By the time the Commander and his adjutant had reached the Fairy Chamber, RO had mostly cooled off. The dark, menacing aura she had been giving off had subsided for the most part, although her fists remained tightly balled even after she ceased storming along the corridors.
When they got to the door of the chamber, they noticed 416 casually leaning on the wall besides it, her attention fully fixated on the phone in the palm of her hand.
"Come on, give me that five-star...Argh! Verdammt!" 416 grumbled as she tapped away on her phone, not noticing the Commander stroll up to her.
"Are you playing a fucking gacha game?" The Commander asked.
"So what if I am?" 416 replied defensively.
"Just...why? Why would you do that to yourself? You know what gacha players turn into, don't you? Just look at Kalina."
"You wouldn't understand." 416 scoffed dismissively.
The Commander peaked over 416's shoulder to get a view of her screen, where a full-screen view of the character she had just unlocked was displayed. "Whoa-ho, I think I understand perfectly well."
"Hey! It's not like that! I play it for the story!" 416 huffed.
"Ooooohhh, the story...Pfft! A gacha game having a worthwhile story? Yeah, and Lady Passadou faked her death and is hiding in the countryside. Get real, I heard the show they made based off it bombed hard."
"The show only covered the first few chapters! The story doesn't take off until the tenth chapter when the K.O.C.C. faction is introduced!"
"Yeah, nothing that takes that long to get good is worthwhile."
416 shook her head and grumbled. "I told you that you wouldn't understand."
"Ahem." RO cleared her throat assertively. "Are you the one in charge of this training course?"
"Training course?" 416 raised a brow.
"Someone deleted all the Commander's training records, and now he's being forced to retake his entire training curriculum. You aren't here to evaluate him?"
"No, I'm just killing time. 45 said she had some kind of 'job' she needed to take care of alone, G11's been riding around on that...thing, blasting her music all damned day, and I don't know where 9 is or what she's up to, so I've just been hanging loose." 416 shrugged her shoulders.
"So, you wouldn't know anything about this, then?"
"Not a damned thing."
"Do you at least know who's in charge here?"
"No idea, I haven't seen anyone coming in or out since I got here."
"It looks like she's been too busy maxing out her credit card to notice anything, though." The Commander quipped.
416 scoffed. "You've got training to do, off with you! Heraus!"
The Commander turned to the door to the Fairy Chamber. "Well, enough putting it off, I guess..."
As RO and the Commander entered the chamber, 416 turned back to her phone. "Okay, last contract, come on, give me something good..." She held her breath as a character's silhouette appeared on the screen, and then...
"LACHMAN-SUB NYAAAAAAAAAAAA" An earsplitting voice blared through her speakers.
"GOTTVERDAMMT!" 416 cried out as she slammed her fist into the wall behind her.
As the door to the Fairy Chamber shut behind them, it immediately became apparent that the room had been deserted.
The Commander stepped into the middle of the room, perplexedly looking around. "Huh...Nobody's here."
"Think whoever got assigned to this one caught on to that it was a prank and left?" RO asked.
"Maybe, but then...where did the Fairies go?" The Commander replied before his attention suddenly shifted to a crate in the middle of the room, IOP's logo visible on the side. "A delivery? I thought I requisitioned more AP ammo last order...Though that's par for the course around here, I really need to get in Havier's face about that one of these days..."
As the Commander approached the crate, the lid suddenly sprang open and a small fairy shot out of it.
"WHOA! JESUS!" The Commander cried out while RO reflexively jumped in front of him and reached for her submachine gun.
"Greetings, Commander!" The Fairy enthusiastically cried out.
"A new Fairy?" The Commander asked quietly. It certainly didn't match anything he had on staff or anything in IOP's catalogue.
"That's right, Commander. I am the newest creation of IOP - The Good Idea Fairy!"
The Commander's eyes widened, and his jaw slowly dropped at the revelation. It was real. It actually existed...And now it was in his base.
"No. Fucking. Way..." The Commander uttered in shock.
RO took notice of the Commander's reaction. "Commander? Is something wrong?"
"Send this thing back! I don't want it in my ba-..." Suddenly, the Commander trailed off, his eyes glazed over as he went faint.
"Commander!" RO rushed to the Commander's side and steadied him. "Commander! Are you alright?! What's going on."
"I...feel..." The Commander uttered out. "...Belay that order, the Good Idea Fairy will stay here, right where she belongs..."
RO instantly sensed that something about the Commander had changed. "Commander?..."
The Commander regained his balance and stood straight. "You know, although we did just survive months of one life-threatening ordeal after the other, that's no excuse to slack. What am I doing approving all of these leave requests? RO, cancel all leave requests I have approved and get a message out that nobody is getting any leave for the foreseeable future, not even the Dolls that made it through Paldiski without having to be restored."
RO's eyes widened as she slowly stepped back. "Commander...what are you...?"
"Let's take it a step further, we need to stop wasting resources on every little flesh wound. Nobody goes to the repair bay unless it is a catastrophic failure of a critical function."
"You...are not the Commander..." RO instantly caught on to what was happening. Her expression turned from shock to rage as she turned to the Good Idea Fairy. "You...what have you done?...WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?!" RO cried out.
"Me? Oh, nothing, except for just giving your Commander some friendly advice." The Fairy innocently remarked.
"What the hell am I doing with these Sangvis units? They were our enemy, who cares if they could be useful or if they've been rehabilitated? I should clear out some of these old dolls too, I mean, when was the last time I ever deployed Springfield?" The Commander continued to muse on.
"No...Let him go right now!" RO shouted, her face turning red with rage.
"But then who would run the café? Wait, why do we even have a café for the Dolls, Dolls don't need human food, not really, a coffee maker in my room is enough. I should shut the place down, and dump all this cheesecake while I'm at it. Why did I exchange all those event medals for them, anyways?"
RO grabbed him by the shoulders and desperately shook him. "Commander! Please! Don't let her do this to you! Fight it! Snap out of it!"
The Good Idea Fairy laughed menacingly. "It's no use, little doll. No Commanding Officer can resist my flawless advice!"
RO's fists clenched with intensity. "You're controlling the Commander...You're sabotaging this base...That means you're the enemy - I can neutralize enemies!" RO resolved as she reached for her submachine gun...but caught nothing but air.
"My bag...where's my bag?!" RO frantically asked before the sounds of tinkering off to her side caught her attention. She turned to find the Commander at a workbench, tinkering away at her gun on the table.
"There, all finished!" The Commander triumphantly exclaimed before handing RO her gun back. "In light of a number of Negligent Discharge incidents involving a certain Doll that I will not name, I have seen fit to take some extra precautionary measures. Not only has the weight of the trigger been increased to a 50-pound quadruple-action pull, but I have installed an ID-Lock system that can be remotely enabled and disabled, as well as a flawless state of the art fingerprint reader. You will have the honor of being the first to try it out!" The Commander explained while he munched on a bag of Nacho-Cheese Doritos. "It might be a little dirty, though. I was kind of hungry."
RO rapidly seized her gun from the Commander.
"ID check failed...WARNING: Maximum login attempts exceeded, please contact your administrator." A robotic voice emanating from her gun stated as the trigger locked in place.
"M-My Noveske..." RO whimpered out. Her legs bucked from under her and she fell to her knees, tears welling up in her eyes. "Give him back...Give him back to me..."
"Or what?" The fairy smugly cackled. "Your programming forbids harming allies. The only way you could ever hope to harm me is if you were an illegal doll!"
As RO whimpered helplessly on her knees, the Commander approached her and softly placed a hand on her shoulder. "RO...I know you've been working hard, not only have you been leading the AR-Team in M4A1's absence, but you've been serving as my adjutant on top of that as well...and well, there's something I want you to know."
RO slowly turned her head up. "Commander?..."
"...I've been passing you over for 24-hour Staff Duty, and I realized that I shouldn't be doing that. You have 24 hour duty starting at midnight tonight."
RO violently gripped the hair on the sides of her head and shrieked at the top of her lungs. "AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!"
Suddenly, the door to the chamber was violently thrown open, and 416 stormed inside. "Alright! What the hell is up with all of this damned racket!" However, 416 identified the source of the commotion almost instantly.
416's eyes narrowed. "Gott im Himmel...you..."
Without another second of hesitation, 416 practically tore her USP out of its holster. Training her sights on the Fairy in an instant, she unflinchingly squeezed the trigger. A succession of deafening cracks resonated throughout the chamber as a barrage of bullets tore through the Fairy's torso, sending her helplessly careening to the floor. After the Fairy hit the floor with a soft thud, 416 fired two more shots directly into her crown.
416 exhaled cathartically. "I should have done that at the Ministry of Defense."
Meanwhile, the final gunshot snapped the Commander out of his trance. "STAR! FOR GOD'S SAKE!" The Commander jerked backwards, frantically looking around the room. "Wha...? Where am...? What is...? I feel...I feel weird..."
"Commander?...Commander!" RO rushed up to the Commander and threw her arms around him, pulling him into a hug.
"Whoa! Hey! Crushing! Crushing!" The Commander grunted out, feeling his ribcage straining from being compressed inwards.
RO still held on for a few seconds before she finally released him.
After getting his bearings, the Commander noticed the dead Fairy on the floor. What had happened had immediately become clear. "I see...That was too close..."
RO turned to 416. "How did you know to shoot it?"
"They had one of these at the Ministry of Defense. I should have known back then that they were trouble." 416 replied.
"There's probably one hiding at Fort Liberty, too..." The Commander added.
RO's expression turned grim. "I'm not saying you shouldn't have shot it, 416...But now we don't know who's behind this...I mean, who around here could be this angry at the Commander? Neither of us have any idea at all."
416 turned to the Commander and raised an eyebrow. "...You have no idea who could be mad at you?" She asked.
"Yeah, why, do you know something?" The Commander asked perplexedly.
"...You really have no idea at all as to who you have pissed off recently?"
"Yeah, I don't think I've upset anyone recently..."
416's disappointment became immediately clear. "...Commander..."
"What?"
416 sighed. "Well, obviously it's-"
Just then, however, the sound of a familiar scream began rapidly fading in from the distance.
"MY BRAAAAAKKKKEEESSS! 416! 45! 9! HELP MEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!" G11's G-Box zoomed past the door, its owner clinging onto it for dear-life while screaming at the top of her lungs.
"Gottverdammt scheiße! Gotta run, Commander!" 416 exclaimed before taking off after the speeding Doll.
"416, if you'd just wait a min-...And she's gone, fuck."
"So...we're still at square-zero..." RO sighed.
"Yeah, but more importantly...Where did the Fairies go?"
"...Don't tell me that thing let them out."
"I'd hate to say it, but that's what it looks like..."
"We're going to have to round them up, aren't we?"
"Nah, I snatched up those Sangvis Units just for moments like this. Get a message to Dreamer, tell her to start rounding them back up once she's finished mopping the parking-lot."
"Yes, Commander."