#2b 1

@podshot

Though the phones they’d been given were relatively simple compared to the tech he was used to, they were surprisingly difficult to format. 9S peers at the screen, sitting crosslegged on his bed. Wires run from the charging port to the open panel on his chest, plugged directly into his black box, allowing him to view his own diagnostics without entering repair mode. 

No matter what he tried he couldn’t seem to break into his own code and unlock his hacking or NFCS. The guide he’d been provided had helped him get this far, but now it felt like it was nothing more than an effort to tease him, dangling the promise of freeing his abilities just out of reach. Everything else reads as normal. No problems to report. With an exasperated sigh he closes the connection and tugs the wires out of his box, replacing his chest plate and pulling his black undershirt back on.  

Backing out to the phone’s main screen, he lies back in bed, thinking about who else might be able to help. Pathfinder was one of the only other robots here, and the only one 9S felt like he might be able to trust. Should really try out the messaging app, as primitive as it seemed. 9S had glanced through it the day he’d arrived, but he’d simply been too distracted by his surroundings and the insistence of his programming to find his bearings before playing around with ancient technology. 

He opens the app. If he had a heart it would have skipped a beat. 2B’s name is there, at the very top of the list. 9S sits up suddenly, hunched over the screen. It... it can’t be, she’s been here all along? And he never ran into her? It was a large island, but... God, she must have no idea he’s here either or she surely would have contacted him. With shaking fingers, he selects her name and types out a message.

Hakuno was still getting used to the strange city and the strange people living within it; she had been here a day at most so everything was undoubtedly new to her. Maybe it was wrong to say the setting and people were strange so much that she was the strange one, a stranger from a foreign shore who washed up here one day. She shouldn’t exclude herself, there are likely countless people in the same position as her.

Perhaps she was still shaken by everything that happened at the end of the Holy Grail War. Perhaps it was the fact that even though she knew she’d be one day separated from Saber, she wasn’t emotionally prepared for it or never expected  it to happen so suddenly. Either way, here she was alone in a new place where she doesn’t know anything, set back to square one on being lost and confused.

But she was stronger and wiser now, she wasn’t going to just drift by. She’ll set out for herself and discover the truth about her place in this world.

...excluding the fact that in her self reflection she lost track of her surroundings and became literally lost.

Hakuno didn’t know what to expect when murmurs went around that a police officer would come to the school and talk about illegal narcotics. Apparently a dealer had been caught in that part of town and the police found it necessary to lecture students on the dangers of narcotics and addition?

Naturally her sheep classmates seem more than a little annoyed and patronized that some cop was coming over to tell them what they’ve been told since they were lambs, but Hakuno had no real knowledge of the subject. She knew what illegal narcotics were naturally, but not much else.

She was surprised when the officer who was assigned to speak to them was...horribly familiar. Stylish black uniform, black blindfold, silver hair. She had definitely seen her before. Hadn’t she? At the very least her appearance reminded her of 9S...