Quietly sipping up some iced coffee, I stand at the corner of an adequately busy intersection, one that's not too busy, but has consistent traffic, both vehicular and pedestrian. This is my favorite kind of intersection; there's a sense of normalcy that instills calmness in whoever beholds it, that everything is business as usual, and that there is nothing out of the ordinary. Progress is being made, and that is how things should be.
Behind me is a small little coffee shop from which I've purchased my iced coffee; though, just like this intersection, it's moderately occupied with customers who enjoy their own coffees or other assorted beverages in the afternoon sun or inside the shop itself. I'm not sitting amongst them, however; I'm leaning against the base of one of the intersection lights, very close to the edge of the sidewalk, to the point where I could reach out my left foot and reach the cars passing by.
I don't know why I decided to buy an iced coffee today. After what feels like a lifetime of having only three choices of beverage as a T-Doll, those three choices being stale water, specially manufactured high-performance energy drinks made by G&K for our consumption during the Girls' Frontline that tasted like a mix of mint and cat piss, and alcohol, iced coffee certainly seems quite out of the ordinary. I suppose having a rendezvous point right next to a coffee shop was what did it - and my own curiosity as to why people would clamor for coffee. And since my partner hasn't arrived yet, I had the time to spare to go in and buy something, though I just chose something simple since I don't know how to order coffee.
Lost in thought again, as I tend to be when I'm not putting bullets into people, I push off the big intersection light and wander slowly over to the open alley to the side of the coffee shop, a foot traffic alley that leads shortly down to a small corner mall and a liquor store underneath a public parking building. This alley has a small fountain and various rectangular marble structures that serve as perfect seats for weary passersby, so I help myself and stand my violin case up against one of these stone seats and sit down on it, facing the fountain in front of me while slowly drinking more iced coffee.
Ugh, waiting for her to get here is pissing me off.
Waiting in general tilts me off the edge of the planet. We T-Dolls were constructed to be exacting in everything we do, which makes sense, since our brains are built like computers, so in the context of the war, if there was any waiting to be done, usually that meant that something in the mission had gone wrong, whether it be another ally squad going MIA, only to be found all KIA from a Sangvis Ferri ambush somewhere, or that some objective that was supposed to have been completed hadn't been. Waiting almost always meant bad news, and we all lived with that knowledge for two years.
Might not sound like a long time, but have enough of your friends and comrades die and two years can feel like two thousand.
Obviously times have changed now; the war is gone and blah blah whatever. But even for us T-Dolls some things don't change. When they built us, G&K initially thought that we were closer to machines than humans. That's what they told us and programmed us to believe, so we believed them. I guess we all know better now.
"Good afternoon, Walther."
A firm grip lightly bites my right shoulder as the words slip through my byzantium hair and into my ears.
"You're growing soft, laddie. Definitely not the Walther I knew two years ago," the voice to whom the hand that's gripped my shoulder belongs continues on, and I can sense a bit of sarcasm in it, as it customary with this particular voice. I lower my iced coffee to turn my head up to my partner, a girl wearing a large black coat and a black pleated skirt. But when I look up at her, she swiftly looks past my face and down at what I'm holding in my hands and contorts her face with confusion. "Drinkin' bloody iced coffee? Who are you and what have you done with the real Walther?!"
Frowning at her joke, I turn away rather grumpily and continue sucking on my straw for some more iced coffee.
"I don't always drink Jack, if that's what you're implying," I snap a little back up at my partner, who chuckles quite vigorously before taking a seat next to me. Luckily for us, this stone seat can just barely fit the two of us. "It's summer, so I decided to get something that'd cool me down a little. And since we were waiting here and there's the shop right next to us, I figured that I might as well. And besides, you're wearing a coat like that in the middle of summer?"
Welrod rolls her eyes, making a dismissive gesture with her right gloved hand.
"This city's somethin' else, I tell ya," she scoffs under her breath. "Normally I'd walk around in the usual, but can't do that now with how much foot traffic there is. I can feel people starin' at me." Welrod shudders a bit. "You know how I feel about walking around in the middle of the day anyway."
I snicker at her testimony. "What, did you think you could just walk around in a big city like this and get away with having no one ogle at you?"
"Kryuger never told us to watch out for things like this!" Welrod defends herself adamantly, pursing her lips at me, but she releases the pressure that she's storing between them as she assumes a more concerned countenance. "But it's not just me; I don't think any one of us really expected to have to deal with issues like that. It would'a been nice if we'd been debriefed about things like that..."
"Not like they could have prepared us for everything once we went merc," I point out.
"That's true. Not like it's a big matter anyhow."
Indeed, the problem of not being self-aware of our own physical attractiveness. Such a quality never mattered with us T-Dolls, especially not when you never knew if you'd come back with half your face missing from an enemy anti-materiel bullet or a rocket pod. And our enemies certainly did not care for it either; they either only took us prisoner or killed us; there was no in between. But now that our adversaries are human, and frequently male, we've been rudely awakened to more of the ugly side of the world, another layer of depth that we must learn if we want to continue serving as T-Dolls. Some of us have grown accustomed to it faster than others; I know DSR has had a few missions in which she used her own beauty as a weapon.
I still prefer the old-fashioned way of shooting people.
"Rgh...didn't bring my gaspers..." Welrod grumbles, fumbling around on her body to try to figure out where her pack of cigarettes went. "You got any on ya?"
Frowning at her but still reaching down to my violin case, I pull out my own pack and flick out a single cigarette for her to withdraw, which she does; she produces her own lighter in the meantime and lights up.
"Forgot yours somewhere?" I ask nonchalantly.
"Must've...I guess I'm losing my touch too," Welrod sighs, exhaling cigarette smoke with a big puff. "And I'm fresh off a defrag..."
"How long ago did you get one?"
"Not even two weeks. And here I am forgetting where my ciggies went." Welrod takes another long drag on her cigarette. "Won't be long before I start forgettin' where my beauties went off to, either."
She's talking about her pistols, by the way.
"It's not just you," I murmur, thoughtfully sipping on some more iced coffee, though I'm almost done with it at this point. "Everyone's been like that."
"Oh, I know. And it's getting worse." Welrod points her cigarette at me without looking at me. "If we'd exited service, then perhaps our problems could be overlooked as quirks."
"We'll just have to work around them, then."
"But at what point will that stop working?"
"Not sure, but that's why we're still here, isn't it? To find out."
Welrod rubs her brow. "Yes and no...? I can't say that I'm quite keen on findin' out when my memory starts to utterly fail me. Same for you, I'm sure you don't want to find out when you'll somehow get alcohol poisoning."
"Not like we can do much about it if Kalina and her team haven't been able to find a way to debug us."
"Yes, it's quite sad, actually."
Welrod glances sideways at me.
"How are things between you and Springfield?" she asks in a noticeably lower voice.
I lower my iced coffee slowly, since there's nothing left in it to drink except for a few shrunken cubes of ice. I don't answer Welrod.
"...I see," Welrod softly trails off. "Forget I asked, then."
Rummaging through her coat pocket, she produces a phone and turns it on to show me a picture on the screen.
"Kalina's found our next target," she mutters, still smoking her cancer stick; the picture shows a man with a clean-shaven face and a distinct jawline walking down a street somewhere. "The information you obtained from last night's assignment's traced him to San Francisco, up north, or at least that's where he should be."
"What's our timeframe looking like?"
"We leave tonight and we scour the city right away as soon as we land. Grizzly, FAL, SPAS, and G36-C will assist."
"Formation?"
"Pairs. Grizzly and FAL, SPAS and G36-C, and you and me."
"San Francisco's a big city; you think just the six of us can cover it in one night?"
"And that's what this is for."
Welrod shakes her phone in front of me to get my attention, and looking down at it, I notice that her phone screen's moved off the picture of our target and instead shows a black screen with digital white circles bubbling inside.
"Whoever's our client must want this target badly," I remark as I put my hand palm-down against the phone screen. A holographic panel blooms into my heads-up display, automatically connecting me to HAVOC, a comms satellite built by G&K that's served with us ever since the beginning of the Girls' Frontline. It's a running joke among us surviving T-Dolls that HAVOC was the first T-Doll G&K built and the last one that they'll ever have in active service. "Alright, connected."
"We're cleared to use HAVOC to survey the city; however, for obvious reasons, its weapons systems are offline," Welrod states. "Kalina and her team will use HAVOC to assist us; if they locate the target first, they'll point us to his location; otherwise, we find the target and detain him."
"Estimated resistance?"
"Not applicable; this bloke's unarmed and not dangerous."
"Must be a cash cow, then," I chuckle, and so does Welrod.
"Easy money. We'll be havin' caviar and Cuban cigars tomorrow night, I tell ya," Welrod cackles a little bit before getting back up, crushing her cigarette butt in her left hand before looking around for a public trash can. "We still have a bit of time before our flight; want something to eat? I know a few restaurants in this area, but I hope you're alright with spicy ramen."
Spicy ramen...my ears perk up a little when I hear these words being uttered.
"Sure. It'll be payment for that cigarette I gave you."
"A bowl of ramen is the same as a cigarette? In what world is that true?" Welrod wonders aloud.
"In ours."
Laughing together, we set off to go find a suitable ramen joint.
