A/N: Hot off the press! I already split the battle into two different chapters, but as I was brainstorming the aftermath and what it would mean for the World of Mana, the fingers just would not stop moving, thus you get an early update. The music used is "Scorcher" from the Armored Core: For Answer OST.

To address the reviews:

Leos: Remember that by the time of For Answer, over half of what was left of humanity was evacuated to the Cradles. Collateral damage caused by a LYNX's activities could easily be justified by Earth's surface being turned largely into a No Man's Land. Further, there do exist missions in For Answer in which bonuses for minimizing collateral damage exist (Take Back Cradle 21).

KnightOfZaku: As I mentioned in the DM, I'm still thinking of possible roles, if any, those two would serve in the future. As for Arthur, Arzenal is the closest thing to a standing military the Six Nations have, and even then, it's not like they'll follow orders one-hundred percent. Realistically, without some unexpected "assistance", the Six Nations can't really stage a manhunt for Arthur.

Chronos0305: Based on page 90 of Armored Core: A New Order of "NEXT", NEXTs average around 10 meters in height (shorter for tank and quad legs). Para-mail stands anywhere within the 7.4 to 7.8 meters, based on the wiki. The next biggest machine down from a NEXT would be Salamandinay's Enryugo standing at 9.1 meters, overall. And believe me when I say this won't be the last of Arthur's chaos-causing escapades in the World of Mana.

Coughing in the wreckage of the two overturned and damaged police cars, one of the officers pulled himself out, dizzy and losing balance as his head pounded with a concussion. One of his fellow officers was badly wounded, with his torso filled with shards of automotive glass, and another was stabilizing him. The officer opened a Mana screen to call in reinforcements from headquarters.

"Dispatch, this is Pursuit One-Niner, come in," he called over.

"Reading, One-Niner. What's your status?"

"Under attack by an unidentified machine," he said. "Officers wounded and in need of medical support, over."

"Copy, One-Niner. Medical personnel and aerial assets enroute…"

With the cars overturned, and officers out of commission, Arthur landed his NEXT into the fields alongside the highway, skidding along the earth. A call was intercepted by his jury-rigged system, and he accepted the call, but made no immediate response.

The transmission was filled with static, but the voice could still be made out: Sayla.

"I don't…Arthur?"

"Yeah. Sorry to keep you waiting, Sayla. I was worried I wouldn't reach you in time," he responded.

"What is that?"

"That's…that's not important right now. What is important is that you get to safety," he said, keeping one eye on his radar. Having the FS-JUDITH installed was rather handy – he deliberately kept behind Sayla's vehicle, and all directions for the next 1 kilometer were clear.

"I…I don't even know what to say…" Sayla said, shock in her voice.

"Just promise me that you and Serra will see the light of tomorrow," he said, before the radar picked up something. Units incoming; a few were ground-based, but the fast-movers were airborne.

Start "Scorcher"

Turning around, Arthur tried to get his NEXT's optics to focus on the incoming contacts. Looked like a few armored police vehicles, one Armored Personnel Carrier, and several helicopters. He needed to put his plan into action and get the overpass to collapse.

"We've got company. I'll hold them off. Just get beyond the overpass," Arthur said, his immediate priority being to intercept the aircraft.

Selecting his SALINE05 missile launcher (the only weapon for which he had abundant ammunition), Arthur triggered his Over-boost function, the NEXT rocketing to just past 1,800 km/h. The FS-JUDITH allowed for rapid lock for missiles, and he opened fire on the closest helicopter on radar. The pilot seemed taken off-guard, as he made attempts to evade, but was caught by the spread of missiles.

A glint of green fell from the wreckage of the recently destroyed craft, which Arthur took to mean that the pilot was using Mana to slow his descent. Arthur may have been ruthless enough to shoot down ejecting pilots, but the active threats were his main priority. Reacquiring his target, Arthur launched another warhead at a different aircraft. This pilot had a rather sound idea of using the Light of Mana along with evasion to mitigate the damage, meaning his helicopter survived the initial salvo.

Arthur cut his Over-boost, but inertia still carried him past, and right into the range of the APC's gun. The incoming fire was from a medium anti-personnel machine gun, the impact against his NEXT's plating heavily reduced by his Primal Armor. At the speed of thought, Arthur brought the foot of his NEXT to bear – between the mass of his NEXT and the speed he hit the APC at, the driver was unable to get a Mana barrier up before being crushed inside his cabin.

Dead or alive, the driver's state was irrelevant – the APC served as a springboard for Arthur's purposes. Kicking off of the frame of the APC, Arthur reversed course and targeted the helicopter again. Another warhead launched from the SALINE05, trailing behind the aircraft. With the more awkward situational awareness that facing away from the missile implied, the Mana barrier placement was less than optimal, and enough of the warheads got close enough to blow the chopper out of the sky.

Arthur ignored the speck of Mana falling from the chopper that was likely another ejecting pilot to reach the overpass, switching to manual aim with his dual rifles as more contacts appeared on his radar: more aircraft. He forced his NEXT off the ground to avoid colliding with Sayla's car, taking aim at the empty on and off ramps, cratering and crumbling them. With a quick thrust around, he waited…and waited…and waited for Sayla's car to clear the grade separation before blasting the central pillar holding the overpass up.

As soon as Sayla cleared it, Arthur let loose, firing the only OGOTO shell he had left, completely blasting the concrete of the pillar away and leaving the area around it a giant fireball. With a groan of the metal, the overpass gave way and collapsed, and the armored police vehicles, while protected by Mana barriers, still found themselves buried.

"I still have aircraft," Arthur said. "Listen, if I keep following you, they'll track you down. We'd better split up – with the damage I've done, they'll be more focused on me. Just drive, and don't stop, Sayla."

"You might die!" she complained.

Arthur sighed. It was a refreshing change to have someone worried about his life after being an expendable corporate-hired mercenary for so long. It hurt, and yet…it strangely felt kind of nice. He hadn't thought of himself as a human being since Anatolia was razed to the ground.

"That's my risk to take – comes with the job. I'll hold off the aircraft. You're on your own from here – White Glint, out," Arthur said, before cutting the connection, eye on his radar as he landed, ready to hold the line against the enemy aircraft.

The very second the helicopters came over the debris and this FCS registered a lock, Arthur pulled the trigger, sending another missile to his target. The poor pilot hardly even had a chance to react, with the resulting explosion engulfing him. Yet another tally to Arthur's kill count.

He was already responsible for the death of many LYNX, as will as possibly all the people of the Cradles – what's a few more soldiers to add to the Butcher's Bill? He was the sole survivor of ORCA and the successor to Anatolia's Mercenary for a reason. It was time for these people to get a reality check and learn.

End "Scorcher"

Elsewhere – A Few Hours Later

The birds sang, and there was the sound of a waterfall – but it was all illusory. Underneath the gazebo, surrounding a table in the shade, the leaders of the World of Mana were gathered, addressing the civil unrest that was likely to erupt over the recent chaos close to the border between the Empire of Misurugi and the Enderant Union. While the Queen of the Velda Dynasty and Jurai Asuka Misurugi maintained an air of calm, everyone else gave of airs ranging from tense to outright livid.

"No less than seven citizens saw the explosions at the junction, and the images all match what Misurugi's Royal Military have seen!" the Enderant Union President exclaimed, pointing to the still image of the white machine. "There are limits to the amount of information we can suppress – the image has been pulled from the Mana network an hour ago, but we don't know how far it's spread before then."

"…or if the image has reached any of the anti-establishment groups," the Marmeria Republic General Secretary pointed out. "It's not uncommon for the Trailblazer anarchist group to employ violent actions, but not to this scale, and the limited intelligence we have does not suggest that they have anything like this in their arsenal."

"And it assisted the escape of a Norma found within your borders," the Enderant Union President said, pointing at Jurai. "This requires explanation!"

"Let's not get hurl accusations. Not yet," the Velda Dynasty Queen stood, gesturing to remain calm. "Let's establish what we know. Misurugi, what are the initial casualty reports?"

"Reports are two dead police officers, three wounded and in intensive care, one dead military driver and several are injured and being dug out of the junction's rubble as we speak, and several wounded pilots, with several more that have not yet reported in," Jurai said.

"And the machine?" the Galia Emperor asked.

"Last sighted heading out to open sea," Jurai said. "If our estimates are correct and it maintains course, it will end up south of Arzenal's restricted airspace by about one thousand kilometers."

"Then send a scouting element!" the Enderant Union President demanded.

"Let's be realistic," the King of Rosenblum summarized. "It's been three hours since the casualty reports – and possibly an hour more since this machine's last known position was reported. We were unable to get an accurate chart of the machine's speed, but if we assume an estimate of two thousand kilometers per hour over the duration of the report, we're looking at a search area greater than three hundred-sixty thousand square kilometers."

"There's no feasible way to cover that search area with our volunteer militaries," the Galia Emperor concluded. "Even if we were to divert the Norma at Arzenal from their primary purpose, the search could take a matter of months. We would require conscription of the masses to do so, and that would raise public alarm."

"That machine managed to single-handedly eliminate a squadron of helicopters with hardly any damage done to it. Any mass conscription would just be feeding it fodder, and it could generate sympathy for the anti-establishment groups," the Velda Dynasty Queen said. "What is it, though? Some type of Para-mail prototype?"

"I highly doubt it – it's a few meters larger, plus, there is this still image to consider," Jurai said, opening a second image of the machine, with a barrier forming in the direction of incoming fire.

"That seems…very similar to Mana," the Galia Emperor observed. "And yet, distinct from it."

"It may be prudent to increase the alert status on our military, in case it strikes again," the Velda Dynasty Queen said.

"What about the Norma that escaped?" the Enderant Union President asked.

"Finding it will be under the jurisdiction of the Norma Management Board. And besides, this machine could probably upset the balance of our world far more than a single Norma ever could," the Queen replied.

Jurai clasped his hands in front of him. Politics were tiresome, but they were a fact of life. He deliberately withheld about something else: the encounter first occurred nearly an hour after his daughter encountered the Norma in question, where another human stood up for her before making a dynamic exit. Jurai strongly felt that the human and that machine were tied to each other; and that could be a very big problem.

Or it could be an answer to one of his more long-running issues.

Unidentified Islands

Arthur spent sixteen hours nonstop putting distance between himself and the mainland. The adrenaline high had long worn off, and he was utterly exhausted. It was the dead of night when he set down on an island. It was remote, with no significant sign of life – just local fauna like reptiles and birds. He popped open a can of preserved stuff, muscling it down – after a taste of Sayla's cooking, canned tuna tasted terrible by comparison.

He wondered whether or not she got to safety but thought his call to travel separately was the right one. He'd just bring too much heat down on the both of them if they stuck together – such was the life of a mercenary. Arthur left his radio transmitter and a proximity sensor on, sitting back as well as the cables in his back would let him, and he dozed off.

Elsewhere

Out of the sea was an island plateau, far beyond the reaches of humanity and all of the glitz and glamor that came with human civilization. A perimeter of stone reefs surrounded the island, and a mountain chain ran along its north end. Built into the southern cliff face was tarmac for the launching and landing of aircraft. This was Arzenal, where the Norma were sent by human society to be contained, and their violent natures channeled into something that benefited society.

In her office, Arzenal's Commander, Jill, finished up the paperwork of the night. A beautiful woman late into her Twenties, with black hair gathered into a ponytail, the woman nonetheless had a hardness in her posture that the wise would know means that she's not someone to be trifled with. A cape hung on her shoulders, over her commander's uniform. A shift of her balance revealed her right arm to be a cybernetic prosthesis – a reminder of her greatest failure.

Jill lit her cigarette up as she finished, gave it a few puffs, her violet eyes absent-mindedly following the wisp of smoke ascending from the end. Ten years had passed, and nothing had changed. The Norma were still enslaved to humanity, her bitter enemy still held the world in his grasp, and Libertus still lay at a standstill. At very least, the day had been quiet. With the last Singularity that opened being four days ago, Jill felt like retiring for the night.

"Commander," Inspector General Bronson's voice sounded from the intercom on her desk. "Your presence is requested in the Command Center."

Spoke too soon…

It was likely something important, or at least of interest. The personnel of the Command Center knew better than to trouble with trivial matters. With an annoyed groan, Jill snuffed her cigarette out and replied, "I'll be right there."

In the command center, a bespeckled woman in a purple and white uniform stood at the ready, her olive-green hair tied neatly up and tucked underneath her officer's cap. Inspector General Emma Bronson was Arzenal's sole resident human from the mainland, assigned to keep an eye on the Norma and to make sure none of them got ideas about disobeying their human superiors.

"What do you have?" Jill asked.

On the next level down, three young ladies in blue uniforms were working on the consoles. From the center station, the lady with the blonde hair turned to answer.

"We detected something on edge of Arzenal airspace fifteen minutes ago," Pamela said. "We charted it travel supersonic speed before it disappeared at the south end of our airspace, right near this set of islands."

A map of the quarantine zone and the next several kilometers beyond that opened, and Jill recognized the last known position. It was the set of islands that Tusk called home.

"Are we supposed to have visitors or supplies today?" Jill asked.

"I highly doubt it," Bronson said. "It would be way too early for a resupply – we're eighteen days out from our next scheduled run. And the Board would have contacted me if a new transfer was set to arrive."

"It was a pretty large contact," said Hikaru, the lass with red hair. "Approximately ten meters – but we have no solid sighting on where it landed since it dropped out of visual range."

"And in the minutes since, we've been intercepting what sounds like a transmission in the area," said the girl with her green hair held up by a head band. This was Olivier.

"What type of a transmission?" Jill asked.

"A musical tone followed by a series of numbers – seems automated," Olivier said.

"Any response?"

"Negative, ma'am," Olivier said. "If there's someone listening, they haven't bothered to answer our hails."

Jill looked to her left, to an older woman with brown hair, held together with a hair clip. A new arrival to Arzenal that washed ashore with quite a bit of electronic equipment, the woman was in her mid-Thirties and was a wizard with tech.

"What do you make of this, Kasumi?" Jill asked.

The woman in question looked up from her tablet, acknowledging Jill's question, then looked back down. From a technical standpoint, Kasumi didn't fall within the rank system of Arzenal.

"It's been a while since I've heard this tone," she said. "I may have an idea who's on the other end – and they won't break radio silence."

Jill raised a knowing eyebrow.

"A friend of yours?" she asked.

"You could say that…" Kasumi said, a smile quirking on her face. "They just need the right person to answer."

A notification of an incoming text transmission spurred Arthur – who had tuned out voice transmissions – awake. A series of numbers appeared on his monitor, and he recognized them. It was a type of cipher – a book cipher. They were a type of substitution cipher where each group of three numbers made a letter – the first number referred to a page, the second number was a line on said page, and the third was the character on the line. Such ciphers were useless unless one had access to the text used during encryption – a translation key. ORCA LYNX and their operators used such ciphers if there was reason to suspect that vocal communication was being monitored by the League.

As of the last time Arthur used such a cipher, Agetha Christie's Destination Unknown was used as the translation key. He processed the message through a cipher tool he had installed on his NEXT's operating system, and what he saw made his heart leap.

AND THEN THERE WERE NONE

KILO SIERRA CALLING ALPHA BRAVO

RESPOND ASAP

Kilo Sierra…

Kasumi Sumika!

Teach!

He immediately got to work responding with an encrypted message with a secure frequency attached to it.

A/N: Surprise! We have not one, but TWO LYNX here. Drop your reviews. The next chapter could take a while, though. Consider this early release my personal treat to you.