Equality under their Gaze

SIG 510: Doubts of your own, the World goes on

Disclaimer: Girls' Frontline belongs to MICA Team. I'm just doing this for fun and I get no monetary compensation from it.

A/N: English is not my mother language, so feedback is appreciated.

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Chapter 1
SIG 510: Doubts of your own, the World goes on

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Another round of laugher filled the room. The dolls inside were sporting wide grins on their synthetic faces, their emotions' modules working fully to keep them enjoying their great time. It was a Girls' Night, one where the members of multiple Echelons got to stay together in one dorm for the duration of the curfew to share stories, tell jokes or simply pass time with comrades with who they didn't interact often.

It had already been a couple hours since curfew started, along with the official beginning of the occasion, when one of the veteran dolls of the base turned to her, still with a grin embodied on her face, but this once accompanied by a curious glance.

"Hey, 510" she turned to her senior in her new assigned area, an eyebrow raised. "You were previously assigned to Area S12, right? The base with the two Commanders." She felt part of her joy died inside of her, already knowing where the question was going. Like following a well-choreographed sequence, most of the other dolls turned to her, anxious to know the answer as well. "How was it? I've barely seen dolls from that Base, even less met one that remembers well their time there and whose conscience wasn't restored to the cloud's backup."

'Well, that'd be for a reason' she thought to herself. That same reason was why she couldn't tell them all the things that happened in that base. Most of it wasn't exactly classified information, of course, but she had already soaked herself in the secrecy imposed to most of the dolls at her old Echelon. She still had the fear that her old Commanders would get wind of her 'spilling the beans', as humans called it, and would hunt her down and have even her backup cloud wiped clean. She doubted they had that actual power, but it was a fear, nonetheless. Fear wasn't supposed to be rational, after all. Nevertheless, there were things she could tell that didn't involve getting herself dismantled in her dreams. Reorganizing her thoughts, SIG 510 hawked to recompose herself before speaking.

"Well... it was a bit weird, to be honest," she kept her voice not too loud, trying to not freak out and get pass the fear of finally speaking after many months. "The two Commanders weren't exactly eccentric, but they had their quirks too. They had a small obsession with law and order. When they first arrive, the first thing they did was to suspend almost all operations for a week and reassemble the teams in the base, as well as requesting or sending away dolls for whatever reason they could find. Most of us were too stunned by the fact that there were two simultaneous commanders to really give any serious opposition. The predominant comment was 'Did Helian's mind finally broke because of her failed mixers?', but that was also denied by an official statement from HQ. Nevertheless, it was weird, but after a week or so of constantly getting new teammates we finally hit the field with operations again."

One of her Echelon teammates interrupted her story. "Given how you describe your commanders, operations must have been really tight-schedule."

She gave a small chuckle. "We wished they were like that. But reality was different. Regarding operations they were chaotic to an extent, firm believers of the phrase 'no plan survives contact with the enemy.' Our missions were always planned with an improvisation element included. Echelon leaders had a certain degree of autonomy for orders, depending on their group."