End of All Meaning
Chapter XI: The End
Everything she knew was destined to end. She had been perceptually trapped in a never-ending spiral of life and death. After everything she had been through, she realized this wasn't a curse, or some kind of punishment, it was just life. There was no point of thinking about the god who forced them into this puzzle, for they had been long dead, just like everything before them, and everything that had followed after.
The platform she was on made its ascent into the air, she didn't know how fast she was going, or even how far she would go, but she could feel the moisture of lightly-formed clouds pass over her body, and the chill in the air as the wind swept over her. How the platform was flying up into the sky like this, she didn't know, and she didn't care. It didn't matter, eventually it would stop, most likely machines would ambush her, and she would kill them all, because that was how it was supposed to go. Aerial machines suddenly swarmed the area around her, the units themselves deceptively fast, easily able to catch up with the platform, each of them carrying a machine that were quickly dispatched and dropped onto the platform, surrounding her from all sides. They all rushed her, one of them coming so very close to 2B, but she side-stepped the blow and quickly cleaved its arm off, and before it could react she jumped into the air and kicked it with enough force that it was sent flying into several other machines, toppling them over into a straggling pile.
2B was on them, bringing her sword down on them. Once, twice, five times in total, her grunts of exertion becoming more frantic and frustrated with each blow, hacking them to pieces, sending parts and remains flying in a shower of sparks and oil. She was quick with her work, leaving behind scrap as she jumped to the closest machines and continued her work, destroying the enemy, killing the machines as they came at her. Why shouldn't they die? This was how it was supposed to be. Androids killing machines until neither one had the strength to go on, until their lives ended.
"Just die already!" she screamed, cutting the head of a machine in half. She didn't like killing, but what as the point in that anymore? Why feel apprehension in taking their lives when they were meant to die anyway? When how she felt on this didn't matter? It would have been better to not feel anything at all, but despite this, she found herself angry, enraged, and the only thing she could do about these emotions bursting out from inside her was to take them out on anything and everything around her. All that she had known had been torn out from under her, all her beliefs of what her life meant shown to her in such a cruel manner.
She'll kill them all. Androids. Machines. A2. She may have had only one arm, and one eye left to her, but that would not get in her way.
Because why not? She was an Executioner. Designed to be a murderer. Maybe if the humans were still alive, she would want to kill them too.
The machines' numbers soon began to thin out, leaving her with a few stragglers, but like everything else they died screaming.
She saw something in the clouds, a large and dark shape that only grew larger by the second. 2B steadied herself as it came into view, a large machine, a giant sphere that looked like the one she fought underneath the factory, suddenly crashed onto the platform, causing it to violently shake, and had 2B not stabbed her sword into the ground, as a means to keep herself anchored securely onto the terrain had settled down.
Staring at her, with a single glowing red eye, was a giant sphere-like machine, its four long and pointed legs holding tightly onto the platform, its immense weight seeming to have no affect on the rapid ascent of the platform.
Two long panels came out of it, each one bursting with electrical surges, while to the sides of the platform, a dozen long, segmented tendrils loomed over her, spiked rings ended in a large turrets and spinning drills.
"I believed you. I believed you. I beLIEved you…" the machine bellowed as it swung it charged appendages, while the tendrils on either side of her began to open fire. She had to be quick, dancing around the shots, avoiding the crushing blows, but still feeling the air crackle and spark at they passed on by her.
"Become a god, become a god, become a god, who has become?"
Why is it asking this? You can't become a god. The machines in the factory felt the same thing, but all they did was kill themselves. It was all pointless, to try and imitate either the aliens or human when they were long dead.
"Take their… Take their lives… Take their…" it continued, even though she had already sliced one of the tendrils down, its length falling and vanishing into the passing clouds below.
"Become as gods! As god! As gods! …as gods!"
Stop talking about gods, she wanted to scream. They can't help you, they could never help anyone. Not not, not ever.
"Lose what is precious… Lost… Destroyed…"
The machines had nothing precious, only their lives. That was all they could lose, but there was no purpose to them dying to her. Or her dying to them.
"So we destroyed you too…"
Her grip tightened around on her sword as she dived toward the machine, jumping over the its electrical weapon and slashing it down the front, just to the side of the eye. 2B wanted it to shut up, to stop talking and let her kill it, because someone had to pay for everything that had happened to her. It lost its grip as a result of her strike, and fell from the platform, the sparks from its weapons and the damage she had dealt it, trailing its course as it fell into the clouds below.
The remaining tendrils lunged at her, fired at her, but they were quickly killed, torn down, ripped apart, and torn to pieces, but before she could even land on the ground, the platform was suddenly bombarded by a hoard of red bullet orbs. Looking up, she saw that the orb machine had taken flight, circling around her, far out of her reach, and she was forced to dodge around them as they rained down on her.
"Look… at the starts… Sing… a… song… Dedicate… now…"
She didn't know what kind of nonsense it was talking about. Was there even a point in trying to understand anymore?
"We are machines. You are androids. Mutual enemies… Doomed to fight."
At least it got that, at least it understood that part. Android. Machine. There had never been hope for anyone on either side, they had all been doomed to forever fight and kill one another, and the idea of peace would forever allude them.
"Why do you live?"
She didn't know. Why was she even alive? She should have been dead a dozen times over since The Bunker exploded. Did she even want to live now?
"We do we exist?"
To kill one another. To fight. That was it, nothing else, to fight forever without end and to litter the planet with their dead. How many of those bodies were because of her? Back in the Soul Box, she had been told that she had killed more machines than any other single YoRHa android, but was that really true? At the time, she didn't know, but now? She'll believe it, why shouldn't she? It seemed like the kind of monstrous, heinous she thing would do.
"I see… light. The light. We will soar through the sky."
Wave after wave of bullets unleashed, and all she could do was not get hit, but how much longer before she could keep this up? Would it be long? Minutes? Maybe hours? How long could she even go on?
She didn't need to answer this, however, as the machine ceased in its constant fire, and rocketed downward, much faster than it had before, and crashed into the platform. It shook and rumbled, and 2B almost fell off, but it soon settled, the ground evening out and leaving them both back where they started. She raised her sword, ready to strike, when the machine single, unrelenting eye, flashed brightly.
"The core of humanity… is conflict," it rumbled, giving 2B pause, hesitation. Those words too familiar to her. "They fight. Steal. Kill. This is humanity's purest form!"
She took a step back from it, raising her sword defensively. "What are you-Why are you saying this?" Did Adam have a point in the end? Did he learn more about humans than anything she, or even YoRHa knew? Could they have really been that awful, that terrible? If they had been kind, or benevolent, would she be the person she was? Could she have been better, or would that never been a possibility to begin with?
"He won't look my way. He won't look my way. Somebody… please look my way."
It didn't matter. It didn't matter! Whatever the human had been like, whatever the aliens had been like, androids and machines were left behind and they all suffered for them. They hurt and killed one another, they suffered never-ending, whatever desires they had secondary at best, and mostly unrealized. Impossible to realize.
"This forest… will be our home. We will become… a family."
Why start now? They were all destined to die for the scrap heap, to be thrown away, so why even attempt to try and entertain any of those fleeting dreams? She just wanted it to all stop, for everything to stop reminding her of everything that was wrong with this world, Why wouldn't they stop?
"Mother. Mother. Mother. It is so cold down here. I'm so alone. Please… Mother…"
"Why are you doing this?" she growled, her hand shaking in the built-up fury inside her. "Are you trying to make me spare you? Are you trying to make me sympathetic? We both know, that no matter how hard we try, there's no point in trying understand one another, and even if we did…?"
The machine said nothing, it only stared at her, unmoving as its eye glowing a deep red.
"Brother… Brother… Why did you… kill my brother?"
Standing there, in the pit, she thought about what he said, trying to not think about it, because for that single moment, she understood what he was going through, but she couldn't let this keep going she had to finish this she had to end this she had to kill him and get back to-
2B roared and charged at the machine, but before her sword cut cut deeply into its face, it backed away from her. She had not noticed that the platform had stopped in its rise through the sky inside The Tower, and had since stationed itself to a wall, and a large door that allowed the machine to quickly backtrack from her, but even so, she still chased after it.
"Get over here!" she screamed, wishing she still had Pod 042 with her, so that she could use the Wire program to shorten the distance between them. The machine backed away, exiting soon into a large open space, and if 2B had been focusing on anything but the machine, she would have wondered if the bright light coming from above was the actual sun itself. Just how high was she? Was she close to the top? Had she possibly breached the atmosphere. It slid to a stop, sparks showering where its legs scrapped along the ground until it came to a stop, leaving it vulnerable to her attack, so she rushed it, sword raised in hand-
An explosion rang through the air, which caused her to slide to a stop and look in the direction of the noise, and in the distance she could see another machine, the same model as the one as she was fighting, was flying into into the sky, a trail of bullets blasting it from below. Looking down, 2B could see a YoRHa flight unit in pursuit of the machine, which then began to tumble down through the air towards where she and her own machine opponent where. It crashed down, colliding with enough force to shake the ground beneath her, and rolled its way to the other machine, and moments later the the flight unit crashed into the two of them, exploding into an inferno of sparks and shrapnel.
Seconds later, A2 landed on the ground, not far from where she was, Pods 042 and 153 floating by her side. When A2 looked away from the burning wreckage and to her, her eyes widened at the sight of 2B, her gaze trailing down to the burnt and mangled remains of her arm.
"Observation: Unit 2B has undergone severe damage since last encounter," said Pod 153.
"Yeah, no shit," A2 said, her voice far off, as though she was in disbelief.
2B said nothing in response, she had no real reason to talk to A2, and made no mention when Pod 042 returned to her side, and even though she should be feeling something positive to it coming back to her, she cannot muster anything of the like. She still felt hollow.
She wanted nothing more than to cut A2 down, but the groaning metal metal to her side told her that she would not be able to do that as the two machines recovered from their respective crashes and moved closer to one another. Ports on their sides opened up and they slammed into one another, and suddenly the two machines had joined together, becoming a single unit. As much as 2B wanted to end things here with A2, she couldn't do that with this machine around, and with a quick, side-glance to A2, there was a brief mutual understanding between them, and they both charged at the machine.
It swung at them with wide and sharp arms, unleashed burst of electricity that threatened to fry their circuits, it fired off missiles and let loose small mobile bombs at them. It was relentless in its continued assault on them, but despite the hostility she felt towards A2, as well as her own handicaps, the two of them had done well in fending off the machine's attacks, until eventually they had ended it, cutting it down until there was nothing left.
With the machine dead, it left only them, the two of them standing a fair distance away from one another.
2B gripped her sword tightly, just waiting for something on A2's side to prompt her to attack.
Eventually, A2 did say something.
"2B," she said, sounding far more tired than she had previously. "This tower is a giant cannon aimed at the servers on the moon. If this things goes off, than the rest of humanity's data will be lost."
All 2B could do was offer A2 a blank, uncertain expression. Why on Earth was that a concern for anyone? As far as 2B was concerned, all the data on humanity could be blasted away into the deepest reaches of space, it didn't deserve a place in this world, not after everything that had happened to her, to 9S.
"Humans are dead, A2," she said flatly. "They've been dead for thousands of years. Let the machines blow up the moon. I don't care."
"2B," A2 said, and 2B had trouble placing the look on her face. Conflicted? Confused? Maybe even afraid? It was impossible to tell.
"That's what YoRHa was for, you know," 2B continued, when A2 did not give her a reason at all. "We weren't built to fight the machines, our reasons for being built had nothing to do protecting humanity until they could return back to their home planet. We're here for the sake of morale," she bitterly spat. "Androids lived past humans, and when the aliens invaded, the androids found themselves on the losing end, and that's when they came up with Project YoRHa, to create an elite organization of top-end androids, for the purpose of protecting a newly discovered human colony on the moon, deep in cryostasis."
A2 remained silent, her eyes glancing off to the side, seemingly refusing to meet 2B's own eye.
"The machines' attack on The Bunker was no accident, it was by initial design!" Her voice was louder, shouting as she felt a spike of anger overcoming her. Let it. "When the time came and we gathered enough data, a back door in the server would open up and every single YoRHa unit would become infected a logic virus. Nobody knew about this, not even the Commander, even though she knew about the humans, but she was just as expendable as the rest of us. Then all that data would be used to make the next generation androids!"
That seemed to catch her attention.
"That's right, you said your squad was killed just for their data, right?" She was trembling. "Everything you went through, was used to make me, and everything I went through will just be used to make some other android, and then everything will just repeat itself all over again!" she shouted, hysterical. "It never would have ended! We would have fought forever, in a never-ending war, and no one would have ever known why! There was never any hope for us! We fought and died, and fought and died, for fucking nothing!" Her voice broke as she let out a strangled cry. "You. Your squad. The Commander. 6O and 21O. 9S." Oh god 9S. "Me… Everything I did…" Her voice started to fade, sounding ever so broken with every passing word. "Every time I killed someone, I always tried to tell myself that it would one day end, but it never did, it never would have. I… I…" She began to sob, uncaring as the tears worked down her cheek. "9S, he… I…"
She broke.
2B fell to her knees, her sword dropped to her side, forgotten, as 2B could not hold back her anguished cries.
"I killed him," she admitted. "I killed him so many times, and it was for nothing."
She was wrong. Her decisions were wrong. Her indecisiveness, her passiveness, cost her the one thing in her life that gave her hope for the future. She should have taken him away, run as far away from YoRHa as they possibly could and hope that they could how make a life for themselves, even if it meant spending the rest of that life constantly looking over their shoulders for an Executioner's blade poised for their necks.
2B was done, she had no desire to fight anymore, there was just nothing more to drive her on any further. A2 had won, she killed 9S, now there was nothing to stop her from killing 2B.
"Just get it over with," she said in the most pitiable tone she had ever muttered. "I just don't care anymore."
2B closed her remaining, non-mangled eye, bowed her head, and simply waited for the end to come.
Seconds passed, but she did not hear A2 come closer to her, did not hear her draw her sword, 9S' sword how fitting, and as far as she knew, she had made no effort to step away from where she had been standing, and opening her eye, she saw that she was right. A2 remained rooted where she stood, the gaze she had been giving her melancholic.
"I said get it over with," 2B growled. "Just… Just end it, please," she begged. Just please bring it all to a close.
But again, A2 did not want she wanted her to do, instead she slowly brought her eyes to 9S' sword in her had, looking it over for a long time, as though in contemplative thought.
Eventually, she did speak.
"Ever since you two came to the city, 9S wondered a lot about you, about why they would assign a Battler and Scanner on so many consecutive missions together, for so long," she said, sounding so wearied, spent. "Eventually, as he learned more about you, watching how you reacted to the things around you, he took a guess on who you were; that you were a Type-E, and Executioner. A YoRHa model designed to specifically kill other YoRHa units, and that one day, you would kill him."
2B flinched beneath A2's sight, shrinking down into herself as her shame was laid bare before her. 9S figured her out, he did that sometimes, though she never knew how far in advance he did. Maybe he found out before he went looking in The Bunker's servers, maybe as soon as they met. He was always able to read her better than she could him, and over the years she must have developed a hundred, small quirks and habits that gave her away in small, invisible ways that she would never notice. Sometimes he fought back, sometimes her let her kill him, and sometimes he killed himself. Call her a coward, a selfish coward, but it was easier to carry out her mission when he did not know what was coming. Easier to kill him from behind so he didn't have time to react, to accuse her of her crimes, of her treachery.
She wished 9S was still alive, if not just so he could kill her. That right should have been his, and his alone.
"But you know what?" A2 continued, unaware or uninterested if 2B gave her any responses. "Even when he knew your designation, it wasn't until you two killed Eve that he pieced it all together."
2B reluctantly turned back to A2. What could she say now?
"When his consciousness was inside the machine network, uploading to the machine bodies around you, he saw you kill him, he saw what it did to you. You wouldn't have cried like that if you didn't mean it."
It always ends like this, that's what she said as she cradled his corpse, the emotions she tried so hard to bury bursting forth. Even if he only lost an hour, the 9S who had fought that battle with her, who had come crashing down from the sky to rescue her, who defended Pascal's village with her, who aided her in their ferocious battle with Eve, would have been gone. But he survived, he was clever and managed to save himself, and he witnessed what became of her after each and every one of his deaths.
He knew more than he had ever had before.
"When I met 9S," A2 continued, and 2B found herself focused entirely on what she had to say. "He was already infected with the logic virus, there was nothing either one of us could have done to save him." She paused, leaving 2B in desperate need for her to finish, to know what had happened. "He asked me to kill him, because he knew what killing him once did to you, how much pain it caused you, and he knew that if you found him after he fully succumbed to the logic virus, that you would be forced to kill him again. He didn't want you to live on knowing you erased him from the world forever."
She should have known, from the moment she saw that smile of his back on the bridge, the same smile, so sad and understanding, that told her that he knew what was about to happen, and he let it happen anyway. All for her sake.
Her lips curled upward and a chuckle escaped from her, soon followed by another, until she was laughing loudly, her cackles echoing through the empty and still air. She never laughed like this, maybe she never laughed at all, why not there was never much to ever laugh about. A chuckle, maybe, but never laugh. Of course, of course! That's how he would have died, trying to save her from more pain, because that was what he did, no matter how many terrible things she did to him, how badly she hurt him, he would always put her before himself if he could. He did so at the Factory, even though he only knew her for an hour at best, and in a cruelly fitting end he would do the same just as they were freed at last, when no longer he had to die.
"Pod," she finally said, when the laughter died down. "Activate Anti-YoRHa subsystems, and prepare to release all the limiters on my body."
"Warning: Activating Anti-YoRHa subsystems and the release of the body's limiters will result in serious damage in your condition. Please retract order and reconsider-"
"I gave you an order, Pod, now just do it."
Pod 042 hesitated, but in the end it obeyed, and she felt those long-dormant systems and programs come to life in her body.
For years, 2B fought and died and killed, all in the vague hope that one day things could end, that she and 9S would be allowed to live their lives without YoRHa or the war looming over them, but she sees now that was never an option to begin with. Every day 2B hoped, she dreamed, that their pain, their suffering and anguish would one day pay off.
2B ran on stillborn dreams and fetid hopes.
2B wasted every chance she had at a peaceful life.
These systems had not been used in years, the systems were designed to make her more proficient in killing her fellow androids, she had stopped using them when the horrors of her crimes dawned on her. 9S deserved better than to be killed by some android who would only see him as their next mission, who would move on without ever giving him a second thought, who would never bother to remember him beyond what they needed to report back.
As terrible as this was, 2B decided she would kill him as his partner, as his companion, as his friend, as his...
2B needed to be the one to kill him.
She had no right to be 2B.
"There's no such thing as justice in this world," 2E said as she reached out and grabbed her sword off the ground and stood up. "But, if there's even the smallest molecule of it, somewhere in this vast and indifferent universe." Carefully, 2E reached up and grasped at her visor in her fingers and torn it off and over her head, tossing it to the side, and stared at A2 with her single, remaining eye. "Then I will use it to end this. For once, 9S will have justice for his death. Neither one of us are leaving this place A2."
"You don't want to do this, 2B," A2 said, with a small shake of her head, almost a plea.
2E raised Virtuous Contract and pointed it directly at A2. "Since when was want I wanted ever important?"
With great reluctance, A2 held up Cruel Oath.
At the top of this vast tower, the two androids prepared to fight a battle that would benefit neither of them in the end.
000
Please be well,
Mrfipp