"...This place, I understand now, A2's heading to the origin point of heartless on Earth. This is really bad news!" 9S said.
"What makes you say that?" 2B asked.
"The heartless used a transport mechanism—a portal if you will—to invade Earth. It remained in an active state until Sora's friends sealed it from the other side after they crossed back over to their homeworld. If my hunch is correct then A2 er- the entity that's controlling A2 is likely trying to recreate the same phenomenon."
"9S- I need you to speak in a way that makes sense!"
"Sorry! Basically, A2's trying to create a dark portal that will let her leave Earth and invade other planets."
"That's not happening!" Gripping her sword in her hand, 2B scaled the face of one of the empty apartment buildings so she could gain more ground over Red-A2. When she reached the end, she jumped off and clashed blade to blade with their adversary. "Whatever you're planning to do with A2's body, I'll stop you dead in your tracks!"
Red-A2 held her ground for as long as she could, but eventually buckled under the immense weight 2B was pushing down and was forced to back away. "You androids are quite persistent, but so are we!" With her current abilities and prowess, Red-A2 knew she wouldn't stand a chance against 2B and 9S so she did what machines do best and evolved.
Starting with the keyblade, Red-A2 recognized its immense untapped potential that not even A2 was able to channel and began to analyze it. 'This weapon may have originated from human society, but it's intrinsically linked to this android. Therefore, it stands to reason it can be upgraded just like any other weapon.' Within seconds, she identified a way to accesses said powers, albeit through highly unconventional means...
[HACKING SYSTEM] - BOOTING SYSTEM
AUTHENTICATION CODE: USER_UNKNOWN
[PLEASE CONFIRM AUTHORIZATION]
AUTHORIZATION KEY: A2_KEYBLADE_WIELDER
ACCESS GRANTED
HACKING DEVICE ACTIVATION COMPLETE_
LOADING . . .
KEYBLADE_MAGIC_DATABASE
1 function initiateCommand() {
2 Command = Download "Basic Magic" Command
3 Downloading: "Thunder", "Thundara", "Thundaga"
4 Download Successful
'I'll have to download the rest of the commands when I have the time to.' While Red-A2 was able to cast a Thundaga spell at 2B that temporarily paralyzed her, 9S still was hot on her trail with relentless pod fire. Red-A2 tried to stop him with a series of Thundaga spells, but he dodged each time using his pod as backup and she soon found herself without any MP to cast another spell.
Soon, 9S cornered Red-A2 at the place where the heartless first originated, it was a dead-end and right where he wanted her. "Alright pod, R010: Bomb, charge level 3!"
Thinking she would be hit with an onslaught of bombs, Red-A2 prepared to maneuver herself accordingly, not expecting a powerful laser to fire from 9S's pod and carve a hole straight through the side of her body, purposely missing her black box.
"Heh, oldest trick in the book," 9S said.
Finally recovering her paralysis, 2B joined 9S by his side. "Good job 9S, now let's finish her off for good."
"Does A2 really have to go out this way? There has to be something more we can do for her."
"No, she's lost and even if there was a possibility to save her, we certainly don't have the tools to do so. That weapon is a heavy burden to carry and she will die with it."
2B and 9S approached Red-A2, prepared to be her executioners, but in the same vein the keyblade was a burden to wielder so too was it a burden to those around them. The heartless, sensing the weakness in A2's heart, clawed out of the darkness and drew to her keyblade like flies to light.
With the last of her dwindling functions operational, Red-A2 used her keyblade to tear open a portal to the darkness and sink into oblivion while 2B and 9S had to contend with the heartless.
"A2!" 2B screamed, but she was already gone.
Pod 042: Unit A2's black box can no longer be detected. Presumed to be offline.
"...We no longer have a read on A2, what should we do now?" 9S asked.
2B thought for a moment. "...Devola and Popola are more knowledgeable with these affairs than we are, let's head back to the Resistance Camp and see what they can do."
In the time since Sora had left Earth, the Resistance Camp had expanded considerably as they were able to allocate more resources internally due to the decreased threat of the machines. Devola and Popola in particular were able to move their business into a physical store with a wider array of inventory than in the past so surely they would have a device that could intergalactically track a missing android down...
"Yeah, we don't have anything," Devola said in a dismissive manner. "You're SOL."
"Devola, don't be so unprofessional! Listen, I'm sorry guys, this is truly a horrible thing that's happened to A2, but if your Pod can no longer reach her, then that means she's either super far away or she's at a location that's blocking the signal. In either of those two scenarios, we have no real way of tracking her down ourselves."
"Well, we need to think of something and fast to reach her. The machines are in possession of an incredibly dangerous tool and now we can only assume they're heading to a world populated by humans to wreak havoc," 2B said.
"World populated by humans...aha!" 9S snapped his fingers together. "Maybe we can try using Pascal as a throughline, he's somewhere with other humans."
"Pascal? I suppose it's worth a shot, even though the signal would be unstable at best," Popola turned to her sister. "What do you think, Dev?"
"I'm not a big fan of saving A2's ass all the time but...I still have a data profile and some spare parts from when I worked on Sora's calling device. I could probably reverse engineer a modification into one of your guy's Pod and- uh I mean, hypothetically speaking anyway, I doubt it would work."
Popola giggled. "That's my sister for you!"
"That actually sounds feasible. Devola, I was wrong about you, looks can be deceiving," 2B said.
"Hey thank- wait, what do you mean 'looks can be deceiving'?"
2B presented the twins with Pod 713. "We were able to confiscate A2's pod before she disappeared from Earth, you can use it as a base for those modifications. In the meantime, I'm going to debrief Anemone on this situation."
"I can help you guys out," 9S offered.
"Sure, why don't you go to the back and grab this small list of materials..."
Devola's 'small' list of materials ended up being 50 unique items, but 9S was able to efficiently gather each part she asked for. When he came back to Devola's workspace, she had already pried Pod 713 open and was working on the modifications.
"...So, uh, do you guys think it's possible to save A2, you know, without killing her?" He asked.
"To be honest, I'm not really sure," Popola said. "I'm not so much worried about the 'virus', A2's defense systems are stronger than most androids. It's her apparently being possessed by the machine network that scares me. This is just a running theory, but I'm afraid that if we don't act in time, the machine network may attempt to 'fuse' with A2 since she has the keyblade."
"So she'll have the body of an android but the mind of a machine..."
"—That's exactly why she needs to be eliminated at all costs," 2B said as she walked inside the weapon shop with Anemone.
"I'm inclined to agree," Anemone said.
"What?! Come on guys! I know some of you may not have the best opinion on A2 ...or just outright dislike her but you're all giving up on her way too easily! We have to take this risk on her!"
"This isn't about taking risks, this is about being logical, 9S. Sora's not here to perform miracles for us and we androids can only do so much for each other, so rather than let A2 suffer a fate worse than death and put the rest of us in an unimaginable amount of danger, I say we just mercy kill her. I doubt she'd want us to let her become a machine of all things anyways."
"No, 9S is right, we haven't even exhausted all of our options and yet you're jumping to kill her," Devola argued. "Yes, she's a pain in the ass, has an attitude, is reckless, never pays off her tab and-"
"You're not making a great case for her," 2B said.
"The point is that like it or not, she's still one of us so we need to do everything we can to save her."
"And do you have any ideas on how we can do that?"
"You're not gonna like the sound of this, but we should ask the other humans for help. That redhaired girl and the spiky hair boy both could use the keyblade so reason stands they could use the same spell Sora could to cure you of the logic virus. After that, it would just be a matter of hacking into her to fully eliminate the machine network."
"You're right, I don't like the sound of this. Involving other humans with this puts them in too much danger."
"The machines are already putting other humans in danger by going to their homeworld. Plus they have the keyblade so they would know way more about how to deal with A2 than we would," 9S said.
"I suppose you're not wrong, but how would we get into contact with those two humans anyways?"
Devola shrugged. "That's the hard part. Once we contact Pascal, we just have to hope he can reach them."
"And there's still the issue of how we can get to the human's homeworld which can very well be lightyears away," Anemone said.
"The humans have no problem finding their way to Earth so we should be able to do the same." Devola made the last finishing touches to Pod 713 then presented it to the androids. "Guess we'll just have to find out and see. Let's get this show on the road."
"Pod 713, contact Pascal," 2B said.
Pod 713: Establishing a secure connection . . . connection secured with a weak signal. Syncing frequency signals with the machine known as Pascal . . . sync successful, opening communication lines at once.
Pod 713: "Oh! Hello 2B and 9S, it's so nice to see you two again, it's been such a long time. I'm in the most wonderful city right now, how are you guys?"
"Pascal, this is no time for small talk, we have urgent matters to discuss!"
Pod 713: "I'm sorry...the connection is 2910812 but you sound quite troubled. Is s-s-s-something wrong?"
2B tried her best to explain the situation, but Pascal could only hear every other word she said, if that. However, Pascal did pick up the words 'human' and 'keyblade' and assumed 2B wanted to speak with Kairi so he called her over.
Pod 713: "Oh my gosh! You're 2-2-2-2-B, right? Do you 89210790 from the factory oh- and when we fought alongside each other against Eve...wait 2190 you got your memory wiped didn't you? Maybe you don't actually remember that...
"This isn't the time to catch up right now! Listen to me, A2's been-"
Pod 713: Error: Lost Connection from Pascal
Guest: Let's f-ing gooooooo!
Centurious the Azure: Oh omg I didn't even know you read that other story! Yeah A2 is currently possessed by the Red-girls, I think it would be super interesting to have A2 interact with the other kh characters!
Anon: Yep
Keybladelight: There wasn't a keyhole for Earth, the heartless just used a dark portal to get there which was later sealed off but there's still some heartless left in the world. Whenever A2 is no longer possessed, she'd probably begrudgingly accept Aqua's help. Kairi considers A2 a friend/rival, A2 just thinks Kairi is annoying.
James reiner: :D
[B]irth of a Wish
SAN FRANSOKYO
"Oh no, we lost connection! 2B seemed really stressed out, do you think something major happened?" Kairi asked.
"She wouldn't have contacted me if there wasn't an emergency going on with the machines. I'll try restoring the connection, you'll just have to continue on with our current objective without me."
"Roger that."
Following the events that unfolded on Earth, Kairi, Naminé and Pascal teamed up together to travel across many different worlds in search of any lost machines from Pascal's village. Since they started their journey together, they'd actually made great progress, rescuing machines all the way from the snowy peaks of Arendelle to the depths of the Underworld. For now, they were housing the displaced machines on Destiny Islands, with the intention of moving them back to Earth once they had located them all.
San Fransokyo was the current world their search had taken them to and luckily, it being a huge metropolis that was so technologically advanced, the residents didn't even notice the machines running around were from another world entirely.
Leaving the gummiship, Kairi thought she'd meet up with Naminé, who had already left a while ago in search of machines, which she often had a habit of doing in the worlds they visited. Though Kairi simply chalked this up to it being the first time well, ever, Naminé could experience so many different worlds for herself so she couldn't blame her for being so gung-ho about it. Still, this meant Naminé frequently found herself in trouble that time and time again, Kairi had to save her from and San Fransokyo was no different.
While Kairi was bounding across skyscrapers and rooftops to get a scope of the city, she spotted Naminé running away from two guys while carrying two small machines in her arms. "Great...what did she get herself into this time?" Kairi ran down the side of a skyscraper and met Naminé on the ground as she was getting ready to cross the street.
"Kairi, there you are! You don't know what I had to do to get these machines! These really rude tech guys were trying to use them for their dumb start-up company!"
"-Hey blondie! Those vintage robots are OUR property, we found them in the dump fair and square!"
"-That's right and theft is a crime! If you don't hand those robots back over to us we'll have no choice but to call the police!"
Kairi snapped her fingers together and placed them under a Stopaga spell. "There, that should give us enough time to get out of here. Let's hope we don't run into any more nerds when we find the rest of the machines."
They decided to take the train to the Central District and get far away from all of the tech companies. During their commute, Kairi filled Naminé in on what she missed back at the gummiship.
"By the way, 2B contacted Pascal just recently. The connection was bad so we didn't hear most of what she was saying, but she sounded really upset so I'm starting to get worried that something bad might've happened."
"Well...I have been getting this foreboding feeling lately, like the world as we know it will soon become unrecognizable."
"Oh..."
"But don't get so down about it! You know how many times I've said that the world might end in the past only for it to not happen?"
Kairi squeezed the folds of her skirt in her hands. "That...was only because of Sora...and now he's gone."
"I know this isn't the same Kairi who totally outclassed one of Xehanort's goat puppets talking right now!" Naminé set the machines down then put her arm around Kairi's shoulder. "You've come way too far to be down on yourself like this!"
"Yeah ...I guess you're right." She chuckled. "And I definitely outclassed him."
All of a sudden, the train cart erupted with screams when a giant axe pierced the ceiling like a scene ripped straight from a horror movie.
"Looks like trouble, I'll be right back Naminé." Kairi used the emergency doors to hop out of the moving train and climb to the top where she could see the culprit was a medium axe-wielding machine, accompanied by several small flyer machines. Once they set their sights on Kairi, they immediately went to attack her.
'That's weird. The machines from the village never attacked anyone before.' With an axe coming her way and fast, Kairi backflipped to avoid getting her head hacked off by the rusted blade, then she used blizzara mid-air to freeze the small flyers firing at her from behind. 'I'll have to incapacitate the big one before it hurts anyone.'
Before the axe-wielding machine could swing at her again, Kairi swiftly got behind it and knocked it out without incurring much damage to it. 'Awesome. My training's definitely paid off! I should have Pascal take a look at-' With how preoccupied she was fighting the machines, she forgot that she was still on a moving train and realized it was fastly approaching a tunnel. "Oh, crap!"
Acting fast, Kairi tackled into the machine and threw both of them off the train, then cast aero to cushion their fall as they landed on the ground. "Okay...I'm fine and the machine's still in one piece too. Sorry Naminé, I'll just have to catch up with you later."
Kairi stood up off the ground and looked around. "Of course I landed in some creepy dark alleyway...let's get out of here asap." She tried to pull the machine but the medium build proved to be far too heavy for her. "...Ugh, no good, you really didn't think this through, Kairi! I'll just have to leave it here and hope some weirdo doesn't try and take it."
Truth be told, as much as Kairi was attempting to sound put together and sure of herself, internally she was terrified. Ever since she was traumatized back at the Abandoned Factory, she never quite got over her fear of the dark. In order to calm herself down, she summoned her keyblade and held it tightly. "Calm down...it's not that bad...it's not that..."
She trailed off when she saw a red light radiating from the darkness. Curious, Kairi located the source of the light and found they glowed like a pair of eyes. Assuming it was a machine, she lit her keyblade on fire to get a better look at it, only to jump back in fear when she saw A2 in the most unexpected of places.
"N- No way! My mind has to be playing tricks on me!"
"No...I'm really here."
"But - But how?! Didn't we seal the dark portal that linked our worlds together...wait a second-" Kairi moved her flaming keyblade around so she could see how poor of a condition A2's body was in. Her arm and much of the left side of her body was melted off, leaving exposed wires and machinery. "Look at you, however you got here, you're badly hurt. What happened?"
"...I was attacked. Human girl, if you could help me, I would be indebted to you."
"'Human girl'? I'm pretty sure I told you my name al- never mind, I wish I could help you but I don't know how to repair an android..." She snapped her fingers together. "Wait, maybe I can't help you, but I heard that in this world there's a boy who knows how to build robots- he should be able to fix you up. Can you stand and walk at least? I can bring you to him."
Red-A2 stood up with the help of Kairi and together they left the dark alley. Even in a world as advanced as San Fransokyo, an android, especially one as lifelike as her, was still an impressive sight to see and the residents were more than happy to point Kairi to San Fransokyo Institute of Technology where they would hopefully be able to repair A2's body. Luckily, the students at SFIT were not only willing to take Red-A2 in but overly enthusiastic about it.
"Did you build this android?" One of the students asked.
'I can't just tell them I found her off the street.' "Um...yeah?"
Big mistake. The students started bombarding her with questions laced with technical jargon she couldn't even begin to comprehend.
"Hold on, what I meant by 'building' her is that I ordered her online and put the parts together. I didn't actually build her from the ground up or anything!"
"Really? From what website? I never heard of anyplace selling androids this high tech."
"Uhhhh you know what? I totally forgot ha ha!"
"That's too bad. This android is so life-like and her internal components house some of the most complex technology I've ever seen before, it's incredible engineering. What are her basic functionalities?"
"I bet it's to 'satisfy' its owner," Another one of the students joked.
"Nonononono nothing like that! She's supposed to be a friendly robot who does chores and stuff! She's a...robot maid?" 'Ouch. A2's gonna kill me when she's up and running again.'
"That's like some 'I, Robot' type stuff, you'd think a major breakthrough like this would've hit the tech world by now."
"She's a p-prototype, that's why! Okay, that's enough questions!" Kairi didn't follow the students into the tech lab and decided she would wait outside on the bench instead. 'I think I handled that pretty well. I hope those guys can fix A2.'
.
.
.
Time: 9:36
Location Confirmed: Desert Zone
Coordinates: 42.7952° N, 105.0324° E
"There you stalkers are, we've been waiting for you guys to find us!" Sora said.
"A2, we need to approach this carefully, they definitely have a trap set up down- uh, A2?" But she had long left 9S's side to go to Sora. "A2! Ugh, you gotta be kidding me!"
Unsurprisingly, when A2 made a beeline for Sora, she ended up falling right for their trap and was now encased in a block of ice.
2B shook her head. "So this is the infamous A2? I can't believe she actually fell for that."
"I told you it would work! Now let's get out of here while we still can!" Sora said.
However, A2 wasn't frozen in the block of ice for long, she may not have been an expert in magic, but if there was one thing she could do pretty damn well was light her keyblade on fire and she was able to melt down the ice within seconds.
"Get back here, Sora!" A2 yelled.
2B whipped her sword out, thinking A2 was getting ready to attack Sora, but actually, she just hugged him, which caught both of them off guard.
"Yo, long time no see Sora!" A2 let go of him then smiled. "I missed seeing your stupid face."
"Uh...thanks I think? I have so many questions right now..."
'It doesn't seem like he recognizes me. Wait that's right, things are different now. I have this stupid scanner with me and 2B's Ex-YoRHa so I guess that means I'm in an alternate reality or something? Well whatever, as long as Sora's here that's all that matters.'
"I know you technically don't know who I am, but... what did you think of that fire spell back there?" She asked.
Sora didn't know what was going on, but he could tell that she was very excited to show off to him so he went along with it. "It was awesome! I had no idea there were so many other keyblade wielders and yours was so cool looking!"
She felt herself getting embarrassed by Sora's compliment, but tried to play it off. "...You think so? I- I mean, ahem, ...thanks."
"Sora, can you explain to me what's going on here?" 2B asked.
He shrugged. "I'm pretty lost myself, but something in my heart tells me she's a friend. I think we can trust her."
"You're way too trusting for your own good... I still have my reservations." 2B faced A2. "How do we know you won't report us to Command in the future?"
"You may think I'm with YoRHa, but I don't trust Command either. The human's best kept safe far away from them."
"-A2, how could you say that?!" 9S asked.
"What the- when did you get here?!"
"Just now. I don't get how you went from single-mindedly wanting to capture the human to suddenly wanting to go behind YoRHa and keep him from them. It's like you did a complete 180."
"I changed my mind. Got a problem with that?"
"N- No, but what're we gonna tell the Commander? She's definitely gonna want updates on the human's whereabouts."
"We'll tell her we're still trying to find him."
"So you're saying we have to lie to her?!"
"Yeah, keep up genius."
"This is all sounding too good to be true, I've never seen a YoRHa android turn so quickly. If you want me to believe you have the best interest in mind for Sora, then you're going to have to prove yourself," 2B said.
"I'm game."
"There's a resistance android we found in the City Ruins, she's apparently lost her memories from a huge explosion and we're trying to recover them for her. Your scanner android would prove to be useful in that regard."
"...that's all? Fine."
"What? I didn't even get a say in this. I mean, come on, wouldn't the human be safer on the moon rather than on Earth with all the dangerous machines?"
"Absolutely not. Should we hand Sora over to Command, they would only use him as a propaganda machine to fuel this perpetual war," 2B said.
"Agreed," A2 said.
"How could you say that so easily?!" 9S argued. "Maybe Command hasn't always been transparent with us, but this is...really extreme. If the Commander caught wind of what you were saying-"
A2 cut her eyes, tired of 9S's incessant whining. "Look, you can go crying to the Commander, but I made my mind up already about this."
"...If this is what you think is the best course of action, then I'll go along with it for now...and I guess we are helping out a resistance android, which is for the greater good, so it isn't all bad."
"Good, then it's settled. My name is A2 by the way."
"I'm 9S..." He said reluctantly.
"We're well aware. I'm 2B and this is Sora."
Sora waved to them. "Glad we're not trying to kill each other anymore."
"The no-killing part depends on the actions of our new YoRHa 'friends'," 2B insisted.
"Yeah, right back at you," A2 said.
Feeling the tension between 2B and A2, Sora stepped in between them. "Uh, so A2, I'm curious about what else you can do with the keyblade. I've never met an android who was able to use one, oh- I bet you're already a pro at it since your brain's basically a supercomputer!"
'Fuck, when he puts it like that, I feel really inept. I can't let him know I actually suck at using the keyblade or he'll think less of me.' "Um...yeah...obviously..." She lied.
"Well? Come on! Show off all the other cool spells and moves you can do!"
2B crossed her arms. "I'd like to see this as well."
"Yeah, this is a completely new development. I have no idea where you got that weapon just now..." 9S muttered.
"Ah, well, you see...uh, there's no heartless around so that's a waste of resources!"
Sora nodded. "True, true, MP can run out easily. Aw, too bad there aren't any heartless around, really wanted to see you in action."
"Don't worry, we'll come across more heartless in due time and A2 can prove how much of a 'pro' she apparently is," 2B said.
"I-████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████
ERROR: OPERATING SYSTEM MANUALLY REBOOTED FROM . . . SAN FRANSOKYO INSITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY. ALL MOTOR AND COGNITIVE FUNCTIONS ARE TEMPORARILY SUSPENDED.
NieR: [O]blivion II
"Incomplete Without You"
A/N: If you need a refresher, weapon stories 1 & 2 are at the end of Chapter 34 in N:O and the end of Chapter 2 in N:O ver 1.5 respectively.
Designed to End
Lv. 3
Strength: 10
Magic: 3
Weapon Story 3:
Purchase:
8 bottles of alcohol
3 E-drugs
Note: The long-haired android is back, however, the younger android is no longer by her side. Or rather, the human, as we were informed. She appears distraught and angry, then wastes her funds over drugs and alcohol instead of the necessities. We offered our support but she lashed out at us then left with haste.