Coral. A miraculous substance. A stable energy source to outstrip all others, and a data conduit so strong even a tiny fleck of it could, and did, contain an entire human consciousness.
Human augmentation, weapons, data storage and computing, the uses were limitless.
And despite everything mankind accomplished with it, Augmented Human C4-621 knew that Coral was so much more than that.
She knew there was more to it's story. More to it's capabilities. A wonder material that could multiply and house someone's mind? It was unreal. Ever since she met Ayre she began to realize just how deep the rabbit hole went. And then she began to remember.
Coral was how she got here.
621 didn't remember much from her days before Walter, barely remembered anything before the mission that fried her brain and took her voice, but she knew one thing- She wasn't from Rubicon. Or any of the planets Mankind listed as inhabited.
Sometimes she would remember flashes of a life before all of this. She would remember red, yellow, and black. Remember love and pain. A pair of crows and an old, weary man sitting atop a tower.
Memories of a different time. A different place.
Of fighting for something bigger than herself. Of black beasts and red eyes, white bone and blood.
Side effects of augmentation, they would tell her. But she knew. 621 knew there was more to her story than that. More they didn't tell her of how she even got in to the augmentation program to begin with.
After she connected with Ayre, memories started to trickle back in. She began to remember who she was. A fighter. A wife. A mother.
Then, deep in the ruins of an abandoned watchpoint, she found a log on an old institute AC. It was an experiment log containing data about using Coral for teleportation. The experiments mentioned a malfunction, and then the arrival of someone through their exit. A picture was attached, of a bloodied and battered woman with a sword and a cloak, with an emblem of a rose. It was then that she remembered her name.
Summer.
Memories that had been scattered, only reconnected due to her exposure to the coral surge, suddenly snapped into place, and she realized who she was.
And what she had become.
She looked at herself in the mirror one day when she was off duty, looking at her bandaged and fatigued form. A special vest helped regulate her life support as she struggled to stand in place. A few scars crossed her body and face, shrapnel from the fight that landed her in a coma for so long. Her hair was only just growing back, hardly to her ears as she looked at her face.
Her eyes, once a special silver had been changed by the augmentation. Dull red, a shade of Coral had replaced the color, but a silvery sheen was still present when the light shined right.
Those lifeless eyes were what struck it home. Those weren't the eyes of Summer. Those were the eyes that Grimm had. Those were the eyes of C4-621. A cold blooded, unfeeling mercenary, dancing to someone else's tune to stay alive.
She hated it. She hated what she had become.
How could she let this happen?
How could she face her family, her daughters if they could see what she had become?
She refused to keep living like this, just a shell of who she was, only fighting because that was all she had left.
She was a Huntress. Not someone like... Raven.
Memories of the cold hearted and cruel Branwen sister rolled across her mind, and she reeled. That was why she hated that callsign. She refused to be someone like her. A betrayer. A killer. A selfish murderer.
She would fix things and become someone who could face her daughters with pride!
Dull red began to glow with brighter intensity as determination filled her. Her Aura, once so strong and bright, now diminished and unused, heeded it's owner's call once again. Life began to return to her as a slight red shimmer flickered over her body.
She was weak. She was weary, but she would push forwards, and be better.
From that day on, the mercenary once known as Raven was then known as Rose.
Rose was different from Raven. Rose took on jobs for the Liberation front. Rose preferred to not work for the corporations. Rose dedicated herself to the arena and beyond, top scoring and getting into Allmind's secret Integration and Analysis programs.
Rose began regaining her health and tossed away the iron lung she had been chained to and began training herself in Hunting again.
Her proficiency in Melee was regained, and then transferred to her AC skills. Light mechs were fun but they were fragile, so she built, tuned, and trained herself on a medium mech specialized for speed and dodging.
Flying became a freedom she relished.
She created a deadly close quarters style involving a Piledriver and a Moonlight blade, with shoulder mounted artillery to pound her foes.
The PCA learned they underestimated her.
The Liberation front approved of her.
The Corporations were wary of her.
And Allmind decided she was to be the one.
When she learned the truth about Walter and Carla, she was sympathetic. When Allmind offered to deal with them for her, she refused.
And so, she fought. Fought for a better future. For an ending to this conflict. For peace.
And when Walter and Carla lay beaten at her feet, she spared them. She worked her rusty but finally healed vocals and she managed to speak. She told them why she did it. She told them her dreams. She told them of Ayre and her family, there, in the coral. And her own, out there, somewhere. And of her hopes to find them.
Beaten, bruised, but alive. Walter had caved, and surrendered. Carla soon followed, and Rose left to pull the trigger.
When the final step was near, Allmind decided to appease the petty and vindictive minds within it who wished for revenge against Rose for her role in their deaths, turning on her.
It didn't matter though. The end was near. And so Rose revealed her last trump card- Her Semblance and Aura.
The Coral within her and contaminating her AC blazed with her life force as she fought the toughest battle she had ever faced.
It was a long battle, but Rose's Aura allowed her to completely block blows, and her semblance allowed her to hit faster than Allmind could avoid. Chip by chip, slash by slash, she brought her enemy down.
After the last blow was struck, and Allmind's enhanced AC lay dying, Kate realized why they had been beaten.
"I see. You're fighting for someone else, too."
And with that last realization, the Mercenary Support system faded from whatever digital life it had.
And then all that was left were two.
Ayre had been a constant companion since the first surge, had even fought with her here in the end. Now they were the only two left on the satellite to witness as the Coral Siphon that jutted out of the planet and into space imploded on itself into a singularity.
It hung there, an oval of black ringed with swirling red, until it exploded.
Then there was black.
"You fought for us, succeeded where none other had."
"You have a family, elsewhere. You wish to see them again."
"I suppose you've earned the right to a happy ending."
"You reunited our families, succeeded in releasing us."
"Let us return you to yours."
It was to a red flash and darkness Summer awoke to. She found herself still in control of her AC, tipped over and laying down in a shallow lake of water.
She maneuvered her AC upright and stood again, looking up. Then she froze.
The Moon was broken.
She was... on Remnant?
She was Home?
She...
Her daughters.
Ruby.
Yang.
Ty.
Qrow.
Glynda.
Ozpin.
She was... back?
She whipped around in her AC, looking at her surroundings. Emerald forests for as far as the eye could see, and a beacon far in the distance.
Her heart could hardly handle it. Beacon. She was back in Vale!
She was BACK!
She could...
She could...
A lack of a presence in her head made her start to realize things weren't as they should be.
Ayre?
Where was Ayre?
The digitized and preserved Rubiconian woman who she usually had with her at all times was missing from her head. Did she.. reunite with her family in the coral? But didn't she talk about symbiosis, about working together? Summer supposed she couldn't blame Ayre for leaving to rejoin family. She would have as well.
But then why did things still feel weird?
She was sensing odd feelings as she piloted the AC. She felt a little chilly and her feet felt... wet? Wait.
She raised a metal foot. Half of the sensation went away. Was she... feeling what her AC felt? She also felt... empowered?
Running a systems check she found her energy levels were running way over what they should have been, and they weren't going down either. It was like flying through the coral fields, her AC was supercharged with enough energy to fly forever. Did the Coral Release somehow mess with her AC? She felt more in tune and in control of it than she ever had!
Had the Coral Release changed her?
She stomped her mech over to the shore of the lake and crouched down, disembarking from the back of it to tumble down onto the grass.
Grass! What a wonderful sensation, soft and ticklish. She missed grass. Rubicon had no grass, it was far too cold for her tastes. Dragging herself up, she checked over herself, finding her black combat fatigues in decent condition and her sidearm still strapped to her hip.
I miss my sword.
Walking over to the lake she peered at her reflection, able to parse out her look even through the waves her earlier movement had caused.
Her face was mostly healed, even if scarred, and her hair had finally grown long enough to reach past her shoulders, streaks of red visible throughout it. It was her eyes though that had changed.
Where they were once dull and drab, they now glowed like liquid Coral, casting a dim red light on the water. Silver rings shone around the red pools of her iris, giving hint to what they once were.
Summer was conflicted. On one hand, it looked kinda cool, but it also looked a bit like the Grimm still. It was a vast improvement over what she had been but it was still not very desirable.
A low growl rang out behind her and on instinct she spun, impaling the creature on her Piledriver before slinging it off... into... the... distance?
In a weird turn of double vision she blinked, and then saw her AC standing there, arm outstretched as the Ursa that had snuck up on her faded into the distance.
Her AC... did she?
Did she just remotely Pilot her AC?
She reached for the feeling of instinct she just used, and tried to pull on it again.
Her vision flickered, and suddenly it was like seeing in two different directions... except... it felt weirdly natural?
She could see herself and be seen in turn as she stared into her AC's optics, and they looked back at her with the red glow of Coral Energy.
One of Carla's sayings returned to her. "You and your AC, you two were made for each-other!"
Flesh and machine...
Was this what Symbiosis truly was?
Gently, she used the link to stretch out her AC's hand, coming to rest at her feet. Stepping onto it, she raised herself up until she was staring straight at herself from a different angle.
Ohum this was trippy.
This required investigating, but right now there were other things to worry about. She gently maneuvered the hand holding her to her AC's shoulder, where she clambered over before dropping into the mobile coffin that is an AC's control unit. She fastened herself into place before regaining proper control of her AC.
It was time to find her family.
Sections unfolded on the back of her AC, and with a burst of fire she flew up and forwards, flying towards the beacon in the distance.
Beacon Academy.
A/N: So, this is something I just had to throw together, because the true ending of AC6 is just PERFECT Isekai material. Truth be told I have no idea where to take this story, or where it should even go, but I wanted to add to this fresh category of fics and give inspiration for more writers if I could.
If you have suggestions on where I should take this, let me know, and if this inspires you to make your own story, all the better.
If I get enough inspiration for this fic I might just continue it because I love Armored Core 6, but I'm fresh out of ideas so I'll be relying on inspiration and ideas from you all while I try to focus on my main story.
Anyways, Peace! Fav, follow, review, all that jazz.