Flowers That Bloom Between Rusted Wire (Girls' Frontline)

[Grimalkinii]

Alle Verlorenen wandern nicht.​

'Have fun'. That was the standing order. But what was Ameli supposed to do? Sure, there was an old game console and television set up in the corner of the brightly-lit recreation room, and there were shelves full of books covering all sorts of topics from all sorts of author, but she wasn't sure if reading or playing games would really be following the command. So in indecision she froze up, staring at the stark white wall to her immediate front while standing frozen in the middle of the room.

Ten minutes had gone by before anybody else walked into the room -- it happened to be the Commander of this particular detachment of Griffin & Kryuger's operations, a Miss Claire Wolff. Twenty-seven years old, she was a relatively young and inexperienced commander, but she had scored well on the written portion of the exams required for her position; her scores on the practical portion had been slightly worse, but still within the acceptable margins. Of middling height for a European woman and a lean, active build, her dark cocoa-brown bangs provided plenty of contrast for her sharp and bright beryl-green eyes, and both paired well with the job's cherry-colored uniform.

"Oh, Ameli, you're…" Claire took a moment to glance around the room. Try as she might, she couldn't quite figure out what the tactical doll in front of her was focusing so hard on. "What are you doing?"

"I'm, um, I'm trying to have fun," answered Ameli. Her long, charcoal hair and bright yellow-orange ribbon swayed as she turned to face the Commander. Ameli's eyes, whose color always reminded Claire of the delicious blood oranges she was only able to acquire every so often, locked onto the Commander's for only a moment before they swiveled away nervously and focused on the floor.

"Are you sure? You don't look like you're having fun. What's going on down there?" the taller woman answered with a question, crouching down to look the T-Doll in the eyes. Ameli was short, and very much so. Her head only came up to about chest height on Claire, which meant that the Commander was always feeling like she was addressing a child, which was an issue due to Ameli's particular 'design features'. While very short, she had a body most women would kill to have - minus maybe the tiny amount of chubbiness. Her loose black hair was accented by a cute orange ribbon that stuck up like a pair of little rabbit's ears, patterned with tiny, cinnabar-colored hearts.

"Well, MAS told me to have fun, and I was going to play Black Spirits 3 at first, but then I thought I might like to read a book… and then I realized that would take a while and I should play something quick and fun like Slam Sisters, but I saw a comic that looked really cool on the shelf…"

Being this close to Ameli, the Commander was reminded that in spite of the T-Doll's lack of ability to make any sort of decision for herself, she was certainly capable enough to choose hair clips that matched her ribbon to keep her bangs out of her eyes and cute gold-colored earrings for fashion purposes. Claire wondered if that was because Ameli just had several duplicates of each of her accessories so she never had to choose which ones to wear on any given day. "Um, well, what is it that you want to do?"

"I…" Ameli started, in her characteristically slow, deliberate intonation. For a moment, Claire was hopeful that the girl would finally make up her mind. Only for a moment, though, as those hopes were dashed by the follow-up: "...Don't know."

"Ameli." Claire looked straight into the other girl's eyes - which were still looking off towards the floor. "Look at me." And as if Ameli were a mindless automaton rather than a mindful one, her eyes snapped up to her Commander's, staring straight at her. It was unnerving in a way, but Claire soldiered on through it.

"What is it, Commander?" A response at least, but it was just like one you'd get from a…

"Robot. Do you know what separates you from one?" Claire cleared her throat and stood up. She walked over towards one of the two sofas in the room and sat down, patting the cushion next to her. "Come here and sit down." And predictably, Ameli followed orders to the letter, moving from the spot she'd been standing in after several long minutes and taking a seat on the couch.

Ameli was quiet for at least twenty seconds before she spoke up again; during this time, her head turned back towards Claire's and her eyes focused on her again. "No," she remarked forlornly. As if not having an answer for Claire was a failure in and of itself.

"You don't have to look at me anymore if it's a problem for you." The Commander's hands folded themselves on her lap, her attention focused on the T-Doll sitting next to her. Ameli's head slowly and unsurely moved away to stare at the floor again. Claire took a deep breath and started: "Robots follow orders. They don't know how to stop following orders. If you tell one to do something, they just keep doing it until they either can't anymore or until they get a new order. They don't know to stop performing the old task - they just know to perform the new one." She paused for a moment to let the other girl take in what she was saying. "Let me ask you this. What would you do if I asked you to boil an egg? What would you take away from that?"

Ameli thought for a moment, during which the low, dull whir of the rec room's heaters powering on could be heard, preventing the space from being in total silence. "I would get an egg, boil some water, and boil the egg… and take it out when it was done."

Claire nodded. "Right. You'd think if I asked you to boil an egg that I was going to eat it." Ameli nodded back, a soft hum her sound of acknowledgement. "The difference between you and a robot, Ameli, is that a robot would just keep boiling the egg until it was inedible." Again, Claire paused, both for dramatic effect and to let the words sink in. She was something of a diva like that. "I want you to think about that. That's not an order, it's just something I want you to think about."

Ameli's face twisted into a mess of puzzlement. "What do you… mean?" she questioned, an unnatural pause in the midst of her sentence. "I don't --"

"You do. You can make me an egg properly, can't you? Then you can decide whether you want to think about that or not. Okay? Now go ahead and play a game - I have some paperwork I have to attend to," Claire explained, standing from the couch before heading out of the room without a word from Ameli.

As for the T-Doll, she got up only after a few moments and sheepishly made her way to the stack of games. She didn't manage to pick one out before another T-Doll - Type 11, a happy-go-lucky sort of girl who always had ideas about what to do for fun - walked into the rec room and offered to play Digbuild with her.

---

Der Hirte betet nicht für seine verlorenen Lämmer - er sucht sie.​

MAS-36 had never known the meaning of 'dressing down'. This may have been a result of having been a cosplay model in her civilian life - so accustomed was she to wearing extravagant outfits that those at this particular outpost often joked that if she was ever seen wearing relatively normal clothes, it was probably one of her old costumes. And this snowy, frigid night was no different. While most would have sufficed with a sweater, MAS' tall, slim body was garbed and wrapped in a dark scarlet cape, lined with white faux fur at the bottom; her slender legs were clad in white thigh-high boots, and atop her head sat a tiny silver filigree crown, offset to one side - it was actually held in place via a hairband so it wouldn't slip and move around. Under the cape she wore a white sleeveless button-down collared shirt, completed with a red necktie, and a simple but effective navy-blue skirt.

What made this getup even less practical was that she was wearing it at 1 A.M., meaning she was either going to sleep soon in all those clothes, or she was going to have to undress and change into pajamas - an unwelcomely laborious process to anyone but MAS. She sighed with a particular air of warmth as a lock of her purposefully loose snow-white hair, the tips frosted with an electric blue, fell in her face. With practiced grace it was brushed away and tucked behind her ear, leaving her to focus on the task at hand. Her similarly blue eyes spelunked the interior of the refrigerator once more before she found what she was looking for, retrieving a bag of bright green Granny Smith apples. She spun around with a flourish and placed the bag down on the crowded island countertop behind her - there were bowls, utensils, and other ingredients like cinnamon, flour, milk, eggs, and sugar on top of the marbled grey-and-white surface as well, and some of it had to be shoved out of the way to make room for the apples. Soon the oven had been preheated to a toasty two-hundred degrees and a baking sheet had been lined with parchment paper, ready to prepare the strudel.

***

Ameli was sitting up in one of the outpost's two common rooms. 'Outpost' may have been the wrong word - it was constructed as a full-blown base, but most people called it an outpost due to its remote nature in the mountains and because its number of staff was more reflective of a small installation than anything truly capable of projecting force. Many rooms were often left empty, used as storage rooms, or repurposed. Ameli was in one of those repurposed rooms now; refurnished with comfortable cushioned chairs, sofas, and small coffee tables, decorated with rustic multicolored floor rugs featuring patterns of elk and bears, and a large window that gave a panoramic view of the surrounding mountains. It was replete with a coffee maker and a small cast-iron woodstove - the former currently brewing a pot, and the latter of which was crackling earnestly - and as such truly gave off a fantastically comfortable feeling that made one almost forget they were in a militarized zone. That rustic, cozy touch had been the brainchild of the base's own Ninety-Six Eleven.

The footsteps coming from the hallway emerged out of the ambient humming of the base's electric appliances and the whipping of the mountainous winter wind at the window, and very shortly their source was made apparent to Ameli. In walked MAS carrying a silver tray with a plate of pastries upon it, with a certain cadence to her footsteps that complimented her extravagance. The smell of strudel and baked apple wafted through the air as MAS set down the tray on the countertop next to the coffeemaker, and she set about pouring two mugs. The first she left black and bitingly bitter, and the other, heavily sugared and creamed until it barely resembled coffee at all. With a call over her shoulder, MAS acknowledged the other girl in the room: "Ameli, dear - how would you like your coffee?"

From Ameli, there was a predictable silence, broken by 'um's and 'uh's every few seconds. The caped woman clicked her tongue as she begun to make it the same way she had made her own, and when finished both mugs were placed on the tray and brought over to the chair in which Ameli was seated; the tray was placed on a coffee table in between Ameli's chair and a second chair, opposite the ribboned T-Doll. MAS tapped Ameli's mug on the rim, signifying which was hers for the taking. For some reason it mattered to MAS. She sat down in the empty seat, picking up her own mug from which she took a long sip, followed by a satisfied sigh. "I made the strudel for us to eat, you know," she mentioned as if to a child as she picked one of the pastries up and bit off the end, chewing and swallowing. Almost like magic, there were no crumbs or filling to be found on her face.

The unsipped cup of coffee lost that status as Ameli reached for it and took an experimental sip of it. Her expression soured slightly as the sheer volume of sugar in the drink hit her tongue; this was accompanied by an involuntary noise of displeasure. MAS raised an eyebrow in response, and Ameli put the mug down gently. "Sorry… don't like it. Too sweet."

"Oh, is that so? My apologies, dear, but you did insist on leaving it up to me," MAS explained matter-of-factly. "Next time, please do speak up. Go ahead and take a strudel aux pommes," she insisted, taking another bite of her own, reducing it to half size.

Ameli did so and cautiously bit into the pastry, and this time seemed content with the pairing of sugar-crusted strudel and tart apple. "Ehs hud," she said through a mouthful; her usually colorless tone seemed to have some life breathed into it by the tasty treat.

"Of course it is," MAS smugly replied. "But I fear I must be awfully Machiavellian with you. I did not call at this hour simply to make you strudel and judge your taste in coffee." Ameli did not respond, but tilted her head as if to say 'huh?'. MAS continued, in that sophisticated, elevated way she always did: "I wish to ask if you would be so kind as to take my place tomorrow. I've a patrol assignment, and it seems I forgot all about it and promised I would accompany Kolibri on her patrol tomorrow night. I am loathe to do two patrols in one day - as I'm sure most are - so could you be a dear and take my place?"

Ameli stared straight ahead at MAS, without answering for a few seconds, as she did sometimes - MAS had to admit it was somewhat uncomfortable. "Is that an or--"

"Come now, dear, you know I don't give orders. I humbly request," she proclaimed, "and the world moves." A facetiously humble smile graced her face, and it looked completely natural on her. "It is entirely up to you. There are plenty of other girls I can ask. I simply thought you may be the best choice."

"Why me?"

"Why not you? You are free, are you not?" It was true - Ameli was free tomorrow night, and had no patrol duties assigned to her then. She bit her lip nervously.

"I am…" And then she was silent for what felt like an hour. Throughout those several moments, MAS was quiet, save for the drumming of fingers on the mug of coffee she held in her hands; Ameli fidgeted and played with the hem of her skirt, fingers working frantically to try to distract her mind from the decision that was now hers to make. Nothing would save her now - not MAS relenting, certainly. That was definitely not in her nature. She would sit here until she had to leave for her duties, if need be. And finally, hoarsely, meekly, as if a croak from a dying man - "I'll do it." She stared down at the coffee she had not touched and remembered its sickeningly sweet taste.

"Excellent. You're such a dear, Ameli. This will, of course, mean that I owe you a favor after this."

"...Could you do it for me now?"

"Oh, how unexpected, holding me ransom now." A melodic giggle from MAS, accompanied by her leaning forwards in her chair. "And what does my savior have to ask of me? A chaste kiss, perhaps?" And then a stifling of laughter.

Ameli blushed. "N-no, of course not. I wanted to ask… what you thought a robot was."

"Oh? That's simple. 'Robot' comes from the Old Church Slavonic word 'robota', which was used for peasants who were obligated to perform labor under the feudal regime. Although the superficial meaning of the word changed over time to mean automatons and contraptions and the like, it never lost the meaning it originally had." MAS took the last of her coffee in a slow sip and placed the cup back down on the tray. "That being 'subhumans that do the work those considered human do not wish to trouble themselves with'."

Ameli allowed herself to take this in, and tried to wrestle internally with the difference from the Commander's definition. MAS noticed the strained look on the other girl's face but did not bother to interrupt her thought processes. Ameli opened her mouth to speak, stopped herself and closed it, and then after some hesitation opened it again. "That isn't what the Commander said…"

MAS smiled sweetly. "Oh, Ameli, dear. Nobody is always right about everything, you know. Not even myself." Ameli's eyes slowly found themselves wandering across the room, but they inevitably found their way back to staring at the cup of coffee, which by now was likely room temperature.

"After all," MAS continued, "I thought a blue ribbon would suit you much better when we first met, but now I realize orange is absolutely your color."

---

Und von Zeit zu Zeit, finden die Verlorenen ihren eigenen Weg zurück nach Hause.​

If there were a single word to describe Kolibri, it would be 'ostentatious'. Not in the same way as MAS; Where she was quiet and at the least pretended to be somewhat reserved - almost like a princess holding audience for some important matter or other - Kolibri was loud, flamboyant, and outspoken. Ameli was reminded of this as her attention was abruptly pulled away from staring at a particularly fascinating rock on the side of the pathway by Kolibri: "Come on, we must arrive at the checkpoint straightaway!" Ameli sighed as her focus turned to the other girl - just a smidge shorter than Ameli herself, although she insisted on wearing a tall white shako cap - and picked the small stone. The piece of gneiss with well-defined white bands was stowed in one of the black pouches strapped to her thigh with care.

Rock collecting was something of a hobby for Ameli. As strange as it might seem to the other girls, it did not require any complex thought or decision-making: if she saw a rock she liked, it was collected. In fact, this patrol had been a fairly lucrative haul for her hoard. The collection only became a problem when she ran out of space, and even then she had devised an ingenious system to allow herself to keep gathering in spite of its ever-expanding size: she simply gave the cherished stones away to whoever would take them, often as a gesture of friendship. Kolibri had already been the recipient of several; mostly assorted common rocks, but the one that stuck out had been a rough quartz crystal.

Ameli fell back into place directly behind the other girl with about three meters' distance between them. Each step she took caused the ammunition feeding into her weapon to clink and clang softly against each other, almost like windchimes. Kolibri's long, fluffy flaxen hair swayed as she turned to face Ameli, presumably to check if the latter was in tow. In the blackness of a moonless night lit only by handheld oil lanterns, it was hard to see her grayish blue eyes even from this close; it was, after all, nearly midnight. "Are you ready? Then let us be off! Vormarsch!" Kolibri began to stomp up the rough dirt pathway with vigor once more, humming some jaunty tune to herself all the while. Ameli thought that the way she did so was very much like the leader of a marching band of some sort as she followed suit, albeit with much less gusto.

For a while, it was quiet save for the rhythmic footfalls on the dirt road, the jangling of bullets from the weapon slung over Ameli's shoulder, and the soft roar of the river that ran alongside the road. Ameli was reminded of how nice these night patrols were when they weren't being shot at; the calm and quiet of things, while not particularly interesting, allowed her mind to wander without worrying about this choice or that, and having an assigned path to follow eliminated the need to worry even further. Eventually the path came to a series of twists and turns with many branching roads, and though Ameli peered off into the night to see what may lie down them all she was met with was the blackness of night. They were not on the assigned route, after all. Kolibri, for her part, navigated with excellency, leading Ameli on like a leashed pet with exclamations of 'Links!' and 'Rechts!'.

Eventually, the two came to a rest stop on the banks of the river. Though it was dark and cold, the lantern provided some comforting light in a radius several meters wide around the group. Even in the night the girls could tell the river was clear and clean and the water likely freezing cold. Kolibri had placed the lantern down on the ground and taken a seat, legs crossed; soon, with all of it strewn out on the ground in front of her, she began to check over it. "Kompass, check. Karte, check." Kolibri looked over at the lantern, nodded, and continued. "Laterne, check."

Ameli sat down to the left of Kolibri and placed her weapon on the ground to her right, placing it between the two. She removed the loose ammunition from one of her thigh pouches and put it in front of her. She glanced over towards Kolibri and stared blankly. "Um…"

"What is it, Frau Ameli?" Kolibri took her attention off her equipment to answer, her namesake weapon in her hand. It was extremely diminutive - too small to even hold with one's entire hand, it would have to be gripped awkwardly between the thumb, the index, and the ring finger. Because of this, it was usually kept on a lanyard around her neck, displayed over her usual olive-and-white long-sleeved dress, as something of a decorative necklace; for protection on any sort of real assignment she often carried a more practical, reasonably-sized pistol.

"I, um, well… aren't your tights going to get dirty if you, you know... sit on the ground?" Ameli pointed to the other woman's slender legs, which were accoutred in what used to be pristine white tights that hugged her body; now, though, they were sullied by dirt and grime, and though Ameli could not see it she was certain that the other girl's rump was going to be even worse off.

"Ah! An excellent observation, mine astute acolyte," Kolibri started, her hand making a wide, flourishing gesture, "but one you need not worry about. I will simply change them if they are ruined, and if they are not… why, I will change out of them anyway!" Ameli nodded slowly as if she understood what Kolibri was getting at. "By the way, Liebste Ameli, I have heard you want to know what a robot is. Would you like my answer to that wonderfully difficult-to-answer question?"

Ameli was taken aback for a moment. Had MAS told her about her questions? Or had the Commander? Either way, the question had not been on her mind before, but now that the opportunity presented itself… Ameli still hesitated, but responded after a brief pause in the conversation. "Yeah. I think so." This was emphasized by a nod.

"Well then, listen closely! I am about to bestow upon you just a drop of my ocean of profundity. It's very simple, really. A robot is anything that does not have an… ah, what is the word in English… oh well, I will simply explain myself." Kolibri cleared her throat and closed the hand holding her namesake into a fist, which was placed over where her heart would be, if T-Dolls had them. "A robot is anything that does not have an Innerer Schweinehund. What is that, you may ask?" Kolibri smiled as she spoke; she enjoyed explaining concepts and thoughts like this to people, especially if she thought of them as fact. "It is the inner beast of all thinking things: laziness. Simply put, a robot is anything that does not have laziness."

"Um… so people can be robots? If they work all the time and don't take breaks, I mean…" Ameli put a finger to her lips, as if this took a great deal of thinking to internalize.

"Of course! People can absolutely be robots." Kolibri's smile remained.

"Then what about animals? Can they? That might be a little odd, though…"

"You may think so, mein kleiner schatz, but you would be mistaken! A dog, or a bird, or an ant - they may all be robots," Kolibri proclaimed, smile widening, "Ants most of all."

As Ameli processed this way of thinking she bit her bottom lip, 'hum'ing quietly. "What about… a river? Can that be a robot?"

"Ho ho. So astute, my student, in trying to trick up the teacher. But I have an answer for you." Kolibri was positively beaming at this point; she was having the time of her life. "Of course a river is a robot!" She swung her closed fist outwards and away from herself, towards the waters of the river and opened it for dramatic effect. The strategy was certainly effective and shocked both Kolibri and Ameli as Kolibri's little namesake pistol was flung into the river.

With a shriek of horror, Kolibri stood up and made a mad scramble to the water - accidentally kicking over the lantern in the process. The glass globe was smashed by the impact, and as Kolibri cursed in a language Ameli didn't really understand, she whipped her head around looking for a stick or any sort of implement to hook onto the lanyard as the pistol floated lazily down the stream; it was certainly too far out to just reach out and grab. "Ameli, pick up the lantern, plea -- AAAH!" Kolibri screamed out as a sudden gust of wind kicked up, scattering the paper maps that had been laid out on the ground into the air. "Nein, Nein, grab the maps! The maps, Ameli!" Kolibri jumped and dashed around around, trying to grab them all out of the air as the wind lifted them higher and higher out of her reach.

Ameli was paralyzed. She never thrived in situations like this; one order was fine, but when several were given and only one could be carried out, that was no better than being left to decide for herself. Her mind raced, clouding her judgement and bringing in the familiar feelings of hesitation, of anxiety, of fear. In spite of that, she found herself rising to her feet anyway, a single thought coming to the surface in the back of her mind as the memory of last night's coffee bubbled to the forefront.

A robot is something that can't do anything without being told to.

Ameli bounded towards the riverbank, springing off her feet and into the glacially-cold water with an awkward flair and a loud splash. She heard Kolibri scream something - what, she didn't hear - and paddled her way towards the pistol that the other girl had flung haphazardly into the river. Ameli lunged for it once and failed, the momentum of her movement dunking her head under the surface of the river. Undeterred, she lunged for it again, this time feeling her fingers slip into the lanyard. She clamped her hand around it and begun to paddle her way to the riverbank, grabbing an exposed tree root. Using it to pull herself up onto the shore, she sprinted back to Kolibri using the light of the knocked-over lantern as her guide and found her friend holding a few of the maps in her hand, though she was certain a few were missing.

Kolibri stared in awe, not taking her eyes off of Ameli as she bent down to right the lamp. Ameli held her hand out and Kolibri hers, the pistol being placed in the blonde girl's slender hand. The water dripped from Ameli all over, causing loose locks of hair to bounce upwards every few seconds as droplets of water fell from them. "Ameli… did you just… no, no." Kolibri smiled broadly, genuinely, full of warmth. Not just because she had her little treasure back, either. "Aus dem Grunde meines Herzens, my friend Ameli. Thank you."

For what Kolibri could swear was the first time, Ameli truly smiled back.

***

The next day, Claire was doing her rounds when she found Ameli in the recreation room once more.This time, however, she was not staring blankly at a wall, paralyzed with indecision - she was playing a game with Kar98, one of those two-dimensional fighting games. "Ameli, Kar. How are you two? Getting along well?" Kar 98 nodded, her long white hair bouncing, refusing to take her attention away from the screen. "What game is that?" Claire asked, attempting to get some sort of response out of either of the two.

"Innocent Cog," Ameli answered as her character on-screen was defeated by a powerful flashy attack. She and Kar98 turned their heads to look at Claire.

"Oh, Kar. I didn't know you were into those sorts of games. I thought you liked those real-time strategy ones. You know, Steel Hearts and those kinds of things."

"I'm usually not, Commander," answered Kar98. "But I wasn't sure what to play, and Ameli," she said, with some confusion apparent in her voice, "suggested it." Claire, with similar befuddlement, looked to Ameli.

She answered without words and without hesitation. She answered with an expression that neither the Commander nor Kar could ever remember seeing on Ameli's face before as long as she'd been at this outpost.

She answered with a smile, warm as a night by the fire and bright as December sunshine.

---

Not all who are lost wander.


The shepherd does not pray for his lost lambs, he seeks them.


And from time to time, the lost find their own way back home.





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