“Now that I think about it, World War 4 was pretty rad.”

“What the fuck does that mean?”

On the second floor of a building, a loud conversation erupted between two soldiers standing watch from a window. The first one to speak wore standard gray military gear with the sleeves rolled up, she had long brown hair with the bangs swept to the side, and dark blue eyes. The second wore a large gray cowl over her white military outfit, her blonde hair was tied up and she had thin rimmed glasses that accentuated her violet eyes. Both had a red and white armband with a moose head icon on their right arm signifying that they were part of the United Countries of North America Army.

“I- I mean like it was over pretty quick compared to 3 and so much cool stuff happened.”

“Yeah and literally everyone got fucked over.”

“It’s better than 3 is all I’m saying.”

“Everything is better than World War 3 that’s an earth shattering low bar to have Cath.”

The first soldier was named Catherine and the second was named Miley. They were both stationed at Fort Long Road Bravo which was set up by the United Countries of North America (UCNA) six months prior in order to extract resources from the surrounding area.

Miley turned away from Catherine in order to ignore her better but a thought crossed her mind. How long has she been here? She recalled that she was placed here the moment the base was established but it felt longer, she took a quick glance at the girl next to her. Catherine was her junior since she arrived around 3 months ago. She let out a sigh as she looked around the empty base.

Because it was meant to be a center for gathering and transferring resources, it wasn’t exactly up to snuff in terms of a military base. It had a reception room with couches and a vending machine. To the northern and southern parts was a long stretch of dorms, large windows were added with the intention to brighten up the atmosphere. The only rooms that seem to be any useful in a time of war were the medical bay and the monitoring room. Most of the rooms ended up becoming a dumping ground for the soldier to place stuff they didn’t want.

There have been attempts to reinforce the base but every single time they would give up because it was too much work. She let out an even bigger sigh.

“I guess the base is sturdy enough…” she whispered to herself.

This mission should have been a cakewalk. The only problem was that the resources are located in an unoccupied region in the middle of North America this wouldn’t really be that bad if not for the neighbouring country to the west, the United States of America, setting up their own operations in the area.

“Cath be serious with me for a moment, how screwed are we?” She said turning back to Catherine. “Like would we be better off if we just give up and run?”

“Ehhhh I say we’re fine, we made it out of that fight! And look none of my limbs are missing!” Catherine enthusiastically waved her arms around much to the annoyance of Miley who only shook her head and looked down the hall.

“Yeah but everyone else didn’t, they’re dead.”

“No, Silver is alive.” Catherine raised a finger as if to make a point.

“Yeah alright, the three of us are alive and everyone else is dead. Holy shit I couldn’t ask for a better outcome!”

“You don’t have to be a dick about it.” The brown haired girl paused for a bit, her face contorted to what looked like an expression of thinking. “Hey this whole living and dead thing, can it really be applied to us? Ya know, considering we’re robots.”

These two girls and everyone else stationed in this somewhat flat stretch of land in the middle of nowhere are androids. Androids were first created before World War 4 specifically for combat, but post-war different types of service androids were made to help out the surviving population of humans. Both of them were service androids who were reconfigured for combat due to cost, to Miley this meant that they were just slightly better than the average human at ending someone else’s life.

“Don’t get all philosophical on me. If you’re running around like a jackass I would count that as being alive and if you’re lying on the ground with holes in you, you’re dead.”

“Oh so like if you have normal human features such as a nose and ears and are also lying down, you’d count that as dead? No wonder we rarely see Silver outside her bed!” Said Catherine with a sly smile.

“Shut it.”

“Hey Miley would girls be more dead than dudes since they have more holes? Or is this a gender by gender basis kinda thing?”

“You know what? Forget it, I don’t care anymore.”

They proceeded to stand there in silence for the next minute staring out the window, both of them having no clue what to do next. They were sent there to secure the region in order for the resource extraction team to come in, but the appearance of the US base really screwed things up. This base once held 92 people 4 days ago and now it’s down to 3 with no one in command. Miley looked down and pondered about what the enemy will do now. She didn’t know how many US soldiers survived the conflict and whether they would be fit enough to attack this base soon.

“Hey you think we could call some people down for a party now?” Catherine looked at Miley with a hopeful expression.

“Goddammit.”

The US soldiers were probably better off than us she thought to herself.

“THE USA WINS AGAIN. USA! USA! USA!”

In another location far across the field, loud chanting could be heard. A short girl with short red hair was celebrating.

She had just cracked open a bottle and was jumping up and down, her red eyes gleaming with joy. The battery cells on her bandolier bounced up and down as well, clanging on her worn-down green metal chest plate. Her name was Savage and she was the leader of the US troops stationed at this outpost.

“USA! USA! USA!”

Two more girls joined in on the cheering. The taller one with asymmetrical medium black hair and gray eyes was called Reaper, she was wearing a long black cloak over her brown uniform as well as a large sniper rifle on her back. The other one was named Sweeper who had a bob-cut and eyes that were both brown in color, accompanying that look was a brown military scarf.

“Uhhhhhh guys, didn’t we just lose a lot of people?”

A voice rose up through all the chanting, it came from Dealer. She had pumpkin-coloured hair that she had done up in pigtails to match her orange eyes and was wearing the standard issued green uniform of the US army. Her face was in disbelief that her team would be celebrating after that spectacularly terrible battle.

“Always the downer Private Dealer, where’s your spirit? This is a US victory!” Savage said as she poured the drink into glass cups.

“Yeah, the Captain led us to a historic victory over those UCNA scums.” Chimed in Sweeper.

“Yes and I guess we, as the four survivors, get to celebrate. Woo…” Dealer weakly shakes one of her arms in the air.

“You didn’t help out at all though.” Sweeper shot a glance at Dealer who turned her head away. “The first moment the enemy started firing you fell to the ground and pretended to be dead until the battle was over.”

“Don’t rat me out! And I’ll have you know I dived into a ditch to gain a tactical advantage.”

“What tactical advantage?”

A smug grin appeared on Dealer’s face before she turned back to Sweeper.

“Everyone that wasn’t me got shot and killed, me being alive is a tactical advantage for this team.”

“I would’ve killed you for mutiny.” Said Savage. “But I’m too happy to do that, so Private Reaper please put a bullet in between Private Dealer’s head.”

The grin was struck right off Dealer’s face and replaced with a scared look as she turned to her would-be killer. The girl in black slowly reached for her rifle.

“Come on guys I’ll make it up to you I swear!”

“Heh it was a joke calm down.”

“Oh.” Reaper quietly said as she quickly put her rifle away.

Dealer breathed a sigh of relief as Sweeper patted Dealer on the back, Dealer noticed that she had a small smile on her face. With that done Savage ordered everyone to take their seats around the kitchen table before starting the meeting.

“To answer Dealer’s question on why we are celebrating, let me remind you that this base had 74 people stationed at it. The UCNA side had 92 according to our Intel. Meaning that they lost 97% of their soldiers while we only lost 95% making us the victor!”

“You know, the most surprising thing from that is that we have intelligence.” Remarked Dealer.

“Ahem!” Savage brought everyone’s attention back to her. “As the leader of this base I thought it would be a great idea to recognize the effort of some individuals. The MVP goes to Private Reaper, whose astounding kill count led our humble team to glory. For that I’m promoting you to Private First Class Reaper.”

“It’s an honor ma’am.”

Wow what a surprise… Dealer sarcastically thought to herself. Both Savage and Reaper are combat androids meaning that they are much more capable than the standard service androids that got sent to hold this base. But what sets apart Reaper from Savage was age, Reaper was 11 months old and Savage was 8 years old. Being more recent meant that you could experience more advanced simulations and get stuffed with cutting-edge technology. Though real life experience still mattered, there are things only the latest combat androids like Reaper are capable of doing.

“And the award for the Least Valuable Player is Private Dealer, who has contributed absolutely nothing to this team.”

“Thank you ma’am.”

“On to other news, Command is sending us much needed recruits very soon.”

“Woah that was fast, how could have Command predicted this outcome?” Sweeper expressed her surprise at the news. “Especially as we didn’t report back to base in four days as we were searching for survivors as well as picking off enemy stragglers, in fact have we reported back to Command yet?”

“We got lost and you know it.”

Those last four days were worse than the battle for Dealer, she actually had to expend some energy to try and find their way back home. Not to mention that she was almost left behind.

“Command most likely would have sent troops either way as a reward for our outstanding achievements in battles.”

Sweeper raised her hand before talking. “Uhh Captain we only fought one battle.”

“Our outstanding achievements in battles to come, Private First Class Sweeper. The recruits will arrive two days from now and then we can go forward and smash those treacherous UCNA scum! DISMISS!”

And with that everyone stood up and left the kitchen. Sweeper and Dealer headed towards the dorm. Dealer took a look around the decrepit hall, she thought that she would never miss this place but a life and death situation changes you. As the two entered their room Dealer sat down on her bed before looking up to Sweeper.

“Kinda crazy how in the last 6 months of sitting here in the middle of nowhere, with the UCNA breathing down the back of our necks, that we only had one battle.”

“Maybe they recognized our technological superiority and were scared to face us?”

“Doubt it.”

With that Dealer dropped into her bed and begun to reorganize her thoughts, her memory had been getting full due to all that’s happened. She also couldn’t do this for the last four days as they were stuck in the extreme wilderness of Former North Dakota. She also neglected to do this months earlier.

“Oh man, I bet the UCNA guys are handling this better than us…”