NieR Chronicles 9 — The City Ruins and Life in the Resistance
Chapters in this story
From the Bunker to the City Ruins: the lives of those who fight
Spoiler notice: This chapter covers the Bunker after the opening operation, the City Ruins and Resistance Camp, and preparations to investigate the desert. It follows the main journey alongside the early requests, distinguishing residents' optional accounts from events required to advance the story.
1. The two androids return to Earth
After resuming activity in the Bunker, 2B and 9S receive their orders from the Commander. They must make contact with the Resistance on Earth and investigate the machines' activity on the ground. Their first descent had a clear objective: destroy the enormous weapon at the factory. This time, their work also involves forming relationships with people who continue to live and fight down below. They are returning to the same Earth, but the subjects of their investigation and the people they will meet are expanding.
They approach the City Ruins in flight units and land by a tall building. The city still retains the immense structures humans built, although the lives once lived inside them ended long ago. Plants grow over the buildings, and animals move among collapsed roads and high rises. Having fought through an industrial space where machinery remained in operation, the two now encounter an Earth where other forms of life continue to grow in humanity's absence.
As they travel through the city, 2B deals with enemies while 9S observes their surroundings and gathers information. The facilities humans once used and the paths androids now follow no longer serve precisely the same purposes. Buildings and roads offer clues to earlier lives, but they are also terrain the pair must climb and descend to reach their objective. Their destination is not every enemy hiding somewhere in the city. It is the base of the Resistance holding out here.
Their communications remain connected to the Bunker. 2B has an Operator named 6O, while 9S works with 21O. Even as they move through the same locations, they speak to different people and their exchanges have different tones. 6O is relatively friendly and expresses personal interest, whereas 21O places greater emphasis on reports and mission procedure. Both fill the same role as voices of YoRHa, but each will emerge as a person with her own relationships and desires.
2. The camp Anemone keeps going
The Resistance Camp houses androids who have continued fighting on the surface. Their lives differ from those aboard the Bunker, an orbital base with centrally managed conditions. Merchants handling supplies and weapons, people responsible for repairs, and residents asking for assistance or investigation share this one base. These are more than new soldiers deployed to the front and brought home again. They are people who keep finding what they need on this land and helping one another survive.
Their leader is Anemone. 2B and 9S explain their arrival and their mission, and Anemone directs them to meet the people of the camp. Being members of YoRHa does not mean they already understand every local problem. It is the Resistance, which has lived here, that possesses information and supplies needed on the ground. The first step is to learn what each side can do for the other.
Anemone does not disclose her entire past when they first meet. For now, she appears as the person responsible for keeping the camp running and coordinating investigations and support. Later, information about A2 and the Pearl Harbor Descent will reveal another side of how long she has endured on the surface. Newly arrived 2B and 9S must first listen to the residents she introduces and learn which needs keep this base functioning.
Living quarters and combat supplies occupy the same camp. Daily life can continue only if its inhabitants can obtain weapons, repair their bodies, and head outside again. If 2B and 9S are to receive help, they must also be able to bring back materials someone else needs. The relationship between powerful new soldiers and an established local base cannot be built solely through rescue or protection from one side. They connect by exchanging necessary work.
3. Why the supply trader will not replace his leg
The supply trader needs materials because the equipment he uses to make chips has broken down. His bad leg makes it difficult to move around outside, so the pair go to collect one Broken Key, one Small Gear, and one Broken Circuit for him. They must fight machines outside the camp in the city and retrieve the parts they drop. If they already have some of the materials, they only need to obtain what is missing. Defeating enemies is not the end of the errand: they collect the requested components, return to the trader, and hand them over.
Completing this work allows his supplies and chip business to run more smoothly. He is not a commander analyzing the battlefield and issuing orders from far away. He is someone keeping the camp's equipment working and giving soldiers what they need right now. Even so, neither parts nor his own body are simply a matter of filling numerical shortages. When 9S learns about his trouble walking, he wonders why the trader does not replace the leg.
The trader explains that he has already replaced the other parts of his body many times. His remaining leg is the last piece connecting him to his original body. He fears that replacing even this final part would leave him unsure whether he is still the same being. Alongside the practical question of whether repairs are possible lies a reason for not wanting the replacement at all. To 9S, fixing a poorly functioning body seems rational. To the trader, it concerns what allows him to continue being himself.
In their first operation, 2B and 9S lost their bodies and met again through stored memories. Here, another android clings to a remaining piece of his body as part of his identity. Beings of the same kind do not necessarily share the same understanding of their bodies. The pair can bring him materials, but they cannot replace the standard by which he understands his own life. That question remains in the camp even after the small errand is finished.
4. Gathering materials for the weapons trader
The weapons trader has a problem of his own. He needs four Complex Gadgets to fix his maintenance equipment. Unlike the supply trader's request, this does not mean obtaining everything from enemy bodies. The pair travel to a designated area of the city, examine their surroundings, and pick up components lying on the ground. Once they have all four, they return and hand them over. The trader's equipment works again, enabling weapon sales and upgrades. They are keeping a base operational so they can return and keep fighting, rather than ending a war by defeating a single large enemy.
Having YoRHa soldiers collect supplies themselves also helps establish trust with local people. The pair do not remain visitors demanding every piece of equipment and information they want simply because of their affiliation. They carry out residents' requests, return, and learn about one another's needs. When the trader can continue his work, 2B and 9S can also set out better prepared. This is their first way of becoming connected to life on the ground.
There is also a strange woman in the camp wearing something shaped like a machine's head. Her resemblance to the enemy does not launch a battle: she is someone to speak with and ask questions. She can explain aspects of the world and ways of acting within it, while the Maintenance Shop can provide information about equipment and functions. Anemone's instruction to talk to people involves more than delivering two sets of items. 2B and 9S encounter the base's different residents and roles before returning to her.
Later requests will include tracing missing people and identifying locations in old photographs. There will also be occasions when the Command's account conflicts with local testimony. Unlike those optional incidents, the present requests from the supply trader and weapons trader connect the early main story to its next investigation. The soldiers learn that the camp is a place where they can find help while experiencing firsthand that its inhabitants need help too.
2B listens to the work and takes the necessary action; 9S adds questions. Even during an errand that could end with a simple delivery of parts, he wants to know why the person lives as they do. 2B's tendency to stay within the framework of the mission and 9S's tendency to ask about what lies beyond it will recur. For now, that difference extends conversations and helps them understand the locals. Later, it will lead to dangerous questions about YoRHa itself.
5. Jackass at the desert entrance
After completing both merchants' requests and speaking with Anemone again, the pair receive an assignment to investigate the desert machines. Something about their activity there is unusual. 2B and 9S pass through the city toward the desert, meeting the Resistance researcher Jackass at its entrance. She does not become a permanent companion following them into every area and fighting at their side. A person familiar with the site meets the two soldiers at the approach and provides a way inside.
Jackass blows up the barrier blocking the route. The first obstacle on their way into the desert is resolved by a field researcher using explosives to open a path, without an elaborate ceremony or permission from a new king. Her forceful, rough approach leaves a different impression from YoRHa's formal reports. The moment reveals how someone accustomed to investigating dangerous subjects on the surface gets things done.
In research she requests later, the pair carry out combat themselves to gather data about the relationship between androids and fighting. This is an optional investigation that continues afterward, rather than a single event they must complete in its entirety at the desert entrance now. Jackass studies the condition of the androids doing the fighting as well as machine behavior. She prompts allied soldiers to ask how their own bodies and their experience of battle work.
The desert preserves the past in a different form from the City Ruins. Traces of buildings and living spaces remain in the sand, and machines nearby imitate human clothing and behavior. 2B and 9S now head inside to investigate what is strange about them. A problem that ended with smashing a giant weapon, as at the factory, might be easy to explain. The words they will hear in the desert will begin to shake the criteria by which they have classified their enemies.
Sources and scope of verification
This chapter follows the game version's early progression after the Bunker and its Resistance requests. Anemone is the camp leader in the game; this account does not mix in the anime's altered character roles. Optional requests, including Jackass's further research, are distinguished from mandatory main story events. This is an AI-assisted story commentary by the TroubleMaker editorial team, without reproducing original dialogue or lyrics. Verified: October 18, 2026 (Bangkok).
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