The last shot was the coup de grace, and ALLMIND's Ibis series C-Weapon, the IB-07: SOL 644, started imploding, having already lost its left leg.
"I always...envied you." Spoke the voice of Iguazu, formerly G5 of Balam's Redguns. He had sacrificed his flesh to become nothing more than a ghost in the machine. The lengths he went to best his opponent after three, now four defeats was almost pitiable.
Two explosions occur one after the other, one at the rear, and one that rips of the left arm, leaving only the shoulder attached while the forearm floats away from him. Determined to kill his rival, in his eyes, he overclocks the Sol and prepares the remaining laser claw and fire the shoulder thrusters to propel him towards his target, Raven, formerly known as C4-621. Raven's AC doesn't even move as the attack draws closer, and, as if by coincidence, the dying machine's energy cells ruptures, with the entire arm blown to pieces of scrap metal.
"The freelancer...who had it all..." As the SOL floats a few feet off the ground, the true extent of the damage is apparent. The only limb it has left is its right leg, with the others gone.
As he looks at Raven while falling to the floor, its power core explodes, engulfing the entire platform in blue and white energy, with a flash blotting out everything.
When the flash fades, the SOL is shown to be barely functional, with parts of its plating missing. Its right arm lazily floating past it.
"O-Our...Plan..." The head swerves towards Raven while saying this phrase, but it's not Iguazu talking, but an artificial, feminine voice. This was ALLMIND, the mercenary support AI, the mastermind behind everything that has happened on Rubicon-3. It wanted to merge humanity and Coral into itself, uniting them, but depriving them of their freewill. It continues to watch Raven even as its reserve energy depletes itself. "Humanity... Creation's potential..."
While Raven continues to look at ALLMIND, he hears the voice of his friend Ayre, a coral entity he shares his brain with.
"We have the trigger. And we'll pull it ourselves."
With that, as if resigned to the fact she's lost, ALLMIND shuts down.
After dealing with the rogue AI, they turned their attention to the Vascular Plant, which has been siphoning Coral from all across Rubicon. Its metal structure suddenly begins to compress, like it's being crushed by an invisible hand.
After a few seconds, the entire thing varnishes into a singularity, with a small bead of Coral red inside it.
Then, in the blink of an eye, Coral explodes from it, giving it's outer layer a crimson hue.
As the Coral began to get vacuumed up, all they could do was watch.
"Its beginning, Coral Release."
This was it. The point of no return. The die has been cast. They've crossed the Rubicon.
"Isn't it... beautiful."
As Raven's consciousness began to fade, he had to agree. It was beautiful.
"ven. Ra-n. Raven. Wake up."
As he began to regain consciousness, he began to hear Ayre in his head and the alarm in his cockpit.
"I'm awake Ayre. What's the alarm for?"
"Looks like exposure to all that Coral rebooted your vocal augmentations, you can actually talk now."
It was true, he lost his voice when he received his Gen-4 augmentations. It made him socially withdrawn and limited his mobility outside an AC. To be able to hear his voice again made him cry, tears leaking from the bottom of his artificial eyes.
But first he had a question for his partner. "What was the alarm for, hard to keep track of all the problems that can happen to an AC."
"It's the alarm for your oxygen reaching 10%."
"Damn it, how long was i out?"
"Since the singularity, about ten hours, most of it was used on Xylem and during your battle with Iguazu."
"Well where are we?"
"Beginning scan... We're underwater."
Underwater, that was one of the worst places they could end up in. It also explained why the tanks didn't refill automatically.
"Alright, let's get out of here. Engage Standard Mode."
"Good call Raven, no way we'll be able to ignite the thrusters down here. Best head the marker I've set, you'll be able to climb out. While you get to the surface, i'll run a diagnostic and see what's damaged."
"You do that, in the meantime, get the lights on."
"First thing I checked, that and the compressor. Let there be light."
And with that, they had light, only now, they wish they didn't.
They were standing in an underwater graveyard of ships and sailors. Their skeletons picked clean and left to disappear.
"Raven, where are we."
"I don't know, maybe this ship has some answers."
Approaching the nearest ship's bow, he found the name Suregami, the japanese equivalent for Revenant. But this kind of ship was discontinued with the advent of thrust and hover tech.
"Raven, there's nothing usable on it, even the radio is incompatible with what we use. Best to move on."
"Understood." And with that, Raven began following the waypoints Ayre kept leaving along the way.
As the trek wore on, the ships he passed became a common sight, not just military, but civilian as well.
"Whoever did this didn't care about civilians." Ayre said this with barely restrained anger.
"Yeah. So how's the diagnostic, should've finished by now?"
"I know you're trying to take our minds off this, and I appreciate it. Results should be on screen."
With that, said results appeared on screen. It was what he'd expected. Thrusters and weapons were waterlogged but not to damaged from the crash, oxygen tanks were three quarters empty, but none of them were ruptured.
What he was most concerned about was the black box, he used that to store the blueprints for all the AC weapons and parts, including the programs used on them. It's data was compressed to make the most of the available space. This was a contingency in case the transport got damaged and he had to start over.
The results for that were positive, no data lost and integrity war 100%.
Before he could check the rest, he heard a ping.
"We're close to the surface, when we get out of the water, we'll need a place to lay low and do repairs."
"Right."
"Surfacing in 3. 2. 1."
And with a push of the servos, the AC is free of it's watery grave.
Performing a scan, he can't find anything on radar. Machines or human. The only witnesses are bugs and animals.
"Looks like we're alone for now." Raven breathes a sigh of relief, because right now he was in no condition to fight.
"I'm not picking up familiar signals, and based on the landscape, I guess we're not on Rubicon anymore."
"I think we're on Earth, but the last news real I saw it on showed it as highly industrialised, nothing like this."
"I'll try to connect to the closest network, if there's any. In the meantime, I've marked an area with a huge concentration of electricity, might be a settlement."
"Lets head there and find a place to lay low until we can figure out where we are."
"Ok, and remember Raven, i'll support you"
"Thanks Ayre."
And with that, the 'duo' head towards the potential civilization, not knowing what fate would have in store for them.
I would like to apologise for the delay between uploads, but my grandfather on my father's side died on the 26th of August and I went to the funeral a week later, then I went on a trip to visit my mother's brother, kind of halted the train of thought.
Posting this chapter today to coincidence with the release of Secret Level, which includes an episode based on Armored Core.
This work is inspired by Code Prime by IronPrime117, Code Geass: Paladins of Voltron by Naruwitch, and Code Jedi by DarkerEvening.
I've put together quite a bit of the second chapter for The Polluted Garden, but i'm hoping to include Tenno based on people who play the game like me, so if anyone wants to see their Operator or Drifter in that story, write what you want them to look like, their personality, their preferred loadout, and appearance and post it in the reviews on or the comments of AO3.
In the next few days I'm hoping to post the first chapter of another story.
So stay warm and have a good Christmas.