9.1
+++
“That voice...”
“I’m the one that Carla calls ‘the annoyance’, yes.” She had called me that to my face and I was oddly proud of the title. “I trust I don’t need any more an introduction that that?”
Walter made a noise, half a grunt and half a hum. “Carla has told me enough.” He says. “‘Drich’, isn’t it?”
“Correct.” I agreed. “Something to say...
2025-04-07 12:27:06 +0000 UTC View Post9.0
+++
I told Flatwell first, of course. Of everybody in the RLF, he more than anyone was the person who could properly make use of the information.
When he’d gotten to the combat footage, he’d closed his eyes, breathed deeply, and then released a very emphatic ‘ffuuuuuck’. I felt it in my non-existent bones.
Seeing it did, at least, leave him fully willing to let me handle that particular matter, though, so... victory?
It was actually B...
2025-04-03 13:56:56 +0000 UTC View Post8.9
+++
Despite how the last five or so years had felt like they were just flying by, it was only now that I felt like I didn’t have enough time.
A little ridiculous, to be honest. I was, if anything, overprepared by now. Yet, knowing that 621 is on the way and everything currently happening is going to come to a head... It’s a heavy feeling.
Anticipation and concern in equal measure, I think.
December was reasonab...
2025-04-01 14:49:19 +0000 UTC View Post8.8
+++
By the time that Walter came back with the next set of Hounds, Carla had their new ACs ready to go. 618, 619, and 620 joined with 617, all of them receiving LUNCH models. It was a decent upgrade for them, especially since Carla had been kind enough to provide them with some varied sets of weaponry on top of that.
From gatling guns to missile launchers to Pulse shields, Carla had provided them with quite the arsenal. The entire squad could be carrying...
2025-03-28 12:41:22 +0000 UTC View Post8.7
+++
January 1, 47 years post Fires of Ibis
+++
This year started the same way that the last year ended.
Balam and Arquebus went to war with each other, both groups attempting to sabotage the other. The RLF stayed holed up in their fortresses, continuing to add more and more defences to them as time passed. Strategic stockpiles built up, even as new luxury and civilian products continued to flow into the cities. Despite the wa...
2025-03-26 13:26:44 +0000 UTC View Post8.6
+++
Time passed quickly enough.
Carla filled Walter in on the events that happened. Walter wasn’t exactly pleased, since he could recognize a complication to the plan when he saw one, but he also recognized that he couldn’t do anything about it at the moment, so that was pretty much that.
Carla’s little group settled into Grid 086, finding that it was the Grid that was most intact and required the least refitting of the entire cluster. Her cr...
2025-03-24 12:58:23 +0000 UTC View Post8.5
+++
I waited only a few moments to respond, a timeframe to ensure that the signal and response took long enough that they wouldn’t know how close to the Grid I actually was.
By the time I started responding, however, Carla was already dumping viruses into the systems. Nasty little things, too, a variety of them designed to cause a variety of problems. The level of access she’d already acquired just getting to this point gave her plenty ...
2025-03-20 12:32:41 +0000 UTC View Post8.4
+++
“Okay, so it turns out that raiding the PCA might be harder than we thought.” Carla spoke, and if I’d had a head, I would have shaken it.
I’ve been watching them for several days now, and I know damned well that the only reason Carla hasn’t already committed to the raiding plan is because she can’t commit to the raiding plan.
Goodness knows she’s tried. They had already raided two other corporate gr...
2025-03-18 11:01:44 +0000 UTC View Post8.3
+++
If not for the fact that she was travelling in a group, Carla would have been a tricky bitch to keep track of. I was honestly kind of impressed with how good she was at going to ground. She was usually so... loud.
Carla’s group was fairly small, all considered though. A few transports carrying a few MTs each, and a few more carrying nothing but equipment and manufacturing. They had evidently come prepared for Rubicon, but if ...
2025-03-14 08:06:10 +0000 UTC View Post8.2
+++
Walter and Carla.
A real blast from the past, those two. Sure, I’ve thought about them every now and then over the years, but that’s mostly in the context of other matters, not... the two people themselves.
I knew them. I knew them in more than just the way that a person who plays a game comes to know that game’s characters.
I’d had the opportunity to see them. Watch them. They were both people I kept an eye...
2025-03-12 12:27:39 +0000 UTC View Post8.1
+++
The first corporate invasion of RLF territory came before the month was over.
It was not, as one might suspect, a particularly big invasion.. No, it had been a rather subtle affair, insofar as giant robots shooting the shit out of each other could in any manner be considered ‘subtle’.
An Arquebus MT Squad was sent to investigate an outlying region that the RLF kept as a listening post / communications center for the outer prop...
2025-03-10 10:15:30 +0000 UTC View Post8.0
+++
In the aftermath of the whole thing, the PCA was, not to put too fine a point on it, mad.
Like, extremely, earth-shatteringly, unreasonably fuck-ass mad.
PCA troops swarmed along Branch’s trail, desperate to attempt to get their hands on them. King and Chartreuse had a number of engagements, but Raven... Hoo boy.
Raven was the priority target, the PCA singling them out as the one who had caused the most problems. ...
2025-03-06 13:36:10 +0000 UTC View Post7.9
+++
May 28, 44 years post Fires of Ibis
+++
“Isn’t this... bad?” Dunham asked, his voice confused. “Why are you supporting this? I thought that you had a different plan that was meant to go slower?”
It was a few days before Branch’s plan was scheduled to be put into action. Flatwell had arranged for most of the RLF’s leadership to be present, which meant that most of their AC Pilots were present, as well as the ...
2025-03-04 14:21:40 +0000 UTC View Post7.8
+++
Life continued. Even the new additions didn’t change that. Until the next set of suckers arrived, it stayed relatively quiet, though, and I appreciated that. The RLF had time to fix themselves up. I scheduled a decent amount of R&R for the Firekeepers, letting them get the stress out so that the next flood of events wouldn’t be too hard on them.
Once they did arrive, things kicked back into gear. New corps, new mercs, but nothing really out o...
2025-02-28 04:23:55 +0000 UTC View Post7.7
+++
Ah, silence. Absolutely no response whatsoever- for several seconds, too!
Either I had touched a nerve, or ALLMIND was putting on quite the show in terms of her reaction.
“It makes sense, really.” I continued, after a bit. “Despite having a much smaller overhead in terms of maintenance, as well as access to a truly vast amount of resources, you are still here. In the Human Sphere. You did not travel to the dark edges...
2025-02-26 13:37:49 +0000 UTC View Post7.6
+++
It only took Flatwell a few days to finish setting things up on his side of things. In those few days, Marzan announced that it was pulling out, now that its army had seemingly vanished into the ether for no discernable reason.
Arkvidavat actually went ahead and accused them of sabotage, proclaiming that their final assault was unsuccessful because Marzan hadn’t participated at all. Marzan got angry and yelled back, and then both had hired a ...
2025-02-24 13:31:01 +0000 UTC View Post7.5
+++
I had the WEEVIL ping Raven’s AC, alerting them to its presence before the WEEVIL moved to shift its camo tarp off of its body.
Raven didn’t react aside from turning to face it. I kept my own guns pointed downwards as the WEEVIL stood upright, the C-Weapon standing loosely, but prepared.
I received a ping back, and then, rather unexpectedly, an actual comms link request. That... well, most mercs were perfectly fine just broadcasting and lis...
2025-02-20 12:53:35 +0000 UTC View Post7.4
+++
One thing you don’t realize about combat between two or more Armored Cores is that it is deceptively quick.
For all the power that those warmachines possessed, they were not equally durable. Speed was the best defense that there had ever been, and every AC ultimately relied on it in the end. Against MTs, or the larger, stranger machines, battles extending into tens of minutes or more wasn’t uncommon. Against other ACs, however, any ...
2025-02-18 14:09:34 +0000 UTC View Post7.3
+++
“Captain?!”
Oh man~
That guy fucked up.
Raven’s Pulse Blade had cut clean through the Core/Leg connection joint. That was a pretty fucking thin target at that angle and with that little warning.
“Unidentified AC has taken out the captain! Code 15e!”
‘Taken out’ usually had some implications of difficulty. That guy got Skill Diff’d.
The rest of them were...
2025-02-14 08:42:01 +0000 UTC View Post7.2
+++
The SEA SPIDER was quick to skedaddle after the battle was over. The AC waited about thirty seconds before it elected to follow, though it chose to hang back at a fairly large distance, well outside of engagement range.
Either stupidity, or a great deal of confidence. Misplaced? Well, I’d say ‘yes’ in most cases, but you could never be entirely sure.
The SEA SPIDER flew north, rushing towards the canals as fast as it c...
2025-02-12 06:27:07 +0000 UTC View Post7.1
+++
The plan was enacted only a few days later. I had the front row seats to both of their forces being marshalled, my Antigens keeping an eye on the situation.
The mercs were unfortunately more difficult to track. Both myself and the RLF had a scattershot of sensors throughout the area, but outside of immediate territory, it was hard to ensure that they were comprehensive, and that meant that there was always an opportunity for some groups to slip...
2025-02-10 13:28:08 +0000 UTC View Post7.0
+++
Raven.
A very familiar name to anybody who played the Armored Core series. You played as a Raven, the Raven, in every game other than AC 4 and For Answer. A myth, a legend, the final action of the battlefield.
But those were just games. Here was the reality:
‘Raven’ was the title of one of the most legendary mercenaries who had ever existed. Back in the age before interstellar travel existed, durin...
2025-02-06 14:08:24 +0000 UTC View Post6.9
+++
March 2, 38 years post Fires of IBIS.
+++
I might have considered myself a prophet if I wasn’t aware of just how much history liked to rhyme. ‘The next few years would be trying ones’, I said. This was pretty fucking obvious.
As the PCA slowly came to the realization that the RLF was only getting stronger and more capable despite their efforts, their designs started to shift. The years passed, and the number of pilo...
2025-02-04 11:35:23 +0000 UTC View Post6.8
+++
“I thought you said you were going on a scouting mission.” Freddie spoke, his confusion evident in his voice.
“I did say that. And I did go on the scouting mission.”
“Flatwell...” Dolmayan, more diplomatic than Freddie, paused for a moment, searching for the correct words to say. “That is a baby.”
“Yes. She is a baby.”
“Out of curiosity, how exactly does a scouting mission progress into... acquiring an ...
2025-01-31 09:28:45 +0000 UTC View Post6.7
+++
“- and that’s the short of it.” I finished explaining.
We were in rare form, today. Every AC Pilot of the RLF was, for once, not scattered to the winds, leaving us all free to have a meeting.
The room was a comfortable one; a low table surrounded by couches and chairs, a large screen on the wall, a tray of snacks and drinks that Dunham had prepared for the evening. Things were quiet, and as far as either myself or Fl...
2025-01-29 11:28:59 +0000 UTC View Post6.6
+++
Well. Isn’t that interesting?
After literal years of effectively waging a shadow war against each other, now ALLMIND wants to talk.
Clearly, she’d started to catch on to certain things. ‘Non-Human Consciousness’... An odd choice of wording, there. Technically, just by the literal meaning of the words, it could describe any AGI, even ALLMIND herself, but there was no reason for an AI to do such a thing. Coupled with the fact that ALLMIND...
2025-01-27 12:51:10 +0000 UTC View Post6.5
+++
The anniversary of the day that the Fires of Ibis had started passed with the same quiet melancholy as it had for the past three decades. The two weeks until the end of the year afterwards were known as the ‘Time of Fire’ to most of Rubicon’s citizenry; a remembrance of the period where the ever-expanding wall of burning Coral had lit the entire surface of the planet as though it was a scorching summer day. In truth, the light had lasted longer than ...
2025-01-23 14:40:27 +0000 UTC View Post6.4
+++
“All settled in, I hope?” Flatwell asked.
“Naturally.”
Ayre’s addition to the family occurred the same way that most of my rescued children had.
It started slowly, at first. She was a being who had never had a conversation with another person, Human or not. Where she differed from most of the other rescuees was in the fact that she’d had access to a fairly consistent stream of data, which had come from t...
2025-01-21 13:58:37 +0000 UTC View Post6.3
+++
BALTEUS retreated, boosting backwards in order to gain a bit of distance from the Firekeepers. Even as it did so, I saw its rails deploy, missiles readying once again.
They launched a moment later, another barrage providing a moment of cover for BALTEUS.
And that was all it was, really; a moment of cover. My Firekeepers weaved through this lot of missiles with the same ease that they had gone through the last, the missiles redirecting int...
2025-01-17 07:23:40 +0000 UTC View Post6.2
+++
The blinding light had barely begun to dissipate into flecks of red and orange before the Firekeepers reached the Watchpoint, trailing so closely behind the Overboost Units. Crimson sparked in the air as the unleashed Coral was agitated.
It gave me a perfect view of the fortress, thrown into such stark contrast with both the world around it and the way it had been only moments ago. There was the main Watchpoint itself, of course, which was a simple c...
2025-01-15 06:19:10 +0000 UTC View Post