FG42 calmly walked through the grocery store, pushing a cart full of food she had no intent of eating. Every once in a while, she would stop and look at some sort of treat item, pretending to read its ingredients or nutritional facts. Maybe some of the candy would be of some interest to the rest of the echelon, but she didn't care. Her duty was to play the role of the good little domestic doll, doing the shopping for mom and the kids while they were out enjoying the rest of the day. No matter how amusing the idea of normal domestic life seemed to her, she was merely here to pretend. She had a job to do while she was out, and time was coming close to start working.
FG42 knew this place was once a battlefield, and she knew that very soon it was about to become one again. Her job was to just simply set up cameras and drones to give the echelon an edge over the local security agency. For some reason, these humans were seemingly supplied by Sangvis Ferri. A few years ago that wouldn't seem so strange, but accounting for the recent uprising against human kind that the SF dolls have been waging; one has to wonder for why they're playing nice all of a sudden. Whatever it was, it was mildly concerning to her and her employers. A lot of peoples lives were in danger, and dead humans didn't really fare well for Griffin's public image. FG42 would much rather pretend to be a domestic doll than return to actual civilian servitude again.
As she shopped, a cell phone in her pocket rang. Taking her cue, she pulled the phone out and made her way towards the bathrooms. On the other end was MP40 back at their penthouse command post, giving her the signal to head to the emergency exit. "Oh hello, how are things back at the house?" FG42 could have answered simply using a wireless connection to the phone, but she needed to make sure that the humans saw her on the phone.
"It's time to shine Filma." MP40 responded using their undercover name. FG42 smiled and left the cart of food behind as she entered a back hallway that connected to the restrooms. Looking for the cameras, she played her trump card. Many of the members of the brigade received upgrades to perform various duties and roles, and FG42's was an electronic cloaking system. No audio or visual monitoring system would be able to see her anymore, giving her full freedom to make her way to the emergency exit in the side hallway containing the human bathrooms. Making sure nobody was around to witness her, she broke out an electronic key breaking system to disable the alarm on the exit. A minute later and she was free to make her way out of building and into the back alley.
FG42 looked both right and left for anymore humans in the alley before she walked over to a ladder and began climbing. There were at least two more floors of shops above the grocery store, and FG42 needed to get all the way to the roof. Poking her head over the edge, she made sure she was alone before climbing up top and walking over to the street side of the grocery store. She reached into her purse and pulled out the pieces to assemble a small surveillance drone. Completing its assemble, she prepared it for a remote connection back to MP40 using the cellphone. "Do you have a visual?" She asked, holding the drone.
"No, I can't see you at all." It was very important to make sure that if the drone was captured, that it never see her face once activated. For this reason, FG42 with her electronic cloaking was the perfect doll for the job.
"Good, I'm letting you go." FG42 let go of the drone and it's small propellers kicked into gear, letting it maintain a steady altitude as it took flight into the city. Ideally, the drone would plant itself nearby the main security base and monitor them for anything suspicious. Her job for the day done, FG42 walked back to the ladder to return to her grocery shopping.
Kar98k sat under the cool shade of an old tree, taking note of the many scars it bore from its time in war. Judging by its approximate age, it had no doubt seen all three world wars. she couldn't help but wonder how many world wars she would witness in her lifetime. Looking around, she tried to guess how many trees had existed before the world was split apart for the safety of what remained of humanity. She wondered what a tree would think about seeing one of the shambling ELIDS, a twisted and pained creature that once considered itself human. In a way, she understood how necessary it was to keep this city safe and secure from whatever might roam from outside the city walls.
None of that mattered now, however, as Captain Adelhard had signed the city's death warrant. There was no good reason for Sangvis Ferri to loan this much hardware to a human city with no ulterior motive. At this point it was just a matter of confirming that the weapons and dolls were in fact given by current day SF manufacturing plants and not leftovers from during the war. Considering their proliferation throughout the city, and every the defense emplacements protecting the outer walls, it was almost impossible to have this many working military models. Someone had to have cut a deal at some point, and all the fingers so far pointed to Adelhard.
In yellow zones like this, it wasn't too unheard of for a cities hired security to run things as akin to medieval lords. Even Griffon holds more power in some regions than the local governments, hence why after the Third World War every PMC was forced to "demilitarize" and surrender any advanced weapon tech. Griffon resorted to outfitting dolls with hundred year old rifles, pushing the limits of doll technology to compensate. The security forces hired by the city of Schaf, however, seemed to have struck an incredibly illegal arms deal with a rogue military manufacturing company. Essentially supplied by the enemy, the actual government could come crashing down on the party if they felt so inclined. This operation was meant to uncover just how deep and dangerous it ran.
For that reason, Kar98k and MP41 were calmly resting under the oldest tree in the park across from the main security base. MP41, playing the role of Kar98k's youngest daughter, had her eyes closed as she pretended to sleep on their picnic blanket. MP41 was hacking into the security mainframe remotely, something that took a lot of energy and produced a lot of heat as she overclocked herself to break in from so far and so deep. Sitting under the shade with Mine's head on her lap, she motherly stroked her hair as she waited for her pretend daughter to awaken. The concept of motherhood was quite foreign to her, having never been trained on how to take care of children. Of course she never had any real formal training to be a tactical commander either, so it only seemed natural at this point to be forced to do yet another thing she had no right being tasked with.
As Kar98k reached for their basket to grab a bottle of water, MP41 stirred and took a deep breath to try and cool her core. Kar98k handed her the water, hoping that getting some cool liquid in her would help her compose herself. After sitting up she took a minute to process everything she had accessed. "I stumbled across a gold mine, Commandant." She finally spoke.
"That's 'Mother' while we're in public." Kar98k hissed at her.
"Right, sorry." MP41 smiled and continued. "Anyway, this entire system has an amazing security system, real top of the line stuff you'd expect from some former military boys."
"Where's the gold mine then?"
Her smile grew even larger. "Someone already cracked it. Dug right in and left a huge back door in the system for me to just walk right in."
Kar98k frowned. "So we're not the only ones on this operation?"
"That's the thing, even the back door was encrypted. It just had a completely different set of passcodes and key words." She pulled a camera out of her bag and took a picture of the security base as the surveillance drone FG42 and MP40 were suppose to launch flew overhead. "I was able to piece this information together using information I stole from from that database during our last operation."
Kar98k raised an eyebrow. "What do you mean?"
"Scarecrow use to be stationed there, but she left that Manticore to do the mainframe duty while she put her full focus here and that other base further north. I used her personal data that was still stored back there to open the back door and walk right in with no issues whatsoever."
A back door access point with security clearance created by a Sangvis Ferri ringleader doll did not bode well for this operation as a whole. "What else did you find?"
MP41 leaned closer and listed off everything she managed to secure. "Everything from security files, control codes for the dolls and defense network, tax forms, census and public identification is here and open for SF to take over anytime they so please."
StG44 sighed as she swept the floor, bored our of her mind on what was supposed to be a high stakes mission. While everyone else got to play secret agent and galavant around the city, she was stuck keeping up the undercover front of Steffi. Captain Adelhard had a son named Kurtis that worked at a street level store a few blocks from the center of the city. It was barely her first day on the job and already they had her cleaning the place like some sort of domestic servant. The real difficulty in the job came from not cleaning as intently as she would have liked to. If she was supposed to pretend to be human, then she would have to struggle to put in as much effort as a human would. Typically, this resulted in her stopping every once in a while to distract herself with something or moving at a much slower and less meticulous pace. Truly the existence that humans are forced to live within is quite boring and unproductive.
While she wasted her time sweeping up glitter shed off of a display of unnecessary shirts, someone approached behind her. Turning around to face them, it was Kurtis coming to check up on how she was getting along. Technically, he was her boss and therefore in charge of making sure she knew how to do her cover job, but he seemed genuinely surprised how quickly she was able to pick on her duties and get to work. If ever he suspected her of being a machine, it was right now. Even with her intentional mistakes to throw off the idea of her being a doll, StG44 knew she was still reaching a level of cleanliness most humans don't typically achieve. Despite this, Kurtis seemed more relieved than disappointed at how skilled she was. "Good to see you're doing well over here Steffi." He looked at the work organize and cleaning and seemed impressed. "It's nice to see that the old man hired someone worth their weight."
Unsure if he was really being sincere, StG44 settled upon telling a joke to hopefully distract from her work. Moreover, she was going to put him on the defensive, to raise his guard prematurely. "I'm worth quite a lot, are you calling me heavy?" She kept a small smile to imply a playful atmosphere.
Kurtis' eyes widened as his face flushed red. "Oh no I don't mean that. You're just doing really well, I'm impressed."
Mission accomplished, now it was time to endear him to lower his defenses, making him feel more at ease to open up. She decided that making it seem like she was lower her guard he would be more willing to open up in return. "Well, I've always had to clean up after my sister," StG44 partially lied, knowing full well she did a lot of the cleaning back at the base, "so I'm no stranger to cleaning up after people that are messier than they are rich."
Kurtis sighed, clearly agreeing with part of what she said. "Yeah, that last part is pretty true with a lot of the people here too." He looked around to make sure nobody was listening to them. "A lot the people on this side of the wall really don't appreciate what goes on outside that wall, no matter how rich it makes them."
Finally finding the nugget of info she wanted, it was time to start digging. "What do you mean?" StG44 tried to stay as innocent and unsuspecting as possible, doing her best to not raise suspicion.
"The city pays the refugees to work in the factories outside the city," Kurtis explained, "and the city then sends that stuff off once a week to get traded away for stuff from other cities. It's very medieval but considering the lack of government oversight in the really bad yellow zones like this it's all we got."
"Once a week?" StG44 asked. "Why not every day, wouldn't that make more sense?"
"Well my dad at the base oversees the trades," Kurtis shrugged, "beyond that I don't really know."
Seeing as she hit a wall with her questions, StG44 decided it was best to distract from the small interrogation and pull off any suspicion. "Interesting," she leaned on the broom, trying to play it casual, "but what does this have to do with you thinking I'm fat?"
Kurtis blushed again. "I never said you were fat." He said as she giggled at his embarrassment.
MP40 sat with the Commandant at the dining table, going over their gathered information. Getting a rough layout for the city security force by drone, they confirmed the information gathered by MP41 about the rough blueprints for the base. A small warehouse was clearly built underneath the base, with a cargo elevator in the main yard that was large enough for vehicles and supplies to be safely stored underground in the event of aerial bombardment. In this case, however, the warehouse is where the local police are keeping the control mainframe for all the Sangvis Ferri security systems. According to MP41, the mainframe is actually an "immobile" Manticore. The presence of such a heavy SF unit here was only worsened by the existence of a back door into the entire command system that was designed especially for the SF command unit Scarecrow. "So what do we know about this ringleader unit?" The Commandant asked.
"Well, I pulled up some of the old files we have on her model." MP40 searched her own neural cloud for the information she obtained. "She's a fairly low ranked Sangvis command unit, but she's known for being incredibly devious. She was designed primarily for information gathering and espionage."
Kar98k sighed. "Sounds like the best doll for the job then."
"Precisely," MP40 continued to explain her research, "and from a recent encounter Griffin forces have had with her model it's been revealed she has a deeper understanding of how IOP manufactured dolls think and operate as well."
"So she understands us better than we understand her."
"Which is why I think we should pull MP41 off of unnecessary electronic warfare to lower her suspicions in the event that she's actively monitoring the city."
The Commandant sighed and leaned back in her chair and crossed her arms. "So she has units all over the city, and can take them over at any time. What's the end game goal?"
"The factories outside the city wall produce various goods and raw materials. The refugees in the camps are more than willing to have jobs there."
FG42, who was listening in on them while she grabbed herself a snack from the kitchen, spoke up. "Sounds like free labor for Sangvis Ferri to me. I'd love to have my own personal horde of humans doing all the hard work for me."
MP40 had to admit, the gunner made a very good point. The Commandant also seemed to agree as she leaned forward and rested her chin on her hand. Kar98k thought for a moment, clearly working on an idea. The situation had changed from an issue of "if" and had now become a question of "why".
