NieR Chronicles 29 — Devola and Popola Open the Tower
Chapters in this story
- Devola and Popola Open the Tower: Two Sisters Carrying Someone Else’s Guilt
- 1. Those Who Repaired Him Had Work of Their Own
- 2. Learning Mourning on the Road to Recover Keepsakes
- 3. The Scanner 4S Left Alone
- 4. A Door Three Keys Cannot Open Alone
- 5. Someone Else’s Failure in Their Memories
- 6. Their Words of Atonement and Their Present Actions
- 7. The Same Entrance Opens for A2
- Sources and Scope of Verification
Devola and Popola Open the Tower: Two Sisters Carrying Someone Else’s Guilt
Spoiler notice: This chapter covers the late-game optional quests involving the twins, Gathering Keepsakes, the battle and sacrifice at the Tower’s entrance, and the sisters’ memories read within the game. Automata’s Devola and Popola are different individuals from the two overseers who stood in the Shadowlord’s Castle in Replicant.
1. Those Who Repaired Him Had Work of Their Own
While 9S obtains the three keys, Devola and Popola remain where he can return for maintenance. They initially gave 2B a scanner, and after her death they cared for the damaged 9S. Readers who know Replicant’s overseers may recall the past on seeing the same names and faces, but cannot attribute those earlier actions against the protagonist directly to the present pair. These are androids of the same model who were responsible for another region.
Following their optional quests reveals more of their position in the camp. The first request needs five Stripped Screws, five Small Gears, and one Machine Oil. Materials already owned can be handed over immediately; otherwise, machine parts and Machine Oil from the abandoned factory must be obtained. The next request is for five Desert Roses. The flowers are collected through the narrow passage connecting the pit near the housing complex where Adam was first fought and the desert entrance, passing gaps where sand flows. After one request is finished and other work has been taken on, another request follows. They do not exist only to repair someone else’s body: they too need resources to live on Earth.
Difficult and unpleasant tasks often fall to them. Asking Anemone why leads to the circumstances in which the twins are treated differently from others. Judged only by their current actions, they care for patients and help the camp. But the name of their shared model carries the stigma of an old failure, and everyday burdens fall on them differently as a result.
After delivering the Desert Roses, hearing Anemone’s explanation, and visiting the pair again, the next request is for five Tree Sap. A strong monster-type machine also appears in the marked forest area. Returning with the materials earns liquor Popola made from the Desert Roses, along with a joke about the trouble that arises when Popola and alcohol are together. The quests also reveal traces of personal belongings and personalities. These are sisters who care for each other and have continued joking and living, rather than purely functional helpers who speak only of guilt and lower their heads. If these small exchanges come first, the extent of the lives they risk losing in the later battle at the entrance becomes clearer.
2. Learning Mourning on the Road to Recover Keepsakes
During this approach to the Tower, 9S can accept another Resistance member’s request to find missing comrades. At first it feels like a mission to locate people who may still be alive. But the first comrade found in the Flooded City is already dead, and the dog tag left behind becomes an object connecting that person to someone who can remember them.
Other comrades’ bodies and dog tags are found around the amusement park and factory. A clue suggesting the last might still be alive leads to the desert, but after fighting two large tanks there, 9S finds another fallen body. The search does not end in a successful rescue that brings four people home to the camp. What he can bring back are records confirming their deaths and keepsakes through which they can be remembered.
The client receives the returned dog tags and mourns the comrades. This shows a practice of remembering and honoring others even when their bodies are gone. For 9S, it is more than a reward for dealing with someone else’s loss. He too has lost someone close and has driven that fact into acts of revenge. Watching how another person treats dead comrades leads him to consider an action for his own loss.
If Emil’s Lunar Tear quest has opened the underground flower field, 9S can honor 2B there. He plants a weapon associated with her and makes a place to leave her memory. In a space Emil recreated and preserved as an old friend’s home, someone else adds a place for his own companion. The fact that someone had a person precious to them even before the world’s vast history was understood overlaps in that field of flowers.
At 2B’s flight unit remaining in the Flooded City, her recorded message can also be heard. Her feeling that their time together was a radiant memory, and her voice calling 9S, reach him. Hearing this recording and the optional mourning through the keepsake quest are not cutscenes that automatically occur in the same order in every playthrough of the main story. For those who seek them, however, they show that 9S was not made of anger alone: there was also a possibility of trying to deal with grief differently.
3. The Scanner 4S Left Alone
In the forest castle’s library, another YoRHa survivor, 4S, can be encountered. A fellow Scanner, he continues collecting enemy unit data even after the Bunker is gone. The force that gave orders has collapsed, but he holds on to the work he has been doing. Unable to gather enough information alone, he asks 9S to help.
When unit data reaching 95 percent is supplied, 4S reveals guilt that his comrades have died while he alone survived. After completing the task with help, he tells 9S not to collapse under the same feeling and intends to seriously consider how to live from now on. Here is a question that can remain for a surviving soldier beyond revenge against the Tower. This meeting is optional, so 9S does not necessarily hear that response through to the end in every playthrough.
4. A Door Three Keys Cannot Open Alone
9S reaches the Tower. Using the keys obtained from the resource recovery units, he opens the surrounding control points and approaches the central entrance. But when he begins hacking at the door, machines pour in. If his body keeps being attacked while he overcomes defenses inside the system, he cannot finish. Even someone with both intellectual and combat abilities cannot fully perform both tasks in the same moment.
Devola and Popola arrive. The two who have always provided equipment and maintenance at the camp now come outside with swords. They offer to handle the enemies so 9S can continue hacking. What he needs is not one more piece of advice or a repair component. He needs bodies that will take attacks in his place while he cannot move, and time during which the enemies are held back.
The sisters fight together to prevent the enemies’ approach. While 9S breaks through barriers in data space, their bodies are damaged outside. The player’s choice to continue hacking does not complete the task solely as a display of personal skill. Even when the screen changes to data space, the battle behind it continues. The longer opening the door takes, the greater the price paid by those buying that time.
The entrance’s defenses hold to the end. Popola intervenes directly in the system to create an opening through which 9S can pass. The act exposes her body to fatal electrical damage. 9S recognizes the danger, but she does not stop. Why she and her sister have come this far, and the wish to be useful this time, are conveyed along with the action. Devola holds the enemies back to the last and sends 9S through the open door. After he passes, the entrance closes again, leaving outside the body of Devola, who had been protecting Popola.
5. Someone Else’s Failure in Their Memories
The memory material opened around this point shows why the sisters have lived this way. After Project Gestalt collapsed, the entire Devola and Popola model responsible for managing it was grouped together as an object of blame. The failure of the overseers who died in the Shadowlord’s Castle in the Replicant era fell even on the same models in other regions. The differences between which individual made which choice vanished beneath that stigma.
Many of the same model were disposed of, and those who remained were modified too. They were made to feel guilt. Even if they cannot clearly remember what specific wrong they themselves committed, the feeling of having done wrong does not disappear. Memories emptied so that all causes cannot be known coexist in the same bodies with guilt they must continue feeling.
Living this way, the pair experienced rejection and attacks from other androids. A function created to help people and a shared android identity were not enough to let them belong comfortably to the same community. Each sister becomes almost the only one the other can rely on emotionally. When one is hurt, the other experiences a danger as though her whole world were shaking.
This past is not information presented to convict them again as the same perpetrators as the original overseers. It shows how long a stigma unrelated to an individual’s responsibility can rule a life when precisely that distinction collapses. Those who directed anger at someone in the face of humanity’s irreversible loss left behind a continuing punishment that could not separate responsibility from a name.
6. Their Words of Atonement and Their Present Actions
The sisters connect their actions to atonement. They wish to be useful and this time help someone advance. Their feelings bear traces of imposed guilt. Readers therefore do not have to accept that the pair ought to give their lives for something that was not their wrongdoing. The fact that they have lived such lives is different from a judgment that their sacrifice is justified punishment.
At the same time, helping 9S here and now is something they truly do. They maintained a damaged body, supplied necessary equipment, and finally took up swords to hold enemies back. The old stigma does not make all those present actions mere appendages of nameless guilt. They try to protect one another and open a path for someone else. As a result, 9S reaches the inside of the Tower.
In Replicant’s Shadowlord’s Castle, two overseers with the same names blocked the protagonist. Their effort to protect humanity’s restoration plan clashed with a party seeking to recover family, and sisters and comrades died. At Automata’s Tower entrance, two different sisters protect someone’s back instead of blocking his way. A similar appearance stands in a different position through the present choices of other individuals.
7. The Same Entrance Opens for A2
A2 arrives at the Tower afterward. The damaged sisters remain at the entrance. She learns that they sent 9S inside. Devola holds the fallen Popola and seeks confirmation that they were helpful. This is not a question about whether a small component request has been completed. It is the answer that beings forced for so long to feel their own existence was a mistake want to hear about what they have finally done.
A2 conveys that their help has reached its purpose and heads inside. Behind a sequence that might look as though the two protagonists each broke into the Tower through their own strength are other bodies left behind after opening the entrance they pass through. The sisters’ wounds and ending leave traces in the later conclusions too. The grand events of the Tower collapsing or the Ark departing do not reverse their sacrifice.
For 9S, the Tower is a path closer to the target of his revenge. For A2, it is a path toward answering 2B’s request and the machine threat. Even if their purposes differ, the help they received to enter that path stands before the same door. Inside, they will encounter information that overturns the boundary between YoRHa and machines, the Red Girls, and 2B’s true role. The cost of reaching those truths has already been left first on other people’s bodies.
Sources and Scope of Verification
This account distinguishes the twins’ present and memory material in the game, the sacrifice at the Tower’s entrance, and mourning in optional quests. It does not treat the sisters as the same individuals as Replicant’s overseers. Keepsakes, the voice recording, and the flower-field memorial are separate content that can be sought out, not one mandatory timetable for every playthrough. This is an AI-assisted editorial account, without reproduction of the original dialogue, lyrics, or novel text. Sources checked: 2026-10-18.
Gathering Keepsakes — NieR Wiki
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