It has been a few minutes since Arnold "Not Crazy" Swanlake got freaked by the system interface in front of him. Holographic panels that he often sees mentioned in fiction, both in written form or drawn, he was fairly experienced in this system business. He knew the general purpose of it, but he also remembers that these systems often had a small twist in them in an attempt to make them slightly "unique" compared to the others. He just needed to find it and then he could start figuring things out after he knew whether this 'twist' was good or detrimental for him.

Let's see the status window that displays his parameters and a 3D render of his body in his hospital-patient outfit.

[Hit points (HP)]

[An invisible protective membrane which protects your physical body from harm until it depletes.]

"…So, Hit-Point is a protective force field instead of my life? Pretty neat."

[Mana Points (MP)]

[A renewable resource to do magic-related activity.]

"Oh, I have magic… but isn't the usual system correlate to the world where the host is in? Why magic? Isn't GFL a Sci-fi? This system has the wrong genre!"

[Vitality (VIT)]

[A parameter that affects the speed of Hit Points Regeneration and your resistance to death.]

"Resistance to death? As in I'm harder to kill? So, if my Vitality is high enough, I could be as hard to kill as a cockroach?"

[Mana Affinity (MA)]

[A parameter affecting your mana regeneration and general resistance to unnatural harm. It also affects the overall effectiveness of your magic.]

"Looks okay, so no comment."

[Body (BOD)]

[This parameter directly affects the general physical performance of your body, strength, stamina, toughness, etc. What you do also directly affects the rate at which aspect of your body's performance increases more after BOD levelled up.]

"Oh my God, Effort Value, this one has the Pokémon EV system. But… what else does this parameter affect besides strength, stamina, and toughness? What does et cetera entail? What else does this parameter mix in? Oy, system?"

[Level (Lvl)]

[Every increase in level also increases every other parameter by 1 and an extra 1 free point that you can use on any parameter of your choosing.]

"This seems okay, I have some comments but I doubt this system has the answer to my question… Let's inspect the next page."

Fumbling his hand while operating a thought-operated system that does not need his hand movement whatsoever, he was received with a fanfare jingle that reminds him of a certain fantasy game from his childhood. The fanfare told him that he had a newbie bonus that allowed him to pick 3 low-class skills and a single mid-class skill for free. Happy with the news, Arnold opened the skill selection list and was offered dozens of skills separated into Active skills and passive skills. The category was pretty self-explanatory, but active skills were further separated into sub-categories of Offensive, Defensive, and Support.

Based on the list provided to him, it seems like he got a magician-esque class with the majority of the choices being magic-based while also having a considerable number of physical options. For the low-class skills, Arnold chooses one skill from each active skills sub-category; Firebolt, Magic Shield, and Slow Heal. All of the skills he chose were pretty basic options but reliable for their class. Firebolt was a low-cost spell which allowed him to either rapid-fire a volley of weak firebolts or charge his spell to fire a single powerful firebolt. Magic Shield is a protective spell that creates a dome of mana that protects its user from harm, the description also says it keeps out gaseous threats, the downside was that its max durability was merely half of Arnold's hit points. Lastly, slow heal, a healing skill that while doesn't instantly heal damage to the body or hit points like a normal 'Heal' does, has better Mana to healing cost which makes it better in a prolonged battle.

Lastly, for the medium magic he chooses a QOL passive skill, "The Mini Pocket Dimension", a godly skill that allows him to open a rift to another dimension to store his items. Once he sees this skill, he doesn't even bother to see other medium-class skills because he knows nothing will beat this one in usefulness, ever. Being a nerd who sometimes got dragged by his family to hike some random mountain that he never knew existed, he always wished for this magical storage to alleviate his burden off his tired shoulder. Despite the pocket dimension using a metric counting system to measure the volume, it was something he could easily get used to shortly. A level 1 Mini Pocket Dimension only have a single metric cubic volume, which doesn't sound very big, but keeping in mind that it was only a level 1 and a mini pocket dimension, he had hopes in the future that it would get bigger as the level increase or he could get a bigger one from high-class skills.

Arnold then inspected the last relevant panel in the system he got, a questing window which gave him missions in exchange for either exp or items of value. While he got his explanation about what the panel did, there was currently nothing for him to do based on the empty quest box. With nothing else to look forward to from the mission panel, Arnold inspected the rest of the less important panels which deal with system configuration and the like.

"It doesn't even have a digital map, how barebones this system could be?"

Drinking the glass of water by the side of his bed, Arnold finished his system inspection with a sigh and left his bed to go to the balcony. From there he saw a city jampacked with skyscrapers, from what he saw there was more height than width with how tall the skyscrapers were. Arnold wasn't very aware of the lore of the Girl's frontline, but he was sure that there was a reason why the buildings were built very the way it was… one earthquake away from being a failed Jenga. It was a joke, Arnold had just exaggerated the city's proportions, it was a concrete jungle which looked very futuristic-ish… for lack of better words. He wanted to go there sometime, yet his status as a mental ward patient was in his way once again for nth this month.

"How the hell do I get out of this place? I want to go to the city…"

"Oh? You want to visit the city, Mr. Arnold?"

Suddenly a woman's voice spoke from behind him, surprising him to hell and back. It was Nurse June, a nursing doll in charge of him from time to time. He ought to be used to this stealthy nurse's ability to pop out of nowhere after the first few months he was in this mental ward, yet he never did get used to it. It was like she embodied the element of surprise, the more he expected the wilder the way she could catch him off guard. At least Arnold was sure that by this point his heart had more muscle than his entire body combined from how much it experienced shock therapy.

"You shocked me again… Nurse June. A human could die from a heart attack you know? But yeah, I want to go to the city, it's getting boring in this place, even more so when I'm not crazy in the first place."

"Your condition has improved a lot compared to the first day you got here, Mr. Arnold. Dead eyes, sickly pale body, freshly healed gash in your body, unstable mind, what else? You filled every criterion for someone who is suffering from PTSD, your stable condition now doesn't mean you won't relapse again in the future. "

What Nurse June said was right, the first few weeks after he woke up from his death, he was basically out of his mind, the very definition of crazy… but who wouldn't be after dying? What he went through was inexplicable, what he felt, what he saw, there were no words in his knowledge that could explain his experience after he was deceased in that car crash. The small moment of clarity, after he was revived, was all the sanity he had before his brain tried to reload the things he went through before being revived and then everything went crazy, his sane mind's attempt to rationalise the information backfired horribly and by the time he manages to hold himself together again, he was already toted as crazy. Though it was said that he managed to get himself together doesn't mean he could rationalise and understand the things that happened to him, it was more like he managed to be careless about it enough that he was no longer mentally troubled by it.

"For a more personal reason, based on your condition when we found you, we deduced that being outside might endanger you. We don't intend to confine you, but if you could let us know what happened to you, we, Paris and Morrison Sanctuary might be able to offer you some help… That was what Sir Morrison said."

Oh yeah, at some point recently, they also started to believe that Arnold was being hunted by some evil force, it was only a theory so even they weren't really sure about it, but following the logic of "Better safe than sorry" they decided to make sure anyway. But there was no way Arnold would be able to retell the thing he went through when even his mind refused to think of it out of self-preservation, even the more easy-to-tell events like his car crash and his eventual death were hard to believe. So, he was forced to just stay silent with a difficult expression on his face.

Seeing that he wasn't about to divulge his situation to her, Nurse June didn't try to push any further and instead changed the topic back to his intention to go to the city.

"If you want to go to the city, looking at your mental state… you might be able to go with a guardian accompanying you."

"I could?"

"In your current state, being cooped inside all the time might have a negative effect instead, I'm sure Sir Morrison would approve it."

Sir Morrison, the name that has been mentioned twice so far, is the co-founder of the Paris and Morrison Sanctuary with Paris being his wife's name. His full name was Howard Morrison and his wife's full name was Paris Morrison. Some trivia about the founder's name that Arnold came to know after talking with some of the staff during his strolls inside the mental ward. This mental ward facility was something like a voluntary facility founded and funded by the couple's money and recently the public's donation also started chipping in on the facility's operation funds. This knowledge was also among the reasons why Arnold really, really wanted to get out of there quickly due to guilt, after knowing his food and his room were paid for by people who wanted to help people in need, not leeches like him.

"…If possible, then… Can I apply for one?"

"If nothing happened, it will take about a week until the facility could allow you to go outside."

"Alright, thank you."

After that, Nurse June, continued with her initial duty before she spooked Arnold. She dragged the food cart closer to the table and put his lunch on the table. Both Arnold and Nurse June talked some more as he ate the lunch presented to him.

0o0o0

It was a week later that he was finally allowed to go to the city, just like what Nurse June had said. He was given normal civilian clothes because his old clothes were ripped apart from the car crash. The Founder Howard Morrison himself came to see him off and gave him a brand-new smartphone for communication, which added more to his guilty conscience. Howard Morrison was an elderly man with already white hair and a similarly white moustache, yet he still appeared strong and healthy with good posture, "must be because he was a doctor" Arnold thought in his mind. The man was old enough to be Arnold's father, might be older, and acted like his grandpa with his generosity towards Arnold.

Right now, all he had to do before he was free to go was to wait for his assigned guardian to come. He wasn't told who would be his guardian and Nurse June who he was close to hasn't come to his room ever since he applied to go outside, did she get assigned to take care of another patient? With his close caretaker away, his nerd self doesn't dare to ask about Nurse June to the new nurse who came to care for him afterwards. He felt a little lonely, but he could do nothing right now.

He suddenly felt someone tugged on his shoulder while he was lost in his thoughts. When he looked over, oh how surprised he was when he saw Nurse June's face being so close to him. Managed to hold in his yelp, he gave the newly appeared Nurse June a look over, noticing that she was wearing a different outfit than the white nurse outfit she usually wore. She wore a letterman jacket and a pair of loose denim jeans; underneath the jacket, he saw a formfitting black suit which reminded him of those female mecha pilot skintight suits. Her ashen grey hair which was usually worn in a low ponytail was tied in a more cheerful high ponytail which went through the backstrap hole of her baseball cap. He doesn't know what her outfit did to him, but he was mentally on his knees and his mind was stalled a bit. He doesn't know what other people comment about her choice of outfit, but Arnold Swanlake digs it!

"I was expecting more reaction from you, Mr. Arnold. But this is fine, too. Sorry to keep it a secret from you, but I will be your bodyguard from now on. I was under a conversion process into a T-Doll this week, so I can't attend to your needs during the process."

Arnold was confused at first, but then he remembered a tidbit of info from his past life about G&K employing converted civilian Dolls as their main force. If he didn't remember it wrong, most of the G&K PMC armed personnel were T-dolls for saving cost and human lives.

"What is the news about G&K right now, I wonder? I remember shit happens right after MC was recruited, but when and where is… Maybe I should've worried about Sangvis Ferri more?"

Sangvis Ferri, the main antagonist faction of the Girl's Frontline as far as he knew, details about their crime have been lost in his annals of memory, forgotten. But their status as the titular enemy has enough weight in his mind for him to reallocate his daydreaming quota to think about Sangvis instead. But right now, he has to put aside both, because he has a city date planned with Nurse June who will be his bodyguard for today and maybe longer since she took the time to become a T-doll. He doesn't forget to also think about what job he could get by looking around the city.

"Let's just enjoy today's trip to the fullest then ponder about everything else once the sun goes down and I'm alone in my room."

0o0o0

The Sedan carrying Arnold and June sped into the distance away from the mental ward building. Howard Morrison saw them off from the gate with his hand hidden behind his back. Gone was the sweet grandfatherly expression on his face, now he had the flat, serious face of those who had multiple lives under his responsibilities. His aide came to his side handing him a tablet, on the screen was a digital map with a dot moving on the road towards the city.

"If you don't mind, Sir Morrison. Can I ask why we need this much surveillance on that man? Is he someone dangerous?"

"No, he is not a threat… for the time being. But the condition when we found them is odd enough to warrant some suspicion. Freshly healed wounds that should be fatal, the Tattered bloody clothes he wore, and his oddly low collapse infection despite being in a yellow zone without a protective suit. But the most peculiar thing was his identification card, here see for yourself."

After opening something in the tablet, Morrison handed the tablet back to the curious aide. It was a scanned picture of a Utah Driver's License card, a normal identification every normal citizen of the age of the USA who lived in Utah would have if they wanted to legally drive a car, but in this world… it was the strangest thing to exist.

Name: Arnold Swanlake

Date of Birth: 08/08/1998

Address: Salt Lake City, …

EXP: 01/01/2025

Seeing the confusion on the aide's face, Morrison chuckled while still maintaining a serious face.

"Curious, isn't it? An ID card could be faked, but the information on this one is far too off for it to be a fake. Combining his anomalous existence that I mentioned before and his severe psychosis when he first arrived here, thinking that he had died, and then the uncontrolled rambling of a person who can't process a traumatic event, we can only guess what he went through for him to ended up that way and what is on his mind. This is only my assumption, but we might be dealing with something beyond a mere doctor like me could handle. But he is my patient, and my facility… beyond a mental ward, I want it to be like its name, a sanctuary, a shelter for those in need… whoever they are."

Morrison then fell into a somber silence while the aide still staring at the picture silently.

"I might be overreacting a bit with my action, converting a civilian doll into a tactical doll, the surveillance system… But what's done is done, I hope none of my imaginative imagination comes true and for peace to stay longer. Let's get back, we still have our today's work."

Howard Morrison, the co-founder of Paris and Morrison Sanctuary, a mental ward operated a bit distance away from the hustle and bustle of the city. A man who loves his wife, his family, and his job as a doctor. He would've never guessed the things he would get involved in the future…

0o0o0

A/n : Truthfully, I was hit with a cultural shock when I found out that Americans don't have official National Identification cards, so I researched a bit and decided to use the driver's license for our dude Arnold. I also gobsmacked, asswhipped, jawdropped, at the new can of worms that I opened that is GFL lore, I'm already mind bogged enough with Fate series yarn boulder lore and Arknights haybale lore, My noggin is basically working with borrowed bandwidth to process GFL lore and I'm already in debt, lol
If I got something horribly wrong regarding the GFL material please let me know, I still take it a bit light regarding the source material involvement in this chapter since I'm still trying to wrap my head around the numerous events and info that happened in the GFL and their place in the timeline

edit: there was a typo and sum other bs that needs to be fixed, I hope I don't miss anything else...