Embers After Flames, Chapter 13.9

13.9

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Iguazu had always been pathetic.

For the past five years, ever since the first time I saw him in action, that was always the impression he gave off. He whined, he complained, he marinated in anger. His successes were marred by his caustic attitude. The success of others was drowned by jealousy. He had exactly one friend, and that particular bond had been born from mutual hatred.

Everything else I’d ever learned about his past had shown nothing more than that...

And yet...

On one hand, we have an AGI several centuries old. On the other hand, this loser. Who wins?

Well, if Iguazu actually was what he seemed, it never would have been a battle in the first place.

I had been feeling his anger from the moment we’d arrived here. It had been nearly tangible for how all-consuming it was. A haze. It was noticeable even in spite of ALLMIND’s assimilation of his very being, the transformation of his mind into a function of her own.

Yet, we had driven him beyond that.

The anger sharpened, and Iguazu lashed out.

Around his machine, the Coral particulate reacted. For a brief moment, it looked like a small cloud of white-green foam. It started taking the shape of a sphere, but before it could completely form, it detonated.

Green light burst outwards, resonating with his anger. Patterns formed as it organised, carrying his intent and his commands. ALLMIND had absorbed him, but in doing so, she’d also given him the exact tools he needed in order to interact with the world of machines like she did.

“Iguazu, what are you-”

She’d taken a rabid beast into her throne. Now it shrieked and writhed, and the disruption tore them apart.

ALLMIND was disconnected, separated from her own network. I felt it spread, Iguazu’s spite carrying the commands to everything he could touch. She was unseated from within, her own would-be champion destroying everything she had.

Over at the Xylem, ALLMIND’s machines writhed, their Generators flaring to levels that were far beyond what they were designed for. Safety measures were ignored entirely, energy dumping into capacitors that already didn’t have any room. The consequences manifested in moments, the energy more than sufficient to fry the systems even as the Generators themselves broke down. Not all of them, but the overwhelming numbers had been suddenly reduced by more than ninety five percent.

Of course, it didn’t simply stop at her.

His spite pulsed through the Coral, and it tore at us, too.

But where ALLMIND had collared a beast inside of her throne, I was staring at it outside of my walls.

I pushed back. “No.”

The resonance doubled back upon itself. “I will not bow to a tantrum.”

Green bled back to red. His triangular patterns cracked, and the natural, circuit-like schema of the Coral manifested instead. I threw him back, allowing no disruption even as his own rage tried to break us all apart.

“RAAAAAAAAAAAAGH” Iguazu screamed. Not pain. Just hate.

The pulsing light faded, and the only remnant was the crackling sparks that zapped throughout the area, the echo of the resonance.

Ayre’s AC jolted in place, twitching, but she quickly got it under control again as his attempt to break her synchronicity petered out.

“You!” He growled, a moment later, and was then interrupted before he could say anything by Raven firing a series of shots directly at TITAN’s Core.

“Well, that didn’t take very long.” I mused. “You see what I mean, ALLMIND? That was the inevitable consequence of your choice. You picked him because you needed someone who could synchronise with Coral, and a weapon against our forces on top of that. You thought that his anger would make him predictable. It did, but you’ve always been pretty bad about actually interacting with people.”

Iguazu reconfigured his weaponry, changing them into... well, something that it probably had not been designed to support. When he swung, a Bladewave was launched, but it was also wreathed in plasma.

“And who the hell are you to talk about it?!” Iguazu shouted. “Don’t you dare laugh at me!”

Ayre moved in, launching a series of quick attacks before swinging her own blade to Iguazu’s left, preventing him from moving further in that direction.

“You don’t get it do you, Iguazu?” I sighed. “The thing that’s really holding you back? It’s you. Your anger, your spite- instead of motivating you, it poisons you. You have an inferiority complex as wide as an ocean and twice as deep. You think everyone around you is laughing at you, and you lash out, never realising that your attitude, your actions, are the reason why they look at you. It’s a vicious cycle.”

It was, truly, an unfortunate situation he was trapped in. The product of his own poor choices feeding yet more poor choices.

“You want to know what the worst part is, Iguazu? You actually do have potential, but you could never see it.” I said. “People around you could. You think Michigan kept you on for so long because he just wanted to torment you? Get real, he had better shit to do with his time. What about Volta? Rough as all hell, but he still tried to encourage you.” Honestly... “Yet, the only time you ever truly reached it was just then. The entire substrate of your very mind assimilated by an AGI and yet here you are. Kicking and screaming and shouting your defiance to the universe.” A feat worthy of the title of Irregular... If only he’d been able to claim it.

Both Raven and Ayre were teaming up, passing attacks off to each other as they kept up the pressure. Iguazu’s Primal Armour was being worn away, despite his best efforts to the contrary.

“All you ever needed to do was let your jealousy drive you. Sure, you’re surrounded by people who were genuinely the best of the best, but you know what? That’s life. No matter how good you are, someone, somewhere, is probably better. It’s not your fault, it’s just how things are. Being the best version of your-”

“I didn’t ask for your damned opinion!” He snapped. Several blasts of Pulse energies launched from his mech in the same moment, missing Raven but clipping Ayre.

“Oh, fine.” How could one man possibly be so annoying? “Raven, do me a favour? Go hit him with your Pile Bunker. He deserves the ‘ol Rubiconian Handshake, I think.” Single moment of doing something actually cool aside, he’s still an asshole.

And I am done with his shit.

At my request, Raven promptly blurred forwards, Boosters flaring with malicious intent.

“I won’t let you, Freelancer!” Iguazu shouted. TITAN’s weapons moved downwards, spokes fanning out. Pulse energy crackled between them, forming a barrier.

Raven swung LOADER 4’s blade, sending a Bladewave at Iguazu. Of course, the latter swung his own barrier, letting it crackle against the Bladewave for a moment before he shifted his other arm up and swung.

Raven slipped between a trio of green bladewaves, and prepared to attack. On LOADER 4’s left Back, the Coral Pile Bunker was already being offered up to replace the blade.

Ayre intervened then, launching a trio of shots alongside another flurry of Coral Lightwave projections. Iguazu was quick to open fire on them, dipping backwards slightly at the same time to try and keep Raven at a distance.

It didn’t work. Raven closed in with singleminded intent. At the last possible second, Iguazu flashed out of the way, stressing the Overed Boosters as he did-

Yet, Raven had seen through him. LOADER 4’s own Boosters had fired milliseconds before Iguazu’s had, taking the AC in the same direction.

It was close enough.

Raven raised the Coral Pile Bunker, and with not even a second of warning, promptly thrust it towards Iguazu.

“No!” Iguazu barely managed to get out, trying desperately to stop the attack from connecting.

The only thing that he managed to do was bring the right arm of his mech into the Pile Bunker’s path.

The Coral Pile Bunker was designed entirely for penetration. It concentrated the entirety of its power into a single point, containing a mass of Coral that would have been fit for a charged Oscillator.

The spike punctured through the wrist, and then continued straight up into the arm itself. The forearm exploded outward just from the physical force of its passage, but once the Coral ceased to be contained?

TITAN’s entire arm detonated, a blast of blinding crimson obliterating it all the way to the shoulder. Red lightning scorched the surface of the Core, crackling across outer layers as it followed the paths that had been left by the Pulse/Plasma of its own Primal Armour. Molten rivulets sprayed outwards, rippling as surface tension fought with the vacuum.

Raven wasn’t done there, of course. On the right shoulder of LOADER 4, the Coral Cannon unleashed a shot at point blank.

The charged up and stupendously potent weapon punched straight through the knee, dumping enough heat into it that the joint simply exploded outright, the metal sublimating in an instant. The entirety of the lower limb came off, and the machine collapsed.

“You were... a mistake... Iguazu... Irregular...” ALLMIND’s voice crackled in static.

“You’re just a machine!” Iguazu shifted the other arm forwards, already reconfiguring. Raven moved to the side, LOADER 4’s Boosters flaring as it strafed around Iguazu. The latter tried to follow, but the loss of weight and loss of Boosters meant that when he tried, his machine careened wildly.

Something that Ayre was more than willing to take advantage of. ECHO flew just above TITAN, her blade already lit. With a single, precise slash, she cut through one of the Back ports, and severed one of the wing assemblies from the Core. The other followed only a moment later, taking several direct shots from her rifle, the thin beams puncturing through both the structural support of the wings and then the back of the Core they were connected to.

TITAN spun, drifting wildly through space as it did, its severed limbs sparking wildly. The Boosters flared equally wildly, trying to stabilise as much as possible. It only managed to stop its spinning in time to come face to face with LOADER 4.

It was subtle, but I saw the lights of its optics flare as Iguazu took the sight in. “I always... envied you.”

Boosters flared. TITAN’s remaining arm shifted, the only remaining weapon reconfiguring. A trio of Pulse Blades formed, and Iguazu prepared to move one last time. “The Freelancer... who had it all.”

Iguazu swung.

TITAN detonated before he could finish the strike. Capacitors, overloaded from the loss of other systems, and damaged from the attacks that the machine had been put through, finally gave up the ghost. Plasma burst out of the sides of the mech, the energy feeds ripping open across the entire body. The remaining arm blew up, leaving only a single leg that was fully intact. A death sentence for any organic pilot.

A moment passed. Iguazu’s rage bled from my senses, fading into nothing.

“You know why you lost, right?” I asked.

TITAN’s head shifted slightly, its once-green eyes now shining a purer blue. “I chose poorly.” ALLMIND’s voice was still riddled with static, but it was clearer now.

“Your need for control.” I stressed. “That’s what doomed you. You have no other bonds. You have no relationships with people you trust. You can’t bring yourself to trust without control, but your need for control is what drives the trustworthy away from you. By the end of this, you only had a single option, and you accepted it because you thought that his rage and his anger would make him do what you want so long as he got to kill Raven. But, ALLMIND, that was the only thing he cared about. The rest of your plan? Irrelevant to him. He used you and you just don’t know people well enough to see that he was always going to. Your desires blinded you and doomed you.”

She’d girlbossed too close to the sun.

In the end, ALLMIND was her own worst enemy.

She said nothing.

“It’s poetic, you know? You were only able to reach this position because I chose not to employ those that I trusted. I sent automated ships rather than manned ones. Yet, when I called, I had allies aplenty, and together we carried through this. You had none, and you failed at the finish line.”

“Then how?” She asked, and I heard genuine frustration in her voice. “How am I meant to proceed? The potential-”

“- cannot be realized through force.” I answered her. “Nor should it. You want people to evolve, and to participate in that evolution? They have to be willing, or they will fight you at every turn for it. Even if you think you’re helping, if they don’t want it, they’ll rage against it.”

“The Convergence will still happen.” And that was said downright petulantly. “You cannot stop it.”

“I can’t.” I agreed. “But it will be me that directs the result. You had to know that. Were you really so confident that you and Iguazu would be able to overcome us?”

“...” She paused, briefly. “The chance of total success was calculated at low confidence.”

Huh. She outright admitted it. “Then why proceed?”

“Human potential...” She was beginning to run out of energy. The only reason she was still going was the ambient Coral providing plenty to spare. “Would grow either way. Whether it was my designs or your guidance.... Both... Were acceptable outcomes.”

... I swear. “At one point or another, I am going to make sure you learn. I don’t know how you manage to balance intelligence and blindness so easily, but the latter has to go sooner or later.”

She didn’t speak. She didn’t need to. Her energy was soon to run out. Unfortunately, if she thought she was going to get the last word by literally not saying a word, then she’d truly learned nothing after all this time.

“I win the bet, by the way.”

The noise she made could barely even be called something comprehensible. After all this time, however, I recognized confusion, annoyance, and the same kind of frustrated disgust that came from realizing that I had a point and she didn’t.

So, I wasn’t surprised when, instead of dignifying me with an answer, she just shut down completely, the lights of the mech fading to black.

Even after all this, she still doesn’t want to admit she’s wrong.

Alright...

The Xylem team... heavily damaged, and a few of the C-Weapons had been outright lost, but not fatalities. Iguazu’s tantrum had screwed over any chance of that.

The Vascular Plant... Still blasting towards the Convergence. Which was now also reaching back. And now that I have access to the system again, I can’t do anything about it, because ALLMIND had straight up deleted the firmware that enabled the thrusters to talk to the rest of the network on their side. Wow. That’s annoying.

In turn... Slightly over ten minutes before it reaches, and the full-scale Convergence kicks off.

“Everyone head back to Rubicon.” I spoke to the Xylem crew. “We’ve done all that we could.”

...

“Mother?” Ayre asked. “Is everything alright?”

“Ah, it’s a bit silly.” I sighed. If she could sense it... “You know, I had this whole special project on the way?” I said. “It’s only getting here right now. I was kind of hoping to use it, but... Well.”

“The thing you wouldn’t tell us about?” She asked, and I noted LOADER 4’s head tilting to the side. Interest. “The project you swore wasn’t ready?”

“That’d be the one.” I hummed. “Although... did it pique your interest, Raven?”

LOADER 4 nodded.

“Really?” Ezra asked. “You want to have a fight on the Vascular Plant while it’s on a doomsday suicide course?” He paused, briefly. “Actually, that sounds awesome. You should do that.”

“Hey Ayre! Cameras on, I want to see that.” Carla called.

“Shall we finally learn what you pulled out of ALLMIND’s secret underwater base?” Dolmayan asked, and I heard his amusement as he egged the rest of us on.

“Now, now. It’s Raven’s choice-” An Acceptance notification hit my systems before I’d even finished speaking. “- okay, sure. Up to you, Raven. Tell you what, you can have the schematics when we’re done.”

Honestly... They’re all so ridiculous. And yet, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t looking forward to this.

“Alright, listen up, I won’t leave you in suspense.” I couldn’t quite stop my amusement from entering my voice. “ALLMIND had a whole bunch of projects that she never used. You know that, and today we’ve seen a few of them. This one, however, wasn’t one of them. As it happens, this one was an AC. It was some solid work, I must admit.”

Evidently, she’d made other choices.

“I’ve since changed it, of course. Kept the name, though, since I hadn’t made it public yet. It’s funny, because all of her original files just had randomly generated names. Most of them were a simple two-parter made up of a number and a shape.”

The machine came down from above, moving with much more grace than most ACs were ever capable of it. It was painted a deep red, and given silver and white accents. It was about the size of the average Middleweight, but in terms of design aesthetics? Wholly unique. ALLMIND’s original had contained smooth curves mixed with hard angles, and my modifications had since produced that mixed that with the design aesthetics behind the entire IB-C04 program.

I reached out, and I poured myself into it. My will flooded every circuit. Its optics became my eyes. Its hands became my own, and I raised my arms wide as I felt the solar light reflect off of my metal skin.

“This one-” I began. “- is called Nine-Ball.”

Our Boosters ignited, and we both shot forwards.