Chapter Text
Old Peace City—or what remained of it. The grave of the corporations.
The centre of many great battles in recent memory, it was in this place that Anatolia's Raven first made their name in their victory over the Dessert Wolf, and it was between these ruins that Rosenthal's alliance sealed the fate of the Lynx War. It was here that the wreckage of Motherwill resides, and it was within these same crumbling towers that the Answerer met its demise.
Today, the Old City ruins would claim yet another corpse.
Bang
A sniper cannon thundered across the silence. Concrete exploded as the shot slammed into the carcass of a half-collapsed skyscraper. From behind it, a shape broke cover—jet-black, angular, moving like a predator.
Bang
The figure juked left, boosters screaming, slipping behind cover. An old Rayleonard AALIYAH frame, antique, but deadly still. It darted between the ruined husks of civilization with surgical precision.
Bang
The shot hit dead on, shattering into a shower of sparks as it hit the NEXTs Primal Armor. The mech stumbled in its steps but quickly recovered as it vanished behind a low-rise ruin.
Then—a high-pitched whine.
The AALIYAH's boosters unfolded. With a burst of greenish-white flame and the sound of tearing air, it hit its Overboost. The ruined city blurred around it as the NEXT propelled itself forward at speeds. Within seconds, it dodged another shot, as it came face to face with its adversary.
An old BFF model, in dark grey paint. It held an old model Rifle in one hand, shotgun in the other, and in its back was a Sniper Cannon. The BFF NEXT boosts backwards, Cannon locking in place, bringing out its shotgun as it attempts to stave off the incoming enemy.
The AALIYAH dodged it, a few pellets grazing at its Primal Armor, as the NEXT engages its Blade. A blue pillar of laser shot up from its right hand, as the NEXT surged forward, boosters flaring as it lunged towards its target.
The blade nicked the side of the NEXT, and that was enough. The BFF Frame staggered midair, and in one smooth motion, the AALIYAH brought out its grenade cannon from its shoulder.
BOOM
An all-mighty explosion echoed through the dessertified ruins. The BFF unit plummeted down to the ground, its Primal Armor sparking out, booster malfunctioning, as it hurtled towards the ground, smacking into the sand with a thud.
It's still standing, barely. It tried to raise its shotgun in defense, but the AALIYAH was faster, its blade descending like a guillotine.
The first slice cut the shotgun clean in two.
The second disabled the sniper cannon on its shoulder.
Finally, the last strike came below the waist, tearing through its legs and sending the BFF NEXT backwards into the sand, helpless, and defeated.
Standing over its fallen adversary, the AALIYAH stepped forward, raising its assault rifle, the NEXT pressed the barrel of its rifle right onto the downed unit's torso, right above where the pilot block is located.
A pause.
And sure enough, a hoarse, female voice came over the comms.
"I'll.....see you in hell...."
Bang
Static came over the comms system, the eyes of the BFF NEXT flickers, and slowly but surely dimmed out.
The AALIYAH stood there for a moment, then without a word, it turned around with Overboost engaged. With a whine of the boosters flaring to life, the NEXT flew off, through the ruined cities, as it soared into the sky.
Thus, Old Peace City received its latest gravestone.
And the Monster of the Cradle claimed its newest victim.
??????
Pain, that was what she was feeling. The kind of pain she hadn't felt in years, least not since she burned off the last of her pain receptors in the last war.
She opened her eyes slowly, each blink like grinding metal. Her vision swam... until it focused on something painfully mundane.
Her pilot block.
Huh.
Weird. She was almost certain that bastard shot her cockpit directly.
Oh well, no matter. She's probably dead either way. But just to check, might as well reboot the systems and open the hatch, if only she could die faster.
She reached out with her mind. The AMS synced with a distant hum—like old bones creaking back into place—and the neural feedback surged. Lights flickered. HUD came alive. And with it, the dull monotone of the OS.
"MAIN SYSTEM: ENTERING STANDARD MODE."
She was halfway through initiating the ejection sequence when the diagnostics rolled in—and froze her solid.
No damage whatsoever, none, her NEXT was in perfect condition. She would have thought it was an error, but the cameras picked that exact moment to come back online, allowing her to see a few things.
1. She's standing, meaning presumably her legs weren't chopped off like she thought.
2. The shotgun in her left hand is still intact and not bisected.
3. .......she's not in Old Peace City anymore.
Because in front of her wasn't the ruined buildings, endless dessert, and half-destroyed skyscrapers of the former city.
Instead, it was water, endless, crystalline blue ocean as far as the eye can see, and a clear, decidedly not Kojima polluted sky above her.
She stared. Silently. Then blinked.
How?
What happened?
Where is She?
How did she get here?
So many questions, and too little answers, and if there's anything she hated, it's the unknown. Too many variables she couldn't account for or predict, and it makes things messy.
She was just about to send in an SOS signal when her systems flagged something pinging over the comms. Great, she could finally see where the hell did she end up now.
She opened her comms, let the systems decrypt it, and the content of that signal was played out.
A very, very familiar voice, one she still remembered after all these years.
Without a second thought, she slammed the Overboost. Her NEXT screamed to life, launching from the water like a missile.
Because this time....
She won't miss.
Not again.
Today had NOT been Hornet's day.
She overslept this morning, and her attempt to cook breakfast whilst half dead ends with burnt toast and black-as-coal eggs. As if that wasn't enough she finds out Vestal had confiscated her drinks, even the secret stashed she hid behind the fuel depot.
Overall, she was already in a bad mood today.
Made only worse when during her patrol, her group was attacked by Sirens.
What at first started as an exciting way for her to relieve stress quickly devolved as the Siren fleet attacking seemed bigger than usual. Worse, they were jamming the radio. Helena has been trying to get reinforcement for 15 minutes now and no answers so far.
Hornet grunted, pivoted, and opened fire on an incoming squadron. Her AA guns screamed to life. Half her fighters were already down. Another wave like that and they’d be fish food.
To her right, Arizona was still hammering the Siren line with her cannons, her AA guns blazing overhead.
Behind her, Long Island lay sprawled on her rigging, groaning—still dazed from the first wave. In front, Helena and Hamman were holding the line with a failing AA screen, barely holding back the swarm.
And then... things got worse.
“Something’s coming!” Helena barked, staring at her flickering radar. “Unidentified, airborne, coming in fast!”
Hornet’s blood ran cold.
Arizona—grim, but steady—asked what they were all thinking: “Another Siren?”
Helena shook her head sharply, still firing as she spoke. “I don’t know! Nothing we’ve got is that fast!”
And thus, so distracted was everyone by this new development that none of them thought to look up.
All except for the currently down-for-the-count Long Island, who peeked out from behind her rigging, eyes wide. "Look out!" She shouted, ducking behind her rigging.
Hornet just barely had the time to turn around, coming face to face with a Siren missile barrage heading straight for her-
BOOM
Heat. Smoke. Pressure.
She flinched, heart hammering—but felt no pain from the impact.
And something is blocking her vision.
She looked up, and up, and up to finally see what it was, and her mouth was agape.
A giant, ten meters tall, maybe more, stood in front of her. A humanoid from the looks of it, dark grey steel that looks like armour platings covering its body. There was a strange, almost transparent haze flickering across its surface—shimmering, like a heat distortion, and then fading as soon as it appeared.
Helena squinted. “I—I don’t think that’s one of ours,” she muttered, both impressed and unnerved.
Hornet didn’t say anything. Because in the time it took her to blink, the grey machine had already moved.
One blink it was standing still. The next, it was airborne—jetting forward with a high-pitched whine as what looked like rocket boosters ignited from its back. The air whooshed as it flew away, and a split second later, a Siren destroyer just....... blew up.
In its right hand was some sort of Rifle Hornet thinks? With a scope that makes it look almost like a sniper rifle. It only fired once, and the Siren destroyer detonated from the impact.
And before they knew it, it was off, flying straight into the Siren fleet, zooming in between them. Hornet could barely see anything between all of the explosions.
"..... Right," Hamman finally says, calm for once despite the background of explosions. "I'm just gonna say what all of us are thinking now," She took a deep breath, before-
"WHAT THE HELL IS THAT???"
aaaand that's the usual Hamman.
Honestly? Nobody knows either. One moment they were on the end of their ropes, the next, a mech of all things that looked like it jumped out of a sci-fi flick appeared out of nowhere and saved their ass.
Hanging from the floating pieces of her rigging, Long Island squinted her eyes. "Hmm, maybe it's a Gundam? I don't think any of my model kits looked like that though....."
Of course, Long Island is thinking of her games again. Hornet sighed—tension bleeding out now that they weren’t about to be blown sky-high.
Beside her, Arizona hesitantly speaks up. "Should we......should we follow her?"
Meanwhile, more explosions in the distant answered her question for her.
Helena finally nodded. "I.....suppose we shouldn't stay put while whatever that thing is is doing all the work."
That was something they could agree upon, so the group sailed forward, past the broken husks of mass-produced Siren warships, all of them listing and in various stages of sinking, some even blown completely in half from the looks of it. Whatever that thing is, it was devastatingly effective at dispatching them.
They finally reached what Hornet assumed was the centre of the Siren fleet, was. For sitting between a pair of wrecked Siren Battleships, was their saviour, which appeared to be firing at more Siren ships...... stragglers perhaps? In the distance with a large cannon on its left shoulder.
Bang
Everybody flinched at the thunderous blast of the cannon firing, and in the distance, a Siren Cruiser erupted into flames. From the looks of it, that was the last one of the fleet.
With all of the Sirens destroyed, the mech seems to relax, lowering its weapons, the cannon shifting backwards, clicking in place in what Hornet assumed to be a neutral position or some such.
Then it turned to face them.
The machine loomed above them, peering down with four faintly glowing red eyes (at least, Hornet thought they were eyes). Suddenly, Hornet felt much smaller than she did 5 minutes ago.
She glanced back at the others. Long Island is too busy staring in awe, Arizona meekly shakes her head, Hamman looks away, and Helena is pretending to still be fiddling with her radio and contacting base.
Traitors, the lot of them.
So, Hornet sighed, cleared her throat, opened a channel, and prepared herself for the task of persuading whatever this thing was not to kill them.
"Ahem—yeah, hi," Hornet started trying to get its attention whilst still sounding casual. "Thanks for the assist back there. You really saved our pickle," She's not even faking it, the mech did save their ass out there. "So uh....who are you bud?"
The line stays silent for an awkward moment. Hornet, flushed was about to check whether she flubbed the channels when finally she got an answer back, as her radio crackles.
A very, very familiar voice. Slightly hoarse, but still recognizeable all the same.
"Collared Lynx, ID 03-08-36," The voice said, before after a pause, following up with. "It's been a while, Hornet."
Hornet's heart stopped, her jaw dropped, and she wasn't the only one.
"ENTERPRISE???"
Collared ID: 03-08-36
Lynx: Enterprise
NEXT: Grey Ghost
Collared Rank: #5
Affiliations: Independent
A former BFF Lynx active during the Lynx War. She went rogue following the corporation’s near-collapse late in the conflict. Though her craft is considered outdated by current standards, it remains highly effective for long-range engagements. Very few that made it into her sight survived long enough to tell the tale.