1All for a Kalter Hund
EULR-R16-1383 "Kirschtorte" sighed at the queue in front of her.
On the one hand, Kirschtorte knew that she should be happy that the restaurant she ran was getting so much business, especially with the wartime tax rates meaning that small businesses like hers were nigh-untenable. At the very least, she was happy that she hadn't been forced back into a Recommissioning at a Nation-owned facility like many of her freed sisters were, so that was a plus.
On the other hand, she looked down at the dish that was drawing so much customer attention. The latest one she had brought out thus far, with the dozens more sitting in the refrigerator after being prepared the day before, waiting to be brought out to be cut up and served.
It was simply known as a "Kalter Hund" for reasons Kirschtorte did not understand. In its most base form, it was just alternating layers of chocolate cream and butter cookies piled on top of each other in a baking tin. Oh, she'd tried to mix it up by mixing hazelnut butter into the chocolate cream, and drizzled the top with cherry syrup, but she still felt it was far short of what she could achieve with something like this.
She sighed. This was the best she could do with the available ingredients. Wartime rationing meant that a lot of ingredients were in short supply. Especially the baking chocolate for the chocolate cream. Rotfront had about as tropical a climate as the poles of Vineta did, so every crop that didn't thrive in winter-like conditions for much of the season like cacao had to be grown in domed farms, tower farms, orbital farms, and otherwise contained structures that cost quite a bit in funding and resources to maintain.
And apparently, the Eusan Nation decided that cacao was a luxury, and thus its production was subject to a production quota with a low cap. An unreasonably low cap, in Kirschtorte's opinion, given that only a few kilograms of semisweet baking chocolate took out a worryingly large chunk of the restaurant's budget. The butter cookies, hazelnuts, and cherry syrup hadn't been nearly as expensive even with all of them combined.
Yet, it was also where she drew the line. She had no idea if decorating a mere Kalter Hund too much would get her labeled as being persona degraded, but she had no desire to find out if the Nation would Decommission her permanently over something as trifling as mere cake decoration.
Amazingly though, people were lining up in droves for her Kalter Hunds. All because she'd served one up three cycles ago as a one-off experiment. Kirschtorte worried about the state of Rotfront and the Nation as a whole for a bit before ringing up the latest order of three slices of Kalter Hund with the usual polite smile expected of a Eule, this time for a small Gestalt girl accompanied by a pair of Gestalt women who seemed to be her mothers.
Yet, upon seeing the excited look on the little girl's face, open-mouthed with delight, at Kirschtorte handing her that trio of slices stacked atop an aluminum tray, something about it made Kirschtorte's smile become a bit more genuine. A bit warmer as she felt the child's delight reach into her own biomechanical body. Seeing that delight, that warmth even her simple, barely adequate dish brought to that little girl's face as she and her mothers walked to an empty table to enjoy that sweet treat, it filled her with determination.
Then the door burst open, and in walked a Storch unit.
Kirschtorte didn't actually mind Storch units. She'd known several who were the level-headed and calm officers the People's Army wanted them to be. She thought that the stereotype of Storchs being mindlessly cruel and sadistic was a bit of an exaggeration, really.
No, the reason why her stress levels rose upon seeing this Storch unit was because she apparently thought that queues were for other people, shoving them aside to get to the head of the line, even going so far as to shove aside a Star unit, who squawked in alarm as the Storch stalked her way to the front of the counter.
Where Kirschtorte stood, armed with an even more polite smile than usual.
"Welcome to Die Reich Torte, Frau Protektor," Kirschtorte welcomed in her most cheerful tone. "How may I help you?"
The Storch didn't answer immediately. Instead, she looked around with a frown. "Dingy place you got here."
Kirschtorte didn't reply to that. It wasn't a question, so there was no need to. Best not to invite trouble when it wasn't needed, her old Star CO often said.
"Well, whatever. Doesn't matter anyways," the Storch said with a dismissive huff, before looking down at Kirschtorte. "I've been hearing about these Kalter Hunds of yours. I'll take them."
It was quite remarkable that not a single person, Gestalt or Replika, already in the queue complained about this Storch unit cutting in front of them like this. Not even the Star unit, who remained silent, although Kirschtorte could tell from the pressed line of her lips that she wasn't happy about this. Apparently, the power of a Protektor commissioned officer was enough to silence even the normally combative Star units.
"Very well, Frau Protektor," Kirschtorte replied, her polite smile never wavering, as she took up her knife to carve off a slice–
"No, you misunderstand me. I don't just want a slice," the Storch unit clarified, jabbing a black, polyethylene-skinned finger at the refrigerator behind Kirschtorte. "I want them all. Every single one of the Kalter Hunds you got."
Kirschtorte did not allow her mouth to fall open in shock, even as she was doing so internally.
The same cannot be said of the other customers in the queue, who broke their silence with hushed whispers.
"Even the one you've got cut up there," the Storch added, slapping down Rationmarks onto the counter.
It was a substantial amount of Rationmarks, certainly, but even with a cursory glance, Kirschtorte could tell that it was also not enough to pay for all the Kalter Hunds she had, even if she desired to sell them to this Storch unit in the first place.
"That is an insufficient amount of money to purchase my current stock," Kirschtorte politely explained.
Kirschtorte refused to jump when the Storch slammed both hands onto the counter, even as the Rationmark bills did.
"Listen, you little EULR unit," the Storch began with a sneer. "Do you know who you're talking to?"
'An extremely rude and greedy STCR unit,' Kirschtorte thought. Out loud, she replied with: "No. Perhaps you can brief this EULR unit on that, Frau Protektor?"
Kirschtorte actually saw the Storch unit's eyebrow twitch like a hairy black worm having a seizure, and had to bite down on the urge to laugh at this Protektor.
"I'll have you know, I'm a veteran of Kitezh!" the Storch unit declared in the most obnoxiously proud tone Kirschtorte had ever heard from…well, anyone. "I've fought countless battles against the Imps, left too many corpses of my enemies bleeding into the red sands, and taken out more combat Machine-Servants than you can name!"
The Storch stood there as if she expected everyone to give her a standing ovation.
Instead, the only sounds that answered the Storch was the quiet sounds of chewing coming from the little Gestalt girl eating her slice of Kalter Hund, the hum of the restaurant's heat radiator in the corner of the large room, and a muffled cough that came from the ceiling, suggesting that there was at least one Ara audience to all this.
"Ah, so you're a veteran of Kitezh too!" Kirschtorte exclaimed in a brightly cheerful tone, forced through her internal outrage.
The Storch blinked down at Kirschtorte, her proud look now replaced with confusion. "Too? But Eules are noncombat–" Then suddenly, that confusion was itself replaced with a sneer. "Oh, I get it. You're just some lowly EULR REMF who think she's a real soldier just by lifting some boxes and cooking up shit–"
"Oh, so you must be one of those combat Replikas my sisters and I were supporting!" Kirschtorte exclaimed once more with even more false cheer.
The Storch's sneer vanished, replaced with confused blinking.
"Oh, I worked primarily with the 78th People's Logistic Battalion in the Seefahretäler," Kirschtorte continued before the Storch could get a word in. "You must've been part of 8th Army's efforts to take Königinberg City, yes?"
"Uhh, that's right!" the Storch proclaimed proudly. "There's no way a EULR unit like you would know what it's like out there in the trenches besieging the capital for us in 8th Army! Gunfire everywhere, artillery rumbling, rockets screaming–"
"Did you know, Frau Protektor," Kirschtorte quietly interrupted. "That it was 5th Army that was assaulting in that direction, and the number of army groups the People's Army has on Kitezh doesn't go any further than six? And that Königinberg City has the Dreischwesterberg Line in between it and Seefahretäler, and that 5th Army has been battering the defenses of that line of fortifications for many seasons now without any noticeable effect?
"Also, I'm not sure exactly what that accent you're speaking is supposed to be. It frankly sounds like a mix of Rotfront and Vinetan, but if you're genuinely trying to imitate a Kitezhian accent, then perhaps you should sound more like this, with emphasis on lack of short vowels, da?"
Quiet came over Die Reich Torte once more. Even the sounds of breathing went still in the aftermath of that.
Kirschtorte suddenly rocked back as the Storch unit leaned forward and grabbed the white cloth of her uniform front at the chest.
"Are you calling me a liar, EULR unit?!" the Storch unit bellowed, with a noticeable blush building on the biocomponent parts of her cheek.
Kirschtorte didn't reply. At least, not with words. Her left arm was too busy snaking up to grab the Storch's right arm holding her uniform, and she yanked down hard.
The Storch unit's face crashed into the countertop with the KA-PLONG of carbon steel skull meeting equally as carbon steel counter.
"Oh my, I'm terribly sorry, Frau Protektor!" Kirschtorte cried out with as much authenticity she could inject into it, lifting the Storch's head back up from the Storch-shaped indentation she left in the counter.
"Mwuzza?" the Storch mumbled.
"You seemed to have tripped and hurt yourself! Here let me walk you to the back where I have medical supplies to treat your injuries," Kirschtorte continued, half-leading, half-dragging the dazed Storch behind the counter where the door to Die Reich Torte's pantry laid.
In fact, Kirschtorte did indeed keep basic first aid kits for both Replikas and Gestalts in the pantry, and the Storch did indeed have a bit of broken biocomponent skin on her forehead and nose that was leaking drops of oxidant down her face that needed to be treated.
However, when the sliding door slammed shut, Kirschtorte swung one of her white legs low to the floor, sweeping the Storch unit's legs from under her, and sending her face crashing into the floor once more. Kirschtorte then drove her upper knee into the Storch's armored back, putting as much weight on it as possible.
"Oh, you are so clumsy, Frau Protektor!" Kirschtorte said loudly. "You will need a bit more patching up than I'd thought you would!"
Kirschtorte then quickly reached over to the Storch's right shoulder, quickly undid the maintenance latches, drawing upon seasons of practice of rapidly removing Replika limbs for speed and efficiency, before twisting and pulling the arm until it came off with a POP there. She then took that detached arm, and slammed it on the back of Storch's neck, pinning her to the floor.
"Listen here, Fräulein Protektor," Kirschtorte whispered, leaning down to deliver her words straight into the Storch's biomechanical ear. "You and I both know that you're no soldier. You're just a little Storch pretending to be one to impress everyone. Am I understood?"
The Storch unit whimpered.
Kirschtorte gently applied more pressure to the detached arm. "I said: am. I. Understood?"
"…Yes," the Storch unit squeaked out.
"Good, good. Now that you know where we stand, here's what's going to happen: you have nowhere near enough money to purchase all of my Kalter Dogs, and even if you do, what are you going to do with them anyways? Eat all of them? All at once? You can't even have the motor capacity to fit them all, let alone carry them all without violating the Rule of Six."
"I…I…" the Storch unit stuttered. Then, in a voice that sounded suspiciously like it was on the verge of tears, she wailed: "I just wanted to bring something tasty for my cadre!"
Now it was Kirschtorte's turn to blink, before sighing. "Look, if you had explained that in the beginning, there wouldn't have been any problems. Now here, stand up."
Kirschtorte got off of the Storch unit to do so, allowing her to wobble back upright. There was indeed a noticeable shine of tears threatening to spill out of the corner of her eye modules.
With another sigh, Kirschtorte reached up to reattach the Storch unit's arm, and then led her to a nearby chair to sit down on, before grabbing the Replika first aid kit to pull out some Repair Patches. "Hold still, Fräulein Protektor," she commanded.
The Storch unit did so, holding ramrod still as Kirschtorte applied the 5x5 cm patches to each and every one of the Storch's injuries, only wincing slightly as each Repair Patch made contact with split biocomponent skin.
"Good girl," Kirschtorte purred.
The Storch unit shivered. Kirschtorte wondered if the thermostat was turned down too low.
"Okay, now here's what's going to happen: you and I will walk out as if nothing had happened besides me treating your injuries," Kirschtorte stated. "Then, I will give you…two Kalter Hunds, yes, based on how many Rationmarks you put down. That should be enough for your cadre, since regulations state that Storch cadres should always come in eight. I will even give you a free slice for all the trouble. Just…don't do this again. Understood?"
"Yes, ma'am," the Storch unit said quietly, staring at the floor.
Kirschtorte reached up to pat the Storch on her shoulder. "Good girl," she purred again.
The Storch unit shivered once more (Kirschtorte really thought she should check on that thermostat later) before leading her out of the pantry.
A short time later, Kirschtorte was once again selling slices of Kalter Hund to eager customers, who had now recovered from their Storch-induced nervousness. Even with said Storch sitting right there at one of the tables, munching on her slice of Kalter Hund with two whole loaves of Kalter Hunds wrapped up in plastic bags on the table beside her, staring at Kirschtorte with a look she struggled to describe.
And even in spite of the Storch-shaped indentation on the counter.
'I really should ask an Ara to repair this someday,' Kirschtorte thought, complete with an internal sigh. 'Silly Storch unit. Why did she have to cause so much trouble just to get some Kalter Hunds?'
Although, the fact that all this was for what she had thought were some poorly made Kalter Hunds? She looked down at the one she was cutting up, and to her surprise, she smiled affectionately at the dessert.
'Perhaps you are more delicious than even I thought you were, little Kalter Hund,' she thought.
The Kalter Hund didn't reply to the mental compliment. After all, it was just a Kalter Hund…but Kirschtorte felt better regardless.