Dusty Memories

"I can't sleep yet, I still have work to do..."

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Dusty Memories are a category of Lore entries consisting of visual novel side-stories, where the playable T-Dolls tell stories of their past to the Commander. They can be read by accessing the Elmo Cloud Server Room, then the Remastered Records menu.

Related stories and suggested reading order

Zucchero Café (Springfield, Centaureissi, Makiatto, Sharkry, Sabrina)

#Returner's Determination, #In the Firelight, #Heart of the Dishes, #Home is in the Heart

Frostfall Squad (Qiongjiu, Cheeta, Tololo)

#Novel Orbit, #Genius' Vision, #Guest in the Palm

Satellite City POL-03 (Nagant, Mosin-Nagant, Ksenia, Papasha)

#The Measure of a Senior, #Part-Time Detective Diary, #Hero of the City

Satellite City POL-05 (Daiyan, Jiangyu, Zhaohui)

#Discordant Pitch, #A Fledgling Returns

Independent

#The Riddle of Vayne

Green Zone

In the Firelight

Vepley (No. 2397) and Sharkry (No. 2286) are members of “11th Task Force”, a unit of the Idol Performance Promotion Program organized by the Cooperation Promotion Office of the Cultural Development Agency. The program aims to entertain the population of Green Zones to alleviate the pressure of their difficult lives. The idols are equipped with fire-control cores to ensure the safety of the public in case of an emergency: Vepley is imprinted with the Vepr-12 and Sharkry with the Robinson XCR. Despite her dancing and singing skills, Sharkry's much less popular than the less skilled but more cutesy Vepley, and her manager is threatening to reset her personality. Sharkry dislikes Vepley as a consequence, but Vepley is seemingly incapable of feeling negative emotions (on top of her habit of adding “Mister” to the name of objects) and treats Sharkry as a friend. 11th Task Force must produce their new song Dream ☆ Time in the Morning in front of an audience of workers disgruntled that the government is putting money into idol shows, and a spectator starts a shootout. Sharkry's neural cloud crashes and Vepley is damaged while trying to put on the show regardless.

After the incident, Sharkry notices that her body was shoddily repaired, and soon after, they're told that the idol project is being shut down due to poor performances after a full year, and its funds redirected to purification projects. The staff and Dolls will be reassigned to other positions in the White and Green Zones. The other members of 11th Task Force, Fiodo, Kroyer and Sibyl, accept the news without complaints, but Sharkry and Vepley don't want to stop being idols. The night before their return to the White Zone, Sharkry sneaks into the warehouse containing the unit's props, intending to create a commotion and escape to pursue her dream on her own. Two Varjagers raid the warehouse at the same time, and Sharkry sees an opportunity to escape by letting them kidnap her, but Vepley comes to her rescue. Sharkry angrily reveals to Vepley her intention to leave, and after some thinking, Vepley decides to help her, creating a diversion by lighting fireworks.

Having reached another Green Zone, Sharkry can't find official gigs and resigns herself to put on street shows. After catching the attention of Springfield, who's been searching for another Doll capable of drawing in customers at Zucchero Café since Andoris left, Sharkry works there for some time. She later joined the Elmo on the Commander's invitation, though she faced difficulties repressing her need to perform during combat.

• 

Genius' Vision

At Griffin & Kryuger, Helian and Frostall Squad are reviewing Cheeta's combat performance. Aside from her obvious lack of manners towards Helian (whom she still calls “Caretaker's Caretaker”), ever since Cheeta discovered the game “DollUnknown's Figthing Ground”, the self-proclaimed genius has been ignoring mission plans in favor of her own ideas, so the team could conclude missions earlier and she could get more gaming time, but making missions more dangerous for the team. Qiongjiu is blamed for being too lenient with her and enabling her behavior, but Cheeta reveals that's she's actually aiming for a tournament with a cash prize of a whopping 30 ounces of Sardis Gold, more than most of Griffin's contracts. She'll need two other players to participate. Cheeta's personal goal is to buy back her original body, and she entices Tololo and Lind to participate with promises of telescope lenses and candies. Qiongjiu sees the tournament as an opportunity to train the team's coordination, and the three indeed lack cohesion and keep losing in training sessions.

G&K takes an emergency commission to help a security team eliminate rogue sentry automatons and save civilians blocked in a building with them. The original plan calls for the security team to drop on the roof of the building while the Dolls attack from the first floor to pincer the automatons, but Cheeta points out that because of the imbalance in fighting power, the security team and civilians could get killed as the Dolls flush the automatons up. Cheeta offers to use her small frame to crawl up the building's ventilation shaft and secure the stairs of the upper floors alone. Qiongjiu approves her plan, but orders her to create an entry point from a window so Lind can assist her. As they implement the plan, the security team acts ahead of schedule and the automatons start rushing to the roof. The team effectively improvises and neutralizes the menace, but Cheeta, Tololo and Lind still end up bickering about each other's miscommunication and misjudgements.

The mission ends up being a sufficient learning experience for Cheeta, Tololo and Lind to win the tournament. When it comes time to split the reward, Helian deducts from Cheeta's share the repayments for various damage her carelessness and experiments caused to G&K and the rest of Frostfall Squad, which leaves her with nothing. As Helian planned when setting up the situation, Lind and Tololo take pity on Cheeta and contribute some of their prize money to the fund to buy back her original body. By nurturing Frostfall Squad's bonds, Helian and Qingjiu hopes to make G&K prosper and assemble their former employees once again.

After Cheeta boarded the Elmo, she relates the story to the Commander and invites them to play a new game called “Justice Legends” and enter a tournament for the cash prize. When the Commander points out that they won't have time to play, Cheeta starts working on an automaton to handle the Commander's daily tasks.

• 

Novel Orbit

At Griffin & Kryuger following the disbanding and restructuration, ^AR AK-AlfaAK-AlfaAK-Alfa is contesting Helian's decision to put her in Qiongjiu's Frostfall Squad. She would prefer to operate alone since she's the only member of Squad Grizzly who decided to remain at Griffin. The others left to take civilian jobs in the Green Zone: ^MG PzB39PzB39PzB39 now works in an auto repair shop and ^AR M82M82M82 in a library. Helian insists, as Griffin's old business partners have walked away and contracts are now scarce. Since Lind is out of commission after their previous mission, Qiongjiu needs an elite T-Doll to replace her and tackle a commission from a businessman named Henryk Wieniawski. Alfa is diligent enough to accept but doubts she'll agree to join the team permanently. When Alfa introduces herself to Frostfall, it is immediately apparent that her calm and professional personality is incompatible with Cheeta's pushy and self-centered demeanor. Qiongjiu requests that Alfa uses a new name for policy reasons, and she chooses the name Tololo, after the observatory which first captured the transit of Mercury.

The commission involves a trip to the Carlos Auto Repair Shop in a satellite city of Dresden, Germany, to retrieve a robot containing sensitive information about local black markets. The stolen robot is also of interest to Wieniawski's business rival, Abel Stark. The shady commission speaks volume about the lows Griffin has to stoop to in order to stay in business. The auto shop also happens to be where PzB is now working. When Frostfall Squad arrives, the auto shop has become a battlefield as Stark's men are attacking. Frostfall manages to limit damages and seize their objective before the police intervenes, but Tololo focuses on protecting PzB and Qiongjiu ends up badly damaged. Before Frosftfall leaves, PzB encourages Tololo to learn to trust her new squadmates like she did with Squad Grizzly. After hiding it for so long so her friends could pursue their dreams without holding back for her sake, Tololo explains her reason for remaining in Griffin: when they left, the members of Squad Grizzly had their Fire Control Core taken away and are now defenseless civilian Dolls. This called to her memory the loss of the civilian Doll Claire during one of Squad Grizzly's missions, so Tololo remained in Griffin to protect her former teammates when the time comes. After being scolded by Qiongjiu for not communicating properly during the mission, Tololo is invited to a sci-fi movie night by the rest of Frostfall Squad. She also receives a picture from the rest of the former Squad Grizzly wishing her well.

After boarding the Elmo, Tololo relates the events to the Commander while watching The Origins of the Universe, and she asks them to help her improve her interpersonal skills.

• 

The Measure of a Senior

This story makes references to the Classified Briefing The Sky Within the Squares.

Taking advantage of a glitch in their office's check-in system, Nagant M1895 and ^HG StechkinStechkinStechkin, working as security personnel for the satellite city POL-03, slip away for a maintenance-and-shopping trip. On their way back, they receive a request to handle a cleaning robot gone haywire on a busy commercial street. They cross path with Mosin-Nagant, who's investigating a serial case of public service machines being infected by a virus. Even if they work in different city sectors, Nagant insists to help to be like the heroes from the movies Stechkin is now regretting showing her. She regrets it even more after Mosin-Nagant is convinced by her sister's delusional argument. The virus appears to strike at random and has done no damage, only forcing the city to provide security upgrades to their systems.

The next day, Nagant and Stechkin arrest a smuggler who was trying to get past security gates with a mismatched ID chip. Talking with Mosin-Nagant, they realize that only the security gates that weren't recently updated caught the fraud, and they conclude that the virus was a ploy to distribute a hacked updated on public machines. When Nagant signaled the issue to the local logistics department, she was however forbidden to investigate. Stechkin regardless cross-referenced access logs and security footage to track down the smugglers to a restaurant called Délicieux Date, where she used to work under her original name Ksenia. Stechkin takes her part-time job again to monitor the restaurant from the inside, while Nagant monitors it from the outside, distributing ads leaflets while disguised as a squirrel (another of Stechkin's ploys to gather blackmail material). They catch a member of their logistics department entering the restaurant and hear the manager and logistics employee reveal the details of the CHAOS 2.0 virus, but their hidden microphone is discovered.

While Mosin-Nagant alerts her security department and dispatches a unit, Nagant rushes into the restaurant to keep the criminals from fleeing and successfully restrains them in a trash bin while concealing her identity, earning the moniker “Vicious Squirrel”. While celebrating with a round of shopping, Mosin also announces that Papasha will soon be joining her department. When Nagant remarks that the “younger” Dolls have all changed their names and that Kalina can make the changes official as a favor, Stechkin decides to go back to her name Ksenia, thinking about how she made more money back when she was using it, and Nagant officially shortens Nagant M1895 to just Nagant, which was already how everyone called her.

After Nagant joined the Elmo, she tells the story to the Commander, who's the one who inspired her to strive for justice.

• 

Guest in the Palm

Frostfall Squad is conducting an attack on a convoy to retrieve stolen goods. Though the mission goes smoothly, Qiongjiu (formerly ^AR QBZ-191QBZ-191QBZ-191) marks it as less than perfect because the team completed it not on schedule, but ahead of it, and she insists on planning any operation down to the second. Helian recalls the squad to HQ to take an emergency commission from Lars Prinsler, a rising businessman in the White Zones. The mission is to act as bodyguards for his daughter Hedy Prinsler during her vacation at the family estate in the satellite city ZHY-06, since the family has been under constant aggression since their business started booming two years prior. With this contract, Lars intends to put G&K's reputation to the test.

On location, it is revealed that Hedy isn't actually the Prinslers' daughter, but in fact their pet flying squirrel. Frostfall Squad ends up spending their first few days trying to prevent Hedy from escaping the mansion, while Qiongjiu keeps trying to reason with it and make it stick to a schedule. Hedy's handler, Cecily, explains that the Prinslers sent their pet away for a “vacation” due to the stress of living in White Zones terrariums, where none of the features of a flying squirrel's natural habitat are found. Qiongjiu decides to take the risk of letting Hedy outside, and the squirrel's health quickly shows notable improvements. Some time later, signs of an intruder appear, Cecily is found unconscious and four fully-crewed UAZ-469 LUVs approach the mansion. While Qionjiu deploys her team to search and intercept, the obsessively detailed notes she's been gathering tells her that this is in fact part of Lars Prinsler's test and that the intruder is in fact Cecily herself faking to be unconscious, while the approaching vehicles are the Prinslers' personal security team in disguise. When the contract ends, the Prinslers enters a long-term partnership with Griffin.

When Qiongjiu tells the Commander about the mission at a later point, she adds that she has since deepened her knowledge of animals and volunteered in animal care organizations to be able to make appropriate schedules for them, and offers to take a contract to protect animals being transferred between two White Zone zoos. She also admits that apart from animals, the only unpredictable person she'll tolerate is the Commander, since she has complete trust in them.

• 

Returner's Determination

After leaving Griffin & Kryuger, ^AR G36G36G36, now called Centaureissi, made the decision to work in the domestic sector again, but her days on the battlefield left her pondering on the nature of “living” and “fighting”. She eventually received an offer from Springfield to work at her café, named Zucchero, in satellite city CHE-02. Partly unconsciously, Springfield has modeled Zucchero after Griffin Cafe where she worked with Centaureissi. Springfield's ambition is to make Zucchero into a place where former T-Dolls can get used to interaction with humans and eventually find civilian jobs, but it's also secretly as intel agency. For the latter part, Springfield has already employed ^RF WA2000WA2000WA2000, who now goes as Makiatto, a name derived from her favorite drink, the caramel macchiato (which she always takes with an ungodly amount of caramel). Both Springfield and Makiatto hope to learn about the Commander's whereabouts through their intel gathering commissions. Springfield puts Centaureissi in charge of the daily operations of Zucchero and makes her crew chief for their recruits. When Centaureissi brings up her reflections on “living” and “fighting”, Makiatto replies that they didn't leave the battlefield when leaving Griffin, because life itself is a battlefield.

Some time later, Zucchero is targeted by a thief who steals from one of the patrons. To catch them, Springfield asks Bella, one of their rich customers, to serve as bait to lure the thief in. Centaureissi draws a connection to Makiatto's answer to her question when Bella calls the ploy to catch the thief a "Cafe Defense Battle". After they catch the thief, Centaureissi concludes that, to her, “fighting” in fact means “protecting”, and that she needs something to protect, like the Commander or Zucchero. However, she wants to remain as a civilian Doll since she prefers to only use her gun under the order of her trusted Master. Soon after, Andoris joins the café, and Centaureissi instructs her to treat Zucchero like a home they must protect from external threats, though this causes some troubles when she intercepts Springfield's couriers as suspicious customers.

Centaureissi later boarded the Elmo to protect and take care of her Master.

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Heart of the Dishes

After leaving G&K, ^SG SPAS-12SPAS-12SPAS-12, now named Sabrina, works as a cook in the Caldo restaurant in Satellite City MEL-07. Before leaving, Springfield had told her she wanted to open a café, sparking in Sabrina the ambition of one day becoming a proper chef. While making a delivery in CHE-02, fans of her food vlog recommend her a coffee made by the resident idol of Zucchero Café. When Sabrina tries “Sharkry's Limited-Edition Shine on Stage Sweet Latte”, her hash criticism shocks Sharkry to the point that she stops talking to herself in third person, and Sabrina's bulletproof cheerfulness reminds her of her rival Vepley. Sabrina, Centaureissi and Springfield are reunited during the commotion, and Sabrina confides that she's having trouble with her ambition due to being unable to come up with dishes on her own, and doesn't understand why Sharkry's coffee is so popular with patrons if it doesn't match an objective criteria of taste. Springfield suggests a Halloween dessert cook-off between the two Dolls, with the customers as judges, to make Sabrina understand.

While Sharkry cooks to please each of the judges individually, Sabrina follows Caldo's framework of consistency, insisting on using fine ingredients and upgrading the kitchen's equipment to her standards to obtain a calibrated dish. Sharkry's assortment of coffee and muffins wins the hearts of the customers over Sabrina's pie, and Springfield invites her to stay a few days at Zucchero to help them come up with new dishes while learning how to incorporate "emotions" in her cooking (to the peril of Zucchero's furniture, which is no match for Sabrina's strength and heavy body frame). Thinking about the people she's grateful towards, Sabrina goes beyond her recipes and cook personalized meals for Helian, who helped her return to civilian life, for Chef Cosimo, who got her her job at Caldo, and for Sharkry, as thanks for inspiring her. She also starts thinking about what she will give the Commander when they meet again.

When Sabrina eventually joins the Elmo, she's anxious while making the dish since she fears the Commander's tastes may have changed since they were separated for years. She's happy to find that her cooking still fits their tastes, and starts trying to come up with more dishes for the Commander.

• 

Discordant Pitch

^AR Type 95Type 95Type 95, now going by the name Daiyan, has become a traveling performer searching for inspiration by visiting satellite cities such as CHE-09 and POL-05. Her research aims to produce works more personal than those extrapolated from her score database, and she also wants her original songs to travel far enough to reach her former Griffin colleagues. She also hopes that her wanderings will lead to a chance encounter with the Commander that wouldn't break “the agreement”. With Helian's help, she was able to retain her fire control core while acting as a civilian Doll for her own safety. Daiyan one day receives a rare call from her little sister ^AR Type 97Type 97Type 97, who still works at G&K in Qiongjiu's team (formerly ^AR QBZ-191QBZ-191QBZ-191) along with Lind (formerly ^SG AA-12AA-12AA-12). Daiyan still worries about 97's ability to take care of herself and left her with a hefty “Emergency Manual”. While 97 could go back to calling herself Jiangyu, she hasn't made a decision yet. 97 has secretly left Griffin to search for her big sister, but hides the truth from her. In reality, Helian has warned Daiyan about 97's elopement, but Daiyan pretends not to know. 97 soon pays Daiyan a surprise visit in POL-05 and discovers that she's studying the local graffiti culture for inspiration.

While searching for information about the origins of the graffiti, Daiyan finds on a poster the signature of Faina, a musician she learned about in CHE-09. Their investigation lead to an apartment that showed signs of having been recently robbed, and the two sisters are confronted by Zhaohui, another wandering Doll that Daiyan met six months prior while playing her zither at a restaurant in CHE-09. Zhaohui was gathering Faina's belongings while she's in the hospital, but the situation escalates when 97 tries threatens Zhaohui with her gun, intending to protect her sister. When Daiyan sharply talks her down, 97 is hurt that Daiyan appears to trust someone she met once more than 97 herself, and fears that Daiyan is growing distant of her after hearing about all the people she's met while wandering, such as fellow Doll musician Clarissa.

Meeting with Faina who's recovering in the hospital, Daiyan explains that Faina's student Lilia, her neighbor in CHE-09, quit music in disgust of the popularity of Doll musicians, arguing that their music lack “soul”. Faina herself doesn't have such strong opinion, and guesses from the fact that Lilia gave Daiyan her sheet music that Lilia's own opinions are changing. Faina also says that Zhaohui is going through a similar change. While Daiyan couldn't make any resident of POL-05 to talk about the meaning of the graffiti, Faina agrees to let Zhaohui reveal this secret: they are a remnant from past social conflicts, and the means of the people to mock the authority that had beaten them down. Zhaohui herself learned this tradition after proving her good faith towards POL-05's inhabitants. Daiyan composes a song representing POL-05 and plays it for Faina, who praises it. After parting with Zhaohui, who leaves Daiyan with her contact information, Daiyan takes 97 with her on her travels.

After Daiyan joins the Elmo, she asks the Commander to share the story of their own travels with her so she can gather more inspiration than she could by herself, and to compose a song for the Commander.

• 

Hero of the City

After leaving G&K, Mosin-Nagant is leading a team of security Dolls in area W12 a satellite city. After learning Papasha was joining her organization, Mosin arranged her transfer to her team, but Papasha has received a lot of seemingly fraudulent citizen complaints. After seeing Papasha working overtime, Mosin complains to Nagant about her lack of directions at work and wish to work for the Commander again while drinking, but has to turn off her simulated drunkenness when Papasha calls her for help with two uncooperative suspected smugglers. The experienced Mosin distracts the suspects with paperwork while Papasha secretly inspects the vehicle and finds incriminating narcotics. After identifying a new drug, Papasha keeps receiving citizen complaints. Mosin cheers her up, but then receives an anonymous warning that she should let the investigation go, or her entire team will receive penalties until they're all subjected to a neural reset.

Mosin and Papasha meet with Nagant and Ksenia to strategize. Analyzing the revenue streams of the smugglers, they find that they must be a small group paying others to file in the complaints, and conclude that they must arrest all the smugglers to solve the problem. The next day, Mosin requisitions her team to pretend making a sweep against the smugglers, baiting them into submitting the complaints to triangulate their location. Mosin and Papasha locate and arrest one of the criminals, but Mosin anticipates that interrogating him through proper channels will take too long, so she instead proclaims that the rest of the security forces will soon find and arrest the others. Learning about the situation, the rest of the smugglers scramble to leave the city by train, and fall into the trap prepared by Nagant and Ksenia. While the Dolls enjoy two vacation days after a job well done, Mosin becomes the face of public security Dolls in local news.

• 

Home is in the Heart

One night in Satellite City CHE-02, Makiatto returns to Zucchero as Sharkry is putting on a show. Andoris has already left at that time. Makiatto fails to understand the patrons' enthusiasm for Sharkry, but can't deny that she's bringing a lot of money to the café, which helps Makiatto and Springfield's intel gathering operation. Struggling against her embarrassment, Makiatto asks Springfield if they finally have enough funding to contact the Commander. Springfield just recently used her contacts among intel brokers to fulfill a commission for the Elmo, consisting of intercepting information from another intel broker.The mission will give the Dolls an opportunity to exchange messages with the Elmo. Springfield assigns both Makiatto and Sharkry to the mission so the latter can gather field experience. Sharkry herself isn't interested in the job until she learns that it involves the Commander, about whom she's been hearing a lot from the other Dolls in Zucchero, as well as her rival Vepley. She also takes a great interest in teasing Makiatto, who's easily flustered by the task of exchanging professional messages with the Commander.

The target of the mission happens to be Henry Wilson, who's both an intel broker and a composer who wrote works that Sharkry has sang in the past, though she stopped being a fan after he veered into uninspired commercial productions. Sharkry notices that Wilson is making a lot of mistakes in his own lyrics, and Makiatto realizes that the changes actually encode information as part of his job as an intel broker, making Sharkry even more angry. Makiatto and Sharkry infiltrate the concert venue where Wilson is singing and, thanks to Sharkry acting like a fan to make Wilson lower his guard, they capture him for interrogation, and he gives up the illegal transport route used by criminals of CHE-02 to collude with Varjagers, enabling the Elmo to intercept a shipment of contraband. Now that a partnership has been established between the Zucchero intel brokers and the Elmo, Makiatto's goal to see the Commander again with her own eyes is within reach, with Springfield and Leva helping her go through the administrative hurdles of her travel. But Springfield and Sharkry point out that she could be endangering the Commander due to “the agreement”, and that they can now exchange messages since Zucchero can provide meaningful support to them. Springfield herself was hesitating to reveal the existence of the commission so Makiatto wouldn't leave for the Yellow Zone, where Helian and Kalina can't support former Griffin employees. Makiatto reluctantly concedes to Springfield's arguments and agrees to stay at Zucchero, just as she did when they had first met again.

When the Zucchero Dolls alter board the Elmo, Makiatto complains that the Commander has been skirting around “the agreement” without involving her, but gets too embarrassed to make them properly promise not to leave her out in the future.

• 

A Fledgling Returns

After leaving Griffin and reuniting with Daiyan, Type 97 accepts to become one of Griffin's free agents in Satellite City POL-05, where the PMC is seeking to establish a foothold through subcontractors. However, 97 still hasn't announced to her sister that she's no longer a Griffin member as to not worry her, and must now prevent Daiyan from making contact with Griffin Dolls so her secret isn't discovered. However, Helian has already informed Daiyan that 97 has left the PMC. On Daiyan's secret request, Qiongjiu gives 97 many commissions, but this leaves her with barely any time to practice with Daiyan for their music competition. Going back to her and Daiyan's apartment, 97 is displeased to find that not only is Zhaohui visiting, but that she immediately criticizes her training performance with accompanying instruments. Instead, Zhaohui suggests that 97 returns to her specialty from before G&K, martial arts, and offers to train 97 is choreography to match Daiyan's zither on scene.

With her schedule now even more packed, 97 attempts to hire another T-Doll to handle Griffin's requests, but she happens to hire Zhaohui herself, who agrees to keep her secret. Some days later, a fire is started in 97 and Daiyan's apartment by two members of a rival PMC trying to bring down Griffin's involvement in the city, and the arsonists manage to convince the city's security to put 97 in jail under suspicion of illegal entry. 97's secret is revealed in the commotion, and Daiyan also comes clean about already knowing 97's situation. 97 interprets it as lack of trust, but Daiyan actually wanted to keep 97 busy in POL-05 to spend more time with her. Seeing that she could handle them easily, Daiyan now knows for certain that 97 has grown and earned her independence. But while 97 initially remained at Griffin to distance herself from Daiyan and wait for a chance to learn about the Commander's whereabouts, she now wants to remain at her sister's side. 97 was initially hesitant to enter the competition under her old name Jiangyu, fearing that it would be childish when other Griffin Dolls chose new names for themselves, she decides to use it again since Daiyan has already acknowledged her growth.

Later reflecting on these events while retelling them to the Commander aboard the Elmo, Jiangyu swears not to become embroiled in lies again.

• 

Part-Time Detective Diary

One day after work, Nagant and Mosin-Nagant pay a visit to the bar where Ksenia is working part-time for extra money to spend during Shopping Fest. Mosin announces that Papasha will soon be joining her team, so she can help her get used to her new work. Mosin is also looking to help the security Doll of a neighboring district catch a gang of car thieves they've had trouble getting their hands on, and are now threatened with being formatted and replaced if they don't solve the case soon. On her next day off, Ksenia gets another part-time job as a vendor at a used car dealership organizing a vintage car convention, while also secretly investigating the stolen cars affair, but found no trace of the stolen cars being resold in the city's systems.

The thieves later expand their operations to District W12, which is Mosin's district, and as the Dolls convene, Ksenia reveals that she realized that the stolen cars all use out-of-production universal parts that can be resold at a premium. Taking yet another part-time job as a delivery worker, she checked parcel records but found no trace of unusual vehicle parts packages, revealing that the loot is being sold in private circles. Borrowing an old luxury car with an engine issue, Ksenia visits local repair shops until one of them offers to acquire the necessary parts for repairs. After a short stakeout of the repair shop, the Dolls track down the warehouse where the thieves are dismantling the car parts and arrest them. During Shopping Fest, both Nagant and Ksenia buy gifts to give the Commander when they're finally reunited. Nagant also notices that Ksenia bought a gift for Papasha's welcome party, though she did it in secret, just like when she investigated on her own, but when confronted about hiding how much she cares for others, Ksenia insists her only goal is to earn money and spend it.

After joining the Elmo, Ksenia decides to create a saving account reserved for helping the Commander in their time of need, since the Commander's devotion to their crew is the only thing she finds as trustworthy and reassuring as money.

• 

Unknown Area

The Riddle of Vayne

Peritya one day enters a simulated space where she encounters Groza. She knows that Groza is a member of the Elmo, which Krolik also boarded, and expects Groza to be familiar with her. When Groza doesn't seem to know her or her codename, Peritya tries to invade her neural cloud, but they are forced to cooperate when the simulation's defense systems attack. After using their respective strengths to clear the wave of enemies, Groza captures Peritya and brings her to the Commander for interrogation. Peritya explains that they are currently in the most complex simulation she's seen among the many she's been dragged into, comparing it to a Klein bottle. The Commander requisitions Peritya's experience to find an exit to the simulation, claiming they're connected to it through special machinery and have been stuck in it for three years. The duration doesn't match Peritya's intel from the physical world, revealing that Groza and the Commander are actually simulated themselves. She suspects that the virtual space is dedicated to simulating the Commander, while Groza and the defense systems provide stimulation to extrapolate more behavioral data. Allowing Peritya to enter implies that the simulation's creator still needs more stimulation to obtain a sufficiently complex copy of the Commander. Peritya decides to rename the simulated version of the Commander “Linchpin”.

Peritya offers to destroy the simulation from the inside and Linchpin readily accepts Peritya's proposal to break down the simulation and to disappear with it. When Peritya starts attacking the simulation's core, the creator of the virtual space sends the defense systems to attack her. While Linchpin and Groza keep the defenses at bay, Peritya manages to access the base layer of the simulation just before they are forced to leave their stronghold. After explaining the world's nature to Linchpin and confirming their resolve, Peritya destroys the simulation by killing them.

Some time later, after joining the Elmo, Peritya asks the Commander if they know any powerful electronic warfare Doll that would have created a simulation dedicated to them, but an issue with the Elmo cuts the conversation short. Peritya can sense that an entity has recognized her EW abilities and interest in virtual spaces, and has been guiding her to the Elmo and the Commander. Peritya decides to play along and keep the Commander safe until she can meet the entity in question, and learn from her how to create intricate simulations. Paritya later retells her encounter with Linchpin to the Commander, explaining that the simulation was created because the Commander is so interesting to observe that some entities, like Peritya herself, become taken with them.

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