NieR Automata Fan Fiction

Reprise

By Kraven Ergeist

Recursion 2


"This is Command. YoRHa squadron, come in."

When 2B next opened her eyes, it was the second time in less than an hour (or at least what felt like less than an hour) that she thought she would never open them again. The first had been when the machine logic virus had overrun her system and she'd implored A2 to end her suffering before she could be turned against her remaining allies. The second time, it had been in trying to out-run a full nuclear meltdown of the abandoned factory.

A factory that she was once again speeding towards in a YoRHa Ho229 flight unit, once again fully intact.

"…Uh…2B here…" she reported after only a moment's hesitation as she quickly collected her thoughts. "…All units have penetrated the stratosphere. Autopilot systems green across the board..."

The first time she'd found herself in this position, Operator 6O had needed to prompt her for a response, but 2B had quickly caught onto where she was, and it was easy to fall back onto her combat programming, which allowed her to slip right back into line with the flow of the operation while her mind worked overtime to determine just what had actually happened.

She and 9S had died in the factory explosion. There was no question about that. She could distinctly recall the feeling of her titanium skeleton shattering from the shockwave, her synthetic skin frying off of her chassis as she had ejected from her flight unit in a futile attempt to reach 9S.

She was also now, once again, en route to that very same facility, her squadron of combat androids all piloting identical flight units to her own and was herself still fully intact and operational. There was no question about that either. After checking her mission clock, her mission log, and her field equipment, she quickly confirmed what her suspicions were already telling her.

None of the other YoRHa androids seemed to be aware of the repetition in events. Not her team, not her operator, not even her Pod. By her reckoning, the only other individual who was even aware that anything out of the ordinary was going on was 9S.

"We've passed the 50-kilometer threshold and are proceeding towards the target," she reported distractedly as she patched in a communication line to 9S.

Before she could establish a connection, her instincts commanded her to override her flight unit's autopilot and jerk her controls to the right.

She moved just in time to get clear of the long-range laser blast that took out her left wingman in a shower of sparks and debris.

BOOM!

CRASH!

"Yeeeaaargh – kshhh!" the android shouted in alarm before being silenced.

"12H down," 2B reported bitterly as she watched the smoldering remains of the flight unit disappear below the cloud line.

She gritted her teeth. There had been nothing she could do to protect her wingman the first and second time she had watched this happen, and there was nothing she could do now. And she knew it. But how many more times would she have to watch these same five androids give their lives in vain?

"All units, activate manual mode and rely on visuals to evade," the commander ordered.

2B tuned out the rest of the chatter and focused on getting in contact with 9S. The sooner they could get to the bottom of things here, the sooner they could stop all this from happening again.

"9S," she spoke into her radio, making sure no one else on her team was listening in. "Come in 9S. Are you there?"

There was a brief pause in which another YoRHa android was shot down, and 2B swallowed yet another pang of guilt, before she finally received a response from her partner.

"2B!" came an excited voice over the radio. "Uh, one second, let me make sure this line is secure…"

2B said nothing as she waited, presumably for 9S to hack something on his end. The relief she felt at hearing his voice was palpable, however. The recognition and exuberance in his voice told her all she needed to know – he was just as glad to hear from her as she was from him. And more importantly, he was on the same page as her with regards to their bizarre situation.

"There, done," 9S called back out to her, seemingly finished with his task. "2B, do you still remember everything?"

"I do," she said, as she veered into the cloud bank. "I don't know why, but it seems that we are both now once again experiencing events from the very beginning of our first mission together."

Before 9S could respond, Pod 042 broke in.

"Alert," it said. "Enemy units sighted ahead."

"Hold that thought," 2B said to 9S, before re-opening her channel back to YoRHa command. "Requesting permission to engage."

"Permission granted!" Operator 6O replied.

2B squeezed the trigger at her fingertips as her flight unit tore into the flying machines that appeared before her, destroying them with ease. It seemed such an odd disparity to 2B that such flimsy fodder be flung their way while the enemy possessed such devastating tools as the goliath class machine, its long-range laser weapon capable of obliterating their forces one by one.

"What's your location, 9S?" 2B asked, a note of stubbornness in her voice. "I'll divert my course to rendezvous with you and avoid combat with the machine claw that I first encountered last time. With any luck, I'll be able to hold onto my flight unit, and we'll have two aircraft to work with."

"Good idea," 9S agreed absently. "I'm trying to figure out a plan based on the intel we've been able to gather so far. This is the second time we've found ourselves once again at the beginning of this mission together. I don't know if it was your death or my death or both that triggered the event, or something else entirely, but whatever the cause, it appears that our conscious minds have been returned to a certain point in time occurring immediately prior to the mission. We seem to be in some sort of…time loop together."

2B chewed on her lip. A time loop? It didn't seem possible. She was admittedly not very familiar with such advanced concepts beyond how they pertained to her role in combat, but even her base level programming told her enough to know that time travel in any form was still only a theoretical science. For them to be experiencing such a phenomenon here and now did not seem to be possible.

"I know it sounds crazy," 9S said, seeming to have reached the same conclusion that she had. "But once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, however unlikely, must be the truth. Which means that we are either experiencing an extremely elaborate simulation…or we have somehow found ourselves caught in the first actual documented case of temporal recursion in recorded history."

2B nodded, following his reasoning. "And in either scenario, the end goal is the same: find a way out."

"And survive long enough to do so," 9S added. "I have no idea why or how this could be happening, nor do I have any way of safely testing my hypothesis without self-destructing, so until circumstances force our hand, the safest strategy is still to assume that the time-loop won't happen again, and proceed as though we still have only one shot at this."

2B hummed in agreement. Given what they had seen so far, it made sense to proceed with caution. She would have said more, but she was busy shooting down flying machines left and right, swerving to dodge energy balls that loomed ominously towards her, until another long-range laser blast from the factory took out their squad captain.

"1D down," she reported to YoRHa command. "Assuming captain's duties."

She reconfigured her flight unit to leadership colors, before she once again moved to engage the next wave of machines.

"With that in mind," 9S continued, oblivious to the plight of the dying androids on 2B's end, "I think our best bet at this point is to engage the goliath directly."

2B furrowed her brow, trying to focus on fighting while she did everything she could not to let her nerves fray at the edges. She had to admit, despite the casualty count the machines were inflicting on their forces with the goliath's long-range laser weapon, those enemies who flew in to intercept her pursuit were barely putting a scratch on her flight unit. She double checked her equipment loadout and found every piece of her equipment was once again fully upgraded, as she had been prior to her deployment before the fall of YoRHa.

It made no logical sense. Had she been this well-equipped during this mission originally, would she have fared any better? Was it worth taking the risk to find out?

What alternative did they have?

As she reconfigured her flight until into mobile configuration, she began idly shooting machines out of the sky. In another twenty seconds or so, her last wingman would be shot down, effectively leaving her to her own devices.

"9S…" she said slowly. "We may or may not survive a direct confrontation with the goliath. But our chances of survival are much more optimistic if we desert the mission and make a run for it."

She could practically sense 9S' unease at her suggestion. If she had been given such a choice prior to the fall of YoRHa, she would have found the idea completely ludicrous herself. She was one of the fiercest and most capable combat models of her generation, and her devotion to YoRHa and everything it stood for had been absolute.

But so much had changed since then. She had changed. And a big part of that change was the circumstances which had held her to such rigid guidelines in the first place. After what 9S had revealed he had learned in the machine tower in her absence, all bets were off. She knew that there were no humans left to save. YoRHa was doomed, one way or another, and quite possibly both of them along with it. Her mission as a YoRHa combat android had been rendered unachievable by circumstances so utterly beyond her control that it was laughable. Everything that she had been striving for, the sense of duty that had been her only solace in the face of the eternal struggle to which she was committed, the very mandate for that dedication - she now knew that it was not only imminently ill-fated but also absurdly meaningless. Every doctrine she had ever followed, including the wall that she had placed around her emotions, served no purpose now.

What reason, then, did she have to remain loyal to YoRHa when every fiber of her being was commanding her to go against that programing, reject YoRHa command, and for her and 9S to live out the rest of their lives as far away from their reach as they could manage?

The only reason she could think of, she realized, was that abandoning YoRHa would also be going against 9S' wishes.

"We can't do that, 2B," 9S protested. "What about the rest of YoRHa? The other androids? Don't they deserve a second chance too? I won't just run away and let them suffer when there's something we could do to prevent it!"

It was pointless to argue the issue, 2B realized. 9S was just as stubborn as she was, in his own way. And she couldn't very well reject his wishes and still call him her partner. Besides which…the part of him that cared for others was a large part of what endeared him to her in the first place.

"Very well," she conceded, watching in vain despair as the wreckage of her fifth and final wingman disintegrated into dust in the wake of the powerful long-range laser weapon.

She switched her comm back to YoRHa command to report her status.

"2B to Operator 6O," she said. "All allied units down. The operation is compromised. Awaiting further orders."

Her operator confirmed her orders to rendezvous with 9S and 2B switched off the comm and altered course. When she had been on this mission the first time around, all she had to go on had been her original target heading, but now her combat data included a nearly full schematic of the facility (or at least all the parts she had covered over the course of her following missions), which also included the precise coordinates for where the goliath-class machine had first appeared.

The wild card in this equation, however, would be the other three.

"9S," she said, resignation in her voice. "I'm en route to your position. Stay where you are, and we'll make our way to the goliath after we rendezvous."

"…Roger that," 9S confirmed after a moment's hesitation.

As 2B made her way around the perimeter of the facility, she allowed her Pod to handle most of the live fire while she reviewed her recorded combat data from her previous encounters with the goliath class machines.

In all the skirmishes she'd had with the goliath, the machine seemed to have a tendency to "play dead" as it were. On several occasions, it had appeared to completely shut down - possibly as a tactical maneuver, but more likely due to actual hardware malfunctions as a result of being composed of a large number of outmoded or overused parts from a bygone era. Whatever the reason, it had an irritating tendency to reactivate and continue attacking even after appearing defeated. In some cases, it would even follow this up by self-destructing, releasing a blast capable of carving out a sizeable chunk of the landscape. And even then, one goliath had remained functional enough to communicate with them afterwards, even with its chassis broken and inert. If anything could be said for the behemoth machines, it was that they were resilient beyond reason.

They were also most dangerous at close range. While the goliath's long-range laser weapon had taken out her entire team, based on 2B's combat data, this laser was relatively easy to dodge at medium to close range. The goliath also boasted a missile array on top of its standard energy weaponry, but again, those were relatively easy to dodge, not to mention capable of being hacked. But by far the goliath's most devastating weapons were its sawblade-like excavator claws. One good hit from one of these claws had been enough to knock 9S right out of his flight unit and leave him crippled and unable to fight, which had been what had inexorably turned the tide of their previous battle.

This meant that mid-to-long ranged combat would be ideal for their inevitable encounter. Fortunately, her Pod seemed to retain all of its programs and modes, including its machine gun, laser and homing missile functions. She briefly cycled through each mode, watching the various machines in her path fall in droves as she tested out each function in turn on the autonomous flying pests. While the seemingly endless swarms of flying machines posed little threat to her on her flight, they did make for excellent target practice. Before long, 2B was satisfied that her full suite of ranged weaponry was functioning at optimal capacity.

A thought occurred to her as she reviewed the rest of her Pod's combat functions, from hammer, blade, spear, mirage and several others.

"Pod," she queried as she moved on to review her skill chips. "When exactly did you acquire all of these combat programs?"

Pod 042 hesitated as it reviewed its databanks.

"No data found," it replied simply.

2B frowned but didn't press the issue. Most of the Pod programs had come from one of the shops at the resistance camp, which was of course a location that they had yet to visit. No sense frying the poor little droid's limited logical processing. It was strange though, that despite being seemingly unaware of the time loop in which they now found themselves, her Pod couldn't even account for its own field equipment.

Not that she was in much better of a position herself.

Filing that nugget of info away to review with 9S at a later time, 2B decreased her velocity as his flight unit came into view.

"9S," she called out to him. "I've locked onto the coordinates of the goliath's previous appearance. I recommend relying as much on long-range combat as possible, and do not assume the target is immobilized until completely destroyed."

"Good plan," 9S commented. "Why don't I focus on crowd control to deal with any machine reinforcements that show up? That way you can concentrate as much fire as possible on the goliath itself to take it offline. With any luck, I'll also be able to hack into the goliath like last time and take it out faster."

"Roger that," 2B said apprehensively as the two units began flying in tandem.

It seemed like a sound strategy, 2B reflected as the two of them began shooting down more flying machines as they made their way to the western side of the factory. They were both as well equipped as they could reasonably expect to ever be under these conditions, and despite not having any backup from YoRHa to speak of, they at least had one additional flight unit compared to their previous encounter, which should increase their odds of success. Still, 2B was not optimistic about their chances, given the circumstances, and she found herself yearning for alternatives.

9S had attempted to destroy the factory during their first recurrence of the time loop, which had ended poorly to say the least. While the addition of a second flight unit might make that plan more survivable this time around, 2B wasn't terribly keen on trying to outrun another reactor meltdown like that a second time. She could still feel the intense heat on her skin from the explosion, and was none too keen on experiencing that again, even if they ultimately survived due to the time loop. It wasn't that she was afraid necessarily, but as a combat model, she was not in the habit of plunging into losing battles. The prospect was not completely out of the question, but their escape window was far too narrow, even with both of them in the air, which did not exactly make for an ideal Plan A. With that idea on the shelf for now, she had to admit, taking on the goliath did seem like the most direct way to complete this mission with the highest chance of survival.

And yet…something nagged at the back of her mind. This whole time loop seemed far too contrived. Why this mission in particular? A lot of strange things had occurred during her and 9S' tour together, and while this mission had been a particularly close call, it barely compared to the oddities she and 9S had encountered later on, nor did it tie in directly to any of those subsequent peculiarities beyond sharing neighboring geography. But if it was just a matter of proximity, then why didn't the time loop seem to begin much earlier when 9S had scouted the terrain beforehand? Or was the event tied to a completely unknown occurrence that had transpired unbeknownst to either of them? But even if it was, why was it happening to both of them and nobody else? And how was their field equipment making it back through the time loop with them?

There were just too many unknowns. They needed more time, ironically enough, to gather data and consider the full ramifications of what was occurring here. While attacking the goliath was the best plan under the assumption that the two of them must continue to bow to YoRHa's will, if they took YoRHa out of the equation, the smartest plan really was simply to run. This would yield them the benefit of time to both analyze the nuances of this time loop and formulate a plan for how to best deal with it. It would also allow them to put distance between themselves and anyone else on the surface who was not aware of the time loop to avoid provoking suspicion. While the two of them were still on assignment, however, they were operating under YoRHa's watchful eye, all of whom, including the Commander herself, were presumably completely oblivious to the time loop.

Although that begged the obvious question: what if someone else in YoRHa did know about the time loop? What if the Commander herself knew? The Commander always seemed to know more than she let on and was privy to many secrets that were well above her or 9S' clearance level. Like 9S had said, one possibility was that this was not actually a time loop at all, but rather an elaborate simulation. Just because such a simulation would require an immense amount of processing power did not preclude it from existing. If the simulation scenario turned out to be the case, could YoRHa itself be responsible for it?

They would have no way of knowing unless they confronted the Commander directly. And doing so upon the completion of the mission was the only way to reach her with any hope that she would grant them an audience with any level of open-mindedness. If they fled the field and returned to the bunker having failed the mission, she and 9S would first be subject to a full probation, and any abnormalities discovered in their programming or their report would be suspect. And she could hardly be certain that there were no such abnormalities to be discovered under the circumstances, to say nothing of how her and 9S' report would sound if the Commander wasn't aware of the time loop.

She was forced to concede that 9S was probably correct – their best shot at figuring out this mystery was taking out the goliath. But 9S was also correct, in that there was no way to guarantee with a hundred percent certainty that the time loop would trigger a second time should they fail. 9S' plan only made sense under the assumption that it might not happen again. In the optimistic scenario that it would not only happen again but continue to do so indefinitely, however, then it was possible that the two of them could simply reset the time loop over and over again. In that case, they could approach this mission from as many angles as they wished, and keep trying as many times as it took, gathering combat data with each recursion, until they managed to find a way out.

2B was not overly encouraged by this prospect, truth be told.

"We're nearing the goliath's coordinates," 9S reported, his flight unit transforming into its mobile configuration.

2B wordlessly mirrored his actions, and the two of them hovered just outside the abandoned factory's western entrance, scanning the chassis of what they both knew to be the goliath class Engels unit. From their vantage point, it did not look like anything more than a large, sturdy piece of construction equipment – which, for all they knew, was precisely what it had been before the machines had inducted the goliath into their services. 9S knew more about the intricacies of the machines themselves, but from what 2B understood, most had simply cobbled their bodies together from what parts were readily available at hand. Crude, rudimentary, but functional if inelegant – that was what the machines were. And the goliaths were the ultimate expression of this philosophy.

It did not take long for their proximity to trigger the goliath's defense systems.

"Look out!" 9S cautioned. "It's waking up!"

A wave of missiles erupted from the exterior of the goliath, an effort to push back the aerial attackers while its two massive excavation claws were lifted into place by the crane system on either side of its chassis. Their arrival had clearly caught the goliath off-guard, and the ensuing counter-attack was proportioned accordingly – well over a hundred missiles were suddenly airborne and locked onto the two YoRHa flight units. The initial wave of explosives could have crippled half of 2B's entire squadron had they been present.

Fortunately, 2B and 9S both operating at maximum capacity, and fully outfitted with every weapon system they had acquired in their previous missions together. Both Ho229s unleashed a heavy barrage of weapon fire of their own, concentric rings of energy spreading out from their center of mass, splaying out in a conflagration of fire to meet the oncoming missile barrage, wiping nearly every one of them out of the sky.

A few well-placed tail-strikes combined with the sustained turret fire from their main guns was enough to remove the goliath's pre-emptive missile strike from the equation. The attack still had its intended effect, however – the massive Engels unit had fully assembled, its torso swiveling around to face the oncoming YoRHa units. Its eyes lit up menacingly amidst a wreath of sparks and flame belching from smokestacks over its head.

"Kill…" a deep resonant voice came from somewhere deep within the goliath, a noise somehow generated by grinding gears and pistons within its machinery that seemed to shake the entire factory. "Kill…Kill…"

2B had faced this same goliath once before, and several others of its class besides. But that noise created from within the bowels of the colossal machine still unnerved her. As a combat model, she was programmed with very specific behavioral protocols centered around her fear response sub-routines. It was not that she felt no fear – fear was an integral part of any entity with both free will and any amount of self-preservation built into their system. But if there was one thing she was good at, it was tapping into this fear and channeling it into a powerful form of motivation that allowed her to fight harder and longer.

Of course, another behavioral protocol that came with her fear response was in quickly determining when it was wise to flee. And while she and 9S were doubtlessly a match for this thing, she could not suppress the lingering urge in the back of her mind to flee from this battle.

She ignored it and pressed on.

"Engaging the enemy," she announced, opening fire with her flight unit's main weapons as her heavy barrage program recharged.

"Beginning hack!" 9S confirmed, launching a probe at the Engels unit.

2B tapped into their shared network and saw a circular progress bar appear on her visor's HUD, slowly ticking up in a clockwise direction as 9S maintained his hacking procedure. It was going slower than she would have expected, but then the goliath was a large machine with many outdated parts, and 9S probably had to work through numerous compatibility channels just to get in.

No matter, 2B thought. Her job was to provide cover fire for 9S while dealing as much damage as possible to the enemy unit, which is something she was more than capable of doing.

"Alert: Incoming enemy fire," Pod 042 announced.

2B took her flight unit into a nimble roll as she dodged past the oncoming balls of pink and purple energy, her unit's melee weapon making quick work of any of the stragglers that slipped through her weapon fire.

The goliath reared back with one of its arms and sent a whirling sawblade at least ten times the size of her flight unit hurdling at her with all its might. 2B twisted past it, slashing at its arm with her unit's melee weapon, taking chunks out of its arm as excavator shovels flew off the edge of the sawblade as it took damage.

Her heavy barrage weapon finally finished charging, and she unleashed a storm of turret fire on the massive machine, catching it completely blindsided. The waters beneath its feet sprayed out in all directions as it tumbled back, and the concrete foundation of the factory crumbled as its colossal weight was forced into the wall.

"Hacking complete!" 9S announced as the circular progress bar finally finished ticking down, keeping his flight unit to the sidelines, a probe latched onto the massive machine. "I'm going in!"

2B pursed her lips. This was going far too well. While she had held her own during her last encounter with the machine, now the goliath seemed to be barely putting up a fight. She knew that all around them, at least three other goliaths were waiting to spring up from the water. While she was confident that they could take them in a fair fight, she could not be certain where or when they would strike, whether they would attack all at once or in staggered lines, or if there were not far more of them lurking just beneath the waves. If her experience fighting alongside 9S had taught her anything, it's that nothing was ever easy.

When 9S finally reported back, this feeling only grew.

"2B! I've managed to override the goliath's primary control system!" he called out in excitement. "Not just the arm – I've got control over its whole body!"

2B stopped firing as she saw the Engels' red eyes fade to a calm pale white light, lowering its arms and ceasing its endless barrage of projectiles. A sudden eerie silence seemed to fill the air, the echoes of the carnage still resonating off in the distance, and 2B was left wondering just what this small victory would ultimately cost them.

"You've taken control of the goliath?" 2B asked in astonishment, glancing back at 9S' flight unit as it hovered precariously off to the side. Despite the sudden shift in power between themselves and the machine, 2B still felt that 9S looked extremely vulnerable in his current state, especially when compared to the giant mech standing over them both.

"Yeah!" 9S said, voice filled with exhilaration over the comms as the goliath took a tentative step forward, testing its footing as it displaced several metric tons of water in a single stride. "I guess my hacking abilities have improved more than I expected! And this machine…it's incredible, 2B! Deceptively simple in its design, yet structured almost like a small city operating within a single framework! It's internal network has a nearly limitless potential for adaptability and improvement! At its core, this thing is just another machine, like all the rest, but taken to the most extreme expression of physical interfacing!"

2B wrinkled her nose, letting her displeasure creep into her voice. "You almost sound like you admire the thing."

"Well, I mean…I'm a scout unit," 9S said sheepishly. "It's in my nature to be curious about these things. I'll tell you though, it's a good thing YoRHa's shutting these things down. I can't imagine what the machines could do to us if they had an entire army of these goliaths. The suite of functions on this thing is nearly astronomical! It even has sensors that reach as far as..."

9S trailed off.

"Uh-oh…"

"What is it?" 2B demanded. There was another shoe about to be dropped here, she just knew it.

"Looks like my hack triggered some sort of alarm," 9S said, as his captured Engels unit turned to face out to sea. "The other goliaths just woke up! And they're not alone…"

2B ground her teeth, keeping pace with the goliath as she turned her flight unit to face the oncoming threat. She just knew it wouldn't be as easy as capturing a goliath and walking out of there!

"Alert!" Pod 042 notified her. "Multiple hostiles inbound."

2B watched, hopes dwindling, as the three goliaths in the surrounding waters emerged from all around them, their eyes red with aggression, smokestacks billowing putrid smoke.

"Kill…kill…kill…" came the sound of their voices, a hollow emanating echo of the mantra which had guided their steel bones for centuries.

Then 2B saw what had truly given 9S pause.

More flying machines than 2B had ever seen. Some big, with multi-pronged limbs and pylons, others tiny, but all of them drifting towards their captured goliath, and all of them piloted by a malevolent machine with glowing red eyes.

"All machine life forms in a ten-kilometer radius have been alerted to our presence!" 9S cried out in alarm. "We've just become the highest priority target to every machine in the area! All local enemy activity is now concentrated on our location! And there are even more goliaths en route to the factory! ETA five minutes and thirteen seconds!"

2B bit her lip. She had been confident in their odds if it had just been the three goliaths, but with wave after wave of machines dividing their attention, they wouldn't be getting out of this situation anytime soon. And if there were still more goliaths coming, it wouldn't matter if they'd taken control of one of the goliaths themselves – sooner or later, they would be overwhelmed.

"Let's not waste any time then!" 2B said, as she opened fire on the approaching vanguard.

"Right behind you!" 9S hollered, his goliath raising an arm and obliterating a swathe of flying machines, their flying balls of energy barely even singing the armor of the massive Engels unit.

2B got to work clearing a path for 9S' captured enemy unit. For every machine she and 9S took out with turret fire and sawblade claws, a dozen more seemed to arrive to pepper the behemoth's chassis with energy fire. 9S' hijacked mech swung its arms again and again, each arc sweeping away machines by the dozen. One by one, the machines fell, their rusty bodies littering the water below, but still more came. 2B was doing everything she could to empty the skies, but there was just no end to the flying machines.

By the time she saw 9S' stolen Engels unit reach the first enemy goliath, the machines already had them surrounded. The flying machines weren't much of a threat to 9S' hijacked mech, but 2B still had to avoid them at the very least. As she pirouetted through enemy fire, she found herself suddenly remarking at how slow their goliath appeared to be moving now that it was fighting on their side. Intellectually she knew its speed had neither increased nor decreased since they had been fighting it - it was only a matter of perspective. While its moves had been telegraphed, the speed and ferocity of a massive buzz-saw coming at her at full force had seemed a lot more intimidating than it did when she watched the same weapon swing from afar.

9S squared his captured unit off with the first oncoming mech. It would have been more than an even match, had the goliaths been fighting one on one. 9S had better combat training and reaction times than the enemy by far. But the slow wind-up and follow-through of a full swing of the goliath's arms still took him several seconds to execute, and it was three-on-one! 2B unleashed a full barrage into one of the other attacking Engels' units, attempting to draw its attention away from 9S' unit. As soon as she took her attention off the swarm, however, the number of flying machines only continued to grow, peppering the air with slow, ominous energy fire, hampering her movements.

She could only focus on one thing a time! And while her diversion of the second enemy goliath allowed 9S to land a clean blow across the first one's flank, the third landed an attack broadside on his own, crushing steel girders, severing suspension cables and causing the left arm to start smoking. As 9S maneuvered his ensnared machine to bash at the third goliath, the first began to wind up an attack of its own. And as 2B moved to spray turret fire at the first goliath in an effort to fend it off, the second began to attack 9S' unit all over again.

They just couldn't counter all of them at once! Another few hits like the one their captured mech had just sustained, and they would lose their only advantage! This was not a battle they could win!

"9S!" 2B shouted. "We have to retreat! Can you activate that thing's self-destruct mechanism?"

"I think so, 2B!" 9S agreed without argument. "Hold on, I – AHHH!"

"Alert!" her Pod sounded. "Unit 9S has taken significant damage!"

2B felt her core temperature drop as she saw their captured Engels suddenly go limp. She cast her eyes about frantically, searching for possible threats. What had happened? She hadn't seen their unit take any other major hits. Why would it just malfunction like this?

Then she realized what she'd missed. Turning her flight unit, she spotted 9S's own flight unit belching smoke as energy balls slammed into him again and again! He was surrounded by at least fifty flying machines, all of them converging on him while he had been controlling the goliath.

"9S!" 2B cried in alarm.

She cursed herself as she blasted towards him, unloading a flurry of turret fire into the surrounding enemies. 9S' body and his flight unit had been defenseless this whole time! In the heat of battle, she had completely overlooked the fact that he was still a target! And now all the flying machines in the vicinity were swarming him! She may as well have handed him over to the machines on a silver platter!

"Get away from him!" she screamed.

With another heavy barrage, 2B managed to take out the machines targeting 9S' flight unit, but the damage had already been done. The dust cleared, 2B could see that the Ho229 unit he was in was barely staying in the air, its engines sputtering and firing intermittently, its chassis sparking and crumpled.

"9S!" she hollered as she approached him. "Are you alright!?"

"I…I think so, 2B," 9S said shakily from the smoking aerial mech. "Thanks for the – 2B, look out!"

2B spun her mech around just a hair too late to dodge the sawblade that came sailing towards her. The goliath that 9S had been controlling was seemingly back under enemy control and had turned to attack them. Upon later reflection, 2B thought she might have actually been able to dodge the attack if she had truly intended to, but doing so would have only allowed 9S to take the full force of the strike. In the split second before the attack hit, something in the back of her mind compelled her to take the hit for him in the off chance he might make it out.

As it turned, however, it made no difference. The attack hit both of them head on, crumpling 9S' already foundering flight unit beneath her own, the two flying machines sandwiched together as the massive piece of construction equipment connected, slamming into them with the force of a high yield explosive device, and sending them both hurdling back towards the factory wall.

BAM-BAM!

The two mechs crumpled like tin cans as they both slammed into the steel and concrete wall, sparks flying as their wings ripped into pieces that fell from their hulls like wilting autumn leaves. And as gravity eventually took over, the two smoldering hunks of metal slowly began tumbling to the ground below, their pilots jerking fruitlessly at their controls.

"Alert: Heavy damage to Ho229 flight unit!" Pod 042 reported, its words all jumbling together. "Flight control systems abandoned – Standard comm systems down – Laser comm activated – Confirming terrain: long range – Transferring FCS control – Transferring IMU control – Activating FFCS – Confirming 2B black box signal – Activating NFCS – Initiating 2B vitals recheck sequence – Initiating short-wave radio-wave camouflage…"

"Eject!" 2B commanded in aggravation amidst her Pod's cacophony of error reports, her cockpit refusing to open as the ground rose to meet her. "Eject!"

Neither flight unit seemed willing to cooperate as they both tumbled over two hundred feet, before slamming into the ground with a devastating crunch. The impact splintered the wrecked suits into pieces, sending the two YoRHa androids spiraling away along with bits of debris. 2B's vision suddenly lost all color as something in her visual center came loose from the impact, before the world around her spun again as she hit the ground once more, and another loud crumph covered the left edge of her vision with static - one of her eyes had been crushed beyond use - as she bounced and tumbled across the concrete.

When 2B's vision finally stopped spinning, she looked down and found one of her legs missing at the knee, her left arm bent backward at an odd angle, and smoke leaking from several of her joints. As she threw a glance up at 9S, he appeared to be in no better shape than her, an arm and a leg missing, the other two limbs crippled and broken.

"Nnng…9S…" she muttered, trying to right herself, her broken body refusing to cooperate.

2B let out an aggravated growl as she crawled on crippled limbs to where the battered scout unit lay collapsed in a heap, trembling all the way as the enemy continued to converge all around them.

"Kill…kill…kill…"

The oppressive voice of all four goliaths filled the air above them as they approached, the sky overhead filling with more flying machines than the two of them had ever faced before. Whatever 9S had done during the hacking process, he had evidently poked the hornets' nest, and they had quite a sting.

When 2B finally reached the ruined remains of her partner, she tried to wrap her damaged hands around him.

"2…2B…" 9S gasped in response, his neck servo twitching awkwardly, unable to turn all the way to look at her.

2B tried to take his face in her hands, but her arms were barely cooperating with her. She settled for draping her forearms across his body she pulled him closer, her teeth gritted in anguish.

It was not precisely pain that she felt - while their android bodies could technically withstand and recover from far worse amounts of damage than this, there was no torture in the world that compared to the shame and humiliation a YoRHa android felt after being brought so low by their enemies. Especially knowing that now, even the slowest, clumsiest and puniest of machines could take their sweet time in finishing them off.

And so the two broken YoRHa androids lay together in shared suffering as they watched their doom approach them.

"Well…" 9S gasped painfully. "We certainly managed to…botch that attempt completely…"

"Yeah…" 2B let out a pained and withered laugh in agreement as four massive sets of malevolent red eyes bore down on them.

"Kill…kill…kill…" the voices of the goliaths were like a mantra of death as they lumbered ever closer.

"Looks like…we're not making it out of this one…" 9S admitted, humorlessly. "How do you…want to end this, 2B? Use our…black boxes…like before? Or just…let them finish us?"

2B hesitated. If she had to go out under normal circumstances, she would have chosen the self-destruct option every time. But given the uncertainty of their situation with the time loop, there was no guarantee that destroying their black boxes would result in another recurrence. Then again, leaving their fate to the machines was hardly a guarantee either. Many YoRHa androids too weak to fight back were not necessarily destroyed, but merely infected with a logic virus in order to turn them against YoRHa. If there was any hope of another recursion in this time loop, it would almost certainly not occur should the two of them be taken alive.

In the end, however, logic wasn't what dictated her decision. Underneath it all, she was a YoRHa android, through and through. And if it was within her power, she would never let herself succumb to an enemy without a fight.

Withdrawing her black box from her chest, 2B managed a shaky smile. "This way…always…"

9S nodded, a relieved look over his face. "Yeah…you're right…"

He withdrew his own black box, his eyebrow furrowed in tension as their enemies closed in around them.

"I managed to…upload our consciousness data to the bunker this time…just in case…" he assured her.

2B nodded. She doubted it would make a difference in their current predicament. Nothing could be certain. Whether the time loop had been a one-time thing, if it was dependent on the manner in which they died, which of them died first, or if this was all just a great big simulation, she could not speculate. All she knew for certain was that nothing was certain.

Actually, no – there was something she did know for certain. Even as the four Engels units raised their saw-blade claws to strike the ground where she and her partner lay, their internal machinery and reactor turbines each growling in ferocious triumph, she still knew one thing to be true: that if there was anyone with whom she could choose to be trapped in a time loop such as this, she would have rather it be 9S than anyone else in the world.

"See you…on the other side…9S…" 2B breathed, tapping her black box to his.

The goliaths brought their excavator claws down, before the world suddenly became filled with light.

And just as suddenly, a voice came sounding over 2B's comm frequency.

"This is Command. YoRHa squadron, come in…"


A/N: Given how each of these chapters is inevitably going to end at this rate, I might as well have called this fic "A Million Ways to Die in NieR: Automata." Not that endings F through Z weren't all basically just that anyway.

There's something eerie about describing a character experiencing their own body's destruction on as irreversible a level as this fic has required thus far. Even more so because they're androids, and so are capable to taking more punishment than a regular human character might. I promise you all, I didn't set out to write a torture-porn fic. I usually prefer to traumatize my characters psychologically, and not physically.

I'm sure though that after a few chapters of this, the point will have been driven home, and the chapter endings will involve a lot less visceral description. Once the whole "time loop" thing becomes more and more apparent, the "reset button" will become much more of a source of frustration and irritation than a source of physical trauma. Which of course brings with it its own host of psychological luggage that will pile up before long.

Stay tuned.