Equality under their Gaze

Sten MkII: New Soldiers, Old Officers

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

A/N: English is not my native language, so feedback is appreciated. The dialogues of the commanders may be a bit off (or more off than usual for the story), but that's just their way of speaking (neither human commander is a native speaker of the language the characters use, be it English or Russian).

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Chapter 2
New Soldiers, Old Officer
Sten MkII

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Six days before the battle of the city...

"You called, Commander?"

Sten MkII closed the door behind her, walking to the centre of the command room. The place was a mess as usual, with the cans making several organized messes of aluminium left and right and several empty cups of tea dispersed by the different furniture in the room. Secretly she wondered how the two humans in charge of the base cleaned the room, or even if they did it at all. Yes, they usually dismissed the issue alleging time shortages, but she wasn't buying it after several months of hearing the same excuse.

It was a no brainer why G36 was allowed to enter the command room once every few days, even with all the love for secrecy the two commanders had. It simply got too messy for it to be serviceable, and her commanders were for sure not changing locations inside the base anytime soon (not that they would like to, either. They were very fond of their command room and individual offices attached for that).

"Yes, Sten. Please come in." Commander Schmidt hadn't risen her sight from the papers in front of her, so Sten couldn't really blame her for not noticing she was, in fact, already in the middle of the room, halfway through crossing the distance between them. She could, however, blame her for not noticing the sound of the door closing or that of her shoes, things that meant she was already inside. Schmidt finally rose her face, allowing Sten to see the all-too-familiar sight of her sleep-deprived face, marked by her eyebags and tired factions. "Is anyone else from Team 1 coming?"

"Sorry. They all had something to do, so I came alone."

"It's alright, I guess."

Schmidt shrugged, letting her tired unfocused blue eyes wander around the room. Sten tilted her head, a frown appearing on her face: while she was used to her commander's antics, that didn't mean she didn't worry about her health.

"Where's Commander Hausser?"

"Don't know. Getting food, maybe."

Sten expected as much. She didn't know Hausser as much as she knew Schmidt, but she still had quite the deal of insight about him, given the time she already spent under his command, how he interacted with her, the rest of Team 1 and Schmidt, and the latter's comments about him.

"Why did you call me here, Commander?"

Schmidt stopped looking around, but still didn't face Sten.

"W-we've been through this, Sten. We're alone with no one around... y-you can be friendly without fear of grounding my career for some, huh... stupid bureaucratic reason or something..."

She wasn't all that convincing when she struggled to say the words, but Sten knew what she meant regardless. This time she actually had to suppress a giggle at her commander's awkwardness.

"Sorry, Miss Alice. It's been a while since we last spoke face-to-face without bullets or other T-Dolls around, it just takes a while to settle back to normal conversation."