Which Flesh is Your Flesh?

Chapter 15

Michigan felt exhausted. The deep in his soul kind of exhaustion that told him he should have quit ten years ago, or better yet, should have never stepped foot in a cockpit in the first place. He was feeling it more and more as this hopeless war dragged on. Despite that, he pulled on his nearly self parodic persona before entering the briefing call.

Freud and Snail were already on the line with Nile.

“It’s about time,” came Snail’s arrogant sneer. “Even the liberation front representative had a better sense of punctuality.”

Said representative used an icon with coloration that suggested a red fox, but with extremely wonky anatomy. He’d heard rumors of V.IV going MIA recently, he wouldn’t be surprised if what he was looking at was a hastily recolored wolf.

“Late for a hot date, Snail? I thought you got enough action licking your bosses’ asses.”

Freud stifled a laugh.

“YOU VULGAR-“

“Gentlemen, please,” the RLF representative spoke through a heavy vocoder. “I understand tensions are high, but I think you can agree that operation Strychnyne takes precedence over your distaste for each other.” He was laying it on a little thick, but changing his patterns of speech on top of using a vocoder was a smart move.

“Of course,” Snail replied, not bothering to hide the disgust from his voice.

“Nile, roll the tape.” Michigan ordered. He heard Freud’s chair squeak over the mic as they watched LOCKSMITH go down from Gun thirteen’s perspective. “This is the best footage we’ve been able to get of Gun thirteen in combat. Straight from the horse’s mouth. Though we know he likes to switch things up, this is his go to AC configuration, Sky Burial. Next tape, Nile.” He waited until the moment Gun thirteen’s cameras focused. “Pause here we don’t need to see the rest of this.” Michigan really wished he hadn’t seen the rest of it. “That’s our man.” Michigan heard Rusty take in a pained breath and then the little icon that indicated he’d muted himself popped up in the corner of his emblem. “I had the tech boys do some modeling for the facial analysis program and they managed to get a hit.” Michigan pulled up an older picture he’d found of him for comparison. He heard Snail’s chair clatter to the ground as he stood up suddenly. “His name’s Zeta. I hear he’s caused quite the PR nightmare for Arquebus.”

“No!” He protested as if that would change the results. “That’s not possible! The Raven operating here has been active as a mercenary since that man was a child!”

“Come on, Snail, think! He’s one of Walter’s dogs. He’s working off a stolen license! You think he’s got the cash for any established talent?”

“That’s impossible! He shouldn’t even be on this planet! I have men scouring Eris for him as we speak!”

“Well according to his bank he’s here. Nile?” A series of bank statements popped up on screen, paired with matching orders of Balam and Da Feng parts, all under different names, but sent to the same set of coordinates on Rubicon 3.

“You could have doctored those!”

“Star Fox, you got any corroborating evidence?” Michigan asked Rusty.

“I have orders from Elcano, sent to the same coordinates, that match the statements Michigan has supplied.”

“So what you’re saying is, we’ve got his address.” Freud interjected before Snail could interrupt.

“Next slide, Nile.”

It was a satellite image of an abandoned Furlong base.

“Zoom in.”

Nile blew up the image until a red and black blur was visible in the snow.

“I’d say there’s a 90% chance we have his address.” He paused for a moment. Still torn up about what he was going to do. “We all know Zeta is a king maker, and we also all know that we don’t want him deciding to take the side of anybody else here. The best option is to just knock the piece off the chess board. This’ll be a four man hunting expedition. I have reason to believe Zeta won’t be alone. Nile?”

A shot of the institute AC Iguazu was piloting popped on screen. Rusty unmuted.

“Iguazu.” He muttered through the vocoder.

“Iguazu? Isn’t he dead? I was under the impression Raven tore him limb from limb.” Snail asked.

“Next slide.”

Iguazu’s updated personnel file came on screen.

“Ah, I see. Fascinating.” Michigan didn’t like how interested Snail sounded. Hopefully he and Freud would be beat up enough after they were done with the operation that he and Iguazu could wring their damn necks. He didn’t even consider the possibility that they’d have to kill Iguazu. Michigan pointedly refused to.

“So here’s the plan.”

Iguazu felt something pass into the edge of the Haunted House’s perception. In light of the fire safety system incident, Raven had started teaching him how to interface with its systems. If he was going to go poking his nose where it didn’t belong anyway, Raven preferred for him to do it in a way that didn’t make the Haunted House try to send an SOS to Furlong headquarters. He could feel a mid-sized craft approaching through the radar. Maybe something about the size of an AC? He sent a message to Raven letting him know he was going to check it out, receiving an affirmative and a “don’t engage if you don’t need to” in return.

Michigan thanked Potomac in his own roundabout sort of way before he bent himself into LIGER TAIL’s cockpit. Every year he spent at Balam made it feel smaller and smaller. His back felt stiffer and stiffer each time he squeezed himself inside. He adjusted the print he’d lodged between the panels of his AC’s radar displays, the “family picture” he’d made all of them sit for after Hakra died. Wu Hauhai was posturing for Red and Volta, Michigan and Nile stood talking to each other about their upcoming deployment, and all the way in the corner, Iguazu stood in the doorway, looking in. He had always been that way hadn’t he. A man unwilling to step through the door, but at the same time unable to leave the threshold. Michigan could pull him through. He knew he could. Or at least he was able to make himself believe he could. In Michigan’s experience, belief in his ability to do something was far more important than actually knowing he could.

Iguazu ran the final checks on his systems once he plugged himself in. His hands moving along his inner surfaces, checking switches, feeling along the edges of each part of his body, slowly beginning to move, testing each servo in turn to ground him, to remind him that the massive metal creature his mind was connected to was him. It was almost like masturbating. It almost felt better.

Iguazu could sense the craft on the Haunted House’s radar was slowing down outside. It was close enough now that he could feel what it was. He knew that AC.

Raven opened up coms.

“Michigan, what brings you here?” Iguazu asked, borrowing Raven’s blown out distorted voice.

Snail worked with his personal medical team to ensure his augments were all running at their optimal settings. It was a slow process, but he had to be recalibrated for each sortie accounting for things like his current diet, hormone levels and emotional state. To fail to do so would risk slow degradation of his emotional stability, similar to the effects of generation four augmentation C8-092. Then once that was finished he checked his experimental nerve connectors. They were top of the line, but if too much residue built up inside his ports, he could risk them heating up and cooking him from the inside out C8-265. Part of his pre-combat ritual was to fastidiously clean them out with medical grade contact cleaner to ensure that there were no issues. Next he ran through a few exercises with his ocular implants, making sure they were focusing correctly. He didn’t need them becoming miscalibrated while he was in the cockpit C8-108 C8-345 that could cause a crash. While Snail worked he pointedly tried to ignore the noise of Freud’s pre-combat ritual. He was surprised he hadn’t deafened himself yet, Freud was completely unaugmented after all.

Freud sat in his cockpit with his eyes closed. He’d heard talk of some augmented humans engaging in almost pseudo mystic practices while in the pilot’s chair, closing their eyes and sitting stock still, allowing their consciousness to pass into the machine. That wasn’t what he was doing though. He had his eyes closed so that he could feel the beat of the music he was blasting in his chest, his foot tapping along on the ground as it thrummed around him. All he needed to get ready for combat was something to get his blood pumping, a good speedcore track, maybe some power metal if he was in the mood, though today he’d gone with some atmospheric drum and bass. Right now he needed something to bring him down a bit. His heart hadn’t stopped pounding since he’d seen that short clip of the copy cat Raven.

He’d known Walter’s pet Raven wasn’t the real one since the moment he first saw combat footage of him. Freud didn’t understand why he would even bother using Raven’s name though. He lacked the level of technique someone with the real Raven’s experience could develop, but his raw skill was much more impressive. Even in that short clip he had been shown of him outside of his AC, he was able to make his exoskeleton move delicately. Using a piece of hardware like that to crush or kill was easy, but to move delicately required a massive amount of skill.

Freud also had confirmation on the identity of Raven copycat #2. Iguazu had been a surprise, though when he looked back, maybe it wasn’t really. He had always flown medium crafts as if he thought he was piloting a light weight AC, it made sense that once he was given an AC suited to that style his performance would improve. Though the lengths he’d gone to for that improvement almost reminded him of Snail.

He’d been so cute when he first joined the Vespers, thinking his shiny new augmentations would make him commander in no time. Freud had enjoyed tearing him into little pieces, watching the naivety and the optimism drain from his eyes as he choked on his own blood, then finally watching Snail disembowel himself, ripping out his own innards hand over fist in a desperate bid to match him. The truly beautiful part was that it hadn’t worked. Freud had driven him to sell his soul in exchange for wings and Snail still couldn’t fly as high as he could. Snail didn’t even have his own name really. Each of the Vespers was given the name of a great artist, scientist or philosopher as a reflection of their corporate ethos. Freud got to pick for them now that he was V.I, but his former CO had given him the name Freud because he likened his combat style to psychoanalysis. First he would do a short period of recon, and then he would tear his opponent’s AC down to the bolts. Snail was a reference to some probably apocryphal thing Salvador Dali had said about Sigmund Freud’s brain. He was just an extension of Freud, a vestigial limb that did paperwork for him, and he wanted Snail to know that.

Freud wondered if Raven and Iguazu were the same, or if they were something else that endlessly cannibalized itself and choked on its own bones.

When he felt their flesh beneath his teeth he would know.

Rusty eased into the cockpit of his borrowed AC. STEEL HAZE was still with Elcano and project New Dawn was nowhere near finished yet. It was probably better that way, they couldn’t show their hand in front of the corporates too soon. Luckily he was already comfortable piloting TSUBASA, he’d been sneaking his way into its cockpit just to stare at the glittering buttons of the controls practically since he could walk. It was the first AC he’d ever piloted. TSUBASA was maybe the closest thing he had to a brother. As he sat down in its pilot’s seat he quietly apologized to it for painting it orange, but he needed every advantage he could get right now. His identity needed to be hidden as long as humanly possible.

He didn’t like this plan from a moral standpoint. It felt wrong, deep in the pit of his stomach to gang up on his buddy, with the corporations of all people, but he knew it was his best option. Raven needed to be taken off the board. He was too dangerous. There was also the prospect of what the aftermath of the fight was going to look like. Freud, Snail and Michigan all exhausted and in one place? How could he possibly pass that up? Even if it was a trap, how could he? He still intended to have Rokumonsen as back up, in case he needed a diversion to escape, he wasn’t stupid, but this was their best chance to knock all the biggest pieces off the table.

“Ready to launch, Rusty?” Flatwell asked over comms.

Rusty took a deep breath. The controls felt good in his hands and his pilot’s seat felt much more comfortable without the fake ports he’d used to pass himself off as an augmented human digging into the back of his neck.

“Ready.”

“Valorous Rusty, my blade will serve as your shield. Bring us victory!”

Raven stood silently in IRON LUNG’s cockpit, listening in on the comms as he strapped himself in. He used to feel like a hostage tied up inside of his own cockpit. How could he not? He had no exit strategy. If he crashed it wasn’t like he could’ve escaped with no hands. Raven was stubborn, but not open a hatch with just his teeth, stubborn. Yet he still kept going back in. For a while this was the only way he could express himself, his AC the only thing he could control. It wasn’t tying him down, it was holding him up. His AC kept him going, serving as his crutch while he found something else to live for.

“Ayre, are we ready to launch in case things out there go south?” Raven didn’t really expect a response, she’d been silent since he’d enclosed them both in his exoskeleton. He got the sense that she was considering something deeply about it.

The humming of IRON LUNG’s coral generators ran up his arm like the purring of a cat.

“Ready to launch.”

“How are you feeling?” He asked her, a little bit afraid of the answer.

“I think I understand you a little better.” She said, “Coral waves are incapable of feeling pain. We can feel negative emotions, like anger, grief, and betrayal, but not the physical pain that a creature with a body can feel.”

“How was it?”

“It was awful.” He felt something through his augments like Ayre was curling in on herself. “If something could make me feel like that, I would try to avoid it at all costs. That’s… that’s why humans do such horrible things to each other, isn’t it Raven.”

“Pretty much yeah.”

“Raven… how could you do that to yourself? I don’t mean that as a moral judgment,” she hurriedly added, “I just can’t understand how someone could manage to make themselves do that willingly if they knew what it might feel like.”

“It hurt less than what I was already feeling.” Raven answered nonchalantly.

“I… I don’t know if I can imagine that. I don’t know if I’d be able to think if I was in that much pain.”

“I wasn’t exactly thinking when I did this.” He wiggled his metal coated fingers.

“Do you… regret it?”

“No. I don’t. This is the first time I’ve felt like myself in years.” This awful, grinding, painful thing he had become was alive. He was alive and breathing. Every spilled drop of blood, every wheeze of his lungs, every bone shattered beneath the screws of his new body was alive. Even the machine that surrounded him was alive, screeching and growling as he moved like a wounded animal. He was a monster, but he was alive.

“You know what I’m here for, Gun Thirteen. I want my man back.” Michigan answered Iguazu’s question.

“I meant what brings you here, Michigan. You have my number, you could have called. I didn’t even have time to tidy up.”

“Why dont we talk out here then. That way you don’t need to worry about straightening your doilies.”

Iguazu opened the hangar doors and Michigan froze.

“Iguazu?”

“I guess the jig is up.” His voice shifted from Raven’s to his own and he stalked out onto the snow. Michigan wasn’t shaken by this, or at least he didn’t act like he was. Iguazu had assumed trying scare tactics on him wouldn’t work, but after hanging out around Raven for so long they were practically second nature.

“Are you going to come home willingly or am I going to have to drag you back?”

“What do you mean home?” Iguazu asked. “You mean back to base? Where I’ve been rotting in debtors prison for seven years?”

“Iguazu,” Raven cautioned over the comms. Iguazu knew this wasn’t the plan, he was supposed to argue that it would be better to be based here so that Raven could perform regular maintenance on him. He was a custom piece after all, it would make sense for him to request a specialist. Right now though he didn’t care about the plan, he was getting pissed off.

Michigan requested a private comms channel. Iguazu accepted, wanting to speak his piece without Raven nagging him about being too combative.

“Look, Iguazu, we both know I’m hard on you, but it’s because I know you have potential. I’ve seen the way you’ve been fighting lately, and I’m proud of you, son. You finally started hitting your stride.” Michigan spread LIGER TAIL’s arms. “Come on Iguazu, give us another chance, it’s what Volta would’ve wanted.”

Iguazu saw red.

“Hey what’s going on out there?! Your regulator is starting to overheat!” Raven warned over the comms.

“HOW DARE YOU USE HIS NAME!” Iguazu’s voice bank strained at the force of his anger, his speech crackling and distorting as he shouted. “YOU KILLED HIM! HE DIED FOLLOWING YOUR ORDERS!”

“I KILLED HIM?! IF YOU HADN’T GONE AWOL-“

Iguazu didn’t hear the rest of the sentence. His regulator melted and all he knew was rage.

Raven watched in what seemed like slow motion as Iguazu drew back his light wave blade.

“Shit!” He launched IRON LUNG.

Rusty watched through his scope as Raven’s AC burst from the hanger, though he really only knew it was Raven’s from the paint job and the pilot’s emblem. He couldn’t say it didn’t suit him though, he had always leaned a little more towards spray and pray than a lighter AC really allowed for. It was kind of cute in a way, he and Iguazu had swapped, Raven taking a heavier build and Iguazu taking a light one.

“Raven has launched.” Rusty watched as Raven attempted to put Iguazu’s AC in a headlock shouting at Michigan to hold his fire. About a hundred meters East of his position Snail lined up a stun needle shot. Then, Raven’s AC’s head snapped towards Snail. His sensors must’ve picked up the incoming fire. Then he pushed Iguazu forward and dodged backwards as the needle slammed into the ground, missing both of them. Raven stared at Michigan for a moment. He didn’t react to Snail’s presence, he just fired towards Iguazu. This time, Raven didn’t try to hold him back, he let the seething ball of rage loose on his former commander, then he turned towards Snail’s position.

The mutt’s AC was different than it had been the last time around. No matter, Snail had planned for the possibility. The fool had pulled into an assault boost headed right towards him. Didn’t it know that made it an easy target? Snail fired another stun needle. For a split second he believed he had landed a direct hit but then at the very last moment, the mutt dodged, the needle just scratching his paint. Snail didn’t have time to react before he took a kick to OPEN FAITH’s head.

“Freud, where are you?!” Snail shouted. He lashed out with his laser lance, but it was like trying to catch smoke. An AC of that size shouldn’t have been able to move that fast, but yet the thing that sat in that cockpit, more a lump of human scrap than a person, could make it. Snail was beginning to panic.

“Freud!” Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed too late that the mutt had drawn back his pile bunker. It tore through OPEN FAITH’s core, ripping open one of its fuel batteries. Snail pressed OPEN FAITH’s hand against his side trying in vain to keep the dark lithium inside. It leaked between his fingers, staining them black as he tried to stop the bleeding. The mutt silently lifted its gatling gun, aiming it directly at Snail’s core. It wasn’t satisfied with just damaging his AC, it wanted to kill him!

Then it paused, cocking its head as if listening. It quick boosted out of the way as Freud crashed from the sky, digging into the ground it had just been standing on.

“Repair kit.” Freud reminded him. “Pressure won’t work.” Snail could hear the smirk in his voice.

“I know that! I was shielding the core while it was exposed.” He lied.

Freud exhaled sharply over the mic. Snail could see the face he was making in his mind’s eye. The smug grin on his face and the disdain in his eyes was as clear as day to him even if he couldn’t see it. Still, he applied a repair kit as Freud worked on distracting the mutt.

Freud could feel the beat of his heart in his fingers. He’d never actually fought the copycat Raven before, ALL MIND’s simulation of him certainly but everyone knew those simulations weren’t fully accurate. He had at least partially expected a scavenger, a pilot who knew how to follow the wolves and steal their prey from their jaws, but that wasn’t what this was.

Snail’s greatest weakness as a pilot was his inflexibility. He planned well, he analyzed pilot data well, and he had built his AC with a specific strategy in mind, but with flexibility outside of it, but the moment anything went counter to the plan he had in his head, he panicked. Granted it was only for a moment before he pulled himself back together, but up against someone who knew how to leverage that panic, he was nothing but target practice. The copycat wasn’t a scavenger, he was an ambush predator. His goal was to get in as fast as he could and hit you with a wall of lead before you could do anything to stop him. That made Freud’s primary concern disruption. With those gatling guns, he would need to stop or at least slow down to keep up consistent fire. If Freud could keep him on the back foot he would have a much harder time fighting back. There was still the pile bunker to worry about of course, but it was slow with a well projected wind up, he could manage that easily if he was paying attention. The only other thing he had to worry about was taking a kick. He knew the calculations there, reverse joint legs had the highest base kick damage among the leg types, however, since the amount of damage done by a kick was also dependent on AC weight, tank legs were much scarier in that regard on average. Not in this case though. He’d sacrificed a lot of mobility making his AC as heavy as it was, but if he took a kick from that thing like Snail had, he knew he’d get his bell rung.

He had a strategy. He needed to stay hyper mobile, relying on his drones to keep Raven on his toes. If he stayed still for too long or stopped attacking for too long, he’d get torn apart, so he would need to fight as aggressively as possible. Of course that was fine by him. It was rare that he got into a fight where he felt like he was hanging on by the skin of his teeth.

Freud snapped out of his own head a second after he’d begun his analysis.

“Snail, go help Michigan put down his mad dog. This one belongs to me.”

“No.” Raven’s voice synthesizer growled over the comms. Snail expected to hear him make some sort of excuse to try and save Iguazu, to try and claim that he was the more dangerous target, but Raven didn’t. What he did say sent a chill of excitement down his spine. “Michigan belongs to him, but you two are mine.” Freud was practically drooling.

“Moving to assist Gun one Michigan.” Snail announced as if he was just following orders rather than trying to be a coward. Raven shot him out of the air the second he tried to pull into an assault boost. Freud let him do it. He wanted to see if Raven had the sheer balls to back up his threat.

“Snail, change of plans.”

“No! I will not be dragged into this! I am the strategic lead on this operation and I say Michigan requires back up.”

In seconds the mutt pulled out in front of him, aiming its gun at OPEN FAITH’s head. It wouldn't kill him, but it would knock out his cameras, external microphones, and sensors, leaving his senses limited to his emergency periscope. That was his option of last resort. If he were to crash or take a hit of any significant momentum the viewfinder could be forced through his skull C8-132 driving shards of bone into his brain and killing him.

“Tell him to do it.” The mutt jerked its head towards the hidden RLF representative. “Is that you back there Flatwell? I didn’t think you’d ever run with this crowd.”

“I’m afraid you have mistaken me for someone else, buddy. Though as to your second point, necessity breeds strange bedfellows, you must understand the opportunity that this operation presents me with.”

Rusty jumped as the notification that Raven was requesting a private channel came through. He accepted.

“This is personal, Rusty, for both of us. Go home.” Raven spoke with a voice that was brittle and broken sounding, like he hadn’t said a word aloud in years. Rusty realized that it must have been his real voice.

“You know I can’t do that, buddy. I can’t let a weapon like you end up in the wrong hands. Look, I won’t mince words, I know your background, I know you understand how Arquebus operates. Michigan might be here to kill you, but those two want you alive.”

“I know, but I need you to trust me, like I’m going to trust you. I promise you I can do the job, but if something goes wrong, I know you can finish me off before they take me. Just please, let me try first.”

Rusty sighed.

“What do you think, Flatwell?”

“I think we should trust him. Freddie won’t be happy, but he deserves a chance given what he’s been through.”

“You’ve got ten minutes, buddy.”

“Come on, have some faith in me. Make it five.”

Rusty smiled.

“Alright, five minutes, buddy.”

“Now we’re talking.” The sound of Raven’s synthesizers filled his cockpit. They were god awful, clearly homemade, but there was something charming about that.

“Finally thinking about joining up?” Rusty asked.

“I’ll think about it.”

Michigan hadn’t realized how far gone Iguazu was already. Well really how far gone he had been for a while. He’d seen the reports, he knew his mood regulator was faulty, he’d seen how often he ended up in the med center getting it fixed, but he didn’t have any real understanding of how bad that was. Unaugmented humans could have panic attacks and combat rage, he’d thought it was probably similar. That was a mistake. You could talk an unaugmented human down from a rage if you were careful with what you said, Iguazu couldn’t be talked down. He was a silver bolt of rage, his broken augments drowned him in a sea of impenetrable red. Iguazu had been a rabid dog for a while, Michigan knew it, he just didn’t have the heart to put him down. He should’ve taken him off active duty a long time ago, let him work off his debt as a mechanic instead of an AC pilot, wasted investment be damned, but Michigan had believed in his potential. That potential was going to be a cold hand around his throat if he didn’t do something.

“I’m sorry, Iguazu,” He said, even though Iguazu couldn’t hear him anymore.

Michigan threw out his left hand, spraying the air in front of him with explosives. Iguazu was forced to back up, blasting away at him with his pistol as he did.

Balam wasn’t a good fit for him, was it. Michigan had needed to twist the higher ups arms to commission the C3, but even that was a near useless compromise to fit Balam’s corporate standards. He wished Iguazu could’ve met Furlong’s old AC R&D team. Those crazy bastards could make a light AC that could still find an enemy craft on its scanners the next moon over. Every day he missed the real LIGER TAIL. The fcs module he had snuck into this iteration was the only piece left of his old Furlong Chiron. They’d stopped making them after the war, not that Balam would’ve let him use any of Furlong’s parts for his frame. His boosters and his fcs module, LIGER TAIL’s heart, still belonged with Furlong though.

Michigan hated to admit it, but G13 had given Iguazu a tool kit that actually worked for him. It looked like he’d had to go rummaging around in some institute basement to do it, but those relics could really fucking fly. Iguazu had also gotten really fucking good at dodging gunfire. G13 must’ve been sparring with him in that walking powder keg he’d flown out in, because the single gun he carried wasn’t even clipping him. He was catching him with one or two of his split missiles, but that wasn’t nearly enough for him to really nail him with his grenade launcher. It was also hard for him to track him now. Back in the day he could go toe to toe with Nile, his eyes finding the gaps in his missile flight patterns like they were glowing. He couldn’t see the gaps in Iguazu’s laser fire. Everything glowed blue as Iguazu drew back his left arm.

Snail raised his stun gun and took a wall of lead to the chest. Raven didn’t have time to capitalize on it though. He was forced to jump as Freud swiped at him with his laser blade. Once he’d finished his spin, Raven tried to kick him in the head. Freud caught his leg before it landed, but before he could begin a throw, Raven’s shoulder guns began to fire, forcing him to let go. He dodged just before Snail’s next stun shot landed, twisting and nailing him with a barrage from the gatling gun he carried.

It was a marked difference from how he normally fought, but Rusty could still see the easy confidence bleeding through every movement. Maybe more than it had before. He wasn’t relying on hit and run tactics as much as he usually did, instead of dodging he was sidestepping hits, cleanly countering as Freud and Snail circled him. It barely looked like he was piloting an AC anymore. With his fast reaction time and the fluidity of his movements, it was more like watching a flesh and blood creature moving than an enormous war machine, unsettling but at the same time almost beautiful. Like watching the first fish drag itself from the ocean and begin to breathe dry air.

Hurriedly, Rusty looked down his scope at Iguazu, watching him kite around Michigan as he rained laser fire down on him. He was the same, his motions fluid, his AC moving like a living thing rather than a giant machine. His blood froze. The corporates weren’t going to win this one. Rusty might be able to squeak out a victory when the two of them were done fighting, but he wasn’t confident, not in TSUBASA, probably not even in STEEL HAZE. He just had to hope they didn’t do any big corporate jobs until project New Dawn was ready. Now that Furlong was lending them technology and expertise, it had to be finished any day now. Rusty hoped it was one hell of an AC. He didn’t run off though, even knowing he’d lose if he had to fight. He could run once Raven had won and he’d finished gathering combat data.

Raven managed to slice through LOCKSMITH’s plating with his pile bunker and he jammed the muzzle of his gun inside the hole. Freud assault boosted into him, driving the barrel deeper into his chassis.

“Do it!” He could taste blood leaking from between his teeth, his head pounding in time with his heartbeat. Raven unloaded into him and his right arm was blown away as it was clipped by a bullet the size of a person. He dug his laser blade into Raven’s plating, trying to reach the soft pilot inside. Raven twisted the barrel of his gun, forcing it deeper inside of LOCKSMITH until the burning hot muzzle breached the cockpit. Freud screamed as it began to burn his already injured body. “YES! YES! MORE!” He howled like a dog in heat, pressing himself against the searing metal as he felt the barrel begin to spin.

Snail stood frozen in horror while he listened as Freud was torn apart.

“No.” He said softly. Snail still needed him. Freud needed to be here. He couldn’t take the planet without him, not yet. How could he prove that all of this was worth it? How could he know that he could shoulder the company now, that the endless surgeries and tweaks to his augmentations had been worth it if he couldn’t prove he was better than Freud. The mutt pulled its gun from LOCKSMITH’s core and callously flicked its wrist, shaking the blood, gore, and shards of shattered bone from the barrel. “Freud, get up!” Freud’s comms remained dead, LOCKSMITH slumped to the ground, a smoking husk.

“Let him enjoy his retirement.” The mutt’s synthesizers growled in Freud’s ear. Its yellow eyes stared at him unblinking, like a massive spider. It forced its face onto his hud, yellow and green with bruises, bloated like a drowned corpse, its exoskeleton piercing into it like a thousand arrows. “You’ll be joining us soon enough.” Snail screamed, but then just as quickly he stopped, unable to make a sound.

He couldn’t feel his legs anymore.

Snail looked down at the enormous metal pole that had erased the lower half of his body.

He would die before the pain would start C8-437 he took comfort in that at least.

Michigan wondered when his AP had gotten so low. He was out of repair kits now, there was nothing left to do but bail and hope he could get away. Before he did though, he recorded two quick messages. One he sent to Nile and the second to Iguazu. Hopefully he’d watch it once he’d gotten himself patched up. Then he bailed, crashing into the snow as he was ejected from the core. Iguazu landed a few meters away from him. Michigan braced himself for impact, but instead Iguazu shut off his engines and opened his cockpit. He cursed, hurriedly unbuckling himself from the escape capsule, Michigan could still win if he got to his feet. He caught a flash of silver descending from the AC’s back before a plume of snow shot into the air where it had impacted. Michigan drew his service revolver. It was an antique, but so was he and its wooden grip felt good in his hand. At the first sign of silver against snow he pulled the trigger. Iguazu spun backwards, the bullet denting the plating on his right shoulder. From the short look at him Michigan got before he fell, he knew he wasn’t using standard issue hardware anymore. He steadied his hands. That wasn’t a problem. He and Nile would watch the sappy message he’d sent out together and have a good laugh about it. A flash of silver appeared against the snow again and he watched as the bullet shattered the mirror finish riot shield that covered Iguazu’s face. A glowing teal eye stared at him with the rage of a wounded animal before disappearing into the snow again. Michigan heard a crunch to his left and shot. He heard a synthesized yelp and the sound of tearing metal.

“Don’t make me do this, Iguazu! You can still back down.”

A burst of static came from somewhere in the snow. Michigan made out a few words “…swore…Volta…living shit…” before shooting again. He heard the bullet ring against Iguazu’s plating. “…doesn’t even… lost… last time…” He fired again in the direction of Iguazu’s voice. Michigan didn’t hear the sound of the bullet landing this time, just got a staticky laugh in response. He was down to one bullet. Michigan slowed his breathing. Waiting for Iguazu to appear from the snow again. He kept his hands steady as he got closer, even as more of his body came into focus, his reverse jointed legs, his mandibles, which clicked angrily as he retracted his half shattered riot shield, the ghost of Iguazu’s face stared back at him through the broken lense of his left camera. Michigan aimed at the center of his core, sending a prayer to whatever gods were still alive to hear him and he pulled the trigger. The shot landed blasting a fist sized hole through Iguazu’s plating. Michigan could see daylight reflecting over snow through the mist of blood that passed through the hole. Iguazu bent down to look at it and then back at Michigan. Shock overpowered the rage in his expression.

“He moved it?” Was the last thing Michigan heard before the first blow struck him.

By the time Raven got to them Michigan wasn’t moving. It was bad. He could see broken bones tearing through his flight suit, blood soaking the snow while Iguazu… while Iguazu just kept going. He remotely took control of his systems. Iguazu was too locked in his rage to notice before Raven switched his motor control off. He caught him before he slumped into the mess of viscera and nylon that had once been Michigan. He looked Iguazu over, trying very hard to avoid the corpse’s reflection.

“Shit, he really did a number on you.” He said more to himself than to Iguazu.

“I think I gave as good as I got.” Michigan coughed.

Raven stumbled back, dropping Iguazu’s limp body.

“Holy shit!” He tore an emergency syringe of medical nanobots from his cobbled together jumpsuit.

“Don’t bother.” Michigan croaked. “You think I’ll ever step foot in a cockpit again?”

“Walter could perform augmentation surgery.” Raven suggested.

“At my age and in this condition? I’d die on the table. Let an old man go out with a little dignity, Gun thirteen.” He tried to sit up but one of his broken ribs tore through his side.

“Don’t try to move, you'll just make it worse.” Raven leaned him back down and Michigan’s uncrushed right eye landed on the Furlong logo on the arm of his patchwork flight suit. He grabbed onto it.

“Take care of him for me. Please. Give him what I couldn’t give him.” Michigan begged. Raven gently put his metal hand over Michigan’s.

“I’ll take care of him. I promise.”

“His name is-“ Michigan pulled him closer whispering it to him. “Please-“

“I‘ll let him know.” Raven assured him.

Michigan smiled and the light slowly left his eye.