Like.. how many times has 9S been broken in 2B's arms? How many times has she seen him in so much suffering? And yet she persists, staying alive. When she reached for him to pick him up, her hand went behind his head. How many times has she held him the same way, but instead of tenderness she's forced to do so with intent to kill? Ugh im screaming!!! "Why does it always end like this?" wuahhhhh And knowing his side of things in route B just makes it so much worse. "9S really went through hell" yeah that's a bit of an understatement TBH... I also recently watched 1.1a (the anime, new season premiers in the morning!!!) and the hacking scenes from 9S perspective are just so much more VIVID compared to the sterility of hacking space in the game. With that level of illustration, suddenly it makes so much more sense why 9S can sometimes be so affected in his own mind when he hacks into machines (Wise Machines sidequest pops into my head as an example). When 9S hacks into a machine he's LITERALLY poking around in their mind. He's not even living in realville half the time because he's inside machine heads, dealing with terrifying dangers in what essentially a dreamscape. I think it's probably impossible to portray that surrealism properly in the game just due to it being a game format, but 1.1a did it so well and it just makes Copied City hurt so much more to watch. He didn't just get *yelled at* by Adam in hacking space, he was full-on violated in the deepest corners of his mind while going through a literal nightmare. (Adam also elaborates in 1.1a that he was actually *experimenting* on 9S through hacking and other stuff before 2B got there. 1.1a is suspected to be a deviant timeline so it's impossible to be certain that that's canon in the game but it's good enough for me tbh). So like... 9S be truly going through it in this story event. I know it's not the worst he'll go through by the end of the game, but in a way, it IS the worst of everything in the A-E events. At least in C/D, he has agency over his own body and (mostly) mind. He's autonomous, nobody is meddling with his brain. He's free to literally move around. But while Adam has him captive in Copied City, he's not only physically restrained. (literally CRUCIFED) and helpless, likely in an immeasurable amount of pain, but his mind is also being rummaged about by a total stranger-worse, a MACHINE. His deepest thoughts, hopes, dreams, fears, things he wouldn't even admit to himself are being laid bare before the enemy. And nobody knows where the freak he is, so he has NO idea if help will come. I'm sure he was fully expecting to die there in excruciating agony, with not a single option to help himself and little to no hope that anyone would be able to come for him in time. He's YorHa, normally on solo assignment. His life to this point, as he knows it, has been one where he's able to generally protect and handle himself and others. And yet, in this event, he's been broken down and reduced to a state of complete and utter helplessness..... And then 2B arrives to take him home. Like I've got tears in my eyes guys I had to like sit for a second and just process all this.

The purple Vallzy, at 6:40 the X button shows up when they get close to the mission selection

tank mines