"What is the meaning of this!?"
Hands, white and digital rose from the ground and everywhere, much like the tendrils previously summoned from the machines, but… who was creating them?
A barrier of white limbs formed around the androids and A2 to hold back and prevent any machine from coming close to them, like a protective circle of light.
Meanwhile other hands were holding both Adam and Eve by their limbs, seemingly spawned directly from their own bodies. The hands held their legs pinned to the ground, and their arms backwards, plus another couple of them around their necks, threatening to choke them should they thrash any further.
"What is happening?" Eve's voice joined Adam's in the confusion, and rather pissed he'd been interrupted from torturing A2, who was still lying in a pool of her own blood, but still alive.
"Are these things… protecting us?" Rose stared ahead at the circle of hands around them, forming a makeshift barrier between them and the machines.
"The Blooming Flower Defense System." White muttered, she had tested this thing personally.
"I think I remember seeing these before." 9S mused, recalling the previous and only instance where he had hacked into Robin and saw her memories, before these same hands knocked him out.
Did this mean… that she was back in her own mind?
"It's a unique hacking defense system, only Nico Robin has it." White nodded, picking herself up. "It's a system I personally had a hand in developing. Usually, for E types, we have a dormant logic virus that triggers when hacked, however the information the human had was far too precious for that method."
"Upon her own request we created this, based on some kind of magical abilities she claimed her original body had, belonging to her world. Though this system has yet to be tested to its absolute limit."
But never before White had seen such an enormous amount of limbs spawning, not even from recordings of the human's former battles with the Scanners she encountered.
However she was positive they were about to find out just how powerful this was.
And what kind of terrifying power has allowed her to survive alone for so many years, to be feared even when so young.
"Let go of me you witch!" Eve thrashed about, but the more he did, the more the hands around his neck would squeeze tighter, though yet not enough to kill.
He watched as the human, now turned towards him, walked over, her steps resonating in the white space almost menacingly.
However, she totally ignored his presence, crouching down where A2 was lying in front of him.
"Robin… you heard my voice?" a weak whisper left the rogue's lips when she too felt hands on her, but these were Robin's actual hands holding her head up, though she could see her now, her bangs covered her eyes, so she couldn't see them.
"I heard you loud and clear." carefully she picked her up in her arms. "Just hang on a little longer, I'll take care of everything."
She held onto her tighter, completely ignoring Eve's presence next to them, and even in her daze, A2 now could see her eyes.
They were colder than ever before, with something dark lurking behind them.
But she wasn't scared, she never would be scared of Robin.
Because she knew that no matter what, she'd never hurt her.
"Forget your friends, Robin, your place is with us." A2 heard the voice of the giant speak, and realized that she could hear those illusions because much like before, hers and Robin's body were touching, like when she had her hand on her shoulder.
Like there was a link, before somehow Adam managed to single out Robin alone.
Probably she'd been hearing all kinds of things while they couldn't.
She watched as the human turned her eyes back for a moment, with such an intense glare matching the one she gave the two machines before.
"Saul would never say such things." it was the flat reply, the tone she spoke with held no emotion just as her eyes did.
The giant moved his arm to hit them, but quick as ever, Robin jumped away from it, carrying A2 with her. She landed in a crouch, there was a brief flash of white before Robin muttered the next words.
"Cien Fleur." like magic, even more hands formed in front of them and the illusions in sets of two, forming a road. "Delphinium."
Using the momentum as the giant was off balance and his arm exposed, Robin's own white arms grabbed him, and with the inhuman strength of android she had combined into all of those limbs, she grabbed, lifted and carried the oversized being down to the pit like a ragdoll made of feathers.
She didn't even watch back as it fell, now with the illusion dissolved around it, it was just a common goliath machine, she resumed her walk towards the group of androids instead.
"Stop them!" as Adam barked that command the other two beings, still masked as the Professor and Robin's mother hurried over.
But neither ever came close to them, as more hands grabbed their ankles, forcing them to fall down flat on the white surface, before finishing them both with a hit to the head, strong enough to break the head of the disguised bipeds themselves.
Satisfied, now Robin could finally take A2 to the others, lying her down in front of 6O's feet, as both Scanner types hurried over to help fix the damage caused by both male machines.
"Nico Robin…" Rose wanted to ask what had happened to her, but Adam's laugh cut her off.
Even though he was tied he still laughed like the maniac he was.
"Oh that was so cruel of you, even beating up your own mother like that." as he talked, the hands squeezed tighter, making him wheeze. "Is this a warning?"
But Robin didn't reply, she looked at him with the same eyes as before.
Dark, cold, menacing.
"Treinta Fleur." with a motion of her right hand, sets of two arms spawned on the shoulders of the remaining horde of machines, grabbing their heads.
"Twist."
And just like that, with their heads twisted out of their chassis, the machines dropped dead like flies.
She did that without taking her eyes off the older machine brother.
Her expression never changed a little bit, and for once, Adam shook in fear, Robin could feel it in her hands.
But she didn't smile.
"What's the matter?" she asked, taking slow steps towards him. "Are you done laughing already?"
Her tone held the same lack of emotion as her expression did, and if A2 had to be honest, she'd seen all from Robin, and yet… this was new.
New, scary, terrifying even.
But she couldn't say that Adam didn't have it coming.
"Scared? Of a witch?" though Adam grinned it was forced.
"Don't lie, I can feel everything my hands touch. You're shaking." Robin was right in front of him, taking Adam by the chin. "Do you think you could get away with this?"
"Get your hands off my brother!" but she ignored Eve's struggles against her hold.
Soon he'll get his own treatment. Very soon.
"I don't know how you've managed to do that, and frankly I don't care, you can do to me anything you desire, hurt me, torture me, kill me…" she held tighter, she could feel his jaw almost cracking. "But no one touches the people I love, not their memory, and not who despite everything still stands at my side."
"You think you're so confident, so evil, yet you call me cruel." she let him go, and also dissolved the arms holding Eve, who immediately charged towards her screaming like an animal.
"Then let me show you cruelty."
As soon as she said so, as Eve got closer, she blocked him yet in another hold using six hands, two held his ankles, two on the back took his arms and bent his back painfully, and other two on his shoulders to reinforce the hold on the neck.
"I can bloom anywhere." she circled Eve's body, still thrashing in her hold. "Power, speed, they mean nothing to me."
Her hand moved right under Eve's chin, as his eyes made contact with his brother's.
"Just the same as the life of your brother means to you."
She knew well Adam left Eve alone for his own interests, and how 2B killed him, she and A2 made sure to let her know he suffered for what he did to her and to 9S.
But this wasn't comparable to the treatment he'd given to the memory of the people she cared about, and for almost killing A2. Again all for his own amusement and nothing else.
He was obsessed with humanity, she'd been human once, she'd show him just the person that hid and lurked in the dark within her then, since he so much wanted to know, and to meet her.
A2 did deserve a revenge more than her, if she had to be honest, but she'll be sure to deliver even worse treatment.
"Clutch."
She just had to apply just a little bit of pressure to Eve's chin, pressing him even further backwards to snap his spine in two.
She let him go as he dropped dead in front of Adam.
"Eve!" his face morphed with furious anger. "You bitch!"
"Wasn't this what you meant to do?" didn't he mean to do the same and have A2 watch her die in front of her, again? It was only fair.
Still, even just as she killed the guy in cold blood, her voice nor face betrayed the faintest hint of emotion.
As if she switched them off entirely.
"She's scary…" Lily muttered as she hid behind Daisy's bigger body.
And she was correct, this was nothing like the person they met before, nothing like the person they've been told she was, nothing like the person they knew.
"That's because… he brought out her old self back…"
The killer, the murderer that ended people's lives for revenge and for survival, in a world that betrayed her, that betrayed a young child forced to fend off against the world by herself.
"She's… the Devil's Child now." the name of the thing humans had given her.
Adam caused her to go back to her old ways, something not even A2 had seen yet, she was colder than ice, eyes unwavering, uncaring, blind to the violence. A side she had kept hidden entirely until now.
And it showed up… to protect them…
To protect her…
If A2 had to admit, Adam had it coming, and she was secretly waiting to see what other kind of thing Robin had in store for him. She was both scared to know what that could be, and excited to see Adam suffer for what he's done.
To her, but to her lover even more.
If there was anyone that knew how attached to the people Robin cared about, and to the past, and to their memory, and how important all of it was to her, it had to be A2 more than the others.
Robin's cruelty was nothing but justified, as it always had been.
Adam would have had her watch the people she loved die in front of her eyes again, maybe both of them, she and Robin, so much he was a sadist.
It was time he got a taste of his own medicine.
"You've tortured and made fun of me before, but what you've done today… I won't forgive that."
"You just killed my brother!" Adam snarled. "You would have done the same thing to us."
She took him by the chin again. "If you don't like being under control, to be miserable, and get the same treatment you deliver to androids, then you shouldn't have messed with us. And you'd call yourself smart? Hardly."
"You could have lived longer." a shame, really.
"You took the people I cared about, that ever cared about me, Professor Clover, that took me into his library and was more of a family to me than my own…" she let her actual hand fall, circling him.
"My best friend Saul, who fought with courage against something even bigger than him, to be able to save even one single person, to save a friend, from the ruthless destruction of my home land…"
A2 listened, she knew this story like she knew every broken part of her body.
"And then… my mother Olvia… I became an archeologist just so I could be with her even if I was just a child, every day I longed to have her at my side like every other child. They all gave their lives so I could live, but you have no idea of the weight of these memories don't you?"
For the first time, her different eyes narrowed. "You can't learn the true meaning of a word just through a book."
And of books she read so many more than Adam ever did in his indefinitely shorter life span. She read any kind of information and any kind of story, nothing he could ever experience.
Because she'll make sure he'll never return again.
"I lived for years and years by their words, to carry their legacy, to carry their lives with me by remembering them, for every day of my life." her eyes became dark again.
"And for all those days I've been hunted for the simple fact of existing, for having survived, with no one to trust, no one to believe in but myself… to fight hunger, thirst, illness, wounds, not having a place to sleep, to rest, fighting against the rain, against snow, against the scorching sun…"
The others remained silent as she spoke, listening to the tale that some already knew, and others didn't.
And who didn't, was rather horrified from what they were hearing.
"It's always been me, just me." she gave a heavy sigh. "For almost 20 long years. Something your little life can't even begin to compare with."
Robin turned to the other androids, looking in their eyes, seeing their compassion and understanding. The same things she first saw in A2's own ones, she started it, and everyone else followed.
"No one is born to be alone. Someday you'll find friends that will protect you." she closed her eyes, as she did, she could see the giant's big smiling face, as it turned ice, because of that damn admiral…
"Saul left me with these last words, I lived all this time waiting for these words to become true."
Without turning, she waved her wrist and Adam screamed, as the digital hands twisted his right arm backwards in the fraction of a second.
"When YoRHa took me in, for the first time I felt… wanted, respected, needed."
Again, she repeated the action, and again, he screamed in pain, as his left arm was rendered useless too.
"Despite all the lies, for once people treated me well." her eyes met 21O's, the first person that treated her with kindness, while she broke the machine's left leg.
"Thanks to these androids I've known kindness, friendship, and even love. They've given me everything I always desired since I was born." she put a hand to her chest, as Adam's last limb was broken.
"And you are not going to take this from me."
As she turned her eyes glowed for a brief moment and more hands took him by the neck, as he wheezed, but she couldn't care less.
She was rather enjoying seeing him this way, after he did the exact same thing to her months ago.
"You wanted to meet the human within me." she put her boot on his neck."You wanted the Devil's Child, didn't you?"
She pushed down, enough so he choked, but not enough to kill just yet.
"Now you've seen it. You saw the devil, but you've never seen hell, Adam." she pressed just a little harder.
He didn't deserve the mercy of her blade, it would be too easy, too good to be just cut.
Besides, he wanted the old her, didn't he?
"I'll make sure to send you to it, and never return."
With her own boot she broke his neck, as he uselessly thrashed about, his limbs limp and useless, he almost looked like a pathetic squid.
Before he stopped moving all together.
As he did, a column of light rose from the floor, similarly to the one that was in the Tower, as the main part of the server was exposed.
"Pascal, your turn."
"Ah, right." the peaceful machine was a little startled from the sudden events, but didn't hesitate any further.
Robin took her old YoRHa blade out, holding it out for Rose to take, so did the rest, following what was decided before, like nothing ever happened.
The androids of the Resistance and A2's old friends dissolved in streams of data inside the weapons, and as they did, Robin gave a nod to Pascal so he may destroy everything around them.
So he did, placing his little hands into the data stream, corrupting it, as the white space crumbled around them.
"I'll see you on the other side." A2 whispered, before fading away like everyone else.
As the light faded, another one took place as the sun began shining on them again, now all back into their own bodies. The group slowly lifted themselves from the ground, all but A2, that even if she didn't get actual physical wounds, she could still feel the effects of the ones inflicted upon her from the two machines.
As did the others, but they had taken considerably less damage. And even if mended, the pain took a while to pass.
Robin took her in her arms, and she smiled at her, even for as tired as the rogue was.
"Are we all here?" 6O asked, to make sure no one was left behind somehow.
A chorus of voices, each in different minds, confirmed that indeed everyone had been taken away from the server, and was just waiting to be rebuilt now.
Robin tightened the hold on A2.
"Let's go home."