My virtual display was black and Kong wouldn’t respond to my movements. I tried turning the key and was relieved when the AC started up. “Activating all systems. Systems functioning within normal parameters. Exterior armor is in need of repair. There is no weapon in the right arm.” Well that was good, I think. I put my helmet back on and still saw only black. No wait, not black, dark blue. I turned on my exterior lights and was startled to see a school of fish hovering around my ACs head. “Oh man, we’re in the river!” “Affirmative. Sensors show that we are 49 feet below the surface of the water. Sensors are picking up the KARASAWA’s locator signal 120 yards to the east.” It was a good thing these weapons were equipped with locator beacons now days. Ravens used to throw down there empty weapons to lighten a load and then never find them again. I stood up and got a head rush. I almost fell over from feeling so dizzy. My AC was moving surprisingly well under water, it was still very sluggish but not as much as I expected. I walked to the east and pretty soon my head hit the thick sheet of ice covering the river. I used my right hand and punched through the ice and boosted out of the water. I found the hole in the ice where my AC must have originally fell through and the KARASAWA was right below it. The hole was covered in about an inch of ice, telling me I had been knocked out for quite a long time. I reached in the water and pulled the KARASAWA out. Kong confirmed that it was still functional despite being underwater for so long. I ran over to what was left of the light AC that caused me so much trouble. I felt horrible for having to kill him. But I convinced myself that I had no choice, and started looking for those powerful extensions. I only found a few bits and pieces, not enough to reconstruct them. I left the area and made it back to the city without incident. It was almost noon when I walked into the Garage at the Global Cortex. I got out of Kong and took a look at my armor. It was dented pretty badly but nothing an MT with a hammer couldn’t fix. “Damn boy, you really got hit hard didn’t you? Oh, where are my manners, my name is Marcus, I’m the mechanic assigned to do your repairs. You are Kur right?” “Yeah I’m Kur, but if you don’t mind I’d like to do my own repairs.” “Huh? A Raven that does his own repairs? Never thought I’d see the day. Well I guess it’s ok with me. There is a construction MT over there with a mallet on it. You can use that one.” Marcus pointed at a heavily built MT up against a wall on the far side of the garage and then walked back into the office. I walked over and got the MT and prayed it would be strong enough to pound out those dents in such thick armor. I began taking the damaged panels off my AC and pounding the dents out as I went. I never had any more than one panel off at a time and always kept the MT between Kong and the mechanics office. I didn’t want anybody asking why my AC has muscles and 30 inch thick armor. The repairs took about 5 hours and the paint was still pretty good surprisingly. It was scuffed up a lot but I could have it shined later, for now I was tired, been up for 31 hours. I walked up to my dorm room and walked in the door almost missing the piece of paper taped to it. I grabbed the note and shut the door behind me. to be continued I put the note down on the table and noticed I had a few e-mails on my computer but I ignored them and climbed into bed. I woke up at 6:00 the next morning and after my shower and breakfast I read the note. “Dear Kur, Jack told me you moved here and that you were a Raven now! Imagine his surprise when I told him you were a mechanic the last time I saw you. I am so happy you moved to Corella City. I am driving my family nuts talking about how much fun I had with you on our date. They all think I just have some stupid crush because we only went out once, but I feel like we have so much in common, especially now that you are a Raven. You are going to have to tell me all of the details when we see each other next time. Well anyway, I came up here looking for you but I guess you were still out on your mission. You better be careful out there, if you get hurt I’ll kill you. Love Trish.” Oh man, she said “Love Trish” that’s a good sign. I’ve got to find her. I left my room and walked down to the rec. room looking for Trish. instead I found a room full of people I had never met. I recognized a few from there pictures I saw when looking through the Raven files. One of them stood up on a table and yelled for everybody’s attention. “Lady’s and gentlemen. As most of you know, my name is William Folton and I am, and have been for the past 3 years, the A-1 ranked champion of the arena, and your elected spokesman. It’s good to see you all here today. We have a few new Ravens to welcome to the flock and I would like to bring them up here now. When I call your name please come up. Logan Farthworth, Karen Garcia, Kur... uh, well I guess it’s just Kur, and Leonardo Mucillini. Please come up and take a bow.” The four of us walked up and stood next to William on the table and shook hands. The crowd cheered and clapped for us as we went and found our seats again. “We have two other newbies but they couldn’t be here today to join us, they are Patrisha Schoviak, and Hohokam Thunderfoot. They are both on a mission currently so if anybody sees them when they get back, please pass along the news of today’s meeting.” I had no idea there was a meeting today, I guess that’s what was in the e-mail I never read. “Ok now down to business. There have been reports of an AC going around destroying manufacturing plants. The AC doesn’t seem to care witch corporation owns the plants and is considered extremely dangerous. There are 8 dead Ravens and 49 destroyed ACs that are attributed to this rouge and survivors describe his AC as an extremely fast, red, hover type. The investigators say his weapons of choice are a powerful plasma blade and a heavy machine gun. If you see this guy, run. Come get backup and then go after him. The Global Cortex has issued a 1,500,000 credit reward for his capture. Any questions?” A short black man dressed in a yellow uniform stood up and started to speak. “Yeah, what if like 20 Ravens take part in his capture? Do we have to split the reward?” The crowd started to mumble amongst themselves over the question until William quieted them down. “Well not exactly. If seven or less Ravens take part, the reward will be divided equally, but if more than seven are involved, each will be given 200,000 credits. And finally, if 20 or more Ravens take part, the reward will be 85,000 credits. Remember though, this rouge could probably take out any one of us, he has defeated four ACs at a time without taking a shot. I don’t know about you guys, but I couldn’t do that. Please, go get help if you see him.” I could hear a few of the Ravens in the room complaining that they don’t need any help and other such bull. Some of the newer guys were saying that they hope they never get a chance to collect on the reward. Once again, they all stopped talking when William started. “In other news, it’s only 2 more days until the annual parts convention at the arena. There will be over 15 different corporations displaying there newest parts and selling them for discounted prices. Also, the Global Cortex shop will be selling it’s overstocked and discontinued parts for 25-80% off. So if you are looking for the latest and greatest, or just want a discount on a certain oldie, stop on by. And what else... oh yeah, the arena will be holding mock battles with fake weapons so that you can test out any new parts you buy. Any questions?” Nobody had a question so William continued. “Well if nobody has a question I guess that wraps up our meeting. The next meeting will be in two weeks from today at noon. Try to be here. Dismissed!” With that, everybody started talking and the room sounded like a dull roar. I wanted to talk to William. I made my way through the crowd and found William sitting at a desk talking to several other Ravens. “Excuse me Mr. Folton?” “Ah, you must be Kur, please, call me Will.” “Ok, um, I saw your last arena match, you were great. I liked how you fooled that other guy into thinking you were knocked out.” “Oh, right. Well don’t tell anybody but I really was knocked out. I just happened to wake up at just the right time.” “Well at any rate, It was a good match.” “Not really Kur, it’s never a good match when a pilot dies. I really didn’t want to kill Gerard, especially not over a silly match.” “I understand where your coming from, I just had to kill a corporate Raven on my last mission, I still feel sick about it.” “It’ll pass, so long as you had no other choice. Some of these guys though, they scare me. They try to kill everybody they face and then laugh about it when they do. It’s a shame really... Hey, I heard your AC has some pretty interesting parts on it, why don’t you show it to me?” This William guy was pretty nice. I guess it couldn’t hurt to have the A-1 ranked Raven as a friend. “Yeah sure, it’s in the Garage right now, come on, I’ll show you.” We left the rec. room and walked down the hall into the garage. There were hundreds of ACs standing against the walls and in the middle of the floor forming lanes across the garage. I found my AC standing right where I left it along the wall to my right. “Well this is it. It’s name is Kong.” “Kong huh? Sure does fit. Boy that’s a big AC. Hey, aren’t you over weight with those arms and weapons? I mean correct me if I’m wrong but those are the heaviest arms on the market, and the KARASAWA is an enormous weapon, not to mention the extensions, chain gun, missile launcher, and blade.” This guy was too smart for his own good. “Yeah, your right, those are some heavy arms and weapons, but my AC isn’t over weight. I’ve done a little tinkering and modifications to lighten it up a little without sacrificing speed or strength. I’m kind of a wanna-be mechanic. I even do my own repairs.” “I see. So what does that thing weigh then?” “To tell the truth, I don’t really know.” “Wait a minute, is that a neck? Jeez son, I haven’t seen an AC with a neck since I was at the Armored Core museum in the southern continent.” “Yeah it’s a neck all right. I found that it gives me more movement in the head and a better vantage point for target acquisition.” Well it sounded good to me, I just hope he bought it. “I see.” Eventually William had to go run some errands for his doting wife. It turns out that the greatest Raven in the bast three years has a wife, four kids, and a small dog named Scooter. I was kinda glad to have him go though, he was starting to ask questions that I didn’t want to answer. I made sure that Marcus the mechanic reloaded my weapons and had Kong polished up and ready for my next mission. I then walked up to my dorm room and checked my e-mail. The first letter was the meeting invitation so I just deleted it. The next letter was from the people at the Arena. “Hello Kur and congratulations on becoming a Raven. My name is Michael Startin, President of operations here at the arena in Corella City. Our data shows that your first mission was a success despite the presence of a dangerous opponent. We will be keeping our eye on your records and if they continue to show the great skill you have displayed, we may invite you to participate in arena events. Of course, you do not have to wait for us to come to you, you can apply for membership at the arena and after a mock combat test, you may be given permission to compete. In any case, we will be contacting you again. Have a pleasant day and good luck in your endeavors.” I had been thinking about joining the arena ever since I found my AC several months ago. I just don’t want to have anybody from the Global Cortex main office recognize me and blow my cover. I have heard of Ravens competing anonymously though. I’d have to think about it. For now I am just going to get some lunch and see if there are any missions on the Cortex computer system that I might want to do. to be continued I decided that if I was going to start making some serious money, and be able to afford ammo for my new weapons, I would have to take some higher paying missions. I mean, these so called “easy sorties” were proving to be very difficult anyway. I was scanning the computer and reading several mission requests looking for one that piqued my interest. I found a mission that took place right in the city just a few miles away. It was a request from Crest Industries, they want me to protect one of there energy reactor plants from attack while the security system is shut down for upgrades. They know that an enemy would see this as the perfect time to attack the plant. All I have to do is stand at the front door for five hours and ward off an attack if one occurs. Not bad for 55,000 credits. I accepted the mission and the Crest representative told me to wait two hours for that sector of the city to be evacuated, and then I was to show up and begin my duties as they worked on their system. I passed the time by reading other missions and talking to a few of the Ravens who were hanging out in the rec. room. After about an hour and a half I strapped into my AC and started it up. The warehouse doors opened up and I walked out and onto the street. My area of operations was only 20 miles away so I decided to walk there in my remaining half hour. The walk was a little more difficult than I thought, it seems people won’t move their cars when a giant fighting machine is walking towards them. After the first five miles I gave up and boosted into the air. I made it to the plant with ten minutes to spare and informed the plant manager to start any time he was ready. The plant doors shut and locked and the power to all of the lights and fences and other things shut down. “Ok Raven, we have approximately five hours before we boot the system back up. Keep us safe and I’ll buy you a beer.” “No thanks, I don’t drink. But I’ll still keep you safe.” “Whatever tickles your fancy bub.” I activated all weapons systems and stood at the door waiting. The time couldn’t have passed any slower without going backwards. I was bored out of my mind and about to fall asleep. There was nothing moving anywhere because of the evacuation, nothing to hold my interest, nothing but boredom. I started to count the seconds as they passed by. By the time I got to 7,013 something finally happened. A tiny red blip on my radar, not much but something was out there. “Ok guys, get moving on those installations. Possible bogies due east.” “Copy that Raven. Be advised you aren’t to be more than 600 yards from the plant at any time.” “Understood” I continued waiting, watching the blip. It was a small object, maybe a little larger than a car. Hell it might have been a car, but maybe it was a small recon vehicle. Either way it wasn’t moving. A half hour later and I was bored again. I let out a sigh and tilted my head back to stretch. When I looked again I thought I saw something move, but nothing was there. I kept looking and thought that I might just be seeing heat vapors from the underground heating system. That’s when the bazooka shell just appeared in front of my face. Without thinking I ducked below the shell and fired my KARASAWA where I thought the shell came from. The blue energy bolt hit the street and left a small crater in the cement. “What the hell is going on?” Then I saw it. It was like somebody was moving a distorted piece of glass over the street. “Transparency shields!” Damn I had heard of these, They equip MTs with these shields that make them almost invisible while moving and impossible to see while they are standing still. As soon as I saw the image it faded away, that just means the MT stopped moving. I boosted forward and slashed where I thought the MT should be. All I cut was a light pole. Then I heard the machine gun fire and watched as the bullets made sparks as they ricocheted off my super heavy armor. I quickly fired MY SAWA into the origin of the blast and a large heavy MT suddenly appeared. It took off running but I shot it again and blew it’s leg off. The crippled MT could only lay squirming on the ground now. I was about to go check it out when my radar went crazy. There were dozens of jet fighters coming in from all directions. I switched my missile launcher to vertical fire mode and activated my support missile extensions. I locked onto six different jets and let the missiles fly. I didn’t have time to see if they connected because several of the invisible MTs were firing at me from all angles. I began firing my chain gun and spun in a circle, hitting almost every MT as I spun. The ones I did hit became visible and I easily took them out with the KARASAWA and my plasma blade. I diverted my attention back to the jets and fired my chain gun into the air. The fighters had very thin armor and only a couple of bullets were enough to bring them down. I wouldn’t have even worried about it but there were a lot of them and as I fought with half of them, the other half were attacking the plant. I had to protect the plant more than I had to destroy the jets, so I over boosted back close to the plant and got in front of the small missiles that were headed for it. I just prayed that my cores anti missile cannon would take most of the missile out. I did a quick count and concluded that there were 29 incoming missiles, give or take a few. Once they were about 75 yards away, my core erupted in a bright green laser display, shooting laser beams in dozens of directions almost all at once. The missiles exploded in a cloud of smoke and fire but 18 of them still made it through. I fired my chain gun at them and managed to take out another five or six. That left about 12 that plowed into my AC. I was just glad they were small missiles. I looked down to see small smoldering dents in my armor and a crack where two or three must have hit in the same spot. “Kong! I need a damage check!” “Systems functioning within normal parameters. Front armor on core has sustained moderate damage.” Just as I thought. I locked onto another six jets and fired my medium missiles, taking out all six of my targets. Then I locked onto 3 of the MTs and fired before I had to dodge a large bazooka shell. I began using my KARASAWA to pick off the MTs I could see and my chain gun to destroy the jets and bring down the shield of the invisible Mts. It took about 20 minutes but I managed to take down every one of the enemy units without letting too much through to hit the plant. “It looks like the attack is over, but I’ll hang around for the last 10 minutes until you guys are back on-line.” “Thanks Raven, we are almost done here.” I was just shutting down my weapons systems when I saw another red dot on my radar. I powered up my weapons again and prepared for another wave of jets and Mts. Instead, I got a heavily armed middleweight AC. It was painted yellow with blue arms and had medium weight legs and light weight arms and core. The weapons were pretty impressive, a heavy bazooka, a fairly strong type of blade, and a large multi missile launcher. The pilot didn’t seem to be in much of a hurry though. He just walked into the area nice and slow. “So you managed to take out all of those MTs and jets with that fat ass AC?” I wasn’t going to respond to him. I’ll just let him talk and maybe he’ll go on long enough that the plants security system will come back on-line and take care of him for me. “Not in the mood to talk huh? I’d have plenty to say if I knew I was about to face a Raven like me. Haha ha ha. You young, punk, Cortex Ravens have no idea what real skill is. I’ll have your fat ass split open before you even know what hit you.” Good, he thinks I am just another run of the mill heavyweight. He doesn’t know how well I can move with my artificial muscle system. That works to my advantage. It seems that he had been locking his missiles on me the entire time he was talking because he immediately fired a dozen good sized missiles at me. My anti missile cannon took care of about half of them and I dodged the rest. He over boosted right at me ready to swing his blade but I saw him coming and jumped over his swipe. I kicked off a nearby building, sending glass and cement crashing to the street below, and sending myself towards the back of my opponents AC. He was just as good at dodging as I was as he jumped to the side and avoided my blade slash. “How the hell does your fat AC move like that? Tell me now or I’ll gut you alive I swear!” He was getting mad, in my experience, when people get mad they either get clumsy or better at whatever it is they are doing. Turns out he was the kind of guy who gets better. “Tell me now damn it!” He was slashing his blade at me at an incredible rate. He lifted his heavy bazooka and fired a round at my core. I managed to jump a little and let the round pass between my legs. I heard a huge explosion as the shell plowed into a tall building behind me. I boosted away from my opponent and into the air locking my missiles at the same time. As soon as I got all six locks I let them fly. The missile launcher and my extensions fired 12 missiles into the air where they turned downward and strait for my opponent. The midweight AC boosted behind a building and my missiles plowed into it, two of them however just missed the top of the building and found there mark hitting the ACs multi missile launcher and rendering them useless. to be continued The AC over boosted down the street about 1000 yards. “Raven, the security system is up and running good job. We have a request of you, it’s up to you to accept or not but we want you to destroy that AC. The mission pays 20,000 credits on top of the 55,000 you just earned. What do you say?” Ah why not. “You got a deal.” I over boosted down the street after my prey. The AC saw me coming and took off out of the city, I followed him into the frozen plains and into a large canyon. I could have caught up to him earlier but I wanted to get out of the city and avoid anymore property damage. I jumped into the canton following the fleeing AC. Once I reached the bottom a large bazooka round hit me in the leg leaving a huge dent in the armor. If I had my old armor I would most likely be missing a leg right now. I found the AC behind me and fired my KARASAWA four times. The first three shots were dodged but the last hit square on the chest leaving a melted panel of armor trailing smoke into the winds of the deep canyon. “Damn you! What are you?!” I fired the last four shots my SAWA had to offer while trying to dodge two large bazooka shells and this time I hit the AC twice. One of my shots hit the already damaged panel of armor and melted it clean through. The other shot cut his leg almost all the way off. I hooked my empty KARASAWA onto the latch on my right thigh. I lowered my chain gun over my shoulder and began firing. The high speed bullets pelted the crippled AC leaving hundreds of dents and holes all over it. 120 rounds later and the pilot ejected before his AC exploded. “I can’t believe I lost to a fat ass AC. You better kill me now because if you don’t I will hunt you down. You hear me you son of a bitch?! I’ll kill you!” I left him there at the bottom of the canyon to let him cool off. I informed Crest that the AC was destroyed and they transferred the 75,000 credits to my account. I made sure that Kong was functioning normally and boosted out of the canyon. On the way back to the city I noticed some explosions and plasma fire of in the distance. I decided to check it out so I boosted towards the area. It took me a good 5 minutes to get there and when I did I was shocked to see a three on one AC battle going on. the three aggressors where all heavy tank types with KARASAWAs, howitzers, heavy rockets, and TITAN missile launchers. The were all painted white, it seems, to match the snow and equipped with turn boosters for better maneuverability. There quarry was a single lightweight AC with a rifle, small missile launcher, and a light blade. It was painted in a lot of different colors, mostly purple, blue, yellow and orange. It looked very familiar actually. The pilot was pretty good too, he was dodging all of the tank ACs shots and landing a few of his own. But eventually the fire power of the huge tanks wore the Raven down and he began taking hits. It looked like the light AC was badly damaged now and about to be destroyed. I moved in for a closer look and got a good view of the battle. The light weight AC dropped a part to gain a little more maneuverability and I looked closely to see what it was. The part laying in the snow was a high quality missile interceptor, that was when it finally hit me. That was Trish down there getting assaulted by three tank ACs! God I was so mad at myself for not realizing it sooner. But my rage at the three men attacking Trish far surpassed my anger at myself. I hit my over boosters and flew into the battle cutting the arm off of the closest tank with my blade. I turned around and boosted into another tank knocking it over onto it’s side. I reached down and pulled it’s head off then turned to the third AC and did my best to empty my chain gun into it. I was blinded by rage, fighting on pure instinct. I actually wanted to kill these men, I wanted to kill them for attacking Trish. I could almost feel the heavy rockets coming in behind me and I jumped backwards doing a back flip over the rockets and landed on the AC that fired them. The weight of my heavy AC landing crushed the core of the AC below me, sending sparks out to the sides. I ran forward as fast as I could and grabbed Trishs AC by the arm then hit my over booster. We both shot across the snow covered plains at the speed of sound. My energy bar ran low and I stopped the over boost and ran, dragging Trish behind, until it charged back up and I hit the over boost again. We eventually made it back to the city border and Trish started to talk. “Wow, that was amazing! Who are you? How does your AC move like that? How do YOU move like that? Thank you so much, I didn’t know what to do, thank you for saving me!” She was talking so fast I could barely understand what she was saying. I suddenly realized that she didn’t know it was me yet and for some reason I got very nervous. I didn’t know what to say to her. “Well come on handsome, you got a name?” “Um, yeah.” She just giggled a little and said “Well what is it?” I was so nervous and I didn’t know why. “What is... what?” “How about this, we will go to the Cortex and talk face to face how does that sound?” “Um... yeah.” We walked our ACs into the city turning heads as we walked. Trish’s AC was damaged badly and mine was in pretty bad shape as well. We made it to the Global Cortex Garage and parked our ACs in a work station.