Armored Core: Warped Souls, Wired Minds (Uncensored)

Party Of Corpses: Act 6 - Showdown

Cherubim hits Archangel with a right jab in it's left shoulder, Archangel counters with a rear uppercut that sends Cherubim bouncing through the arms forts. Specter is still immobilized and unable to get up.
"Nzube, can you read me?
"Loud and clear"
"I'm gonna something pretty risky, give me some cover"
The balljoints connected to Specter's lower and upper half suddenly begin rotating, as if it were being unscrewed by an invisible screwdriver, some of it's joint restrictions were released.
"What the hell are you doing?!"
"Evening the odds"
Specter's upper half disconnects itself from the legs and almost slides off the wing but manages to grab the ledge. Taking this opportunity, Nineball Archangel grabs Cherubim by the neck.
"Your friend over there seems to be very persistent to fight against me"
"He's not my friend. Just a temporary ally"
"You two are just puppets on strings, when you see money involved, you accept the contract. How many lives have you taken? How many lives have you ruined? How many lives have you abandoned?"
"Gotcha!"
The legless Specter using it's boosters to hover, grabs Archangel by it's back, and fires several rounds at Archangel's boosters before running out of energy and rolling down on the wing.
"And you, the pilot of the white unit, you claim to want to free the world of it's corruption, but allied yourself with the corrupt police force of Brex. You're a pathetic puppet, have you even tried stopping the corruption inside the police force?"
Archangel throws Cherubim on top of Specter, the two Nexts fall through the roof of the left wing and into it's interior, Archangel watches from above and leaves the two pilots.
"Those two are not worth my time"
"SkyGekko has received severe damage in it's left wing! Henry, what the hell do we do, that red Next is flying towards us!"
The scientist sweats as the red blip in the radar gets closer and closer.
"We'll leave this arms forts"
"How?! Were in the sky and we didn't even have enough time to put parachutes in this prototype!"
Henry points to one of the camera screens above on the left side of steering wheel.
"The Normal I brought here, we can use that to escape"
"What about the test subjects?"
"Load them into the trailer of the truck you brought them with and push the trailer with the Normal"
"Someone will have to stay and open the rear door of the plane, we'll skydive towards the ground and hope that the red next didn't follow us"
A scientist steps up from his seat, white hair and a long mustache.
"Nobody gets left behind! Are you crazy?! We lost two valuable researchers already, we can't lose another one because of your dumbass plans!"
"I'm the one in charge here, my rank is above yours. It doesn't matter if I kill or lose a researcher, one phone call later and a human plus researcher from another corporation is transferred to mine. You're disposable waste"
The scientist with all his mighty, uppercuts Henry into the control panel, the red blip disappears for a brief moment, but nobody notices it, as they're too busy arguing against Henry.
"Stop being a dumbass for ten seconds, Henry!"
Henry slowly gets up from the control panel, some shards of glass are stuck on his right arm.
"Hold him down and grab his pistol! He's the one who will be left behind"
"Yes Mr. James!"
Henry tries to resist, but he's easily outnumbered by Scientist holding him down on the floor, one of them uses their belt to tie up both of his hand. His pistol is handed to James.
"You can't do this to me! I'm in charge here! I'll kill you when I manage to get out of this!"
"But you won't, you'll die inside this glorified cargo plane, and nobody will grieve your death"
"Doesn't that count for all of us? We were chosen for this job for a reason, were a walking threat to society. We have no family or nothing to lose"
James fueled with pure anger punches henry in the face, a blood-soaked tooth falling on the floor.
"Mr. Rez, grab Henry and bring him with us, he's the one who will push the button to open the rear door of the SkyGekko and be left behind"
Mr. Rez grabs Henry, he seems to be worried about something.
"James, don't you find it weird that the red next is taking too long to even get here?"
"Judging from how that thing acted in the cameras, it's safe to assume that it's just waiting the right opportunity to attack. That still doesn't mean we should let our guard down"
"Yeah guess you're right"
The scientist walk out of the room and make their way to the rear of the arms fort, Rez drags Henry by his coat. In the Interior of SkyGekko's left wing, Cherubim and the damaged Specter still remained, both pilots had been knocked out during the fall. Inside Cherubim's cockpit, Nzube slowly opens his eyes.
The visor of his helmet is soaked in blood with small cracks on it, the impact from the fall had made him hit Archangel's GPS monitor with full force and small shards of his visor's had cut through parts of his forehead. He checks the control panels of Cherubim and how much damage each part had received, the entire right hand of the Next was turned into scrap metal and some it's joint had become very loose, the FCS no longer works, going full melee wasn't a pretty good idea.
"You okay?"
Cherubim slowly turns Specter around who had fallen head first into the floor.
"Yeah... I'm okay..."
Nzube looks around the area, the left wing seems to be an entire room dedicated to the creation of Muscle Tracers with several schematics lying down on tables, there's only one MT though, a unmanned Gibbon, it's frame is still incomplete, with several exposed wires and no signs of a leg part. Nzube motions Cherubim, the left hand of the Next grabs and rips off the shotgun connected to the Gibbon's left arm.
"Alex, hover to the back of Cherubim and grab onto it"
"What? Why?"
"I purged my weapons, you lost your weapons. You'll use this shotgun from the Gibbon unit. Your Next will basically be used like a back unit by Cherubim"
"That seems like a very good plan, what's Archangel's current location?"
"About that... the gps broke in the impact. But I would bet that Cherubim is either inside the arms fort or outside of it"
Alex slowly hovers Specter to Cherubim's back, the mech attaches itself by holding onto one of Cherubim's back stabilizers. Cherubims hands the Gibbon's shotgun to Specter. Alarms suddenly blare through the entire arms forts, the tiles in the wing's ceiling rotate, revealing more than 10 active turrets. The turrets fire missiles at Cherubim, it dodges and hides behind cover, the missiles hit the ceiling of the wing.
"Damn!!!"
Nzube noticed that the turrets seem to be modeled after the OSAGE03 back weapon part, the engineers who developed this arms fort forgot that the missiles from that weapon climb before hitting the enemy, the turrets are pratically gonna destroy the wing if they're not deactivated. The turrets are reloading, Nzube takes this chance and flies back to exterior of the arms forts. The ceiling of the wing shifts again, the turrets open fire on Cherubim outside. It dodges severals missiles before running out of energy and falling back to the wing.
"Alex, use your boosters to get Cherubim the closest as possible to the turrets, my compatibility with the AMS is too low, it'll take some seconds before I can fly again"
"Got it!"
Cherubim with the help of Specter's boosters, steers towards the turrets, dodging the missiles along the way. Cherubim spins around with the help of Specter to dodge the missile fire, Specter fires the Gibbon's shotgun at the turrets, destroying them one by one.
"That was tough. Wait, something's coming!"
Lighting strikes the hole that was made in the left wing, setting it on fire. Both pilots are caught by surprise.
Inside the Skygekko, the scientist load the capsules containing the human plus subjects onto the truck's trailer, Henry is unconscious next to a square shaped button. Mr. Rez throws a plastic cup of water on his face.
"You... son of bitches..."
"Make him stand up, we don't have much time"
Henry looks at the pilot inside the 048AC-S, it's cockpit is open, James is the pilot and he stares at Henry with a menacing grin.
"You'll pay for this James... you'll pay..."
"Tie his hand to the button, make sure he's not able to get out"
"Yes sir"
The rear door slowly opens, the view outside is completely gray, covered in fog and drops of rain get inside the interior.
"Mr. Rez get inside the trailer"
"Are you sure about this?"
"There's no need to worry, we've installed some parts from the MT development area in this trailer"
Henry watches as the 048AC-S pushes the trailer to the outside of the arms forts, the 048AC-S jumps out the arms forts and Henry stands there, still tied to the button.
"Doomed to obscurity forever..."
A bright red glow appears from inside the fog, getting closer and closer, it's Nineball Archangel.
"Damn it, why didn't you go after them?!"
Henry tries to untie the rope imprisoning. Nineball Archangels jumps inside the interior, shaking it a little and breaking the lights above. The red glow emanating from it's visor engulfs the entirety of interior as it slowly walks to Henry.
"Target acquired, commencing hostilities."
Cherubim and Specter burst through the wall, catching Archangel by surprise. Alex looks to the side and notices Henry.
"Nzube, there's a guy over there!"
"That'll have to wait, Archangel is our top priority!"
"Why do you two still fight? I've already won this battle" several explosions come from the right and left wing, the three nexts slide down, crashing through the interior walls of the arms fort as the craft tilts down to the ocean. Henry holds onto his rope.
"God damn it!"
He climbs it trying to reach the top, but the rope is breaking.
The Nexts crash through the cockpit of the Arms Forts, Archangel uses a chainboost technique and flies through the holes created by the fall, Cherubim and Specter have suffered severe damage in their boosters, they can still float but won't be able to fly. Henry looks down, Archangel is beneath him.
"What do you want from me, why didn't you go after the others?!"
"They've already been taken care by the others. My mission is to eliminate you from this earth, but that will have to wait, you're still useful for the others"
"The others? What the hell are you talk-"
The rope breaks, Archangel quickly maneuvers and opens it cockpit, Henry falls inside, several steel chains wrap themselves around him.
"God damn it!"
Archangel activates it's overboost and flies out of the SkyGekko as it makes contact with the ocean below, Nzube and Alex watch as the arms forts makes a giant splash and slowly sinks into the depths of the ocean. Both of them have failed in their mission and Nineball Archangel escaped.
"There was someone inside that place, We should have saved them!"
Alex shouts, his voice almost cracking.
"We can't, that person probably drowned by now or hit the water while the arms forts fell"
"B-but!"
Alex is reminded of that unfortunate event from years ago, the people screaming for their life, the smell of oil soaked flesh and the oil rig sinking into the ocean while people screamed for help. An event that has scarred him.
"Call your little pig buddies, tell them that the mission was a failure and that the Nexts suffered severe damage"
"Y-yes..."
A small teardrop falls from Alex's eyes as he calls Jane, unaware of what fate that person inside the arms forts had.

One day later.
"This is Natsumi Aya, the scheduled arena battles of today for Master Of The Arena have been cancelled, we have important news regarding the tragic chain of events that happened at the Synthesis Dynamic building. Nineball Archangel was gonna be the first in a line of Unmanned Nexts similar to the UNACS. During the presentation however, SD's prototype UNNT activated by itself, and began killing the investors, the total number of deaths is over 30, no one managed to escape, the doors were locked from the outside, many suspect the involvement of terrorists. The police force allied themselves with a raven, but the Next easily overpowered the raven and escaped, social media users suspect that the landslide that happened in the forest was caused either by the police force or Nineball Archangel. A Tourist who was in the forest claim that they saw what appeared to be a mix between a cargo plane and a stealth bomber flying over the forest. To all citizens of Brex, please have a good night and take good care, our normal schedule will return tomorrow"
The credits roll and Natsumi gets up from her chair and stares at the city from a window in the next room, holding a phone to her right ear.
"Jane, do you have any more information about the incidents?"
"The raven that I contracted, Nzube, he told me that there was some type of underground lab in the forest"
"An underground lab? Can it still be entered?"
"Nope, a landslide was caused by several explosions in the forest it'd take several weeks to remove all that dirt. But there's not only that, Nzube and Alex remember seeing several surgery rooms"
"What in the world is going on..."
"Natsumi, I'm worried about this entire thing, the terrorists, Nineball, a flying arms fort... it just feels like were seeing the start of another conflict"
"Arms Forts?"
"The last object you described in the news, that was an Arms Fort, Nzube and Alex fought Nineball in that thing before it sank into the ocean"
"This can be an important lead! Why didn't you send any submarine to it's location?!"
"I"ve tried that with a submarine equipped with UNAC technology. It didn't handle the pressure and imploded, the Arms Forts was already too deep in the ocean"
"What about Alex, is he alright?"
"He's been out cold for 14 hours since we've found him with Nzube. Their Nexts were in awful shape, it'll take a week to repair Specter. The other one however is completely damaged internally and externally. Repairing it would be too expensive and I decided sent it back to Synthesis Dynamics"
"This is the first time I've heard something like this happen to Alex and Specter, I hope he has a speedy recovery, he's basically my successor"
Jane chuckles after hearing Natsumi say that.
"Wait are you laughing?!"
Jane would then jokingly reply to her.
"I'm going home, want anything?"
The two continue their conversation, the bright colorful lights of Brex contrasting with the recents chain of events. Lumintek and Synthesis Dynamics received huge blows from the terrorist attacks, The recents event this week were just the start of something that could spark a new conflict against the corporations.