Common Denominator - Chapter 3: Internal Friction

"You must be one of the Sangvis Ferri dolls," the leader of the Griffin reinforcement team said as she warily walked up to Howl and Magic. The Griffin doll had tan skin and long white hair which flowed loosely behind her back. She wore a relatively standard uniform, complete with a utility belt and a pair of small articulated armour panels. In her hands, she held a pump-action shotgun.

"Yeah, Sangvis Ferri Mobile Task Force, to be precise." Magic replied, walking up to the Griffin doll. "And you must be… Mossberg 500?"

"Mossberg 590," the Griffin doll corrected, "What are your names? I suppose they aren't MAG-7 and Mk 18 mod 0?"

"My name is Magic, and this is Howl," Magic answered, making a gesture at her teammate behind her. "Looks like we'll be working together in the near future."

"I wouldn't go that far," M590 warned, "We'll simply be working alongside each other, but remember that we take orders from our Commander, not Sangvis Ferri."

"Good," Howl sneered from the back, "We don't need your 'help' anyways."

M590 glared at Howl. "Maybe you just don't recognize the situation you are currently in."

"Alright, alright. Let's try not to get on each others' neck right away," Magic hastily interrupted, shooting Howl a quick shut up gesture. "By the way, we have a team of our own arriving shortly, M590. Just a heads up."

"Understood," M590 coolly replied as she turned around, "I expect not to be disrupted by their presence then. That is all."

"Yeah, got it," Magic replied as M590 walked away.

"Tough crowd, eh?" Howl asked in disdain.

"No kidding," Magic sighed, "Though I guess it'd be foolish to think all of Griffin would be so receptive… I still gotta get this data drive to them though, guess I'll just look for that RFB girl."

"Fuckin' pricks, acting all high and mighty just cause they've got more of 'em than us," Howl spat, "Part of me just wants Archangel to fly over and nuke them from orbit. Just wait until Axiom and the girls roll in and we'll show those Griffin bitches who's boss."

Acre walked down the main street in the village, looking to either side of her as villagers watched the new Sangvis arrivals from within the safety of their houses. Acre realised that—as surprising as it may sound—this was the first time she saw actual humans in the flesh. Although she's seen pictures and videos of humans on the internet and such, Acre only noticed just now how much variation there was in their appearances. The dolls at Sangvis Ferri, as lifelike as many of them may be, were all really just modelled after young adult females. And even so, many of the SFMTF members were really just variations of different structural templates. Here, not only could Acre see people of all ages and sizes, she also saw men for the first time. Although Acre thought about it beforehand, she only realised just now how much her unnatural dark purple hair and yellow eyes must've stood out…

"Acre," called a voice from in front of the distracted Sangvis doll, "Acre!"

"Huh?" Acre replied, snapping out of her thoughts and turning her head to look at the doll ahead of her. "Did you say something, Axiom?"

"Yes. I wanted to remind you to maintain trigger discipline and stick to the RoE," said Axiom—designation Mace 3 Actual, leader of one of Mace division's four teams. Her bright orange eyes seemed to pierce through Acre with a hawk-like gaze. The doll stood about 165 cm tall and wore a hip-length white cape which extended all the way around her left arm, covering a white uniform with futuristic orange markings underneath. Her messy black hair was tied into thick twintails and ran down to her legs like the ruffled plumage of bird. In her hands she held a white-and-orange AWM sniper rifle chambered in .338 Laupa Magnum. Rumour has it that Axiom gained her name through her almost-obsessive perfectionism and adherence to protocol, or so they say.

"Right, of course," Acre responded before continuing to look around. Behind Acre was a contingent of four Vespid units carrying lots of gear, and in front of her Acre could see three other members of the Mobile Task Force. In addition to Axiom, there was Keter—designation Mace 3-Alpha, a wielder of the famous Desert Eagle handgun—and Élan—designation Falchion 1-Bravo, imprinted with a prototype Chinese rifle named the Type 115.

"Acre!" a familiar voice called out up ahead. Acre raised her gaze from the ground and saw Kia's familiar face smiling at her.

"Kia!" Acre shouted back, running ahead of the group. "Good to see you again!"

"Good seeing you too," Kia smiled, patting Acre on the shoulder. "I see you've changed your hairstyle too~."

"Oh, yeah…" Acre sheepishly acknowledged, blushing as she showed Kia the long purple ponytail flowing down her back. "Figured I'd give it a try…"

"It's not half-bad, ya know? Looks kinda like mine," Kia chuckled, "Anyway, you ready for the op?"

"Honestly, I dunno," Acre admitted, her expression turning serious. "I can't believe we're working alongside Griffin to help a bunch of humans."

"Yeah, I can understand," Kia reassured Acre, "Don't be worried though, I'll be here if you need me. Just treat it as a vacation from all the fighting."

"Thanks," Acre replied, looking behind her as the rest of her group caught up. "But why are we even doing this in the first place? I mean, how is it going to benefit the Mobile Task Force? It's confusing."

"Kia, I need the situational report," Axiom announced, walking up to the two. Up until this point, Axiom's team has had little to no information about the situation or the Griffin presence owing to a communications blackout enacted to avoid tipping off the ringleaders. As Kia transmitted the data regarding the situation into Axiom's mind, the Sangvis sniper felt a massive weight being lifted off her chest.

"Keter, take the decontamination gear to the spill site. Howl will join you there shortly," Axiom ordered, "Élan, Acre, we're going help with the demining operation. Let's move."

"Actually, Axiom," Kia interrupted, "Would it be alright for Acre to help me with the liaison duties instead?"

"Fine," Axiom said after a moment's thought before walking away with Élan and the Vespids in tow.

Acre watched as Axiom and the others walked off towards the truck before then turning back to Kia. "So…" Acre began, "Now what?"

"Now…" Kia responded with a knowing smile, "Now you'll see the other side of what it means to be a soldier…"

"There's more of them now…" tactical doll Tac-50 muttered as she paused during the middle of setting up a metal detector, using her left eye to watch the video feed from her personal drone which was hovering above the Griffin dolls' position.

"They did say they had more dolls on the way," M590 noted as she slung a backpack full of equipment over her shoulder, "Fortunately, now that RFB has returned with the map containing information on the radiation and the UXO, we should be set for now. Just don't interact with Sangvis Ferri, and you should be fine."

Tac-50 stood up, holding her metal detector as she looked at the setting sun to the west. They'd only have a few more hours of light to perform their duties until the waning light would force them to halt for the night. Having been intrigued by the novel mission request, Tac-50 joined a hastily put-together team to deal with what was originally just a mine threat. The situation has revealed itself to be much more complex than what she initially thought, but Tac-50 welcomed the challenge with open arms.

"What's your take on the situation, 590?" Tac-50 casually asked her team leader.

"It's a mess, that's for sure," M590 replied, "And we're gonna be the ones that'll have to keep order around here."

"Wouldn't it be better if we cooperated with them?" RFB asked, inducing several surprised stares from her Griffin teammates, "What? I'm just saying, there's strength in numbers, right?"

"We should focus on our own work," M590 argued, "We can't trust those Sangvis dolls, and even if we could, it'd be a mess trying to coordinate with our different protocols and whatnot."

"Yeah, it'll be like a competition," tactical doll Sten Mk. II agreed enthusiastically, "Imagine the look on those Sangvis dolls' eyes when we beat them at their own game, haha!"

"Hm, now that you put it that way, guess we can't say no so some good-old competition," RFB laughed, "We'll show the them that Griffin is number one, no matter what we do!"

"Indeed. let's get on it then, girls," M590 smiled in approval as she set off with her gear in hand. During RFB's brief consultation with Magic, they agreed on a tentative partitioning of the village into different sectors that would be managed by Griffin and SF. Seeing it as a chance to one-up their Sangvis counterparts, the Griffin dolls eagerly went to work scouring their part of the village for unexploded ordinance.

"I still can't believe we're surrendering part of the village to Griffin," Élan sulked, crossing her arms as she watched Magic scan a patch of grass marked by a drone. In her neural cloud, Élan was contributing her processing power towards the analysis of scans from the drones above. Élan didn't have any formal demining training, so Axiom felt it was best to leave the actual defusal work for herself and Magic. Élan felt bored not actually doing anything but process data, but orders were orders.

"Yeah, well at least it's gonna make the job go faster," Magic rationalized as she reached into the tall grass and pulled out a pocket compass—another false positive, though at least this one had value as a souvenir. "You'd be surprised how long a demining job can take."

"Seems it's been going pretty quick to me," Élan remarked.

"Yeah, well we're actually going much faster than usual this time," Magic replied, "Right now we're limiting the GPRD filter to UXO as opposed to general parameters…"

"Which means…?" Élan asked.

"Basically, we've stopped telling the ground-penetrating radar software to look for stuff like mines and only for submunitions, which in this case are all metallic," Magic explained, "On the other hand, landmines—and especially the crappy ones Griffin sometimes uses—aren't always metallic in nature, so we have to look for a wider range of signal markers in the GPR deconvolution. Like, plastic shows up differently from aluminum, for example."

"Uh huh," Élan absentmindedly acknowledged.

"Oh, actually, we also have a NQR drone too," Magic continued, "Nuclear quadrupole resonance basically uses an NMR-like thing to detect nitrogen in explosives like TNT, but you'll have to ask Nyx for more detail about the science behind it…"

"Right, whatever," Élan muttered as she closed her eyes and focuses on the data.

"Hey Axiom, how are things going on your end?" Magic asked over the radio as she and Élan moved on to the next marked spot. It had been about half an hour after Axiom's team arrived, and the sky was beginning to show a slight tinge of sunset orange.

"Nothing," Axiom replied, "You?"

"Same here, though I guess that's a good thing," Magic responded, "Wonder how the Griffin girls are doing."

"They better know what they're doing," Axiom muttered, "Or else I'm- Wait, what the fuck are you doing?!"

"Huh?" Magic asked, confused. "Axiom?"

"Hey, you!" Axiom shouted, angrily pointing at a Griffin doll on the other side of the field. "What the fuck do you think you're doing?!"

"What?" a confused Tac-50 responded, turning her head at the Sangvis team leader marching towards her.

"What's that in your hands?" Axiom demanded.

"Huh? It's UXO, isn't it?" Tac-50 frowned, showing Axiom a bomblet in her hands.

"Why's it in your hands then?!" Axiom asked, exasperated.

"What do you mean?" Tac-50 protested, confused at why this Sangvis doll suddenly appeared and started to berate her.

"What's going on here?" M590 sternly inquired, walking over from a nearby house.

"Your subordinate here is improperly handling explosives, that's what!" Axiom gritted her teeth.

"What? I didn't know-" Tac-50 began.

"If you don't know how to handle explosives you shouldn't be touching them in the first place!" Axiom scolded, "Look how casually you're swinging that thing around, do you want to explode?"

"Enough!" M590 interrupted, "This is our business, we don't need you to tell us how to do things."

"There's a right way to conduct ordinance disposal, and there's a wrong way," Axiom angrily said, "Your friend here isn't following proper protocols."

"Not everyone does it your way," M590 shot back.

"You guys don't even know what you're doing," Axiom dismissed, "Your equipment is shit and so are your protocols. What are you going to do when some poor cunt steps on a bomblet you leave undiscovered? Trusting you with this operation was a mistake."

"So says the Sangvis doll," M590 countered, "Who are you to tell us how to run a humanitarian relief operation? I can tell you for a fact that Sangvis Ferri blows up more shit than it creates."

"Look at the bomblets," Axiom sneered, "Those are Griffin-spec."

"What, are you suggesting we put the bombs here?" Tac-50 questioned Axiom.

"I'm just stating the facts," Axiom responded, "And my expert opinion that you are not fit for this line of work."

"Okay, fine, I'm sorry," Tac-50 snidely shrugged, "I won't touch bombs anymore, okay?"

"I don't care if you're sorry," Axiom coldly told Tac-50, "I care if you're competent."

"Look, I'll make sure she doesn't get into any trouble," M590 sighed, "Just, leave us alone, alright? Go finish your job first."

"You're on our side of the village," Axiom growled.

"We're on the line," M590 replied through narrowed eyes, unwavering in the tension.

"…You'd better hope for your sake you don't fuck this up," Axiom snarled before turning around and storming back to the side of the field she came from.

"What the hell," M590 muttered to herself, "Why's she got a stick up her ass?"

"I dunno," Tac-50 replied, looking conflicted. "Was I actually in the wrong there though?"

"Hard to say," M590 admitted. The Sangvis sniper was right to some degree in pointing out Tac-50's inexperience, although M590 definitely didn't agree with her attitude. "Um, give me the bomb though."

"I could do something else to help if you want," Tac-50 suggested, "I just want to try out something new, that's all."

"Tell you what, then," M590 said, a look of contemplation on her face. "The Commander is sending another team over shortly with ELID vaccines for the villagers. We've already gotten the go-ahead from the Sangvis Mobile Task Force, so hopefully they'll arrive intact."

"Vaccines for the villagers, eh," Tac-50 muttered, "That should buy them some time…"

"Yeah, time…" M590 agreed, staring off into the evening sky. "But it won't save them forever, and we still don't know how we're gonna remove the collapse fluid."

"What are we going to do then?" Tac-50 asked, "Surely the Commander has something in mind?"

"I sure hope so, otherwise all of this would've been for naught," M590 replied, "But knowing the Commander, I trust him to make the correct call…"