NieR Chronicles 26 — A2, Pascal, and Hands That Help Children

A2 and Pascal: Helping Children with Hands That Have Cut Down Enemies

Spoiler notice: This chapter covers A2’s actions after receiving 2B’s memories, the battle with Hegel in the desert and maintenance of her body, and her first exchanges with Pascal’s village and its children’s requests. Some of the order between this period and 9S’s journey is selectable, so this account does not insist that every scene on one side finishes before the other side begins.

1. Shortened Hair and the Sword Left Behind

After 2B dies and new structures rise in the city, A2 survives. She has 2B’s sword, the memories within it, and the request concerning 9S. Cutting her long hair short connects to that death. Looking more like 2B does not mean that the two characters have merged into one person. The one who will continue living in that body is A2.

Pod 042 travels with her. Originally assigned to support 2B, it now helps A2 according to the final instructions. Hearing its explanation does not make A2 immediately accept every suggestion as naturally as she would from an old comrade. She is used to fighting alone, and a support unit that talks to her and analyzes her condition and actions can be irritating. The Pod continues observing and supporting her despite those reactions.

2B’s memories show A2 relationships she has not personally experienced. But those memories do not erase A2’s losses or instantly change her hostility toward machines. Her time as the lone survivor who lost comrades in the Pearl Harbor operation still exists. The new responsibility of receiving someone else’s request remains alongside her own original fight.

2. Facing Hegel in the Desert

A2 fights machines in the desert. After she defeats the large bipedal machines in the target area, Hegel appears: a gigantic form made of nine spheres linked into a long chain. At first, its whole body moves across the desert. The spheres then separate and attack her individually with lasers and barrages of projectiles. Avoiding one does not end the attacks from the others. When a damaged sphere stops moving inside a barrier, the number of attack sources she must face simultaneously decreases. This is a different opponent from the multi-legged Boku-Shi outside the camp or So-Shi inside the factory.

Her combat abilities have sustained her in ways different from YoRHa’s regular support. She can raise her body’s output in berserk mode and forcefully press the attack. Her health continually drains in this state, so merely avoiding enemy attacks cannot sustain her body indefinitely. Being able to unleash great power does not remove the limits of an old, damaged body. When enemy attacks and internal strain overlap, even victory must be followed by a separate assessment of whether she can continue fighting.

Hegel’s electromagnetic attack exposes A2 to a danger beyond physical combat. The Pod intervenes in her system, and a space of memories and data opens in the process. It is more than a change of genre on the screen: this is a period in which an internal response is necessary to preserve the body in the present. Sword combat and support that protects the system operate separately but together.

After waking again, A2 needs maintenance. The diagnosis is that desert sand particles have worn out her fuel filter and it needs replacement. The battle with the enormous enemy is over, but continuing her activities is difficult without repairs and supplies. Even a fighter who has lived by cutting down enemies alone still faces the need to depend on other beings outside combat.

3. Whether to Kill the Machine Rescued Outside the Camp

On her way to the Resistance camp, A2 encounters Pascal under attack. Hostile machines are threatening him. She deals with the attackers. Afterward, the question remains of whether to eliminate Pascal too simply because he is a machine. The player can enter a separate failure branch by killing him here, but the path that continues the main story spares him and allows them to talk.

Pascal explains that he and his villagers want peace. A2 does not receive, as her own first meeting, the same experience that 2B and 9S have already built through their visits to the village. Even after receiving someone else’s memories, she must personally speak with the machine before her and make a judgment. Rather than commanding her to attack enemies, he speaks to the person who has helped him.

Inside the camp, A2 meets Anemone. The Pearl Harbor operation belongs to their shared past. The familiarity Anemone felt when 2B first descended now leads to the return of the person behind that feeling. Anemone offers A2 a room and directs her toward Pascal about the filter she needs. Someone who has wandered alone as a wanted deserter still has a relationship she can return to for help.

Here A2 explains that 2B has died and that she has received her memories. To Anemone, the two fighters with the same face are not one person whose names can be exchanged. One recently arrived and helped her people; the other is a comrade with whom she tried to survive long ago. Now one of them has returned carrying the other’s sword.

4. A Part for Her Body from an Enemy’s Village

Going to Pascal’s village, A2 obtains the material needed for the filter. When she brings back Rigid Tree Bark from the forest, Pascal supplies the filter. An exchange resembling 2B and 9S’s transport of goods between village and camp now happens out of a direct need to maintain A2’s body. Treating every machine solely as something to destroy makes the actions of the one supplying that part difficult to explain.

Inside the village, the residents do not all raise weapons against her. Machines live there with children’s small bodies and with tasks of their own. The king A2 killed in the forest also had a small body, but she encountered him then as the center of an enemy to eliminate. This time, she has an opportunity to learn directly who fears what and how they live.

After providing the filter, Pascal asks her to deal with a machine threatening the children. The problem is an enhanced quadrupedal machine at their play area. A2’s combat ability becomes a way of removing a danger the villagers cannot resolve themselves. The target of that strength narrows from every machine before her to one particular threat attacking particular children.

When A2 returns after defeating the enemy, Pascal and the children are relieved and grateful. It is a different response from recognition for destroying a powerful weapon. Behind the opponent she cut down are those who can now survive and play, and who remember her and speak to her. Helping brings more troublesome requests, but relationships of living together also begin with small exchanges like these.

5. A Sick Child and New Play Equipment

The village offers additional requests to help its children. Pascal says that one child’s condition has deteriorated and a necessary part must be obtained. The child may die if its body cannot be repaired. Just as A2 came here seeking her own filter, she now goes to the factory to find a part that will sustain another small body.

From the factory entrance, she climbs inward along stairs and ladders. She deals with machines in an area containing containers, obtains the Storage Element, and returns to the village. Pascal is happy that the child can now be helped. A2 may coldly claim that she acted for the reward, but a life continues because of the result. Behind the action is someone else’s next day, invisible if one counts only the number of enemies destroyed.

The children also want something new to play with. When A2 asks the village’s tool shop, she is asked to collect the necessary materials. She gathers five Toy Materials at the amusement park and hands them to the merchant. The result is a new slide in the village. A2 speaks to the child beside it, sees the delight in the new play equipment, and receives a reward. It does not end with her personally handing out finished little toys to each child. Rather than simply raising the intensity of combat, this task helps decide how children who are now safe can spend their time.

They are not merely asking for stronger new weapons so they can attack an enemy army. They want to play together and have new things. As A2 helps them directly, small machine bodies begin to look less like vague enemy reserves and more like neighbors with names and requests. That change emerges through repeated journeys and responses rather than a single declaration that she has come to love machines.

6. The Book Intended for Pascal

A small flying resident near Pascal wants to give him a thank-you present. The resident asks for a book for Pascal, who is always looking after villagers and children. Following this request and collecting the book at the camp triggers the next main-story event. This time A2 goes to Anemone’s camp. The person who went to the machine village to repair her own body now carries a villager’s feelings to an android community.

Anemone gives her a book and Gold Ore. The book is Pensées. Human thought linked to the name Pascal is carried, after a vast passage of time, as a gift for a machine bearing that name. What matters here is not that the resident fully understands the book and has prepared a philosophical debate. It is the relationship behind wanting to give a caretaker something he might enjoy.

This resembles 2B sending 6O images of Earth and helping find Emil’s flowers. Someone considers what another person wants, travels dangerous routes, and delivers objects and records. A2 gradually acquires moments that cannot be explained by hatred of machines alone. She actually repeats the choice to use her combat and movement abilities for someone else.

This does not mean that every playthrough necessarily completes the optional requests involving the children’s play equipment and a sick body. Progress in the village’s main story and completion of optional missions can differ. For players who perform them, later events connect to more specific memories. Rather than a count of survivors, they remember the small bodies for whom they provided a slide and helped with repairs.

7. A Place to Return to for Someone Living for Revenge

A2 does not invent the desire to protect people for the first time in this village. She cared about her comrades long ago and tried to survive together with them. After losing those relationships, she devoted herself to killing machines. Instead of serving as compensation that erases her existing losses, Pascal and the children create relationships in which the A2 of the present can act anew and take responsibility.

2B’s memories and request influence that path, but do not make all of A2’s decisions for her. Sparing Pascal when he was attacked before her, receiving the help she needed, and accepting other residents’ requests are actions she has taken in the present. Carrying someone else’s feelings overlaps with forming relationships through her own body, giving her fight additional directions.

After she receives the book, the view briefly switches to Pascal in the village. Danger begins where everyday life had continued, and A2 receives a call asking her to help the village. The next incident arrives before she can even complete the return journey, safely deliver the book, and receive thanks. Another outbreak of violence reaches the place she has visited for parts, play equipment, and a book. She cannot expect the life she has just known to continue unchanged in the village she is about to return to. A2, accustomed to killing machines, must now hurry back to the home where machines had been living. The fear of losing that place becomes part of her own present.

Sources and Scope of Verification

This account distinguishes the game’s main progression from optional requests while covering A2’s battle with Hegel, maintenance, and Pascal’s village. The resident’s request for a book and the children’s request for play equipment are described as different tasks. Receiving memories does not make A2 a being directly controlled by 2B, nor is she identified as the same person as Kainé. This is an AI-assisted editorial account, without reproduction of the original dialogue, lyrics, or novel text. Sources checked: 2026-10-18.

NieR:Automata — Steam

YoRHa Type A No.2 — NieR Wiki

Hegel — NieR Wiki

Vanquish the Bad Bot — NieR Wiki

Storage Element — NieR Wiki

Play with Us! — NieR Wiki