NieR:Remnant

IV - Sea of Madness

"CHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGE!"

A2 felt the ground start to rumble. The violet-eyed machines glimpsed at one-another before turning towards the distant voice.

"CHARGE, MY PRETTIES!" The rumbling grew stronger. "TAKE BACK OUR HOME!"

The entire environment shook as if the earth was quaking, giving way to a sudden creaking of wood and rummaging of leaves. Wildlife, an entire stampede of them, came rushing into the clearing with a cloaked machine mounted on a boar up front, and A2 was right in their path.

The violet-eyed foes braced themselves, but there was nothing that could protect them from such numerous tusks, antlers and hooves. Smaller machines went flying in a barrage of plates and screws, flailing their arms all around before exploding. Larger foes' efforts to guard against or divert the wave were fruitless; their towering figures collapsed one by one to be torn apart beneath the powerful stride. The screams were as unrelenting as the herd itself.

A2 darted her sight around quick as the wave of destruction approached her. She located an aged trunk not yet claimed by the flames that had curved over into the more dense brush, likely having timbered from the meteor's impact. The wounded android sprinted towards it, her dead arms flailing around as she leapt off the bent trunk to boost herself higher into the trees. She made do with just her legs, minding her footing while jumping off smaller branches further up into the canopy. A2 managed to avoid what few pockets of flames threatened her rise, but she soon lost her balance, slipping off about thirty feet above the stampede. She curved her knees as the backs of her legs slammed onto the branch. That sharp, splintering pain from the impact intensified with each passing moment as A2 strained her lower body to hold on, upside-down, her dead arms dangling towards the earth along with her long hair. She hung there for over a minute, praying that the branch was sturdy enough to hold until the carnage down below was over. Finally, the stampede started to thin. It grew less dense until one last moose galloped through, sending a crawling Biped that had lost three of its limbs to the skies towards the hanging android with a strong buck of its antlers. The moose ran in a few excited circles before continuing the way its companions had galloped.

The Biped exploded, and the creaking branch A2 had been hanging from gave way with the machine's final destructive wave. She went falling into the field of ruin, barely managing to stick the landing on two numb legs. She seated herself down and gave a quick glance at her surroundings, dumbfounded at what had just transpired. Machine bits were everywhere, heads here and torsos there, a sea of dented bolts and crushed screws sprinkled between the more defined parts all throughout the clearing. Some of the more intact machines shuffled or crawled about, that spark of their miserable synthetic lives still not fully snuffed out.

A2 finally managed to restore function to her right arm. She braced it over her chest as more pain from her struggle set in.

"I-it showed us so much!" One of the dying machines called out to her. It rolled back and forth, limbless. "To be more than a cinder in the flame, a flake in the avalanche, but we f-failed!" All of the surviving machines cried out together.

"Failed! FAILED! FAILED! FAILED, FAILED, FAILED, FAILED, FAILED, FAILED, FAILED-" The shrieking came to an abrupt stop, and then they exploded.

The lone android at last let herself breathe. She felt the functioning return to her left arm, and she stretched both out making sure they moved like they were supposed to. She would most definitely need maintenance before feeling a hundred percent, but that could wait. A2 gave the ruin a more intent look, setting her eyes on a dented Goliath corpse that had its ruined arms curved into its torso, almost like it was protecting something. She rose to stand and began moving towards it.