Disclaimer: (CONTAINS SPOILERS SO IF YOU HAVEN'T TOUCHED THE GEARS 5 CAMPAIGN DO NOT READ BEYOND THIS POINT; YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!) I do not own anything related to Gears; it, and all characters, known canon locations and weapons are solely the property of The Coalition, and I claim only my original characters, events and locations.

This is a fanfic revolving around Lizzie Carmine in an AU where she survived the end of Act I of the Gears 5 story. This fanfic takes place of jumping between points from before, during and after the course of the Gears 5 story, developing her character from an aspiring mechanic to the confident warrior we know her as based on what we already know, saw and heard of her, alongside her relationships with a couple of OCs and the existing cast. I will be going with the canon ending of JD surviving and Del dying in Act IV, so for those who picked Del to survive, I sincerely apologise in advance.

This is the work of a humble fan trying nothing more than to provide a piece of emotion, violence, triumph, romance, and above all, entertainment.

Enjoy!

Prologue

Chapter I - 'Nightmares and Daydreams'

~ Lizzie

~ Tyro Garrison - New Ephyra

~ 42AE - 84 days before the evacuation of Settlement 2

She stood amongst the midnight plains of the battlefield; fire and smoke danced into the endless black sky; the sound of chittering gunfire, echoing explosions and reeling screams of dying Gears.

Elizabeth Carmine was glued to the spot- her boots barely soaking into the muddled earth,- the Enforcer SMG in her hands felt lightweight, yet she didn't have the strength to lift it. Behind the steely-illuminated gaze of her visor, her natural blue eyes were wide and affixed on the horror that surrounded her.

The unimaginable terror of her father and uncle's past had returned, and it bore a new, vengeful skin.

The scourge of humanity had crawled from the grave to gnaw at the old scabs of the war they fought so long and so hard to end until they were wounds once more, fresh and bloody; tearing at the foundations of the COG with more promises of war and extinction. She hadn't ever dreamed it was possible...

But the nightmare had returned.

The antithesis of mankind. The true enemy. The Locust.

The Swarm.

All around her, Lizzie saw the twisted hybrid of man and Locust fall upon her brothers and sisters with unbound fury- blasting them away with scavenged weapons of the COG and the Locust. Even when the initial waves of the Swarm were cut down by the drilled Lancer fire of her comrades from behind sturdy barricades, the following onslaught mercilessly trampled over their own wounded and overwhelmed the Gears; dragging them down and tearing them apart in an avalanche of scaly hide, raw muscle and gnashing teeth and claws.

Even the DBs- indefatigable stalwarts of the COG military and the mechanical safeguard against threats like this- proved ineffective; the Peace Maker Shepherds too slow and clumsy to counteract the voracious savagery of the Swarm Drones- stolen Lancer chainsaws and crude pig iron knives rending the robotic soldiers into oil-spurting wrecks.

The stench of blood and death; the screams of torment and despair shook Lizzie to her core- rendering her incapable of acting.

She wasn't trained for this, for god's sake. She was a mechanic; a maintainer of the Coalition's Minotaurs, Armadillos and other vehicles with the offhand knowhow to tackle roughneck Outsider raiders and insurgents; she wasn't trained to deal with the Locust...or whatever the fuck these things were.

Everywhere she looked, she saw the terror unfold; the COG were losing- humanity was losing. She lost count of the number of Gears she saw die in comparison to the horde.

"L-Lizzie…" she heard a voice call just above the cacophony of slaughter, a voice she dared not to turn and look towards, but against her better judgement, she felt her body twist to the familiar calling.

Clayton Carmine lay slumped against a barricade, accompanied by a small mound of mangled and battered Swarm and Gear corpses. A Lancer was wedged halfway into his chest cavity- the flesh parted from his left collarbone, causing his head to slump sideways in a sickeningly-awkward angle and spattering his armour in smears of blood and chunks of tissue and bone.

"You...cou-uld h-have...saved me...saved s-someone…but you didn't...why? Why didn't you s-save us, Lizzie...?" the harsh words wheezed from the inanimate, violated corpse of the Grub Killer.

Lizzie's heart skipped too many beats when she registered the words of her uncle; a man she loved and admired as valiantly as her father. The Enforcer dropped from her hands, splattering into the quagmire of mud and blood at her feet with no sound.

Her eyes screwed shut as her legs lost all feeling,- crushing under the weight of guilt as she collapsed into a kneel. She screamed and wailed, not even caring that she couldn't hear herself over the deafening roar of humanity's demise all around her- hot tears carving dirty trenches down the grit of her cheeks.

She screamed and called for her uncle, but he didn't reply; instead the corpse continued to bleed and fade into the blackness of the hopeless war; everything began to fade. The endless sight of ruin, destruction and the end. The smell of smoke, puke, piss and blood; the sound of gunfire, tearing flesh and futile screams. Everything slowly dissipated- leaving Lizzie alone in an empty, vast plain of black.

She relished the oncoming damnation; penance for her ineptitude. So many died because of her...it was her job to fight with her brothers and sisters, or to drive them to salvation and let them fight another day...instead, she let them die because she wasn't ready...she failed them. She failed herself...

The torturous void of darkness that she let swallow her whole was suddenly beginning to bleed with light. The bitter silence punctured by the raising crescendo of a dull, mechanical buzz that only grew in intensity.

A horizontal blade of light began to ebb into her veil of black- causing her eyes to sting in reflex, even through the light filtering of her helmet visor. The buzz became deafening; a rallying call to the waking world.

Lizzie's eyes naturally peel open,- squinting in immediate response to the cruel invasion of daylight shining through the window that faced her bunk.

Her eyes remained fixed on the drab blanched ceiling of her room in grim, faceless realisation.

She lay there for a few moments as she came back on friendly terms with reality, before her left fist blindly hammered down numerous times onto the nightstand to silence the disruptively-effective alarm clock; her fourth fistblow sufficient to shut the damn thing up.

A soft exhale leaves her lips as she is returned to the silence of her room- the faint din of the outside world masked by the thin walls and code-sealed door. She doesn't have to look at herself- she could feel her chalk-grey tank top was glued to her skin; the bedding beneath her damp with a sheen of sweat.

"Shit." She breathlessly sighs out, lifting her right hand to rub over her face to remove some of the layers of sweat she gathered on her brow, courtesy of her recurring nightmare.

She glanced at the time shown on the clock and immediately scowled to see it read 09:23. No doubt the good selection of the galley breakfast would be all but gone at this point.

Without a further thought, she threw her legs off the bed- the sheet seemingly discarded some point during her restless night's sleep, went into the bathroom and showered.

She was out of her room by around 09:42,- dressed in a more black and far-less-sweaty tank top and her signature clementine insulated motor pool trousers. All she was missing now was her trusty helmet, breastplate and that worn leather jacket she tied around her waist. But she expected no warfare, today...or at least she hoped.

Usually she kept a slow pace- more than eager to stop and draw a humorous template response from a passing DB unit or chat to any Gear she recognised along the way, but today she adopted a brisker speed and kept her head down; not only was she friggin' hungry, but she'd rather not take any human interaction until the vivid memories of last night's dream were all but pushed to the back of her head.

Lizzie crossed the courtyard of the Garrison and entered the living hub- not really drawing any attention much to her satisfaction. As she rounded the corner into the galley, she took a sigh of relief to find it was more or less empty; a few Gears sat solo or in pairs spread amongst the wide array of benches used for eating food, clearly ones who prefer to avoid the initial rush and first pickings, but she counted no more than five heads when the galley could easily hold most of the Garrison at one time.

Her stomach rumbled slightly, kickstarting her inertia to grab a plate and cutlery then approach the table for breakfast. No surprise, most of the options were already gone, prompting a faint grunt from Lizzie.

"Teach you to ignore your alarm for, like, three hours, dipshit." She reprimanded herself silently, but sighed. Not like she could blame herself; if she could've woken herself up on command she would've done so every fucking moment that nightmare came crawling back. She shakes her head in self-pity, before reaching to take what morsels she could with hungry determination.

As she managed to get half a ladle of beans, a quarter of scrambled egg and a tidbit of bacon rind on her plate, a hand wrapped in a disposable glove reached from the other side of the table, seizing her plate out of her hand.

As she looks up to issue a warning of painful beatdowns to the perpetrator, her gaze immediately softens upon the hardened, yet playful scowl of the chef.

"Goddamit, Ms. Carmine...y'can't eat nothin' but scraps; your uncle'd nail my ass if he found out I let ya eat like a rat." The chef softly quips in his natural drawl. Lizzie resigned herself with a sigh.

"Yeah, Diz, I know...please tell me you've got some stuff just cooling in the microwave? Hell, I'd take just a block of cheese from the fridge, right now." Despite the defeated sincerity of her words, that earned her a quiet chuckle from the aged Dizzy.

Turning around with the assistance of his crutch in his free hand, he begins to hobble behind the doorless walkway into the kitchen.

"Hang in there, private. Uncle Wallin's got just the thing for you.~"

With a fatigued nod, Lizzie lazily turned on her heel and stole a seat at the nearest unoccupied bench. Propping her arm on her elbow and resting her cheek upon her palm, she found herself staring into the matte white finish of the table- the haunting images of the past few nights starting to creep into the corners of her eyes again, before she softly grunts to herself.

'Goddamnit, get your shit together, Elizabeth; you're a damn Carmine- a lady from a long line of asskickers!' She feels herself wrestling with her thoughts, and feels the negative side win. 'Yeah...you're a Carmine. But you're not -a Carmine-.'

Her thoughts were interrupted when a china plate filled with numerous rashers of bacon, grilled tomatoes, scrambled eggs and beans clattered before her eyes, disrupting her from her thoughts with a soft yelp.

Looking up to her right, she sees the aging Dizzy looming over her- his face now showing a glower of deep concern. With ailing limbs, he softly ambles to sit beside her, removing the net from his nest of ash-white hair.

"What's eatin' you, honey?" The retired Gear-turned-cook asked softly. Despite the fact he was infamous for showing a happy-go-lucky hillbilly type, Dizzy's reputation of being a deceptively-perceptive and intuitive grandfather figure still preceded him in his elder years.

Quirking her lip, Lizzie doesn't spare him a glance as she gouges a forkful of egg off her plate and scoops it into her mouth, savouring the buttery smoothness.

"Am I really that obvious?" She quips rhetorically which rewards her with an unamused deadpan. Smacking his lips, Dizzy shuffles himself to be a bit more comfortable.

"Well, you're stayin' in late for the past few weeks. You've inherited your uncle-dearest's obsession with bacon, and the fact you weren't front of the queue knuckling Alverez's face in over the greasy prime stuff rings a hella lot of alarm bells. And- and I mean this with the greatest respect, honey- ya look like shit." He offered her a friendly smile, which she slightly reciprocated.

He wasn't wrong, after all...she was usually out of her pit by seven sharp on a bad day- earlier on the norm. Her and Alverez- her fellow squadmate from Echo-4- were always in friendly competition on who could grab the fresh bacon first, and whilst Lizzie kept her raven hair short and easy to maintain, she hadn't even bothered slightly tuning it after her shower.

She forsakes her fork in favour of taking up a rasher of crispy bacon and taking a bite. Chewing it slowly, she relishes the greasy goodness before she softly shakes her head with a forlorn sigh. Dizzy lightly bumps her shoulder.

"C'mon, Elizabeth...open up to me, ya gotta trust your fellow Gears. Your uncle's worried about you, too..." The concern was evident in his drawl. The fact that this was the first time she was made aware Clay had picked up on her recent sombre vibes struck a sad pang in her heart.

With some semblance of guilty acceptance, she discards the half-munched bacon back onto her plate; her appetite suddenly vanishing.

"I never knew this day would come...the day we'd be at war, again. With the grubs of all things…" She drones quietly. It had only been a matter of weeks since the public announcement of the truth behind the vanishing Outsider villages and COG establishments culminating in the reveal of the Swarm's existence from the First Minister herself, and the effect was- as expected- poorly received; even some of the Locust War veterans who still served in the army today were still restless and relapsing their traumas buried over twenty-five years ago.

Her father had long resigned from the COG army, and now serves in administration- mainly so he could still keep tabs on her and Clay- the latter of which seemed eerily too calm with the prospect of going back to war with the grubs.

But for Lizzie, the prospect wasn't the same. She was a fighter, for sure, but the idea of going to war with such a historically-vicious and merciless entity terrified her to the core.

Dizzy gave her a sympathetic smile.

"We beat 'em once, darling. We'll do it again." Lizzie shook her head in reluctance.

"No, no, that's not it, Diz. I'm…-I'm not ready for this kind of war. Sure, I've fired a lancer, gotten my boots on the ground and into scraps and taken down some Outsider bandits, but...these new Locust? This 'Swarm'? I'm scared I'm gonna fuck up; get myself killed, get someone else killed- fuck, maybe someone I care abo-" Lizzie's quietened ranting had drawn some traces of attention from the few souls in the galley- given their reluctance to fully turn and watch her display was enough to show that witnessing a Carmine have a mini panic attack was enough to jarr them.

However, Dizzy was quick to interrupt her- placing a hand upon her shoulder and locking eyes with her.

"Enough of that crap. You're a fuckin' Carmine; you're blood of Clayton; the bravest, most indestructable motherfucker on Sera- the Grub Killer. When the Swarm lays eyes on him and you, they'll crap their skivvies and crawl back into their holes. And, you're the daughter of Danny, the best damn pilot and greaser to ever hold a spanner...besides me and Baird, of course. But ya don't just take after him; you're the best darn mechanic I've ever seen; hell, I'd even trust ya to tune Betty up, god rest her sweet soul." Dizzy kept his words quiet and level, but the firm confidence in his tone helped stoke some kind of fire in her.

Lizzie could recall all the stories her father and late mother told her; how Lieutenant Daniel Carmine's piloting skills helped save a wing of Ravens from an onslaught of Locust Reavers. The teachings Clay gave her on how to shoot, how to fight and survive up until the day she enlisted, and even then, he continued to watch over her and advise her- mould her into the gear she knew would do Clayton, her father, her mother, and her uncles Anthony and Benjamin proud.

She allowed herself a small smile, taking up her fork as her appetite resurfaced with a vengeance- a small sense of hope kindling to hold against the young adolescent despair.

"You're gonna be fine. The COG are gonna beat these scale-assed grub turds back into the ground, and you'll be among the boots doin' the stompin'. And then,-" Dizzy leans in closer, flashing her a wink, "- you're gonna go on a date with Benik.~" Lizzie dropped her fork again to clatter on the plate- complete with a half-eaten, skewered tomato-, eyes going wide to shoot Dizzy a glare of embarrassed bemusement as a faint flush colours her cheeks. She opened her mouth to protest, but Dizzy lifted a wrinkled hand with a hearty laugh.

"Nope! Ain' gonna hear it from ya! I've seen the chemistry brewin' between you, and I see the way you've looked at him."

Lizzie opts to stare at Dizzy for a few moments with her mouth ajar. Finding no denial to immediately spring to mind, she scoffs, then takes another bite of bacon.

"So?...is it a crime to look at a great ass, every once in a while? Just because you're dieting doesn't mean you can't look at the menu." She wriggles her eyebrow at Dizzy, who squints with a knowing grin.

"Name a valid diet, and I'll maybe buy that handsome scoop-a bullshit." He cheerily teases. Lizzie just...stares at him. For someone as sharp-witted as her, she seems to have hit a snag far more complicated than any busted-up minotaur engine. As she opens her mouth to speak, the galley intercom drones to life with the telltale introductory blare that would wake even the most hungover deep sleeper.

All eyes in the galley turned to the hailer; the filtered voice of Major Valker coming through.

"All Gears of Tyro Garrison; report to the hangar at 10:30 sharp for an urgent briefing. That is all."

The few Gears in the galley turned to each other to converse quietly, perhaps speculating the sudden call to assembly. Dizzy's teasing grin had faded into a look of more taciturn flatness as he and Lizzie eyed one another.

"I should probably go. Thanks for the breakfast, Diz." Lizzie remarked with a half smile, before giving the old cook's snow beard a gentle tug. Dizzy smirks and softly swats her hand.

"My pleasure, Ms. Carmine. I may have hung up my Lancer, but I'll always be hangin' round the kitchen and the motor pool if ya ever need me, darlin'."

Lizzie nods at the sweet gesture, pushing herself to her feet and giving the half-eaten breakfast a mock sad pout, before making her way to the galley door. As she checks the clock overhead to see 10:09, she wagered she could make it to the hangar of the Garrison with about ten minutes to spare.

Besides, with the maelstrom of thoughts in her head right now? She was in no rush.

Shoving her hands into her overalls pockets, she switches her feet on autopilot and begins the trek to Tyro Garrison's aircraft hangar.