Story/Emergency 11-1 (Part1)/Script

[Three months after the “Continuum Turbulence” incident.]

Kalina: Commander, I’ll leave today’s progress reports here.

Commander:Thank you for your hard work.

Kalina: Haha, you’ve worked hard too, Commander.
Still, it seems you’re used to the work here.

Commander: So, what interesting things happened today?

Kalina: The usual, logistics, maintenance, supplies, peaceful news broadcasts, dolls who gave themselves stomach aches from eating too much.
Why were they designed to be allergic to certain foods? I don’t understand those people at IOP. Is this some sort of Turing test?

Kalina: Ah, never mind that. Want to have something at the cafe after work?
… Aw, there’s no reason for it, I just wanted to relax a little. That said, we only have instant coffee on the base. After all, we’ve been confined here for several months now...
...Hehe, of course you’ll be paying for it even if it instant coffee, Commander.

[Beep.]

Kalina: Ah, a comms request… it’s on a Class B encrypted channel, from Harvey-san.

Harvey: Commander, how does it feel to end a day’s work?
Haha, well it’s like you said, work doesn’t end that easily, which is why I’m here.
Are you sure that your surroundings are sufficiently secure?

[I looked at Kalina.]

Kalina: ...Alright, I guess the cafe’s a bust, right?

Kalina: No, don’t even think of trying to bluff me with coffee from the vending machine.

[Kalina waved the schedule sheets she was holding and left the command room, leaving me alone.]

Harvey: Don’t worry, I told you that I’m not here to talk about work. That’s right, just chuck it all aside.
Let’s talk about something light today. For instance…
...How would you like to go out on a sightseeing trip?

[The next day, at 1430 hours, in a dark alley near the intercontinental railway station.]

RO635: Is this our mission this time round, Commander?

[RO635 held the photo I had given her. It showed a busy street on Belgrade, and a man’s murky profile was circled in red permanent marker.]

RO635: But how are we supposed to find him with just a photo taken from afar…
Also, while you say that he’s an information vendor, does he really have information on Ange?

[One day ago.]

Harvey: While our great bureau chief gave you a mission earlier, the fact that all of Griffin’s transportation has been destroyed and you haven’t been able to step outside must be very depressing.
Therefore! I managed to arrange this opportunity for you. You’d better thank me for it.
I’m sure you’re thinking, what kind of opportunity is this?
Don’t be hasty, I’ll explain it to you slowly.

Harvey: I heard the chief mention that Ange might show up in a city in the south.
Of course, don’t bother asking me what she’s doing there. I have no idea what she’s up to either.
Frankly speaking, if I were her, I would have demanded a raise upon going back to Statesec, rather than just wilfully vanishing without a trace.

Harvey: So I was thinking that this is your time to shine. If you really do manage to find Ange, the chief will probably be so happy that he’ll approve a helicopter or two for Griffin. THat way you’ll have a way to head out on your own!

Harvey: Hm hm, “how do I find her”, I hear you ask? I’ve arranged it all for you, Commander. I’ll send a piece of crucial information I’ve found over to you. You’d best be grateful for my kindness and magnanimity!

[......]

RO635: Commander, are you listening?

[I looked at the photo RO was holding, and sighed deeply.]
[Indeed, all we had was a photograph and an area where the source had been sighted once. These clues were far too scanty compared to the problem we had to solve with them.]
[How to find him was only a small problem. The bigger problem was whether he really possessed information concerning Ange.]
[And I had another question… which was why Harvey wanted me to find her.]
[Harvey might have sounded like an eccentric old man, but I knew very well how smart he was. There must surely be some reason why he wanted us to carry out this mission.]
[...However, this was not something I ought to think about for the time being.

RO635: Commander?

Commander: I’m listening. This is the only clue we have. We’ll think of something once we get to our destination.

RO635: Alright… and yeah, I can’t really think of anything just by looking at the photo.
Come to think of it, this is my first time at this train station. It looks much more decent than the one near the base.
And yeah, that’s the intercontinental express for you - the last time I took it, I was in another city, with the rest of the Palette Squad. It was a terrible experience… that is to say, the train was good, but my teammates were really noisy.
Hopefully this trip will correct my experience; SOP2 ought to be easier to deal with than AAT52.
Still… it’s really has been a while… we’ve all been through so much in the blink of an eye.

[5 months ago, Griffin PMC embarked on a joint operation with the army. The objective was to capture the SF mastermind Elisa in order to completely suppress the local android uprising.]
[But during the operation, we were betrayed by the army and were almost wiped out. In the process, Kryuger-san was arrested on groundless charges.]
[The army’s true aim was not just to take control of the Mastermind, but to exploit the relationship between M4A1 and the Mastermind to achieve some kind of dangerous aim.]
[And all that was stopped by Collapse Fluid-enhanced dirty bomb.]
[The army took grievous losses and had no choice but to abort their operation. Meanwhile, M4A1 and the Mastermind vanished to parts unknown.]
[I had worked out some possibilities based on the information I had collected on and off the battlefield, but was it the truth?]
[I could not be sure of that, but what I could be certain of was that I and the people involved in this mission were not the only one interested in the truth.]

[The fighting swiftly drew to a close after the contamination from the Collapse Fluid radiation spread throughout the battlefield.]
[This was when I was captured by a mysterious white faction.]
[They were interrogators calling themselves Nytos, and they wanted to extract information about Ange and M4A1 from my brain.]
[I told them a bit about that… and also made up a bunch of unimportant things while I was at it. [After that, 404 Squad rescued me, and Kalina escorted me to the new Griffin base.]
[And then, both Team Defy and 404 Squad vanished without a trace, as though they had never been.]
[After being introduced by Harvey-san, the boss of 16Lab, I accepted a job from Zelinsky, the Chief of the Bureau of State Security…]
[And so I ended up taking part in the search operation targeted at Ange… a former Griffin Commander, Statesec agent, and now a fugitive traitor.]
[Which was to say… this operation.]

RO635: Still, Commander… have you thought about what you’ll do after you find Ange?

RO635: ...Sorry, I shouldn’t have asked that, I simply wanted to give suggestions… but my neural cloud overloads a little when I consider that problem.

RO635: In any case, I have faith in any decision you make, Commander.
Ah, SOP2’s back.

M4 SOPMOD II: I’m back~ Huh? Where’s the special railway hotdog I wanted?

RO635: Take it. I’m not going to go wasting money for you next time. Our operational expenses are limited.

M4 SOPMOD II: Yay~! We ought to enjoy ourselves since we haven’t been out for so long! At the very least we ought to take a picture to show it off!

RO635: You really do get along well with those friends of yours, huh. But I can guarantee that once the mission is over, all the visual data you’ve taken which is irrelevant to the mission will be deleted…
So, have you figured out the location of the servers yet?

M4 SOPMOD II: I had Banana scan it for me!

RO635: “Banana?”

M4 SOPMOD II: Yup! Banana looks like a banana, right? Persica helped me modify him to greatly improve my EW capabilities♪

RO635: That Dinergate… so you were still carrying it… ah, this is bad, just looking at it makes my head spin...

M4 SOPMOD II: Haha, then just don’t look!
In any case, I’ll send it over to you right away.
Still, I don’t understand why we can’t just walk into the station.

RO635: SOP2, this is a public train station, do you understand? All the exits are watched by army soldiers, and the security system records every entry and exit.
The Commander is now most likely wanted by the army, and it’s even less likely that we’re legal too. After stepping into the ticket gates, our identities will be uploaded to the army databases in less than 3 seconds, and those two big dolls will be pinning us to the ground in another second after that.

M4 SOPMOD II: Is that why we’re disguising our identities?

RO635: At the very least we mustn’t be detected by a scan...
I’ll plant a virus in those servers you found.
When the fake ID code we use is uploaded to the station’s authentication systems, the system will skip the authentication process and automatically upload a fake ID to the army’s central database.

M4 SOPMOD II: Wow! You can even do that, RO!? Can you teach me how?

RO635: It’s all thanks to Kalina-san who helped me prepare for this ahead of time...
This is elementary electronic warfare. As you are now, you should be able to do it too, provided you understand the control principles.

M4 SOPMOD II: I don’t get it, but it sounds really cool!

RO635: Haha… I thought so...

RO635: Then let’s begin, Commander. Please help me take out the barrier systems of the servers. SOP2, you stand by and keep a lookout.

RO635: Commander, I’m about to hack into the station servers. RIght now, I need you to find a loophole in the authentication system for me to insert the virus program.
Is this your first time hacking a public system? Are you nervous?
Maybe you feel a little guilty, but that can’t be helped either. Get used to it, I guess. After all, we’re not the same as we used to be.
In any case, this isn’t any different from other EW missions, so let’s begin.