Down south of the UCNA base was a wide open field filled with a variety of vegetation. There was little reason for anyone to be wandering around here but today it was visited by those who were in search of a great beast, or the skeleton of one.

“Alrighty then, a couple more miles of this and we’ll be able to find the Loch Ness.” Silver’s voice travelled across the plains as she slowly walked further south.

“Really? That’s great I’m getting tired of all this walking.” Annie, who was unable to understand the sarcasm, replied.

Today was their turn to search the area while the others hold down the fort. They weren’t obligated to help the researcher but due to a majority vote Silver was roped into it. They didn’t even try to wake her up to ask for her opinions on the matter which ticked her off. She was now forced to go outside during a war every other day in search of some lake that may or may not be there and her sole companion was one of the newbies.

Silver thought about kicking a rock but was too lazy to go through with it and decided to just sigh. The group had a shared digital map that they would continually fill out every time they headed out with the main goal of finding any noticeable depression in the ground. The map itself was a 3-d model that fully captured the area that each of the androids manually scanned. They had to make do with what they had at the base to set it up, though all of the hard part was done by Engie.

“The weather has been really nice lately!” Annie looked down to her travelling companion.

“You’re saying that as if you’ve been here for more than a week.”

“Well if we wait until tomorrow do you think I can say it?” The giant android earnestly replied.

“I- well… yeah I guess.” Silver admitted defeat. The short time she had spent with Annie had made her realize that she was missing some key components in the head department. She didn’t want to say it out loud because the girl could easily twist her like a balloon animal.

“So this time do we go right or left?” Annie placed down her machine gun and made an L shape with both of her hands.

“What?”

“My left hand makes an L so I know its left while my right hand makes a backwards L so I know it’s right.” Annie quickly explained.

“No I meant what do you mean by this time do we go right or left?”

“The direction we’re going this time.”

“Do you mean east and west?” There was a slight tinge of annoyance in Silver’s voice.

“Yeah that’s what I said. Right or left.”

Silver stopped in her tracks as she glared at Annie who turned around and tilted her head at Silver like a puppy wondering if it had done anything wrong. She barely interacted with her fellow base dwellers before the incident but if even a slight fraction of them were anything like Annie she would have probably lost it by now. She reminded herself that she can always retreat into her room and watch anime after they make it back to base.

Silver took a deep breath and replied. “Last time we went west, left, this time we’ll be going east, right.”

Annie confidently nodded her head as her own logic slowly warped Silver’s words into a more digestible sentence. She turned southwards and once again held her hands up, paused, and then raised her left hand even higher.

“Right we go.”

The plains continued on and on as the two kept walking down the path. The further they went the more flat the ground got, there was no possible way for them to find anything that appeared even close to a hole in the ground.

“Even with the past two world wars no one wanted to bomb this place.” Silver was surprised by how untouched the area was. “If no one had found any purple dust here it would probably have went ignored for a few more decades.”

“That would most likely be the case.”

A voice came from behind the two girls that caught both of them off-guard. Silver quickly turned around and raised her gun at the direction of the voice only to see Engie who let out a small yelp as she faced down the barrel of the gun.

“Huh?! What are you doing here?” Silver lowered her weapon as Engie recovered from the shock.

“I was with you the entire time…”

“Wait hold on, Annie were we supposed to go today?”

“Did we go yesterday?” Annie looked at Silver puzzled. “I think we went yesterday cause I remember us seeing that weird rock.”

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

“Oh you have got to be kidding me… how are we supposed to do this when there are five of us and we go in groups of two at a time?” She attempted to remain calm as she tries to keep track of the schedule, of where in the past seven days did they screw up. As she was doing the math in her head Engie spoke up in a meek tone.

“Hey I, um, I volunteered to go out whenever I can. It’s actually two groups of two plus me.”

“Okay okay that makes things easier. So if you tagged along most of the time were we out yesterday?” Silver gestured to both Annie and herself.

“Yes.”

Silver sat down on the grassy field and leaned back. She had wasted her entire morning, all her precious time went down the drain as she used it to look for a mystical Scottish creature in the middle of North America. As she contemplated what she would have done if she had stayed back Engie adjusted her gear and looked up at Annie.

“Should you be carrying that thing around?” She pointed at Annie’s machine gun that she was lugging around. “What we’re doing is recon so you could have brought a smaller weapon.”

“Don’t worry! I also have my pistol.” Annie raised the big gun in the air with her left arm as she uses the right to reach around for her other weapon.

Knowing it was pointless to continue an argument with the giant, Engie crouched down to try and talk with Silver. As she looked into her defeated eyes which kept staring into the blue skies above, Engie tried to come up with something that would snap her out of it.

“So, uh, how’s the weather lately?”

Silver slowly turned to look at the smaller android, there was a long pause as the two stared at each other for an uncomfortable amount of time. Meanwhile the larger android quickly looked back and forth at the two of them as she wasn’t sure what to do. A few seconds pass before Silver got up.

“Yeah okay let’s get this over with and go home.” She checked the time. “Only about an hour left of wandering aimlessly.”

She continued going east as the two recruits followed behind.

“Hey sis did you bring any snacks?” Annie pointed at the large backpack that Engie was carrying. “You sure did bring a lot of things.”

Silver hadn’t noticed it before but after taking another look at her she noticed that Engie wasn’t carrying any weapons, at least from what she can see.

“You’re carrying all that stuff but you don’t have a gun on you?”

“I just thought we would find the lake faster if I carried surveying equipment around.” The girl gestured to the antenna sticking out of her backpack. “This scanner allows us to retrieve more information from our surroundings and can cover a larger distance then if we were to do it by ourselves."

“What if we get jumped by those US soldiers? Are you going to beat them to death with your bag?” Silver exclaimed.

“All this equipment weighs as much as my carrying capacity, I’d be slowed down if I carried anything more.”

“I don’t think those guys are even looking for the Lock Nest Monster anyways why would they try to hurt us?” The other two stared at Annie wondering how much she actually understood of their situation.

“Well if we do get attacked can’t you do that thing? You know the, um, thing you did back then when we were attacked.” Engie tried to find the right words to describe the ability that Silver showed off when they were last under siege by the US soldiers. Glowy and sparkly were the only things she could think of as she thought back to that display of speed.

“Oh you mean when I shot electricity out of my ass? Yeah I guess I can do that.”

Annie raised her right hand. “Oh oh can you do it now?”

“No, but we can just toss all our weapons into a storage room if all we are concern with is finding this lake.”

Silver waved it off as the trio continued down the field. The map was now more filled out but nothing of any interest shown up, it seemed like this venture was another bust. Several minutes passed as they continued silently walking. A soft breeze blew Engie’s braided hair off her shoulder as she took in the view. When she was told that she would enter a warzone she didn’t think that she would be able to see a scenery like this, a warm and calm plain full of flowers gently swaying in the wind.

“Hey try to keep up!” Silver snapped at her.

“Oh I’m sorry.” She held tightly to the straps of her backpack and quickly jogged up to the other two. “Silver, I was wondering are you able to do those things because of the Golem System?”

“Huh? What are talking about?”

“Oh sorry… I went ahead and checked on your records. Since you were created four months ago that means you were built on the Golem System right?”

“I guess. I don’t pay attention on things like that.”

“I can’t do anything close to what you do since I use an older system, it’s a variation of the Leclair’s Hybrid System that improves my task management abilities.” Engie explained to the group. “You also use the Golem System too Annie, can you do something similar to Silver?”

“I don’t think she can.” Silver chimed in as Annie tries her best to transform.

“Hmm interesting. I’ll check out Miley and Catherine too once we get back.”

Silver checked the time to see if they can start heading back yet, only 30 more minutes left before they can give up. As she turned her head to the side to check on the other two she noticed figures in the distance. She stopped in her tracks as she motioned for the others to look at the figures.

“Hold on are they enemies.” Silver keeps a hand on her rifle as she continues to eye the figures. “There’s a lot of them, way more than the ones that attacked our base.”

“Can they see us?” Annie worryingly looked at Silver.

“Well considering we are in an open field, we can see them, and a few of them are already staring at us I think I have to go with yes.”

“The uniforms they are wearing don’t seem like they belong in the military.” Engie pointed out. “Should we go up and talk to them?”

“Engie we are in the middle of a war and a bunch of strangers, who outnumber us by the way, have shown up wearing weird outfits.” In her mind Silver was thinking hard on what to do next, should she tell the others to run away? She quickly threw away that idea as they could track them back to base. Could she even take all of them? There were quite a few of them but this open field gave her an advantage. As she judged the options available to her Annie’s hand grabbed onto her shoulder.

“Hey I think their waving at us.” She pointed at one of the figures who was indeed waving at them.

“What?”

“Maybe we should go talk to them.” Annie shook Silver back and forth.

“I think it’s worth a shot.” Engie took a few steps forward and looked back at the two.

“Alright you should do the talking we’ll try to cover you… I guess… if anything goes wrong.” Silver loosened her grip on her rifle and let it hang down on the straps.

Though she wasn’t fully mentally prepared Engie stared forward towards the figures and took another step. “Well here goes nothing.”