Southern Germany, a few weeks after the URNC's insurrection...
The decrepit bulb struggled to illuminate the grimy, unkept restroom it was mounted in. The dim, flickering light revealed the layer of filth on the white tiles below, as well as tags of sloppy graffiti on the walls. On the far wall, two men stood at the trio of urinals that were barely holding to their mountings, doing their business a space apart.
The two men seemed to not even acknowledge each other at first, but after a short while, one of them suddenly spoke. "Man...you ever just wonder...what the point of it all is?..."
"Huh?" The other replied.
"Like...life, you know? It's just kinda funny when you think about it...millions of species on this earth...dogs, cats, all kinds of bugs and shit, and yet here we are, humans...we can like, think, you know? About stuff...About how we're just a bunch of specs on some giant ball hurling through space, around some ball of fire that's gonna explode in like a million years..."
"...What the hell are you talking about?"
"I'm just wondering...why can we even think? What's the point of it? Cats and dogs don't think about stuff, and when I think about it, I might as well just be a machine that converts alcohol to piss...That's my purpose...that's everybody's purpose, we put stuff in our mouths, and we turn it into shit. Everything, from dishes prepared by five-star chefs, to random stuff you pick up off the floor, it all just becomes piss and shit in the end...that's what living things do, we turn other living things into piss and shit...Doesn't that make you, like, sad and stuff?"
"Dude, can a man please just take a piss in peace? I don't care what-"
CRASH
The exchange was suddenly cut off by the door to the restroom bursting open. Before the men could even turn to the sound of the commotion, a man in a hotdog suit yelped as he was sent careening to the urinal separating them, the porcelain crackling loudly as he slammed into it.
Turning to see culprit, the men laid eyes on the brunette woman with a green-stripe on one side of her hair, menacingly encroaching upon the hotdog man. "There's nowhere for you to run now..."
The two men exchanged looks before coming to the sensible conclusion that what was happening was none of their business, nor did they have any interest in it becoming their business.
"Hell with this, I'm out of here!"
"Hey, wait for me!"
The men scampered off, leaving the hotdog man alone with the T-Doll as he stumbled to his feet, the doll encroaching ever closer.
"Now...who are you working for?" M4A1 growled.
"Crazy bitch...get the fuck away from me!" The man swung at her, but in a blink, he found his arm thrust into an awkward position. A stomach-churning pop sounded as his shoulder was torn from its socket, his cry of pain echoed off the walls before being cut off by the doll violently seizing him by the throat.
"No more playing around. Who are you working for?"
"G-Guh...Frank's Frankfurters you fucking psycho!" The man struggled out, the doll's hold barely giving him room to breathe.
M4's brow furrowed, releasing his neck, she quickly grabbed the back of his head and slammed him face first into the urinal, the material cracking further as he let out a pained groan. His hands struggled to find the edge and prop himself up, but he could only just do so before the doll's fist pounded into the back of his head, smashing his head through the toilet and leaving him writhing on the floor.
She grabbed him by the throat yet again, and pulled him to his feet, her arm doing more to hold him up than his own legs. "Wrong answer. I know who you really are...what you belong to. You're going to tell me everything."
"Grrrghhh...d-did...you want to talk to the manager...?"
"Being snide won't save you...It's not a matter of if you'll tell me, it's when. How many parts you lose along the way is up to you."
The man spat, a line of crimson and the white fragment of a tooth splatted to the floor. "You hit...like a bitch..."
Her hand forcefully gripped his head, and jammed his head straight into the door of a nearby stall, briefly embedding his head in a hole. The doll releasing him, he slumped down against the door. Her knee thrust forward, the cap smashed straight into his nosebridge and wrenched his head back into the door, sheering it from the deadbolt and sending the door flying open. The man bent forward, a gush of crimson poured to the ground from his shattered nose.
A man sat inside the stall, sitting with his legs curled up onto the toilet seat. "I-I had nothing to do with anything! I swear!" He frantically cried out as M4 once again pulled her victim to his feet.
"Heh...do you really think...this is going to accomplish anything?...If I really am what you seem to be implying...What would you even do about it?...You're out of your depth, little girl...You can't possibly fathom who what you're messing with..."
"Your concern for me is touching. Now - who's your contact in the organization? Who do you report to and where can I find them?"
Before the man could say anything else, a familiar voice suddenly called out from behind. "M4!"
RO635 rushed into the room, the Commander following close behind. "What the hell are you doing?!"
"I told you already, RO. I'm getting to the bottom of this once and for all." M4 replied, holding her grip firm on the hotdog man.
"That doesn't explain what you're doing to that restaurant worker!" RO cried out. "Let go of him, right now!"
"Damn it, RO! He's one of them! I'm so close to finding them!" M4 defended.
"Who is them?! What are you even talking about? You just jumped up like you had a nightmare and bolted out of the Elmo without explaining a thing!" The Commander pressed.
"There's no time to explain, Commander, I just need you to trust me! Paradeus, The URNC, the Relic agencies, William, they're all just pawns, nothing more than instruments of something bigger...And Frank's Frankfurters is at the middle of it all!"
"I have no idea what this psycho bitch is talking about! She just ran up to me and started accusing me of being the illuminati or some shit!" The hotdog man cried out.
"Don't listen to him, Commander! He's part of this! Everything we've gone through the last two years, it's all because of him!" M4 accusingly exclaimed.
RO and the Commander slowly exchanged looks.
"M4...you need a vacation." The Commander began.
RO nodded in agreement. "You've been stranded on your own for several months, fighting battle after battle. Your neural cloud is the most human of all of ours, it's only natural that stress would take its toll on you."
"No! I'm not going crazy, damn it!" M4 snapped back defensively. "You have to understand, I'm still connected to that other world, and through it, I was given some kind of...warning...from...another me! She warned me, warned me about them! This isn't over, Commander! Please, you have to believe me! This place, it's more than just a hot-dog stand! This is one of their listening posts, it's how they monitor people, how they ensure that they're still in control!"
More silence.
"M4, let the hotdog man go. Please. I don't want to have to send you to the brig for a psychiatric hold." The Commander pleaded.
"Commander!"
"Your paranoia is getting out of control, M4. We're fugitives from the URNC, we can't go around causing incidents and bringing more heat down on us."
"Tch, bold words from someone who pulled a gun on the convenience store clerk the other day!"
"I know hindsight is 20/20 and all, but I swear, she looked just like a Nyto! She had the white hair and everything!"
M4 sighed angrily. "Commander, why don't you trust me? I'm telling you the truth!"
"That truth sounds suspiciously like the drunken rant we went on after cleaning out the safehouse's liquor cabinet. And now, you want me to believe that whole tirade you went on about Frank's Frankfurters being a front for a global secret society was some kind of message from another you? From the future?"
"A possible future...From my point of view, I don't really understand it all. Sometimes I get these...memories sent back to me, warnings...Like I've experienced them myself, except they're things that haven't happened yet..."
"See?! Listen to her! She's crazy I tell you!" The hotdog man interjected.
"Commander, please! Let me make him talk! I promise you, I'm not crazy! I'm so close to getting him to spill everything!"
"If you hit him hard enough, he'll tell you he's working for monkeys from outer space if you tell him to. That won't make that the truth now, will it?"
"Commander..." RO spoke up. "We're probably going to have to take him with us, for now, anyways...it'll be bad if he gives our description to the police. We can release him once the Elmo's repairs are done."
The Commander exhaled bitterly. "Shit...you're right..."
"W-What? No! Nononono! You can't do this to me!" The man could only fruitlessly protest as M4 shoved him forward.
"Move. Don't even think of trying anything, it won't end well for you."
Exiting the bathroom, the group quietly began to make their way up the stairs to street level.
The sun hung high in the sky, beaming down onto the pavement as the afternoon crowd bustled along the street they exited onto, sounds of footsteps and idle chatter filled the air as the group got their bearings.
"Where do we go from here?" RO asked.
"We'll cut through the marketplace and head down the main road towards the outskirts, it's the quickest way back to where the Elmo's stashed." The Commander replied.
"Damn it, just let me go...I won't tell anybody anything..." The hotdog man pleaded as M4 held his arms behind his back.
"I wouldn't make a scene if I were you - if you do, I'll make one of my own." M4 asserted.
M4's threat only served to exacerbate the man's panic. "You don't understand, you're making a huge mistake! Please, this is a mistake! I can't-"
Suddenly, the fabric of the suit over the man's chest violently ripped asunder on both sides, M4 felt something slam into her chest, the force of which knocked her off her feet.
SNAP
The sound echoed from across the road, passerbys froze in place as if time had suddenly stopped. The man dropped to the floor like a puppet who had lost its strings, clutching his chest as his face contorted in shock and agony.
"GET DOWN GET DOWN!" RO cried out, throwing herself onto the Commander and sending both of them tumbling behind a nearby planter.
SNAPSNAPSNAPSNAP
A flurry of shots chunked off the top of the planter, the crowd erupted into terrified screams as groups of people sprinted away in every direction.
"Pro...me...theans..." The hotdog man hissed out with his final breath, his head lifelessly rolled back as his arms fell limp.
The Commander looked up to see M4 grunting as she crawled behind another nearby planter. "M4!"
"Ngh...I'm okay. It didn't break the skin...Where's the shooter?" M4 grunted out.
"Working on it!" RO called back, discretely sliding an optic cable around the corner of the planter.
Surprisingly enough, it didn't take long to discover the culprit. Another man in a hotdog suit frantically scrambled down the stairs of a fire-escape across the road before jumping onto a ladder to ground level.
"Fire escape, alley across the road, he's making a run for it!" RO relayed.
"Stay with the Commander, I'm going after him!" M4 yelled back, she vaulted herself over the planter and bolted across the road in hot pursuit of the culprit.
"I want him alive, M4! He's our only lead!" The Commander called after her.
Sprinting through the alleyway, it didn't take long for the high-grade T-Doll to catch up to the assassin. Hearing the rapid footsteps gaining ground behind him, the hotdog-suit clad assassin quickly spun around, whipping out a machine pistol and training it on his pursuer. The gun erupted into a storm of automatic fire, a flurry of impacts kicked up a cloud of dust in front of M4 as she was sent scrambling behind a nearby dumpster, more impacts sent reverberations through the dumpster as the assassin pinned her down. As soon as the slide locked back, the assassin spun and bolted towards the end of the alley, fishing out a fresh magazine as he ran.
Grabbing her 92X out of her thigh rig, M4 peeked out of cover after the break in the shots to find her attacker sprinting away. She jumped to her feet and resumed the chase just as the man reached the end and whipped around the corner.
M4's hand tightened anxiously around the grip of her pistol as she reached the end, cautiously leaning around the corner. The market stood before her, a maze of busy stalls lining a crowded street.
"EVERYBODY GET THE FUCK OUT! GET OUT OF THE WAY!" A voice commanded a short distance away from her, a gunshot echoed from the middle of the market, a mass of screams broke out, crowds of panicked people stampeded directly towards M4.
"Damn it!" M4 hissed as she bolted towards the market, fighting through the stampede. "Security, make way! Get out of the way, PMC business!"
The panicked crowd bought the assassin just the time he needed. He sprinted towards the end of the market, heading straight towards the Weinermobile parked on the curb of the main street.
Emerging from the crowd, M4 immediately pinpointed where the assassin was headed. She desperately tore after him, but she could see her opportunities slipping before her eyes as he tore the door open and practically dove onto the driver seat..
"Hah! Home free, baby!" The assassin gleefully cackled, he quickly jammed the key into the ignition and wrenched it clockwise...
BOOM
A powerful shockwave hit M4 dead on, throwing her from her feet and slamming her into the side of a parked car, denting in the doors and shattering the windows as the alarm blared. The Weinermobile had erupted into a raging inferno of fire and smoke, and with it, the assassin - and the only other surefire lead she had on the Prometheans' operations in the area.
M4's vision filled with garbage data as multiple systems struggled to reboot. She let out a pained groan as her damage sensors sent off a flurry of alerts.
"M4!" She heard RO's voice call out, rapid footsteps approached. "M4, are you alright?!" Her companion asked frantically.
"Ngh...I'm fine..." M4 groaned out, struggling to pick herself up.
RO's arms forcefully seized her by the shoulders. "Stop it. That shockwave alone would have killed a human. Don't try to move."
The Commander caught up and made his way to RO's side. "How's she doing, RO?"
"She's taken some damage...It looks minor, but I'd still have her visit the repair bay just to be safe." RO relayed.
M4 grunted, her gaze shifted over her companion's shoulder. "The assassin..."
The Commander looked over to the heap of burning fuel and smoldering wreckage that used to be the culprit's getaway vehicle. "Charred to a crisp. Hope you like your hotdogs blackened."
"Charming..." M4 coughed out.
"There's nothing else for us to do here, Commander. Grab her other shoulder, let's get her back to the Elmo before the authorities get here." RO refocused.
"Right."
MBV Elmo, a short while later...
After making sure they weren't being followed, the group had made their way to a cluster of ruins on the outskirts of the city, where the hulking mobile HQ had been hidden amongst the rubble under a large camo-net.
While M4 was getting herself looked over in the Repair Bay, the Commander and RO had assembled the AR Team and Team Groza in the Combat Information Center, and explained a rough overview of the situation.
Once they got to the end of their recollection, ST AR-15 spoke up. "The Prometheans?...I thought that was just some cracked up conspiracy theory. Are you telling me that you guys just had a run in with them?"
"M4 seems to think so...Whoever they were, they were paranoid enough to not only shoot the guy M4 snatched up before he could tell us anything, but then they car-bombed the assassin they hired immediately afterwards...God knows what happened to the triggerman of the bomb itself." The Commander replied.
"So...where does this leave us?" Groza interjected.
"In our current state? It doesn't really change anything. The URNC has risen to power and repossessed just about everything I've built over the last three or so years, except for you guys, M4, and this rusted up tub we jacked from them and escape into the badlands with. Kalina's gone completely crazy, tried to kill me and Star because I refused to let her stuff me in a mech and take on contracts from the firm she started behind my back, then signed on with the new G&K without hesitation. Our temp office? Gone. Our safehouses? Compromised. All the resources I had saved up over the years? Cleaned out. Helian and Kryuger? Missing. I'm sorry to say, ladies, but it looks like the Griffin & Kryuger you all knew and loved is in shambles, and it's all thanks to the rat bastard Griffin and that stupid fucking hat."
"And now the Elmo's broken down and stranded us out here..." STAR added.
"Makes me wonder if they just let us take the damned thing so they could write it off. Let's face it, without an entire armored division and air support backing us up, this thing's going to be nothing more than a giant coffin in the face of an actual military. It's no wonder why you don't see these things around anymore after World War Three, most of them were either destroyed or shit-canned."
"I wonder what they were thinking when they built these. Something like this goes against every lesson learned during the second world war..." RO pondered out loud.
"I guess some bigwigs wanted to look like royalty rolling onto the field, and telling a Soviet Officer the word 'no' tends to shorten your life expectancy dramatically. Colonel Ivan wants a fortress on wheels? He's going to get his fortress on wheels, and anybody that tries to tell him that every artillery gunner and A-10 pilot on the other side of the curtain is going to be jumping for joy when his signature pops up is obviously a Western Saboteur." The Commander surmised.
"So we're fucked, I get it. What do we do now?" STAR interjected.
"Well, we're not going anywhere until we get this tub up and running again."
"And how are we going to do that?"
"That's a question you should be asking yourself, since you're the closest thing to a grease monkey onboard, you've just been voluntold."
"Great..." STAR grumbled, silently gritting her teeth. "Do we even have the tools for that on here?"
"Do a damage assessment and take inventory. We may very well have to 'borrow' some things from the local scavs."
"So, we're raiding bandits for their supplies now instead of the other way around?"
"Such are the times we're in, Star. We're going to have to do a little 'enterprising' to get back on our feet."
"To think we were driving a Ferrari just a couple of weeks ago...Tch, should have sold that thing off instead of just ditching it."
"Why don't you call up the police and turn yourself in while you're at it? Way too much heat attached."
"And where would the fun be in that?" A familiar Russian accent sounded from the door.
The group turned to source, AK-12 casually strutted into the room as if she owned the place, AN-94 trailing behind her.
"Hello, Commander...Sorry to intrude unannounced." 94 quietly greeted.
"Twelve...we've gotta stop meeting like this..." The Commander's eyes followed the uninvited guest as she walked off to the side and leaned against a wall.
"And you need to stop making it so easy to let myself in. especially with how popular you've become lately." 12 shot back. "Couldn't have hurt to leave some coffee and donuts out, and be a more considerate host if you're so willing to have visitors."
The Commander scoffed. "I take it Zelinsky isn't singing my praises through the halls of the Kremlin?"
"Oh, he's your number one fan right now. So much so that he is just dying to meet you for an autograph." 12 cracked.
"About what I'd expected...Are you here to arrest me?"
"Ange has sent me to conduct a very long, grueling investigation of your whereabouts. I'd imagine it's going to be quite some time before I can report back with any news."
"Same trick as Belgrade, huh? Is that really going to work?"
"You have more friends than you know, Commander. It isn't too hopeless as long as you don't do anything stupid...And I suppose that's where I come in."
"I'm not sure how much that's worth coming from Ange's protégé. She isn't known for her natural grace and finesse."
"Right, says the man rolling around in this lumbering mountain. Tell me, do you want me a paint a bullseye on your head while we're at it?"
"I never claimed I was either, why do you think we got along so well?"
"Mhm...Well, since I'm going to be in the blast radius of whatever missile that gets launched at you, I may as well help you with your little engine problem."
"And how are you going to do that? You never struck me as a mechani-" The Commander was interrupted by the sudden buzzing of his communicator. A call was coming in over the secure channel.
"I'd answer that if I were you, could be important~" 12 teased.
A step ahead of everyone. Despite her "antics", the Commander was at least glad that she was still on his side.
The Commander picked up his Communicator and patched through the call, it didn't take a lot of thought to figure out who it could be.
"Hello, 45..."