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GFL2 Story/Summary
"I can't sleep yet, I still have work to do..."
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This is a general overview of the plot of Girls' Frontline 2: Exilium.
Ordering
Decanonized stories are not listed. Read here for explanations on how story implementation evolved since release.
In-story chronology
For detailed sources, read Timeline#Girls' Frontline 2.
Because new story elements are introduced and developed in a non-chronological manner, the in-story chronology should not be used as a reading order guide. The CN release order or CG Playlist orders are recommended instead.
| Pre-Main Story | ||
|---|---|---|
| Non-sequential stories | Sequential stories: H.I.D.E. 404 Team A | Sequential stories: Doll Community |
| Into the Shadows | Chapters 6.5 & 6.7 - Sojourners of the Glass Island | |
| 404 Found | Halting Station | |
| Main Story Starts | ||
| Chapter 1 | ||
| Chapter 2 | ||
| Chapter 3 | ||
| Chapter 4 | ||
| Chapter 5 | Chapters 11 & 12 - Deep Oblivion | |
| Chapter 6 | ||
| Chapter 7 | ||
| Chapter 8 | ||
| Chapter 8.3 - Amidst Wings of Gray | Chapter 9 - Aphelion (Part 1) | |
| Chapter 8.7 - Bitter Thorns and Daisies | Chapter 10 - Aphelion (Part 2) | |
| Sequence unclear[Note 1] Breaking Butterfly | ||
| Doll Recruitment Chapters | ||
| Non-sequential stories | Sequential stories | |
|
Escape from Cyborg |
Mimisbrunnr's Loop | |
| Life Rekindled | ||
| Main Story Resumes | ||
| Chapters 13, 14 & 15 - Corposant Project Neural Convergence[Note 2] |
||
Main Story
Chapter 1
The stories Bygones in the Wind, Secrets of the Heart and Mayling's Journal are relevant to characters introduced in this chapter.
The year is 2074, ten years after the end of Girls' Frontline. In the wake of the creation of the URNC, PMCs such as Griffin & Kryuger have been forcibly downsized. Aiming to escape the control of the Prometheans, the Commander suddenly left the PMC to take part in the rise of bounty hunting. Aboard the mobile base Elmo, they take on bounties with the Dolls Groza and Nemesis and the Elmo's mechanic Mayling. In March, the Elmo crew took a job to transport a mysterious high-tech box across Eastern Europe. The day after the welcome party of the newest member Krolik, the Elmo is ambushed by Varjagers, who take down the Dolls and seize the box. Deploying with their spare bodies, Team Groza manage to recapture the box, which opens briefly in self-defense and reveals a young girl inside. After replenishing their stock by visiting the underground broker Poludnitsa, who casts suspicion on the Commander's client, the Elmo makes way to Purification Zone W_2069_0105.
Chapter 2
The story Twisted Smile is relevant to characters introduced in this chapter.
In Purification Zone W_2069_0105, the Commander obtains topographical maps of the region from the garrison commander. The crew is also joined by the medical Doll Colphne, gifted to the Commander by Poludnitsa. To lose their Varjagers pursuers, the Commander directs the Elmo to the contaminated area of Port Vest and set a successful ambush, but Team Groza barely survive an encounter with a Nemertea Boojum-class ELID. Colphne temporarily leaves the other Dolls to save herself before coming back out of guilt, durably damaging Groza's trust in her.
Chapter 3
The box reacts to the Commander's biodata and opens, revealing the girl inside. Called Helena, her lack of ELID symptoms despite exposure to Collapse radiation indicates she's a fully-immune individual. With growing suspicions towards the client, the Commander decides to send the Dolls and Mayling to confront them at the delivery point, while they themselves travel to Satellite City ODE-01 with Helena to meet an old friend who will know more. When Team Groza attempts to capture the client, they are faced by the powerful third-generation Doll Sextans and are forced to pull back.
Chapter 4
Rabbit Observation Diary occurs during this story.
In ODE-01, the Commander and Helena meet Lenna and Kalina, who now work for the URNC's Non-Military Forces Administration (NOMFA). Though Kalina still blaming the Commander for abandoning Griffin a decade before, she reveals that she secretly arranged for the Commander to work on their current contract. Her aim was to facilitate the investigation of the client, who's suspected to work with the Girard Group. A message from Persica introduces the Commander to Remolding Pattern technology, a portable Reverse Collapse device. Helena is captured while Kalina's teams give her a checkup, and Team Groza breaks into a Girard lab to recover her, but they are attacked by Darture, another third-generation Doll equipped with a Remolding Pattern that transforms her into a giant combat mech. Groza manages to hold her off using her own Remolding Pattern device. Meanwhile, Kalina barely escapes summary execution from ODE-01's police thanks to Lenna and Leva and flees to Kyiv.
Chapter 5
After being destroyed by Darture and uploaded into a new body, Groza temporarily enters a trance where she relives memories from her lost past. With the help of Dandelion and Peritya, the Commander, Krolik, Nemesis and Colphne manage to return to the Elmo. Back in the Yellow Zone, they receive a signal from Kalina to change their meeting point from Kyiv to an abandoned Sangvis Ferri factory. On the way, they discover that Helena is not a true fully-immune individual and Team Groza are all outfitted with a Remolding Pattern. Kalina's message is revealed to be a fake by Darture, but the Dolls prevail by using their Patterns. Before she succumbs, a voice enjoins Darture to abandon Girard Group and join a new faction.
Chapter 6
After contacting the real Kalina, the Elmo departs for Kyiv. When Groza inquires about the Commander's motivations for helping in a matter that shouldn't concern a bounty hunter, they respond that the ongoing research about fully-immune individuals means their last target while working at G&K might still be alive. The Elmo reaches the underground channel used by the broker Saga to replenish their resources, taking out a Varjager ambush on the way. They take in the T-Doll Vepley and help the brokers defend against a vengeful Varjagers.
Chapter 6.5 (Sojourners of the Glass Island - Part 1)
Continuity note: The events of this chapter happen before Chapter 1, NOT between Chapters 6 and 7.
Punctuation of Friendship, Mysterious Message, Transcender, First Counterattack, If I Still Had a Choice, Second Farewell and Flower of the Heart are prequels to this story. Special Cinema and Halting Station are sequels to this story.
The story is told through Suomi's letters to the Commander. She's now part of a Doll community born from the caravan of a bounty hunter named Allen. After Allen's disappearance, his Dolls rallied behind the T-Doll Ullrid, who leads the community to live in the Yellow Zone independently from humans. Ullrid is able to inspire hope in the community, but is not actually comfortable in her position and relies a lot on Littara, another former G&K Doll, as her strategist. However, the community is slowly dying from lack of resources. A ray of hope appears when they find the abandoned Marley thermal power station, where a lot of Doll equipment is stockpiled. Only the high concentration of ELIDs seems to be in their way.
Ullrid insists that the community decide their next objectives with votes, but more Dolls are abstaining from participating as their situation worsens. Ullrid needs to convince them to brave the ELID danger at Marley instead of going on their way and hope to find resources elsewhere. By chance, Suomi runs into the deactivated body of former elite G&K T-Doll KSVK and brings her back to camp to repair her. After losing all memories of her past, KSVK has been wandering trying to find people who knew her. Suomi and Littara didn't know her well at G&K, but they help her remember the Commander, DP-12, and her true name: Dushevnaya. As thanks, Dushevnaya promises to help the Doll community fight the ELIDs at Marley, which tips the scales during the vote.
While investigating the station, the Dolls discover that it was actually being used by an experimental agricultural project aiming to make Yellow Zone agriculture viable by developing underground cultivation techniques. But when they try to enter the subterranean fields, they are attacked by bots and pursued by an incredibly powerful Creepy Doll. They also discover that the station's cooling towers are artificially increasing the local concentration of Collapse particles to lure ELIDs in the region. All signs point towards the fact that Marley is actually a secret but active human operation, but Ullrid skews the community's vote again by hiding some information and promising that the chances are in favor of the community taking the station by force. When investigating Ullrid's reasons for lying, Littara discovers that the community's resources are actually nearly depleted and that their only other choices are to go to their death in the Red Zone, or abandon their freedom and return to human settlements. Despite uncovering Ullrid's lies, Littara, Suomi and Dushevnaya support her ideals of freedom and her plan to take over Marley.
The next day, the Doll community enters the cooling towers and deactivate them, causing a general attack by the bots and the Creepy Doll. After a harsh battle where Littara is nearly destroyed, the Creepy Doll is engulfed in the explosion of one of the cooling towers and only one of her previously severed arms remains. In the locket attached to the wrist, the Dolls find records revealing her true name, Lambertia, and her apparently unfruitful attempts to complete the cultivation research after the humans abandoned it. Shaken by the deadly battle that reminded her of her past as a prey in a Doll hunting ground, and the revelation that the underground fields are unusable, Ullrid is about to make amend for endangering the community by giving up her role as leader. Littara then finds more hidden reports revealing that Lambertia's efforts actually paid off, and that Marley is so isolated that she wasn't even able to contact other humans to reveal her progress, ultimately making Ullrid's gamble a success.
Chapter 6.7 (Sojourners of the Glass Island - Part 2)
Continuity note: The events of this chapter happen before Chapter 1, NOT between Chapters 6 and 7.
Shadow in the Snow and Deputy Leader are prequels to this story.
After the events at Marley, Suomi is sent on a resource gathering expedition and helps a bounty hunter convoy, in hopes of meeting the Commander to give them the letters she wrote. She's abandoned by the convoy and found by the Elmo, who followed the light of her lantern. By having Suomi on board, the Commander is breaching the Mephisto Agreement forbidding them from staying in contact with their former Dolls, with the exception of the amnesiac Groza. Two months after Suomi's rescue, the Elmo receives an ad about the “Spectrum Bubble-Cart”, a bubble-spewing toy tank. Suomi recognizes the ad as a secret message from Ullrid recalling her to the community, but she decides to wait for a proper occasion to announce her departure to the Commander. Mayling mistakes Suomi's interest in the ad for an interest in the bubble-cart and starts working on a makeshift version.
To craft a situation to announce her leave, Suomi organizes a Game of Kings with the crew, but none of the situations that emerge are what she expected. Mayling duels the Commander in a tactical command simulation, loses and gets too drunk to keep playing, Nemesis gets asked to tell a joke and Groza launches into a monologue about the proper criteria for selecting a tea set. The game ends when combat arises against ELIDs. Later, the Commander receives an ominous email warning them not to keep Suomi any longer, while Suomi prepares a letter of leave for the Commander. She walks in on Mayling preparing the bubble-cart and a mechanical issue causes the entire command deck to become covered in slippery bubbles, causing Suomi's letter to reach the Commander's hands ahead of time. Because the Doll community includes several of their former Dolls, the Commander can't escort Suomi back, but sends Groza with her along with a gift of resources, and they hope the agreement will end soon so they can all be reunited.
Chapter 7
On the way to Kyiv, the Elmo stops by Saga's settlement. There, Colphne meets an ELID sufferer named Crifium, who is claimed to have been involved with her lost regiment. Colphne deletes all her data from the Elmo and goes alone to investigate the cult Crifium has joined to cure his ailment. When they discover that Colphne disappeared, the Elmo crew also come in contact with the cult, and they discover that their beliefs are close to those of Paradeus. Helena and Nemesis also recognize the cultists, but can't communicate well about their past involvement with them. Vepley and Krolik infiltrate the cult and manage to convince Colphne to run away with them. Colphne doesn't understand why the Commander would want to help her, but Paradeus' involvement is a clue that could lead the Commander to settle the “unfinished business” from their time at Griffin. The Commander decides to investigate the “Lady Immore” and the “Lost Cavitas” at the center of the cult.
Chapter 8
The Elmo crew captures the leader of the cult, which the Commander identifies as a Nyto. While fending off the prisoner's attempt to hack the Elmo, Groza briefly makes contact with her virtual cognition image and learns her name: Niter No.249, a lesser form of the Nytos previously encountered by G&K. The lower technological level of the Paradeus units compared to the ones encountered in the 2060s leads the Commander to speculate that the White Faction has not significantly recovered from its fall in 2064. To continue the investigation, the Elmo allows No.249 to escape after secretly putting a transponder on her, and they follow her to a new Paradeus stronghold.
Disguised as cultists, Team Groza and Helena infiltrate the cult and take part in their “purification” ritual, where a Nyto miraculously cures an ELID sufferer. The Nyto then changes Crifium into an ELID monster to attack the Dolls. Colphne attempts to interrogate Crifium about the reason why his Varjager group went out of their way to wipe out her regiment, but can't do anything than kill him to claim her vengeance. The encounter with Paradeus leads the Commander to think that Helena is related to the “Lost Cavitas” that “Lady Immore” is searching for. Back at the Elmo, Colphne apologizes for her past behavior and the Commander gives her the welcome gift they had prepared for her: a uniform from her original regiment. Colphne finally opens up about her past, and the Commander pledges to support her. The Elmo is suddenly attacked by Sextans?, who appears to have forgotten her identity.
Chapter 8.3 (Amidst Wings of Gray)
Growing-Up Emergency Manual, Graffiti Variation, Discordant Pitch and A Fledgling Returns are relevant to the Dolls featured in this story.
As Team Groza is struggling against Sextans?, Lenna and Dandelion contact the Commander. Dandelion remotely accesses the Elmo's systems to enhance the Remolding Pattern, which enables the Dolls to capture Sextans?, and Lenna informs the Commander that Helena must now be transported to Lviv using the intercontinental railway, in order to throw off enemy surveillance. They also make plans to assists Squad 404 in one of their future missions. The Commander and Dandelion catch up after 10 years apart, and Dandelion informs the Commander that “she” has requested that they must again take part in a plan that promises to save many lives, after leading a powerless and aimless life for 10 years. In exchange for the Commander's help, they'll slowly be reunited with more of their Dolls through so-called “chance encounters” until the Mephisto Agreement can be rescinded.
Leaving Team Groza aboard the Elmo to monitor Sextans?, as well as Nemesis due to her newly revealed past as a Paradeus Doll, the Commander, Colphne and Dandelion (controlling a levitating Dinergate) fly by drone with Helena to the nearby railway hub. On the way, Helena hears a voice in her head and intervenes in a battle between the Mangi PMC and a Tumorhynchus Boojum. When the Commander comes to after being knocked out during the battle, Colphne has disappeared and a Collapse storm is approaching. Helena guides the Commander and Dandelion to an Underground Broker tunnel, which they find has been repurposed into a lab where Paradeus is studying the fusion of Collapse-infused plants with animals and humans.
Meanwhile, the Boojum carries Colphne to the railway hub as it attacks it. Colphne is found by Daiyan, Jiangyu and Zhaohui, who had been called there to reinforce the Commander. The Dolls follow Helena's signal into the Paradeus lab and find that she's trapped inside the wounded Boojum, which is being resuscitated by absorbing the bodies of sacrificial cultists. When Helena is liberated from the Boojum, it is revealed that it was a second Helena, designated D-68, that was guiding the Commander in the lab. In a trance, Helena calls D-68 a traitor and claims to be an entity of familiar nature to the Commander. As the Dolls, the Commander and D-68 attempt to leave, Mangi troops threaten to overwhelm them when Centaureissi and Makiatto from Zucchero Café also arrive to reinforce them.
Chapter 8.7 (Bitter Thorns and Daisies)
As the Dolls of Zucchero Café were waiting for the Commander's visit on their way to Lviv, Dandelion warns them of the incident with the Boojum and they rush to reinforce them in a refurbished Griffin helicopter. With Zucchero's help, the Commander, the Dolls and the two Helenas break through the encirclement of Mangi Security Service's Omen special forces. The leader of Omen, Adjutant Lentine, recognizes the Commander from the Battle of Frankfurt and tracks down the Elmo. The Commander and the Dolls return to CHE-02 to hide in one of Springfield's safe houses, and the Commander and Springfield have a heart-to-heart about the Commander's self-imposed exile. Springfield sees the Mephisto Agreement as a trial to test the bond between the Dolls and the Commander, and asks them not to feel guilty for calling on them after 10 years of absence.
The original Helena is stuck inside her box, where Dandelion had to imprison her due to another entity taking control of her, and the second Helena is reluctant to trust the Commander and the Dolls because the Statesec agents who previously tried to protect her died fighting against Paradeus. After hearing about the Commander's background, she opens up and explains that the Helenas were expelled from their place of origin when the “first Helena” attempted to kill her sisters, and that Paradeus has since been using them as icons in their cult communities, and as controllers for the artificial Boojums they are creating by sacrificing the cultists. Springfield and Makiatto agree to transport the box containing the first Helena to Lviv, while the Commander and the rest of the Dolls will return to the Elmo and separately transport the second Helena, renamed Melanie, after assisting H.I.D.E. 404.
On the Elmo, Groza attempts to probe Sextans' neural cloud for information and discovers that she was damaged during a “fusion experiment” to make her body appropriate for hosting a godly entity. The connection also gives Groza a vision of herself assassinating the Commander, which deepens her fears that she may be a sleeper agent ever since she was allowed to return to the Commander after losing her memory. The Elmo weathers Mangi and Lentine's attack, but the situation becomes desperate. Groza is about to conduct a suicide bombing attack, hoping to take out two threats by killing the Mangi troops and herself, but the Commander's helicopter arrives in time to repel the attack. While searching for 404, they rescue Dier, who discovers that Sextans' body is made of Boojum cells which self-repair her mangled body and neural cloud when Melanie approaches her. Due to her data having been wiped clean, Sextans recognizes the Commander as her new owner, and Dier uses her IFF to track down the movements of the Mangi forces and find 404.
Chapter 9 (Aphelion - Part 1)
NOMFA has deployed Team One of H.I.D.E. 404 to determine if Paradeus is active at the border of the Red Zone. Team One comprises Mechty, Andoris and Belka, and is led by Klukai. While reconnoitering, Klukai and Mechty lose contact with the rest of the team and are attacked by unidentified mechs. They then accidentally fight against the 3762nd Platoon of the URNC Survey Corps led by a soldier named Dmitry, who hates Dolls. Klukai escorts Dmitry's forces to a nearby settlement as reparation for the equipment damaged in their altercation, and to restore transmissions, but all relays in the area have been sabotaged. Klukai is forced to pay Dmitry to use the Survey Corps' channel and link back with Andoris and Belka. They notice that the Survey Corps are assisted by Mangi Security Service, the private guns of pharmaceutical company Cecht FABN. As 404 continue their investigations, they answer a distress signal from Dmitry, whose forces are attacked by a Boojum. Just as Andoris was about to kill the Boojum using an experimental cannon built by Dier, a Mangi soldier sabotages the shot and the Boojum runs away. With the danger rating of the area increasing dramatically, Kalina and Leva pull strings to attach Team One to Dmitry's 3762nd Platoon.
Chapter 10 (Aphelion - Part 2)
This story is related to Classified Briefings#Deeply-Buried Crystals.
As the 3762nd and 404 investigate the next area, they find the corpses of the 1364th Survey Corps Platoon carrying a strange set of coordinates. Blusphere continues to send Mangi troops in an attempt to eliminate them, causing ever-mounting losses in the 3762nd and hindering their efforts to restore communications with the outside world. Reflecting on his past as a loyal soldier of General Carter, Dmitry realizes that the coordinates are encrypted using a cypher from his old friend Nikolai, who died with the rest of the 1364th, and follows them to an abandoned sanatorium built into a salt mine near Jahodná. 404 finds unusually big Collapse crystals in the mine as well as the runaway Boojum, which they eliminate. Dmitry carves out of the monster's body a datachip which contains the evidence collected by the 1364th about the Powehi Plan : Paradeus, Mangi and Cecht FABN conducted Collapse radiation experiments on their Unitates followers in the region, using the crystal to control radiation density. 404 and Dmitry realize that the enemy's objective in pursuing the Boojum was to get rid of this compromising evidence while Mangi's troops surround the salt mine and blow up most exits.
Dmitry mounts Operation Smoke Signal, where he intends to sacrifice the 3762nd in order for 404 to escape and reveal the conspiracy. Dmitry's men give up the batteries powering their radiation suits to power Dier's experimental cannon and let 404 blow an exit open, and when Blusphere captures Dmitry and attempts to make him reveal 404's location, he and his men stall long enough for the remaining natural gas in the complex to gather and cause a powerful explosion. 404 manages to exit the mine, but Mangi's troops catch up to them, along with a monstrously deformed Blusphere, as a side-effect of entering her second form while badly damaged.
Blusphere is about to destroy 404 when Groza, Krolik, Vepley and Sextans? intervene in an armored car, having met the surviving members of the 3762nd before their death and followed Mangi's signals to the battlefield. Neutralized, Blusphere starts her self-destruct sequence as well as a region-wide catalysis of the hidden Collapse crystals, menacing to drown the area in radiation. Dier manages to hack her just in time to stop the countdown, and Blusphere's components only produce a flash before she suffers from a neural meltdown. The Elmo recovers both 404 and Blusphere's body, but they find that the flash from Blusphere was a powerful EMP that made the data collected by the 1364th unreadable. Leva orders 404 to travel to Lviv along with the Elmo so they can attempt a recovery of the data and obtain definite proof of the connection between Paradeus, Mangi Security and Cecht FABN. On the conspirators' side, they uncover ties between 404, the Elmo and NOMFA, Cocoon is certain that Stuart Group's EMP has destroyed the evidence, and Blusphere receives a new body.
Chapter 11 (Deep Oblivion - Part 1)
Directly after the incident in ODE-01 during Chapter 4, while the Commander returns to the Yellow Zone, Kalina, Lenna and Leva return to the White Zone of Odesa. They are placed under house arrest while Public Security investigates their connection to the illegal automatons who fought against the Commander's Dolls in ODE-01. Director Kryuger sneaks out Leva's neural data to load it into her original body, so she can join Robella and Soppo of AR Team to prove Kalina's innocence and resume NOMFA's investigation into the Girard Group. Kalina receives an encrypted anonymous message that points the Dolls to a backdoor in the remains of the illegal automatons. They find proof that the automatons actually belonged to the Girard Group, and Kalina is released by Legislator Zimmerman, a member of the Parliament of Odesa.
Zimmerman claims he wants to collaborate with NOMFA's investigation of Girard, as he suspects they're involved in the assassination of the previous Chief of Odesa Oblast. Surveillance footage proves that Sextans perpetrated the murder, before impersonating the Chief's authority and ordering the raid on NOMFA's safe house in ODE-01 where Kalina was nearly killed by the illegal automatons. However, there is no solid evidence that Sextans is acting under Girard's orders yet. Moreover, Girard will be fighting hard against any accusation, since Legislator Rurik, who is also the chairman of Girard, will be campaigning to replace the Chief, relying on the company's good standing in Odesa's public opinion. This is in spite of the company using its connections to the city's government for profit, to the detriment of its economy.
Kalina sends Robella and Leva to investigate the scene of the murder for clues about Sextans. During the mission, the two Dolls come clean about their respective reasons for assisting NOMFA despite their status as independent Dolls: Leva aims to preserve the equilibrium between the political forces of the URNC, which is a source of contracts and stability for H.I.D.E. 404, while Robella wants to keep collaborating with former Griffin & Kryuger allies to search for M4A1. They also start to suspect that the Chief was killed because he was investigating Girard's concealed stranglehold on Odesa. Rurik obstructs the investigation, pretending that the Dolls are breaching the confidentiality of the Oblast's government, but Kalina intervenes and gives Robella enough time to hack into the late Chief's computer and copy its content. In the data, they find a purported email that the Chief attempted to send to Kalina, which points to a locker at a railway station in ODE-22.
In ODE-22, Leva, Lenna, Robella and Soppo discover that they're now considered wanted Dolls, with Public Security pretending that it is due to an error in their systems. They receive the impromptu support of Dier, who was in the city to support his family's supermarket business, and helps the Dolls with his network of delivery trucks and hacking skills. Using the rush hour crowd at the station to their advantage, the Dolls manage to reach the locker and discover it contains a huge amount of illegal Sardis Gold, as well as a forged contract implicating Kalina. With Public Security and the illegal automatons closing in, Leva takes the decision to let Lenna be captured, giving Robella a chance to escape with the contract to preserve Kalina's position.
Afterwards, a furious Rurik confronts Cocoon about her failure to obstruct NOMFA's investigation, as well as Darture's inability to kill the Commander, and Sextans botched murders and fallout with the Claude family because of the events of Chapter 3. Sextans in particular is being prepped for disposal. The obstacles met by NOMFA to reach the locker were only a setup to entice them into the trap prepared by Rurik, but with the contract missing, his plan to indict Kalina has failed and his takeover of Odesa could be compromised. Due to his control on third-generation Dolls technology, Rurik considers his company to be the most important actor of the Horoscope Program led by a mysterious entity only referred to as "it". Rurik particularly despises the company Cecht FABN, the only one of the “Families” of the program willing to directly work with Paradeus, and he considers recalling the Dolls lent to them, Cocoon and Blusphere, if they don't pay a tribute.
Despite having lost Lenna, the NOMFA Dolls gained from the locker an extra piece of intel hidden in ad leaflets inside, which points to an abandoned villa outside of ODE-04. At the villa, they run into Alva, a member of Task Force DEFY who is following her own lead on a private affair. Alva cooperates with Leva, Robella and Soppo, and they find an extensive, seemingly inactive Girard underground research center. They find evidence that Girard has been stealing their third-generation technology from Persica for years, and locate the server room used by Girard to control their third-generation Dolls. They're confronted by Darture, who coaxes Soppo into destroying the server controlling her before unleashing a powerful Doll prototype and wiping out the other servers. After a grueling fight in both the physical and digital world, Leva, Robella, Alva and Soppo manage to escape the complex just before the prototype self-destructs. Outside, they realize that the underground battle has caused severe damage to ODE-04.
Cocoon reports to her actual superior that she has seized Girard's research from the underground labs and that Girard has now lost control over their third-generation Dolls, allowing Darture to shift her allegiance. It is revealed that Cocoon's superior was the source of the string of intel followed by the Chief before his death, then by NOMFA, in a bid to diminish Rurik and Girard's value in the eyes of "it" and lose control of the Lullaby Project, without having to expose Cecht FABN's true role in the events.
Chapter 12 (Deep Oblivion - Part 2)
After the incident in ODE-04, Girard Group equipment across Odesa Oblast have been running haywire, including dangerous security automatons. Rurik tries to conceal the remains of the underground lab and control the damages to the company's reputation and stocks, extorting more funds from Cecht FABN to cover his expenses. Meanwhile, the NOMFA Dolls, including Lenna who was returned from custody, help Fedya's SSA and the PSA to secure the satellite cities. PMC and Railway Corps troops are recalled from the purification and contamination zones in the city to assist. Robella ingratiates herself with a PMC member and former NSU soldier named Pavel by saving his daughter.
As soon as the state of emergency ends, a new crisis emerges when ELID contamination appears to have spread in the Oblast, and Kalina sends the Dolls to investigate the outbreak in the confinement area of ODE-07. They find that the contamination is spreading from the troops that were recalled from irradiated areas, despite their vaccination records showing no anomalies. Robella pressures Pavel for information, and he reveals that most of the personnel working outside the Green Zones are relying on cheap and low-efficiency vaccines due to the limited quantities of official ones. Robella inquires about why Pavel isn't using his NSU veteran perks to solve his personal situation, and he reveals that he actually deserted during World War Three to form his family. Robella fails to seize the opportunity to empathize with his situation, but Kalina does, which convinces Pavel to give them one of the illegal vaccines he had been saving up for analysis. Soppo is sent out to bring the vaccine to a NOMFA lab for analysis. Robella later reflects that "human sensibility" is both a weakness and a great provider of opportunities that she must learn to use, and Kalina praises her growth as a Third-Generation Doll, even though she's no longer considered a viable experiment by Persica.
After finding that the factory that produced the vaccine is near Lviv, Kalina sends the Commander to investigate, since they're also approaching Lviv Oblast where they're supposed to deliver Melanie to NOMFA. Klukai, Andoris and Belka discover that it is an abandoned factory belonging to the Girard Group, and recover proof that it was intentionally producing sham vaccines. From the experiment records and equipment, Leva also starts suspecting that Helena was originally being shipped to this factory to be used as a cultivation medium, before she was intercepted by the Commander on behalf of NOMFA. Kalina orders the Elmo to stand by near Lviv while NOMFA launches the prosecution against Girard. When he learns about the lawsuit, Rurik realizes that the factory originally belonged to Cecht FABN, who had given it to Girard as part of their financial help scheme. Having lost all support from the other members of Project Lullaby, Rurik activates a backdoor that makes every Girard product in the Oblast go haywire, including overloading the experimental Collapse radiation energy generator of Selene Power Plant in ODE-07 to transform Odesa into an irradiated wasteland. Rurik flees the city by air, but is assassinated in his plane by Darture and a Groza lookalike clad in black.
As Odesa descends into chaos, the NOMFA personnel is sent to Selene Power Plant to stop its explosion as part of Operation Xyster. Kalina takes over the rescue operations after the local commander is killed by the rioting droids, while Leva and Robella counter the hacking of the plant to re-enable its cooling systems. While Leva synchronizes her efforts with the human technicians, Robella tries to rush through the operation to return at Kalina's side and protect her, taking the risk to make the situation worse and arguing that winning the battle is meaningless if the people they're close to die in the process. Leva only manages to convince her to follow the plan after Soppo returns and reinforces Kalina. The situation eventually stabilizes and Kalina sends the last convoy of refugees through the Odesa Bay Bridge along with the wounded Fedya, but a last enemy wave led by the black-clad Groza attempts to break through and destroy the convoy.
To protect the civilians, Kalina leads the surviving rescue forces and Soppo against the droids. By staying behind, she uses her position in NOMFA to force the Odesa government's hand, so they accept her request carried back by Fedya: to prepare an artillery strike on the bridge itself despite the risk of tremendous economic damage. Soppo and Kalina attempt to stop the powerful Groza?, who mangles Soppo's body but stops short of killing her, and is similarly reticent to kill Kalina. When Leva, Lenna and Robella arrive, Kalina directs them to conscribe Groza? to the most resilient part of the bridge, before jumping into the water as the artillery strike hits. Groza? survives using a force field and leaves the battlefield, having completed her mission to spread as much chaos as possible.
After the battle, Leva praises Kalina's heroism while lamenting that she's been pushed into the role of a cold calculating strategist. Eager to defend Leva's image, Lenna reveals that Leva actually forgot that she also made a terrible personal sacrifice earlier during the underground lab battle, by losing her memories of UMP40. A month later, Zimmerman is elected interim Chief of Odesa due to his collaboration with NOMFA, most of his opponents dropping out during the investigations into Girard's collaborators in the Oblast government, and appeal to the citizens' desire for stability after the recent string of tragedies. But instead of freeing Odesa from corporate intrusion, he announces that Cecht FABN will take the Girard Group's place as an integrated partner. Zimmerman is revealed to be a member of the Orlog Conglomerate who was in charge of taking down Girard's increasing monopoly on Project Lullaby.
Breaking Butterfly takes place directly after this chapter.
Chapter 12.5 (Intertwined Assault)
After capturing Blusphere's body, the Commander makes a deal with Dier and Sier to plan for a new permanent base in the Yellow Zone to study the Girard Group's third-generation Doll technology and its ties to fully-immune individuals like Helena and Melanie. When the Commander attempts to procure daily resources through Poludnitsa, they learn that prices have gone up because the URNC is tightening surveillance of supply lines. The increased security is caused by the Girard Group's bad batch of ELID vaccines, increasing vaccine prices as supplies were reduced, and forcing the population to attempt importing illegal vaccines from the Yellow Zone, where these vaccines are part of basic survival. Kalina sends resources to the Commander under the cover of a vaccine raw materials transport mission to an isolated location in the Yellow Zone. Kalina elects not to mention the encounter with Groza? in ODE-07.
While delivering the raw materials to an automated factory, the Elmo fends off Varjagers and follows them to their base, finding it under attack by the soldiers of Lonnie from Mangi Security, who aim to recapture vaccines and raw materials. While Groza's team infiltrates the Varjagers' base to steal a batch of vaccines, the overwhelmed Mangi soldiers call Adjutant Lentine for help, and Blusphere also joins the assault on Cecht FABN's orders to destroy the vaccines instead of recovering them. By reselling the raw materials through the Underground Brokers, the Commander confirms that the automated factory relies on both official and stolen materials to produce illegal vaccines. After rescuing Lonnie's teams, Lentine decides to integrate Dolls in her teams in a bid to rise through the ranks and prove herself better than the Commander, requesting a particular former Griffin Doll connected to the Lullaby Project.
Meanwhile, Kalina also investigates the raising vaccine prices and learns about Orphi Hospital, a Yellow Zone establishment known to produce small quantities of a vaccine more effective than official ones. Kalina sends Lenna to make contact with the hospital through one of their patients, a retired soldier suffering from ELID called Isa. Isa's disease is in the terminal stage because she sold all of her vaccines to support her daughter Lily, who's studying to become a permanent Green Zone citizen. Isa managed to avoid turning into an ELID infected through sheer force of will, but she now considers joining the cult of Paradeus for a chance to reach true immunity. Isa receives emergency treatment from the hospital's director, Orphia, who wants to uncover Paradeus' treatment methods to save her own patients. Lenna and Isa agree to infiltrate Paradeus to investigate, with H.I.D.E. 404 on standby to provide support. After passing Paradeus' first “trial” by surviving the ingestion of their anti-radiation treatment, Isa and Lenna are brought into Paradeus' base, where they find experimental human Boojums and recover anti-radiation drugs before the base is destroyed by 404's assault.
Lenna brings Isa and Orphia to the Elmo, where the Commander confirms that Orphia is the one operating the automated factory and producing the illegal vaccines. While Lenna has come to respect Orphia for her efforts to save all of her patients, the Commander is more wary and interrogates Orphia about her ties to Paradeus. Orphia admits that she's been working with both the Varjagers to procure the raw materials and with Paradeus, sending incurable patients to them so they can die as test subjects while holding to some hope. In exchange, Orphia received batches of Paradeus' drugs to reverse-engineer it and copy their technology for her own vaccines, but she still hasn't identified the last key ingredient. When Isa changes into a human Boojum, Orphia controls her using the same kind of special Collapse crystals used by Paradeus to influence ELIDs, and kidnaps Lenna before returning to the factory, where she demands to meet with the Commander.
Orphia asks the Commander to become her backer, using their military power and political connections to enable her factory to run at full capacity, flooding the market with cheap and efficient vaccines to challenge the conglomerates crushing the common people for profit. The Commander refuses and warns Orphia that Paradeus is only pretending to cure ELID sufferers to gain sponsor from people like her trying to save their patients, and from conglomerates hoping to corner the market by obtaining a true cure to ELID. They reveal that Paradeus' real goal is to produce fully-immune individuals to gain control of Relic Technology, and that the patients Orphia sent to them were never used as test subjects for a cure, but exposed to deadly dosage of radiation to screen them for potential immunity. The Commander threatens to kill Orphia if she doesn't cut ties with Paradeus and surrenders all of her research materials, but they're interrupted by a Paradeus attack. Orphia's contact at Paradeus boasts that Orphia is disposable since her research never helped them in their search for producing human Boojum controllers, and reveals that the missing ingredient for her vaccines is tissue fluids from a fully-immune individual, a component impossible to mass-produce. Contracting ELID due to the sudden localized increase in Collapse radiation combined with her constant exposure to infected patients, Orphia admits she was wrong and sacrifices herself to destroy Paradeus' troops, Isa and the other patients turned into human Boojums, and the factory. She grants her research materials to the Commander and her sister Elinda.
Combining the new intel with the data salvaged from the Survey Corps' chip from Chapter 10, the Commander locates another Paradeus base in the Lviv White Zone, where Helena is currently headed. This also grants Kalina conclusive evidence to launch an official investigation into the connections between Paradeus and the Orlog Conglomerate, but she needs the Commander to make a formal transfer of evidence, which will expose their identity to the actors of the conspiracy. In Odesa, Zimmerman negotiates with Cecht FABN to bring the vaccine prices to normal to gather public support and advance Project Lullaby.
Chapter 13 (Corposant - Part 1)
Springfield and Makiatto from Zucchero Squad approach Lviv to complete their mission of delivering Helena O-43 to NOMFA, with the Elmo following close. Outside the city, the Commander receives the unexpected visit of Berezovich Kryuger, their former superior at Griffin & Kryuger now working as NOMFA's director, and the person they respect the most. Kryuger explains that the evidence gathered by Kalina after years of investigations will be used against the Girard Group in court, in order to bring them down and deny Paradeus' main source of funding. The Commander isn't satisfied with this approach since the long process allows Paradeus to inflict more suffering on innocent people and relies on the URNC's administration, which is controlled by the Rossartrists who manipulated the Commander until they chose exile after the Battle of Frankfurt ten years prior. The Commander still accepts Kryuger's accommodation plans, which gives them elevated access to the entire city. The Commander assigns the Dolls of Squad 404, Team Groza, Monsoon Squad and the remaining members of Zucchero Squad to secure their stay in Lviv and investigate both the Girard Group and NOMFA.
Meanwhile, during an operation against a Paradeus lab where they destroy a clone of Chiloveig, who is one of Paradeus' top scientists, Alva and Voymastina from Task Force DEFY learn about Project Eden, a joint project between Paradeus and the Girard Group which requires Helena O-43. DEFY's commander, who is currently in a deep infiltration mission in the Orlog Conglomerate, deploys the team in Lviv to support NOMFA, alongside Kevin and Nele. After successfully smuggling Helena O-43's box in Lviv with Leva's help, Springfield and Makiatto hand the asset over to Kalina's team in the city's outskirts. But despite their measures of secrecy, they're attacked by invisible Automatons and surrounded by Public Security troops led by a Third-Generation Doll of the Girard Group, Igla. Under the pretense of investigating the battle, Igla is stalling NOMFA's team to expose Kalina to ELID and capture Helena's box. DEFY steals the box first to deny it to Girard and flee in the city.
Before DEFY retreats to the sewers, Voymastina, known as the strongest Second-Generation T-Doll, fights one-on-one with Igla, the strongest Third-Generation T-Doll, and is bested. Voymastina argues that Helena is hampering their original mission and that they should eliminate her so Paradeus can't use her, but Alva strongly opposes harming an innocent child. With their original handover point compromised, DEFY contact their commander to obtain new target coordinates, but expose their location to Girard in the process. By calling a favor from a certain woman, Igla remotely opens Helena's box to further slow DEFY down. Alva manages to gain Helena's trust and learns from her that Project Eden is led by a woman who wants to open a certain "door", but they're interrupted by Igla's arrival. Alva decides to fight Igla herself, enticing the enemy into capturing her, while Voymastina evacuates Helena.
Chapter 14 (Corposant - Part 1.5)
After the Commander arrives in Lviv, Springfield reports the fight against Igla where Kalina was hurt, and that DEFY ran away with Helena. At the hospital, the Commander visits Kalina, who is depressed after botching the handover. She laments that her efforts at NOMFA failed to prevent the return of Paradeus and apologizes to the Commander for involving them in the Helena case as an excuse to contact them again. As the replacement of Kalina as NOMFA's field agent, Kryuger tasks the Commander with investigating and protecting Orphelune Girard, the heiress and daughter of the president of the Girard Group, and leader of “Project Eden”. Igla, who defeated and captured Alva during their previous confrontation, is the bodyguard, attendant and confidant of Orphelune, but Zimmerman attempts to poach the Doll for Cecht FABN.
Posing as a journalist, the Commander gets acquainted with Orphelune by demonstrating their interest in her research, while others only see her as Girard's emergency PR tool after the disaster caused by Rurik Girard in Odesa (in Deep Oblivion Part 2). They receive an invitation to her lab where she demonstrates how Project Eden uses Collapse Epiphyllums to convert Collapse radiation from the contaminated zone into electricity, doubling as a decontamination method. She claims that Project Eden came to her in a vision during the Frankfurt Incident. Seeing Orphelune's innocent enthusiasm for her research, the Commander suspects that she's not a member of Paradeus, but is being manipulated.
Meanwhile, Chiloveig fails to break into Alva's Neural Cloud and urgently calls Igla to perform the hacking, which leaves Orphelune vulnerable to an assassination attempts by unidentified forces. The Commander and their Doll forces repel the attackers and protect Orphelune until Igla's return. When Igla learns about the attack, she shoots Chiloveig in the head, but another Chiloveig clone immediately replaces her and claims that she can't be responsible for the attack since she needs Orphelune's help to complete Project Eden. After Igla is gone, Chiloveig explains to Alva that while she's not a genius like her idol Persica of DEFY's late creator Samantha Shaw, she still considers herself superior to them because she's immortal.
At Orphelune's lab, Igla wants to eliminate the Commander, thinking that they're a spy who protected Orphelune only to gain her trust. In response, the Commander comes clean about their goal to track down the origins of the Collapse Epiphyllums used by Paradeus to create artificial Boojums, and asks Orphelune to reveal the identity of her research partner. Like they did with Orphia in Chapter 12.5, the Commander also warn Orphelune that Project Eden is built on the lives of innocents and that her technology will be misused even if her intentions are pure. Orphelune reveals that she was introduced to Collapse Epiphyllums by Chiloveig, but refuses to give up on Project Eden, claiming that her technology cannot be judged based on its origins. Igla returns to Chiloveig and threatens her so she doesn't implicate Orphelune in Paradeus' plans, but Chiloveig points out that Project Eden will necessarily put Orphelune in danger once she gets in the spotlight. Chiloveig instead suggests that Igla helps her complete Project Eden in Orphelune's stead by bringing Helena to her.
While Chiloveig tells Igla that she wants to hack into Alva's Neural Cloud to find Helena's whereabouts, her actual goal is to recruit her into Paradeus. She forces Alva into a Level II simulation where she's confronted by a doppelgänger, who claims that the death of Angelia and RPK-16 were caused by her own incompetence, and that DEFY's decade-long war against Paradeus is useless. With some remote help by DEFY's commander, Alva confronts her insecurities and makes the decision to not give up on her mission and fix the situation she failed to prevent, and to keep fighting for Angelia's ideal against Paradeus and Relic Technology. Alva speaks with a vision of Angelia who praises her growth as the inheritor of AK-12's title of “Snow Wolf” and encourages her to keep "defying" those who oppress the innocent until she finds a purpose beyond Angelia's ideal.
Alva successfully breaks out of Chiloveig's simulation and feigns being weakened to make Chiloveig talk about her objectives while discreetly hacking into the lab's network. Chiloveig promises to resurrect Angelia in exchange for Alva's defection, claiming Paradeus still possesses her consciousness engram. Chiloveig also reveals that her objective for Project Eden is to cultivate "flowers that attract butterflies" to open a "door to a world without pain", similar to the Starfish of the Paldiski Incident. Chiloveig flees after realizing that Alva has taken control of the lab, and Voymastina soon arrives to free Alva. Voymastina successfully stalls Igla while Alva siphons Paradeus' data and the DEFY duo escape, but Chiloveig has tracked Helena's position and captured her while they were away, intending to use her as one of the "flowers" of Project Eden.
A furious Zimmerman calls Chiloveig and blames her for calling Igla away, preventing his men from capturing her during the assassination of Orphelune. Chiloveig retorts that his assassination attempt failed anyway, and that he needs Paradeus more than they need him. A messenger from a Deputy Minister of the URNC warns Zimmerman that he must ensure the success of Project Eden's demonstration to keep the Girard Group afloat, while also delivering Igla to them the next day, or risk losing the URNC's support.
Chapter 15 (Corposant - Part 2)
While monitoring Igla's movements, the Commander's forces cross path with Task Force DEFY and help them escape Igla. With the data she stole, Alva reveals the full extent of Project Eden: by channeling the Collapse energy gathered from Orphelune's plants into Helena, she'll be consumed as the key to activate a Relic device and open a door to Nirvana, and the residual Collapse particles will contaminate Lviv. To prevent a potential enemy informant planted in NOMFA to ruin the operation, the Commander and DEFY decide to raid the Paradeus lab under Girard's local HQ in secret.
Meanwhile, Director Kryuger obtains the full cooperation of Oleg Girard in the investigation of the numerous incidents, in exchange for his personal safety. But when Oleg also surrenders the data on Project Eden, Girard's security forces capture Kryuger and Oleg to ensure Project Eden goes through. This triggers the intervention of the Central Army Group of District Seven of the URNC under the command of Havier Witkin, who storms Girard's properties in the city. Kalina relays to the Commander Havier's orders to disengage, but the Commander launches their raid anyway, knowing that NOMFA doesn't have the full picture of Project Eden and suspecting that the URNC is trying to seize the project for their own gains, just like they opposed Paradeus' destruction in order to control them ten years before.
As the Commander's forces break into her lab, Chiloveig reveals that she designed Helena, a Cavitas Experiment test subject, based on the genetic sequence of her own teacher, granting her the ability of a key to Nirvana. Orphelune and Igla escape the URNC forces and join Chiloveig, who asks Orphelune to start Project Eden, since she locked all of the project's apparatus with her biometric data. Orphelune realizes that her friend and bodyguard have kept her in the dark about the true scope of Project Eden for years, but she's tempted to overlook the betrayal and the sacrifice of lives in order to realize her vision of the future, and escape the URNC's retribution. The Commander pleads to save Helena and not repeat the massacre at Frankfurt.
During Orphelune's hesitation, Chiloveig stole her biometric data and activates Project Eden. An immense flower-like structure made of light emerges from Helena, opens a hole in the sky, bathes Lviv in radiations and causes ELIDs to invade the city. Chiloveig also activates the Boojum cells in Igla, changing her into a rampaging ELID monster to contribute more energy to the door to Nirvana. To cut the power sustaining Project Eden, Orphelune and the Commander locate Chiloveig's true form, a disembodied brain sustained by Orphelune's genetically altered plants. Chiloveig acquired this form after collaborating with William, who granted her the ability to safely experience "death" in exchange for entering Nirvana in his stead. When the Commander attempts to destroy the brain, a passage to Nirvana opens, and Orphelune steps through.
At the gate of Nirvana, Chiloveig is denied entry to the complete archives of the universe's knowledge by an entity called the Clear Voice, who claims Chiloveig's willingness to peer into her own fate disqualifies her from accessing Nirvana. Orphelune, in full control of the local region of Nirvana due to the status of Blessed One she acquired in Frankfurt, confronts Chiloveig and prepares to revert the disaster at Lviv, but she's interrupted by Helena's arrival. Helena and Orphelune recognize each others, having met in Nirvana ten years before, when Orphelune was transported to Nirvana just as she was about to be killed by the explosion of a missile during the Frankfurt Incident.
At the time, Helena, who didn't have a name yet, was bored in the absence of her "teacher", a human living in Nirvana and imparting her with universal knowledge. After talking with the young Orphelune, Helena allowed her to return alive to the real world with a parting gift of immense scientific knowledge, becoming the source of Orphelune's academic success and "genius" image she hated. With her knowledge and the vision of a city taken over by plants received in Nirvana, Orphelune launched Project Eden. Her status as a Blessed One was also why William arranged for Chiloveig to make contact with Orphelune, in order to take advantage of the knowledge she gained from Nirvana and create another "door". Orphelune sends Helena back safely to the real world as repayment for saving her in Frankfurt, which causes Orphelune's life to "roll back", retroactively changing reality and causing her death in Frankfurt. Orphelune also decides to let Chiloveig experience the true nature of life and death, by paying the appropriate price as all Blessed Ones must. She attempts to take Chiloveig with her in the "torrent of consciousness", but is interrupted before they can reach it.
In the real world, Kevin air-drops the powered suit prepared for Voymastina by Nele, which allows her to fight back and prevail over the transformed Igla, but a drone captures Igla's unconscious frame and brings it to Zimmerman, who delivers it to the URNC to secure their partnership with Cecht FABN. After the immense flower disappears and Helena returns to normal, Havier and his troops surround the Commander and accuse them of collusion with Oleg Girard and Project Eden, unaware of Orphelune's existence. They demand custody of Helena, but the Commander refuses unless they receive a guarantee that she won't be used for further experiments. The Earl remotely takes over the negotiations, asking the Commander to decide between becoming a "fox" who seizes opportunities to change the future or a "hedgehog" who attempts to protect the statu quo, the same question he asked ten years before. The Commander refuses to pick a side again, even more certain now that choosing won't help to make the world better, seeing how little it changed in a decade.
The Earl orders Havier to execute the Commander, but Havier gives a different signal to his troops, which gives the Commander's Dolls a brief window of time to use smoke grenades and evacuate the Commander by air. The URNC denounces the Commander as a terrorist, accusing them of attacking Lviv and putting a bounty on their head. The Commander learns of Orphelune's death in Frankfurt, seemingly leaving them the only one to remember a reality where she survived. DEFY, working with "the Organization", the anti-Relic group led by Misha, decide their next course of action against Paradeus with their commander, who's spying on the Orlog Conglomerate while working as Zimmerman's secretary. Some place away, William brings Chiloveig's consciousness back from the "Sea of Death", so she can keep her end of their bargain and talk about what she learned in Nirvana.
The Classified Briefing "Secret Logs of the Lviv Violent Uprising" reveals that Igla retained her memories of Orphelune, and Aida Squad - Mission File LP0524 reveals that most people forgot about the incident in Lviv due to the "reality correction event".
Chapter 16 (Antiparallel - Part 1)
Second Farewell and Ex Umbra provide more context for this chapter.
For a week after fleeing Lviv, the Elmo must run away across the contamination zone to escape the bounty hunters coming after the Commander. Helena's health severely declines and Melanie explains that being used for Project Eden has spent her energy, which needs to be replenished with special nutrients made by Paradeus. As the Commander searches for a temporary base to replenish their resources and launch raids on Paradeus labs, an opportunity appears when Suomi calls for help on behalf of the Doll Community. The Elmo intervenes against the Community's attackers, who turn out to be Mangi Security, intending to obtain information about safe areas in the region.
Being reunited with Suomi for the second time allows the Commander to also meet Dushevnaya for the first time in a decade, but she has lost her memories of their time together at Griffin & Kryuger. When Mayling attempts to repair Dushevnaya's neural cloud, she triggers a program which transmits Dushevnaya's location to her previous owners, Mangi Security. It's also revealed that Dushevnaya's current Mangi designation is "DP-12", the name of her missing Doll friend, instead of the expected "KSVK", Dushevnaya's previous identity. To learn DP-12's whereabouts, Dushevnaya and the Doll Community's mechanic Balthilde decide to join Mangi Security, where they expect to meet Nikketa, another one of the Commander's Dolls currently in long-term infiltration at the company.
Meanwhile, the real DP-12 is secretly reactivated at Mangi Security by Adjutant Lentine. Ten years before, when DP-12 and KSVK left the downsized Griffin & Kryuger and joined Mangi Security, DP-12 collaborated with Lentine, who was also laid off by G&K, since they were both searching for the whereabouts of the Commander. But their collaboration was paused when the Conglomerate attempted to destroy KSVK after she accidentally overheard confidential information. To save her, DP-12 ran away and swapped their designations, allowing the amnesiac KSVK to run away, while Lentine ensured DP-12 only suffered from a memory wipe after being recaptured, before being falsely declared lost in the contamination zone. Using her electronic warfare abilities, DP-12 built a simulated daily life with the Commander and Dushevnaya in the secure base layer of her neural cloud, ensuring her goals to be reunited with them survived every neural reset. In the present, Lentine needs DP-12's hacking and intel processing abilities to gather more information about the next mission given to her by the Orlog Conglomerate, who won't give her any details. To make sure she will help her, Lentine promises to give DP-12 a hidden neural backup of KSVK she made before the incident ten years prior.
When Dushevnaya returns to Mangi Security under the name "DP-12", the Third-Generation Doll Cocoon insists to see her and has her neural cloud reset. Cocoon has been temporarily lent by Cecht FABN to its subsidiary Tlazo Incorporated, the company involved in managing Chiloveig before the catastrophic events of Lviv. Cocoon has been ordered to tamper with Mangi's databases to prepare them for the impending investigation by the URNC, who is sending the Doll Heli in search of data about the incident. Cocoon's goal is to make sure Heli finds no incriminating connection between Chiloveig and Tlazo, Cecht FABN or the Orlog Conglomerate, and to doctor the data to depict Chiloveig as a Paradeus infiltrator who took advantage of the Conglomerate. On top of Cocoon's data tampering, the Conglomerate is also sending Mangi teams to destroy Paradeus labs that could contain incriminating data. Pursuing a personal objective, Cocoon had also altered some of Mangi's missions, sending their teams deeper than expected in the contamination zone in hopes of finding the lost DP-12.
DP-12, whose real name is Helen, meets Nikketa and Balthilde at Mangi. While they search for the backup of Dushevnaya hidden by Lentine, Helen enters Mangi's database to investigate Cocoon's goals. After deciphering Cocoon's intentions regarding Heli, Helen warns the Commander that Mangi has been sent to plant Paradeus equipment in a base near the Doll Community, which turns out to be the nutrients Helena needs. Helen's intel also allows Lentine, who's in charge of the mission, to survive the explosion prepared by the Conglomerate, intended to kill her team to ensure they won't betray them. Shortly after, Balthilde finds Dushevnaya's neural backup and starts reloading it while Helen confronts Cocoon in Mangi's network. Realizing she has found the real DP-12, Cocoon attempts to invade the base layer of her neural cloud. Because Helen served as the model for Cocoon's neural cloud as part of Project Coronal Hole (which explains their many similarities), Cocoon is carrying the simulated daily life created by Helen, and wanted to decipher its origins as part of her search for information about the creator of Third-Gen Dolls.
To counter Cocoon's invasion, Helen reactivates every disabled automaton in the Mangi facility to cause a riot, forcing Cocoon to disengage and focus on the emergency and completing her evidence tampering, but she also manages to find Balthilde and Dushevnaya. Since Dushevnaya has only recovered memories from ten years in the past, Cocoon attempts to convince her she's Helen, but Dushevnaya eventually identifies the real Helen by trusting the instinctual bond she developed with her. Before leaving the Mangi facility in the Elmo's helicopter, Helen is confronted by Lentine, who's furious that a useful Doll is trying to escape her control. As her legal owner, Lentine orders Helen to self-destruct, but she easily ignores the order and even fires at her, considering her loyalty to remain with the Commander. Being less spiteful than Lentine, Helen leaves her with the location of the Mangi brass so she can save them and gain a commendation.
At the end of the incident, Dushevnaya recovers her memories from a more recent backup, and Helen is reunited with the Commander and joins the Elmo crew. Lentine's commendation allows her to add the post-neural reset Igla to her team. Though the unauthorized actions she took in search of DP-12 have been revealed, Cocoon escapes punishment since she perfectly carried out the mission to deceive Heli and the URNC, enabling the Conglomerate to escape scrutiny for Chiloveig's actions in Lviv. However, Cocoon inherited an independent streak from Helen and is not satisfied with her condition as a pawn of the Conglomerate, so she has laced the data with special code which starts subtly altering Heli's cognition.
Chapter 17 (Antiparallel - Part 2)
After Helen boarded the Elmo, Blusphere's stolen frame goes on a rampage and damages the landship's radiation shielding. The Doll Community shelters the Commander and Mayling, as well as their bodyguards Colphne and Helen, in the radiation shelters of their thermal power plant. This gives Ullrid the opportunity to discuss a future collaboration with the Commander in order to ensure the long-term survival of the Community, where vote-based decisions are becoming increasingly cumbersome. When she shows the Commander the automated underground farms producing fresh and uncontaminated produce, the Commander starts drawing up a plan to expand the farm's operations and sell the crops in the contamination zone through their own channels. This trade will allow the Doll Community to strive while remaining concealed from humanity, and the Commander to build influence in the contamination zone and better fight Paradeus. However, before humans can stay in the plant, Ullrid must obtain the approval of the inhabitants, which includes the rest of the Doll Community, who are split evenly on the issue, and another troublesome resident: Phaetusa.
Phaetusa is the original management AI of the plant, who has come to inhabit a Sangvis Ferri Doll frame. She awakened after the Community defeated Lambertia, but allowed them to keep living in the plant in exchange of their labor to produce crops. As a pre-World War Three AI created to serve mankind, Phaetusa wants to help humans rebuild the world, but her goals clash with the other Neural Cloud inhabiting her frame: Sweeper, whom Phaetusa has nicknamed Nyxie. Sweeper is an experimental Sangvis Ferri Doll who was created by Mastermind during the Sangvis Ferri rebellion, and who has inherited her hatred for mankind. Despite their opposed views on humans, Phaetusa and Sweeper still share a strong bond due to the time they spent in the same body.
When Ullrid informs Phaetusa of the Community's decision to shelter the Commander, Phaetusa is elated since the Commander looks exactly like the "ideal human administrator" she imagined. But Sweeper also recognizes them as the Griffin & Kryuger commander who allegedly killed Mastermind and destroyed Sangvis Ferri. While Phaetusa decides to trust the Commander since Ullrid does, despite the difficult past with humans that pushed her to form the Doll Community in the first place, Sweeper is certain the Commander is planning to take control of the plant and decides to act by infecting every Doll, taking control of their frame while trapping their consciouness in the plant's central server. Even Phaetusa and Helen are trapped, and they collaborate to take down the server from the inside.
As Sweeper takes control of the entire Doll Community, she tests the Commander's by tempting them to lord over the Dolls, and has the infected Ullrid question the Commander about whether the Community will end up like Sangvis Ferri. She eventually tries to capture the Commander directly, but they receive the assistance of Dushevnaya, who escaped the infection due to being under repairs. While running away from the infected Dolls, Dushevnaya and the Commander discover the hidden room containing Phaetusa's journal logs, shedding some light on the situation. Sweeper eventually captures the Commander, who sends Dushevnaya to fetch H.I.D.E. 404 for help.
Sweeper hesitates to kill the Commander because she doesn't want to upset Phaetusa, which gives the Commander the opportunity to explain that Mastermind left to Nirvana on her own accord during the Paldiski Incident, and to learn about Sweeper's motivations. Sweeper is preventively trying to stop the Commander from working with the Community because she and Phaetusa had many bad experiences with humans taking advantage of Dolls in the past. The Commander empathizes with her experience, having also been manipulated by the Prometheans. The Commander also thinks that Sweeper's ultimate goal after reviving Sangvis Ferri isn't to destroy humanity, but to find a place to call home again, which is also the Commander's goal through the mutually beneficial relationship they want to create with the Doll Community. The Commander also points out that by taking control of the Community, Sweeper is hypocritically doing the same thing she accused humans of doing to Dolls. H.I.D.E. 404 eventually saves the Commander and captures Sweeper.
Phaetusa offers to be quarantined with Sweeper to ensure her partner won't threaten the Community again, but the Commander insists to demonstrate their good will and overcome Sweeper's prejudice. Helen broadcasts the Commander's discussion with Sweeper to the entire Doll Community, convincing every skeptical Doll to allow the Commander in their midst. As the Commander and Ullrid continue to make plans for the future, a new faction watches their cooperation unfold.
Chapter 18 (Dawnforger - Part 1)
Chapter 19 (Dawnforger - Part 2)
While not classified as a main story chapter as of March 2026, this character event contains critical information for the main story.
Chapter 20 (Chiral Redundancy - Part 1)
Chapter 21 (Chiral Redundancy - Part 2)
Side Stories
Vestigial Display
The Elmo rescues a newly founded settlement from ELIDs, and the residents ask Monsoon Squad to write and stage a cautionary play for the children. Zhaohui and the Commander agree but Jiangyu isn't taken with the sudden amount of work. Varjagers attack while the Elmo is surveying the area and three children disappear. Jiangyu decides to show her stuff as a Griffin elite and infiltrates the Varjager camp to find the children. She discovers that they came to the camp on their own to take back what the bandits had stolen and Jiangyu gives them a practical lesson in moving silently back to the settlement. After the Elmo has taken down the Varjagers, Jiangyu demonstrates her martial arts to the children instead of the stage play, and tells them they can't act on their own until they can reproduce them.
Rhapsody Quartet
Bullet Echo, Homeseeker, Coffee-Flavored Stage, Returner's Determination, In the Firelight and Home is in the Heart are prequels to this story.
As Sharkry is preparing her next concert at Zucchero Café, she accidentally exchanges a box of props while defending a delivery truck against rioting automatons. Back at the café, a Dinergate exits the box and starts rampaging in the kitchen before being hacked. Just as the Dolls discover that the box is full of illegally modified weapons, the city is put on lockdown as Public Security is searching for a weapon smuggler named Farkas. Leva asks for Springfield's help to find Farkas, unaware that Zucchero is already in possession of some of its merchandise. Sharkry decides to keep the modified Dinergate and dresses it like a lion.
The Zucchero Dolls prioritize discreetly moving the weapons away from the café so they don't get in trouble in case of a search. They elect to move them to the nearby harbor full of abandoned warehouses, but as Centaureissi is moving the box, she passes near one of the drop-off locations of Farkas' smugglers and manages to infiltrate the gang. Makiatto follows Centaureissi to the concealed ship that serves as Farkas' base, and a battle starts when Farkas realizes their intrusion. The Zucchero Dolls prevail over Farkas' Flareberus and draw the attention of Public Security to the ship with the fireworks Sharkry planned to use for her show. The incident helps Centaureissi settle on new rules for herself, as she decides that using her weapon again is necessary to protect her friends.
Halting Station
Following the events of Sojourners of the Glass Island and before Suomi's return to the Doll Community, Dushevnaya is hesitating to leave the community to search for her past. In order to repay the community for repairing her damaged body, she declares herself the “Almighty Wishing Machine” and tries to grant the wishes of her companions. She first dives into the database of the Marley Power Plant to find heavy metal songs for Suomi, stumbling on more operational logs from the experimental agricultural project. She then accidentally discovers the recipe for making a fidget slime toy for Ullrid. Afterwards, she associates with Bathilde to grant Lotta's wish of restarting the underground crops project, using the data previously acquired to activate a radiation-cleansing device in the plant. At the end of Dushevnaya's quest, Ullrid asks her to reconsider her decision to leave, and having grown closer to her friends over the course of her “Almighty Wishing Machine” project, Dushevnaya decides to stay and wait with Littara for an opportunity to meet the Commander again.
Echo of Dawn
Click here to read the original version of this story, before its June 2025 revision.
Following the events of Aphelion, Makiatto and Centaureissi from Zucchero Café and Daiyan and Jiangyu from Monsoon Squad have remained on the Elmo. However, Monsoon Squad is still technically commanded by Zhaohui, which blurs the chain of command. Zhaohui wants to come to a proper decision concerning her choice to leave Monsoon Squad or join the Elmo, and takes a solo commission from her underground broker friend Amida so that each member can reflect on their decision separately. Zhaohui's commission involves the protection of the Talia Troupe, and the lead actress, Aida, in particular. She happens upon Aida in a yellow zone alleyway in the middle of being mugged. After returning the stolen bag to Aida, she requests to join the troupe as an assistant and is allowed on by Thalia's manager. The Thalia troupe is touring the yellow zone to perform the play “Daybreak's Oath”, which Aida is hoping to improve by way of collecting more inspiration during her travels - in pursuit of such inspiration, Aida requests that Zhaohui take her to a nearby abandoned city. Shortly after arriving, Zhaohui notices some thugs looking for Aida and quickly neutralizes and ties them up. Zhaohui briefly interrogates them but learns little. At Aida's request, Zhaohui sets the thugs free, allowing them to drive off, and promises not to tell the troupe manager about them.
That night, Zhaohui returns to the abandoned city and follows the tracks left by the thugs' car, eventually reaching a Varjagers camp. There, she runs into the Commander and Groza, who were sent on a separate commission to investigate local Varjager activity. The Commander and Zhaohui agrees to support each others while working on their respective contracts, and the Commander and Groza join the troupe's bodyguards as a cover for their investigations. While they assess the settlement's security, they overhear an argument between Aida and a man regarding a certain "Feris", but the Commander prevents Zhaohui from intervening, not wanting to butt into Aida's private affair or create complications that could jeopardize their investigation. Zhaohui, who has a strong sense of justice, is disappointed in their action. To smooth things out with Zhaohui, the Commander asks Jiangyu and Daiyan to join the mission. Some time later, two rioters attack the troupe and accuse Aida of murder, but reveal that they were only hired to cause a scene and don't know the details of the accusation. The troupe director reveals that Aida's friend Feris, who played the lead role in “Daybreak's Oath”, was killed by Varjagers, and that her parents are accusing Aida of having organized her murder since she was promoted to lead actress after the death of her friend.
The Commander orders Groza to follow the rioters, which leads them to another Varjager camp. While destroying it, Faye, who had been traveling to join the Elmo, serendipitiously joins the attack, marking the complete reuinion of Monsoon Squad. As the Commander takes Zhaohui and Jiangyu to investigate the Varjager camps over the next days, they find that they beat a concerted retreat, an unusual strategy for the bandits, consistent with the more complex strategies they've been using in the past six months. The Commander also reveals that Monsoon Squad is cleared to join the Elmo since Kalina got NOMFA to relax the “Agreement” after the Commander assisted H.I.D.E. 404 a month prior. Daiyan, Jiangyu and Faye want to join the Elmo, but Zhaohui is still hesitating even with her companions pressuring her. A few days later, the Varjagers attack the settlement and capture Aida for ransom. Zhaohui wants to stage a rescue herself, but the Commander stops her, using a less direct and risky strategy: they pretend to be defeated and captured in order to locate and hide Aida before Monsoon can storm the Varjagers' camp.
Before they can leave the camp, Aida suddenly asks the Commander to kill the Varjagers: she noticed their leader wearing Feris' necklace, identifying them as the same group who killed her two months before, and wants to take revenge. During the final representation of “Daybreak's Oath”, Aida uses the necklace as a prop to represent the parting of a friend. Zhaohui asks the Commander why they chose self-exile, and they replied that they didn't want to blindly follow orders. This reason echoes Zhaohui's own choice to quit her former job and live freely according to her own justice, represented by the scars she chose to not repair. Having tested the Commander's moral stance, Zhaohui decides to join the rest of Monsoon aboard the Elmo.
A few years prior, Daiyan met Groza during a commission and had her deliver to the Commander a blue ribbon. In response, the Commander sent Groza back to deliver a pendant in the form of a thunderbolt representing Saint Elmo's Fire as a promise of reunion. Daiyan initially attempts to give the pendant back to the Commander, but finally decides to keep it as a proof of their bond.
Escape from Cyborg
Following the events of Aphelion, H.I.D.E. 404 Combat Team B, which includes Vector, Harpsy, Ruchey) and Welrod, also board the Elmo. While Klukai, Andoris and Belka are out on a commission, Klukai puts Vector, whom she appinted as Team B's leader, in charge of making sure that Mechty is doing the calibration training on her new module installed by Dier. Vector is a diligent leader, but her natural pessimism leads her to accept the issues with her team without trying to address them, in particular her bad relationship with her strategist Welrod. The Commander advises Vector to solve the team's issues by leading the members into a consensus.
It turns out that Mechty has asked Harpsy to gamify her training by applying a game logic AI on top of the training simulation. The situation is familiar to Vector and she disapproves, but withholds her judgement until she can see if the training is adequate for herself, joining Mechty in the game. As they progress, the AI game engine feeds on the two Dolls' neural logs, rapidly increasing the complexity of the simulation. Soon, strange occurrences start appearing, Vector and Mechty start losing their memories, and Harpsy assumes a virus has taken over the simulation. Welrod contacts Dier to help find the source, but he discovers that the AI itself has reached the level of complexity of a Doll and is becoming sentient.
In the game, the formerly friendly NPCs in the form of the members of H.I.D.E. 404 start becoming hostile in a bid to absorb the entirety of 404's neural clouds and reach a "complete" state, and acquire their bodies to experience the real world. The AI appears as an amalgamation of the appearances and personalities of the team, and decides to name herself “Koshmar” (nightmare), the opposite of “Mechty” (dream). Team A returns from their expedition early, and Klukai jumps into the simulation along with the rest of Team B to save the neural data of Mechty and Vector. Klukai forces Mechty to go through an actual training, and Team B, reflecting both on the disregard of the rules that led to the incident and the successful strategies they implemented during the crisis, reach a consensus and a new common perspective.
404 Found
Some time after Belka has officially joined H.I.D.E. 404, she's still searching for ways to get closer to her “Big Sister” Klukai, who keeps her at arm's length. Belka's usual social strategy of appealing to pity and pestering people into accepting her doesn't work with the prickly Klukai, and Belka even gets jealous of Ruchey after she gets closer to Vector thanks to her advice. Andoris suggests that Belka organize a surprise party to celebrate the day of her reunion with her sister. The perceptive Klukai quickly ruins the surprise and gets pestered into authorizing the party, but wants to celebrate the formation of Combat Team A instead of just her reunion with Belka.
The day of the party, the team is pulled into an emergency mission. Klukai doesn't make it in time for the celebration and Belka ends up emptying her battery waiting for her return. Seeing that Klukai isn't bothered to have missed the day of the event, Belka lets out all her frustration and claims she's leaving the team, forcing Klukai to speak her usually concealed feelings. She praises Belka's growth since joining the team and feels like celebrating on a particular day isn't as important as maintaining the day-to-day success and well-being of the team. She gives Belka the hand-made gift she prepared for her, and the two sisters make up.
When showing these memories to the Commander later, Belka admits that her clinginess is based on her fear of losing her found family and being abandoned, and starts using her pestering on the Commander so they always stay by her side, too.
Into the Shadows
Andoris is a service Doll with large data storage capacity, but brittle processes who tend to crash when she has to multitask under pressure. Changing jobs often, Andoris ends up joining Springfield's Zucchero Cafe as a waiter, but her instability continues to plague her work despite her colleagues' patience. One day, HK416 and G11 visit Zucchero Cafe to pick up a package for transport and storage, which turns out to be Andoris herself.
It is revealed that Kalina and Leva visited Zucchero in the past, and Leva decided to recruit Andoris into Squad 404 as an intelligence officer. She convinced Andoris that the cafe wasn't the best environment for her, and that 404 would be a place where she can make use of her strengths while having companions to cover for her weaknesses. By bringing Andoris in 404's base, Leva forces 416 to consider her admission into the team. Despite being overworked, 416 has been reluctant to admit new members in a black ops team that was originally born from desperation. To test Andoris' determination, 416 first challenges her with landing a hit on her by any mean necessary at any time of the day, but Andoris is much too slow to surprise or overpower an elite Tactical Doll. Instead, Andoris sets up a trap with innocuous items and manages to indirectly “lands a hit” on 416 by making G11 trip. Accepting Andoris' persistence, 416 takes her in a duel with live guns.
416 brutalizes Andoris in the duel, stopping short of actually shooting her, so she can realize the constant danger she'll be under if she joins Squad 404. Andoris is undettered and decides to take the admission test, which involves an ambush against a moving target, despite receiving no training with her new gun, a G63K-KSK. Paired with G11, Andoris demonstrates a better situational awareness than her veteran partner, but ends up accidentally shooting G11 due to her abysmal aim. The test demonstrates that Andoris needs severe training, 416 recognizes that Andoris can complement the team and officially admits her into Squad 404. At Andoris' welcome party, Leva and Lenna make a rare visit, and Leva officially transfers the role of team leader to 416 until her mission at NOMFA is done. 416 officially reintroduces her former codename Klukai, and swears she'll lead 404 towards a bright future.
Mimisbrunnr's Loop
- Part I
As the Elmo is under maintenance on the way to Lviv, Springfield finds a commission to test the security functions of Sycca Technologies' new Mopro 1.5 multifunction robots. She organizes a paintball battle royale in the lavish Platinum Resort, and invites some former Griffin Dolls to take part in the trial and reunite with the Commander, since the Agreement has been relaxed. The independent Dolls Peri and Sabrina arrive, joining Lind who was sent by Griffin & Kryuger. From the Dolls already aboard the Elmo, Groza, Makiatto, Sharkry, Andoris and Mechty also take part. The winner of the battle will receive a cash prize, and most of the Dolls intend to use it to buy a gift for the Commander.
Sharkry attempts to ally with Makiatto and Groza, but is quickly eliminated. Makiatto battles Andoris and Mechty while Peri and Sabrina ally to mow down the Moppies, but all five become trapped by locked doors. The disturbance is caused by Lind, who's using Cheeta's invention, the remote universal lock, to trap the other participants and make them easy picking. Springfield and the Commander decide to ban her strategy since it is contrary to their obejctive to train the Moppies, and Lind is eliminated by Peri and Sabrina soon after. Makiatto takes down Mechty, but underestimates Andoris and is eliminated in a draw. Sabrina is eliminated while shielding Peri from Groza's shots, but breaks the rules by continuting to fight the Moppies. This causes a cascading error in the Moppies' logic, and the robots start going haywire. While Peri and Groza trap the robots using Cheeta's gadget, the other Dolls hack into their central system, and after the incident is resolved, Peri emerges victorious because Groza was hit by a Mopro shortly before the bug.
Peri books the resort for an extra day to have a party with the Dolls and the Commander, but during the night, she visits the rooms and shoots her friends.
- Part II
With a few days remaining for the Elmo maintenance, the Commander and the Dolls visit the nearby Underground Brokers annual fair. The organizer, Jakub Zeman, is a former member of Poludnitsa's convoy, before he was kicked out for being too greedy and ignoring merchant solidarity. As Peri tries to gather information and find her mentor, Thompson, Jakub suggests that the Elmo takes part in his promotional rally event, where broker teams compete to delivers goods in time and avoid the dangers of the contamination zone, with each team being tracked by Jakub's Compass system. Peri easily wins the first round, but that same night, the Commander and Springfield notice her slipping into an alley. In the morning, Peri has disappeared and Jakub denies knowing anything about it.
Investigating the alley, the Elmo crew discovers that it contains a hidden backdoor to Jakub's headquarters. Investigating Jakub's past through the information channels she built at Zucchero Café, Springfield learns that one of her contacts, Drachen, was negotiating a contract with Poludnitsa when Jakub approached her with a better offer, evidently relying on a mole in Poludnitsa's crew. Springfield asks Drachen to gather the locations of Jakub's warehouses, while simultaneously contacting Poludnitsa to exchange the identity of the mole against her help in the investigation. Meanwhile, Zhaohui and Jiangyu respond to a distress signal from one of Zhaohui's friends, Aminda, who's also Qiuhua's employer. The two Dolls fend off a trap set up by Varjagers, noticing that they're using the same unusually advanced tactics as they did during Echo of Dawn. The next day of the rally, Poludnitsa allows Elmo crew members to hide in her rally cars to hack into the Compass system, and track its signals.
While the investigation proceeds, Peri is caught in a simulated world where she's relentlessly pursued by a murderous version of Springfield who destroys her core across many simulation loops.
Having assembled enough evidence, Springfield and the Commander get to meet privately with Jakub, thanks to Drachen presenting the Commander as her final client. Springfield confronts Jakub with all the evidence proving he's colluding with the Varjagers to eliminate other brokers and steal their cargo: the B.R.I.E.F. reports showing that his convoys were never attacked by the local bandits; footage proving that the Varjagers were using the Compass system to target the brokers during the rally; CCTV footage procured by Poludnitsa showing that Peri met with Jakub the night of her disappearance; and finally the results of the investigation of Jakub's warehouses, filled with the stocks of other brokers killed by the Varjagers. Threat of violence by the members of Zucchero finally push Jakub to proudly admit to his dealings with the Varjagers in the search of profit, but his mood quickly drops when her learns that his Varjager allies just betrayed him and raided his warehouses, having only cooperated with him to gather more loot to pillage.
Under the Commander's promise to not ruin his reputation by revealing his collusion with bandits, Jakub reveals that he tricked Peri with the promise of meeting Thompson, instead delivering her to the camp where the Varjagers are collecting autonomous weapons and overwriting their authorizations. After she was injected with an overwrite program, Peri received external assistance from a mysterious woman, who introduced a vulnerability in the overwrite program to run a series of simulation loops based on Peri's memories. By allowing a specific member of her companions to "win" the current scenario, whether the battle royale during the Sycca contract or the rally, Peri could slowly build the termination sequence required to end the overwrite program. However, Peri was also forced to kill her friends at the end of each loop to slow down the overwrite, causing the vision from the end of Part I. An error in the process caused the overwrite program to counterattack in the form of Springfield, the most formidable T-Doll in Peri's mind, but she stands up to her regardless to protect the memories of her companions.
The Elmo Dolls raid the Varjager camp where Peri is kept in and help her complete the termination sequence. On Poludnitsa's insistence, the Commander makes good on their promise not to ruin Jakub's reputation, and with the many Dolls reunited aboard the Elmo, they resume the mission to delivery Melanie to Lviv, hoping to get the Doll Community aboard in the future. It is revealed that the Varjagers were under the control of Glasir, a member of Paradeus, and that the voice who helped Peri only saved her to hack into the Elmo's system and gain an access to the outside world, being otherwise held prisoner by Paradeus. Her backdoor planted, she waits for “Nebula Wind” to take action.
Life Rekindled
Soon after the brokers fair incident, the Elmo expects to welcome Qiuhua aboard, but she's nowhere to be found. To investigate her last location, they travel to Darksteel Farm, a well-organized settlement led by Inspector Leo and Expedition Leader Garen. The Commander, Groza and Sabrina are turned down at the gates, but find another way in through the ruins the settlement is built on. On the way, they find a woman who's been shot and leave her in Colphne and Vepley's care. In Darksteel Farm, they learn that the settlement's annual trade fair is being delayed on top of the preparations being disturbed by a string of thefts performed by an unknown party nicknamed the "Nian".
The Elmo crew and Qiuhua are reunited just in time for Qiuhua to bail them out as they catch the guards' attention. Leaving the settlement, they join the camp of the scavengers, the descendants of the original inhabitants of the ruins, then called Sunset Farm. The scavengers ambition to rebuild the ruins and the fields, but have made no progress since their arrival, and acquired a bad reputation after some of their members turned to theft to survive, in turn leading the guards to suspect they're harboring the Nian. Qiuhua met with the scavengers on behalf of a former employer who came from Sunset Farm, and won't join the Elmo until she's caught the Nian and cleared the scavengers of suspicion. Meanwhile, the wounded woman awakens and disappears from Colphne and Vepley's watch.
Reconstructing doctored camera footage, the Elmo crew discovers that the Nian is in fact a group of robots who're stealing supplies and stockpiling them deep in the ruins. After recovering the stolen goods, Inspector Leo hires the Commander to investigate another theft: most of the funds planned for the trade fair were also stolen, causing the fair's delay. The prime suspect is the accountant Delia, whom the Commander recognizes as the wounded woman they found. Tracking her movements on CCTV, they find that Delia has returned to the farm and apprehend her, but she reveals that she wanted to be captured to bring vital information directly to the Inspector: taking over after the previous accountant's disappearance, she discovered in the ledgers that Expedition Leader Garen has been stealing the farm's resources for years. Delia was shot by Garen's men and left for dead after finding the truth, and the Nian was a cover-up to distract the guards from the important hit.
To test Garen's allegiance, Leo insists to go out with his expedition team and the Elmo crew to guide Aminda's convoy (actually Colphne using Aminda's identity) to the Farm. Leo and Garen reminisce about the past, but after meeting "Aminda" and getting the supplies, Garen orders his men to kill Leo. Garen reveals he's long been quietly disapproving of Leo's management of the Farm, based on prosperity via redistribution of resources, instead believing in a might-makes-right approach and that efforts to build stable settlements are wasted. Having confirmed Garen's guilt, Leo calls in his own men lying in wait and the Elmo crew to capture the expedition team members. Garen gives up the location of the stolen funds and warns Leo that his idealism is doomed to fail, before he's executed.
Back at the Farm, Qiuhua explains that some of the plants in the ruins are actually edible if correctly prepared and can be cultivated, helping the scavengers to survive. Before the Elmo leaves, Inspector Leo gives the Commander a special access permit so they can take shelter at Darksteel Farm in the future.
Silvered Whispers
As Yoohee's Sparkle troupe is set to take part in a holidays festival in satellite city PRY-01, she travels to LUB-01 to meet Professor Bowen, a researcher working on artificial snow, on an idea from her senior Sharkry. In LUB-01, she meets her old companions Nagant and Ksenia as they help control a rogue robot who spews cold, slippery foam in the streets. The robot, Lumi, is actually part of Bowen's research. Bowen invites the Dolls to his home as thanks for catching Lumi, and explains that the robot was made by his late wife Renee as part of her pre-war machine learning research. Bowen accepts to help Yoohee with her show, but Lumi runs away before they can make plans. Yoohee finds Lumi entranced by a music box showing a dancing figure before it runs away to an abandoned building.
Yoohee, Ksenia and Nagant manage to catch Lumi after luring it by playing Bowen's favorite song, and enter its systems to take control and prevent it from causing more troubles. They discover that Lumi's overeager data intake has created a cache overflow that confuses its operating logic, and start destroying data packets to bring it under control. In the data, they find memories from Renee, and her last wish to share a dance under the snow with her husband. Seeing the memories, Yoohee realizes that Lumi was actually trying to learn to dance while creating snow to convey Renee's last wish to Bowen. She teaches Lumi how to dance so it can properly convey her wish. The incident solved, Yoohee integrates Lumi into her routine, making the show a great success.
Ex Umbra
This story is related to Classified Briefings#Unanswered Prayers. Thriller Wonderland is a follow-up to this story.
Three years before the events of the main story, former Griffin Doll VSK-94, now called Nikketa, is a member of the Public Security Administration of satellite city ODE-13, and a backer of the local orphanage. Due to her impressive combat performance, Nikketa is regularly scouted by Mangi Security Service, but she prefers to serve with the police to uphold her ideal of justice. During a routine sting operation against a drug ring, she's framed for the attack of another public security agent and expelled from the force. Trying to appeal the decision, Nikketa contacts fellow orphanage backer Inesa Chernova, who's a high ranking member of the PSA's intelligence agency. Chernova reveals she's the one who framed Nikketa to force her to join Mangi and serve as an undercover agent for the PSA, in order to investigate a drug called Vitalis, a sham cure against the shcizophrenia-inducing “Doll Syndrome” which Mangi is suspected to be trafficking based on a photograph taken by an anonymous source.
Unbeknownst to Nikketa, Chernova is actually working for Mangi themselves, who want to gather data from Nikketa's exceptional neural cloud on behalf of their associates developing the third generation of Dolls, the Girard Group. Soon after joining, Nikketa is accidentally assigned to a job for veterans, which puts her in close contact with Mangi's most important cargo. While investigating it, Nikketa learns that her squad leader, David Evans, secretly hates her for being a Doll, and is involved in embezzling a different drug trafficked by Mangi, Erdis (or “Eutis”). Chernova orders Nikketa to ignore the Erdis trafficking to focus on the Vitalis, which doesn't sit well with Nikekta's conception of justice.
With the help of her former Griffin colleagues still working at the PSA, Mosin-Nagant, Ksenia and Nagant, Nikketa continues to investigate David. She learns that Chernova's young daughter Una was in contact with him, and in the warehouse where hestored his Erdis and Vitalis, she also finds some of Una's belongings, which turns out to be the camera that took the picture which started the investigation. Following the route of a suspicious delivery completed by David some months earlier, Nikketa acquires evidence that he murdered Una. Nikketa confronts Chernova about her ties with Mangi, and she admits that someone named “Sharktooh” blackmailed her into making Nikketa join the PMC. Learning the murder of her daughter, Chernova allies with Nikketa to get revenge.
Nikketa willingly falls into a trap planned by Girard to deactivate, then abduct her and David, whom Mangi is planning to kill for his embezzling. After reaching her destination, a Girard R&D lab, Nikketa is remotely reactivated by Chernova. In the lab's computers, Nikketa finds the names of two projects, Nebula Wind and Coronal Hole, and a list of Dolls they want to gather data from, including herself and several former Griffin colleagues, in particular OTs-14 and DP-12. To protect her former colleagues, Nikketa decides to compromise with her ideal of justice in order to keep investigating Mangi, and self-destructs to convince Mangi that she has forgotten all the evidence she previously discovered. Meanwhile, Chernova abducts David and tortures him to understand why he killed Una. It's revealed that David has been suffering from Doll Syndrome schizophrenia, and murdered and mutilated her daughter while transporting her for Sharktooth after becoming convinced that she was a Doll. Chernova kills David and continues to assist Nikketa to complete her vengeance against Sharktooth.
Back in the present, Kalina explains to the Commander that Nikketa will give them intel about Mangi until she can joins the Elmo.
Breaking Butterfly
A week after Zimmerman became interim Chief of Odesa at the end of Deep Oblivion, Lenna, Leva and Kalina prepare their departure for Lviv, where the Elmo will deliver Helena to NOMFA. They're delayed when Leva falls in a coma. Persica discovers that, because Leva damaged her neural cloud during the battle against Chaos and her memories of UMP40 became inaccessible, the program normally clearing the redundant data caused by the persona of UMP40 living in her neural cloud hasn't been running.
Leva (then known as UMP45) and UMP40 were originally two sister T-Dolls infected with the Parapluie virus and sent to cause the Butterfly Incident against their knowledge. At the conclusion of the incident, 40 forced 45 to kill her in order to survive the virus and become a free Doll, directly leading to 45's strong-willed personality, her meeting with Lenna and the formation of Squad 404. In the aftermath of the Great Retreat ten years before the current events, Leva discovered that an OGAS personality had formed in her neural cloud as a result of her Parapluie virus infection, which used the appearance and personality of the late UMP40. With Persica's help, 45 decided to keep this simulation of 40 as a secondary computation core and emotional support.
The most expedient way to save Leva would be to delete the 40 persona, but this would be against Leva's wishes. Instead, Persica sends Lenna into Leva's neural cloud to manually clear the redundant data. In Leva's neural space, Lenna and the 40 persona cooperate to destroy the hostile programs spawned from the redundant data, and meet a Mysterious Girl of unknown origins who wants to devour Leva and Lenna, but is friendly towards the 40 persona. The destruction of the first redundant data source leaves behind a bullet containing Leva's memories of her time with 40. Lenna inadvertently accesses these memories which Leva always refused to talk to her about. The second data source takes the form of a giant hostile program and Persica grants the 40 persona the authorizations to delete data to help Lenna fight. The object left behind after its defeat are 40's dog tags, but the memories they contain are partially encrypted. The 40 persona convinces Lenna to ignore them and move on.
The 40 persona makes a fake copy of the dog tags to lure the Mysterious Girl and defeat her. They find more items related to Leva as they run after her but lose her track near a chasm caused by Leva's degrading neural cloud condition. As they're left without a lead again, the 40 persona suddenly changes her mind and claims the dog tags might actually contain a clue. Lenna, who already felt inferior to the 40 persona in terms of emotional connection to Leva, becomes suspicious of her behavior. She suspects that she's not actually trying to guide her to Leva, and notices that the fake dog tag she created have the same data signature as the other items they found and the encryption on the real dog tags, revealing that the 40 persona was responsible for the encryption.
The 40 persona eventually admits she's been manipulating Lenna into clearing the redundant data so she could free more processing power for her true goal: taking over Leva's neural cloud. She explains that the damage caused by Chaos allowed her to rediscover he nature as a Parapluie virus and that she's now Leva and Lenna's enemy. The 40 persona pushes Lenna into the chasm, but she survives instead of becoming trapped in a deeper layer. Lenna tracks down the 40 persona to the last data source, where the 40 persona shows her what happened at the end of the Butterfly Incident, and reveals she's trapped Leva in an illusion. She then fights against Lenna, expecting Lenna to kill her so she won't take over Leva's neural cloud, but Lenna instead decides to trust the bond between Leva and 40 and search for a third option by breaking Leva out of the illusion.
All the while, Leva has been living an alternate version of the aftermath of the Butterfly Incident, where she can live peacefully with all of her friends. She allows herself to enjoy this dream for a while, but eventually confronts the simulation of 40 who wants to keep her prisoner, saying that escapism is a betrayal of the ideal the real UMP40 imparted her with her sacrifice. Lenna breaks through the illusion and intervenes just as the simulated 40 asks Leva to kill her, but Leva never actually intended to do it, having instead come to the same conclusion as Lenna that a third option is possible. Outside the illusion, Leva reveals that the 40 persona had been trying to convince Lenna she had become an enemy so Persica would go through with the plan to delete her, which would suppress the Parapluie virus endangering Leva's neural cloud.
The Mysterious Girl, who has become more powerful by absorbing redundant data, captures the 40 persona and reveals she's a Parapluie persona like her, but the 40 persona rejects her, determined to reject her nature as a virus and save Leva. Having learned over a decade that the 40 persona is her own individual who yearns for liberty, and considering her a part of her family after receiving her support for so long, Leva rescues the 40 persona and asks Persica for a resolution where she survives. Persica sheds light on the entire situation: when Chaos damaged Leva's neural cloud, an obscure subroutine of the Parapluie virus was activated, which caused a new Parapluie persona (the Mysterious Girl) to be created under the assumption the original one (the 40 persona) had disappeared. As a result, the 40 persona has been severed from the Parapluie virus and the Mysterious Girl can be destroyed without harming her. Lenna gives the 40 persona the new name Lainie to signify she's no longer the ghost of a dead Doll.
A few days later, Lainie is separated from Leva's neural cloud and been uploaded in her own Doll body. She joins Persica at 16LAB to be studied, with the promise to eventually join the Commander aboard the Elmo when Leva and Lenna do.
Thriller Wonderland
This story follows to Ex Umbra.
The Commander awakens, amnesiac and foggy, in a mysterious amusement park called Thriller Wonderland. They meet several other “guests”, including Mia, Fleur, Esme, Michelle and Pauline, who all vaguely remember each other but not the Commander, as well as Florence, a Doll who acts intimate with the Commander. Acting as the park's manager, Florence guides the guests to several attractions, but Mia claims Florence has been making them visit the park in a loop before being taken away by bizarre “clowns” for refusing to participate. Fleur is killed on a rollercoaster, Michelle from drug withdrawal, and while visiting a haunted house, the guests other than the Commander relive a Mangi Security Service delivery run that went wrong and Esme is fatally shot. After each ride, Florence gives the guests a pill that allows them to recover some memories, and the Commander starts piecing out that they're part of a collective hallucination.
At the end of the loop, Florence takes the Commander to her personal clinic and uses a special process so they recover their mental capabilities faster. After Pauline confirms the Commander's theories before being killed in the first ride, the Commander completely recovers. They remember having received a message from Florence and came to the amusement park, which is in fact too dilapidated for the rides to work, to recover samples of Eutis, a hallucinatory drug smuggled by Mangi according to Nikketa's intel. Florence drugs the guests to maintain the hallucinatory loop, while also secretly giving them a counter-agent, revealing that her actions are forced by the orders of the actual mastermind.
The Commander identifies the culprit as Esme, who is sickly and uses a wheelchair outside of the hallucination. Esme only faked her death, and the other “killed” guests are only in a coma after thinking they died. Based on bits of information remembered by the other guests or revealed by Florence, the Commander deduces that Esme is a Mangi Security Doll engineer who developed a form of schizophrenia and adrenaline addiction because of Eutis, and hacked into Florence to make her develop a new form of the drug, called Euphoria. Florence was working as Esme's physician as repayment since she repaired and maintained her frame, but her treatment was hampered by Esme's addiction. Seeking ever more thrilling events to escape from her physical condition, Esme manipulated a convoy of her colleagues to capture them using her “clowns” (actually robots) and force them to participate in the Thriller Wonderland hallucination with her. However, by calling the Commander for help, Florence reactivated their priority authorizations in her neural cloud, countering Esme's orders and allowing her to use her special process on them to break the loop. After confirming the Commander's deductions, Esme forces a neural cloud deletion on Florence, but she again uses the Commander's priority authorizations to counter it. Neither the Commander or Florence are interested in passing judgment for Esme's actions, so they release the guests after curing their symptoms and seize the Eutis for further analysis. Florence decides to complete Esme's treatment for her lingering condition before joining the Elmo.
Turbulent Undercurrent
At Griffin & Kryuger, Frostfall Squad is completing a security assignment against rogue guard robots in the rich residential area of the KYI-09 Green Zone. The team has too little work and its finances are tight due to the tendency of Cheeta and Lind to cause collateral damages. While cleaning up the battlefield, they find an ID card made of rare Girard Group-patented memory-shape alloy, and Lind keeps a copy of the rogue robot's code. To earn extra money, Lind and Cheeta decide to secretly sell the ID card to an Underground Broker, but the broker calls Varjagers to capture them and only Cheeta manages to escape. Cheeta, Qiongjiu and Tololo find the Varjager group and the broker who captured Lind and learn that she's been taken to a luxury cruise ship at the frontier between the Yellow Zone and the Green Zone. Qiongjiu and Cheeta use the ID card to board the ship while Tololo provides remote support. The ship serves as a gambling den for rich White Zone patrons, and Tololo detects the signature of many Dolls on the lower deck. Qiongjiu and Cheeta hack into a slots machine to earn the gold casino chip necessary to access the VIP area and they discover that the ship is actually hiding an illegal Doll gladiator arena.
In the command room of the ship, Lind is kept captive by Karl Holtz, the son of Girard's R&D representative Yakov Holtz. Growing under his mother Celia, a philantropist and toy maker, Karl is considered a failure by the rest of the family. To prove his worth to his fathern Karl wants to use Lind to beat the arena's champion and take control of the arena's betting scene. The champion in question is K-09, a replica of Krolik, one of the most popular Doll gladiators before the Statesec crackdown of 2067. To beat K-09 both in firepower and in spectacle, he specifically sought Lind, using the commission at the mansion to lure her in, after learning her most well-kept secret: she's an experimental UL-SD Doll capable of feeling pain like a human. To force Lind to follow his orders, Karl attempts to infect her with an incomplete version of Girard's BETA virus, exploiting the fact that the virus will still be effective on an IOP Doll like Lind since Girard's own products are based on stolen data. Lind resists the virus but pretends it worked to gain Karl's trust. Her plan works and when Karl leaves her unsupervised, Lind steals confidential files from the ship's systems and spreads the code she acquired in the rogue robots at the mansion to cause all the security robots on the ship to go berserk.
Lind is sent to the arena to fight K-09, but doesn't fight in earnest. Having once been used as a tool and tortured by humans, she wants to free the over 170 Dolls who have been subjugated by the BETA virus and forced to fight aboard the ship. When the security robots go haywire, Frostfall rescues Lind and agree to help her free the gladiator Dolls. Using remote-controlled bombs crafted by Cheeta, Frostfall blows the ship in two parts, trapping Girard's guards on one side before using Griffin's tugboat to steal the part containing the captured Dolls. Lind reveals her origins to Frostfall and apologize for the risks she exposed them to for her own ideal, and they reinforce their trust in each other. Meanwhile, Yakov remotely traps his son Karl in the sinking part of the ship, revealing that he allowed Karl to organize Lind's capture as a last chance to prove himself, but failed in an even more spectacular way than expected since the files stolen by Lind contain ample evidence of Girard's illegal activities. Yakov also reveals that he married Celia to kill her and inherit her fortune, and only sees killing his son as tying a loose end during an already difficult time for Girard after the events involving FABN.
Project Neural Convergence
This is a sequel to the story of Project Neural Cloud. See PNC Story/Summary.
The Elmo and Groza Team are suddenly infected by a novel virus, and Persica comes to the Elmo to intervene. She brings with her Lewis, who works for 42LAB's Doll research division despite her background in toy-making. Persica reveals that the virus, called Entropy, originates from 42LAB's Magrasea superserver. She needs the Commander to enter the server with a consciousness digitization interface to gather the source code of Entropy, which can be used to create countermeasures. While the Commander is unfamiliar with Magrasea, Persica hands them the profile of a 42LAB member bearing the Commander's exact name, calling it a coincidence, and asks them to act undercover under the name of “the Professor”.
When the Professor and Lewis enter Magrasea, they're separated by an unknown entity. Lewis wounds up in Njord Sector, finding it ravaged by Entropy. The Professor arrives near Rossum Sector and is found by PersicariaPersicaria , the Doll assistant of Persica in charge of Magrasea. While defending Rossum against the Entropics and gathering their source code, the Professor and Persicaria discover that the Entropy is using the data from T-Dolls that the Professor knows from the real world. Searching for Lewis, the Professor learns that many of the Dolls from Griffin & Kryuger once lived in Magrasea as part of Project Neural Cloud, and others benefited from the final results of the project. After being captured by the unknown entity, Lewis relives the period when the inhabitants of Magrasea decided to perform a second server reset as a protective measure, separating everyone from each other, and the later process of merging the memories from Magrasea's Dolls back into their physical frame. At the time, Lewis felt that both Griffin and Magrasea had met unfair ends, and joined 42LAB to watch over the data of her companions from the Cloud.
Lewis, the Professor and Persicaria are reunited, having gathered 85% of the necessary source code of Entropy. They're invited by the unknown entity to the remains of the Oasis, where the Dolls used to live while in Magrasea. There, the entity introduces herself as Beelneith and attempts to convince the Professor that the outside world is needlessly cruel and that they should abandon their body to live in Magrasea. Beelneith is an entity born from the data of Project Neural Cloud that Lewis brought back to Magrasea. The data contained the strong emotions every Doll felt towards the Professor, but lacked the memories necessary to interpret these emotions, turning them into possessiveness. To force the Professor to stay with her, Beelneith broadcasts the Elmo's positions to nearby Varjagers and bounty hunters, aiming to destroy it and Groza Squad to cut the Professor's ties to the real world. Finally, Beelneith steals the Professor's authorizations, taking full control of Magrasea and enforcing the Black Box Evolution Theory program to cut it from the external world.
Using her own authorizations as a 42LAB researcher, Lewis allows the Professor and Persicaria to log out of Magrasea, but stays to fight Beelneith, feling responsible for creating her. Since 2% of the virus' source code is still needed to create a countermeasure, the Professor decides to return into the Cloud to fight Beelneith and save both Lewis and Groza Squad. By allowing themselves to be infected by Entropy, the Professor gathers enough source code to formulate the countermeasure, which allows the Professor and Persicaria to invade Beelneith's neural cloud. Inside, Beelneith attempts to use the Professor's memories to convince them to join her in Magrasea, confirming that the Commander and the Professor are the same person, but that they deleted their memories as the leader of the Exiles of Oasis in order to conceal Magrasea from the external world. The Commander isn't swayed by Beelneith's promises of a virtual paradise, having already chosen exile once to escape from someone else's control. Beelneith attempts to convince Lewis and Persicaria to join her in trapping the Professor in Magrasea, being keenly aware that Persicaria's feelings for the Professor are the strongest, to the point that Beelneith's appearance resembles Persicaria because of them. While Beelneith only sees the Professor's exile as a painful separation, the Dolls trust that it is only temporary and necessary to pursue their ideals.
In the real world, the Entropy preventing Groza Squad from defending the Elmo is remotely alleviated by the intervention of the former members of the Exiles, AntoninaAntonina , SolSol , CroqueCroque , EosEos , XinghuanXinghuan , NanakaNanaka and SangomaSangoma . After Beelneith loses control of Magrasea's authorization, more former members of the Exiles connect remotely to provide Lewis, Persicaria and the Professor the necessary operands to destroy her.
The crisis averted, Persicaria and Antonina reset Magrasea to its state before Beelneith's intrusion and bid farewell to the Professor. Due to the sheer amount of sensitive data gathered in Magrasea, its existence must be kept a secret, which in turn prevents the research it contains from positively impacting the real world and the Professor from freely visiting it. The Exiles gift the Professor a copy of the research performed by each sector to use during their own missions. The Exile Dolls hope to be able to meet the Professor in the real world soon, while those without a physical body like Eos want to acquire a frame for themselves. In private, Persica, Persicaria and Antonina discuss who re-introduced the Entropy to Magrasea and to what end, narrowing the possibilities to a spy within 42LAB. Persicaria confirms that she could have handled Beelneith alone using her powers as the Entropic Arbiter, but that involving the Professor ensured that Magrasea wouldn't be damaged in the process.
Advance! Miss Courier!
After the Commander left Griffin & Kryuger in exile, SMG Type 100Type 100Type 100, who goes by the new name Sakura, loses interest in her routine as a mercenary without the Commander to give her advice and praise her efforts. She decides to leave to search for them, and takes a job as a warehouse manager for the logistics company Molniya Express in KIR-03, hoping to one day handle a package related to the Commander. While Sakura's efforts contribute to Molniya's growth, she slowly realizes that her efforts are wasted since she can't find any lead on the Commander, her managers waste all of her proposals to improve work processes, and she gets in a spat with one the couriers, Andrei Petrov, when she refuses to break company policy by handing him a package for an unconventional delivery.
On a particularly busy day, Sakura takes a quick battery-charging nap, but falls asleep on a truck that brings her all the way to the distant satellite city of CHE-03. In the warehouse of the CHE-03 branch, she meets Truck-san, the haughty navigational AI of one of the company's delivery truck. Since there's no truck going to KIR-03 before ten weeks, the company asks Sakura to start working as a courier for the local branch. She gets paired with Truck-san, who insists she calls her “Truck-senpai” while it calls her “baka Sakura”. On her first delivery, Sakura convinces Truck-san to take a dangerous shortcut where she fends off a band of thugs, but ends up ruining the cake she was supposed to deliver, angering the client.
Sakura falls into a rut, but after her training at Griffin & Kryuger saves her and Truck-san from a Varjagers attack during a delivery, she receives praises from the soldiers of the Great Wall Railway Garrison and decides that her efforts shouldn't aim to earn the praises of the people around her, but to uphold the standards of the Commander so that she can be proud of her accomplishments when they meet again. With her new motivation, Sakura improves her interpersonal communication skills and provides reparation out of her own pocket for the previously wasted cake, obtaining the client's forgiveness. She also decides to gather enough money to upgrade her fire control core and Truck-san.
An opportunity to make money arises when Sakura's manager nominates her for Molniya's quarterly “Ace Courier Competition”. During the challenge, Truck-san's experience with deliveries and Sakura's experience with combat enable them to obtain more points by completing difficult deliveries, but Sakura's bad luck catches up to them when they get targeted by Andrei and other couriers trying to get in their way, get stuck in potholes while trying to take a shortcut and run into the same thugs who attacked them during the cake incident. They also lose time when Sakura decides to save Andrei from the thugs to honor Molniya's policy. Andrei confesses that his actions were motivated by his goal to climb the corporate ladder and change the company for the better, but Sakura points out that he can't gather any support with his current attitude. She also meets Springfield, who works with Molniya through Zucchero Café and repeats the praises Sakura receives from management.
At the end of the competition, Sakura and Truck-san arrive in second place, a few points behind Molniya's best courier, Vera Ivanova. But Vera, who is acquainted with Andrei, learned about Sakura's heroic actions during the competition and intercedes in her favor to the judges, who decide to award the title of Ace Courier to both Vera and Sakura. When Sakura returns to KIR-03, Truck-san gifts her a wind chime lucky charm to ward off her chronic bad luck, and have her promise to recruit it when she opens her own delivery service in the future. On the way back, Sakura catches the news of the Commander being declared a terrorist.
Needy Cat Girl Overload
Auspicious Gallop Into Spring
Decanonized stories
These stories originally ran in CN as events, but were later rewritten. The rewrites were added to the story archives in CN and ran in place of the original events in other servers. Translation is only fragmentary in early EN files.
Exotic Cadence
Zucchero Café occurs during this story. Replaced by Amidst Wings of Gray.
Daiyan, Jiangyu and Zhaohui are wandering Dolls, taking odd jobs while traveling between Satellite Cities for Daiyan to gather musical inspiration. When they visit Satellite City CHE-02, the Commander is also there to track down members of the Girard Group on NOMFA's behalf after the Odesa incident, which authorizes them to work with the Dolls of Zucchero Café. Their mission is to capture a woman named 埃丝特 (Esther), a Yellow Zone civilian convinced by Girard's men to carry out a terrorist attack during the upcoming festival celebrating the Purification Project. Esther's men have planted explosives in the Eber, a giant mechanical beast used during the festival.
Esther's men book the restaurant where Daiyan, Jiangyu and Zhaohui work, but instead of celebrating, they start fighting over whether to abandon the attack since Esther is having second thoughts. Just before the fighting began, Daiyan started playing the song 马铃薯花开的时候 ("When the Potato Flowers Bloom"), which she learned in the Yellow Zone, but is actually from the village where Esther and her men are from. Esther takes it as a sign that Daiyan was sent by Girard to intimidate her and leaves the restaurant in a hurry. Daiyan runs after her to interrogate her about the brawl, but she's shot by 弗拉格 (Flagg), one of Girard's men, who was targeting Esther. When Esther flees, she drops her notebook, and the Commander saves Daiyan before bringing her to Zucchero Café for repairs.
The notebook informs them that Esther was from the Yellow Zone village of 乌扎马德奇 (tentatively “Uzamadezh”), which was built by generations of villagers before being destroyed by the Purification Project, leaving many of the inhabitants to die. The Girard Group infiltrated the villager's community and convinced them to attack the festival as retaliation against the URNC, manipulating the villagers as part of Girard's plans to take over the city. Daiyan, Jiangyu and Zhaohui volunteer to help the Commander find Esther and prevent the attack. When they infiltrate the villagers' hiding place, they find that Esther is trying to call off the attack, but Flagg's men are leading the villagers against her. The Dolls capture Esther, who explains her circumstances and helps them disarm most of the bombs. To identify and capture the villagers in the crowd and prevent them from activating the remaining bombs, Esther has Daiyan perform "When the Potato Flowers Bloom". Flagg retaliates by sniping Esther and remotely activating the Eber to crash the parade. Sharkry uses stage dry ice to slow down the machine and give Jiangyu time to hack it.
Meanwhile, the Commander confronts Flagg, who reveals that he once fought for the URNC and considered the Commander a hero for supporting its inception during the Battle of Frankfurt, but became disillusioned after the Commander's exile by the URNC government. He offers the Commander to join the Girard Group to take down the URNC and live a comfortable life in the White Zone, and also promises them the funds to fuel their “Doll fetishism”. The Commander replies that their exile was self-imposed, praises the loyalty of Dolls which humans like Flagg lack, then orders Makiatto, who was lying in wait, to take him and his men down. The Commander is nearly killed by Flagg during a brief close-quarters fight, but Daiyan arrives in time to save them. Flagg attempts to detonate the explosives rigged to the building, but they've already been disabled by Centaureissi while the Commander was making Flagg talk. When the Commander notices the strange color of his blood, Flagg confirms that he's in fact a Paradeus agent with an enhanced body. Before the Commander can wind down from the incident, they have to leave after Leva calls to warn that Squad 404 and Team Groza are locked in combat against the PMC Mangi Security Service. Daiyan gives the Commander a bottle pendant containing a potato flower to remember her by. After a visit to Zucchero Café, Daiyan, Jiangyu and Zhaohui leave for the next leg of their journey.[1]
Datamined version
An unfinished version of the plot was found in Exilium's September 2023 beta in the form of audio files. Because only the voice acted lines were published and not the full text, most of the script is missing. The biggest difference with the final version of this story is that the Commander and Flagg don't appear, so Daiyan, Jiangyu and Zhaohui instead discover the terrorists' plans and neutralize the Eber with some support from Zucchero Café and Griffin. Paradeus' involvement as the true perpetrators is only hinted at by the appearance of their symbol. The character of Esther is instead called 雷蒙 (translated “Ramon” in game files and “Raymond” by fans) but fulfills the same role in the story.[2][3]
Zucchero Café
This story was acknowledged as unfinished by Sunborn and includes only pre-battle dialogues. Occurs during Exotic Cadence. Replaced by Bitter Thorns and Daisies.
As she's out buying ingredients for Zucchero Café, Centaureissi helps a convoy attacked by Varjagers. The convoy leader, who's a patron of the café, pays Centaureissi ten times the normal bodyguard fee to protect them the rest of the way. Before the convoy can leave the contamination zone, Springfield orders Centaureissi to urgently return to CHE-02 to help the Commander, Daiyan and Jiangyu. The Commander asks Centaureissi to hack into Girard's local network, where she finds information about bombs being planted not only in the Eber, but also in the building where Flagg is hidden. The Commander positions the Zucchero Dolls to prepare for entering the building. Centaureissi provides electronic warfare assistance to Jiangyu to take down the Eber before disarming the bombs.
Intertwined Assault
This story was rewritten and replaced by Chapter 12.5.
The Commander asked for Lenna's help for one of their operations. Lenna tried to keep it a secret from Leva to prove her worth to the Commander, but as they're driving through the contamination zone to reach Satellite City MAS-03, she's forced to request her sister's help to repel an electronic attack and to escape pursuit from a group of Varjagers and the defense forces of the Great Wall Railway. After falsifying their identity records to enter the city, Lenna claims she didn't correctly read the time to meet with their client and that's they're half a day early, giving her an excuse to spend time with the Commander.
At night, they meet the client, who requested intel about the Commander, and are surprised that the Commander showed up in person. While Lenna eliminates the client's bodyguards and deletes all traces of their presence, the Commander interrogates the client about their trafficking of chemicals in Odesa. The Commander's goal was to gather intel on their own so they wouldn't always rely on Kalina, but the interrogation yields no new information. As payment for the mission, Lenna asks the Commander to bring her back to the Elmo so she can be reunited with Klukai's team. She hopes that Leva and Kalina can soon also join, so her “family” is complete once again.[4]
Echo of Dawn
This story originally ran on CN in August 2024. When Echo of Dawn was added to the CN story archives and ran as a new event on other servers in June 2025, its script was updated to reflect the changes in other rewritten chapters. The rewritten version also uses new assets: portraits for Faye and side-characters, and the closing CG from Aphelion.[5]
After Jiangyu and Faye accidentally broke instruments in a music shop, Monsoon Squad is forced to live in a minuscule apartment in the Yellow Zone until they can make back the money they lost. While they assess the neighborhood, Zhaohui and Faye help Aida, a young actress who got robbed while gathering inspiration in the Yellow Zone. Aida is a member of the Talia Troupe, a wandering theater who will act “Daybreak's Oath” as a charity play. Since the troupe lacks the funds to hire guards and assistants, Zhaohui offers to hire Monsoon, who has experience in both combat and performing. However, another bounty hunter group, led by a certain 凯利·诺顿 (Kelly Norton) of 劳伦斯安保公司 (Lawrence Security Company) has already been recommended to the troupe.
Desperate for the contract, Monsoon decides to intercept the bounty hunter, but a fight breaks out between them and their two Dolls bodyguards. Faye eventually recognizes them as the Commander in disguise, who wanted to work for the troupe as a cover for their own contract, involving the investigation of nearby Varjagers groups. Upon hearing Monsoon's explanation, the Commander sends Groza and Vepley back to the Elmo and collaborates with Monsoon, supporting each others while working on their respective contracts. While they assess the settlement's security, the Commander and Zhaohui overhear an argument between Aida and a man regarding a certain "Feris", but the Commander prevents Zhaohui from intervening, not wanting to butt into Aida's private affair or create complications that could jeopardize their investigation. Zhaohui, who has a strong sense of justice, is disappointed in their action. Two days later, three rioters attack the troupe and accuse Aida of murder, but reveal that they were only hired to cause a scene and don't know the details of the accusation. The troupe director reveals that Aida's friend Feris, who played the lead role in “Daybreak's Oath”, was killed by Varjagers, and that her parents are accusing Aida of having organized her murder since she was promoted to lead actress after the death of her friend.
As Varjager activity in the area picks up in the following days, the Commander takes Zhaohui and Jiangyu to chase them. The Commander notices that the Varjagers are using more complex strategies than before, and also reveals that Monsoon Squad is cleared to join the Elmo if they want since Kalina got NOMFA to relax the “Agreement” after the Commander assisted H.I.D.E. 404 a month prior. Daiyan, Jiangyu and Faye want to join the Elmo, but Zhaohui is hesitating. A few days later, the Varjagers attack the settlement and capture Aida for ransom. Zhaohui wants to stage a rescue herself, but the Commander stops her, using a less direct and risky strategy: they pretend to be defeated and captured in order to locate and hide Aida before Monsoon can storm the Varjagers' camp.
Before they can leave the camp, Aida suddenly asks the Commander to kill the Varjagers: she noticed their leader wearing Feris' necklace, identifying them as the same group who killed her two months before, and wants to take revenge. During the final representation of “Daybreak's Oath”, Aida uses the necklace as a prop to represent the parting of a friend. Zhaohui asks the Commander why they chose self-exile, and they replied that they didn't want to blindly follow orders. This reason echoes Zhaohui's own choice to quit her former job and live freely according to her own justice, represented by the scars she chose to not repair. Having tested the Commander's moral stance, Zhaohui decides to join the rest of Monsoon aboard the Elmo.
A few years prior, Daiyan met Groza during a commission and had her deliver to the Commander a blue ribbon. In response, the Commander sent Groza back to deliver a pendant in the form of a thunderbolt representing Saint Elmo's Fire as a promise of reunion. Daiyan initially attempts to give the pendant back to the Commander, but finally decides to keep it as a proof of their bond.
Notes
- ↑ There are no in-story time markers enabling to place Breaking Butterfly and Chapter 12.5 - Intertwined Assault relative to each other on the timeline. Based on each story's release date, it can be assumed that Breaking Butterfly took place before Chapter 12.5.
- ↑ Based on each story's release date, it can be assumed that Project Neural Convergence took place before Chapter 16 - Antiparallel Part 1. This is supported by the bounty hunter attacks during Project Neural Convergence, which is consistent with the week of running away from pursuers mentioned in Antiparallel HA-1-1, as well as the absence of mention of the Doll Community in Project Neural Convergence. This however creates a continuity oddity because the Commander's fresh bullet wound isn't mentioned in Project Neural Convergence despite being mentioned at the end of Chapter 15 - Corposant Part 2 and at the start of Chapter 16.