not to be.

As the dim fire illuminated her optics, 7H blinked to confirm the sight before her. They managed to organize a gathering in conditions like this? As much as she wanted to find some ulterior motive, they all just seemed to be enjoying each other’s company. They didn’t seem to react much to the commotion though, not yet. Carefully stepping forward and away from the bitter cold of the door, 7H flinched at the sound of her own heels. The machines seemed to stir, but she hoped it wasn’t enough to initiate confrontation so quickly. There weren’t any visible weapons though they didn’t necessarily need them– she was quite surprised to see them chat so nonchalantly.

“..They’re just..speaking to one another…” She leaned in a little closer, trying to pick up on their speech. “Oh..I think this group is arguing about something. The one next to them are quiet…I have to listen in!” The healer whispered, peering over the corner as she moved completely inside.

Nodding, 9S listens in as well.

“Well I, for one, am sick of it!” One machine exclaims to another, gesturing dramatically with its stubby arms. 9S notes that it has the ragged remains of a scarf looped around its head, lacking a neck. “Those hooligans! Throwing their loud parties all throughout the night when decent folks are trying to sleep! Playing their rock music! It makes me sick!”

“I know daring, I know,” the other soothes, patting its fellow machine with a mechanical clunking. “But we’ll be rid of them soon enough. The ski jumping competition is fast approaching, and we-” 

They both pause, turning to look at the androids in the doorway. 9S extends a hand, prepared to hack one of them, when it squeals in delight. “Ah! New guests! You must help us, please! Please come in, you’ll catch your death out there!”

“Huh.” Well if you’d asked her a few hours ago, she probably would have said the same. She might not have put the emphasis on the same place in the sentence though. “I… Suppose there’s some logic to that. Maybe. I’m trying not to make too many assumptions right now, but I don’t have much else to go off.”

“Do you like it? The room that is. I suppose that’s not really what’s important here. Black and gold? Sounds stylish. Haven’t seen it though. There seems to be weapons here and there on display, but I’m not sure if they’re replicas or not. I… Haven’t seen any floating boxes, no. Armed or otherwise.” She’d rather not, all things considered. 

She folded her arms as she thought for a moment. “It’s strange. I was travelling somewhere, or about to. It’s… A method of travel that involves me passing out and waking up somewhere else- don’t ask- but instead of waking up where I intended to arrive, I was in this city. Say, does this mean anything to you?” She searched in her pockets for the paper the Messengers had given her, unfurling it to show a string of nine numbers with no particular context or sequence.

“Do I like it?” He repeats, as if he hadn’t expected her to even consider his opinion. “...sure? I mean, I’m not exactly used to luxurious accommodations. It’s nice that it seems like it’s got a bunch of stuff I’d collect in it, but the fact that I don’t remember anything is making it a little hard to get excited over it.”

She’d not long descended from that eerie tower and the uncomfortably familiar room when she had finally ran into someone in this place and almost jumped out of her skin because of it. If she hadn’t been looking at the string of numbers on the paper in her hand she might have accidentally shot him. Interesting clothes. 

“I… Was about to ask you the same thing. You don’t live here?”

“I’ve never seen this place before today, but I’ve got keys that work here.” That probably sounded suspicious. “I don’t know how I got those keys either. Who are you? What weapons are you looking for?”

“No, I don’t. I don’t really live anywhere...” Even if his room seems to illustrate otherwise. 9S can’t say he’s ever been forced to think about that fact before. Even the Bunker wasn’t much of a home. He smiles easily, as if this was all some funny coincidence, rather than an enormous problem. “Definitely not in a castle. But if you’ve got the keys for it, either this is your place, or someone’s decided that you live here now.”

“Either I’m a guest too, or someone made my room up the way they thought I’d like it before they dumped me here.” 9S tilts his head back in the direction he’d come. “I had a sword, though. Black and gold, and my Pod. Think of a floating box with arms, about this big.” He holds his hands apart about the with of a shoebox. 

For a moment, they don’t say anything. They shutter their optic and listen to the sound of the grass rustling beside their antennae, to the chirping of birds and the subtle whirring of their own components. It’s not long before their usual restlessness itches beneath their plating, however, and they open their optic to glance sideways at their amica.

“Me? A teacher? That’s the worst idea I’ve ever heard.” Whirl chuckles, shaking their helm. “I think I’ll be fine. I’m just in a weird mood. I owe you one for listening, Nines.”

Human? Maybe. No, something’s off, something’s not pinging right. Not machine either though, not like Adam and Eve. There’s a heartbeat in there somewhere.

“Hey, sorry if I startled you.” 9S waves casually. He’d woken up in a room that looked like something he’d create, full of cracked aquariums and glass jars and plants uprooted by hand, but which he had no memory of. His body was fully intact, no memory corruption detected in his personality data. This was much too advanced to be some kind of simulation.

“That’s the thing, though. I’m millions of years old, and I just feel like I’m stagnating.”

They sigh with a whistle of air through their vents, frame sinking into the grass slightly. “What am I missing? Why don’t I get excited for things anymore? I mean, I get excited, but nothing ever lasts.”

“I guess that’s good.” They lay on their back, arm-cannon crossed behind their helm as they stare up at the skies. “I dunno. I feel… weird, I think.”

“Dude. Nothing matters. Get with the picture already.” 

Shigaraki had originally planned on messing with this kid’s head a little bit, but the conversation had gone wildly off track. 9S, his pure innocent whiteness was having a strange effect on him, that Shigaraki didn’t quite understand. 

He wanted to rip that blindfold off, make him see, make him look at how dirty everyone was. He thought of the worst possible ways he could hurt someone to prove to 9S that humans were bad, but he didn’t lift a single finger. He just kept staring, blankly. 

He didn’t get people.  He didn’t get this robot. 

“You’re right. I didn’t have to do any of that. What do I want? Maybe… I want to kill you.”

Shigaraki suddenly reached his hand forward. He tried to put his hand on 9S’ face, holding it up right in front of his eyes, so those five fingers were the last thing he would ever see. 

He tried but he stopped.

He just held his hand up in front of 9S’s face without moving another centimeter forward. 

“If I killed you it would be the exact same as killing a person, okay? I would be killing you. You exist, and have consciousness, and can be broken beyond all repair.  Then you’ll just be nothing. You’ll be gone. You’d feel pain, it would hurt like a bitch. Come on, care a little bit! It’s no fun killing someone that doesn’t even care if he dies.” 

9S’s gaze flicks from Shigaraki’s hand, to his face, though he doesn’t flinch, still resting against him as if they were friends. “...alright. I don’t want to die. They probably have some way to keep it from being permanent here, I bet. Can’t have your test subjects killing each other willy-nilly. I don’t feel pain the same way you do, but... I guess if given the choice, I’d rather not die. But it still wouldn’t be the same as killing a person. I know I can come back, that they’d keep replacing me as long as I was useful. A human being can’t. Not usually.”

     ❝   i see ,   humans who couldn’t protect their planet & instead fled from their problems to the moon .   oh ,   that’s sad .   did they make you to try & solve their problems for them ?   then once you do all the dirty work ,   they won’t hesitate dismantling you .   humans tend to love doing that .   ❞

     amusement  breeds  in  the  shadowed  lining  of  her  face ,   ill  -  placed  hostility  punched  at  the  corners  of  blackened  lips .   was  it  not  funny  how  they  BOTH  came  from  worlds  where  humanity  has  doomed  itself ?   android  certainly  finds  aspects  humorous ,   a  spectacle  of  arrogance  beneath  synthetic  veneer .   synthesized  voice  mangles  up  syllables ,   laying  down  her  comments  as  objective  fact  without  missing  a  beat .   GLaDOS ,   too ,   denies  the  other  anger  which  she  suspects  he  wished  to  cull  from  her ,   &   with  a  hum  she  turns  her  attention  back  towards  his  appearance .

      her  interest  lands  upon  the  cloth  wrapped  around  the  other  android’s  eyes ,   tilting  her  crown  so  as  to  examine  it  further  in  quiet  contemplation .   a  strange  design  choice ,   if  nothing  else .   a  metal  hand  reaches  out  slightly ,   as  though  desiring  to  touch  the  blindfold  or  to  attempt  it’s  removal ,   but  she  halts  before  making  contact ,   lingering  in  mid  -  air ,   choosing  to  voice  her  curiosity  instead .

   ❝   so ,   little boy ,   what’s this for ?   ever attempted to take it off ?   or did someone tell you that you’d explode if you do ?    ❞

“...I guess you’re not wrong. But think of it this way: If the humans didn’t get chased off their own planet, I never would’ve existed, never gotten to see all the things I’ve seen, never gotten to meet all the people here. If the war was over tomorrow and they wanted to take me apart because my work was done, I’d be okay with that. What good’s a soldier if there’s nothing left to fight?” 

It’s said matter-of-fact, his falsely-cheerful facade dropped like a brick. While he’d joked with 2B about shopping, going to the park, playing at being human in the aftermath, it had all been nothing more but idle chatter. His purpose in the machine war was all he had to cling to in order to keep himself moored in this place, the thought that he might someday return to the front lines, that all this data he was gathering here would useful for something outside of his own temporary satisfaction. YoRHa existed for one purpose and one purpose only, to win the war, and with no war, what good were any of them?

“And alien machines aren’t people, how exactly? Don’t be so goddamn pretentious, you kill shit, I kill shit, it’s exactly the same.”

The boy next to him felt so alive. He seemed much more alive than Shigaraki at least, who considered himself a corpse that just kept walking around out of sheer spite if nothing else. Shigaraki could hear whirring and tiny noises from 9S that reminded him of his mechanical nature, but Shigaraki was already looking at him like he was human. Shigaraki was used to seeing humanity in the weirdoes and outcasts anyway. 

Five fingers. It would be so easy to disintegrate 9S, but he doesn’t. He just holds onto him, lightly, gingerly. “What would make me feel better? Nothing, that’s why I just want everyone to leave me the fuck alone. They should all just die.” Shigaraki said, harshly, and then in a much softer voice. His eyes were a little like 9s’s, they both looked… so childish. 

“Why aren’t you worried about what would make yourself feel better, you dumb piece of shit robot?” 

“I don’t think you’d say that if you saw them.” More often than not, it felt like a mercy, putting down something that had long forgotten its reason for being. Something so confused about its own existence that it begged for mercy even as it flailed at him with its dull weapons. 

9S even breathes like a human would, softly audible over the noises of the street, the chatter of people walking by, amid the quiet hum of his internal workings. Something that could be chalked up to his predecessors needing to seem more human, to fool the souls nesting inside them, something that had simply been copied over when the template was changed to something more focused on combat. Perhaps. Who could say.