The Spider of Rubicon (Reader x Armored Core 6)

Chapter 1: The Coral Response...

How long have you been here?

In this...

Sea of voices...

It didn't hurt to listen to all of them despite the noise, but...there was still wonder and question with your disposition...

Unlike the others, you didn't remember or even found out what your name was before-...

What were you thinking about again...?

Ah...how long you had been here...

Your being, voice, and mind had been brought and lured into a large deposite of Coral...but...that didn't really help in finding how long you have been like this...

Days?...weeks?...years maybe?

Your mind pondered on as your consciousness began to dwell and drift between the drowning noise...this was...

This was a strange feeling to you...not unwelcomed, but...strange...

Have you ever lost yourself to sound before?...when your thoughts are so clear that the sound around you begins to deafen and almost slow down time?

That was what you were feeling as your mind jumped from subject to subject while listening to the millions of voices that surrounded you...

A small wave...in a sea of sound...

And although it was difficult to even have your own voice...you did find clarity in one thing...

Music!

Despite the many sounds that echoed around you...you sang...even taking time to listen close to the voices that had memorized and spoke the lyrics of forgotten melodies and songs...

For a time...this is what had occupied you...but for how long?...and how long would this last?

??? Pov

System : moving to intercept...

The system blandly speaks into the coms mic inside my AC.

Walter: affirmative...you should be closing in on the objective soon 621...in the mean time, mission debrief...

I sighed as I let go of the controls of my machine, as the auto pilot function chartered towards my mission.

A screen appeared before me as my Handler spoke in his usual serious tone...

Walter: your mission is to attack one of the corporations that have been pillaging Rubicon, and its people...Arquebus...and one of their Vesper officers...

The Arquebus logo appeared on screen as several machine types listed off to the side of the screen.

Walter: so far, their operations to simply wittle down a Rubicon Liberation Front base has been less than successful...

The screen showed hundreds of burning MT's and different unmanned and ai controlled machines that were either crippled, or blown up

Walter: but seeing as Balam industries is closing in to clean up and take control with a less wore out force. Arquebus will be making their big push against the Lieration front earlier than expected...and as for why...

The screen shifted once more to show the liberation Frontiers' area

Walter: the area that is being occupied was originally a massive research facility that stood on top of a large coral vein to study the corals behavior. It was abandoned years later, and now serves as one of the head bases of operations for the Liberation Front...and with more recent scans, it appears that the coral vein maybe flowing once more...