//So since you don't know Nier: Automata, lemme quickly explain the situation: Earth has been taken over by aliens that use machines as their weapons. Most of the last remaining humans have fled from earth and now live on the moon (or so one thinks) and, in order to fight the foe, they built androids to fight in their stead. Basically Kiren is a scanner unit that usually works alone and is meant to gather input from enemy territory and learn from their behavior to adapt and get smarter. Rayen is a Combat unit exclusively made to follow orders and dismantle as many machines as possible. Ray and Kiri got paired up as a team some time ago and are now sent out to investigate on missing android units that were scouting out an abandoned amusement park that's basically filled to the brink with machines. While Kiren wants to make friends and perhaps more, Rayen pretty much ignores every attempt and keeps him at a distance.
What Kiren doesn't know, is that they've basically been partnered up over and over for years and Rayen is, in fact, no combat unit but an execution unit. Her job is to kill him whenever he gets too close to figuring out that humanity has actually gone extinct and androids are now fighting a hopeless war against an enemy that is long dead because the machines have killed their alien creators. And she now tries to remain distant from him to not mourn him again when soon she'll have to kill him. Which fails, obviously, because scanner units are just sweethearts.//

"Hey, 2R-- err, sorry, ma'am?"

"Yes?"

She didn't turn to face him as he spoke, even when he caught up to walk next to her. Focused on the task as ever, huh? For a second he considered mentioning it, but his judgement about his partner knew better than to pester her with criticism of that kind and he brushed it off. While it wasn't likely, he knew she could as a combat unit easily end him.

"People who know me well usually call me 'Kiren'."

"Oh."

Not the reaction he had hoped for. The young man averted his eyes, instead laying them on the surroundings. Another heap of scrap metal parts, probably machines their predecessor models had defeated in an attempt to clear the sector from enemies. His lips curled when he made out the silhouette of a head underneath the rusty parts of a dismantled crawler. It sent shivers down his spine and he forced his eyes away from the body. When he looked ahead he realized he'd fallen behind. Kiren sped up until their paces aligned again.
Focus, Kiren, focus on the rescue mission. Our allies are counting on us.
And yet the conversation didn't want to leave his mind.

"...so.... so what do you think of it?", he spoke tentatively, trying to read her expression  below the black cloth covering her eyes. She didn't even flinch.

"Of...?"

"I-- uh..."

His mouth suddenly felt very dry and Kiren distractedly ran his tongue over his lips to moisten them. He was making this awkward, wasn't he? Oh, why did he have to open his mouth?
It's now or never, a voice in his head whispered and he swallowed drily before continuing, voice hesitant.

"I mean, if you want to call me Kiren, it's totally okay."

He felt his blackbox algorithms stop and for just a moment the tension that had been crawling under his skin became unbearable.
I made this awkward, he mentally repeated, this was the worst decision!

Perhaps it was an illusion, but for a moment he thought he'd witnessed the corners of her mouth twitch. The moment was gone before he even had the time to run a proper analysis.

"I'm good."

"Oh... uhm, all right."

He tried to hide the way her answer had caused his mind to stumble and with an instant that disheartening feeling returned. Sadness? Disappointment? He couldn't really tell, he did not have enough information on that subject yet to fully diagnose the sentiment. If one could even call it that. To be honest, he hadn't expected to gain much out of this conversation anyway. This had just been a waste of their time.

Even when surrounded by skeleton walls of a ruined building, up here the blowing wind was cold and for the first time Kiren considered changing his temperature bar to lower registration settings. Then again his commander would probably scold him for that, but she always did, right?

"Pod?", he asked and the grey drone hovering just above him answered:

"Yes?"

"Remind me to re-evaluate my sensory settings next time we get to city base."

"Affirmative. Should I run an analysis on your current status?"

The android shook his head even though he knew the pod would not register such an act as an answer.

"No, I'm good right now."

"Affirmative", the drone answered in its robotic voice before adding without missing a beat, "please refrain from using coded language, unit 9K-19-1228--"

"Yeah yeah", Kiren interrupted with an eyeroll as he leaped off the edge of a railing before safely landing next to his partner. As if he hadn't heard it often enough by now. It felt like lately everything he received was criticism, wether he was talking to his pod, commander or partner. And now he was being lectured for his speech patterns? Tch! Wasn't he supposed to adapt to human language to make contact as easy as possible? They never got lectured on that flaw of theirs, so why would he have to sit through every transmissional scolding from--

The ally signal suddenly changed and Kiren felt almost overwhelmed by the amount of force behind it. The android stopped abruptly, head snapping back to browse for its direction. A quick evaluation of data pinpointed it back below, and the scanner unit followed the continuous stream of waves of a distress call emanating from underneath. His expression hardened simultaneously with the incoming warning of her pod assistant.

"Alert: multiple resistance members detected underneath this room. Enemy activity likely."

"I register an enemy signal mixed in between", Kiren added in a tone of concern, "and the signal's source is strong. Be careful when we enter, ma'am."

"Your advice is appreciated", she answered and Kiren followed suit when she descended the stairs towards what he identified as a broken glass floor.

//Probably gonna do more of these because I have so many ideas for crossover oneshots :3//