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 telling the past of the playable T-Dolls in Exilium. They can be read by accessing the Elmo Cloud Server Room, then the Remastered Records menu.

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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