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There was mischief brewing in the Bunker on this day, and she had a fair idea where and who was responsible for the air of almost giddy expectation. Not too long ago the very same pair had perhaps unintentionally caused a stirrup with a handful pictures of flowers, not that one half of the pair knew that much. She had been on earth and had stayed there for quite a while. The half of the pair here, however, knew very much how she had caused trouble with it.
Bursting into tears like that was uncommon with Operators, doubly so when the unit they were supporting was perfectly unharmed and kicking her heels into the sand after dispatching a handful machine lifeforms. But that was perhaps what made 6O such a good Operator for a thinly veiled Executioner model like 2B. The emotional side to the stoic facade, the surprisingly hard-hearted and almost unerringly unrelenting calm in the face of chaos to what others would call a ticking time bomb. Of course there had been a reason to put these two together—but pictures of flowers were certainly the last thing one would have expected from 2B of all units on earth at the time.
Which in turn had thrown the entire room into disarray for a few minutes before she had stomped her foot on the ground and told everyone to get back to work.
Whatever was brewing now, it was best to nip it in the bud before it—pun intended—bloomed into something that could distract everyone during the many crucial moments to come.
“2B, 6O.”
The pair straightened up when she walked over to them. 6O in particular went from slumped over and highly flustered to bolted upright and attentive, no trace of her almost sheepish smile remaining.
“Surely you know that with the network in shambles, we stand a chance to end this war once and for all.”
“Preparations have been going well, from what I hear from the other Operators that work with Scanner models,” 6O said with an enthusiastic nod, which 2B mirrored in her more calm and collected way. “Though a lot of the Operators say they would quite like joining in the battlefield once it comes to that.”
She crossed her arms with a nod. The more capable fighters for that, the better, even if the end of it was a foregone conclusion. The war couldn’t simply end like that, given that there were no humans to triumphantly return to the planet they abandoned. With the end in sight there had been no reason to wipe the memory from 9S as per usual, too. “And what about you then, 6O? Would you like joining them down there as 6B?”
The Operator immediately shook her head. Again with a little too much vigour—it was what made her so endearing in her own strange way, even if things had not exactly worked out between them. 2B meanwhile was staring at the Commander in a way that only an Executioner could and should; the piercing glare of someone who knew that someone was up to something. Perhaps 2B and 6O weren’t the only ones hatching potentially troubling plans, but the Commander was not going to let herself be outdone.
“I see, I see. How fortunate—but in any case, there is something that on-field units learn better than their Operators. Before we sortie for that final, decisive blow… perhaps it would be best if you saw the potential battlefields for yourself.”
2B crossed her arms with a low noise that was neither joy nor displeasure. Whatever she was thinking was hard to parse even on a good day, but she had a rational mind. Surely she would bring up the most glaring concern—
“An Operator on the surface, on a potential battlefield even, unarmed and on her own is a sure-fire way to waste funds on replacement models.”
—right about now.
The Commander shot the Executioner a smile. Hopefully a mischievous one, but getting a reaction out of 2B was harder than trying to glean what she was thinking. “But of course. Seeing as your former partner 9S is involved with reconnaissance work, perhaps you could escort your Operator.”
“And who, in turn, will oversee our operations?”
“That, my dear 2B, you can leave to me. But do you think, 6O?”
The confused squeaking noise was cute, but so was her enthusiastic half-cry of “Yes, yes!” which made her slap her hands over her mouth in embarrassment.
The City Ruins were quieter than they had ever been. During Eve’s rampage a lot of the local wildlife had gotten into the crossfire, and while the Resistance had voiced interest in seeing at least the flora restored to its previous state, they had been asked to refrain from doing so until YoRHa launched and won its final blow against the machines. The heavy losses that the Resistance had suffered also meant that they could devote their limited numbers to rebuilding their camp and reconnecting their network and making contact with the other main Resistance settlements all across earth.
Still, with a non-combatant in tow, it was wiser to take the scenic route just in the event that there were any stragglers left at this moment. The main factory had been violently shut down by her, 9S and Pascal but there were plenty of smaller production facilities scattered around. That was what the Scanners were working on for the most part.
There was something eerie about not having to manoeuvrer around moose and deer—while these animals normally never reacted to Androids marching through their prowling grounds they had become a sight that was not unusual. Not seeing them now was what put her on edge more than having a non-combatant in tow; normally the animals being missing meant something was amiss. But she knew better than most others that this place had been all but crushed when Eve started his all-out attack. Hells, there were countless lifeless husks scattered around, and she almost felt a pang of emotion for all these machine lifeforms that could have joined Pascal had they not been crammed into a haphazard attacking model that used quantity over quality.
She did not want to think about all the empty shells that were scattered on top of the ruins; how many of them had collapsed further during that event?
6O was looking around with what could only be described as wide eyes. It was hard to tell with the visor, of course, but 2B knew when someone was stunned and taking in the sights better than anyone. Normally it meant trouble given 9S and his tendencies to uncover something that he was not meant to see whenever he got excited about a locale, but she was not here to serve as his deadly shackles.
How very unlike the Commander.
For all intents and purposes, the Commander normally was the rational one even if her passions sometimes got the better of her. Said passions were intriguing in their own right, but seeing an Operator to the surface even after she declined becoming a combat-suited model? Emotional investments were heavily frowned upon, though even 2B herself had to admit that perhaps she was the last person to judge that. Executioners—pun not intended—executed orders on a different level than any other unit. Those that let their emotions get the better of them wound up like the hysteric mess that the one in the ruins had become. She had been subsequently reminded of her orders and given the choice of continuing, quitting and having her memories wiped once again, or getting her memories wiped in general.
Why on good earth was the Commander sending an Operator meant to support an Executioner to the surface? It was absolutely foolhardy. She would, of course, fight to the very ends of her strength if anything came up during this little stint, but the sheer dangers outweighed anything that 6O could gain from having her long-standing dream fulfilled. Her knowledge of the terrain already towered over most other Operators, and her reluctance to accept a weapon even as a measure of self-defence spoke volumes of what she thought about fighting her way through anything. An Operator through and through, and an Operator that 2B adored, emotions being prohibited be damned.
Sending her to the surface was reckless, ill-advised and frankly put, idiotic. Not that she would throw these words into the Commander’s face, especially since she knew that the Commander cared about 6O just as much as she did.
“The battle affected this region more than I thought it would… and I read the reports you and 9S submitted after the fact… but I realise I had no idea what it really looks like,” 6O eventually said, breaking the long silence that had hovered over them since they departed from the Flight Units. Their entire journey so far had been smooth and no machine lifeforms were anywhere in sight. There were precisely three places that she could think of where machine lifeforms would still be active, and all three of them were on their list of places they would have to check over the course of this mission.
2B remained quiet as they made their way through the ruins. 6O was marvelling still, turning and looking around with an enthusiasm that befit one of the children in Pascal’s village better than one of the most experienced Operators in YoRHa. A small smile crossed her face when 6O stopped to point out how dense the moss and ivy had crept up on this one ruined complex and how a tree had grown inside it and broken through the ruin without making it collapse in on itself. The long-abandoned buildings were the last remnants of humanity on earth, and the way nature took its course was beautiful beyond words, even if their eventual end goal was to return humanity to its former glory and these ruins back to the city they had one been. They would succeed, and 2B had to admit to herself that she was going to miss these ruins in particular.
“It’s beautiful,” 6O breathed out when she drew her hand across the slightly singed bark of the tree. The scorch mark likely came from a skirmish a few years ago, judging from the way it looked. “The way it still stands despite the war that has waged for so long.”
“Had the underground hideout been anywhere else, this tree and the building would have fallen into the sinkhole.”
Indeed, not far from here ruins had been irrevocably changed when the machines had attempted to wipe out all androids in the ruins at the time with a massive attack. What had once been a pleasant and familiar sight of ruins and overgrown flora had given way to an almost gaping abyss that led down, down, down and revealed that all this time their supposed main target had been overthrown by their weaponry.
“Which makes it still standing all the more beautiful, if you ask me!”
2B let out a half-amused snort as an acknowledgement. As nice as it was to look at, it remained part of the surrounding area and therefore could prove either helpful or rather unhelpful in combat. The city’s ruins in particular were both an obstacle course and a wonderful opportunity for proper sniping attacks. And, of course, a horribly desolate place that made dispatching easier because rarely anyone went this particular way, and even rarer were the occasions of people checking the insides of these buildings that offered nothing but flora, mould and perhaps a scrap that said something about the ways humans had lived here before.
“Beautiful or not, you are the Operator. It is best if you decide our course of action.”
“Right, right… the three places we have to check are, ah… the desert complex, Pascal’s village and the amusement park. It would be best if we checked the furthest location first, so the desert complex. Unless you deem that too dangerous, of course.”
2B shrugged vaguely. Any of these locations could potentially turn into a death trap at any point, given that they did not know their exact status after the end of the machine network yet.
“The desert complex it is, then.”
As much as she would have enjoyed watching 6O marvel at the ruins of civilisation, it was true that the desert would be the best first objective.
For all the heart-throbbing excitement she felt at the prospect of venturing into the unknown, the desert soon turned out to be rather… dull. It made her appreciate the hard work that 2B had gone through to get her a picture of a desert flower even more, now that she was staring at the bleak rock and felt the unforgiving sun beat down on her. But even just that experience of having the sun shine down so brutally it made her wonder if humans had truly ever lived in the desert was enough to keep a spring in her steps as she followed 2B around.
She had gone over the reports from what 2B and 9S had done in the desert most attentively. It had already been in the data base at the time, but all that knowledge that the two of them scrounged up about the desert civilisation had certainly tickled 21O’s interests more than they had 6O’s. Still, in order to be a good Operator she needed to know as much as possible—and the last thing she wanted to be was a bother to 2B.
2B, who acted all tough and stoic without as much as batting an eyelash. 2B, who listened to her bawl over getting rejected. 2B, who had gone out of her way to get her a picture of flowers and who had been fully willing to go on a scavenger hunt for actual ones now that she was not tethered to 9S for the time being before the Commander had interrupted them.
Suddenly her attention went from the rough environs that always interested her to her partner who led the way with a confident stride. Soon enough the wind got drier and yet 2B marched on unbothered by the sand and heat. Expected, of course; YoRHa combat models of any sort were the best equipped for this sort of thing, and Executioners like her were even a tad better than the rest simply by virtue of what their roles were. Disguised as B-series androids, the E-series had a select few members who all were outstanding with what they did. She as Operator had been exceedingly proud to have been assigned to one of these, even if she was not allowed to even acknowledge their roles in any capacity. Whatever 2B did, she did so without supervision and the assignment was more of a technicality at first.
She would have been happy to simply serve as Operator, but soon enough she realised that 2B was a more interesting android to be around compared to the rest. The same air of mystery that followed some others hung about her, but unlike those others she never made a conscious effort to address or dismiss that mystery. She was simply… 2B.
“You have been staring for quite a while now.”
“Eep!”
“If there is something bothering you, please, do let me know.”
She let out a terrified giggle at that. “How strange, hearing you scold me in a way that sounds an awful lot like a dry reminder of the principles of teamwork. Normally I am the one giving you these. But no, there is nothing amiss. I apologise, 2B.”
2B looked like there was something else she wanted to say, but whatever it was that was on her mind, 6O never got to hear it. Just as 2B opened her mouth, a rather familiar sound rung in her ears—2B let out a sigh instead, gesturing vaguely into the direction they would be heading. Without even much of a flourish, she picked up.
The Commander had played coy, a small smile on her lips as she bade the two of them farewell when they had departed from the Bunker roughly 20 hours ago. She had deliberately danced around answering the question that had concerned 6O the most; the issue of not having an Operator checking in on them. Back in the Bunker all the Commander had said that everything was under control and the two of them should worry about the transportation system being on maintenance outside of the machines in the Resistance Camp instead.
2B froze to the spot when she heard the voice of the Operatorassigned to regularly check in with them while they were deployed on the surface.
6O on the other hand could see the wry smile on her face as she spoke into the communicator.
“Good afternoon, 2B, 6O,” said the Commander with an amused tone to her voice. “All is well, I presume?”
For a long moment it was quiet, utterly so were it not for the desert critter running past them. There had been many possibilities with who would be assigned to oversee their operation on the surface—6O had half expected 21O-née-21B’s voice to chime from the communicator—but now that the Commander had spoken it only made sense. While she kept the stoic facade just as much as 2B did, the Commander had a mischievous side to her that few other androids ever got to know. 6O considered herself very lucky to have been let into her personal space like that, her heart still aflutter with more than simple adoration whenever it came to the Commander. But it also meant that she knew that both she and 2B had been had. This was… an intervention of some sort.
“Your position tells me you are on your way to the desert complex. Have you run into any machine lifeforms yet?”
“No, Commander,” 2B said dryly, professionalism lacing her voice even with her position saying that she was less than pleased about this arrangement. “None so far. It would seem that the destruction of both Adam and Eve served to severely weaken if not outright destroy the network.”
“That aligns perfectly with what the Scanners have been reporting. And how about you, 6O? How has earth been treating you?”
She fidgeted a little, almost missing the fact that 2B started marching again. With a huff she followed her partner deeper into desert, until finally the supposed sandstorms were visible in the distance.
“It is just about as I imagined it to be,” she finally reported, and with that and a small laugh, the Commander disconnected and said that she would be back at the scheduled time.
Earth was absolutely nothing like 6O had imagined, and yet she spent most of her time as she marched through the sand with 2B on her partner once again. The confidence with which she marched through the slippery sand, the strange turns and twists she did as their path took them towards the eventual hole in the rock wall that would take them towards their goal. It was clear that she was used to this, noting here and there that no machines came rushing towards them with a horrid screech, or kicking a half-buried container open and crinkling her nose a little when the container revealed itself to hold some unidentifiable substance that may have been water centuries ago.
It wasn’t until they reached the path forward that 6O realised why exactly 2B had been leading them around in wild waves across the sand. She had been avoiding any deep dips on the dunes based around the fact that 6O was not equipped to deal with this sort of thing—but now it was unavoidable. She would have to slide own there, seeing as gaining proper hold on the sand was nigh impossible. She stared down into the ravine where the desert complex and their destination awaited them, almost ominously jutting out of the pristine sand. For all the excitement about the desert flower, she came to realise that she really, truly did not enjoy being in the desert in any way, shape, or capacity.
6O was torn out of her thoughts when 2B turned around to offer her a hand.
“I’m afraid you will just have to trust me with this.”
She gingerly took her partner’s offered hand and tried to smile as confidently as she could, despite the terror that was terror gnawing at her insides. “You know I do, 2B.”
“And that would be your first mistake,” came the quiet reply.
There was that strange air of mystery that followed 2B wherever she went. The light that drew her in like the moth that she was, fluttering about this Executioner as if she couldn’t quietly snap her neck and move on and she would awaken back in the Bunker when they loaded her data back into a replacement body with certain memory parts wiped none the wiser. The same air of mystery that followed the Commander like a heavy cloud of regret laced with other things, things that she could never get out of her no matter how much she tried. But in the end, she had won the Commander’s trust.
6O gently squeezed 2B’s hand with a reassuring smile, the fear that had been gripping her not a moment ago dispelled. “I am an Operator—in theory you are the brawns and I am the brains of this operation. I trust you unconditionally; you are my partner and a partnership without trust might as well be a team-up out of convenience.”
It earned her one of 2B’s rare slightly amused twitches of the mouth. Nothing worth mentioning were it any other android currently on earth, but 6O had to admit that it made her heart, whatever it truly was in the end, soar like an eagle.
“Well said. Let us hope you do not come to regret your vow of confidence—we still have to get down there.”
A huff. “How hard can it be? Bring it on, you horrible sandy slope!”
The desert complex itself was on one end of a desert that had always and would always stretch from this side of the light half to the other side of it. It effectively separated the continent it was on, whatever its name had once been, and on either end of it were settlements that were vaguely in contact with each other in the past. The fact that several members of YoRHa had reported machine lifeforms wearing mockeries of the other side’s long-since fallen city had been concerning at first, but as the time went by the Commander had accepted that as merely another fact. Machine lifeforms were more than capable of crossing the desert, and it was not the first time that a machine or android had done the very same. Whether they picked up actual remnants from Facade or merely copied what other machine lifeforms had brought from over there, the fact that it was widely spread had always interested her.
The humans that had lived in Facade had very quietly faded from the pages of history after the death of their king in the same event that swept across earth and led to the slow demise of mankind. Yet their culture lived on, somehow, even though they had been gone for so long that the only reason the settlement’s name was known these days was thanks to some reports recovered from an abandoned coastal town also on the other end of the desert.
The machines that bore Facade masks never quite left the desert. And then 2B and 9S reported a group that tried to settle in the abandoned desert complex that had once had a name like Facade that had long since faded from memory. It was interesting to say the very least, knowing that machines that found themselves disconnected from the network normally chose a different path. But in their recent antics of trying to copy humanity they had… succeeded, more or less. One by one, they attempted to recreate what they knew—some chose the path of eternal amusement, others tried to focus on community, some managed to recreate in scant few days what had taken religion hundreds of years with humanity. It was a bizarre dance, seeing machines develop and change while the androids remained the same. Then again… wasn’t that sort of determination also a part of what had made humanity so… human?
Her thoughts had been interrupted by a sudden transmission earlier—and with an as controlled as ever voice, 2B reported that the machines in the desert complex had vanished. They had likely been affected by the half of the machine network that Eve controlled running rampant with madness and grief that seemed so unbecoming of a machine.
The Commander steepled her fingers as she watched the dots on the screen that represented 2B and 6O moved through the desert complex into where they had lost track of 2B and 9S what felt like half an age ago only for the two of them to re-emerge near the city ruins and reporting a rather troubling incident. Who would have guessed that the evolving, learning machine that split into two would be the centrepiece of the network?
With a low sigh, she realised that no matter how much she wondered about the implications, there would never be a satisfying answer to why the machines did things in the way they did it. With the network gone it would be easy to coax the still hostile ones out into the open all over earth. The ones that presented no issues were the ones that they were going to leave alone. Anything else would have, going by definitions from recovered human texts, been murder.
That strange moral point was the only reason why the pair of Devola and Popola models were allowed to continue existing. They had been created as a perfect copy of humanity to serve as their stewards, and the pair that had made its way through the desert had not quite been the Devola and Popola who had caused humanity’s decline with their neglect. Besides, Anemone had taken them under her wing. Anemone, who cooperated but clearly still held onto the memory of A2.
Another sigh escaped her as she watched the pair march towards Pascal’s village, then suddenly turn sharply and moving towards the Amusement Park instead.
The view was the same, but the atmosphere had changed considerably here. The half of the network under Eve’s command had attacked those that had been under Adam’s at some point—and it seemed as if the Amusement Park had fallen under Eve’s control, whereas Pascal’s village had been under Adam’s.
It had been a veritable explosion of strange unnatural colours in the ruins that were so wildly overgrown that it might not have been ruins to begin with, and the machines in the costumes only added to the inherent strangeness of this part of the region. It still was bright and colourful, but the sheer noise of all the celebrating jolly machines had all but faded into silence.
2B crossed her arms as she watched a particularly mangled-looking machine jitter across the main plaza. Its movement was choppy and janky, the voice that still tried to call for a happy celebration was borderline unbearably corrupted. Their numbers had been greatly reduced—what had once been full of machines not caring about the ongoing war was now an almost desolately empty vacuum with a handful survivors choosing to ignore each other.
6O remained behind her as they marched into the place. Whatever wonder she had felt at seeing this place at first soon turned into numbly following 2B around.
She made a point in knocking a hand against the machine playing at statue in the middle of the plaza. She heard a familiar creaking noise that might have been an acknowledgement of her existence, but the faux-statue refused to budge. Well, whatever. If it wanted to play wilfully blind to the silent destruction around it, it was more than welcome to.
“Unbelievable,” whispered 6O and grabbed 2B’s arm to hold onto. “It sounded so wonderful from what you reported. This is… this is.” She flinched away from a machine in a half-torn costume with a horribly feral-looking face that waddled past them agonisingly slowly. “It’s not… right. They weren’t doing anything.”
Of course, the not doing anything had been the grave mistake these machines had made in the eyes of Eve. Their enjoyment of whatever it was that they were doing in the end had been nothing compared to the sheer abyss of rage and grief that their master had worked himself into. The same spiral that many Executioners went down until someone wiped their memories; the same spiral that all of them returned to even after erasing them—except nothing could have filled that abyss in that machine lifeform’s existence.
2B watched a balloon wobble softly in the breeze, the rest of those long since gone from the machine they had been tied to. The machine itself was lifeless, still; the core had been destroyed by something or other. Perhaps an android doing reconnaissance caught up in the storm. Perhaps another machine lifeform going mad as the rest of them. It was more than a little bizarre, knowing that there were countless empty shells like that scattered around the countryside now.
Whatever had taken that one out, it would remain a mystery.
2B shrugged vaguely, suddenly painfully aware that if this place looked like this, there was no way of telling what had happened to Pascal and his little village not that far from here. Against all odds, Pascal had proven to be a very genuine ally without any malicious desires of any sort. He had been prepared to walk into the hell that had been the factory when the cult took up residence there on his own if 2B had had refused coming with him. Surely he would have fought tooth and nail—or metal and nail—to defend his village, but… communications of any sort had died down by the time she and 9S had taken out the machines nearly breaking through from the City Ruins.
She half-listened to 6O making her report to the Commander, instead turning to look towards the main attraction of this park. This thing that humans once called roller coaster. It still ran against all odds, almost defiantly in the wake of the desolation in the park it had been built in. Human creations could be so very peculiar at times—this thing had outlived its creators, had been haphazardly maintained by machine lifeforms and now also outlived most of these caretakers. A lone balloon flew up into the sky, past the empty cart that plummeted down the slope it had slowly been pulled up onto.
There was a good chance Pascal’s village would look the same. And there was a more than likely chance that once the war was over, the rest of the world would look like this place. Just an empty amusement part, with the winners not entirely certain what to do with themselves. Wobbling about like a balloon attached to a lifeless husk, abandoned by the other balloons and ignored by the survivors. Continuing down the same path as they always had, without an end to it. A cycle undying when everything around them was designed to die. An endless trap, now no longer with a war to keep them occupied.
She curled her hands into fists as she stared at the roller coaster staring its round anew. As empty as before.
Something about 2B had changed while she had talked with the Commander. She was a lot more tense now and marched a little faster as the two of them made their way over to Pascal’s village. Compared to the desert and the return to the City Ruins, 2B’s face had returned to its normal stoic and unmoving state. A far, far cry from the android that had let go of her hand as they slid down the sand and then still turned around to catch her when she inevitably had lost her balance and fallen near the desert complex. 6O knew these moods, of course; for someone who claimed that emotions were prohibited as much as 2B, she certainly was just as much an android like the rest of them. She normally looked like this whenever a mission turned for the sour ending of having 9S eliminated for the time being and essentially factory resetting him. There were some other missions where she returned with that same expression, with the same almost furious stomp to her walking cycle that spoke volumes about her mood.
The wooden walkway they were on creaked below their feet, and 6O spent a few more minutes mulling about. The launchers in the distance were still, and whatever noise might have come from the Amusement Park in the past would have faded into silence by now. Only the birds remained to sing their songs, as uncaring as ever while other creatures crept about the forest floor way below them. There weren’t many ways to break 2B out of her moods, and pointing out the beauty of the surrounding flora and fauna was most certainly not a good way, no matter how utterly astonishingly different this true wilderness was compared to the bizarre breathtaking architecture of nature taking back what humans had long since abandoned.
She hummed for a while and followed 2B, the walkway leading further and further into the forest and further and further away from the Amusement Park. Her own heart grew lighter as that devastated place was left behind them, and even 2B’s furious stomping died down a little. Hells, she even slowed down a little, remembering that she was not walking with a combat or reconnaissance model. 6O hummed louder to signify that she was pleased about 2B eventually falling in to walk beside her.
“You didn’t mention this village would be so deep in the forest!”
2B flinched ever so slightly. “I thought it would be obvious from the report stating that they were hiding from the network’s eyes,” came her dry reply.
6O finally understood what was bothering her. This village and its leader had proved themselves to be valuable allies in the face of overwhelming opposition. She was worried after having seen two of the places with a notable population of machines no longer in the network completely devastated. And, of course, as per usual the many things that made up the cloud of mystery that followed her about.
But at least one thing she could help with—and thus 6O reached for 2B’s hand and squeezed it gently.
“Hey. You needn’t worry all that much; they’ve been off the network for so long I’m sure that not even that Eve guy remembered them! No one manages for so long only to fall to something that banally simple.”
2B unclenched her jaw a little and said nothing for a moment. Then she gently squeezed 6O’s hand back.
“You do have a point.”
“I’m your Operator. I’m supposed to have a point every once in a while! Even if I mostly… bother you with my own problems.”
“And that would be your second mistake,” 2B said softly and watched a flock of birds take off from the tree they were on. “You don’t bother me. In fact, those calls of yours keep me grounded when the going gets rough.”
She was aware that she was staring now, likely with her eyes as round as an owl’s, judging from that picture the other Operator on the next booth over had received from her Scanner recently. 2B continued walking without letting go of her hand, the small smile that showed up so rarely on her lips the entire time. Slowly but steadily the walkway looked a little more worn, with scrapes on the wood that were not made by androids or animals—machines, of course. There was nothing else on this planet that could leave marks on the wood anyway.
“Even if sometimes your problems crop up in inopportune moments. But even so, it helps me stay focused a little, knowing that life on the Bunker and everywhere else goes on no matter how dire the situation has gotten here on earth. And the insight into several important figures in the Bunker has been rather fascinating, to say the least.”
Sometimes she wondered why they had been built that way, but 6O knew that she was turning red as a beet with the embarrassment running hot through her channels at this point. 2B, ever the watchful, only had her small smile get a little wider at that point.
“And despite everything, the crying and the wailing, the laughter that could make the desert bloom again with how clear it is, you still pull through whenever I need you most. Not once has your information misled me, not once have you let me down in those rare moments where you failed to find something on short notice. Truly, not a single android could wish for a better Operator than you. Crying and sobbing included.” The smile faltered a little. “Of course, that is to be expected from those of us who operate under… specific circumstances.”
“2B….” 6O shook her head, then pulled ahead of 2B to grab her other hand and pull her a little closer. “No, 2E! Not a single Operator could wish for a better android to work with, but you still manage to care even through the circumstances! That’s why I would never want to work with anyone else. Hells, even once this war is over, I wouldn’t want anything to change! We could… I don’t know. You could show me more of earth! No, you absolutely have to show me more of it! We could cross the desert together and see what happens over there. We could visit the dark side together and work with the other androids there to help restore earth to whatever it was formerly! We’ll take the Commander! 21O—I mean 21B and 9S if they want to, and if they don’t just us> both and the Commander and we’ll go wherever we want to!”
2B let out a snort, the vaguest hint of a smile having bloomed into a proper smile by now. “The Commander and us, huh? So, like this little expedition that she most certainly set up so I wouldn’t go pick you some flowers?”
“Yes! Except she would be here with us, and you could show us where to pick the best flowers!”
“I don’t quite think that picking flowers is on an Executioner’s relevant skill list, but I will keep that in mind. Once the dust settles and the war is over we will go. I promise you that.”
6O beamed, the hot embarrassment replaced with a warm, fuzzy feeling that almost made her want to skip all the way to the end of the wooden walkway they were on. 2B still did not let go of one of her hands as they continued walking, and she even pointed out a particularly colourful bird as it flew past them. Perhaps 2B was more interested in the local flora and fauna than she let on, and 6O felt like the cloud of mystery surrounding her lightened a little. Perhaps one day it would be gone entirely and she would fully understand her. But for now she was content with it, expressed loud delight at another handful colourful birds that flew past them, and then finally let go of her hand when they reached the village.
There was a small sigh of relief that escaped 2B when a few stubbies rushed past the village guards and loudly started cheering for “Miss 2B” before turning to her and welcoming her to the village loudly and enthusiastically. Even though they wound up being roped into investigating some damage the village had sustained during the fall of the network, 6O did not mind climbing that ladder up and down a few times. 2B still greeted her with a new report and a small smile every time she came back with another set of tools and what not to investigate or fix the mess in this place.
“Although,” 6O eventually said when she and 2B sat next to each other half-listening to some nonsense a machine babbled to them and its friends, “I don’t think the Commander would come with us.”
“That took you an almost embarrassingly long time to realise, Operator.”
“Oh, shush!”
The Bunker never truly slept, unlike the planet down below. Even if the sun never rose on one side and never set on the other, there were plenty of dark places to rest for one and the other side merely woke up and did what it had to do to pass the time. But in the Bunker, there was no need for rest or pauses unless something new was discovered and required immediate attention. It was routine, routine that went by based on schedules and who was currently deployed on earth and who was not.
The scanners running about down below were reporting that several factories were still active and that they could be shut down easily, whereas the machines that they were creating now would prove an issue later.
2B and 6O were reporting what they had learned in detail now. 2B sounded as professional as always, stating plainly and almost coldly what they had found in all three locations. 6O meanwhile supplied some interesting insight into the layout of the places they had been, confirming several reports and suggestion that she had received from the reconnaissance squads by now. The best place to tackle the surplus machines that were created only to destroy were the City Ruins in that sector. It would be ill-advised to drag the fighting into the Amusement Park region or the forests, and the abandoned factory was best left alone anyway. And the desert, as interesting as its history was, was the least suited to be a good battlefield for either side, ensuring that the androids would lose in this sector going by sheer quantity of available fighters. The Resistance would have to be notified of their intentions, however, but 2B volunteered to go bring that issue to Anemone of the Resistance Camp.
Those two had always been a good match, but it became blatantly obvious by now. Their characters balanced each other out, yet both were almost unnaturally perceptive at their core. She smiled to herself, nodding when both androids relayed that while the other two settlements were gone or in shambles, Pascal and his village had made it through the fire mostly intact. They had lost a few machines but thanks to 9S and 2B’s timely intervention the worst had been prevented.
Once this war was over, 6O said with a grin, there would be quite a lot of interesting relationships waiting to be forged between local resistances and the machines that had been off the network for a while. It almost hurt, hearing her talk about this so enthusiastically despite the fact that both of them knew there were no humans to return to earth. The thing they didn’t know what the fact that there would be no relationships waiting to be forged between YoRHa and anything else. Nothing would be waiting for them once the war was over.
But still, she noted everything about their reports, knowing full well that there was no returning from this point. She had tried her damned best to avoid getting attached, echoing the credo that emotions were prohibited and that all of this was for the glory of mankind—and here she was, most definitely attached to a most unusual but very effective pair of androids.
She had heard that conversation. She so very desperately wanted to be in that world after a war where 2B dragged 6O across every continent, even if her old body would likely never make that sort of journey. Perhaps she could simply stay in a Resistance Camp somewhere on the dark side, waiting for the two of them to return to that camp to report what they had found and what relationships with the local machines and androids they had managed to make better. She wanted to see what remained of Facade for herself.
Still, there was a role she had to play until the very end of YoRHa, and she was going to play it to as much of perfection as she could manage.
“Oh, 6O?”
“Yes, Commander?”
“You made a third mistake.”
Both 2B and 6O stared at her with varying degrees of utter confusion and blank horror. She cracked a sheepish grin at the both of them, then turned around to return to her normal station, knowing that some other report would warrant her attention sooner rather than later.
“If you only asked, perhaps I would entertain your proposition. But that can wait until the end of the war, don’t you think?”
She enjoyed the stunned silence from the resident troublemakers while it would last, at the very least. It was all she could do—and those two had ever been some of the most interesting personalities that she had had the pleasure of working with. If only she had done a little more than entertaining the Operator’s crush on her for a while. That would be something she would regret until the very end of YoRHa.