Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Everything that lives is designed to end. We are perpetually trapped in a never-ending spiral of life and death. Is this a curse? Or some kind of punishment? 

I often think about the god who blessed us with this cryptic puzzle. . . and wonder if we’ll ever have the chance to kill him.

- Yorha Unit 2B

Above the clouds, the sound of a quad-engine YoRHa jet flight unit was nearly silent. Each thruster made a rhythmic whirring sound, and the LT Holo Ring around the tail thrummed, ready for anything. 

A squadron of six such flight units rocketed toward land in a careful reverse chevron. Synchronized autopilot with Command in control made such a formation the work of a software program far away in the Bunker, but these pilots would have had no issue maintaining it either way. 

Audible even from other units came the central Beacon’s ringing signal, and the pilot at the forefront loaded the message into a holographic screen in the air before all six jets, such that all could see. 

A device within each pilot’s skull linked them to the call, and in an instant, they were all listening. 

“This is Command. YorHa Squadron Falcon-Bravo, come in.” 

The speaker was a blonde woman with a black veil over her nose and mouth. Beside the video was an overlay with a rapidly updating transcript of other squadrons who were already in range of the enemy and engaging. 

“2B here,” the pilot at the centerfront of the formation replied. She wasn’t the captain, but the captain had asked her to maintain comms relay with Command prior to atmospheric re-entry.  “All units have penetrated the stratosphere. Autopilot systems green across the board.” 

“This is operator 6O. All units confirmed. Clean re-entry execution, team. What is your status?” 

“We’ve passed the 50-kilometer threshold and are proceeding toward the target.” 

“Copy, 2B,” 6O replied. “Once you’ve crossed the anti-air defense perimeter, disengage autopilot and prepare for manual combat.” 

“Copy,” 2B said, the voices of her comrades echoing around her. 

“It’s not pretty in there,” 6O admitted. “But your orders are to punch through the melee and target the Goliath-class unit by any means necessary. We need this landing zone. Once you’re in, gather what data you can.” 

“Understood,” 2B replied. As she spoke, the air to her left suddenly superheated. Without manual controls, no one had time to react as a scarlet corrosion laser blasted through their ranks. Sparks and flaming oil plumed, and 12H screamed for only a moment before her jet, down three wings, fluttered like a falling leaf before exploding in an array of superheated metal, smoke, and fire that was all at once too far behind them to make out any details. 

“12H is down,” 1D called, “All units, activate manual controls, rely on visuals to evade.” 

“Free movement operational,” came a masculine voice through the squadron’s comms, and each jet instantly broke formation. 2B grasped her controls and yawed hard right as the air all around her superheated. She curled out of range mere milliseconds before it was too late. 

“Our Ho229 cancellers were supposed to cloak us!” 11B called, her voice now only audible through comms. Another corrosion laser was targeting her flight unit. “What the hell does R&D even do all day?!” 

“Spread out,” 1D said evenly. Her flight unit was white, denoting her status as captain. “We’ll join back up at the 5-kilometer threshold. Evade those lasers.” 

The team scattered, and making headway toward the target became a violent game of dodge and roll as seemingly dozens of anti-air weapons took notice of them. The battlefield was still too far on the horizon to see with raw optics, but the enemy had more than that to take aim. 

As she watched 1D bank expertly through the storm of enemy fire, an explosion to 2B’s right caught her off-guard. 4B had tried to pitch under a laser, but miscalculated a follow-up yaw and had taken the dead-center of a corrosion laser. Nothing remained once the scarlet beam flickered away. 

“4B is down,” 1D said bitterly. “Origin of that long-range corrosion laser is confirmed. I’ve marked it on your HUDs.” 

An orange hex appeared in 2B’s vision, blinking softly. 

“Thanks, Captain,” 7E said. She was alone on the left flank, now that 12H was down. 

2B watched the hex carefully as more corrosion lasers flared out. They came five or six at a time, now. Someone on the other side had pinpointed their assault squadron and was trying to keep them out. If they were lucky, someone in the fray at the front line would be trying to shut it down. 

They pushed toward the battlefield relentlessly, weaving through anti-air lasers until 1D called for them to break through the clouds approximately ten kilometers from land. 

“11B, you’re nearly a full klick away from us,” 1D called, “Pull back toward the squadron.” 

“I—It’s not letting me—” the woman grunted, the sounds of multiple lasers uncomfortably near her tinnying through comms. 2B watched in her direction, unable to make out her position by any means except for the consistent scarlet streaks punching out of the cloud layer getting farther and farther away. “I try to—” a blast corresponding to a distant explosion cut her off, and then the sound of alarms blaring through her HUD. “I’m hit! I’m hit! Help!” 

1D was silent for a moment. 

“Eject,” she said, her voice a little colder. “We’ll circle back for you.” 

The squadron listened in shuddering silence as 11B’s breaking gasps and pained grunts screamed in their ears. “My pod is damaged—I don’t have a parachute! Please!” 

“You are too far out,” 1D insisted. “Stay close to your crash site. We’ll come back for you.” 

2B grimaced. It was an utter lie. This battle had gone on for sixteen days already. 

11B ejected, and 2B tried not to imagine the sheer terror of a ten kilometer fall. 

The squadron remained silent. Only three units left. 

“It’s time,” 1D called. “This is the five kilometer threshold. Regroup and prepare to engage.” 

“Copy,” 2B said, pitching and banking back to take her place before the captain. Together, they dodged a corrosion laser, and then 7E descended to 2B’s side. 

“Enemy units sighted,” 7E warned. Still above the clouds, the squadron could see the signs of conflict. Violet plumes of Machine Phaze bullets inched into the sky. The clouds themselves glowed with light in places as things exploded beneath. Corrosion lasers speared into the heavens at random. Dogfights burst through the clouds, with no winning team clear yet. Machine Flyers grouped up on YoRHa units, clustering them with Phaze that clung to them like napalm. 

“Requesting permission to engage,” 2B said. It was a little early, but there was nothing worse than finding yourself surrounded and dodging enemy attacks until permission to fight back was granted. 

“Permission granted,” Operator 6O replied, her face doing a poor job of masking her concern. Back at the Bunker, there were hundreds of Operators directing teams like theirs in battle. The scale of this incursion was bigger than 2B had ever seen. She knew that the Commander stood there in the command deck before the colossal monitors, watching the battle intensely. 

“Descend,” 1D called. “Get close to the water, and I mean skim it. Engage maximum thrust. We’ll slide under the fray.” 

“Copy,” 2B affirmed. 

“Captain, you’re hit!” 7E said suddenly. 

“Lost a bit of my tail fin. All systems green,” 1D replied. “Eyes forward, 7E.” 

2B snuck a glance in her rearview monitors. A stream of smoke chased the captain, but 2B wasn’t going to argue with her—if 1D thought she could go on, then 2B wouldn’t stop her. Instead, together, they turned nose-down and plunged straight through the clouds. 

The relative peace of the sky died to the thunderous applause of the invasion campaign playing out on the surface. Explosions near and far flickered like lights on a command board. Flight units rocketed past, bullets screaming. Vast clouds of Machine Phaze bubbled like foam in places, making descent to the surface another game of dodge and weave. 

“So far, so good,” 1D called, “Nobody’s seen us yet.” 

As if in response, a nearby YoRHa jet spun out, crashed into a cloud of Phaze, and exploded, the pilot howling in agony. A horde of red-eyed Machine Flyers turned their gazes on the diving assault squadron, and took up pursuit. 

“Shouldn’t have said anything!” 7E called. “Incoming!” 

“Keep course!” 1D called, “We’re faster than they are!” 

Together, they plunged toward the water. The ocean here was violent indigo, dark like the depths of space. In some places, ancient and desolate buildings that had once been thousands of meters tall perched above the water, and mountainous waves that crested in tight packs, slammed into them like bombs. 

Together, they pulled out of their dive just meters above the sea. Propulsion engines activated in tandem, and the squadron blasted across the waves, their target suddenly and triumphantly in sight. 

An ancient manufacturing complex comprised of hundreds of silos and warehouses towered into the air. Factories on factories on factories, each piled atop the one beneath it. Much of it was totally or partially submerged, the results of thousands of years of decaying foundation.  A monument of rust to the lost age of manufacturing. 

A choking sound erupted from behind, and 1D cried out. 2B hazarded a glance back to see that 1D had fallen behind, and the Machine Flyers had boarded her jet. Plumes of Phaze ignited across her prow. 

“Captain!” 7E screamed. 

“I’m not done yet!” 1D bellowed, pitching in a circle to shake away the boarding enemies, and the Phaze slid away from her more vital components, though her outer shielding had already ignited. Alarms systems were blaring as she screamed, “Get off me!” 

The air around them quietly superheated. 

“Duck!” 2B shouted, but both 7E and 1D were too occupied. Alone, she peeled away as a corrosion laser blasted across the surface, igniting the very ocean along the way. Both 7E and 1D took it at full force and exploded, along with the chasing Machine Flyers. 

2B flew alone for a moment. “7E, 1D down,” she said. “Assuming Captain’s duties.” In a cascade of light, her flight unit changed color from black to white. For now, she had no pursuers, but that wouldn’t remain true for long. “2B to 6O. All allied units down. The operation is compromised. Awaiting further orders.” 

“O-Operator to 2B. The Goliath class is still active, but we’ve lost its location. We need you to rendezvous with YoRHa unit 9S within the factory to begin gathering data on the local terrain.” 

2B’s heart skipped a beat. She was familiar with scanner unit 9S.

Chapter Text

“2B to 6O. Multiple surrounding enemy air units confirmed. Requesting permission to assume mobile configuration.”

2B wondered if 6O could even hear her over the sounds of battle. Bullets erupted from her embedded disruptor guns along each wing. The rounds were energy-based, as all 14th machine war range armaments, and they tore through machine lifeforms like paper. Their plating crumpled and the lights in their eyes didn’t have time to go out as their internals suffered rapid heat fusion followed by meltdown combustion. 2B cut them down in hordes.

“Permission granted!” 6O said, the worry leaking into her voice. 2B wanted to chide her. Emotions were prohibited.

Initiated by a quick interlink between her neural net and the flight unit’s firmware, several seams and hinges across her prow and wings flipped and spun into motion. She still skimmed just above the waves, but her flight unit rapidly transformed from a forward-thrust jet fighter to a vertical thrust, momentum reliant but vastly more agile combat unit. The tail folded and adjusted along her back, the wings hinged inwards and reoriented their embedded ordnance.

2B was surrounded. Crowds of machine lifeforms had taken notice of her streaking revolution across the waves, and they converged like wildfire. Their eyes pulsed red, and machine phaze crested from their cannons. The napalm-like substance wasn’t a bullet projectile, but a strangling spume that engulfed and torched android hulls with unbearable efficiency. 2B danced under the phaze and dodged a corrosion laser to sweep a barrage of disruptor rounds through the ranks of machines.

Pushing straight through the ensuing explosions, 2B didn’t relent on the trigger. The aerial units crafted each energy-based disruptor round in the nanoseconds between shots, and the black-box reactors in each android unit had no problem supplying a near-limitless convoy of power to keep the guns firing. Supply chain and infantry logistics had changed since the age of humanity, which 2B understood to have included many years of difficult combat dragged down by the burden of needing to deliver heavy and unreliable weaponry and single-use materiel to the places and people who needed to use it.

In the year 11,945, the androids were the supply team, the pilot, the strategy analysts, the soldier and the weapon all programmed into one body.

One with her combat mech, 2B withdrew an energy-coupled spearsword from a nanosheath near the base of the wings and slashed through another wave of machine fliers. Several quad-flier units were bearing down, and she activated a short-burst shield array and slammed into the fliers intentionally. The shield held strong for less than a second before disengaging—plenty of time to crush the enemy against it and move on.

Another YorHa squadron fought in the near distance, and as the smoke cleared on 2B’s location, she watched as machine phaze choked through their ranks and dragged them to the waves, where they exploded in four haunting bursts. The machines, not programmed with the humanity to celebrate their victory, instantly turned on 2B, who screamed across the surging ocean to deliver rightful retribution.

The enemies numbered perhaps more than was reasonable to engage with alone, but 2B broke through their front line to surround herself with the leering red eyes of her loathsome aggressors.

Good.

She interfaced with the flight unit once more, and within a fraction of a second, placed targeting reticles upon each of her scores of foes. Another fraction of a second later, and a stentorian salvo of single-target missiles rocketed from her weapons bay and detonated against the machines who had murdered her comrades.

Emotions are prohibited, she reminded herself, and tried to steel herself against the waves of death ripping through the ranks of Yorha.

She broke through the clouds of smoke and shrapnel that remained of her enemies, ready for a tooth-and-nail brawl all the way to the factories where her assignment lay, but her enhanced eyes noticed something unexpected in the dense fray that lay between. It was a path. A slight and narrow thing, but at this vector, she could punch all the way to shore so long as she didn’t draw any more attention to herself.

She prodded her neural net interface again, and the flight unit seamlessly reverted back to forward-thrust jet configuration. Her eyes traced her route, the flight unit aligned with it, and she blasted away, tearing a sonic wave in the air as she broke the speed of sound.

Her flight HUD idly noted that the corrosion laser that had blown away most of her squadron had gone offline. She quietly thanked whoever had pulled it off and closed the gap between open ocean and factory complex in a matter of moments.

She found an opening into the compound wide enough to slip her narrow flight unit through and entered a long exhaust tunnel, rimmed with piping channels and spanned with ancient catwalks that forced her to dance and weave to avoid crushing herself to little android bits against any of it—she had to slow down, but she was still heaving along at 800 kph. Her flight unit was agile even at this speed, but there was only so much flipping and barrel rolling could do to avoid obstacles in the dark.

Just as she began to slow down to manage the sudden twists and corners of the exhaust chute, a cloud of machine phaze appeared at her rear. Some of them must have watched her rip past them. She grit her teeth and gunned the throttle. She was good—she could do this.

Pipe. Catwalk. Overhang. Pipe again. Overhang. Catwalk. She swerved and cut around each of them at a heart-pounding 600 kph, and she could feel the stress of each maneuver on vehicle. Her wings creaked, her LT holo ring hummed louder, and the finer instruments began to lose calibration.

2B pushed it harder—the tunnel tightened around her like a viper, and she estimated she was working with a bare twenty feet to either side. A margin of error so narrow she was having trouble calculating it.

She roared around a corner and only dodged a cloud of machine phaze by sheer luck. For an instant, the machine chatter clattered against her ears. What do they talk about? What could they talk about? It was obvious, of course. They talked about killing androids and that was all.

The chute narrowed even tighter as machine fliers bore down on her, phaze pluming from their turrets and crowding the chute. 2B weaved around a slanted pipe and nudged the vehicle’s firmware to assume mobile combat configuration. It was risky at this speed, in these occluded conditions, but the odds were stacked against her anyway and if she wanted to make it through this chute, she needed to deal with a handful of alien-spurned solicitors. Their chances of bringing her ship down in these conditions were better than good, they were nearly guaranteed.

So 2B took a deep breath. She probed into the neural net and felt her vehicle’s synapses, grounded herself in the way information routed along its circuits. The LT holo ring thrummed, keeping her connected to the Bunker. Its presence was comforting and constant. She probed along each microdevice along each circuit—each resistor, thermistor, inductor, connector, transformer, and oscillator. She ran her neural fingers along the hull, feeling the bumps and grooves, noting the bays for weapons and engines and smaller macrodevices; the precision pneumatics and hydraulics that could change the unit’s form mid-flight tucked and folded neatly away, ready to jump back to work in an instant. Reliable and intricate, like her own body. She and the flight unit were one not only in firmware and neural network, but in all of its engineered components—she didn’t pilot by any controls in her hands, rather by automatic reaction of the mind in harmonious sync with its neural net meta infrastructure.

In short, 2B became her ship.

Connection deepened, it warned her of the exhaustive stress of such intricate and precise flying. These speeds and these hard turns and angles would tear the ship apart if she wasn’t careful.

But YorHa Unit 2B didn’t have time to be careful. Instead, she did what she came here to do.

Instead, YorHa Unit 2B reaped death at sixteen gs and nearly half mach. Android bodies were built to manage in-atmosphere forces that, if she had been one of the organic species native to the planet she defended, would have crushed her to pulp. As it was, her titanium skeleton held strong, and her porcelain skin stayed rigid and taut. Her oilblood pumped as intended without errors despite the immense accelerations. Her blackbox began to feel hot.

She flexed her prow around a fixed cable highway and angled a burst of fire at a quad-flyer machine. Its hull shredded to scrap, it wobbled in the air before losing control and crashing into a rusted support pillar that gave out. The tunnel shuddered and rust particles sifted down into the air, turning her forelights into beams. She probed the ship to transform into mobile configuration as she rounded a tight bend over an askew ventilation duct and then back to jet configuration to regain lost speed. Her field scan showed that she was approaching the location where the goliath was last seen, but the exhaust corridor bobbed and danced in fallen disorderly breaks, forcing her to route outwards and away from her destination.

More machine flyers converged, keeping pace and slinging phaze at her. She was forced to bank harder, yaw tighter, cut faster. She burst out more rounds, flipping upside down to fire backward while performing an adverse yaw mid-transformation to mobile configuration to swerve around a drainage pipe and under a catwalk. In mobile configuration, her mech technically had hands, but using them for movement in any way beyond balancing—such as grabbing things and swinging off them—would only destroy the whole assembly at these speeds. Her fuselage strained at the maneuver, and one of her ailerons simply snapped off, flung away in a spin. She cut off the transformation and heaved her thrusters to max as machines died in a cloud at her rear.

“Report: excessive maneuvering will result in the destruction of YorHa H0229 flight unit,” Pod 042 said. “Proposal: fly more carefully.”

“Shut it,” 2B said. She monitored her neural instruments carefully, noting from the altimeter that the tunnel hadn’t changed elevation despite the ages of shifting tides at one end and settling structures atop it. “Where does this tunnel lead?”

“Analysis: corridor comes to an abrupt stop in five hundred meters.”

“What?”

The machines converged in her sudden consternation. She braked, readied her short-burst shield array, and flipped a wide barrel roll around the snapped framed of a steel support, knowing full well that she wasn’t going to be able to slow down in time before the end of the tunnel. She’d hoped it would exit into the factory interior, but Pod 042 was right, there was only a corrugated steel wall, aged with rust and missing panels here and there.

At the last second, she activated the shield array and rammed straight into the wall at just over a hundred kph. The shield held long enough to break through but not long enough to squeeze the flight unit through the new hole. Both wings clipped, and her LT holo ring overheated in the sudden damage. With a lightning-quick prod of her neural net, 2B ejected mid-crash and launched herself through the hole and into the chamber beyond. In the air, Pod 042 launched into a rapid-fire systems change sequence to give her control of her body before she touched the ground. 

“Alert: Heavy damage to Ho229 Flight Unit. Flight control systems abandoned. Standard comm systems down. Laser comm system activated. Confirming terrain. . . long-range. Transferring FCS control. Transferring IMU control. Activating FFCS. Confirming 2B black box signal. Activating NFCS. Initiating 2B vitals recheck sequence. Initiating short-range radio-wave camouflage.” 

Multiple gyros through her body activated mid-tumble, and she flipped forward to land on her feet on a rusted steel grate in a dark room. She had been assigned to get on the ground, but she would have preferred a more controlled landing. 

“Activating short-range attack gear.” 

She straightened, summoned her blade, and enjoyed a nanosecond of quiet—the machines that had been chasing her had been destroyed in the explosion of her crash, so for a bare instant, all was still. Then, her sensors picked up on the several dozen awakening machine life forms beginning to surround her. 

“Alert. Large enemy group detected.”

“Yes, I’m aware of that,” she replied. 

The machines converged on her on the ground just as they had in the sky. Mostly small bipedals, but some were equipped with phaze shooters that kept her on her toes as she tore through their ranks. Her blade cleaved through their hulls easily, shearing apart their wires and sockets and cranks with whip-like speed. She darted and slashed, dodged and stabbed, danced and slaughtered until their numbers thinned. Pod helped too, of course. He fired endless streams of energy rounds similar to what the flight unit had been armed with until a huskier large bipedal came barreling through the hole in the wall still smoldering with the wreckage of her ship. 

2B cracked her neck and walked to meet it, her heels clacking against the corrugated steel flooring. Then, as it swung a fist at her, she dodged, slashed, and roundhouse kicked it across the room so hard it cracked a concrete support wall with its body. The lights in its eyes went out as the room came to know a brief quiet. 

“Enemies destroyed,” Pod 042 said. 

Then, before she’d had a chance to inspect her surroundings, the entire wall shredded away. A shovelwheel mining implement at least fifty feet tall tore away ancient rusted steel barriers from the other side without warning, and 2B only dodged the tornado of debris by initiating a dodge chip program that phased her body straight through projectiles. She was equipped with a dozen or so chip programs, but this one required instant speed reactions to pull off effectively. 

“Not quite,” she replied. 

The mining implement, like a behemoth circular saw, reared back and regarded her for only a moment. 

“Let’s do this, then,” she said, raising her sword.