26 March 11946 10:13 AM – Alloy Site

At the top of the crater, 9S squinted against the rain and took a deep breath.

4S and 11S' black box signals were still down below, further back into the tower-fall tunnel than they had any reason to be. When they awoke to find 9S gone, they must have decided to hide instead of run. Not the best tactical decision from where 9S was standing, but it was incredibly lucky. Iota's strange behavior had set 4S' intuition on edge and was likely the reason they hadn't returned to the resistance camp.

Theta wouldn't have accepted anything less than a full handover of his audiovisual history if an escaped executioner and a kidnapped scanner were on her radar at the same time and 9S just walked back into camp like nothing happened.

Skidding down the muddy cliffs, he stepped carefully into the mouth of the cave. They'd left the modified pod out in the open. He cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted. "4S?!"

A scuffling sound echoed out from the hollow cavern. It soon turned into the hurried shuffle of two pairs of boots and two sets of optic lights appeared like animal eyes in the dark. 4S came into view first. A swirl of light from his spear de-materializing illuminated 11S' scowl just behind him.

4S sagged down onto the floor. "Thank goodness. I'm super glad it's you."

"Can't say I share the sentiment," 11S said tartly, crossing his arms tightly over his chest. "First you leave and let 3S tell us about the final protocol, then you disappear, then you walk back in like you just went out to take a walk. It's been nine hours! Where the hell have you been?!"

9S' almost smiled. He hadn't missed 11S' tart temperament, but after he'd been in such terrible condition for so long it was good to see him functioning as usual. "8E was here."

11S raised a brow, more at 4S than at 9S. "Another surviving YoRHa?"

"An executioner that killed an Army of Humanity officer," 4S answered, picking himself back up and leaning in to search 9S' face. "What was she doing here? She was supposed to be imprisoned somewhere in the camp."

"She escaped. So she could talk to me." Not entirely the truth, but they didn't need to know the precise details of what had happened. What they needed to know was what he'd discovered in her memories. "She didn't want you two involved, so she used an E-bomb and carried me off."

11 jolted and clutched 9S by his shoulders. "Holy shit, are you okay? Does she know about the protocol?"

"She does. And I'm fine. But I need to tell everyone in the Ark what she told me. Are you guys good for another dive?"

The two shared a look and gave a slow, leery nod of their heads.


26 March 11946 10:30 AM – The Ark

Legacy Reclamation's goals spread through the sub-network with the speed of a new virus.

The existence of 'Rho-2' as 8E had called her, is enough to bring out even the more reclusive members of the ark, and nearly all of the network's black-clad YoRHa gather on the stark platform like starlings darkening a field. One side of the crowd descends into fierce argument about whether or not Theta was right about not letting machines inherit the planet despite the absence of humans. The other side considers more somberly how unreasonable it is that they had all been designed to die and yet now their existence was deemed valuable to android kind. Because of something emergent and desirable that the Army of Humanity is hoping to replicate. Not by producing or restoring any YoRHa, of course. Their remains will be scraped and scavenged and put to use in beings that can properly be considered androids.

9S notes that there are more operators embroiled in the former subject, while the combat models dominate the latter. Eventually, the two discussions are going to merge and he hopes he is gone by then.

The scanners' concerns are comparatively localized. For them, there is still the plan to consider, nebulous as it is. 1S' previous hypothesis that Legacy Reclamation's interest in 9S might be a way for him to stay alive is stronger with this new information. Provided that he keeps showing signs of the kind of behavior they're hoping for, he can only become more valuable to them. As long they don't have his data, he needs to be alive. That can pave the way for him to get rid of the final protocol as well as secure some defense against YoRHa's makers if he is careful.

"The problem is that the Pods' internal network is really outside our expertise," says 1S. "The server didn't contain anything, not even design documents. Just some notes about when the Support System formally became the Pod system back around the end of Guadalcanal."

"I wasn't expecting there would be anything stored on the server. If they're supposed to be the project's administrators, any existing design data on them is probably stored in the same place as the full design data for our bodies."

"You mean on an external server," 4S' disembodied voice mumbles.

"I mean on the moon server."

Five pairs of eyes snap to him, filled with everything from indignation to tired disgust. Even now, they haven't been able to fully throw away all that they were led to believe in. The moon is still a holy place, though the gods were never there.

"...It makes sense," 11S concedes.

"It does?" asks 32S.

"The protocol would have to operate from somewhere without a consistent connection. Otherwise, when the back door opened and the Bunker was destroyed, the protocol would be wiped out as well."

Where 1S excels in leadership and 4S at intuition, 11S has a talent for quickly breaking down dense information into only the important and actionable parts without losing sight of the big picture. Though he isn't particularly personable as scanners go, 9S remains glad for his restoration. With him there, they won't lose sight of the forest for the trees.

"I can't hack into my pod; the framework isn't compatible. And even if I could, the survival chances of going against the program's defensive system are too low. Not that it won't be dangerous in plenty of other ways, but I'll have to try a more direct approach." He meets all their eyes, one after the other. "Ito go to the moon server."

"Now is no time to be a lunatic," 42S says with a skeptical smile. "How are you gonna get to the moon, Greenhorn? YoRHa handled the shipment of supplies to the server pretty much exclusively."

"I don't need to go straight there. If I can get back into orbit, I can work it out from there." He opens up his readouts and brings up a globe. The resolution is terrible in every area outside the one they are in, but he is able to point out general locations. "With android manufacture in decline, the only place still sending up supplies might be the H zones. Getting there is my plan right now, but I don't have much to go on after that. I can't remember if I've ever been on missions out that way. Have any of you?"

"I have!" 32S raises his hand and trots forward, his eyes are wide and bright. "There's a place out there called the Isle of Man where materials from all eight H sectors get processed for shipment to Horizon 1!"

"Horizon 1...?"

1S' sigh bears the heavy disappointment of a teacher with a clever but careless pupil. "I'll assume that you have forgotten this information rather than having never learned it… Horizon 1 and Horizon 2 are resource dissemination bases. One circles the Earth along the prime meridian and the other along the Equator."

"They're basically big warehouses that other bases can request materials from," 32S adds eagerly. "Horizon 1 flies over Sector H about four times a day! But it's really hard to get close to the Isle of Man. Because it's a low aggression zone, the tech there is in good shape and security measures are sophisticated. They don't let strangers near it."

"You've been there once?"

"Yeah! Right after Normandy."

So it isn't official data, but 32S' personal experience from his ground activity. In many ways, that makes it far more valuable. "Can you guys gather up a packet of stuff just like that for me? Any information about the ground or the satellites or the sectors you think I can use, even if it might have been considered junk data on the Bunker."

"That's going to be a lot," says 4S. "Are you sure?"

"There's no flight units or transporters that'll take me out there," 9S says with a clumsy smile. "I'll be traveling for a long time..."

The real implications of what he's intending to do settle over each of them, and turns their small circle into a pinpoint of quiet amid the low roar of conversation that fills the sub-network.

3S is the first to recover, rubbing at his hair and gazing sleepily off at the gray sky. "I'll try to grab you a good map…"

His words break the trance and one after another they blurt things that might be useful.

"I did a lot of work in the EH Sector after Normandy."

"I know where most of the Defense HQs are in Sectors G, I, and J. Might have some supplies or a vehicle laying around if you're lucky."

"I'll put together a packet of basic information about Army of Humanity structure since you clearly never bothered to access any of the books in your room."

"Thank you," 9S says warmly. "Really. Could you also include anything you have about the kingdom of night or the development of a weapon called 'the dragon'?" They exchange a dozen confused looks that converge on 3S, but even he just shakes his head. They have no idea what he's talking about. "Ah… nevermind."

"I'll talk to the operators about it," 11S volunteers. "They have knowledge of many subjects that aren't accessible to field units."

"No need," a blunt and business-like female voice interrupts. "I'll take point on that."

9S head fills with static. The scanners part. Though she steps forward like she has more right to be there than any of them, there is a flash of the same flustered surprise he is sure is on his own face when her eyes meet his.

"Operator…?"

Her embarrassment grows and maybe as a defense mechanism she assumes the position she always took as an operator, her arms crossing over a clipboard she no longer has and her weight resting on one leg. "No, I'm… I'm 21B now."

Without a second thought, he rushes in and throws his arms around her. She makes a show of fussing, but there's no one there to see it. The other scanners have already scattered.

"I'm sorry," he blurts, his last memory of her rushing to the surface and blinding him so that he can only clutch her tighter and keep her from being taken away again. "I'm sorry I didn't—I couldn't…"

A feather-light pressure rests on his shoulders, then moves across his back. She returns his embrace like he's the most delicate thing in the world—like she's scared she'll hurt him. She sighs in familiar exasperation, but he can hear the affection that laces it. He wonders if it's always been there.

"Couldn't is right. I always told you not to get in over your head. You're a scanner, 9S. You're not designed for direct combat with machines, much less a B model. Honestly, this was why I—"

Her words catch and trail away. He looks up at her and watches her narrow eyes look everywhere but at him, his mind already filling in the blanks. "Was it actually you who was my operator during that last scanner mission?"

"No. I was already…" She gingerly parts their hug and makes a stiff gesture at her body. It's still encased in the heavy armor that only combat models were capable of wearing. "I went through a model transition so I could maybe be assigned to you. So I could be with you. I thought… I could do a better job than 2B of keeping you safe." A stilted, bitter laugh rattles low in her throat. "I've since learned just how misguided that was. Even if I knew, I wouldn't have been able to ask to be an E model. I couldn't have..."

Maybe her memories were also tampered with, or she just didn't put it together. YoRHa died and lost memories all the time so his situation wouldn't have been that strange. She had always badgered him to stay focused, too. It strikes 9S that she might have ve sincerely believed he was just getting himself killed in the field all the time because he was accompanying the missions of a B unit.

"You said you were lonely…"

Her shoulders draw up. Coupled with her sad expression, 9S finds the gesture more fragile than tense. Maybe that's how it's always been underneath that business-only demeanor. "I'd rather you didn't bring that up. I would have liked to talk to you without having lost control of my body."

"I should have killed you properly," he apologizes. "I shouldn't have let it be done by someone like A2. Someone who didn't... care about you."

"And you did?"

"Yes!"

To be questioned on something he finds so obvious stings, but the moment he processes the complicated look of relief and happiness and heartache all mingling on her face, he knows she didn't mean to hurt him.

"That's the most responsible thing I've ever heard out of you," she says with her characteristic coolness. "But it was still reckless of you to think you could defeat a B unit with a logic virus infection unassisted."

She raises a halting hand, but whatever impulse she is acting on unravels before she can complete it. In the end, she clumsily pats his head. She's used to keeping him at a very precise distance and now, cutely, she doesn't seem to know how to behave with him. "I'm not an operator anymore so I don't have any functionality that can help you. The least I can do is talk to the other operators on your behalf."

"Hey, you get to be harsh with me, not with yourself." It's becoming a comfort to him just how average he is turning out to be. Everyone he'd cared about in the slightest had been lonely and dealing with it in ways he'd never have guessed. "When you're back outside, I'll take you to the orange grove, okay?"

"Orange grove?"

"Families eat together, right?" He smiles as bright as those memories still make him feel. That must definitely be the kind of feeling she had hoped to experience by coming to Earth to be with him. "The fruit's good if you go in winter. We'll have a picnic."

She makes an unimpressed face that does not match the softness of her voice. "…If you say so."

As he watches her go, warmth and a strong sense of resolve wash over him.

It feels good to make promises about the future again.


27 March 11946 9:08 AM – The Forest Kingdom

"I still don't get how the hell you broke all of them."

"Oh, I'm so sorry. Next time I'll let you fight off the magic grinning skull and you can show me how it's done."

The sounds of the two YoRHa bickering filled the dead stones of the castle with a certain kind of life. They'd bickered about everything since they regrouped, and 9S' emergence from the ancient cellars and fresh coat of dirt and cobwebs had only soured his mood further. Fern had not a repentant bone in her body for the trouble either. The four bottles 9S managed to salvage were even filthier than he was, and now they were bickering about how it should be her job to clean the bottles since he was the one to find them. A suggestion Fern denied based on 'not having a delicate touch'.

V was content to relax against the stones and ignore both of them. It wasn't a hard task. All morning he'd been occupied with an ominous dream from the night before.

The dream had taken place in a field of lunar tears. The pure white petals stretched on forever in stark contrast to the black field where he'd fought the Watchers. His presence was a lone, dark intrusion amid their glow. His back had been turned so that he couldn't see his own face, only that he seemed to be staring up at the sky. Until the final moment, it was a boring, uneventful kind of dream. The kind he would have paid no mind at all.

At the last moment, his face became visible. A pure white flower grew in the same place as Zero's, and as he watched, blood seeped from its center, over the petals, and down his cheek to stain the field red.

He'd experienced no ill effects since waking, but he was wary of such things now. The dream was silent, at least. Not a sound to be heard. Even if he had been left with some kind of residue from his contact with Zero, the song was dead and gone.

A stack of books dropped down beside him, drawing him out of his thoughts. Fern was leaning over him. "You'll probably want these. You seem like the type who gets bored easily."

"Pod has an excellent archive of everything I could hope to read," he said, even though he was already turning the spines to face him

"Pods are YoRHa tech. Ground units don't have things like that. Both of them are going to have to stay out of sight while we're traveling."

V glanced at the silver support unit. Her point was made so he shrugged and began flipping through to the title pages of those too weathered to have legible exteriors.

"How are we going to hide them?" asked 9S. "They're not compact and we have two."

"I dunno. Backpacks?"

"So we need three backpacks total, is what you're telling me. Not just two."

"Oh my God, Nines—"

"Hey. You don't get to call me that."

"Then hurry up and decided on a name! I picked mine in two minutes just looking at shit on the ground!"

V tuned them out as they quarreled about the importance of names and the logistics of transporting pods. It might have been a cause for concern if there were any actual vitriol flowing between them, but even at their loudest all V could hear was the squabbling of siblings. If he was going to indulge in the luxury of literature, it need not be anything so wasteful as a full stack of books—even if his companions could carry them, it was a waste. A single book would be good, provided it was the right one.

Not that he trusted Fern to know his tastes.

There was no reason she should, and yet he was greeted with a faded blue book with a familiar name on the title page.

"Heinrich Heine…"

Fern detached herself from her argument with 9S instantly. She leaned over to look at the pages as he flipped, her face strangely bright. "Oh right, that's the one. You muttered a lot of gibberish while you were hypothermic. I thought you were delirious—well, you were, but pod said it was poetry. Heine's the guy who wrote what you were repeating, right?"

She almost sounded like the old Fern again. 8E didn't worship him even a fraction compared to her old self, but her abrasively upbeat demeanor had withered into something a little more genuine for this offering. She was not the kind who would have bothered to hide it if she'd included Heine in order to mock him.

"…It's in good condition."

She rolled her eyes. "Ooooh, high praise."

He gave a quiet 'hmph'. Sarcasm was wasted in the mouth of someone that looked that proud of herself.


28 March 11946 5:22 PM – The Underground Lake

"He falls asleep pretty easy when you're around."

It was just a remark while I was watching V sleep just beyond the shaft of muted light spilling into the cavern. I didn't mean to be petty or to sound sad about it, but it probably came out that way.

I couldn't be sure if it was the dark or the sort of echoey silence or the cool, stagnant air down there, but the place made me feel strange. Every time I looked at the cloudy beside us, I imagined myself slipping quietly in and never be seen again. It was everything I didn't want out of my death, but the thought was consistent.

9S didn't seem to mind. He didn't mind a lot of things now that he'd made his peace with V. For some reason that made me want to mess with him more than if he just hated me the way he'd hated Fern.

Couldn't really do that when my body plates were popped up and he had his hands in my circuits though.

"It's the sun." Pushing up his sleeve for the nth time, he pulled a length of wire from above my chipset. Like a worm being pulled from the dirt, I felt it slide from around the back of my neck before it popped free. A tiny node capped the end, with a flickering light that went out by itself after a few seconds. "When he's out of the sun, he tends to fall asleep. Something about human biology."

"They're diurnal." Blue eyes popped up over the edge of my chest plate. "What? They are."

"I'm wondering…" He shifted to the other side of me and again with the sleeves; why didn't he just take the damn coat off? "Why you know so much about humans."

"The same reason you do, genius."

He shot me a look that we both knew was pointless. The great thing about having your heart set on dying was that intimidation was pretty much impossible. The only thing on this planet that scared me at all was the idea of Rho-2 taking my memories and acting like it would be a favor to me. "I gained knowledge through experience. It sounds more like you just read through all of pod's archives on them."

"Yes and no. My last self was kind of a fanatic. She did a lot of old-fashioned info gathering after she discovered V, and I know what she knew. A lot of it is domestic shit. Things humans needed. Things they wanted. What their lives were like. For the shack, probably."

I watched his eyes focus on nothing as he weighed that last admission.

"She probably wanted a family," he said permissively. "I'm finding out most of us did."

He wasn't entirely wrong. Fern couldn't remember anything about where she'd come from and everything about her identity was gained experiences piled on top of the soft, hungry bog of a dozen assumptions always ready to swallow whatever she built. I knew 9S thought the shack was weird, and I knew V thought the shack was weird because I thought the shack was fucking weird. But it was the sophisticated game of make-believe Fern played inside that I found especially upsetting.

Without knowing a thing about V, she'd imagined a whole life for him. A family, friends, a neighborhood, co-workers. All of them acted out whatever snippets of old literature she could find. They ate, they laughed, they fought, they got sick and recovered; they had pointless conversations that didn't mean anything at all other than it made them feel more real to her.

That Fern had wanted to be a part of a human family. Key distinction, but I wasn't going to tell 9S just how far down that spiral went. She wasn't here anymore, and I wasn't going to be answering hard questions like 'what the fuck' on her behalf.

All I volunteered was, "If you say so."

He did another sweep of my circuitry, but there were no more obvious tracking-related components he could identify. While I closed my plates back up and my anti-magnetic skin pulled back over my body, he kept his back politely turned. I wondered if he'd learned that from V's consistently strong reaction to the concept of being seen naked, or if it was just because my model was sexed differently than his.

"Your turn."

He stripped everything above the waist without much of a fuss—just a single aside glance before he laid down and retracted his skin below the neck. Probably as he assured himself I wasn't going to rip his OS chip out. His plates popped open with a series of clicks and a gentle hiss of pressure being released, and for a while, I worked with only the sound of rain on the surface of the lake, water dripping on stone, and the distant clanking of machines in the tunnels.

9S wasn't more or less riddled with tracking devices than I was. The process of removing them was surgical, but the silence got dense pretty quick without either of us really meaning for it to. You couldn't just let someone poke around in your circuits without feeling exposed, any more than you could be the one doing the poking around without getting self-conscious.

He'd at least had the task of identifying them circuits to keep him occupied. I was just following the instructions he'd built as he went, avoiding the two I really didn't look forward to.

"You're leaving after this, right?"

An obvious question. There because he probably found all of this as awkward as I did. "Yeah."

I carefully raised his motherboard's sub-panel. The black box hovered in perfect balance at the center of a ring-shaped compartment that held it in place. The light inside strobed as placidly as the ripples on the lake. Just like there had been inside of me, two non-essential wires, one black, one white, were connected to the mechanism.

I drew my hands back just to steady them.

9S and I were working together, but that arrangement was way too fresh for this. We didn't trust each other nearly enough to be sticking our fingers near each other's black boxes. Unfortunately, I was the only one he could examine for tracking devices without constraint and the only one who would remove his without asking any difficult questions.

To give my thought routines something else to focus on aside from the fact that I was staring at the physical embodiment of his heart and the place where all his personality data was stored, I kept talking.

"If I can't get a hold of any vehicles on the mainland we could be hiking four to six months. Whatever needs to happen with this Isle of Man deal isn't going to be a matter of just a few days, and neither is getting V to the night kingdom."

"It takes however long it takes," he said solemnly. "Is the rendezvous point still synchronized on your map?"

"Haven't made any changes since you gave it to me. You gonna be able to pick up the rest of the stuff you need?"

"Yeah. We should be fine."

"When you planning to meet me?"

"I don't think it'll be more than a week before we leave. We should be able to meet you up at the rendezvous point four days after that."

I couldn't think of another question and he couldn't think of another thing to say. I pulled the last wire from his black box compartment in silence somehow even more awkward than before, and carefully lowered his motherboard back into place. We both breathed a little easier for it, and I let him close himself back up in peace.

For the trouble, we both got a jumbled pile of wires and microchips that had come from our bodies. Most went dead as soon as they could no longer draw power from our bodies. A few still blinked and flickered with some kind of emergency supply.

I kicked my pile into the lake. 9S threw his.

With a sigh of relief, I pulled up the hood on my cloak. "See you at the cape."


30 March 11946 6:15 AM – The Amusement Park

The castle wasn't a good place to stay with the extended rain. The moisture seeped into even the innermost stones and refused to allow any warmth or comfort. With the camp aware of him, V resisted going back to the skyscrapers in the ruins, so in the end, he returned to the park.

More specifically, to the shack.

It was the only place that didn't need to have any work put into it in order to be made livable and it was a secluded area where 9S could come and go with supplies without worrying about who might be watching. Already, two neat piles of clothes sat on top of the table. One for each of them. On the floor, leaned against the legs of the chairs, their bags were packed with things 9S thought they might need. Everything from kindling and carefully sharpened skewers to rolls of netting to reflective sunglasses that 9S had managed to dig up somewhere. Apparently they were to hide V's lack of optic lights once they were in the scavenger city.

Humility was leaned against the wall. The longer V looked at it, the more certain he was of the words on the edge of his tongue.

"I'd like to entrust that to you."

9S blinked at him, followed his gaze, and glanced back. "Are you sure? It's important to you isn't it?"

"I can trust you with it." He stood and retrieved it with no hassle at all. The weight was beneath his notice now. He leaned it toward 9S, who leaned back by a bit, visibly replaying the sword's history behind his eyes. "I have the power to swing it if needed now, but I'd still rather not use it at all."

Griffon snickered from the back of the bench. "Nelo's sword ain't a devil arm but it's still one of Machiavelli's. You sure we shouldn't give it to the one that's actually made for fighting instead of boy-bot?"

The sword de-materialized on the spot, as if to firmly deny the suggestion. It re-appeared on 9S' back, and he turned an experimental circle with it. "Doesn't feel any different than Iron Will or my other large blades."

"And I'm sure I'll have a great time watching you swing both, twiggy."

9S' face scrunched, but ringing from Pod 153 interrupted whatever retort he was charging. To V's surprise, the face of a machine appeared when 9S answered. Their conversation was brief, some mention of parts that made V's brain tune out, and no sooner did 9S hang up than he was bolting out the door saying he was headed to the Machine Village and he would be back.

In the quiet, Griffon shuffled. "You just didn't want to carry it, did you?"

"I said what I meant."

"Yeah, but you're strong enough to carry that thing easy now. You didn't need the kid for that." His beaks twitched and spread and clicked thoughtfully back into place. "I'm not sure you really even need us anymore after all the shit you've absorbed."

V raised a brow. Griffon was a demon. It was in his nature to observe the strength of those around him, but that was far from the kind of conclusion he'd expected from one like him. "...The same could be said of you. The basin has granted you all you need to draw in magic for yourselves. Nightmare is bound to me under different circumstances, but you and Shadow have no need of me in order to survive in this world."

The two stared at each other. It was a reality they must both have been thinking about, but never had a moment to bring up. Necessity had always been the most pressing of the circumstances that bound them, but survival was no longer a factor for any of them. Not in the way it used to be.

Griffon was the first to crack, with a loud mocking snort. "No way any of us are gonna break contract and miss out on a dragon hunt. We'd die. Of boredom. Cause it's boring here. Boring as shit."

"It would be embarrassing for a demon, even a nightmare, to die of boredom." V scratched under Griffon's chin—and Shadow's too when she seeped up from the floor onto the bench and butted her head insistently against his chest. "And I only seem to be able to manifest a meaningful devil trigger by temporarily absorbing one of you, so our contract still serves me well."

"And that's the most important part, isn't it, your majesty." Griffon threw a wing around his head, cackling loud and abrasive as he was wont to do. "Looks like you're still stuck with us til the end!"

V gave a smile and shrug of surrender, as though it was out of his hands. "Seems that way."


2 April 11946 2:48 PM – The Forest Outpost

After seven full days of rain, the sun made a triumphant return.

Narcissus clusters rose proudly in glistening patches beside streams just beginning to settle down and clear up from rain swell. Pollen hadn't yet choked the air between the trees closest to the city ruins, so the breeze was fresh and easy to take in.

Anthurium sat off to the side of his tent, soaking in the sunshine with his eyes closed and hands resting across his middle like an old man having a midsummer nap. At the sound of V's cane rapping against a stone, his eyes peeked open. Wrinkles worried at his brow as soon as he recognized who V was.

"You're alone today," he noted. "Not here to drop off another report, I hope."

"No." V ran his fingers over the line in the table where the shade ended, and the light began. "I've come to express my gratitude."

"You'll pardon my saying so, but you don't seem the type."

At that, V smirked. "You would be right. But I am not here to thank you for acts done on my behalf."

"Ahh, I see I see." Just like that, Anthurium's cautious demeanor melted and he spared an endlessly cordial smile for V that made it easy to understand why 9S trusted him despite how little time the two spent together. "Glad to hear you and 9S made up, but you don't need to thank me, sir."

"And you do not need to call me sir."

"I think I do. You pre-date the war and that deserves its respect. Come in, come in, please. Take a seat."

V couldn't argue with that skewed perception of his age, given he was the one who told the androids he was a weapon from thousands of years ago. He took the offered seat instead, sparing a moment to examine Anthurium's permeating aura of welcome and good-will from a reasonable distance. It reminded V a little of the man who owned the store where Vergil would buy books as a child.

"9S expressed to me that he'd wanted to find something for you, but never could, on account that there was nothing you wanted. I have a hard time believing that is true."

Anthurium chuckled. "You've been alive a long time. You must know how it gets after so many years. It's hard to think of things being any different than they are."

There was something enjoyable about Anthurium's way of speaking. It was old. Wizened. Talking to him felt like talking to another adult, and left V astonished and a little worried at what a pleasant change of pace it was. He pulled the book from his coat and pressed it gently onto the table between them. Anthurium stared at it quizzically, his brows knitting as he observed the very slight bulge in the pages. He flipped it open, to where a single red flower in the shape of a heart and been nestled between two blank pages.

Lifting it from the page, he turned it around and around. "What's this?"

"It's what Witch Hazel was looking for." Anthurium's grip tensed a fraction, and the flower began to shake in his hand. "Your namesake."

For such a large man, the sound that left him was finer than a thread of spider's silk. He drew the flower in close to his chest, but just as quickly set it down so he could cover his face. He didn't cry. V did not expect him to. But he was not expecting the shudder that came older the old android to be a precursor to laughter either. He howled with it in short but rolling rhythm that went on and on and every time he tried to pick up the flower it seemed to come back only stronger.

It was finally ebbing out when a shuffle of footsteps came in to fill the space it left behind, and three black coats came into view.

"Oh, is that him? That's V right?" The voice wasn't 9S' but it had the same energy to it. "Hi, V!"

"4S," the other one chided sharply. "Why are you talking to him like you know him?"

The energetic one waving at his one arm and the one with the shorter hair and shorter temper stood on either side of 9S. There was something fascinating about seeing him next to other scanners. It let him normalcy this world otherwise denied him. On the other hand, it was one of those things that made it quietly clear that 9S was built, rather than born. The other two boys had slightly different faces and different hair, but the way their bodies filled their uniforms was identical. It was only how they moved that was different.

9S tilted his head at V, his brows twitching in a silent ask that V answered by flicking his eyes toward the book. That seemed to be enough for him. He smiled and tugged the other two scanners on.

"Come on, let's go."

"But I want to meet him! 11S you're curious too right? He's super old, think of the songs he must know."

11S spared V another glance. Why song should sway him, V didn't know, but the prospect clearly tempted him. "H… He's a weapon, he probably doesn't know any songs." He leaned conspiratorially close to 9S. "Does he?"

"Guys, we'll take all day if we stop for every little thing. I've still gotta take your trackers out."

"You didn't answer my question."

The last thing V heard as they passed around the bend and into the forest was the sound of 9S groaning.

Anthurium gave a thin chuckle once he was sure they were gone. "They all looked like brothers."

"So they did."

Again, the comfortable silence settled over them. Anthurium took the flower in his hand with an almost apologetic smile. "I found Witch Hazel in the grove a long time after they died. I never knew what had happened."

"9S was able to recover some of his memories. Just a few logs, of the times they had met with you. It left an impression on them to be named. And that you did not know 'the flower for which you were named'."

"That's how they phrased it alright. I just gave them that name because of the trees." Another laugh shakes Anthurium, though this one is silent. "They asked me if I'd ever seen an anthurium before but I never thought they'd run off and try to find one. You really...went and found this for me?"

"My thanks," said V, rising from his seat. "To you, and to the boy himself."

"You're awful roundabout if you did this for me to thank him."

"What better expression of thankfulness than to do something good for someone he cares for and who has cared for him in kind?"

"Sounds like two steps too many." He placed the flower back on the page with a grin. "But I guess you did say you're not the type for expressing gratitude. No wonder you take the long way around it."

Even in teasing, Anthurium was good-natured.

V drummed his fingers along his cane as he circled around the table, back into the spring sunlight. Humans were superstitious and quick to give meaning to that which had none inherent, but V thought Anthurium lived up to the meaning bestowed on his namesake.

'Hospitality.'


3 April 11946 12:29 PM – The Abandoned Factory

9S perched on the edge of a large red shipping container while V sat below. The factory loomed unseen behind him, the sunlight casting the shadows of cranes and beams and metal bridges somewhere out of sight. His eyes were on the smoky gray waters. Ones they would be crossing soon.

He had taken every measure he thought he could, and there was nothing else to be done. They could have left right at that moment.

Only he hadn't thought of who to leave 2B's restoration to.

There was no one he could put that kind of faith in. Anemone was sympathetic, but she was beholden to the chain of command and didn't have the know-how to do it quietly on her own. There was no way he would risk anyone in Legacy Reclamation knowing about 2B's body. Jackass had the know-how and didn't give a shit about authority, but she was also…Jackass. He wouldn't be able to rest if he left the ruins and she was the one he had to rely on to fix 2B in the event of his death.

He wanted to entrust it to other YoRHa. 4S and 11S had the necessary know-how and they didn't need the authority. He'd taken them somewhere remote, as they'd asked, and removed their tracking components, but they had their own goals and they revolved around not going too far from the ark. That meant they'd always be in Theta's range, and if she found them, he had no doubt she had the means to get them to tell her pretty much anything she wanted.

Never mind that if 9S died, there'd be no 4S or 11S left to fix anything anyway.

Maybe that was why he'd come here of all places. The mission that first brought him to the factory was where he liked to think this iteration of his life began. He didn't remember most of it. Lost in the black box reaction. But he remembered the warmth in her voice when she thanked him for uploading her data back on the Bunker. How happy it made him. And then how his heart had plummeted at her dejected response when she learned that he didn't remember doing it.

They could only have been on that mission a few hours, and they probably hadn't spent any time physically together at all. Putting someone else's memories before his own was his first clue that she must have been someone special. That quickly, he'd wanted to know why. What made her so important? What would he have to do to hear her speak so affectionately to him again?

Looking back at that past version of himself made his temperature spike with embarrassment. It amazed him just how innocent he was.

"Something on your mind?" asked V.

"You're not even looking at me, am I that obvious?"

"Yes."

He took a deep breath. The ocean was right there, but it was a bit too deep and full of dangerous debris to throw him in. "This was where I died last, back in March with 2B." He pointed out at the broken bridge. "Our black box reaction took out four goliaths and most of this part of the bridge. Our old bodies might be together underwater around here somewhere."

"How morbid."

"Really? It seemed like a kind of happy thought to me."

V looked up as if he had an objection, but strangely he seemed to drop it before it could go anywhere. "I suppose decaying together would be a kind of romance to an android."

Well, he hadn't meant it like that but now that 9S considered it that way…

He folded his fingers busily in his lap to try and control a sudden burst of energy that fluttered through his black box. Unfortunately, with his hands occupied, he unconsciously started to bounce his heels against the containers.

V pushed the cane flat against his shins and glared up at him as the booming racket slowly faded away

"S...sorry."

From further up the steps, someone called out. "Who's there?!"

9S knew that voice. He hopped down and trotted around the edge of the rusty red container. Anemone stood at the top of the stairs with a hand at her hip, ready to fire if needed. She relaxed as soon as she saw him, while 9S tilted his head. Pascal was with her.

"What are you two doing out here?"

"I could ask you the same." Anemone nodded a little to his right, where V had stalked out behind him. "Nice meeting you for the third time."

"Third?" V asked.

"You were with that silver Pod out by the rosebush last fall, weren't you?" She scowled. "You should've said hello."

"Ah, yes... You were carrying the kind of gun I didn't want to get involved with. Particularly if you were none too pleased that a stranger was eavesdropping on you."

"Why would you have been eavesdropping on me in the first place? I was alone."

"You are the only android I've encountered yet who sings."

9S watched in disbelief as the wary tension flowed right out of Anemone. She laughed in a tired, almost helpless kind of way. "Then you never encountered Rose."

"Who's Rose?" 9S asked, looking between the two of them in utter bafflement. 9S had never heard Anemone talk about anyone from her past but A2, and V hadn't batted a lash at the name.

"The previous resistance leader," Anemone answered coolly. In the space of a second, she re-gathered herself and closed back up. "Apologies for being jumpy. Pascal and I were discussing shutting down the factory."

"What? Why?"

Anemone crossed her arms loosely over her stomach. "While it's true that the vast majority of machine life was destroyed when the Tower collapsed, new machine life has been pumping out of the automated system in the factory at a mostly uninterrupted pace. The population density of the machines is climbing because they have no orders to re-distribute to other zones."

"So it is," said Pascal. "In order to avoid saturation which would invariably lead to further conflict, we're hoping to shut the system down and replace it with a manual, as-needed system."

A tendril of suspicion curled along the base of 9S' spine. "Did Theta suggest that?"

"Yes! I had come to the camp to discuss resource scarcity and it was her first suggestion. She has quite the mind for these matters. I had not even given this old place a second thought, but she was able to see potential conflict such a long way off."

It was difficult to keep his face from darkening. Theta had probably not considered the factory at all until they started burning bodies in it and it became obvious it was still very active. Shutting it down meant that the machine numbers in the area could only ever decrease while they worked on a replacement. Which could take any length of time she wanted, really. There was no conflict. No reason for someone as good-hearted as Pascal to think anything was off about the situation.

He put on his confused-but-not-really-interested face and reached back to squeeze V's hand. "Sounds complicated. I don't want to interrupt, and we weren't here for any specific reason, so we'll get out of your way."

"Oh, it's no trouble at all! Do take care, 9S."

The moment they were out of range, V coughed politely, and 9S unclenched his fingers to let V's hand slip away.

"Is there something you wish to do about that?" he asked.

It was a legitimate problem. Theta was giving a legitimate solution. It just happened to be one that served Legacy Reclamation's purposes, and if 9S said so, it would probably cost all of them their fragile peace. More machine-android conflict was the last thing he needed. Peace was the more beneficial state of affairs for his goals and V's as well.

It didn't sit well with him, but there was nothing good gained by making this his problem.

"No..." He smiled feebly. "Head back without me and get some sleep. We can head out at midnight; there's just something I have to do first."