As the three shadows behind Adam took form, A2 watched her stare ahead, eyes wide like never before, and could feel her shake and tremble in her grip.
She didn't actually know who these people were, but one thing she did recognize.
It was the face of the woman she loved plastered onto another with wavy white hair, that she had seen Robin look at the poster too many times to forget.
As many as the woman in question kept saying that, if she had A2's hair color she'd be her mother's exact clone.
And going by that reasoning, those other two must have been someone equally important. Robin did speak often about a professor, and about another friend of hers, though she never really disclosed many details about them.
But the older man did have the face of a teacher so did that mean that giant one was the other person? Whatever, size wasn't the main issue here, she faced big machines before.
Adam was planning to torture Robin with her own memories for his own amusement…
Like hell he was!
"You goddamn bastard!" she yelled after him, teeth bared in a snarl, as her hands tightened on Robin's shoulder, trying to bring her back to reality.
No such thing happened, as her eyes just were fixed on those people. She didn't even blink, it was almost too creepy to look at…
It was not an expression she'd ever see her make, not even when she got lost in memories, but now here they were right in front of her. Or rather, they were an illusion created from Adam for his amusement, which made A2's blood boil even harder…
To think that for him this was all just a test!
"Robin, you've grown so much." the old man was the first one to speak up.
"You're such a beautiful lady now." she was, on that A2 could agree, but the comment of a false of her giant friend counted nothing at the moment.
"Come here with us." of course they meant to get her over there, using her mother, and the other two as a bait.
And much to A2's horror, she could see it was working too, as the woman she held onto started walking towards them.
Robin did know it was an illusion, right? She was sure that she was too smart not to know, but she knew well how emotional it was to see someone you thought lost for a long time felt, she just was the protagonist of such a thing just a few hours ago.
The difference was, her friends were here for real.
"Robin, don't listen…" the rogue didn't manage to finish her plea, barely she heard something from Adam, telling Eve to stop her, and the next second she doubled over in pain from a kick to her abdomen.
She could take any pain, what worried her was that now she no longer was grounding Robin to her with her hands, and she was free to walk forward, just like Adam wanted.
"You cowards…" it was the only thing she could mutter as Eve took her by the hair, holding her face onto the ground.
But finally it seemed someone else understood the weight of the situation.
"Shoot those things!" 2B yelled at her Pod and pretty much to anyone that held a gun. If they got rid of those illusions, then Robin could come back to them.
"You don't think it's that easy, right?" Adam's laugh resonated in the blank space, as he held his arms outwards, creating a barrier to protect the damn things, so none of the shots could damage them.
"Seize them. Seize them all!"
As soon as the order was given, the horde of machines around the androids began to close in on them, and they were so many more than them too.
"I'm not sure what is happening, but we've got to aid Number 2 and we must not let our new friend get close to those things." or so it was how Rose assumed was the problem, Number 2 did seem very contrary to letting the human go towards them.
And the intervention of Eve under orders of his brother only reinforced the idea.
"Those must be illusions of people she was attached to." 2B said, blocking an incoming attack with her sword. "I've watched those girls in the Tower torture A2 the same way, using you as bait." hadn't she intervened, then her sister would have never made it up to the top, and would have never saved 9S.
"Not only her." 9S spoke at her side, briefly recalling how machines used his memories too, and even dared to clone 2B, and watch him fight the copies for their amusement.
Not to mention all the things Adam told him, and mocked him for when he was in his hands.
He almost forgot that 2B hadn't really known about it, well, now she did, more or less. He'll explain later, when this whole thing was done and over.
"It is something they're known for." he knew it well, and longed for revenge.
If only he could get close enough to Adam…
He didn't want Eve, he already crippled him once with the aid of 2B, and they killed him by using their combined strength, though he wouldn't mind doing that again, useful things were still useful, and Scanner types were made to aid and support.
It had been then he discovered… no, it wasn't important what 2B was anymore, there was no need for E types any longer, and no more need for secrets. It wasn't something he should think of right now either.
"I think I recognize the face of the woman she said was her mother." why else would that person hold Robin's same face? 21O asked herself, she almost felt jealous, but she had to remind herself that the person she felt envious of right now wasn't even real.
"It's her!" they heard A2 yell somewhere far from the crowd, but she did then she recovered, but probably was still being harassed by Eve.
"I saw the posters too many times, that's how I found out!" it was how she found out who Robin truly was and had been, and she'd chosen to tag along with this human, partially out of curiosity, partially because she felt a duty to protect this one of a kind person, until her feelings spiraled out of control.
And here she was, failing miserably, as she always did…
Most she could do at the moment was to attempt to defend herself from Eve's relentless attacks, as he charged her with punches, kicks, and whatever he decided to summon from underground with light or to throw in the form of cubes.
Instead of managing to get closer to Robin, he was pushing her away and towards the others and the crowd of machines.
All the while Adam just sat in the same spot grinning and laughing like the idiot he was.
"We've got to push through!" but no matter how many machines Dahlia and the rest shot at, and took down, more kept coming.
"How the hell are there so many?" Number 16 felt her back come in contact with Dahlia's as she stepped back, sharing well the same feeling of the other woman.
They had to breach through and aid Number 2, nothing else mattered.
Yet more machines spawned.
"Oh my furious friend, it is simple." in a flash Adam appeared in the middle of the crowd. "You see, your Scanner friend with hair of fire isn't the only one that can create things here."
Disappearing before anyone could get line of sight on him, he showed up again a second later, way too close to the woman in question.
"But you see, we machines have no limitations, because this is our network."
Too fast for Number 21 to reach in time, he grabbed her by the scruff of her neck. "Such a pretty color for a person so weak." he spoke as she struggled in his grasp.
"Shut up!" Anemone's voice rose from the crowd, as she pointed her gun at Adam.
Much to her horror, that piece of dirt took Number 21 and held her in front of him as a shield. He was using her to cover himself, and the current Resistance Leader couldn't bring herself to shoot her.
Never again that would happen.
"Shoot if you're so brave, the bullets will only hit her, no matter where they come from." because since he was still tied to the network he could let his body dissolve, and any shot would only harm, or potentially kill Number 21 for good.
All of this while the machine horde was still closing in and pounding hard on the androids too, so they couldn't focus on the matter entirely.
"Don't worry about me, just shoot him." Number 21 looked over, blue eyes calm and confident as ever, as the hands she was holding onto the machine's arm grasped at it hard and firm.
She didn't want him to let her go anymore, all the opposite in fact.
"Trust me." she pleaded.
It wasn't quite shooting she heard, but rather the voice of Number 4, that with a mighty yell threw her large sword at him and…
It hit the mark, cutting away at the back of his left shoulder, forcing him to retreat back to where he had been originally. The howl he made had been quite satisfying to hear.
Adam hadn't taken into account something pretty important when he attacked Number 21…
The android he was holding was still a Scanner model, in her case, built to be calm in every situation, even in the hands of the enemy, but it had been clear that he didn't know about this detail.
"Nico Robin was correct." the redhead stated, picking herself up with Anemone's help, though a little winded. "His ego is way too big for him to handle. By having him in direct contact it was easy for me to hack into him, and disconnect him from the server, he's vulnerable now."
The drops of blood on the ground next to her feet where he stood previously, and onto Number 4's sword were proof of it.
"This should reduce the enemies spawning as well." since Adam was the main culprit behind everything.
If she were to be honest, judging from the human's words, Number 21 had almost expected he'd try to eliminate at least one of the main threats to his invincibility on his own, and she had hoped it would have seen her as the easier target, as the harmless Scanner with no weapons.
But the best weapon an S type had was their brain power.
He'd been so overconfident that he doomed himself, even quicker than expectations.
Perhaps he had hoped that his little plan to distract and harm the human would be enough to disrupt the plans, or their mentality so he could do what he wanted.
"Now we've just got to get to Eve." Number 4 looked over, retrieving her sword, to where beyond the crowd of machines she could still hear Number 2 fighting with the other machine.
But just from the sounds it didn't look like she was doing too well.
This was proven from just as they could see her being thrown away like a ragdoll, colliding with some of the machines, and sending them tumbling.
At least it was one way to clear the path…
Rose was the first one to rush to her as she was the closest, picking her up, though she wasn't looking too well, but mostly she just had signs of a beating with brute force on her, no weapons used.
"We've got to stop Robin…" A2 muttered, the black haired woman, though slowly, was still making her way to those illusions, and no machine was stopping her of course..
And the more time they lost the more she'd get closer and closer still.
"Well, isn't that cruel?" once again Adam's smug voice made itself be heard, though he didn't appear to have recovered entirely from the hit of before, his shirt was sporting a rather large blotch of blood where Number 4 slashed him.
"Here I thought you'd be more compassionate for your partner, but it seems that you're only thinking for yourself here." A2 could only glare at him.
"Shut your goddamn trap, Adam!" 9S yelled.
If there was something they had learned, it was that when it came to Robin's sake, A2 was the most selfless person, she'd done so much for her, for each other…
"Here you are with your friends again, how jealous she must be feeling when you get all the glory, and she gets nothing? Don't you think she misses her own friends and family too?"
"What do you even know about a family?" it was 21O's reply, before A2 could say the same thing.
And she just knew that everyone around her shared the exact same feelings too.
"We are literally brothers." Eve grinned down at A2 and Rose, the first time he actually said a thing during the whole ordeal.
But he was only the child that obeyed orders of the older brother here, they were told that too.
"It doesn't mean anything!"
A voice elevated from the very end of the group, from where he was keeping himself hidden and away from danger with the assistance of the defense model, Daisy.
"And what does a traitor know?"
"More than you, Adam." it was Pascal's reply.
"While it is true you know the terms friend and family as what they are, you don't know the true meaning of them, and never will, even if you may call each other brothers, you'll never know the true value of such a word."
The glowing green eyes of the peaceful machine laid on the android that taught him all of this, that taught them what it meant to treasure the memory of the people you cared about.
"You don't know how precious the moments lived with those we cared about are, and the importance to remember, otherwise you wouldn't be using them as weapons."
He had spent enough time in solitude back at his little village, piling up the old remains of the bodies of who once he considered family, and watching over Robin's corpse, recalling the old times when they were alive.
It hurt to think about them, it still did, but like A2 taught him, if he let their memory die with him, then nothing would be left to remember, and to tell stories about.
And slowly, things moved on, and now he found new friends, machines and not.
He did long for the presence of the people he knew, just as he knew that the androids here were as important to A2 as his villagers were for him, that was why he was here, willing to help them.
It pained him, yes, but he didn't hold it against A2 for desiring her happiness back, and besides, the androids didn't deserve to be stuck here any longer either, he held no ill will to them, if anything, he had been the first to search to seek an alliance with them back then, with Anemone, he was there to show that machines could be better, that they could be peaceful too.
"Well, I know for sure that Adam doesn't know the meaning, given he willingly let himself be killed for his experiments." 9S allowed himself a grin, as he recalled how he had disconnected himself from the main network, just to know how death felt, to test out emotions.
And surely 2B delivered it, and did it well.
As for Eve, the destruction he had caused after might have been driven from grief, actually that had been the cause, and 9S guessed that Adam never told his brother he'd been so stupid to get killed after either, just judging how he was acting, still answering his brother's commands with no question.
Much easier to blame the evil androids after all.
The sound Adam made was nothing but pleased, which told the Scanner boy he was right.
Would have been fun if Eve turned on his brother because of this, but judging from the lack of response, he didn't seem to be smart enough to catch the hint.
"It doesn't matter, you're all going to die here anyway, starting with your precious human." Adan allowed himself a grin.
"I must say, I expected her to be stronger than this." she had fallen for his trap way too easily.
She was much more confident those other times they met, with her head full of secrets, and her speech full of mockery and superiority.
"What do you even know about her?" A2 lifted herself up, with the aid of Rose. If looks could kill he'd be already dead from the intensity of her glare.
How dared he to make fun of her? He knew nothing! Nothing at all!
"As naive as usual, Number 2. You see, when our virus disrupted your main base, not only it killed most of you, but by hacking into the server we could access the data of each single unit, including their memories."
So that was how he was able to make those illusions so perfectly.
"Heartless monster…"
Did he even know how much he was hurting Robin with this? How much she'd been hurt, how much pain she'd been through during her life? And all alone?
"She's a weakling that hides behind a facade."
"Shut up!" the scream elevated from a multitude of voices of the people close to Robin, but A2 was the one that shouted the loudest.
"If there's a weakling here, that is you." 2B pointed her sword forward.
"I'm tired of hearing you talk." Eve whined, tilting his head and eager to return in beating up A2 and the others.
"Me too." it was the white haired rogue that charged forward first.
However she didn't seem too conscious of her weakened state, or she didn't care about it, but Eve's attack arrived first as he was healthy and at the moment still invincible too, hitting her square in the face with a punch.
A2 staggered on the same spot, but forced herself to stay standing. If she allowed herself to be pushed backwards again then she'd never get to Robin. She couldn't let Eve throw her around another time, no matter the cost.
She was not going to leave her, she was not going to die again, not at Adam's hands and his stupid tricks.
Once more she braced herself for another hit, this time managing to raise her sword to protect herself, however, she never felt the impact.
Because his hand never hit her sword, but rather someone else's.
"I'll hold him, go." her twin's face looked back at her for a moment, as she struggled to keep Eve at bay.
With the corner of her eye she could spot a goliath sized machine charging at her, but that also never arrived to hit her, his legs cut off before he could reach her. She could recognize the silhouette of 21O behind it once the thing fell over.
"Only you can bring her back to reality."
A shot rang out quick and precise to the machine's head to finish it off. "Don't worry about us, go save her, we'll be fine." Rose's words were met with various others of affirmation, prompting A2 to resume her run.
Seeing the androids fighting back with even more vigor made Adam's blood boil.
"We'll see about that." even if currently disconnected, he could still summon and have control over the network thanks to Eve.
Tendrils of light rose from the ground, attempting to trap the androids, but A2 first and foremost, so she could no longer move. But again, no such thing happened, as someone protected her once more, and it was the person the machine least expected.
"I've made many mistakes in my life, I should have never experimented on Nico Robin, and I deeply regret it, I had no right to do so." White shot him a pointed glare. "But if I didn't, then neither do you machines."
"Go on ahead, Number 2, she needs you."
And in this moment, she'd rather take anything White would say, and the fact that she too truly desired to protect the human that served her for so many years, instead of Adam.
Perhaps Robin hadn't been wrong about her, again. Perhaps she did care more than she was allowed to show or say.
But she needed her more right now.
"You don't believe that I wasn't prepared for this?"
Before she could react an electrical barrier appeared in front of her, so quickly that she couldn't stop herself in time and collided with it. Electricity ran through her body, sending waves of pain through all her systems, as she helplessly fell unable to move.
All the while with Adam's annoying laugh ringing in her ears.
"I told you before, you can't save anyone!" with a motion of his hand, the barrier broke to pieces, forming smaller particle spheres he threw at the rest of the androids.
Though she couldn't see, she could hear them howl in pain.
"Eve, please get rid of this pest, I have other matters to attend to." opening her eyes again, to her horror, she could see that Robin almost arrived to the illusions, and Adam was heading in the same direction too, while his brother approached now that she assumed 2B was just in the same predicament as she was too.
If only her useless body would move…
Perhaps he was correct, she was too weak to protect anyone…
I believe in you.
Those had been the last words Robin told her, broken and worn from the virus, before pushing her away and taking her own life, before something worse happened.
Robin had believed in her, she still believed now, she was certain.
She wouldn't, she couldn't let Adam get his hands on her another time, no matter how crippled her body was. She could see his slimy gloves almost coming in contact with Robin's shoulder…
"Don't touch her…" she growled, low and menacing.
As A2 pushed herself up, she could feel the familiar rumbling in her chest as her body sparked red with electricity and heat.
He was wrong, she'd save her.
She would save her!
She would make her voice be heard!
With a feral scream she exploded with energy overflowing from her reactor.
The blast alone was enough to throw Eve off balance as he approached, turning as fast as ever her fist collided with his face to send him flying away before he could dissolve, his body colliding with other machines which exploded on impact.
Quick to react, 9S called for Number 21's help, as together they could hack and unlink Eve from the network too while he was momentarily down, caught off guard from A2's sudden power.
"Get your filthy hands off her, Adam!"
Having never seen a glimpse of her Berserk Mode, the machine was caught off guard from the extra strength and speed A2 possessed, as he uselessly tried to summon things to grasp at her ankles, but she was too fast for him to even see.
A menacing red blur of heat and electricity.
Before he could mutter another word, she had already caught up to him, reserving him the same treatment as his brother had, this time punching him straight into the ground, leaving a dent in his face.
"What the hell was that?" Number 16 asked after witnessing Number 2 literally explode with energy.
"It's called Berserk Mode, an overload of your fusion reactor to augment physical capacity beyond normal limits, it was implemented in older models like you, and later discarded because it was too dangerous." White explained, looking over at where Number 2 stood, or rather staggered.
Seeing how hurt she was from her previous beating from Eve, she doubted she could hold on for long with putting so much pressure on her body.
"We had this strength this whole time?" Number 4 asked again, but Number 21 cut her off. "Explanations later."
"Right."
"These two are vulnerable now, it's our chance to act." Rose reminded them, because without them attached to the server, they could no longer summon more machines, and wouldn't dissolve if hit anymore, unless caught off guard like Number 2 managed to do right now.
But looking over to where she was, and from the way she was slowly limping towards the human, she doubted that whatever she did to become so strong would do her any good too soon.
"Robin." A2 limped towards her, she could already feel her strength fading away, though she still held on in keeping her B Mode active, for intimidation purposes.
But in reality, she was much too hurt to keep it much longer, and soon enough the failsafe would activate to keep her body from melting on itself.
"Robin…" she called her again. "Please answer me, I know you're still in there somewhere."
Whatever was happening to her, whatever spell she had been put under, she'd break it and bring her back, at any cost.
Focused on following the human, and body fighting to keep moving, she failed to notice the menace coming from behind her.
Until it hit her, tearing through from back to front, a light tendril peeking through her stomach, leaving a hole in it.
As she fell, she still held a weak hand towards Robin.
"Come back… to me…"
She hit the ground with a thud, bleeding out on the white floor, struggling to keep conscious.
"You almost got me." Adam walked towards her, stopping right in front of her face so she could see him. She could feel his hand on her head, taking her by the hair and forcing her to look at his ugly face.
"I must say, it's a powerful thing you've got, but I'm afraid it backfired on you. Strength alone gets people nowhere, Number 2."
"Hey brother, can I kill her?" came Eve's voice, as he had done the same thing to keep the other androids locked and away, some he caught, and others were struggling not to be taken, so he could escape and get to A2 again.
"I could have given you the mercy of a quick death, but you're too much of an annoyance to deserve that treatment." for response, what Adam got was A2 spitting blood in his face.
"Get rid of her right now." he growled. "I'll deal with the rest of these bugs." he had a personal revenge on 2B as well, so she would probably be the first victim, he decided, as she struggled to free herself from the tendrils holding her limbs.
He grinned, despite talking big, these androids weren't too much of a challenge anymore.
Too dumb, too reckless, too dependent on one another, and too emotional.
As she saw Adam leave, all A2 could do was to wait for Eve to finish her off, she couldn't move and she was bleeding out.
She'd be lucky if she would just be kicked from the server, but something told her the machines would keep her and the others here until either side was dead.
"I'm sorry…" she could only whisper.
This time she'd wanted too much, and soon she may just lose it all.
She closed her eyes as Eve raised his leg to kick her down, instead of finishing her directly, aiming for the wound Adam left.
… But the hit never came…