Carbon Brain, Silicon Fist

“How about my way?” He had called out. “Monarch Chassis confirmed. Modification detected.” BRT called out internally. She hardly noticed. She was too focused on trying to remember where she heard that voice from earlier. It was familiar, but she couldn’t quite place it. She wasn’t so distracted, however, that she forgot she was in the field. The instant he rounded that corner, she laid it on, her brain only catching up to her eyes after she spat out 17 rounds from her cannon, and she immediately let go of the trigger.

A Vortex Shield? Great. That’s when she began noticing other things. Like the 40mm cannon in the other hand of her opponent, and that her Titan was providing notification of an enemy lock, her HUD helpfully supplying that it was coming from the Titan in front of her. It was almost like this guy wanted a Vanguard of his own, but couldn’t make the cut into Briggs’ SRS. “Hey, BRT, this guy doesn’t look like he’s earned any Upgrades from his core, wanna check to see how close he is?” “Affirmative.” While he did that, she appraised her situation with her opponent, the missiles themselves weren’t a problem, she could dash just before impact or let her shields soak them. But her little blunder would add to the damage she’d take, and that 40mm was a nasty piece of work in the right hands. There was a reason it was the most used weapon back in the days of the original three Titans.

So, she’d dash to dodge the missiles, then see if he’d follow up with the 40mm, she’d throw up the Gun Shield once her shields hit 10% and let’em recharge. And the instant that Vortex went down, she’d start charging up a Power Shot. If he ran, she’d back up and track his movement if she could, leading her shot to deal as much damage as she could the instant he popped out of cover. “Pilot. The enemy Titan has a Core charge of 0%, in fact; it is safe to say they have disabled their Core entirely.” She stifled a laugh  at that. “BRT, tightbeam ‘im.” She had to mock him for this. By the time a live feed of her appeared in the top right corner of his HUD, displaying her from the chest up, with a white line pointing from it to her Titan, she had completely broken into laughter. “Oh- Oh this- this is too good!” She managed between bursts of laughter. “You actually disabled the Core of your Titan, on the Titan Chassis that needs it the most!? You fucking moron! Oh, by the Void you Militia types make this way too easy!”

It had been a good move, pre-emptively charging the Vortex Shield. Of course, it hadn’t been fast enough to keep one or two rounds from carving neat gouges into VEGA’s arm, but he caught the other 15 rounds quite excellently. The 20mm ammunition swirled around in the vortex shield as all twelve target locks solidified and the Acolyte pods fired, disgorging multi-target missiles towards the enemy Legion.

In the split-second it took to consciously fire the missiles Douglas realized the Legion he was facing down had stopped firing; they were smart enough to realize the Vortex was a problem. That meant it wasn’t going to be the Legion-countering tool it was against bad Pilots; of course, however, it was now a convenient ace in the hole to keep a long string of fire from coring VEGA out. The Pilot released the Vortex Shield, before grasping back onto the 40mm and beginning the followup exactly as predicted.

He didn’t stop moving, though - VEGA continued to strafe to the side towards another set of buildings as he fired. Against any Ogre-type, mobility was your best friend. Sitting still was inviting the Reaper into your cockpit.

Oddly enough, the Apex pilot chose to tightbeam. Something about her voice was indeed recognizable as she mocked Douglas for having disabled VEGA’s Upgrade Core, but Douglas was too focused on the actual firefight to try and pick out exactly what it was. VEGA would probably record it; he could jog his memory later. For now, though, he was at least going to indulge this Apex in her banter.

VEGA knew not to transmit video, though. Just audio.

Sheila looked up from treating her patient just in time to see the first plasma warheads strike the Titan’s arm. She bit back a curse and put her head back down, only briefly registering the fact the trio had turned back around to fire at the stalkers. For she was too busy with one patient. The other? Unfortunately, the victim of the indiscriminate fire of the enemy. Their firing high and low had scored on one of them, but it enraged the other wounded man. Despite his inability to stand, he grabbed his rifle again, and aimed for the enemy who couldn’t walk, yet still crawled towards them. 

Somebody in the squad shouted towards Douglas, “deal with the feckin’ enemy Titan! We’ve got these feckers!” 

Something flew out from the pinned squad. To the trained eye it was recognisable as an arc grenade, as it landed at the feet of one particular enemy. The man who threw it couldn’t resist following it up with, “Hope you loike loightnin’, you fecker!”

The Stalkers were designed to overwhelm enemy positions simply by being too tough to normally displace. Strategically, they were almost more of a psychological weapon than anything else; the sheer bulk of their armor and the lack of response to weapons fire intended to terrify frail, human Militia defenders into abandoning their positions.

Of course, however, that didn’t work against the people who knew how they worked, or were tough enough to simply continue holding the line regardless. An arc grenade stunned most of the rest of the Stalkers, and after several more seconds of gunfire they were all destroyed, leaving the Atlesians free to focus on the skirmishers (if any still remained).

“I sure as hell hope so,” Artemis dropped her hand, and gave a weary smile. “‘Cause I can tell you right now, it sure as shit sucks to lose your Titan.”

It was awkward, at least for a week or so after everything had been sorted out. But, as to be expected, things progressively got better, settling into a natural routine once that particular shore leave had ended. Of course, it helped that the hopes for the Typhon Protocol to work came true; KAT was able to be salvaged from Artemis’ helmet and placed into a Smart Core, which that was then placed into a Monarch-class chassis. Of course, it didn’t happen right away, because it wasn’t like there were a ton of spare Smart Cores or Monarchs just lying around, but it happened.

That made things a lot easier on the battlefield, and a lot easier on the Pilot, too; her best friend was back and in one piece.

Didn’t mean everything was easier, though. The IMC was still gunning for the Militia, and Voyager were working their asses off in combat mission after combat mission. Like the one they were on currently, in which half the team were under heavy fire, and everyone else was spread far and wide, which meant it would take some time for them to assist those pinned down.

“These guys just pop up wherever they want to, don’t they?” Artemis lamented, after KAT stomped on one IMC Grunt before punting another into atmosphere.

The days went by. It was a little easier to breathe with the elephant out in the open, and the next day Douglas had managed to bounce back (a personal record; usually it took him a few days to bounce out of things).

A weight seemed to lift from the entire ship when it turned out the Typhon Protocol had worked; KAT had been bootstrapped back up from her core AI subroutines, and a few days later she found a new home inside another Monarch-class chassis (which earned the two of them a lot of teasing from Douglas about stealing his thunder).

Life returned to normal, or at least, as normal as it got when you were a Pilot fighting the IMC at every opportunity for fame and cash.

“And yet you have seen what strange outside forces can do to said metal friend.”

Regretfully, Artemis pulled away from the embrace - when had she ever done such a normally unthinkable action? - and there was guilt and regret swimming in her eyes. Well, at least, it was visible until she lowered her chin and averted her gaze. Her body language displayed that she did not like what she was about to say, and yet she was about to say it anyway. It was clear that whatever this was, it was big, and it would impact things greatly.

“I am going to turn myself in to the people who once had me under their command in the Office of Naval Intelligence,” the words fell from her lips, as empty-sounding as the dead leaves and twigs that rattled in a fierce breeze, “But I cannot do it alone. I need your help. It is - It is the only way that I can protect everyone I care the most about. I think I have worked out that the one thing I fear the most is myself, and losing control. I have done it before, and there is nothing to say that it cannon happen again. The safest thing for me is to go back into ONI’s hands.

They controlled me once before. They can and will control me again. 

But I cannot cede control to them alone.”

Finally, she raised her chin to meet his gaze, and there were tears in her eyes. “Please, I cannot do this alone…”

The SPARTAN augmentation procedures were a miracle of modern medical science, especially after having gone through a few iterations to make sure side effects were minimal. Douglas might not have gotten his through purely conventional means, but the end result was the same; he thought a lot faster than he used to. It wasn’t magic making him faster to react, his brain was quite literally faster than other human brains were.

He had the time to review that and still held difficulty processing what Artemis said she had planned. After all this time, all this suffering, she was just going to throw herself back at the ONI subdivision that saw her as nothing but a weapon? The same one that caused all of these problems in the first place? As if that would fix things.

It was a lot easier to remain calm than he’d expected, though. He almost didn’t react. Artemis could easily tell that he was stunned by the news, but if nothing else he didn’t seem to be panicing or freaking out over it. Externally, anyways.

“Oh, yeah, no, sure…. that’s fine.”

At least that, the Pilot understood. It wasn’t like the saying “time heals all wounds”, because it didn’t, not really. It was more like “time is an important thing you need to step back and take a look at things”. Time as in “time is needed to process things”. After all, she still needed time to process the fact that her best friend was just totally gone. That the chances of KAT coming back were slim to none. So she understood; she could relate.

She gave a low sort of half-laugh, and just for the briefest moment her eyes glimmered. “That’s a relief. Don’t know what I’d do with myself if I lost a friend, too.” He was the first friend she’d ever had, aside from her Titan.

She didn’t want to lose him entirely.

Artemis hesitated only briefly before clasping his hand and giving it a shake.

Douglas had to force himself to remember that this was just as harsh on Artemis as it was him. Trauma was trauma; trying to compare specifics to see which was worse never ended well. She was dealing with the loss of a partner, almost in the same way he was. You didn’t just get over the death of something like your Titan in a day - that meant your bond wasn’t worth anything.

So much horror had been instilled into her over the thought of failure.

This was what the Office of Naval Intelligence had wanted - a Spartan, to use as they so wished, to follow their commands, and execute any task flawlessly. What they hadn’t seen was that they’d bent her to their will so far that she had broken. Effectively they’d made her the opposite of combat-ready. She was not suited for the battlefield, and she knew that. She knew that, and she hated it.

“Istenem… I should not even be out there fighting, and yet there is no other way I can protect you.” Dear me. “I know that it’s not right for me to be fighting but if I stop… If I do the right thing and pull myself off the battlefield… I know that I will only break further until I am no more than an empty shell.”

Artemis swallowed thickly, feeling ill. Unease settled into her gut, and silence weighed heavily between them.

“I just… I don’t know what else to do.” She closed her eyes and winced. “I am sorry, I do not mean to be like this. I just… I feel awful all of a sudden.” It was likely the nightmare. It had been so twisted and warped and reminded her so much of reality that it had shaken a few screws loose. The dam of what had been done to her; what she had been through; had been knocked one too many times, and now all of that was slowly leaking out. Soon enough it would burst, and she would crack and crumble under its weight.

The crying had stopped but she still was shaking, feeling hot and cold in turns. She knew she was going to break soon, but she didn’t want to.

“I… I’m going to do something you’re not going to like but - I think I have to do it. I don’t want to - I don’t want to put this burden on you but at the same time I don’t want to be alone…

I am afraid.”

Douglas wasn’t too sure what to say about all of this. Artemis had laid her fear bare; she didn’t want him to die out there. He knew that feeling well, he’d rather she didn’t die either. All he could do right now was try to hold her together until she could ride out the initial shockwave; she’d be able to keep herself together from there on out.

“Lest you forget, I got a nice metal friend I’m usually sortieing in, programmed specifically to keep me alive in as many circumstances as possible. It’s not like I’m flying out there alone - so long as I’m with VEGA I’m never alone. And you’ve seen what he can do when you piss him off. That Hunter probably still regrets his life decisions... their life decisions? Whatever.”

He didn’t like the sound of what Artemis said she was going to do. There were a hundred different things that could mean and it wasn’t clear what any of them even were. He just waited.

He was a lot bigger and a lot stronger than he was before. He could handle Artemis now.

Toaster stayed firmly stood on top of the mech as it toppled, a huge cloud of dust being thrown up around them as it impacted with the ground. When the dust cleared Toaster was still atop it, aggressively crouching up and down on top of it and hitting it with the butt of his rifle a few times for good measure. Clearly maturity would never be one of the Cyborg’s strong points.

“This is uhhh….” He needed a good code name, and racked his brains for a moment. “This is Manborg to Dig Dug and Gigantor.” He radioed to Douglas and VEGA. “The Northstar and its pilot have been thoroughly twatted.”

There was a moment of silence, and a muffled groan. “Wait no hang on the pilot’s still alive.” Toaster grumbled, drawing his revolver and putting it to the plating. “You might be the one in the Northstar, but…” Toaster let out a low chuckle.

“…Omae wa mo shindeiru.”

With that he unloaded the entire cylinder into the cockpit, pulling the trigger until he was only met with clicks. Seemingly satisfied, he reloaded his revolver, loading in rounds one by one as he started to walk away.

Only to pause after a few paces, look thoughtful, and then cheerfully unload another cylinder of eight rounds into the cockpit for good measure. “There we go. If a jobs worth doing. Manborg to Dig Dug, pilot is actually dead now, or if he isn’t that pilot is officially the luckiest bastard alive. How are things hanging your end?”

He went quiet for a moment, only to follow up with a clearly annoyed. “FUCK. I already made a fucking Hokuto no Ken joke. Dammit.”

Douglas breathed a sigh of relief as he watched Toaster tear the Northstar’s battery out, and began to close in. He avoided firing weapons, though; even if you were using something without explosives like a Chaingun, it was usually a very bad idea to fire at a Titan a friendly Pilot was rodeoing. Chances are you’d splat them if your aim wavered for any reason.

As the Northstar fell over VEGA approached, the forest glowing faintly red behind him as Pramoor Reserve slowly began to catch. Toaster fired a couple rounds from his revolver into the Northstar; he needed a couple of shots to breach the frame, as it was fairly well protected against small arms fire, but eventually he seemed to manage with the monster rounds fired by his magnum revolver.

“We’re good over here! Sniper asshole didn’t tag us with any spare rounds, otherwise the best we’re looking at is being a forced amputee of some type. Shouldn’t be too far to the doors now!”