Warning! Due to the nature of this work, spoilers for NieR and NieR: Automata are unmarked. Tread carefully.
After the events of NieR: Automata, 2B, 9S, and their pods decide to find a new purpose in the Kingdom of Night. But after a run-in with the time-monitoring android Accord, 9S’s curiosity with one of her time portals leads them to thousands of years in the past when humans (or rather, Replicants and Gestaults) still lived.
Creatures of Flesh is a crossover between NieR and NieR: Automata where the heroic androids find themselves in the events of the first game. It can be read here
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Creatures of Flesh contains the following tropes:
- Accidental Kidnapping: Chapter 13 reveals that the Shadowlord has his shades kidnap 9S thinking he was 2B, who could communicate with shades.
- Awful Truth: 2B does not take it well learning that the Shades she’s been killing to protect the village were humans.
- Blessed with Suck: In chapter 6 the terminals gives 2B the ability to understand the Gestalt language in hopes she can change the fate of humanity. But between the Gestalts hating her for killing their kind and the guilt of murdering the humans she worshipped, it is anything but a blessing at first.
- Clingy Jealous Girl: Kainé gets annoyed when she thinks 2B is staring at Nier because she wants to have sex with him (the other belief is that 2B wants to kill Nier). Grimoire Weiss lampshades that she’s jealous, which gets him a kick in the face.
- Dude, Not Funny!: Played With in chapter 10, when 9S suggests to Nier that shades may not like getting killed as a means to ease him into seeing they are human too. Nier, who hates the shades between relapsed gestalts attacking his home and the Shadowlord kidnapping his sister Yonah, yells at 9S for making an insensitive joke and that all shades need to be killed for peace.
- Fisher Kingdom: Accord's time portals can alter any traveler to fit the time period if they aren't careful as a best-case scenario. When 9S goes through a portal to the setting of NieR out of curiosity and 2B and their pods follow him, the androids become humans while their Pods become Grimoires.
- Foil: 2B and Kainé are both white-haired Action Girls who wield swords, have Ship Tease with a white-haired boy (9S and Nier respectively), and can understand the language of Shades (thanks to the Terminal and Tyrann respectively). But while 2B is stoic and reserved, Kainé constantly swears and always aggressive. Likewise, 2B wants to find peace between the Gestaults and Replicants after learning the truth, while Kainé sees the Shades as Always Chaotic Evil monsters who need to be killed. In chapter 12, Kainé picks a fight with 2B because she sympathizes with “monsters” that constantly harm innocent people.
- Interquel: The androids and their pods arrive a few years during the NieR Time Skip, just a few weeks before Nier and Emil unpetrify Kainé .
- Not What It Looks Like: Defied by Emil when he sees 2B conversing with a Shade when he "knows" Shades are monsters. Instead of jumping to conclusions, he decides to gather as much information as he can before he confronts her about the topic.
- An Offer You Can't Refuse: Grimoire Noir tells 9S that if he wants to be let out of his cell and help save humanity, he will have to critically injured Nier so the Shadowlord can take his Replicant's body and proceed with Project: Gestalt.
- Set Right What Once Went Wrong: Accord's reason for letting 2B and 9S stay in the events of NieR is that she hopes they'll create a branch where humanity doesn't go extinct.
- Small Role, Big Impact: Accord of Drakengard 3 fame only appears twice in the story. But her time portals are the reason that 2B and 9S, along with A2 later on, are trapped in the events of NieR. She permits their stay in hopes of creating a new branch that will save human history.
- Spared by the Adaptation:
- Thanks to 2B's work to end the conflict between the wolves and Facade and Fyra promising to speak up for them as queen, the wedding massacre never occurs and Fyra, Roc, and his pack survive.
- Kalil, with 9S's help, fake his death by making a shadow clone for Nier to kill and make the warrior think he's dead along with Beepy.
- Villain Takes an Interest: To call the Shadowlord a villain is a bit of a stretch. But when he finds out that not only can 2B understand the Gestalts but is willing to discern which are a threat and which are peaceful, he decides he will bring her to his cause no matter what it takes.
- What the Hell, Hero?: 9S calls out Popola and Devola for not telling him and 2B that the shades were humans so she’d kill the relapsed gestalts without issue, as 2B has plenty of past trauma getting ordered to kill sentient beings as the android 2E.
- With Us or Against Us: Most of the village's residence, especially Nier, hate the destructive Shades with a burning passion. So when 9S stops Nier from killing Gestault Aster and he and 2B try to talk them out, Nier considers them traitors and no longer his friends. This forces 2B, 9S, both Asters, A2, and her cat to flee their home.
