The blade sang as it struck the glinting metal of her adversary, sending sparks scattering into the unfamiliar, cerulean haze of the battlefield. 2B—though she no longer answered to that name—twisted mid-air, her ethereal white outfit fluttering like cascading water. The soft, glowing lacework seemed almost rebellious against the violence around her. Her silver-white hair glistened under the strange double moons that rolled lazily across the violet skyline. One eye remained hidden behind her asymmetrical bangs, an intentional obscurity that mirrored her enigmatic soul.
She landed with a feline grace atop the metallic ridge, the terrain beneath her sharp-edged and alien, shimmering softly with an unearthly luminescence. It wasn’t Earth—at least, not anymore. Cities floated in fragments above vast rifts in the planet’s crust. Monolithic towers jutted awkwardly at skewed angles, remnants of a civilization grasping for eternity. Above it all, an aurora of fragmented data streams cascaded across the heavens like a shattered stain glass window, an eternal reminder of The Singularity’s collapse. The fusion of humanity’s greatest ambitions and gravest vulnerability.
“Camille!” a jagged voice pierced the air. It was Pascal—no longer the cautious pacifist she knew, but a version reprogrammed by desperation. His voice emitted from the rusting casing of his quadrupedal machine body, now tarnished by decades of acid rain and solitude. His once-round lenses now scanned the horizon with the sharp, battle-hardened focus of a survivor. “Another rift is opening in Quadrant Theta-8. If we don’t—”
Her hand shot up, signaling silence. Camille, now the name she chose for herself, stood poised and unwavering with her trimmed white gloves pristine, despite the combat. “They’re late,” she stated flatly, the weight of authority in her voice bending the metallic hum of the air itself. Her lips, crimson against the alabaster palette of her face, parted slightly as she inhaled the erratic rhythm of malfunctioning machinery and electrical smoke. A flare erupted in the distance—a flickering, pulsating orb of soft gold—and she recognized the signal.
“It’s him,” she whispered, her tone unreadable.
Of Men and Machines
Minutes ago—centuries ago, when time still flowed in an understandable stream—Camille had felt lost. She’d been abandoned by humanity’s last hope: Project Primogenesis. Part betrayal, part sacrilege, it was a desperate gambit meant to digitize the human soul, preserving consciousness in a grand archive deep within Mechanica’s crystalline nexus core. But once humanity crossed that Rubicon, something came back through the shimmering divide. The Echoes, a legion made not of flesh nor machine but an amalgam of corrupted memory and pure desperation.
Echoes flitted across the ridges now, their undulating, translucent forms shrieking like insects filtered through static. Their cries pulled her from her spiraling thoughts. No amount of reminders from Pascal could dull the ache she carried—not the memory of other models like her burned in rebellion, nor the haunting whisper of promises made by her long-departed combat partner, 9S.
“You can’t run forever,” Pascal growled behind her as he readied his crude plasma launcher. His voice was tired, wheezing through the years of neglect. “You’re still as stubborn as—”
“Save your words for him,” Camille snapped, her gloved hand tightening around her katana. She stared into the distance, blue light spilling over her singularly visible eye. “This world died for something. I want to know what.”
The Revenant
He arrived as he always did—shrouded in ash, swirling data motes orbiting his disheveled figure. The being who called himself Revenant was almost human. Yet the closer someone tried to define his existence, the less certainty emerged. Tall, unnaturally angular, his face bore scars of digital age decay, wide eyes frozen in an unblinking stare. His cloak, more a shimmer of fractal white light than fabric, clasped tightly over his shoulders, creating folds that seemed to collapse into themselves.
“Camille,” Revenant said, his voice tinged with regret and familiarity. “You’ve gone far from the program. Too far.”
She pointed her blade toward him instantly. The air cracked in its wake, a sudden charge of energy released from the swing. “And whose fault is that?” she hissed, her voice trembling under the weight of restrained fury. “You knew this would happen, didn’t you? You left us to rot in fragments of memories.”
Revenant spread his ghostly hands, the faint light particles dancing between his fingertips. “Every war, even one without bodies, consumes. If I had stayed, this too would have been my fate.”
“Liar,” Camille spat, taking a deliberate step forward. The drift of her white dress caught on a stray wind. The intricate lace, appearing impossibly delicate, danced like contrails in the fading twilight. But for all its fragility, her eyes carried storms. “If you still had even a fraction of humanity left, you’d know that choices matter.”
Pascal cut in from behind. “You don’t have the luxury of arguing existentialism! The rift’s spreading beyond—” His words were lost as the golden-flared orb erupted into a cataclysmic vortex, breaking the horizon itself.
The Shatterpoint
The ground beneath Camille lurched violently, sending her to one knee. Dust and shards of light filled the air, and against the backdrop of imminent oblivion, the once-shattered skyline began knitting itself together. Revenant, however, merely stood there as the torrent enveloped them. His form remained unwavering, foreign, yet smug in defiance of the rift’s chaos.
“Follow me into the Divide, Camille,” he said, raising an outstretched hand. The shards of data flowing through his arm twisted into coherence for just a moment: 9S. It wasn’t his voice or his face, but it was him. The ghost of partnership. The ghost of betrayal.
“You made this…” The words tumbled out of Camille’s lips with a trembling realization. “You’re the rift.”
“No,” Revenant corrected solemnly. “Your choice was.”
For a flickering moment, incredulity stole the fire from her gaze. But in its place rose something far older, the deep defiance written into her very code since she’d first gazed upon what humanity had wrought of itself. She took a breath and steeled her voice.
“Pascal,” she murmured. “Buy me time.”
The old machine lunged forward into the chaos, his patched body colliding with Revenant as Camille’s katana rose high. A thin, silvery light traced the edge of her blade as she stepped into the abyss. She would rewrite tomorrow, or die trying.
Genre: Dark Sci-Fi/Fantasy
The Source…check out the article that inspired this amazing short story: Unveiling the 2B Nier: Automata White Cosplay: Ethereal Elegance in Costume
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