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Nea Jyrkiäinen shifts on her perch, adjusting the scope of her rifle. Alice Takanashi's battle maid's ears white cat ears twitch, and her fluffy tail swishes as she lies in wait for her target. As still as a statue, as silent as the grave.

This high up, it's like she can see the world.

"Target's in sight, sis," Lea's 'voice' echoes through Nea's mind, a product of the twin sisters' mental link. The two had always shared a close bond before their wonderful mistress remade them. "Two minutes."

In the time since that day, their bond has only grown closer.

"Yeah, yeah, I got it. You planted the thing?" Nea replies in the girls' native Finnish, relishing in the connection she shares with her twin. There were days, bad days, terrible days when the two were separated, when one would have to freeze out in the streets while the other huddled in a shelter. Days when Nea thought that she'd lose the last bit of her family, her precious twin sister.

Those days are over. Now, Nea and Lea are connected forever. What one feels, the other feels. What one sees, the other sees. And what one thinks...

"Yep. All good to go, just tell me when to start recording. And, uh. Don't miss."

Nea rolls her eyes, her lips curling into a fond smile even as her ears twitch happily. "Who do you think I am? I never miss."

"… Missed the last guy we killed," Lea replies deadpan.

"I blew a hole through his chest!"

"But you were aiming for his head. That counts as a miss. Now me? I never miss."

"You use knives, dear sister. You're playing with entirely different toys than I am," Nea huffs. "Since when do we compare apples and fucking kumquats?"

"… I throw those knives too, you know. I don't miss."

"Then maybe you should be up here freezing your tail off and I should be down there in that coffee shop slurping on…" Nea pauses as a phantom taste tingles on her sensitive tongue. It's warm, vaguely spicy… "Is that a pumpkin-spice latte?"

"Sure is."

Nea's eyebrow jitters as she 'hears' her sister make an exaggerated slurping noise through their mental link. Her stomach grumbles.

"You heartless bitch, you'd better save some for me."

"I ordered two, and I made yours an extra-large," Lea replies.

"Adorable baby sister, purr-fect love of my life, my lovely angel, I love you so much. Have I told you today how much I loved you?" Nea immediately switches tack.

"I love you too sis, but I'd love you more if you'd stop making a lazy fucking joke about everything. Like that. That just now. What even was that?"

"Sorry, can't talk, too busy killing people," Nea replies as she gazes through her scope and sees the armored convoy appear on her scope.

"Jade Tiger flunkies are people? This is news," Lea's mental voice is dry, sardonic. Nea can't blame her too much for that.

She knows what the Jade Tigers used to do to people, after all. There's a reason why Lea and Nea never went to go beg on the docks. Why all the street rats avoided that place like the plague. The PLF would just drug you up and pimp you out. The Zealots would just force you to fight to the death after cutting you open and chroming you up.

The Jade Tigers?

The Jade Tigers wouldn't just stop at killing you; they'd exploit you just like the bastard corporations do. The snuff film of your death sold to some Virtusim freaks on the street, your organs harvested and sold to the highest bidder, the defiled remains of your body reprocessed to be sold as feedstock.

So. Nea takes great delight in what she's about to do, and she knows the rest of the maids have to feel the same way. There's not a shred of guilt in her heart as she fingers the trigger of her rifle and peers through the scope. None at all. Why should Nea feel guilty about murdering some filthy animals?

This isn't murder; it's pest control.

"Whatever. Get the camera on, I'm taking the shot," Nea mutters as she zeroes in on her target. Shinzon Hamada, Some nameless two-bit thug who decided to fight instead of kowtowing to mistress Alice's new patsy, Suzume. Inconsequential, except for the fact that he's been putting out feelers to try and gather support.

Which is why Nea and Lea have been tasked with liquidating him, along with the other Jade Tiger holdouts who can't accept the new order of things; where Mistress Alice is on top, the women she loves sit by her side, their pets doze comfortably at her feet, and everyone else?

Well. Their lives are inconsequential. Less than the worms in the ground Alice treads on.

"Camera's on," Lea reports and Nea squeezes down on the trigger. The heavy anti-material rifle in her arms judders against her shoulder as it unleashes its deadly payload.

Far below, the vehicle she'd targeted careens out of control as a heavy slug shatters the reinforced windshield and blows right through the driver and passenger behind him. The heavy truck spins out of control and slams right against the street's concrete barrier.

"Kill footage recorded," Lea reports. "Nice shot, you took off his head."

"Told you I wouldn't miss," Nea starts packing her gear, dismantling her rifle and the tripod it was resting on. "We good to go?"

"Yep, we're good. Lemme just grab the camera real quick before we leave," Lea replies easily.

Nea slings her bag over her shoulder, the bag containing her gear, and starts ambling towards the side of the building she's perched on top of. "And you saved my latte?"

"And I have your latte, yes. Now come on down already so I can give it to you. And, you know, so the cops don't bust our cute asses."

"On my way," Nea leaps off the roof and begins rappelling down the side of the building. Wind rushes through her hair; her stomach lurches as she tumbles…

Finally, she hits the ground far below, jolting her ankles as she lands hard. Lea looks up, and Nea smiles as she sees her twin again with her own two eyes.

"Gimme my latte already," Nea orders. Lea passes her cup over, and Nea eagerly slurps its hot contents. "Mmh… Mmh, mmh. Mmh. Mmh. Coffee's so good..."

"What, no love for me?" Lea asks wryly. "You sound like you're wanting to make out with the barista instead of – mmh."

Lea's voice is cut off as Nea leans forward and presses her lips against her sister's, relishing how her twin's warm body feels, how soft her lips are, how slick and wet her tongue is…

"… Damn, sis," Lea whispers into Nea's mind through their telepathic link, even as she moans appreciatively into Nea's mouth. "Remind me to get you coffee next time we kill a guy. If I knew you'd french me this good..."

"You'd better get me coffee next time. I have been perched on top of that roof for the last hour waiting for that schmuck to show up, and it was cold," Nea replies, eagerly thrusting her tongue in between Lea's welcoming lips. "Just let me enjoy you already."

"Yeah, that's fair," Lea shrugs before continuing to make out with her twin. "Aren't we forgetting about something, though?"

Nea pauses, and her ears perk up as sirens echo through the smog-choked air.

"Right, the TCPD," Nea sighs. "Come on, let's go, these assholes aren't going to go kill themselves."

"I call shotgun," Lea leans in, nuzzling herself against her twin's side, and Nea feels her stomach squirm happily as Lea's tail winds around her own, intertwining behind their backs. Nea reaches to the side and squeezes down lightly, groping her twin's ass… And delighting in the phantom sensation that creates on her own ass.

"You always call shotgun," Nea grumbles playfully as the pair amble towards their car.

"You drive better," Lea shrugs.

"You could too if you practiced more," Nea counters.

"I don't need to practice when I have you."

"…" Nea sighs as she stops in front of the car and unlocks it. "Just get in already. And pull up the list of targets?"

"On it, let's see who else is on the murder list - Oh. Lupe just texted me," Lea blinks, surprised by that fact. "She's telling us to… Return to base?"

Nea pauses. That's weird. "Is she saying why?"

"Something about a thing Mistress Alice wants us to do," Lea shrugs.

"Alright, let's head home then and see what's up," Nea says. "… You know-"

"No, I called shotgun."

"Oh come on, sis, you have to drive at some point!"

--

Lea Jyrkiäinen feels her ears twitch as she gazes through her thermal binoculars at the facility on the ruined outskirts of Terminus City. There are some days where Lea loves her job, truth be told.

She loves playing with her sister, the twin she's become inexorably tied to. Loves that she gets to work and play around with so many other cute girls. And, of course, Lea likes that she gets to visit new places in Terminus City, explore new things, meet new people…

And kill them, naturally.

Today though? Today's not looking like one of those days.

That'd be because the facility that Mistress Alice has ordered MAID to investigate? The one referred to in Jintaro's computer after the former Jade Tiger Underboss was interrogated and then promptly disposed of?

It's not just a facility. It's an entire military compound buried in the outlying, overgrown districts of Terminus City.

"That's… A lot of guards," Lea hears Nea report. The taste of mint ghosts against Lea's tongue, probably from the soft chewing gum Nea likes to gnaw when she's on overwatch. "Counting… Fifty around the roof, a couple dozen at the landing pad, and the entrances-"

Lea eyes the roads, noting the armed and very deadly guards, dressed from head to toe in sleek black body armor. Lea looks towards the fully manned guard towers around the perimeter, the APCs parked outside the main entrance. A distant drone echoes through the air, signaling the presence of VTOL aircraft patrolling the facility's airspace.

And on the rooftop, a suite of anti-air missile batteries looms, ready to shoot down any aircraft that enters the facility's airspace.

"Yeah, this place is gonna be a hard nut to crack," Lea agrees, touching a finger to her commlink. "Kisha, you getting all of this?"

"Oh yeah," Kisha's voice crackles into Lea's ear. "Pulling up the specs now. Huh. This place was a pre-war nuclear bunker. Whoa, that's pretty extensive…"

"What do you mean by that?"

"How does ten floors worth of concrete walls and chambers sound?" Kisha snarks, and Lea grimaces.

"Underground?"

"Oh yeah. That massive building on top's just the tip of the iceberg. The place looks like it goes on for miles underground," Kisha responds. "And if it managed to survive the Resource Wars? It's got to be reinforced enough to withstand the apocalypse."

"Incoming vehicles," Nea reports, and Lea turns her gaze back towards the roads. The ground shudders, and Lea ducks deeper into the bushes she's lying in as a long convoy of trucks passes by her. Lea cranes her head up, trying to eye the trucks…

"Nea, those trucks look familiar, don't they?" Lea whispers, so Kisha can be a party to what the twins are saying.

"Yep. We stole the exact same models from one of those Jade Tiger warehouses. You know, when we kidnapped that one underboss, what was her name again?"

"Junko," Kisha replies offhandedly. "… And she was trafficking people to Mendesdyn's subsidiaries along with Jintaro. Keep an eye on that convoy?"

"On it," Lea replies curtly, taking out her binoculars so she has a view of the loading dock. She watches the guards pass the trucks through a checkpoint through the entrance, watches as the trucks park…

… And she feels her jaw tighten as many disheveled, bedraggled-looking girls stagger out the back of the truck. Watches as corporate security goons handcuff each girl and frog-march them into the bowels of this facility.

Street rats, homeless girls. Orphaned waifs just like Lea and Nea used to be...

"Sis, you seeing what I'm seeing?" Lea murmurs, unconsciously switching to her native Finnish.

"Yeah," Nea's voice is just as flat as Lea's. "They must've come from another one of those Jade Tiger warehouses."

".. Well, I guess that proves that the Jade Tigers really were working with Mendesdyn Security," Kisha says weakly. "Why do they need girls specifically though? Why aren't there any boys? If they're just doing human testing-"

"You're not here to engage in conjecture, you're here to provide oversight and electronic warfare capabilities," Lupe's voice crackles over the comms. "Lea, Nea. This changes nothing. You have your orders; infiltrate the facility and uncover its secrets."

"And we'll get on that as soon as we figure out a way in. Which is proving to be difficult right now because Mendesdyn decided to stick an entire army out here," Lea whispers, feeling a little frustrated. "Nea, do you see another entrance?"

"… No. Nothing. If it's a bunker and there's only one way into the bunker…" Lea feels a stinging pain in her lip, undoubtedly because Nea started gnawing on hers'.

"Stop that, sis."

"… Sorry."

"This facility's completely disconnected from the grid. Everything's air-gapped, I can't hack into it from here without a physical access point," Kisha says, a note of frustration bleeding into her voice. "So you'll have to plug one of my drones into a terminal for me to let me do my thing."

"Guard tower should have one of those," Lea murmurs. "Nea?"

"There's one on the perimeter that's just out of the line of sight of two others," Nea replies. "… Or we could try to sneak in through the docks."

"What?" Lea blinks.

"As one of their shipments," Nea responds hurriedly. "We still have some of the old trucks the Jade Tigers were using, didn't we? Load them up with some of the other maids-"

"And ambush the corpo assholes because they aren't expecting us to fight back?" Lea murmurs. "I like that…"

"Thought you would, sis. Or maybe… Hmm..."

--