CHAPTER 6

2B had lost her sense of loyalty a long time ago.

She was tired of this goddamn war. She was tired of fighting over and over again against an enemy that never got any weaker, for a people she had never met - a people she often doubted even existed.

"For the Glory of Mankind."

Every time she said it, it sounded a bit more hollow to her ears. She felt like a walking corpse, someone who was going through the motions for lack of anything else to do. Someone who used to have feelings, to have faith, but who's heart could no longer generate them. She felt like a machine.

She didn't understand how no one else had noticed. She kept expecting someone else to call her out on it, for being a fraud. For being a hypocrite. She expected someone to notice.

No one had. Or at least, no one had cared enough to confront her about it.

Maybe they were all fake too. Maybe everyone in the Bunker was an empty machine too, and their souls had all vanished somewhere without anyone noticing. She doesn't know if this would be a comfort or not.

9S is… a breath of fresh air. He's naive, and friendly, and carelessly flirtatious. He seems to really believe in everything that YoRHa stands for. He believes that the machines are mindless (a claim she's been doubting in light of recent evidence) and that their war is just (something she's doubted for much, much longer). It's a bit foolish, she thinks, but it's also warm and fresh and real. Real in a way that nothing has been for far too long.

She finds herself doing silly things, just so he'll comment on it. She starts taking more gofer jobs, during their deployments to earth. They're simple things that someone else could easily do, but it gives her an excuse to linger. And the longer they stay on earth, the more 9S talks to fill the space.

She really likes his voice.

He complains about the tasks, but that doesn't stop him from doing exceptional work. She tries to explain it to him, that these things are meaningful. They're delivering important items that might save some android's life. They're helping people, in a way they can't do by shooting down enemies on the battlefield.

She doesn't think he gets it, but that's okay. She'll keep trying. The more she tries, the more she herself starts to believe it. She starts to think she can feel again.

That makes it worth it.

And she smiles, every time 9S grumbles about the work, or an exceptionally obnoxious machine (it's odd, how they seem to have personalities now. She doesn't remember that happening before. It's probably important). She tries not to let that smile show, every time 9S tries to get closer to her, introducing nicknames and such (she wonders what her nickname would be? What would people call her for short? Maybe she would ask 9S sometime…). She tries to hide the smile under a veneer of cold aloofness because it's dangerous to be close to 9S. It's dangerous to care.

She cares so, so much. She didn't realize she was able to care about someone this much, before it hit her like a flood and now she's drowning.

She thinks there's probably no hope for her at this point. 9S is a disease that has infected her circuits and her memories and heart. 9S might be the only cure.

She'll kill for him. She'll die for him. He's the only spot of color in her world of desaturated gray, and she can't lose him, she can't. She finally found something she can protect, something she can believe in.

She's drowning in his light, and she doesn't want to be saved.

Consciousness returned in bits and pieces. Her processes spun up, running diagnostic checks. Her status terminal filled with warning messages as her system protested that it was shut down incorrectly, and improper shutdown could lead to memory corruption. She internally silenced the warnings because yes, she'd shut down incorrectly and no, she was not planning on doing so again.

She was... hacked, she thinks. She's not very familiar with being the victim of malicious hacking (9S was always careful when he hacked her system for diagnostics - she couldn't feel a thing outside of his reassuring presence) but it didn't take a Scanner to guess what that was. Her system had shut down, completely, without Cain laying a finger on her.

Cain... 9S... she supposed that if Cain was anything like her 9S, it's not surprising for him to have that level of hacking ability. Alarming, certainly, but expected. She'd have to ask 9S to create a stronger barrier before facing him again, a barrier so strong that even he can't break it.

Because, if her suspicions were correct, then Cain might really be...

Her musings were interrupted by a loud metallic clank. She looked behind her to see that 9S had... kicked a door. And was now holding his foot in pain.

How cute.

"Stupid friggen door, open up already! I know you're listening up there! Let us back in you faker!" 9S was standing in front of the entrance to the tower, shouting angrily up at the sky, where the top of the tower was hidden by a layer of clouds.

They're outside the tower. Cain had apparently knocked them out and then carted their unconscious bodies outside the tower. Which, judging by 9S's ineffectual struggles, was locked behind them.

That's... not bad, actually. They're safe. They've escaped the enemy-controlled territory. And (she briefly checked over her internal data storage, which appears unharmed) they've even retrieved the critical mission intel.

She could work with this.

Carefully, mindful not to move too suddenly, she rose to her feet (more and more system checks return green - her body appears undamaged, and her nerve circuitry is fully functional).

She walked over to where 9S was now leaning his head against the tower door, occasionally banging his fist against it weakly. Her stance was, as always, confident, even as her system diagnostics continued to scan for backdoors, malware, and any other number of viruses that the enemy could have planted while she was unconscious. Just because she feels unharmed doesn't mean she is.

But that's not her problem right now. If she is compromised, she will find someone to fix it. Most likely 9S, unless he, too, is compromised.

"9S. Are you alright?"

9S jerked from his slouched position on the door, and spun around, almost tripping over his legs as he did so. It seemed that while he communed with the door, he didn't notice her approach and she'd taken him by surprise.

She really needed to coach him on his awareness. An enemy could easily ambush him while he's in such a state if she wasn't there to defend him. But - she took in her surroundings - it seemed this area was as devoid of machines as it was when they first approached it earlier today.

"2B. You're awake." There's something in his tone which is paradoxically both relieved and alarmed. She noticed that 9S now has his back firmly planted against the tower, like he's using it to protect himself (a decent instinct, although a questionable choice of support. There's nothing in that tower that she'd trust to have her back).

She nodded in affirmation of his statement, and looked at the tower door (which incidentally involved looking at 9S, given how he'd positioned itself). "It's locked again?" she asked.

"What? Uh, yes. It's locked. The defensive barrier is back in place. Closed defense system. It's not violent, but it's not budging either," he sent a fierce scowl at the door behind him as if it had personally offended him, which in a way, it had.

"So we won't be getting inside anytime soon. Not unless he wants us too," she concluded. "Come one, let's go," she turned on her heel, trusting 9S to follow.

"Go? Go where?" 9S called after her. After only a moment, she heard his hasty steps as he ran to catch up and started keeping pace at her side.

"Back to the Resistance Camp. We need to restock and regroup. And maybe someone there can run a more objective diagnostic, in case our self-diagnostic systems were compromised."

"To the... 2B, wait!"

2B turned to look at 9S, who appeared out of breath behind her. Maybe she should have slowed down - she'd confirmed that her body seems to be functioning correctly, but she hadn't confirmed the same of 9S. Maybe he was damaged by Cain, either during the hacking or the eviction from the tower. He never did answer her question about if he was alright.

"Just, just wait a moment, please?" 9S asked, and he sounded so tired that she couldn't find it in her to insist that no, they should go on, it's not safe here.

Instead, by unspoken consent, they both took a seat. By this point, they'd made it out of the hole and were back in the grassy area of the surface. There were still machines around, but they were small and largely non-hostile. It was as safe a place to take a break as any.

2B said nothing, content to let 9S catch his breath and do his own diagnostics. She kept half an eye out for any potential threats, but aside from a single moose, the grassy plain is vacant.

A few minutes pass where neither of them speak. Finally, 9S broke the silence.

"2B... how can you be so calm right now?" 9S asked plaintively.

How? That's because... "Being upset won't benefit the mission," 2B responded.

"How can you talk about the mission at a time like this! Like everything's okay, like nothing's changed," his voice cracked as he said this. 9S... is emotional. She knows this about him, and considers it to be in many ways an asset. But it isn't doing him any favors right now.

Maybe that's why he was out of breath. Maybe he's not damaged, he's just... hurting in other ways.

She never wanted him to have to see something like Cain. He never should have had to.

But he also had a point. "You're right. Things have changed," she frowned - she'd been putting off thinking about the implications of the intel they'd gathered, focused first on obtaining the essentials: finding safety, repairing damages. That was short-sighted, she needed to think about the long game here. "Have you contacted the Bunker yet?"

He seemed taken aback by the sudden topic shift, and then looked guilty. "No, I - no. I haven't."

"Good. Don't."

"W-what?"

"We don't know what that man did while we were unconscious. We'd best avoid syncing to the Bunker just yet, or we risk introducing a trojan horse into the Bunker servers."

"Oh. That's what you meant. Of course." 9S sounded a bit gloomy as he returned to looking at his shoes.

She let him inspect his shoes a while longer, before asking, "Are you ready to go? The camp isn't far from here. Or is there something else you wanted to discuss."

"No... nothing else." He offered one last look at his shoes before pushing himself off the ground and brushing the dust off his clothes. "We can go."

And with that, 9S joined 2B in the short walk back to Resistance Camp.

Ending F: A[F]termath and Reprieve

# A/N: 2B has feelings for her cinnamon roll. She might be a little bit obsessed. I also might have found her a little bit too easy to relate to, when playing the game.

# How has it taken this long to get some good 2B POV? It's really overdue.