xxxxxxx

The android behavior in this chapter is brought to you by a line in-game where 9S says, and I quote:
"Human-shaped weapons, huh? Wonder if they worked like flight units."

Completely missing that he and literally everyone he knows is a human-shaped weapon.

xxxxxxx

The rain that had plagued so much of the early journey was gone. The sky was clear as a summer dream, with only the occasional passing herd of puffy clouds to be seen, and the sun was a little lower in the western sky every day.

West being the direction of their travel, meaning the incessant glare quickly rose through the ranks of V's travel-related nemeses. Mercifully, it was one defeated easily with the sunglasses 49 had found before they began this trek. It was time for him to get used to hiding his lack of optic lights anyway.

If only the heat were so easy to alleviate.

Their route had turned marginally south to keep away from increasing clusters of androids and keep close to water sources. Somewhat paradoxically, it also brought them closer to the desertification that had claimed the planet's equator and was steadily encroaching outward. Open prairie had yielded to hills covered in destroyed forests only just beginning to regrow saplings and finally to scrubland. Fern gave some explanation about a series of high-carnage descent missions in advance of the one-sided loss that was the battle of Normandy, but V barely heard it.

The terrain was aggressively barren of shade. Even with the breeze that came from speeding along with Shadow underfoot and bare minimum resistance clothing, the temperature was stifling. V hadn't felt so wretched since he was actually dying.

It only grew worse when scrub gave way to a red-hued expanse so sterile it may as well have been on Mars. Treads of boots and tires scuffled and danced around one another in the dust. Buildings more unsettling than anything the machines had ever restored pocked the landscape. High rises standing at strange uneven distances from one another without roads or concrete or any other infrastructure. They were strangely well maintained despite their blown-out windows and the absence of any place the white material that made their façades would have come from. On and on they stretched, despite days of travel, like strange markers in a graveyard that may not have been as abandoned as they hoped.

With that alien terrain came the dust storms, a worse enemy than the rain had ever been.

The air on the horizon would rise in ruddy clouds and they'd have half an hour at best to get to the nearest of the unsettling white-paneled monoliths. The storms posed as much danger to the androids as to V himself, so they were forced to rest the same as he was while it passed. The heat didn't slow them down much, but V had noticed both of them audibly huffing after the first two or three hours on the move. Invariably, they would fall asleep within minutes of hunkering beneath their cloaks while the inescapable grit hummed over them, and V was rarely far behind.

He awoke from one of these dusty naps to the jolt of Shadow's cold nose pressing against his cheek. He didn't mind. Nor did he mind the bottle that followed. He'd become accustomed to lukewarm water pulled from little trickling streams that didn't suffer from pollution. The water in the bottle tasted like rocks but was cold enough to make the bottle sweat in the heat even after he'd emptied it.

Fern stood over him with a wide, impish grin and hiked a thumb over her shoulder. "Wanna get out of the heat for a bit?"

He followed her without question or retort out to a dry gorge that looked like it went to the center of the Earth. They descended down into the dark, hugging the smooth, red and cream banded walls. Before it could grow dark enough to call for a pod, light began to ripple along the walls in swaying rays, and what had become a tight tunnel opened into a cave. A wide lake of crystal-clear water stretched before them. 49 waved from the other side, where the light was passing through from some other point of entry.

V flung his cloak, gloves, and cane aside, sank down at the lake's edge and tossed water over his face. The cave wasn't as cold as the water, but it was cool enough to be a relief.

He noted 49's boots placed neatly by a stalagmite. "Shallower than it looks, I take it?"

Fern kicked off her own boots, rolled up her pants, and stepped in. "Except for those dark spots, yeah. Shallow and cold and not so much as a single machine fish. Not any regular fish either, but hey, nothing's perfect."

She squatted down and sucked in water with all the noisy urgency of an unfed calf. V clenched his eyes and tried to remember he might seriously damage her by throwing her bodily into the water, however much he hated that sound. "I thought you didn't need to do that."

"I don't. It's just a secondary measure to refresh my coolant system. Don't really want to do it the right way and expose my components to all this fucking dust." To emphasize her point, she fluffed her fingers through her hair, shaking free a rusty cloud. "Kid's been doing the same. Our old uniforms might've looked flashy, but the fabric was designed for thermal regulation. Gotta mitigate any way we can now that we're going without."

He glanced out to where 49 was wading his way over to them. "…How have your filters been holding up?"

"So you do know a little something about android functionality. Color me surprised." With a smug grin, and a split-second of hesitation which she then obviously overcorrected for, she clapped his shoulder. "Don't worry. We're taking care of each other."

V wondered if she realized how big a shift in her thinking those words indicated. Not that he intended to ask. Or that he had time to with 49 splashing toward him with the high, flopping steps of a puppy in slightly-too-deep water.

"Come to the other side," he called with bright-eyed excitement. "I found something you're really gonna like!"

V's head lolled back. He couldn't imagine something better than the shade and the cold water and he didn't want to get up. But 49 was more than qualified to make judgment calls about what V would like. If he was that enthusiastic about it...

With a long-suffering roll of his eyes, he heaved himself back upright. 49 guided him across the lake and down three passages where the faint light bounced from so many corridors away it was unlikely even the dust storms made it there. The temperature of the air changed. The stones grew slick in places and lichens clung to the floor here and there. An unpleasant but momentary rotted egg stench made him pause and tighten with alarm, but all that lie around the last bend was a dimly lit pool of clouded, faintly green water.

49 beamed from its edge. "It's a hot spring!"

"Hot spring?" Fern poked her head around V and just as quickly recoiled away, wagging her hand in front of her face. "Why's it stink?"

"Sulfur," V and 49 answered simultaneously.

49 went on, proudly: "V's been trying to get a hot bath since he got here."

V weaved between both of them and stooped at the water's edge. Hot, but not near-boiling. The color was a bit off-putting, and the cloudiness more so, but the stink was rather mild. He'd already stopped noticing it.

"Why didn't you just use a machine torso?" asked Fern. "V could practically swim in a goliath."

"That's kinda dark…"

No tingling on his skin. Good enough. The spring was shallow, just like it's cold neighbor, and it couldn't have been more than a few meters across at best. Truly, nothing was perfect, but he was well beyond needing it to be.

"We use them for all types of shit, why is that dark?"

"I don't know, it's just different!"

"If you two are done?" V interrupted, glaring over his shoulder.

"Yeah, yeah."

Fern wasn't as quick to catch on. Her head swiveled between 49 as he passed back around the bend and V climbing back upright at the pool's edge. "Wait are you actually getting in? Why would you want to get in hot water when you've been sweating your ass off for the past two weeks?!"

Perhaps sensing V had neither the energy nor patience to explain, 49 grabbed Fern by her shirt and hauled her out of sight.

Moments later, V's clothes were tossed aside, and his cane was leaned carefully against the wall. He slipped in with only the scantest sigh and relaxed almost faster than he was prepared for, sinking bonelessly until he was nearly on his back. The spring suffused him in an opulent heat that evaporated even the memory of discomfort. It left no room for him to do anything but forget himself and melt.

Only vaguely did he hear the voices from the next corridor over. "What are you doing?"

"I haven't had a bath in a long time. Probably even longer than V."

"You really are a humanity fetishist..."

"It's not about doing it because humans did it! It just feels nice."

49 rounded the bend and crept around the side of the pool. In underwear. Which raised a few questions that V didn't care to ask and would have liked to never form in the first place. "You cannot think I'll agree to this."

"Agree to what?" 49 asked unaffectedly. "Humans made communal bathing spaces of out hot springs all the time, didn't they? It's not like I can see anything since the water's all cloudy anyway, but I'll keep my distance. It'll be fine."

Before V managed more than a weary glower in response, Shadow seeped from his tattoos into the water with barely a splash. She draped herself across 49 with a self-satisfied look and a deep purr. V wasn't sure if he considered her a traitor or if she was illustrating the source of his irritation. Given 49 didn't seem to mind, V leaned more toward the former.

Of course, where there was unfavorable behavior already grating on V's nerves, Griffon was sure to appear. "It'll be fine," he leered in imitation of 49 as he floated by on his back. "Share the wealth, V~"

Perhaps it was the spring sapping the sharpness of his temper, but he relented. The occasion was too rare to waste, the jokes and troublesome lack of common sense aside. Someday 49 was going to have to learn that the breadth of human custom was infinitely bigger than what he read in the records, but this was not going to be that day. V leaned his head back against a stone, closed his eyes, and made the effort to ignore the splashing around him.

"Hey, watch it, toasty!"

"WARNING: THIS POD IS DESIGNATED 153 AND 153 ONLY. POD UNIT 042 IS OVER THERE."

"REPORT: PLEASANT."

So even the pods now. Of course.

To V's left, 49' made a strange remark with an inquisitive lilt. "I didn't know you were outfitted."

"I'm surprised you even know what that means," Fern's voice answered from his right. Accusations of fetishism and confusion at the concept of a hot bath in hot weather were not more important than being left out, clearly. "It's not like I was hiding it, you just always turn around when I'm doing anything with my plating. Where'd you get that habit anyway?"

"Pascal told me I should do that with female model types since my model type is male."

"Hm. Weird."

"I would have liked to meet Pascal," V said, knuckling slowly at one of his temples. "At least then, I would have met someone with an accurate sense for human custom."

"Machines are the ones who replicate everything you guys did even though they don't even look like you," Fern said matter-of-factly. "Not our fault you didn't build us with that level of imitation in mind."

He shot her the same look of tired irritation he'd given 49. And like with 49, a dozen questions he would have liked to not conceive bubbled to the front of his mind. Only this time a single answer to a question he hadn't to asked came as well: 'Outfitted' apparently meant 'anatomically correct'.

V struggled not to laugh. With that new context, their conversation was utterly exhausting in every sense of the word, and he had no strength for anything but helpless, feeble amusement. She was only half-submerged and 49 didn't look at her any different, but he would give her some privacy if she had to get at the plates underneath her skin. Was that what it meant to be courteous this far into the future?

"V," 49 called. "You ok?"

"Just. Fine."

Fern laughed and propped her arms up over the edge of the pool. "Real convincing, V. Are you embarrassed or something? It's not like any of it is functional. You like art—just think of me like a statue or something."

How charmingly nostalgic to be reassured about something he didn't care about in the slightest. "You must realize you are more alive than a statue."

She blinked a few times, like she wasn't sure how to take that, and eventually gave a slow shrug. "Same principle though, isn't it? Humans had intimate engagements for reproduction, but androids aren't capable of that."

Keen judgment lost against the crescendo of his half-stressed, half-amused annoyance. "Then for what reason do any of you bother to be 'outfitted' at all?"

"I mean… In my case, it's a means of getting closer to a target since it's not an uncommon modification among resistance androids. They mostly get it for recreation."

The moments passed with nothing but Griffon snickering while both androids looking bewildered, and it became clear that the obvious connection was not going to click. V's lips pursed as he considered belaboring the point. He didn't. Unwilling, unable, and frankly disinterested in pursuing the subject further than that, he offered only a flat "I see."

Androids. Intelligent, robust, and in many ways even more clueless than demons.

Nothing would be accomplished teaching them things they didn't need to know. There hadn't been a human on the planet in ten thousand years and there'd be none for another ten thousand and more once he was gone. Being so pointlessly similar to humans had done them enough damage as it was.

He sank until all but his head was submerged and quietly gave up.