NieR:Remnant

XIX - C0114P53

A2 awoke with a retch of salty liquid, conscious, wet sand caking against her wounded shell. She was barely keeping her eyes open.

Her soaked, burning vision was clearing towards her outstretched arm. Something was dragging her. She blinked and gave her eyes a quick rub with what remained of her left hand. That burn intensified for a moment, but her vision was focusing. It was a pod, violet-colored. A2 was too weak to pull against it. She tried to stand, shaking before plopping back into the sand, her arm buckling beneath her chest.

"H-help," she cried weakly. They didn't come this far just to be assimilated, damnit! "S-someone, anyone, please..."

A2 caught glimpse of something on her left. It was 2B, her ruined, unmistakable outfit soaked with sand and seaweed. She was out cold, along with Nines a bit further past in a similar state. Pods were dragging them as well, though A2 couldn't make out their colors.

Minutes went by. A2 tried to stand again. Her head began to swim, the pod attached to her dangling through the air as it continued to jerk in that same dragging direction.

She froze, collapsing to one knee. Pods of varying brightness were all over the place, many wriggling like fish. A familiar, colossal face was right in front of them, half-broken and twitching with a shallow portion of the sea around it. Remnant's right appendage of pods, what was left of it, was coming forward with long drags in the sand, struggling against the pull of the sea. Further above, a good majority of Its amorphous torso, enough to obscure the horror within, remained intact, but unmoving with a weak, almost nonexistent glow. Pooling out of the faltering coat of pods was a thick, dark substance, trickling from It in the form of small slow-moving currents drifting into the ocean.

Remnant's visage rose up weakly, trembling against gravity with thick wet globules of sand dripping off.

"W-we... All we w-wanted was peace. R-respite..." The jaw had been broken, leaving the mouth to dangle by a thread, showing multiple spots of missing teeth. The upper-right part of the face was all that was fully intact. Everywhere else was ruined, battered and broken, the outer layer of the crystallized silicon face missing all over to show parts of the inner lining. "Respite, f-for you and for Us."

Weak as It was, the legion of voices still carried a powerful force. That black-and-white pattern coming from the intact eye was the last perfect, petrified part of the visage, focused and alone. Every other part of the face was moving, dangling, crumbling.

"N-no." A2 pushed herself up higher. "All you w-wanted was a world devoid of soul."

There was a growling noise. Remnant raised Its annihilated head once more and tried to reach further towards the three androids with that struggling appendage, sinking deeper towards the sea by the second. It growled again, longer, before the pods on Its body all went dark. Whatever Remnant had come to rest on seemed to cave in with a series of air bubbles, and as one, the entire body began to sink into the sea, that crumbling appendage trying desperately to find a grip. The visage vanished beneath the surface, and the pods forming the appendage lost their form, joining the rest in sinking to their watery grave.

With a deep, tired breath, A2 lifted and managed to find balance despite her leg. She turned around to take in the wider area. They seemed to be in the middle of a crater, or half of one, that was a decent way's below sea level. She looked up to see an even larger swarm of pods formerly of Remnant's shell, spread out and shielding against the crushing sea that threatened everyone within the crater.

They had to get out of here. There was no telling how unstable the land had become.

"2B? 9S?" A2 called out to them. That pod continued to hold onto A2's hand. She didn't have the strength, or care, to yank it off.