One of the things I am most worried about is that I'm spending way too much time on exposition for the setting, enough that people who might have otherwise continued to read decide to click 'Back' and never look this way again. But I'm not a fan, at least in this context, of an 'In Medias Res' introduction because I firmly need to establish the political and social frameworks of the setting for anything to actually make sense (god knows the games could have used it).
So along with comments about this in general, I would really appreciate some genuine assessments of length. While I'm not quite done with it yet, it won't be but another few hundred words if that, so what is going to be posted here should be a moderately accurate gauge on what the finished product will have.
That in mind, I present Armored Core: A Reason to Fight.
---
The machine lumbered across the land. To the human eye, its progress may have seemed glacial, but each step covered roughly half of a kilometer. The truly terrifying aspect of this machine was not, however, the speed at which it moved, but the feeling of inevitability that it carried. This machine was destruction incarnate.
Six was the number of main cannons it boasted, able to rotate to cover forward, rear, and respective sides, as well as all angles above the machine. Not to say that it was defenseless if the incredible machine was attacked from below. Armed with an incredible compliment of missile launchers and high-caliber machine guns armed with APCR rounds, the machine was well-equipped to deal with any force sent to siege it. For enemies that happened to survive long enough to get directly beneath it, bomb dispensers placed in hundred-yard intervals on the underside of the machine meant that even that option was a death trap.
The Arms Fort Spirit of Motherwill strode inexorably on toward its target, preparing for the opening act of the most sordid war in human history.
---
Sophie LeBlanc was happy to be alive. At the ripe age of seven, though, this was a constant state for her. It was the first of November, and that meant that it was La Toussaint. School did not meet, and that meant that she had an entire day to herself and her family, and that evening, which it now was, was the festival. The streets of Lorraine were lively, as families and couples and singles wove their way through, meeting friends old and new, reigniting passions and generally enjoying themselves. It was full of sensations that stimulated the developing empathic ability, as she felt as though she was walking on clouds, a high that she had never before known.
And yet something seemed horribly wrong with the entire affair, a niggling sensation at the back of her mind that suddenly cut through her euphoria. With startled eyes she turned in the direction of the sensation, prompting confused queries from her parents. She searched the sky, wondering about that sensation. Her blood was chilled. She was all of seven years old, but survival instincts bred into humanity from millennia ago understood that feeling all too well. Someone was intending to kill her.
All at once though, that sensation was lost as something else caught her eye (she was only seven). Being so distracted, she pointed up, and stated, with more than a little glee and happiness, ôLook, mama, papa! Look at all of the shooting stars!ö This exclamation prompted not only her parents to look up, but several people standing nearby. Indeed, in the sky there were thousands of streaking points of light. A wave of awe hushed the crowd as more and more people noticed it. Then, applause rippled through the crowd as the childish delight at such a magnificent sight spread.
And then all at once that glee and happiness crystallized into fear, and the fear quickly spread to terror as her empathic abilities registered those same emotions from around her. She was the first to scream as the points of light suddenly changed their arcing course over the world and plummeted straight down at them. All at once, the people surged, going every which way trying to flee the coming apocalypse. People were trampled and killed instantly. Sophie managed to hold onto her motherÆs hand long enough for her to see the edge of the crowd. Then her mother fell, her hand slipping from her daughterÆs. Fortunately, Sophie was too far away to see what happened next.
She fought the best she could against the river of bodies and emerged onto the side of a street, crying desperately for her mother and father amidst all of the screaming. She turned her tear-streaked face to the heavens, and had no more time to ponder the whereabouts of her family as a missile struck the ground a foot in front of her and detonated.
Lorraine, miraculously, survived the first barrage. The city was cratered, buildings annihilated, but there was still a semblance of something, and people had managed to survive that apocalyptic rain. Then, from the far distance, came six booming reports. The survivors had enough time to see the projectiles racing toward them before they struck and detonated, completely annihilating the remains of Lorraine.
With no regard for the destruction it had caused, the machine continued to move on its way, the second barrage of missiles being loaded, the cannons cooling from their expulsion of the collected Kojima particles. Several more times it would repeat this pattern over the night, with many other cities never receiving even the slightest warning. The corporations had shut down communications when the operation started. The world, for this night, was completely silent.
The next day, when desperate officials restored communications, the world was already in shambles. While America could easily transfer the nationÆs command to NORAD in the Cheyenne Mountains, other world powers were rendered helpless with their capitals annihilated. That morning, the corporations, now united under the ideal of Pax Economica, announced and declared the National Dismemberment War. Laying out a long list of complaints including the mismanagement of dwindling materials and the subsequent danger facing the human race, the Pax Economica declared that the nations of the world were unfit to govern.
Their plan, they claimed, was to provide humanity with a purpose, a meaning for existence, security and safety and happiness. The world would be returned to its natural state without humanity spanning the globe. Eventually, mankind would take to the stars. Their weapons in this conquest, they stated, were the sword of righteousness, the ten Arms Forts that even now were in the process of completely and totally annihilating entire cities and countries, and the shield of faith, their legion of devoted Armored Core pilots. Nothing the modern military could throw at them would be able to compete. The logical choice was surrender. Surrender, and the corporations wouldnÆt have to annihilate your country and most of your population. Surrender and be granted a higher status in the new world order. But first and foremost, surrender.
Astonishingly, despite the fanatical nationalism that marked every conflict it had ever faced in the past, Russia was the first to capitulate. The entirety of the Serbian Wastes had been taken by Armored Core legions and the citizenry were being held hostage, while another Arms Fort advanced from the west. Rather than lose everything, they surrendered. As such, Kamirovgrad, the colony built atop the remains of Moscow, would have the densest population of any colony after the National Dismemberment War.
Other countries did not give the corporation forces the time of day. Japan was among these, completely untouched by the opening theater of the war. The traditional arrogance that marked their nation would not permit them to serve. By November Third, the citizens that had been able to evacuate from Japan were all that was left when thousands of Armored Cores descended upon the island country and, after pausing to eviscerate the national military, proceeded to obliterate any trace of civilization beyond rubble. Live footage was transmitted worldwide, and people watched in terror as civilians were annihilated with bursts of fire from guns and missile launchers. This event would become known as the ôNightmare of the Thirdö worldwide.
Horrified by the brutality of the corporationÆs methods, several other countries surrendered the following day. Among these was America, who, only minutes after completing their surrender, turned their available forces northward to begin a joint assault on a staunchly opposed Canada. The sudden attack, planned with the surgical precision so common to the United States, eliminated CanadaÆs primary defenses immediately. Four hours after the attack began, Canada surrendered as well.
In two days, the biggest advocates of freedom and democracy had fallen under the heel of the corporations. While a surprisingly resilient Britain held out against astonishing odds in Europe, India fell quickly. In a coalition that surprised the world, the Middle East, including Israel, stood resolutely opposed against the infidels, and waged a horrific guerilla campaign that saw most cities in the Middle East completely destroyed. These companies also suffered the highest casualty rates of any corporate forces that took part in the war. China and southeast Asia held out the longest, mostly because the requests for surrender had to navigate the Byzantine systems of the Chinese government, as well as processing the votes from its subordinate states in the region. When an Arms Fort appeared over Beijing one day and drew a scorching line in the earth with one of the beams on each tip, the process sped up significantly.
The largest difficulty the corporations had with conquering Africa was the sheer size of the continent. The constant infighting amongst the African peoples had, despite the best efforts of all outside parties, kept its civilization on a significantly lower level. While pockets of heavily-westernized society existed, by and large there was nothing Africa could do to stop the rolling tide of flying metal. After a stubborn resistance that saw the majority of south Africa erased, the remaining states surrendered. With so many falling, Australia and New Zealand allowed themselves to be conquered with little resistance, hoping to preserve most of their populations.
In the span of two months, the corporations had waged the most widespread war in the history of humanity, and had emerged victorious. Almost immediately, they began construction of the colonies, the supercities that would house all of humanity. It was decided that there be ten, placed at key locations in the world to ensure that the corporations had easy trade routes available to them. While more than a billion had been killed in the process of annihilating the world, the corporations now had to deal with the fact that they were placing the remaining billions into ten distinct locations. These locations were the places where Kojima radiation from the Arms Forts was weakest. They established nearby farms, massive plots of land where crops were grown and made into various foods and then shipped to the city.
Packed into such small spaces, human life changed greatly. Mob mentality ruled the city, and initially there were constant revolts against the corporations. When the corporations continued to respond with increasing disregard for human life, and then began to send units on patrols through cities to keep the peace, these revolts died down fast. Almost everyone found employment though the corporations, but there were those who could not. These outliers were quickly shunned by the general society for being drains on incredibly limited resources, and oftentimes actively encouraged to commit suicide to make everything easier on the rest of them. More than a few followed this advice.
Of course, despite the idea of the Pax Economica unifying the corporations, there was as much infighting as ever, and after a short recess from conflict to make sure that the world was running as the Pax Economica wanted it to, it became commonplace for civilians to be forced to scatter when explosions dotted their city as Next pilots fought it out for their employers. Most of these conflicts were deliberately scaled back to reduce the chance of their carefully executed plot collapsing in on itself. Half of the corporation members came to believe that it was just a return to things for normalcyÆs sake.
Despite the harsh militaristic actions of the Pax Economica in response to any kind of rebellion, several groups popped up to oppose them. Most infamous were the Maglib Liberation Front, a collection of Muslim and Judaic revolutionaries who had survived the initial war against the corporations and now sought to restore their people to freedom. Through means even the Pax Economica couldnÆt discern, these soldiers appeared in every region of the Middle East to wipe out patrols and supply trains, forcing operations in that region of the world to a grinding halt.
Additionally, a rebellion under the name Hold the Line rose up in Europe. Mostly British and German, these men did the unthinkable and assaulted one of the immense Arms Forts with the intent of capturing it for use against the corporations. In a worldwide-televised broadcast, the Arms Fort obliterated the attacking force inside of a minute before continuing on with its duties. A previously unnamed revolutionary group in North America named themselves Line Ark after this event, and proved to be the ghosts in the machine, forcing the corporations off their rhythm time and again in the American regions.
So along with comments about this in general, I would really appreciate some genuine assessments of length. While I'm not quite done with it yet, it won't be but another few hundred words if that, so what is going to be posted here should be a moderately accurate gauge on what the finished product will have.
That in mind, I present Armored Core: A Reason to Fight.
---
The machine lumbered across the land. To the human eye, its progress may have seemed glacial, but each step covered roughly half of a kilometer. The truly terrifying aspect of this machine was not, however, the speed at which it moved, but the feeling of inevitability that it carried. This machine was destruction incarnate.
Six was the number of main cannons it boasted, able to rotate to cover forward, rear, and respective sides, as well as all angles above the machine. Not to say that it was defenseless if the incredible machine was attacked from below. Armed with an incredible compliment of missile launchers and high-caliber machine guns armed with APCR rounds, the machine was well-equipped to deal with any force sent to siege it. For enemies that happened to survive long enough to get directly beneath it, bomb dispensers placed in hundred-yard intervals on the underside of the machine meant that even that option was a death trap.
The Arms Fort Spirit of Motherwill strode inexorably on toward its target, preparing for the opening act of the most sordid war in human history.
---
Sophie LeBlanc was happy to be alive. At the ripe age of seven, though, this was a constant state for her. It was the first of November, and that meant that it was La Toussaint. School did not meet, and that meant that she had an entire day to herself and her family, and that evening, which it now was, was the festival. The streets of Lorraine were lively, as families and couples and singles wove their way through, meeting friends old and new, reigniting passions and generally enjoying themselves. It was full of sensations that stimulated the developing empathic ability, as she felt as though she was walking on clouds, a high that she had never before known.
And yet something seemed horribly wrong with the entire affair, a niggling sensation at the back of her mind that suddenly cut through her euphoria. With startled eyes she turned in the direction of the sensation, prompting confused queries from her parents. She searched the sky, wondering about that sensation. Her blood was chilled. She was all of seven years old, but survival instincts bred into humanity from millennia ago understood that feeling all too well. Someone was intending to kill her.
All at once though, that sensation was lost as something else caught her eye (she was only seven). Being so distracted, she pointed up, and stated, with more than a little glee and happiness, ôLook, mama, papa! Look at all of the shooting stars!ö This exclamation prompted not only her parents to look up, but several people standing nearby. Indeed, in the sky there were thousands of streaking points of light. A wave of awe hushed the crowd as more and more people noticed it. Then, applause rippled through the crowd as the childish delight at such a magnificent sight spread.
And then all at once that glee and happiness crystallized into fear, and the fear quickly spread to terror as her empathic abilities registered those same emotions from around her. She was the first to scream as the points of light suddenly changed their arcing course over the world and plummeted straight down at them. All at once, the people surged, going every which way trying to flee the coming apocalypse. People were trampled and killed instantly. Sophie managed to hold onto her motherÆs hand long enough for her to see the edge of the crowd. Then her mother fell, her hand slipping from her daughterÆs. Fortunately, Sophie was too far away to see what happened next.
She fought the best she could against the river of bodies and emerged onto the side of a street, crying desperately for her mother and father amidst all of the screaming. She turned her tear-streaked face to the heavens, and had no more time to ponder the whereabouts of her family as a missile struck the ground a foot in front of her and detonated.
Lorraine, miraculously, survived the first barrage. The city was cratered, buildings annihilated, but there was still a semblance of something, and people had managed to survive that apocalyptic rain. Then, from the far distance, came six booming reports. The survivors had enough time to see the projectiles racing toward them before they struck and detonated, completely annihilating the remains of Lorraine.
With no regard for the destruction it had caused, the machine continued to move on its way, the second barrage of missiles being loaded, the cannons cooling from their expulsion of the collected Kojima particles. Several more times it would repeat this pattern over the night, with many other cities never receiving even the slightest warning. The corporations had shut down communications when the operation started. The world, for this night, was completely silent.
The next day, when desperate officials restored communications, the world was already in shambles. While America could easily transfer the nationÆs command to NORAD in the Cheyenne Mountains, other world powers were rendered helpless with their capitals annihilated. That morning, the corporations, now united under the ideal of Pax Economica, announced and declared the National Dismemberment War. Laying out a long list of complaints including the mismanagement of dwindling materials and the subsequent danger facing the human race, the Pax Economica declared that the nations of the world were unfit to govern.
Their plan, they claimed, was to provide humanity with a purpose, a meaning for existence, security and safety and happiness. The world would be returned to its natural state without humanity spanning the globe. Eventually, mankind would take to the stars. Their weapons in this conquest, they stated, were the sword of righteousness, the ten Arms Forts that even now were in the process of completely and totally annihilating entire cities and countries, and the shield of faith, their legion of devoted Armored Core pilots. Nothing the modern military could throw at them would be able to compete. The logical choice was surrender. Surrender, and the corporations wouldnÆt have to annihilate your country and most of your population. Surrender and be granted a higher status in the new world order. But first and foremost, surrender.
Astonishingly, despite the fanatical nationalism that marked every conflict it had ever faced in the past, Russia was the first to capitulate. The entirety of the Serbian Wastes had been taken by Armored Core legions and the citizenry were being held hostage, while another Arms Fort advanced from the west. Rather than lose everything, they surrendered. As such, Kamirovgrad, the colony built atop the remains of Moscow, would have the densest population of any colony after the National Dismemberment War.
Other countries did not give the corporation forces the time of day. Japan was among these, completely untouched by the opening theater of the war. The traditional arrogance that marked their nation would not permit them to serve. By November Third, the citizens that had been able to evacuate from Japan were all that was left when thousands of Armored Cores descended upon the island country and, after pausing to eviscerate the national military, proceeded to obliterate any trace of civilization beyond rubble. Live footage was transmitted worldwide, and people watched in terror as civilians were annihilated with bursts of fire from guns and missile launchers. This event would become known as the ôNightmare of the Thirdö worldwide.
Horrified by the brutality of the corporationÆs methods, several other countries surrendered the following day. Among these was America, who, only minutes after completing their surrender, turned their available forces northward to begin a joint assault on a staunchly opposed Canada. The sudden attack, planned with the surgical precision so common to the United States, eliminated CanadaÆs primary defenses immediately. Four hours after the attack began, Canada surrendered as well.
In two days, the biggest advocates of freedom and democracy had fallen under the heel of the corporations. While a surprisingly resilient Britain held out against astonishing odds in Europe, India fell quickly. In a coalition that surprised the world, the Middle East, including Israel, stood resolutely opposed against the infidels, and waged a horrific guerilla campaign that saw most cities in the Middle East completely destroyed. These companies also suffered the highest casualty rates of any corporate forces that took part in the war. China and southeast Asia held out the longest, mostly because the requests for surrender had to navigate the Byzantine systems of the Chinese government, as well as processing the votes from its subordinate states in the region. When an Arms Fort appeared over Beijing one day and drew a scorching line in the earth with one of the beams on each tip, the process sped up significantly.
The largest difficulty the corporations had with conquering Africa was the sheer size of the continent. The constant infighting amongst the African peoples had, despite the best efforts of all outside parties, kept its civilization on a significantly lower level. While pockets of heavily-westernized society existed, by and large there was nothing Africa could do to stop the rolling tide of flying metal. After a stubborn resistance that saw the majority of south Africa erased, the remaining states surrendered. With so many falling, Australia and New Zealand allowed themselves to be conquered with little resistance, hoping to preserve most of their populations.
In the span of two months, the corporations had waged the most widespread war in the history of humanity, and had emerged victorious. Almost immediately, they began construction of the colonies, the supercities that would house all of humanity. It was decided that there be ten, placed at key locations in the world to ensure that the corporations had easy trade routes available to them. While more than a billion had been killed in the process of annihilating the world, the corporations now had to deal with the fact that they were placing the remaining billions into ten distinct locations. These locations were the places where Kojima radiation from the Arms Forts was weakest. They established nearby farms, massive plots of land where crops were grown and made into various foods and then shipped to the city.
Packed into such small spaces, human life changed greatly. Mob mentality ruled the city, and initially there were constant revolts against the corporations. When the corporations continued to respond with increasing disregard for human life, and then began to send units on patrols through cities to keep the peace, these revolts died down fast. Almost everyone found employment though the corporations, but there were those who could not. These outliers were quickly shunned by the general society for being drains on incredibly limited resources, and oftentimes actively encouraged to commit suicide to make everything easier on the rest of them. More than a few followed this advice.
Of course, despite the idea of the Pax Economica unifying the corporations, there was as much infighting as ever, and after a short recess from conflict to make sure that the world was running as the Pax Economica wanted it to, it became commonplace for civilians to be forced to scatter when explosions dotted their city as Next pilots fought it out for their employers. Most of these conflicts were deliberately scaled back to reduce the chance of their carefully executed plot collapsing in on itself. Half of the corporation members came to believe that it was just a return to things for normalcyÆs sake.
Despite the harsh militaristic actions of the Pax Economica in response to any kind of rebellion, several groups popped up to oppose them. Most infamous were the Maglib Liberation Front, a collection of Muslim and Judaic revolutionaries who had survived the initial war against the corporations and now sought to restore their people to freedom. Through means even the Pax Economica couldnÆt discern, these soldiers appeared in every region of the Middle East to wipe out patrols and supply trains, forcing operations in that region of the world to a grinding halt.
Additionally, a rebellion under the name Hold the Line rose up in Europe. Mostly British and German, these men did the unthinkable and assaulted one of the immense Arms Forts with the intent of capturing it for use against the corporations. In a worldwide-televised broadcast, the Arms Fort obliterated the attacking force inside of a minute before continuing on with its duties. A previously unnamed revolutionary group in North America named themselves Line Ark after this event, and proved to be the ghosts in the machine, forcing the corporations off their rhythm time and again in the American regions.