NieR:Remnant

VIII - Cold Fire

This area of Grun was a hell of a lot more subdued than anywhere else on deck 9S had been.

It was probably due to the fact that there wasn't any crew partaking in noisy duties in the immediate area. When he relayed his thoughts to Pod-153, not in a way one would refer to as voluntarily, it suggested relocating to a place of seclusion at least a moderate bit away from the trials of others; when facing similar trials, many humans found partaking in this "alone time" to be freeing, relieving even, in relation to their inner turbulence as 153 relayed. 9S had been incapable of recollecting a time where he'd truly been alone upon his pod's inquiring, so they both agreed it'd be worth a shot.

At the very least, it was helpful that Grun was so damned gigantic that 9S could even find a sub-area on the deck to even attempt this "alone time" method despite the sizable crew of machine and android. He felt blessed, even, that he was able to find such a place and time to practice such method of zen despite how everything had transpired, and on the husk of what had been a colossal foe mere months ago no less.

Was that part of the idea, then? Finding something bright in the endless sea of pitch darkness?

It had the ring of something wise, sure, but 9S didn't feel much better upon the consideration. Moving his sight from the expansive sea, he dove into his external data storage to try something else. 9S had been compiling a musical library during all of his curious scavenging throughout his past lives, keeping it backed up with help of Pod-153 and rediscovering it every rebirth to add on anew. Thinking on it now, it was a weird thing for his pod to agree to, but he soon deduced that it must not have felt such a harmless endeavor would compromise its previous protocol. Hell, it had to have been quite the balancing act between serving its assigned unit and maintaining its contradictory higher-priority orders, when considering how much 9S had partaken in such little things in regards to data recovery and conservation.

Wait.

All of those memories were back.

Every single death blow by 2B's hand.

The echoes of Pod-153 instructing her in disposal of his corpse, confirming its awareness and role in the scheme.

They'd been there since he awakened in her arms, and yet he felt nothing, didn't even question it, like they were always there.

Was that wrong?

This revelation, for a brief moment, he felt...

He felt like he was someone else, but the same.

Still him, but in someone else's head.

Was this real?

What was real?

And how?

How did he even regain them?

Was that damnable creature in his head again? Were Pod-006's estimations off?

9S's vision focused on the list in the data space, and he forced his spinning mind to the back of his awareness. He'd made an effort to listen to everything he could whenever able, gravitating towards what humanity had referred to as "rock and roll," as well as a "subgenre" they called "metal." How fitting, for the sort that he'd prefer. He'd gathered so much, most of which he hadn't so much as laid eyes on. On a quick scroll through, there were a few albums from that one group that'd named themselves after an ancient armored insect but had an apparent ignorance towards differences in vowels, a couple of longer songs from another group who enjoyed the rush of going fast based on their name, more songs dated later from one of 9S's up and coming favorites who for some reason chose to identify under the label of an ancient torture device from even further back in civilization's infancy, another group who seemed to be mega-fascinated by death and apparently also had trouble with spelling, and another whose choice of label perplexed him most of all; how could someone stand guard over something if they were blind? That didn't make a decimal of sense!