Sunlight poured onto the firing range from the clear blue sky, illuminating the field in the warmth of the golden rays. A little white cat padded along the dirt and grass, ignoring the residual stink of firearms discharge. Normally around this time of day, one or more of the girls would be firing at targets on the range. Lead would fly and loud noises would ensue as they practiced with their weapons, kicking up dirt and rocks every time they missed. For the cat's sensitive hearing, this was usually the worst place to be. For the past few days, however, the firing range has been peaceful enough to allow nature to reclaim its land. While the dolls would still got to extensive lengths to trim the plants and clean up their garbage, they've kept their firearms silent.

Unfortunately for the cat, its favored doll was no longer around. The blonde doll with the funny scented friends had been gone for some time, and the room where it slept with her was locked tight. Luckily, the half-human that would sometimes stalk around the base was now a permanent resident. Sometimes, she would come out of the medical room and sit under the shade of some of the trees, occasionally practicing dances. While she stinks of human medicine, she was familiar enough with the cat to quickly earn its trust. Today, the white haired half-human was performing with one of the dolls, showing her how to perform a complicated dance for two.

Angel took the lead in the dance, showing MG34 how to not embarrass herself at the upcoming wedding. It was a slow and intimate dance, but the doll stumbled about like she had two left feet. Still, Angel was patient enough to keep trying with her, suspecting some of the confusion might be coming from a difference in feet. While Angel could easily perform graceful leg movements and dances, Paradeus had her balanced on spindly, peg-like feet that resembled high heeled dress shoes. It helped with her grace and poise, but made it almost impossible to teach the proper foot placement for dancing. Despite this, MG34 was making some progress with her lessons. Taking a quick break, MG34 sat in the grass to breathe heavily and watch Angel continue to twirl about gracefully in the sunlight. "How are you not dying right now?" MG34 panted as she spoke.

Angel kept up with her motions, enjoying her freedom in the outside world. The commander was kind enough to provide for her the crimson Griffin Commander long coat and officers beret, a much needed change from the thing and flimsy robes Paradeus would issue. Dressed like this, she almost felt human again. "Dying?" She asked, spinning on one 'foot', "I've never felt more alive!"

"You know the doctor is gonna be mad at you for all this dancing." MG34 was referring to Doctor Nathaniel Adams, a dark skinned man from America who was hired by Griffin to help care for Angel and her medical problems. Dr. Adams was a young expert in the field of biotechnology, working mostly with the complicated prosthetic limbs and organs that kept people alive and working. Because of his field of expertise, he was especially qualified to practice on an amalgamation of human and machine like a Nyto.

"His concern is appreciated, but unwarranted." Angel explained, stopping when she noticed the cat. She squatted down and called for the white ball of fur. She scratched behind its ears with her mechanical fingers, the tips feeling especially pleasing to the animal. "The rate of which I've been healing is amazing, even to him."

"Just don't get another infection, or everyone will want to kill me." After Angel's stabbing, the unclean circumstances of which she was operated on initially led to a very poor stitching job, accompanied with a near lethal infection. For a normal human, there would be a very real possibility of death; Angel's unique Nyto systems helped fight and control the spread of the infection. Once Dr. Adams was able to step in to help, she began to make a recovery with nothing more than a nasty scar where she had been stabbed.

Angel merely chuckled, picking up the cat in her arms. "I'm sure your sister will fight for you."

"Hey, David will fight for me too!" MG34 was referring to her boyfriend, the one that was happily showing her off at his sister's wedding. Ever since Paradeus bombed and burned out the nearby town he loved in, he had been staying with MG34 here at the base. Angel made a point to apologize on more than one occasion for her involvement.

"I'm sure that he would make a wonderful cheerleader for you two!" Angel laughed as MG34 held up an obscene hand gesture in response.

The two returned to their lesson before they noticed a single car approach from the road. The gates automatically opened for them, making them out to be someone of importance. It pulled up to the base and came to a stop as close to the front entrance as it could be, killing its engine to park there instead of one of the more convenient parking spaces. The car was all black, with almost completely opaque black tinted windows. Angel squinted and noticed an official government seal on the license plate, signifying the vehicle as property of the Bureau of State Security. "Now what would attract the rats of State Sec here." She asked herself.

The driver side door opened, and a man in a fancy suit with a black suitcase stepped out. He looked around, his black sunglasses hiding his eyes from view. Everything about the man's appearance screamed federal agent, and he walked with a gait that made it seem as though he owned the place. He was overconfident, or arrogant, and Angel didn't like the looks of him one bit. "Should we tell someone?" MG34 asked.

Angel watched the man as he entered the base, analyzing him and committing him to memory. "People like him are cursed to forever seek attention from those around him," she explained, "I'm sure he'll wave a fancy badge in everyone's face to let them know how important he is."


Kar98k sat in her office chair, enjoying the beautifully warm day. It had been raining and cloudy for the past few days, finally giving way to a gorgeous sunny day. The outside world was silent save for the sounds of nature, with Griffin unable to provide ammunition resupplies preventing the girls from hitting the firing range. The silence was welcome after everything they had been through, giving everyone a chance to catch up on their other hobbies and interests. It had been a very long time since she'd been able to relax in the sunlight with a cup of tea, and she was going to try and enjoy every second of it.

The office door opened without any warning, and Kar98k sighed as her peace was broken. She spun her chair around to greet her guest, placing her teacup on a little plate she had on her desk. Fredrick had barged into her office, scowling at a jaggedly cut piece of scrap metal. She watched as he smacked the piece of metal on her desk and swore. The specific cut wasn't very clean, the cutting tool leaving too many marks and almost warping the steel. His usual cutting tools were damaged from the fight in the maintenance bay, most of them peppered with shrapnel or broken to pieces. "This is why we need a plasma cutter."

Kar98k shook her head. "I told you, we can't just requisition equipment we don't have the proper utility space for."

"I just need a small one."

"Absolutely not." She crossed her arms in resolution.

"Sweetheart, you know I'll just get my hands on some energy weapons and make my own." His smile put his confidence in his ability on full display. In the end, he wasn't asking for permission for what he wanted to do; he was asking for permission for what he was going to do regardless. She knew she couldn't stop him, but she could at least disapprove for her own peace of mind.

"I don't want you performing marvels of engineering just so you can make little boat models."

"You weren't complaining when I installed that scale model of the Bismarck in the lobby!" It was a very nice and detailed work, she couldn't deny that. However, G&K logistics has been wondering why the Brigade keeps requesting spare materials. After a very long meeting about the proper use of limited company resources, Kar98k was not looking forward to having another.

There was a knock at the door. "Let them in and then find something productive to do with your time."

Fredrick rolled his eyes and opened the door. MP40 entered, along with a man in a black suit with a suitcase. Kar98k shot Fredrick a glance to leave, but his shrug and expression told her that annoying her was his idea of finding something to do. She stood to shake the hand of whoever this new man was, but he simply pulled out a badge. "Good afternoon," he said, "I'm Agent Peter with the Bureau of State Security."

"Sounds fake." Fredrick muttered.

"That's because it is," he explained, "it's a codename to protect my actual identity. These things are important considering the kind of people I have to deal with."

"To what do I owe the honor of your visit?" Kar98k asked, motioning for the others to leave. MP40 simply nodded and left, while Fredrick not only insisted on staying, but moved to stand behind her. His expression screamed of mistrust towards the man, but his curiosity wasn't getting the better of him.

"I've been assigned to report to you the findings of our investigation pertaining to your troops and the group that calls themselves Paradeus."

Kar98k offered a seat to the man, sitting across from him at her desk. Fredrick crossed his arms and leaned against the cabinet she had in front of her window. "Please, share whatever you can."

Peter nodded, placing his suitcase on his lap and unlatching it. "Shortly after the arrest of the doll you refer to as FG42, she was apprehended by what we believe were Paradeus agents. At first we believed it was a rescue operation, but that was proven incorrect upon information recovered by a Griffin commander and his dolls while on operation in a location used by Paradeus for a purpose we have yet to identify."

He pulled out a photograph, depicting a very familiar doll slumped against a collapsed wall. There was no sign of a fight or a struggle, nor was her face locked in pain or fear. It was as if FG42 laid down and decided to die, giving up on life. Kar98k felt empty inside, unsure of how she felt looking at the picture. It was never easy to see a doll die like a human can, and it was even worse when that doll was someone that she knew personally. Despite everything she had done, it was still hard to look at FG42's corpse. Peter continued to explain as they looked at the photo. "The city of Tallinn was highly radioactive, and we believe that may have been the primary cause of her death."

"Why was she there?" Fredrick asked, with Kar98k still speechless.

"Based on the other entities that were found there," Peter explained, "Paradeus would dispose of their various failures by dumping them there to die."

"Entities?" Fredrick asked. The word itself conjured up a multitude of possibilities, each more haunting than the last. knowing Paradeus, the truth was probably stranger than anything Kar98k could imagine.

"Nytos, such as the one you have been harboring, but in a worse state of mental and physical health." Considering the state that Angel was in when they adopted her as one of their own, that was quite a thing to say. Dr. Adams stated how despite the injury to her stomach from the stab wound, the organ's lack of actual use was a much more pressing concern. Her body gained its nutrients from mechanical means, leaving her stomach in a constant source of starvation despite being "fed" from her implants. It took a joint effort from him and Fredrick to get her body working in a somewhat stable manner that she was no longer living in an equilibrium of torment.

"Why would they do this to her?" Kar98k whispered.

"She's not the only failed Paradeus agent that was spotted within the city." Peter seemed to be suggesting other such people existed, but no doubt wouldn't share anything more than that. "We believe that they've been doing this for a very long time."

"Did you recover anything from her?" Fredrick asked.

"Unfortunately her neural cloud was gone, she was nothing but an empty husk when she was located."

Fredrick didn't look convinced, but kept his mouth shut. Kar98k handed the photograph back to Peter, hoping to never see it again. "Is this all you came here for today?" She asked, her voice a little uneasy.

"State Sec is interested in your Nyto." Peter pulled out a small stack of forms. "We've already discussed it with Griffin, but you and your troops will be working operations for us so we can provide protection for you from any future Paradeus incursions as well as studying the Nyto."

"You do realize that Angel is a kid?" Fredrick said incredulously. While Dr. Adams did some tests on her, he found that the reason so much of her human body had a difficult time melding with its augmentations was due to her body still growing. His estimate was that Angel should currently be in her early teenage years, but an accurate number was hard to gauge due to so much of her body being removed or replaced. Her fingerprints and her fingers were gone and replaced with mechanical arms, her hair was altered chemically to be a stark white, and her teeth were artificially replaced with a much stronger set of artificial ones that were difficult to break or remove. Her blood was the most interesting, seemingly being replaced by someone else's. While it hadn't been tested yet, it was highly suspected that she was also highly resistant to the radiation from collapse fluid. Despite all of this pointing towards Angel being a marvel of medical engineering, all of it was seemingly done with no regard for basic human ethics. Almost all of her augmentations and changes were done with no anesthesia, scarring her mind to the point she used Paradeus and their religious zealotry as a mental escape. Combined with the emotional and mental abuses from her former masters, it's no wonder she turned on them so quickly once offered a better choice.

Peter, however, didn't seem to be aware of much of Angel's torments. In fact, Kar98k wouldn't be surprised if he didn't care. The man was here to his job, and was seemingly unfazed by the questionable ethics of the birth of a Nyto. "Unfortunately that knowledge is irrelevant," Peter's expression was uncaring, "we can't fix ethics once they're already broken. We can only learn from them so as to avoid repeating them."

Fredrick shook his head. "She doesn't need more tests, she needs someone to help her be normal!"

Peter scowled, wondering why he was arguing with the engineer and not the Commanding officer. "This is why we're involving you instead of stealing her away."

Kar98k held up a hand to stop Fredrick from continuing his argument with the agent. "And we thank you for involving us as her caretakers. While I would have liked to have had a choice in the matter, I understand that sometimes swift decisions need to be made. So long as you and State Sec are more transparent with that matter in the future, I will happily work with you and your organization."

Peter's face was unchanged, as if he was expecting this outcome. "Excellent," he said as he latched his suitcase closed, "I've been appointed as your handler with State Sec. I'll come back in a week for a long term residence."

"We'll be happy to have you." Kar98k tried to give Peter a warm smile, despite knowing that she didn't have the option to refuse. Instead, she led Peter on his way out of her office and kindly held the door open for him. MP40 was still waiting outside, who would lead him back to his car outside. Kar98k would remain in her office, breathing a sigh of relief once the door was shut and he was gone. "Long term residence, my ass!" She swore, her actual feelings finally coming out. "If they didn't trust me to lead these girls by myself that much then they should have just thrown me in prison."

"Dolls don't go to prison." Fredrick answered, rifling through the papers Peter left. "Besides, that's not what he lied to you about."

Kar98k raised an eyebrow. "What do you mean?"

"That photograph," he explained, "she was holding something that he didn't mention."

"I didn't notice her holding anything." She had been more focused on the dead doll to have noticed any superfluous details.

"I wouldn't expect you to know what they are since they're well beyond your range of expertise." Fredrick crossed his arms. "It was a recording device designed for use in highly radioactive environments. Usually they're mounted on drones built to scout through red and black zones, or to search for survivors in a contaminated place."

"So if FG42 had one on her," Kar98k connected the dots, "then she might have been able to leave some sort of message behind."

He nodded. "She didn't collapse suddenly like I would in that place, she had time to leave a message for Saint Peter to conveniently not mention to you."

"So you're saying that she left something behind that they don't want us to know about?"

"We won't know until we get to see what's on that camera." He sighed. "Unfortunately we can't just ask the higher ups in Moscow for something like that; Soviet agencies are notorious for their treatment of questions."

"What do we do then?" Kar98k sat back at her desk and rubbed her temples.

"What can we do?" Fredrick sighed, knowing he didn't have an answer. "You said it yourself, we don't have much choice in the matter."

Where she was once being strung along by a secret organization, Kar98k now found herself embroiled in a conspiracy with her own government. She would do what she could to protect her Brigade, but government bureaucracy was a greater foe than any soldier or tank that could be thrown at her. In the end, she was at the mercy of State Sec. Looking out her window, she saw Angel and the sisters prancing about in the sunlight like children. They were happy, even with everything that had happened to them. "I'll do everything I can to keep my girls safe." Kar98k pledged.