Respectfully, nursery rhymes often have deeper or esoteric meanings other than children’s entertainment – Madam Tobin

Operation Giga Pudding (D+XX hours)

Lillian crashed through a hedge, her breath coming in ragged gasps. The barrel of her rifle glowed red-hot, and it began to strain under the heat.

“Tom-Tom, swap it out,” she ordered between breaths.

In an instant, the rifle was replaced, and fresh rounds began to fire. Bullets pinged off street signs, ricocheting unpredictably. Her legs burned with exhaustion, forcing her to slow down and catch her breath.

Even as she paused, the rifle continued to spit out the occasional shot, relentless in its targeting.

"Must still have... a lock," Lillian panted, hands trembling as she tried to regain control.

Lillian cracked open a pouch and pulled out an autoinjector labeled "stimulant." She removed the safety cap and jammed it into her thigh. The needle deployed, injecting the chemical cocktail into her bloodstream.

Her pupils dilated.

Her heartbeat quickened.

Vision sharpened as a bead of sweat ran down her forehead.

“Back to normal,” she said tightening her grip around her weapon.

After checking her map and reloading her weapon, she raised it, ready.

“Tom-Tom, I need my Ground Pounder,” she said in a single breath. “Only 100 meters from the police substation. Someone better be there.”

Waldo arms extended from her backpack, attaching an M204 underslung grenade launcher to her rifle and securing it with three bolts. An armor-piercing round slid into the chamber with a satisfying clack. With that, she sprinted down the sidewalk toward the southwest entrance of the underground connection hub.

Sixty meters ahead, she saw the entrance. A series of stairs, and a wheelchair ramp, leading downward. The muscles in her legs began to tense up, but alchemical and magical infusion forced them to relax. She jumped on the handrail and slid down to the bottom.

Lying under the four-way intersection of the street was a passageway that was connected by a series of tunnels with graffiti painted on the walls. In the center was the police substation with the lights still on.

Once at the bottom Lillian heard heavy boots on the sidewalk above.

“Okay you think you can take out a Queen Pin so easily, Thornewood?” Lily said as she flicked the safety catch on the M204. “Here’s a thorn right up your…”

Lillian fired the grenade launcher. The round hot the ceiling and concrete crashed down.

As the dust began to settle, she heard Whisper’s voice say, “Ya’ missed”.

Her targeting matrix beeped in her ear—someone was near the northwest entrance. She sprinted toward it, loading a fresh round into her weapon.

Spotting movement in the light above, she fired, reloaded, and quickly fired again.

The air thickened with dust, and she coughed.

“Ha! Ha!” Whisper's laughter echoed from the southeast entrance.

Lillian darted to the other side and collapsed the entrance. As she wiped the dust from her face with the back of her sleeve, she noticed something by the door to the police station—her rag doll.

“Stop taunting me!” she yelled, unloading an entire magazine into the doll.

The bullets tore through it, scattering stuffing and bits of cloth into the dusty air.

“You think you trapped me?” Lillian shouted as she sprinted toward the last remaining northeast entrance. “Tom-Tom, deploy all sentry guns.”

A message flashed in the corner of her vision: *Two systems remaining. Are you sure you want to deploy? *

“Yes, you stupid bot. I want everything.”

The robotic arms sprang out, quickly setting up two machine guns and mounting them on tripods. Lillian checked the sensors. Other than herself, the area was clear. Only the movement of the waldo arms registered.

“Good,” she muttered, activating the motion detection system and moving it to the corner of her vision.

Red laser dots scanned the stairs as the motors smoothly rotated the guns from left to right. She punched in the parameters, setting the left and right firing limits, height, and rate of fire. As the robot arms attached the ammo belts, the red lights of the motion detection system turned green.

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Lillian tossed her rifle to the ground and drew a pair of pistols from her holster. The weapons hummed softly as their electric capacitors charged.

“You might be good enough to dodge one Chainstrike pistol, maybe the guns, but not two Chainstrikes. Nobody’s that good,” she said, checking her scanner again.

Her heart rate slowed as she backed up, wiping the remaining sweat and grime from her forehead. A glint of light caught her eye. She turned to the left and saw a single strip of aluminum foil, drifting in the air like a leaf caught in the wind. Then, another strip floated into view on her right.

“What is this?” she muttered, poking the strip with her pistol.

Lillian was struck by a sharp pain in her chest. She glanced down and noticed a curved blade sticking out of her chest. The internal monitoring system indicated that the ascending aorta was severed.

She considered activating the emergency EVAC system but would bleed out once the blade was removed. Even their best medics wouldn’t be able to stop the internal bleeding in time. She even considered punching out, but the weapon prevented her from that option.

“Stupid Icepick and her Fog of War Machine, I could have radioed for backup, and I’d had twenty teams waiting for me,” Lillian thought, then something had occurred to her. “Why…why am I still alive?”

Lillian stood as still as she could still get out of this, if she offered the right incentive.

“What do you want?” Lillian asked, her face turning white.

The only answer came from the motors of the sentry guns that moved from left to right.

Breaking the silence, Whisper said, “What I want is for you to meet a friend of mine.”

Whisper shoved the doll in her face. The empty eyes stared back at her.

Then Whisper said:

There’s a doll upon the shelf,

With eyes that see more than herself.

She’ll smile wide if you are true,

But frown if mischief follows you.

Her button eyes are dark or bright,

Can peer into your heart at night.

Be kind, be fair, and she will know,

Her gaze will give a gentle glow.

But if your deeds are cold or mean,

Her stare will turn a ghostly sheen.

For in her silence, she can tell,

If you bring peace or raise hell.

Lilly, mind your manners, day by day,

For the doll is watching as you play.

Lillian turned her head, but Whisper grabbed her by her hair and turned her to look into the cold button eyes. The eyes pulled her closer, then the screams began. She wanted to close her eyes but couldn't. Whisper let go of her hair.

“You hear that?” asked Whisper. “Those are the screams of everyone you murdered with your weapons.”

“It’s Battle City, nobody really dies,” Lillian replied.

“Your father’s weapons, Rose Industries,” Whisper said.

“But it wasn’t me! That’s my father’s company…I had nothing to do with his company,” Lillian said, her voice began to shake.

The screams grew louder, more distinct, as haunting images flooded Lillian’s mind. She saw teenagers, school-aged children, and the elderly, all armed with laser rifles, carbines, rockets, and grenades. Men in black tactical suits, bearing a rose emblem on their uniforms, that showed the civilians how to operate the weapons—how to aim, how to kill.

Whisper’s voice cut through the chaos, “Before I joined the Drop Bears, I was an AT-76 gunship pilot. We were ordered to crush the Meade Rebellion.”

More images flashed—old men and women, barely able to stand even with the help of canes, forced to carry backpacks heavy with ammo and explosives.

Teens crouched by windows, rifles clutched in their hands, waiting to fire at passing soldiers. And children, too young to understand the horrors they were part of, dragged out of schools to work in cramped, dim spaces, their small hands shoving X-19 explosive powder into makeshift bombs.

Lillian’s chest tightened. The weight of the war wasn’t just measured in the fallen soldiers but in the lives torn apart, the innocence stripped away. Young faces, once full of hope, now hollow, forced to bear arms for a cause they barely understood, just following orders from politicians who send off others to do their fighting for them. The elderly, who should have lived out their days in peace, turned into reluctant soldiers. The children—used as tools in a war they should never have known.

Whisper's voice grew softer. "There was no victory. Just broken lives, shattered futures."

The ground rumbled caused by an artillery shell somewhere in the distance, followed by the distinctive boom from the explosion.

“My unit was ordered to clear the bridge at the Kaibun Pass. As we approached, the squadron commander spotted civilians guarding the bridge.”

“You’re a liar, we only sold weapons to the military aged!” Lillian cried while tears streamed down her cheeks.

Her hands began to shake which caused her to drop her weapons. Her knees felt weak. The trembling continued setting off her internal monitoring alarms. Her breathing increased and she forced herself to slow down.

“Time for you to see the truth, Lillian Rose,” Whisper said.

The image of a fixed wing gunship flying low consumed her vision. The ship opened fire on the bridge as civilians fell from the heavy weapons.

In the cockpit a young woman with her hair up in a bun, purple-blue eyes and soft features yelled into the microphone for the other ships to begin their strafing run.

“You’re the monster,” Lillian said as the screams filled her ears.

“Then meet zee monster,” Whisper said. “But it was your father who gave the politicians the weapons. The Meade government was ready to surrender peacefully—until your father’s weapons were forced into civilian hands.”

Lillian covered her ears, but the screaming continued.

Tracked vehicles rolled across the bridge as medics checked for survivors.

“You may not have put the weapons in their hands, but you and your family profited off all that death. Who bankrolled your perfume company? Who bought all that fancy gear, hun?” Whisper asked.

Lillian found herself standing in front of her perfume shop on its opening day. She remembered the excitement—the moment her father kissed her on the cheek after she cut the ribbon. The press, friends, and family cheered; their faces lit with joy. But behind the crowd, her eyes caught sight of a small girl clutching a rag doll with button eyes in one hand and a rifle in the other.

The image flickered. A tracked vehicle crushed the doll’s hand under its treads, and an infantry officer bent down to pick it up.

“What a shit show,” he muttered, wiping it off. “Give this to whoever's in charge of this mess and tell’em, ‘She’s your problem now.’”

“Yes, General,” a soldier responded, taking the doll.

The doll passed from hand to hand, finally landing in the arms of a young female lieutenant with black hair holding a piolet’s helmet that had ‘Whisper’ stenciled on the side.

Lillian blinked, trying to clear her vision, then she saw the girl again. Hollow eyes stared back at her, as if her very soul had been drained.

A red dot from the sentry gun passed through the girl’s ghostly form.

“She’s your problem now,” Whisper said coldly.

The weight of war pressed down on Lillian; she reached out to the girl.

Whisper removed her blade from Lillian’s chest. The hollow eyes of the girl tracked Lillian as she slumped to the ground. Then her head was removed in a single swipe by Lullaby. Lillian’s arm remained outstretched as her body turned pale and sizzled away.

“Welcome to my hell,” Whisper said quietly.

***