Girls' Frontline Fanfiction: Tsar of the Mountain

Rewriting One's Fate

"Commander Zeldri," Persica tried to get Zeldri's attention away from the t-doll, "This doll is a prototype that's currently scheduled for dismantling." Zeldri noticed a twitch from the t-doll at the mention of their dismantlement. "We should move on."

"Why's she scheduled for dismantlement?"

"As a prototype, this doll is meant for internal testing purposes and isn't a valid candidate for being offered to Griffin & Kryuger commanders as a full t-doll."

"..." Persica was being oddly cruel and dismissive to this doll even though Zeldri got the impression that she cared deeply for her creations. It felt as if she was hiding something. He turned his attention back to the t-doll that was still sitting on the floor looking up at him. "Can you hear me? I asked you to get up and follow me."

"..." The t-doll picked up their guns and slowly got to their feet. They seemed hesitant.

"What's your name?" While he could guess her name by the standardized naming conventions of t-dolls, he wanted to get her focused on him and start responding.

"AE-...A-545, sir," she sounded unsure of her own name.

"Then, A-545, follow me to the firing range; I want to see you in action."

"Commander!" Persica objected, "I already told you they aren't valid for deployment."

"I'm not deploying them," Zeldri countered, "If they're a new prototype, then I can get a good base of how the t-dolls compare to each other. I also want to see what 16Lab will have in store, eventually." He was lying as his true goal was to see A-545 in action as this doll was obviously something he shouldn't have seen.

"...Fine." Persica knew it was too late, and Zeldri's interest was too piqued, to brush this aside with excuses. She'd only briefly looked at A-545's specs when she was called AEK-971 as she let her teams work, for the most part, independently to allow greater freedom in their creation of next-generation t-dolls. She hoped Maxim held back while providing her the unauthorized neural upgrade.

"You heard her," Zeldri said to A-545," Follow me."

"Y-...Yes, sir!" A-545 perked up considerably at the chance to prove herself. To maybe escape her fate? Things were going to plan, and only continued to when they reached the firing range.

"A-545, set up in the booth over there." Persica took a tablet from a nearby table and started tapping away at it.

"Yes, Miss Persicaria." A-545 approached the booth and lowered the visor on her helmet.

"I'll start up an intermediate firing exercise. After, I'll have other dolls run the same to compare for you, Commander."

Zeldri glanced over Persica's shoulder and asked, "Does that control the targets directly?"

"Partially," Persica admitted as she handed him the tablet, "We have some presets that do the work for us, but you can manually increase variables to adjust the difficulty of the desired test."

"And, these numbers on the left?"

"Those are the currently inputted t-doll's stats as compared to their peers. While a gun can only do so much, t-dolls can partially adjust their lethality and efficiency in combat with software and hardware upgrades as well as attachments for their gun. I remember a commander that spent hours fine-tuning and upgrading his t-dolls to maximize their efficiency, though such a thing was costly. Although," Persica took a sip of coffee as her mind wandered, "With the number of resources you have, that wouldn't be an issue."

"..." Zeldri looked over the stats and two radar charts that were next to it showing how A-545 compared to other t-dolls. Her Overall stats were low and her Class stats were mid-tier at best. Her fielding and repair costs were also the highest he'd ever seen for an assault rifle. Was this really a new prototype? Maybe Perisca's warning about it being unsuitable for commanders was right? But, something felt...off. "Begin." He pressed the start button.