CHAPTER 3
INTRUSION

Kylia was waiting for Raven as soon as he docked the Dalriadan. She was sitting in the same chair she was in when he left, reading a 'breaking news' headline on the front terminal. It read "Mirage declares war on Crest!" and "All that was gained soon to be lost; Kisaragi takes advantage!"
Raven sat down next to her. He opened a slide-out glowing pad next to his chair and spoke into his armrest consol, "Coffee, hot." A styrofoam cup materialized out of thin air on the pad with steam rising from the fresh coffee. A product of the Corporate Sector Authority.

He took the cup, about to drink it, when he noticed Kaori's eyes were focused on him. "What?" he asked in a droll manner.

She sighed, "What's with you? Not even a 'hello Kaori'? You're manners are appalling, ever since you've beaten the arena! There's no reason for you to be completely cold-hearted."

"I have a reason!" he shouted. "Ever since Forever Zero decided to fight to the death. I was only a raven for two months! I had to kill for the first time, I... watched him... die..."

Kaori realized that she had forgotten this fact, "...I'm sorry."

"I tried to make him stop fighting, but he said if he lost, he'd die anyway. I don't know who he was sponsoring at the time. Something died in me then... I couldn't tell what." he put down his coffee. "Then I started on my first mission. An AC showed up, and I had to kill him as well. I continued to kill for Pioneer on missions covered up as Arena flukes. I've seemed to loose a part of my soul each time, and I've been emotionless just so I don't feel that horrible sensation ever again!"

"Was it the same with Exile? Why him?"

"I don't really know why I had to kill him! I don't know why I did it, I didn't know why I liked it, and I don't why I'll probably do it again!"

Kaori got up out of her chair, "Hey, hey! Calm down!"

"I AM CALM!"

Kaori put on her innocent and cute face, started to point at Raven and make circle shapes in the air with her finger, "Brother, we are not being completely honest with ourselves, now. Are we?"

Raven got an angered expression on his face.

"Let's see a smile! Come on now... come on!"

The face that Kaori had, combined with her joyfulness, Raven couldn't help but crack a little smirk after feeling abashed about lashing out like that.

Kaori continued, "That's right, happy thoughts! Apple pie, and funny words like spoon and... Fahapugagh!"

"Kaori, are my methods... unsound?"

"Well, I don't see... any method... at all. The killing part's gotta stop, though. However, I do have a new assignment from this LC's second corporation of Crest!"

"...This may be off-topic, but do you believe that there's anyone watching our actions... from above?"

"Sometimes I think that the surest signs that intelligent life exists elsewhere in this universe is that none of it has tried to contact us!"

Raven somehow seemed pleased with her answer. Of course, the subject of God came to his head, not aliens, as he was sure Kaori was thinking of at the time. "Okay, what's this mission?"

"Mirage wants us to destroy a prototype weapon of Kisaragi origin near their Avalon Hill. The obstruction there has now been confirmed as a space vessel that crashed into the LC before the Great Catastrophe, making the surrounding area a wasteland."

"I see. Can I bring a consort?"

"Yes, his name is Vulcan from LC 225."

"A stone, eh? Am I right?"

"Yeah, a heavyweight. Should be useful. Wait, weren't you friends?"

Raven got up and walked to the loading bay. "Yeah, glad you remembered. He helped me through my first mission, and gave us both pointers on abandoned part whereabouts. It'll be good to see him again."

***

It all started, Raven was on a mission in the middle of nowhere and ran into some pretty bad resistance from ACs guarding a warehouse housing the top-secret Kisaragi prototype weapon sample he was supposed to destroy. For this mission Mirage contracted the aid of a longtime ally of Raven, an associate who goes by the codename Vulcan. He pilots the heavyweight AC Heavy Metal, using a powerful laser rifle and multiple missiles. We departed for this seemingly routine mission the day after the sorty was accepted and Kaori agreed that she'd pay Vulcan his portion of the credits earned upon completion of the mission.

They arrived at the complex and found resistance from two unknown ACs, a heavy quadruped and a light reverse jointed AC. Vulcan told Raven to go in and complete the mission, so that he could handle the opposition out there. "Either way, I'm glad to see you're sister again!" Vulcan sarcastically spoke over the intercom.

"That remark is punishable by slow torture and death by my standards!" Raven said with a grin.

"Ah, yeah! Good to see ya too. There'll be plenty of loot for ya after I trash these two."

While he pinned the other two ACs with firepower, Raven made it inside the compound. Upon entering the main complex he ran into the leader of this AC team in the large room which preceded the room that housed the target. This guy seemed well equipped, his tank AC was bristling with weapons, the only way to complete the objective seemed to be through him.
He was motionless in his heavy AC, not moving but aiming, his shots were accurate as hell and he left Raven no room for error in his dodging. Closed quarters were not Raven's favorite of combat fields, since he could only use his speed to a limited extent without running into a wall or ceiling.
After a while of trying to advance for close assault, but only being forced to recede and start dodging shots again, Raven was pretty irritated. However, the tank just wouldn't give up in his relentless assaults; chainguns, grenades, machine guns... he wasn't going to stop anytime soon. His large tank AC was hell, and this pilot was ruthless. Raven finally took a chance and overboosted toward him quickly, then veered to the right, barely dodging a large grenade. This risky maneuver gave Raven a brief opening to knock the large chain gun off of his opponent's left shoulder with a blade slash, sending sparks flying everywhere. The enmy AC seemed to have been malfunctioning after doing this.

Raven then quickly sliced off his right arm which held a 1000 round machine gun with an upward slash. While the enemy was in a shocked state Raven tore off the grenade launcher on his back with the Dalriadan's bare hands. The pilot replied to Raven in a confused yet gruff voice, "How... how did you...?"

Raven backed away from him, "You are no more of a threat to me, you have failed your mission, now leave. If you oppose me again I will be forced to destroy you. You are weak for not being able to harness the full potential of your AC, thus you were too much of an easy target."
The tank slowly turned as sparks flew from his ruptured arm then overboosted away and replied "You... You got lucky you cocky bastard!"

Raven watched the damaged tank boost out of the large door as a black smoke trail followed.

"You coward, a true warrior wouldn't run from death in battle and blame his failure on bad luck..." Well anyway, it's time for the completion of this mission, he thought. Still though, why did they hire such a large amounts of ACs to guard this? He wondered how important this new "prototype" weapon was, the details acquired in the mission briefing were scarce to say the least.
After standing there for a moment contemplating, he turned and proceeded to the door the AC was previously guarding. It would not open due to his lack of a hacking function. He activated his blade and stabbed the powerful blue beam into the midsection of the door, the door mechanism activated and it opened. Raven slowly walked inside, and in the back a dim light shone, and under it was something that surprised the heck out of him. Before him was a mechanism of which he'd never seen; it seemed ancient in design, and upon closer examination he found that it seemed to be some type of Dragon MT, complete with four wings folded over the body, and it was curled as if it was sleeping. Covering this dark green "machine" were large, strangely shaped thrusters on the wings, and individual shielding relays.

Suddenly the dim lighting in the room faded, Raven could see nothing and instinctively started to back away from the device slowly. All of a sudden the large boosters began to emit a haunting red aura which filled the dark room with an eerie crimson glow. The room seemed to start to pulse around him, the walls almost moving, was he hallucinating? Soon the red energy started to glow even brighter under the machine. Raven backed away a few steps more then watched as this large creature, at least a dozen times the size of his AC started to crawl from it's cave. As Raven stood there in awe, soon after seeing the contraption start to rise, he got a message directly from Mirage, who had contracted him for this mission. "...Raven, destroy that thing before it becomes fully operational!!" He got a call seconds after from Vulcan, "Raven, what the hell are they talking about?!?"

"Blast it, it's... too late…"

The robotic monster let out a terrible roar, wrung Raven with fear as the compound started to collapse. The dragon's wings flapped out, causing the ceiling to shatter, allowing debris to harmlessly fall on it.

Raven boosted out the way he came, and only Vulcan could see the beast emerge from captivity, stepping on the compound, crushing it under it's weight. It flapped it's massive wings, and with another roar, flew out into the sky at an incredible speed.
Raven exited, saw the monster flap away, creating a massive gust of wind to send sand flying in all directions. Vulcan reached Raven through the static, "...Raven...th......hing is heade..f..or the LMC...!"

"Understood!" Raven shouted as he engaged his overboost in an attempt to catch up with it, but was caught in a hail of fire coming from Kisaragi heavy-end MTs. Raven was caught with a heavy barrage of bazookas, Vulcan's signal went offline. The sudden jolt of his cockpit caused Raven to hit his head on the front screen. Raven looked at the broken glass, saw that he smeared it in blood, and fell unconscious.