"Is everyone here?"

A chorus of affirmatives and wave of nods was the response from the motley crew of dolls and humans gathered in the command center. Despite the lateness of the hour, everyone present looked awake, for which Kerr was thankful. She had chosen the meeting time so that the command center would be empty of nonessential personnel, the better to conduct a semi-secret briefing. The Commander punched in a few commands on the holotable, spinning up a map of S17.

"All right. Jericho, report on our containment efforts."

The doll to Kerr's left leaned forward, producing a pointer which she started using for gestures in reference to the map. "Several daytime teams have been deployed to stifle Sangvis troop movements in the region. Just yesterday, Chrysanthemum was deployed to A2 and A6 to intercept several Sangvis patrols in the area, and the day before Arnica, and the day before that Dogwood… despite all operations being successful, no impact seems to have been made on Sangvis troop numbers, implying a large reserve, or maybe even a hidden production centre."

"We have enough ammunition to keep dealing with it," commented Evert Salmela, the logistics officer. "But if Sangvis starts sending out more troops…"

"We'll have to deploy and resupply more dolls in a single day," finished Makarov. "The issue isn't ammunition supply, it's actually getting the ammunition to the dolls. If they have to spend more time out there, we'll need to start resupplying them in the field, and then it gets risky. We don't know if there's more Soviet tech Sangvis could use in the region – they could shoot at our carriers."

"Perhaps we can continue using trucks, the same way we transport the dolls?" suggested Contender, lips pursed in thought. "It's slow, but keeps transport safe from potential air intercept systems."

"But what if Sangvis raid the supply trucks? We'd have to assign a doll escort to them." Makarov played with the end of her scarf. Kerr sensed that the doll was baffled for a solution to the supply problem. From the other end of the table, Major Bezpalov, the commanding officer for the wing of helicopters attached to the base, spoke up.

"We can risk the flights. Maybe the Commander can work to locate any other old Soviet installations and remove the chance of Sangvis shooting us down, like at the hangar."

"That works," replied Kerr, no longer wishing to hear the argument between the staff. "Makarov, I'm putting you in charge of the search-and-destroy missions."

"Isn't field command Welrod's job?"

"You can stay in the command center, Welrod will go in the field," said Kerr. "Come up with a list of teams you want to deploy and give it to me when you're done. Serdyukov, work on getting a list of Soviet installations in S17 from the database, if possible. Major, Salmela, you can get ready to start running resupply sorties in the meantime."

"Aye, ma'am."

"Right. Schuhart, report on the Yew Team investigation."

The IOP engineer was silent for a moment before speaking, crossing his arms across his lab coat as he did. "RPD has not improved. There's a team of engineers working with me to unscramble all the diagnostic data, but no one's having an easy time of it. I've never seen damage to the digimind like this. It's like Parapluie, but… different. 16Lab has been rather unhelpful in their communiqués, so it's up to us to decipher what's going on."

"And what about the cause of it?" asked Jericho. "Surely there's something."

"I performed a necropsy on the SV-98 dummy recovered in the forest. It seems to me like it was forced into shutdown via an external force."

"Some sort of focused EMP?" asked MP-448.

"Maybe. The dummy was then cannibalized for certain parts, and it appears that during the process it was permanently disabled. The only thing I've found is traces of foreign nanites on the corpse as well as in RPD's system."

"Perhaps from what attacked her," replied Kerr. "Do you know anything about them?"

"Sangvis, for sure. Beyond that, it'll take a lot more lab analysis."

Python leaned in from her position between Spitfire and Makarov. "And what about the thing that did this? It's Sangvis, yeah, but I don't get the impression that it'll go down as easily as the last one."

"I can attest to that," said Grizzly, breaking her silence from where she stood next to Makarov. "It'll be a bitch to even get it in our crosshairs."

"So do we have a plan?" pressed Makarov. "A way to kill this Sangvis, and put an end to SF's efforts in this sector?"

"We don't know where the Ringleader is operating out of, and thus will have a hard time attempting to track it," said Kerr. "Hunter Team is devising a solution for the matter. For now, we will simply have to wait for it to come out, if at all."

"Assuming we can kill it," put in MP-448. "Tiss had a team of veterans with her. No one on Carnation is a pushover. How long have Grizzly and M590 been employed with Griffin? I don't like the ratio of successes to deaths here so far."

"Maybe it's a matter of fighting it on our terms," replied Contender. "Luring it out. Bring it to a place where we have the advantage."

"What place is that, though? We've fought it in the woods right outside our checkpoint and in a massive hangar with it outnumbered eight to one. Can we even lure it out in the first place?"

"Of course we can. It acts like an animal, and animals love meat." Jericho sounded much more confident than MP-448.

"This one also happens to be particularly good at disappearing dolls," said Makarov. "We shouldn't hinge our success here on a hunch that this Ringleader is just as bloodthirsty as the others. You read the briefing from yesterday, right? Grizzly mentioned that it used a Griffin IFF tag. That's more than a little worrying."

"Shchuka will keep dolls from being mistaken for the Ringleader, or vice versa," countered Jericho. "We sweep the entire sector on foot, keep Hunter and other QRF teams ready in choppers to land and blow the head off this Sangvis, and then tear every cavern and Soviet installation apart to find any last trace of Sangvis Ferri and slag it!"

Several dolls and humans murmured agreement with Jericho, seeing no other alternative. Kerr certainly saw the value in the plan. She was almost inclined to approve it.

"No."

Jericho looked over to the Commander, her face twitching in annoyance. "Ma'am, it's the best way."

"OTs-12 and SV-98 are still out there."

"What's the use of their little guerilla tactics?" Jericho was peeved. "It means nothing if this Sangvis Ringleader is continuing to direct the war effort against us and taking out our dolls one by one at the same time. We'd have to operate in large teams so there isn't a repeat of the Yew incident."

"Those dolls have got a lot to analyze. Even if they themselves don't know anything useful, there's never been a case of Sangvis taking prisoners before. They might be carrying something worth looking at. Not to mention that conducting a sector-wide hunt for this Ringleader would mean mobilizing the entire base, which we can't do right now. And even if we could, I wouldn't order anything like it. We lack the logistics, technology, or numbers for a large-scale offensive to work, even if this is one of the largest doll garrisons in Eastern Europe."

"Acting in haste is a fatal misstep," Makarov conceded. "It would be unwise to go all in when so many variables are unknown."

Kerr nodded to herself. "The best course of action is to do what we can with what we have. We'll continue our current containment effort and secure Soviet military assets that might be commandeered by Sangvis. Once we have better control of the playing field, we can start working on a plan for the Ringleader."

An uneasy silence filled the room, but no one seemed to have any other solutions to offer. Kerr sighed. "I know no one's too confident with this situation, but we're in a state of limbo right now until fresh information comes in. Let's just keep moving steadily."

"All due respect, ma'am, but we're going to have a hard time with that if things escalate any further," said MP-448, her tone forceful. "S17 has always been an active area, but I sense it getting a bit hotter in the coming weeks."

"That's enough," said Kerr, dismissing the doll. Fearmongering was the last thing she wanted to hear at a time like this. "There's one more matter to discuss: the SV-98 recording found by Chrysanthemum. I trust everyone has watched it on their own time?"

"Yes. They're wise to stay away. How do we know they're not already infected with Parapluie?" Jericho sounded quite skeptical.

"Because they couldn't have handled the Sangvis virus. It would've fried their digminds out, or turned them into something not capable of speech or higher reasoning."

"Should we organize search teams?" asked Serdyukov. "It may look bad to take no action."

"No. They're right, the risk of Sangvis infection is too high," said Kerr. "We'll let them run off the grid, so long as they don't interfere with normal operations. When we get the chance, maybe some sort of containment procedure can be devised to bring them in safely, with no risk to the rest of the dolls or the base. MP40, I'll give you jurisdiction on monitoring any information related to the two of them, as well as handling communications, should any more of these messages show up."

"Aye-aye, ma'am."

"Are there any other comments?" Kerr asked, looking around at all the gathered command staff. No one opened their mouths. "Very well. This will all be reported to Helian tomorrow, so we'll see just what Griffin command thinks of it all. Meeting adjourned."

Double upload because of how short these chapters are. So ends the first half (or so) of A War for Three (the distinction is really just for me, since this is where I started a new Google Doc to write it in after the first one started getting really slow to open and such. Also because there's gonna be a short timeskip between this intermission and the next chapter, as well as a change that will become evident very quickly. Finally, this means that I only have a few finished chapters left (I'm actually still writing the fanfiction and started uploading well after I began writing, but now my upload schedule is catching up to my writing), so expect a bigger gap between chapters in the next month or so. Anyway, thank you to everyone for reading so far and I hope you continue to enjoy my content.