a p p l i c [A] t i o n . // acata.

[abandonware]

OOC INFO;

NAME: Robyn
AGE: 32
CONTACT: godsibb, discord: nibelung#7485
CHARACTERS IN GAME: n/a

IC INFO;

CHARACTER NAME: YoRHa Type A No. 2, No. 2, or A2
AGE: Unknown, though she is stated to be an older model than 9S and 2B, who are about 3-4 years old chronologically? She appears to be/is mentally in her early 20s.
CANON Nier: Automata
CANON POINT Route C, after "Play With Us" quest in Pascal's Machine Village.
HISTORY: Command is who betrayed you.
PERSONALITY: To understand A2 as she is now, you must first understand how she came to be.

All android models are finite, weapons of war made to then be destroyed from the inside by a logic virus, by bio-machines, by one another, to then be rebooted and reconstructed, clean and new again, only for the cycle to continue. A2 is only one piece of the intricate puzzle that compromises many of these cycles, a neverending circle of life and death that had gone on for years. She was expendable, made to be used and then discarded.

Created as a prototype to speed development of the later YoRHa models, such as the technologically superior E (Executioner) models, A2 was part of the first squadron of YoRHa units to be deployed to earth in order to serve during the Pearl Harbor Mission in the 14th Machine War — a mission that was, unbeknownst to them, ultimately doomed to fail. She was described as "quiet and gentle," a follower rather than a leader, her fighting capabilities mediocre and lacking compared to the other squad members. After the death of the original squadron captain, A2 takes on a leadership position and is revealed to have great strategic ability under pressure. The squadron introduces themselves to the local Resistance group of androids down on Earth, and they become allies. It hardly mattered however: her squad is gradually picked off by a combination of bio-machines and a virus that infects their ranks, the battle culminating in Unit No. 4's sacrifice to save A2 by overloading her fusion reactor and destroying the bio-machines' server.

A2 is the only android of the 16 deployed to survive. And in the depth of her despair she is met with an awful realization: each of the deaths of those comrades who meant so much to her, each loss and devastating battle, was created by the Command that had sent them down to Earth in the first place, the Command they were loyal to. They were little more than pieces on a chessboard. Her friends, from the Resistance members to No. 4, who had given her life in a final, desperate attempt to turn the tide of the war, were simply cannon fodder, a test run for the real thing. In this moment, A2 lost all hope. She could not return to YoRHa command, not marked for death. And while death would be preferable to her, loathsome and undeserving of life as she was, she could not simply give up on the life that so many had died for, either. To do so would be disrespectful to the dead. And so A2 became driven by another purpose, not friendship or kindness or hope, but revenge. Hate. If she could not die as her friends had, then the answer was to simply kill every machine indiscriminately until she was finally allowed to rest. Until either they were all dead or she was. They were all responsible for the way she and so many other androids had suffered, as far as she was concerned. And so the A2 that is encountered in the game proper is a shadow of her former self: callous and prickly, vulgar and unfriendly. Cold, and very, very angry. She's introduced by killing an infant machine, and not because of any particular reason, either, no grand plan or secret: it was a machine, and all machines were going to die by her hand. Nothing more, nothing less. Though she's kept living on stubbornly, there are signs that this life has not been easy for her: she's literally falling apart in places, most of the endoskeleton under her artificial skin exposed , and so serves as a visual contrast to the pristine-looking 9S and 2B, in their neatly tailored, dark uniforms.

However, this introduction presents the first hints of an interesting dichotomy in A2: though she kills the child machine and throws its corpse off the edge of her blade like so much trash, it's implied that she holds back from the battle following with 2B and 9S. This is unusual, because she's met them before. Four times, in fact, and all four times she's killed them both — once even by turning 9S' own hacking against him. 2B remembers this, but 9S does not (for reasons that will later be revealed), and his pleading and need to understand why she could have possibly betrayed Command on this fifth battle of theirs seems to move A2 to feel some form of pity: before she escapes, she tells them both that it is Command that has betrayed them. When they meet again, with 2B near death due to the logic virus — the same that had killed A2's friends, the same one she's seen before — she takes her life by her request, the memories contained in her sword, and promises to take care of 9S. 2B, for context, is the same E android that had been modeled after A2 herself. A member of the kill force meant for her and other androids who knew too much about the truth behind YoRHa, a butcher wearing her face. Still, even this death brings her no pleasure.

And before she leaves 9S to his grief and rage, she cuts her hair so that it resembles 2B's as well. To not do so would be disrespectful to the dead, after all. Perhaps it is because of 2B's memories, or A2's own lingering guilt for continuing to live when others had died, or a combination of both, but she gradually begins to soften. At first she is a complete and utter contrast to the coolheaded, focused 2B: she's snappy, caustic, sarcastic, and irritable. She frequently calls Pod 042 (who is assigned to her after 2B's death) useless, and threatens it with physical violence at any given opportunity, she doesn't bother to remember names (she calls Emil, a shopkeeper (??? living weapon?)  "that round thing," for example), and she behaves in a hostile way even toward friendly machine forms, such as Pascal and his villagers. This is undermined considerably by the fact that she does begin to listen to and work with Pod for all her griping, that she offers to help Pascal and his village in exchange for Pascal giving her a piece needed to repair her body. That she builds a slide for machine children to play on (and seems genuinely troubled and saddened by their deaths later), and she even goes into the desert to help poor, doomed Emil when he begins acting strangely. Most importantly, she keeps to her promise to help 9S, even when he wants nothing more than to kill her. She is reluctant to fight him and tries to reason with him even at the end, when the logic virus and his despair have burned away all reason he may have had left. ("2B...she wanted you to become a good person," she says to him in one last ditch effort to reach him before they fight.) In ending C, she makes a sacrifice that mirrors the one No. 4 had done for her so long ago, hacking into 9S to eliminate the logic virus ravaging his mind and getting him and her Pod to safety before dealing one lasting blow to the machine control tower, dying in the process.

It seems then, that the person that A2 had been, gentle and reluctant to fight or harm, is not dead. Only buried deep beneath the weight of hopelessness and anger and her own dismal view of herself.


Someone who was a good person, and perhaps could be so again, given the chance.


CANON POWERS: small, strong, angry, can sprint in heels, can hulk out

As an attacker type unit, A2 is possessing of incredible strength, stamina, speed and endurance. She specializes in close range melee attacks, and can use small swords, enormous broadswords, spears and combat braces in battle. Even as an outdated YoRHa model, she's still YoRHa, and so far more technologically advanced and battle-capable than the androids of the Resistance. She's able to overpower and kill 9S and 2B on numerous occasions, who outnumber her, have pods equipped for ranged attacks and are newer models. It's implied she's killed many other YoRHa units who have tried to capture her as well.

Unlike the self-destruct sequence in later models, A2 is able to implement an ability she refers to as B-Mode, or Berserk mode, a skill that temporarily grants her greatly increased stats at the expense of her health. Her "dash" ability is also unique — it grants her brief spurts of camoflague/invisibility, and is able to destroy smaller machine life forms by creating some sort of red energy shield if she darts past them while dash is activated. She is also able to "taunt" enemies, which angers them and increases their stats as well as her own. Like 2B and 9S, A2 is also able to install program chips to further increase her strength, ability to recover, and her speed. Although she appears mostly human, she is able to withstand falls and injuries that would easily kill a human being, and has fought countless machine lifeforms without breaking down (so far.) She does not require food to function, though it is implied that androids at least need to rest and may have some need for other basic necessities, such as water. She also has the werewithal to be able to perform rudimentary repairs on herself, as she is no longer connected to the YoRHa bunker and so has no other way of fixing her body. She is possessing of "nanomachines" inside of her body which allow her to gradually recover from wounds over time, though major injuries cause damage too quickly for her to recover, and she can bleed out and perish just like anyone else.

A2 is also said to be possessing of considerable analytical and strategic ability under duress. Prior to the game, she is able to memorize 9S' combat pattern and use his hacking against him, and similarly, at endgame, she disables him by quickly cutting off the infected arm he'd attached from the 2B copies (thus stemming the flow of the logic virus), and uses Pod to hack into him in a split second. Pod 042 also says on numerous occasions that A2's cognitive functions are lacking compared to later models, as she requires more than one explanation on multiple occasions, so who knows.

Like all androids, she will die if she eats mackerel (this fish causes the fluids in her body to turn into a gel-like substance.) Yeah, I don't know either.
OTHER: n/a

GAME INFO;

CRAU INFO: n/a
MAGIC ABILITY: Emotional Manipulation. A form of empathy. This skill will initially resemble her Taunt ability in canon, and so be primarily focused on inducing anger to increase physical strength, though as she opens up to others and gets a better grasp of emotions, both her own and others (laugh track), she will be able to project, influence and augment emotions as needed. THIS WILL TAKE A WHILE...
ANY WEAPONS/MAGICAL ITEMS?: Virtuous Contract, a white katana containing 2B's memories and final request.

Her initial weapon is the Type 40 Sword. She has a ton of other weaponry that I can list for the sake of completion, if needed.

ANY PETS?: Her "pet" is a companion pod designated as Pod 042. It serves as support during her journey and is capable of long-range attacks but these will be disabled, per the rules.

SAMPLE;

LINKED SAMPLE: A2 at the TDM