Springfield shows appreciation for K98 when MICA team doesn't. At this point everyone on the base is going to start calling her "Mommy" for a different reason. That includes even the human personnel.
Cousin, more like, and a younger cousin to boot. The K98 dates to 1935, the G98 is the proper version and would reasonably be Kar98's mother and Springfield's immediate cousin. Furthermore, the 'Mauser' used as a reference for the Springfield M1903 was the Spanish M1893, which wasn't even a proper Mauser but a licensed derivative tracing its roots to the Gewehr 71 (Mauser M1871) in much the same way as the Serbian M80/07 did years later. There's also somewhat credible reasons to believe that the international lawsuit levied against the US Gov. by Mauser over the M1903 was entirely bogus, as firsthand parties at Mauser purportedly later admitted well after the damage was done and they had laughed all the way to the bank. YMMV on that.
Oh yeah the lawsuit was definitely entirely bogus. For one, taking tech as war spoils is completely legitimate. However the US at the time was trying to appeal to globalism and ruling against ourselves to prove we were "fair". Same deal with after the war with the Spitzer bullet.
I can kind of see the logic the US had in that patents don't have legal power outside of one's country, so by trying to get international cooperation, there would be better IP law enforcement. However that clearly failed, with China as the prime example of that failure to enforce IP rights.