemone said, with a stern look at the two Army androids. "Just don't leave in case we need you."
The table it would be handled at, when they were all finally settled around it, was deathly silent.
V sat at one end, spinning his cane and looking around the camp like it was a novelty toy in a broken-down storefront. Something for his eyes to peruse, but ultimately useless to him. Gamma sat directly to his left, radiating the threat of violence with her entire body only for it to bounce ineffectually off V's complete lack of interest in her. 8E sat quietly to her left. She was… different. She paid 9S' occasional quizzical glares no mind and seemed content to sit there in the embarrassingly primitive restraints that bound her arms and wrists. Theta sat next to her, at the opposite head of the table from V. A tactically sound choice, as far as possible from V while leaving him the center of her focus. They knew the threat that 8E posed, but V was an unknown. 'Old World Weapon' was a broad term and he could be capable of anything.
That left Anemone and 9S sitting together on V's right like repair units hunkering down on the edge of a soon-to-be battlefield. She occasionally shot him enquiring and slightly panicked glances, but he could only give her bug-eyed, jittery headshakes for an answer.
Careful to not direct his question too obviously at V, he parted the dense silence. "Anybody wanna catch me up on what's going on here?"
"Your friend wants to arrange a trade," said Theta. "YoRHa Unit No. 8, Type E in exchange for the weapon you recovered from the desert."
"Okay…? So let him take it. You want your culprit, there she is. What's the problem?"
Surprisingly, Anemone was the one to shoot him down. "I'd say the problem is that we killed a full squadron of dead YoRHa and that sword had something to do with it."
"There's that. And the matter of whether he is an accomplice to 8E, as well as the veracity of the claim that he is an old world weapon, which I am bound by Legacy Reclamation protocol to verify and catalog." Theta folded her hands beneath her chin. It might have been mistaken for a casual gesture if her joints did not crack so loudly. "Let's start with why you want the sword."
Griffon snorted from his perch above them. "We're doin' you a favor, trust me it's not every day we bother to be diplomatic; kinda the long way 'round if you catch my meaning. But sure, sure, keep it, it'll bring you good fortune sure as I'm the bluebird of fuckin' happiness."
8E sat forward with a sigh. "What the dumb bird means is that the sword belongs to V and if you keep it, it's only going to cause more problems for you."
"I don't remember permitting you to speak."
"Glad your memory checks are functional. You're not my Commander, I don't need your permission to talk about this."
"About what, exactly?"
"About Legion," said V.
The beginnings of all other petty exchanges blew away, leaving a hush far more oppressive than the last.
9S' connection to his sensors shorted and for a moment he floated away from the table, his thought routines untethered from the rest of him. This was not how today was supposed to go. If V lost whatever game he was playing by being here, 9S might never get the chance to find 2B's data. Faced with that prospect, he snapped back into himself and shot V a look that begged mercy and threatened murder.
V leaned his cane against his mouth to hide the twitch of a grin.
Across from them, Theta set her hands on the table and leaned forward like an encroaching glacier. "Legion is dead. They've been dead for thousands of years."
"Yet here am I and there…" V trailed, waving the tip of his cane until it pointed beyond the obscuring tarp, toward the back area of the camp. "…is my sword."
"What do either of those things have to do with Legion?"
Griffon bounced down to a lower perch on the back of V's chair and spread his wings. "V here is an anti-maso weapon. We keep that salty shit purged and make sure nobody wakes up another Red-Eye. Me? Oh, glad you asked! I'm his entourage since as you can tell he's not much physically after so many thousands of years, kind of an old-timer, you know? Someone's gotta take good care of the brittle bits."
V pushed the head of his cane up underneath Griffon's jaw to force it closed before he could make any more opportunistic jabs. "So it is. The sword captures maso and ensures that it stays… indisposed. The supposedly resurrected YoRHa you faced were mere maso-driven pawns drawn toward it."
"No," Theta said tightly, shaking her head. "No, no, Legion was a result of human contact with maso, and they were white and—" She was halfway up before she caught herself, and her fingers gouged the wood as she forced herself back into her seat. For the first time since they sat, she broke eye contact with V.
"Ваше мнение?" she asked Gamma.
9S twitched as his language functions stuttered to life. It had never even occurred to him that Theta's group might have a different default operational language than the one used in this zone. Even if it had, he would never have imagined he'd find himself in a situation where it was a problem.
"He isn't dead," Gamma answered. "Iota couldn't get readings because he's not an android. Whether he is old world or not, he is organic."
"How is that possible?!"
"He may be like No. 7 before his merger with No. 6. Similar form to replicants, ability to use magic, seemingly infinite longevity…"
"All of the anti-maso weapons were made from children; this is an adult!"
If V cared that they were talking in a language he didn't know, it didn't show, but he really needed to. Theta and Gamma were not like the androids he was used to, and while he sat there looking so unbothered they were dangerously close figuring him out. The only reason they weren't coming to the right conclusion was because the truth happened to be the least rational thing possible.
Their sidebar ended, and Gamma leered at V. "I request permission to interrogate."
"Denied," Theta answered. "You're an Enforcer, save interrogation for the executioner. If V is what he says he is, he is an artifact. Intel gathering is more prudent, especially given he's…organic."
"Not fully." V gave that smug, secretive look that made the back of 9S' neck crawl. "I have a bad habit of turning to dust when my power is depleted."
He had clearly reached deep inside and pulled out the most insolent, unaffected version of himself he could find—one that considered all of this a courtesy that could become an annoyance at any time. Theta's sharp, predatory gold eyes locked with his bored-looking green ones, and the air took on a buzz as tangible as metal striking metal.
"Where've you been all this time?" she demanded.
"Dormant." V leaned back in his chair and loosely crossed his legs. "In Jerusalem."
"No.7 has been sighted in many combat zones, but you've never appeared before, even in skirmishes in that area."
"His name is Emil." His tone fell over them like a thundercloud with every suggestion that further 'No.7's would invite lightning. 9S didn't think it sounded like an act, but since when was V defensive of Emil? "I haven't bothered in the affairs of androids since the celebrant. Your wars have nothing to do with me."
"Clearly not, since you decided to show up after the end of it. Legacy Reclamation has no record of you."
"Don't you have boy-bot out here digging up your lost history for you?" Griffon cawed. "Your records ain't shit!"
Theta's gaze flicked sideways and bored into 9S.
He didn't know what to do with himself at this juncture. Should he look bored, so it looked like he knew all this? Should he do his best to achieve direct communication with V's brain just to ask him what the fuck he was doing? Should he just look nervous? He could definitely do nervous. At least two dozen extremely nuanced varieties of nervous were already fully loaded and ready to go, from the sucking void of terror just under his ribs to the prickling flight urge creeping from his toes up the back of his legs all the way to where his fingers were hooked and ready to overturn the table and run if this all went bad.
The only thing he knew he couldn't do was let his body shake as badly as it wanted to. V's lie was good. Almost too good. He could do magic, so how was anybody supposed to know that it wasn't technically this world's magic? He even hid the existence of demons under a different kind of monster; one Theta would never be able to ignore.
But why now? Why like this?
"Why now?" Theta echoed, startling him. "Why here?"
"You complain that you fought corpses and can't figure out why I would appear in this time and place?"
Theta ground her jaw. "I mean how long have you been here?"
"The rounds of the clock run together... The turn of autumn was it, 9S?"
9S choked on the sudden attention from every eye at the table. "S… September. 19 September 11945, approximately 2:00 PM. That was first contact."
"You're a better liar than I gave you credit for." Despite her obvious skepticism, there was a brightness to Theta's eyes. A thrilled astonishment. All the boredom and disappointment she'd shown or claimed toward him was gone. Her expectations, whatever they were, had suddenly been met. Her voice modulation lost its usual control and her words shivered as she spoke. "This is what you were really trying to hide all this time."
9S directed a silent cry for help to V, who gave a self-satisfied chuckle. "At my request, yes."
"Dressing like a YoRHa unit was a flashy choice if you wanted to hide."
"Plain-sight camouflage often is." He twirled his cane in the slow, thoughtful way that typically preceded the end of a machine's life on its point. "It was the safe choice for much longer than I expected. The relationship between androids and their YoRHa creations is quite… fascinating."
The word rumbled off his tongue in just the right way to shed light on the full intensity of the contempt beneath his calm features. They didn't know he was human. There was no reason for that judgment to strike home with them, but it did. 9S watched the ripple of it pass through Theta, Gamma, and even Anemone. It gave 9S a moment to consider something he'd never had the opportunity to while in the company of other androids.
V was eerie.
It wasn't his crooked, bony body or the cane or even his weird way of speaking but something innate and uncanny and un-androidlike that permeated him. He gave off a feeling that he was exactly where he needed to be, doing exactly what he needed to do. That lack of aimlessness was increasingly rare among androids. He must've known it, too—it was obvious he was wearing how strange he was on his shoulder. The only frame of reference 9S or any of the other androids in this area would have for behavior like his was Emil. Whether that was a lucky convenience or an intended implication that V was playing on was impossible to say.
"Prove it."
Attention at the table went to Theta. The tension around her had lessened. Her request was simple, unemotional, and accompanied by her usual mirthless stare.
"That I'm a weapon?" V purred, and 9S thought he was going to faint. V had that glimmer in his eye that only appeared when he was about to take a swing at something dangerous and find out the hard way whether or not he was in over his head.
"That maso is back," Theta clarified. "Whether you're a weapon or not, the purging of maso was thousands of years ago, and now you're trying to tell me that it wasn't successful. I want proof."
"Hold on," 9S interjected. "How is he supposed to prove that?"
"It was his mission to deal with it," she said coolly, folding her hands atop the table and staring expectantly at the black-clad figure on the opposite side. "I'm sure he can figure it out."
Pride. The one thing that might out-class reason in this situation. Theta was a member of Legacy Reclamation, but she was herself a kind of legacy. Android heritage had personal meaning for her. What V was suggesting was that android kind had failed yet another of the missions left to it by humanity. Even if they were all dead, she wasn't going to let that be the truth unless V could produce tangible evidence.
9S swallowed and aimed an urgent glower at 8E, only to be horrified when he found her glaring back at him in search of similar assurance.
V's remained impenetrable beneath his hooded eyes right until he planted his cane in a crack and stood. "Fine."
Across the table, 8E wriggled in her chair. A shimmer appeared in the air around V, first in red, then in the bright violet that 9S associated with V's magic. But something wasn't right. Sweat gathered on his skin. His expression pinched like he was in pain and he had to plant both his hands on the table just to keep himself upright while his head dropped forward between his shoulders. The shimmer faded. Nothing happened, but V made a rough, pained noise that triggered a blind panic from deep in 9S' protocols.
Help him help him help himhelphimhelphimhelp—!
8E stood from her seat, and 9S saw the exact same panic in the way she pushed toward V in spite of Gamma's vise grip threatening to tear her arm off. "V, are you—"
His back bowed out in a single violent jolt.
Pure white salt spewed across the table, hissing like a sandstorm and spraying as far as Theta's folded hands before she jumped back. They all did, save 9S himself. He had seen the salt before, but never the actual expulsion. V had done it on command. Did that mean he had control of it? Or was he just that familiar with the condition?
He reached out and laid his hand carefully between V's shivering shoulders. "…You didn't have to do that."
"Yes," V coughed, avoiding his gaze. "I did." He sank heavily back into his seat. The salt had clearly taken something out of him, but he swept his hair clear of his face and stared high-headedly at Theta. "What else would suffice for proof but the very substance that devoured mankind?"
Theta started like she'd forgotten V was there. Her eyes jumped between V and the salt and all their faces, and she seemed suddenly no different than any of the resistance members. A lost android with no idea what to do with herself or any of the information that had been presented.
"How…" she breathed in a dry whisper.
"Maso."
"So it's not gone… And now… it's made androids into Legion?"
V shrugged.
"It's machines too," 8E offered.
Theta and Gamma snapped their ravenous attentions to her. V had made his point and checked out, so they were willing to take answers wherever they could.
"The day of the amusement park fire there was a Legion outbreak in the ravine," she explained. "V patched me up and a few days later we went down there and killed them all. It was mostly machines. The heads, bouncing around, rolling up the cliff faces…"
"And that's when you began traveling with him?" Gamma probed.
"Yeah. He said there might be more and that he needed my assistance. That's really the long and short of it."
Anemone leaned forward over the table, parting Theta and Gamma's tension with her own razor-sharp intent. "Why did you pretend to be a normal android?"
8E's level expression melted like wax, but she didn't allow herself to look away from her former pseudo-commander. "During the final descent mission, I tried to delete my memory. I've only remembered my designation in the last 12 hours. I'm sorry to say it, but I've been in your camp before and this was probably the first time I wasn't pretending."
"You didn't remember that you were YoRHa?" Gamma scoffed. "How convenient."
"It matches," said 9S. He sagged back into his seat and let his hands clasp beneath the salt-covered table. "If she didn't remember, that explains it. Why nothing about the murder or any of the attacks I've been investigating was what a YoRHa would do. And I've met this executioner unit before. Before the Bunker fell." His brown tightened, but he refused to look her way. "This isn't the first time she's tried to erase her memory."
"If you didn't remember," Anemone pressed, her eyes drilling into 8E's as though she could find some kind of satisfying conclusion if she just went deep enough. "Why did you kill Lobelia and Rho?"
"Because they were in the way." 8E shrugged like it couldn't be helped, but her voice came out leaden. "Not remembering didn't make me not an Executioner."
Few of the camp's androids were willing to go anywhere near Humility. The ones that were didn't want to get too close to V. Delivering it as promised to the crumbled corridors of the skyscrapers that separated the camp from the rest of the city was a job that fell to 9S.
It crossed his mind that if V had done all of this for the sword, he could hold onto it. Demand his answers right here and now. But when he arrived, Shadow rubbed affectionately against his hip and wrapped herself around the handle and 9S' fingers limply let it go.
V was either too overconfident to know just how much he had risked or his nerves were made of more steel than the old abandoned factory. With only the information 9S had gathered and some obvious prying into Pod 153's records of what 9S had been telling Theta, he had resolved the murder, set up an entire false identity, and pretty much secured his ability to come and go in the city as he pleased. There was no reason 9S couldn't just walk out of the camp and go with him right then.
But V showed no sign of wanting him to, and 9S wanted to believe he wouldn't go even if he had. The words they'd last exchanged hovered between them as silent and nearly as solid as the pods over their shoulders.
"That man," V said abruptly. "Anthurium. He has some information that may be of interest to you."
He stalked off without waiting for any questions or offering any more answers. Cryptic was normal for V, so it wasn't enough to make 9S worry, but it amplified the sense that there had been a shift for both of them since they last spoke. Like they were both trying to decide how to communicate something that might be too much to talk about.
Maybe in V's case, he was leaving it for someone else to say.
Anthurium sat in one of the emptied truck beds tapping his foot expectantly. When he saw 9S, he immediately hopped down.
"Your friend send you?"
"Yeah. He said you had some information for me… But what are you even doing here? How did you end up with him and 8E?"
"I'm not sure myself," Anthurium admitted, sagging back against the truck bed. "About two weeks back he showed up in the forest without you and gave me some data. Said it was important and I was supposed to give it to you if anything happened to him. Next thing I know he shows up today with that woman and asked for an escort to the camp."
"Did he tell you anything beforehand?"
"That he'd never been to the camp and it would be a pain if he got shot."
That was V, alright… "What's the data he left with you?"
"…You have any idea what it is?" The old android took one look at the way 9S' fingers balled up around his coat in response to the low, conspiratorial whisper, and crossed his arms. "Thought so. I'm not playing messenger on that. It's serious and you should hear it from someone you trust."
"I think V knows I trust you, Anthurium..." Whatever V had been doing out there, he'd considered this data important enough to take precautions with, even if it meant interacting with an android he'd barely made eye contact with before. "I can't think of another reason he'd involve you."
"If he can think about you that clearly, he should be able to tell you just as clearly." He stubbornly raised his chin, but it didn't keep. He wasn't that kind of person. "I'm glad you trust me, but you should get it from a friend, not just some old nobody you pass in the woods once in a while."
A cry of rage from somewhere in the back of the camp cut their conversation short. 9S moved instinctually to place himself between Anthurium and the direction the sound had come from. If 8E had gone berserk, he didn't want to leave the older android undefended. But nothing happened. Everything went quiet. A few moments later 8E did appear, marched up to them in Gamma's grip which made a far better restraint than any ropes ever could.
"She has a message for you," said Gamma.
He stared at 8E. "…You're bleeding."
"It happens. Others generally won't respond well when they find out they were hanging out with machine-hearted murderers." He squinted as she licked at her split lip. "I knew Aconite, Aconite knew Lobelia, Cypress knew both of them and my last target in this camp…so technically we all kinda knew each other. Being an executioner leaves sort of a messy situation if you have to come back to the scene of the kill, you know?"
He thought he did. Some unyielding and unsatisfied part of him still hated her on principle, but now that she was no longer directly between him and V it was easier to look at her as more than a target for that hatred. All androids cared for humans in some sense, but not the way YoRHa did. Her feelings for V were probably the same as his. After watching her nearly yank free of her own arm just because V was in pain, it wasn't a wonder she had killed other androids for him.
9S knew very well that an executioner with something to protect could do just about anything.
She probably knew she was never going to see V again, but he couldn't make himself say anything soothing. 'I'll take care of him' would have been simple to say, but it felt too much like kindness and it was still far too soon for that.
"What do you want?"
Her brows rose but she just as quickly snorted laughter and wiggled in Gamma's grip. "You mind?"
"I do," Gamma growled.
8E rolled her eyes and leaned forward until she was close enough to whisper in 9S' ear. He didn't flinch back or withdraw. He had no reason to fear her and if it was some kind of last request or secret message, he was at least willing to hear her out.
What she told him was so much more than either of those things.
He snatched her by her collar to closely search her face. Killing her on the spot would have been the least he would do to her if he had found even the slightest evidence she was lying, but there was none.
A weightless terror overcame him. He bolted out of the camp. Several times he nearly tripped on the treacherous terrain while paying too much attention to his map and not enough to his feet, but he managed to catch up to V. As he gripped his knees and vented excess heat in hoarse huffs, V looked down him with only puzzlement.
He wasn't sure if he wanted 8E's words to be true or not, but he couldn't risk not believing her.
"Can you come with me for a bit?"
