Fighting 8E was not like sparring with 9S. V hadn't expected it to be, but the gap between them was far wider than he anticipated.

His time in the ruins overflowed with stories of 9S in the tower. 9S destroying the machine network. 9S surviving where so many others had not. But he finally began to understand: the battles that had brought the ruins shuddering down on themselves had been, in many ways, attuned to the skills of a scanner who had the ability to engage in combat.

Had it been a more typical war, no doubt the survivors would have looked so much more like 8E.

Her limbs moved faster than any command he could have given, so he abandoned all thoughts of providing Shadow with orders and let her claws and blades flow around him at her discretion to protect him from 8E's onslaught. The executioner didn't seem to care about being struck by V, but she moved with appropriate caution where it came to Griffon and the moment V opened his mouth to command Pod 042, her evasion made her almost impossible to deal with.

When he wound Griffon's power down into his arm and struck, their eyes met. She could have dodged. For her, there was all the time in the world to do so. It was a choice to let those sparking talons collide with her, and he knew before she stirred that she wasn't dead. The difference between YoRHa and android was clear to him then, and the difference between the two of them more so. He was slow, just like 9S had told him so many months ago. The space between thought and action, between attack and reaction was infinitesimal to a YoRHa that had been designed not just for combat, but for killing other YoRHa.

Yet he knew speed was not the determining factor in this battle.

8E was willing to take any strike as long as it came from him. It was what she hoped for. What she demanded through one of the most unpleasant provocations he'd ever been subjected to. He didn't need to be fast in order to kill her, nor did he require any elaborate maneuvers. The moment he could break the alloy beneath her skin, this would end.

What he needed was more power.

The dragon answered him and his tattoos pulled back from his body to make way for dark, leathery scales. An impulse of electricity and neon blue crossed his mind as she tugged Griffon's power closer to her own, and he felt an uncomfortable multiplication of his tongue becoming his tongues behind teeth too sharp to be his. Black talons grew from his right hand, mismatched to the bone-colored claws where the dragon had taken her residence in his left.

8E eyed him up and down and raised her fists with a taunting smile. "Didn't want the kid to see?"

Electricity crept along the feather-like grows rising from his shoulders, and the glove burned and fell away. Being goaded by someone who wanted to die was somehow twice as irritating as being goaded by someone who intended to win.

This time when she came at him and let him strike, he felt the plating beneath her leg crack and yield. His body wasn't less frail, but it was fortified. Not fast, but faster. Closer to what he was accustomed to. Impulses in blue and red strobed through his mind, Griffon and the dragon pouring themselves through him and melding into the violet magic that natural coursed through him. It came so naturally that it was hard to believe this body was actually supporting a devil trigger, but he knew that power for what it was. When 8E's legs sparked and she stumbled back wheezing and attempting to speak for only a static scream to leave her mouth, all he saw was the opportunity to finish the matter. She'd come to die, and he'd come to preserve 9S. They would both get what they wanted.

"V…?"

Such a small voice. Barely a whisper over the roar of blood pounding in his ears. But he had come to know that voice too well to mistake it for anything else.

His mind came to a grinding halt while his strike flew on without it, all muscle memory and the prior moment's focus. 8E's expression betrayed nothing. None of the trepidation conveyed by that single word. Was it a trick? Why would she bother if her goal was to be killed? Could he risk it being a trick?

While he stood paralyzed by the unexpected, Shadow surged over his shoulder and altered the course of his strike. The transformation receded and his pale hand slipped from the handle as 8E clasped uselessly for it.

"Don't interfere…! Don't…take this from me…!" Her words seemed to come across a great distance. A sea that she had to fight her way across for every word. Terror came into her eyes then. Desperate and unlike the focused but ill-mannered personality who had the audacity to hold 9S over him in the first place. "Please kill… me…!"

He paid her no mind at all. "…9S?"

A brief pause, and from 8E's speaker, the boy answered. "Pod 153, initiate maintenance mode on Unit 8E and re-initialize my body."

"AFFIRMATIVE."

8E emitted a sharp screeching burst of static that cut off in time with the slump of her body. As quickly as she'd come, Pod 153 turned and floated eagerly up the stairway to the throne room to get back to 9S' side.

V was left alone with nothing to show for having come all this way but a dumbfounded scowl and the beginnings of a headache.

"What… just happened?"

"REPORT," said Pod 042. "UNIT 9S WAS ENGAGED IN HACKING UNIT 8E AND SECURED TEMPORARY CONTROL OF CERTAIN INTERFACE FUNCTIONS."

"He has always detonated his enemies in the past. Why would he only seek control?"

"UNKNOWN. HYPOTHESIS: GIVEN HIS COMMAND TO PLACE HER IN A MAINTENANCE STATE, IT IS LIKELY THAT UNIT 9S' GOAL WAS THE CESSATION OF COMBAT, NOT THE DESTRUCTION OF UNIT 8E."

V wrenched his cane free of her body. It didn't move. She looked just as serene as 2B had, and was equally unidentifiable as being dead or alive.

Pulling his hand through his hair, he followed Pod 153 and stalked the long hall back to 9S.

Saying hello again was even less familiar to V than saying goodbye, and nearly as tainted by hostility as his perception of family. Reuniting with anyone, even his own other half, was the smoke before a violent flame. In the basin, Eva was able to bypass that by her nature and the nature of who she was to him. The force of her temperament would have driven him back into the appropriate position relative to her even if he had resisted it more. Both 'family' and 'reunion' meant things in her presence that they no longer could anywhere else.

But this wasn't the basin.

9S sat still and frozen beside Humility and grew only tenser the closer V came. He gave no greeting nor any reception at all save his wide eyes and complete silence. Troubling, to say the least. When 9S had no questions to ask, that was never a good sign. It had only been a few days since they last spoke, but the air grew thick. There was no triumph here. No gratitude or relief that 9S' memories had been preserved. It seemed to V they didn't know each other that well in this moment, and the friction of two strangers who were not sure the other could be trusted vibrated on the air. Standing at the bottom step while 9S sat at the top was like standing at the threshold of a familiar house where it was no longer certain he was welcome.

"Are you unharmed?"

9S jolted and jumped to his feet. "No. I mean yes—I'm fine. 8E didn't do anything to me. Minor EMP damage just to knock me out."

"She was intending to erase your memories. All of them."

His fingers tugged and curled around one another. A small gesture, but enough that the full weight of all 9S could have lost pressed down on the already heavy atmosphere. "I know."

The furrow in V's brow deepened. So 9S had witnessed that part as well. He must have been in there the whole time, and to V that begged only one question of any importance. "If I struck a lethal blow, would you have died?"

"I don't know. It doesn't happen like that when I subjugate machines because I still have my own body to return to, but because of the EMP, it wasn't available for me to go back to. I tried; the connection was gone. It's possible I might have lost any memories accumulated while outside my body." His head fell as his mouth went on mechanically without him, but it lacked the vitality of 9S' usual technical chatter. "Theoretically, if I were to completely embed my consciousness over the UI of another YoRHa unit, I suppose their death might cause my entire sense of self to destruct and since there's no ambient machine network or bunker server signal anymore I wouldn't be able to regenerate back in my own body… But it's fine. I didn't go that far, I didn't want to take control of her consciousness, I just captured some of her motor control and her vocal synthesizer."

"And her sight," V added.

9S' eyes flicked to V's arm. "Yeah…"

Thunder lurched by and V looked to the window where he'd come in hardly fifteen minutes ago, wondering how the tides had turned so harshly in so little time.

9S wouldn't be the first to respond with fear and revulsion to his power. It was a reaction common to most humans, and one he was well acquainted with. True, he had responded with more awe than anything to V's familiars but seeing the more demonic aspect come out of V himself could not be the same matter. In an instant not meant for his eyes, he'd found a devil beneath the mask of the one he was supposed to understand as a god.

And for what exactly? V hadn't saved 9S' life, because 8E had never planned to kill him. 9S had made it very clear his memories were perhaps a step more valuable than just continuing to exist, but V could not convince himself he'd saved those either. The situation was never truly out of 9S' control. He could have saved himself, and this could have been avoided.

A current of agitation made V drum his fingers along his cane. Thinking of how he'd have preferred this to go had no meaning. What was done was done and all he had left was what needed to be done from now on. The kingdom of night was on the other side of the world, and he could probably go there alone by one means or another. His plan three days ago was to settle his debts with 9S and leave quietly. There was no reason for that to be different now.

Only he owed 9S one last thing. Not as a matter of obligation or some weak attempt to smooth over what had just occurred, but as a matter of his word.

Taking each step slowly, he climbed to the top and took hold of Nelo's sword. Without a word and while making sure to use his unmarred right hand, he leaned it toward 9S. The boy looked between him and the hilt, his fingers twitching without making a move.

"Go ahead," V said gently.

A thin golden circle appeared, and the sword shifted closer to 9S' hands. His eyes unfocused, his mouth moving around small, whispered words.

"My only treasure," his voice hitched with recognition, and again he glanced up at V. "My divine hate… Wears our mother's red. To a silver blade, I lose... this foolish life."

His recitation was clumsy. Factual and un-poetic. And somehow it made them so much worse. "There is far too much to tell you everything. But as I promised, I will tell you all that you wish to know."

"Uh…okay... Can we start with what this means? I sort of get the start, that's about your mother and the fire. And then you were wandering around with a weapon defending yourself from…your father's enemies. Which must have been demons. The three eyes of red must be whatever you thought the symbol at the church was… But I don't get the rest or why any of this is even on here. Who is the Black Angel and why does his weapon have your memories?"

V gave a small, tight tic of a smile and meandered toward the empty metal crib. "The Black Angel was properly known as Nelo Angelo. It wasn't a demon. Not really. It was a prison, in the form of a suit of demonic armor. I was the prisoner. I was Nelo Angelo."

Behind him, there was the heavy, tolling clang of the sword hitting the floor. V didn't bother to look over his shoulder. He knew 9S well enough to know he was reconciling that new knowledge with the turns V's mood had taken during that wretched period in December when it had first appeared. And most likely re-playing all that had followed—the fire, the way it attracted demons, everything.

"It was my own fault," he offered, thumbing his cane absently. "Believing that I could live up to my father's legacy, I opened one of the greatest gates to hell in order to gain what I viewed as my birthright. Dante, my brother, defeated me there. And I fell, alone, into hell. To meet the demon prince whose servants razed my home and sent demons to hunt me all my life after. I challenged him and lost, and for it, I was sealed in the armor, without ego or memory."

"Until your brother appeared," 9S murmured. "In your mother's red, with a silver blade…"

The rain pattered busily on the stones. There was little more about that period of his life that V was willing to volunteer aloud. The torture that preceded his time in the armor. Watching the Yamato be shattered before his eyes. He'd call his younger self misguided in his focus, to have been so absorbed in becoming like his father than he undid his works.

"Are you…a ghost or something?" That was enough to draw V's attention. 9S looked genuinely puzzled and gestured defensively at the sword. "What? It said you lost your life."

V laughed tiredly through his nose and waved his cane dismissively. "When Dante destroyed Nelo Angelo, I was released, and that weapon was lost. That is merely where those memories end. In truth, I survived to wander hell in a truly pathetic state for…" He hesitated. Time was strange in hell. It hadn't felt like a decade but it seemed to have been no less than that in the human world. "I don't know how long it was. But eventually, I found my way back and found the sword left to me by my father. In my absence, it had found its way into my son's hands. More specifically…" He held up his left arm and flexed the claws. "Into his arm."

"And that's why you took his whole arm off? Couldn't you have just asked for it?" V looked back at him with a flat and cynical stare. "Yeah, yeah, okay, dumb question. So is your family… are you all…" 9S frowned and abandoned his charming effort to ease into the subject. "What are you?"

And there it was. The question whose answer had eluded V despite nearly a full, uninterrupted year to think about it. He had gone back and forth on the answer so frequently that he could no longer be shocked by all that had happened to him. Human enough for the gods, demon enough to reach the soul of a woman and a dead dragon, and maybe something else entirely to have reached the basin as a still-living being.

"I don't know," he confessed, suddenly sagging under his own exhaustion.

"Well…" 9S tried again. "Are you a demon?"

"'I' am not. But the man I used to be, the man I am part of—Vergil… He is a half-demon. So is Dante. Nero, a quarter. We all share the blood of my father, the Legendary Dark Knight, Sparda. A demon of unparalleled power, who turned on his own kind in order to protect humanity. Vergil spent most of his life pursuing his demonic heritage at cost to his humanity. Eventually, he lost sight of the reason he wanted that power, and this led him to commit multiple sins. Among them, my own birth. It is the nature of a solitary man that he cannot live with anyone but himself, but even that was an unbearable intrusion for Vergil. He cut away everything he believed made him weak. Including his humanity."

The heart is a tumor of weakness. I shall rid you of it. Those were the words Mundus spoke to him as he took away what little Vergil still cherished, right down to his identity as a son of Sparda. Where Mundus had been satisfied to seal that humanity, Vergil, ever refusing to be outdone, excised it entirely. So blindly seeking power that he inflicted on himself the exact same cruelty that his enemy had.

V rubbed at his eyes and let his arms drop wearily to his sides. "I'm neither a demon, not truly human. Not half anything, or quarter anything, just…an effigy. A half-demon's bad dreams of being human. Cast out and given form. The less magic I have, the less flesh and blood I am."

"Which means…" A long, pregnant pause trailed those words. When 9S finished them, it was with a horrified whisper. "You were supposed to die."

"That was the idea, yes. Nero was the one who helped me return to where I belonged. Without knowing anything. Without either of us knowing anything. I did not know he was mine until I was Vergil again." He frowned. "It has been a concern of mine whether or not my presence means that was undone somehow."

Standing straight, he turned and planted his cane firmly. It was a sordid tale to tell anyone, much less someone like 9S, but it was done. The truth was revealed, and he felt he'd kept to his word adequately enough to ask the final, obligatory question.

"Now you know. What will you do?"

9S snapped out of whatever calculative trance he'd entered to process this whole story and raised his head from where he'd propped it on his fist. His eyes met V's easily, almost carelessly. "Should I call you Vergil from now on?"

V's face congealed into a grimace. It wasn't an unfair question, yet the thought was enough to make his jaw stiffen and his fist tighten around his cane. The overlap was a blurred line indeed, but after so much time to live as himself, little galled him more than taking the name of the fool who had thrown him out. For as long as he walked in this feeble body with nightmares carved on its skin, he was V.

"At your own peril," he grumbled coldly.

"Right, I guess not. Wait…" 9S eyes widened and he raised a flabbergasted finger to point at him. "Holy shit, you actually weren't kidding when you told Theta you turn to dust when you run out of power, were you?"

"No…? 9S, you are dodging my question. Now that you understand your complicated feelings toward my humanity are misplaced, you don't owe me any loyalty. There is nothing that binds you to me."

"'Nothing that binds you to me'…?" 9S face slackened, then went tight in time with the climb of his shoulders toward his ears. "Oh my god, V, you're such a…such a dramatic baby."

Even the thunder didn't dare add its commentary to that, and it seemed even the rain let up as he stared incredulously at the android across the dais. That was a level of insult V hadn't been exposed to since he was a child. "I beg your pardon?"

"Keep on begging," 9S spat hotly. "I knew for certain you weren't human three days ago. You forget the things you say over time. I don't. The moment you started to be honest with me, I remembered where the inconsistencies were. You told me Nero was a grown man, but you also specified to me the day we buried Devola and Popola that you were 28. I may not know about human reproduction, but you guys don't start that young. I've had my suspicions since the fire, but really there's just too much about your being here that was farfetched from the start. I'll give you credit, though I swore you were going to tell me you were a gestalt or something. I guess that's not that far from the truth though, is it?"

"I…" This was not the answer he had been counting on, and he felt strangely backed into a corner. 9S was angry, but not the way he'd expected. He seemed almost… insulted. "I can't help but feel you are missing the point of all this."

9S crossed his arms, his eyes the color of cold steel and brightened by fury. "Then spell it out for me."

V gripped his cane. Being commanded added an unpleasant aftertaste to what he considered an act of politeness. "There is no reason I should presume your continued assistance given my nature is far more complex and less human than you were led to believe."

"Than you led me to believe," 9S corrected with a raise of his chin.

There was a time V might have said it was foolish of 9S to be led along so easily if he harbored so much suspicion, but that was hardly the road he wanted to go down. Even if 9S was starting to tug his more confrontational nature to the foreground.

Before V could decide how to proceed, 9S' gave a long sigh that seemed to carry the weight of the weeks and finally drop it all at their feet. "No amount of programming could make me go through the ordeal that these past few weeks have been just for 'a human'. Especially not for one as weird and spoiled and annoying as you."

The words were both a scathing indictment and inappropriately light-hearted. Was this another of those unpredictable emotional progressions 9S had? First saying that he hated 2B when he so clearly loved her, and now…whatever this was.

"For being such a precise guy, you really are… clumsy." 9S' brows were still drawn, but he looked at V with a sort of agitated pity. "You went through all this stupid convoluted trouble to protect me from you and this is all it was... You really thought I'd throw you away that easy, didn't you?"

Ah.

There 9S went again, choosing to be stupidly, recklessly, unrelentingly kind.

With it right in his face, V realized that he'd been estranged from humanity far too long to assume things like forgiveness or kindness from anyone. He cared about them on some level, but when it came to deception and betrayal, they didn't even register to him as possible answers. Not even for 9S, who was kind enough to forgive his own murderer. To V, being forgiven so simply was as unrealistic as his own presence in these ruins. It wasn't personal; V just didn't have that kind of faith. In anything.

After a life without, that level of mercy was beyond what he could plan on, much less hope for.

"It wouldn't have surprised me," he said, and chose to believe that 9S understood what he meant because he didn't think he could convey it in more or fewer words.

"It's not like you to be so insecure," 9S taunted. "I didn't call you family just because you're human. It's because you act like a huge show-off even though you don't need to impress me at all. And you complain about the food I bring, but you always eat it all. And every time I'm even the slightest bit in trouble, you go out of your way to ensure I won't get hurt. Even if you won't admit it." His smile was small and a little cheeky and infinitely welcoming, as though it understood perfectly well (perhaps a little too well) why V hadn't taken all this for granted but aimed to convince him that he could. "And even though you're actually pretty bad at it."

V was entirely at a loss. His eyes narrowed, not out of any anger, but more a mortified confusion that an android might be more human than him. "Even more than Nero, you've always reminded of myself, 9S. But when you say things like that I fail to understand how I could have come to that conclusion."

"Well, you're not really all that different from me, are you? You're not exactly human, and not really a demon. Just like I'm not really...either of the things I'm made of either. You would do well to embrace all that your existence entails. That was what you told me when I was worried about what I was."

"Hardly comparable. I'm the dredges of a man who only ever thought of his humanity as a burden and a sickness that weakened him. I share his memories. His sins."

"Yeah. You do. But that doesn't mean you're not a different person now."

"You sound so… sure."

"I'm on my 48th life, so yeah, I think I get to call myself the authority between us. I got a lot of those memories back, and I made dozens of different choices when I found out about 2B. Hacking, teaching myself to fight, killing myself instead. I even made her promise to continue killing me after she asked me to destroy her. I did all those different things even though I was technically the same person the whole time. As far as I'm concerned you being half of another person that means you're a whole somebody else."

V really couldn't argue against logic like that. Not with any hope of victory. "An android would think so."

"And android does think so," 9S said proudly. "It doesn't matter to me you're not human or a half-human or some kind of magic construct. I think it's cool. Maybe even better than you being only human."

"That seems an especially sacrilegious thing for an android to say."

9S' smile widened to a mischievous grin. "You're the one who always says I'm not very reverent."

"So I do." V managed a smirk in kind and tossed his cane over his shoulder. "It's a quality I've missed."

The minor concession caught 9S off guard. He beamed with one of those brilliant smiles that let V know everything was as alright as it seemed. Nothing of what he so uselessly valued in 9S had been lost. "Did you just say you missed me?"

"I said I've missed your irreverence," V answered curtly. "Perhaps your ears need maintenance."

"Maybe," 9S laughed. He took his first steps toward V and pointed at his arm. "You mind if I see it?"

"Did you not get a good enough look?"

"No, I mean can I get a closer look at it? Like last time."

Last time…? It took V's mind a swath of seconds to puzzle out what 9S meant. The offer to examine his hand. From the day they'd met. Android recall really was a force to be taken seriously if he remembered such a small event. It had lasted barely a minute, and only so he would believe that V was human and cease being so antsy.

Letting 9S examine this knock-off devil arm was another matter entirely. To have it examined so closely by anyone, much less someone with the capabilities that scanners boasted—

He swayed as Shadow materialized against his leg with a deep, rumbling purr. She seeped beneath his feet and dragged him easily across the stones until he was face to face with 9S. Though V shot her a look that promised he wouldn't be forgetting this, she took his betrayed glare with a blithe wag of her tail.

9S snickered and craned his body to the side to get a better look. "You don't have to, you know?"

In much the same way he did not 'have to' endure that silly game of 20 questions, he was sure. "Just do it."

It was a strangely less clinical affair than before. 9S wasn't looking for the ways in which he wasn't an android, he was just…looking. His fingers brushed the lines of the pact mark and traced the leylines of red-violet light seeping from between the ridges. The dragon had been on the quiet side since they killed Zero, but an easy, comfortable warmth began to seep from his forearm. An image of Dante trailed through his mind. Not the one who had existed as family—a constant adversary who refused to be defeated despite every pain. It was the image of his twin in hell as the chopped the qliphoth down at its roots. Fighting with Dante and beside him as the mood took them. A memory of someone who was his match and could be relied on.

Perhaps that was why, for just a moment, he allowed the distance between them to dissolve. Allowed both the absurdness of 9S' capacity for compassion to envelop him and the physical touch to seep in. A low breath escaped him, and his body drooped with ease, his rigidly extended fingers relaxing into half-curls.

"I got this arm after finding the bones of the red dragon," he explained quietly. "In the desert that day, far below ground in the place they made Emil. I have to go to the kingdom of night and find the rest of her body. The gods are gone, and that is my only path home now."

"That's fine. I'm pretty sure I need to get to the moon server."

The furrow returned to V's brow with a vengeance. "The what?"

"…The server on the moon? I've been thinking about it and the pods are too simple for me to hack into. Even if I could, their network is top secret. I'd probably get attacked by the entire thing if I tried to back my way in—and I'd probably destroy either 153 or 042 in the process. The only place left that could possibly be keeping the pod network connected on a global scale is the moon server, so if there's any place I could dismantle the protocol from, it's there."

"You do know I can't follow you to the moon."

"Yes, V, I am aware that humans need oxygen and you can't come with me to the moon. But I can at least head west with you. They're not exactly doing any orbital shipments out here. For all the excitement we've had around here, this is actually kind of a backwoods area as far as global affairs go. Do you know where in the night kingdom you need to go?"

"…No. Only that 'dragon' weapons were developed there sometime around 6200, and that has something to do with our red dragon."

9S eyes lit up with the exhilaration of discovering wholly new information. "I've never heard of that! How'd you find that out?"

"An android by the name of Accord."

"Accord…? The…" 9S' head tilted. "The old-world weapons dealer? You actually met her?"

"She made it her business that I should meet her. She knew about the gods, as well as exactly what I was. I gather she'd like me gone before I deal some manner of damage to the fabric of this dimension, but all she could share was that hint about the development of dragon weapons by the Army of Humanity."

"Huh… I'll see what I can dig up on that. I wonder why I've never even heard of them being in action…"

9S released his hold on V's claws and crossed his arms. His mind was no doubt already a thousand miles gone into the subject and its possibilities. Likewise, V turned to the windows and looked out at the forest. After so long, there was a certain unreality to the idea of leaving the ruins. But it seemed both their goals lay far outside of it.

V's on the other side of the world, and 9S' out in space.

"What do you intend to do with 8E?" V asked casually.

9S froze as if he was the one who had been caught in an incriminating form. "O-oh. Well… I really didn't have a plan when I was trying to stop you, I just didn't want you to kill her. But now… Look, I'll tell you, but you have to trust me alright?"

V frowned. He didn't like the sound of that at all.


A/N: SO HOW ABOUT THAT NIER REPLICANT REMASTER ANNOUNCEMENT AND NIER RE[IN]CARNATION?