RA Deal (Worm/Lancer) 1

I itched at my shoulder, waiting eagerly for the bell to ring and to be free from this hellhole. Mr. Gladly droned on, oblivious to the plight of his students. “...Now, who can tell me the greatest impact of para technological advancements on our society. Anyone?”

When no one jumped to volunteer, he picked me out. “Taylor!” In response, I lifted up my left arm. “Do you have a question? We’re near the end of the period so if you need to use the washroom you’ll have to wait-” he stopped as I shifted my arm, spinning it around a full three-hundred and sixty degrees, showing off its mechanical nature. “Ah, yes, very good. Cybernetics and prosthetics have come lightyears since the first contact, just one of the many ways we’ve advanced…” I tuned him out as he continued to babble, taking deep breaths instead.

My therapist had suggested that, and it helped me hold back from screaming at him. That all people with powers did was bring death and destruction, but no one in authority wanted to talk about that. How if it wasn’t for overpowered fools duking it out, I’d still have a flesh and blood left arm. And a mother.

The bell blessedly rang, and I grabbed my bag, rushing out the door. On the way, I bumped into my former best friend. “Out of the way,” I growled, shoving Emma to the side. The girl simply flinched and let herself get pushed away, the former model looking despondent and listless as usual.

I almost wish that she’d fight back, do something. Did she feel that way when she picked on me? I didn’t think so; even in my worst moments I hadn’t been as helpless as Emma had been ever since Sophia left. Or rather ‘left’ - sudden disappearances usually meant you got caught up in a fight, just another casualty of MAT’s ‘aggressive anti-villain stance.’

If that’s true, I might feel a bit of pity, even for her. No one deserves that. Not her and definitely not… mom. As I turned my thoughts in that direction, I adjusted my glasses and exited Winslow, immediately hearing a ‘whoosh’ overhead. 

Glancing up, I saw it. The machine looked like a small jet with quad thrusters, on the backs and wings. They rotated down as the mech came to stop, hovering over the air. It was made of dull steel plates, a sharp angular machine. From only a hundred meters below, I felt some of the heat from the thrusters, could see the bombing bays and machine guns mounted on it.

Would I have noticed those features before I gained my own powers? Possibly, if I had been paying close attention. Before, I’d just tried to keep my head down, but now, even as I still tried to do so, I could see the flaws. 

Nothing on the aerial mobile unit was egregiously badly designed, but I could automatically pick up little inefficiencies in the design. Weak points I might want to hit. Impacts likely to jam the doors to the bombing bays, how the machine guns would have difficulty hitting things on an elevation below them, how its scanner openly bathed the area in a green light showing what it was scanning…

“Shit,” I murmured, ducking my head and moving along as I realized it was scanning me. Really, scanning the dozens of students around me as well, but still. This mech might be weak, but even if I could take out that one the Mechanized Assault Team would just send more after me. Just another casualty in their war against the gangs.

I was conflicted about the presence of MAT; I had plenty of reasons to hate them, but everyone heard about the human trafficking the Asian Bad Boyz did, the brutal assaults of the Empire Eighty Eight to minorities. Of course, despite the heavier pressure, the gangs were still doing what they did. It’s all shit.

With a heavy sigh, I trudged home. Like the city itself, my house looked rundown, tired. The paint on the patio was chipped, the stairs creaking ominous as I walked up them. Dad could probably fix it up, it’s not like we don’t have any money, he’s just so tired after work. And before work.

From inside, the t.v. made noise, left on before my father had gone to work. It was one of those twenty four seven news stations. A thin man in a suit was being interviewed. “...We need stronger protections for our citizens. I understand that this may lead to some restrictions on the rights they’ve enjoyed, but I believe this curfew will be for the best.”

The reporter bobbed her head along. “Well, that certainly explains the meetings you’ve been having with the mayor, Director Calvert. Do you think he’s likely to agree and if not, what actions will MAT be taking?”

“I’m quite hopeful for the future - Mayor Christner has proven himself to be a capable leader in these troubling times. If he doesn’t agree with our proposed plan then of course MAT will follow the law; despite what agitators might say, our country is still one that abides by the rule of law. I can only pray that we won’t see any further tragedies in the near future. Even with new ace pilots like ‘Gallant’ and the rest of our roster of brave men and women, there’s only so much we can do to keep this city safe-”

I turned off the television. Bunch of useless PR. It was still a little early to get dinner ready for dad’s return, so I went up to my room. Tossing my bag to the side, I pulled out my computer and booted it up. The ‘Trio’ might be broken up and Emma’s hangers ons have abandoned her, but I’d still never feel comfortable bringing something as expensive as a computer to school. Especially not one I’ve upgraded.

The few press releases about what Lancers could do never said anything about fixing up laptops or the like, but ever since I’d gotten my powers, I found that it was easy to figure out how to boost it. Hardly has the raw processing power of my mech, but at least there’s no lag when browsing the web.

Online there wasn’t much, however. The internet was heavily monitored, so there weren’t any websites that handily explained everything. The few fansites were suspect, and the official government pages just tried to funnel any new Lancers to the MAT, espousing the various virtues they had.

One interesting article that had caught my eye before talked about an interview with a former MAT Lancer which I tried to look up… only to find the page was gone. Should have realized they’d scrub it. The rest of the news just showed the same old. Gangs mobilizing and causing destruction nearby the docks, etc.

Frowning, I looked up one of those in closer detail. That warehouse the ABB hit… that was only two doors down from the Dockworkers Union. Sure it was at night so my father likely wouldn’t have been hit in any case, but still.

An alert from my phone showed a text from my father that he was coming home late and something in me chilled. Enough waiting around. If the MAT can’t clean up the city, use the violence to crack down on us, then I’ll do it. For whatever reason RA gave me these powers, I’ve got to do something with them, so why not try and make the city a better place?

***

I waited until after Dad had returned home before pretending to go to bed and slipping out. Both less chance of him finding out what I’m doing, and no chance of him getting caught up in the crossfire. Don’t think I could forgive myself if anything like that happened.

Slipping out my window was easy enough. While difficult, I could project just a drone with the basic systems needed to lift me down from the second story to the ground. From there, it was easy to hop over the fence and make my way down the street.

The docks were the ABB ‘territory’ and where I was most likely to find them. I wanted to be ready for anything if I did find some of their gang, but I didn’t want to out myself, however. One fact everyone could agree about online was that a Lancer was most vulnerable outside of their mobile unit, so getting identified was dangerous. So finding a deserted alley midway between the buildings, I called on my power in full.

It was nearly impossible to describe the sensation, feeling a goliath of steel and wires forming around me. The cockpit was created first, then rose up as the legs of the frame grew in. At the same time, multiple sets of arms grew out of the sides, some of them disjointed in places, hovering and connected by magnetic circuits. 

The back was the last section to form into existence, and the most complicated. It formed into a large, bulbuous ‘shell’ filled with the majority of my system’s armaments. The various drones my mech had could be deployed from there, though the two largest sets of arms were actually just modular drones as well. The same went for the head of the mech, floating above the torso. Its sensor systems were only backups for when I deployed it away from the body. Only the smallest set at the bottom were manipulators to actually hold or move objects. 

With a floating black ‘head’ matching the gleaming black, almost chitinous plating on the body, it gave a very dark image. Grey joints didn’t help, with only a few hints of magenta highlights adding a splash of color to the mech. Despite being a fifteen foot tall, six armed machine of death, it had a very human-inspired image. Not for the first time, I wondered why so many (though not all) mobile suits seemed to be built off of human physiology. The best answer anyone had was that it was a quirk of RA to make them such.

With my mech fully projected, the neurological casing dropped down on my skull, sharp pricks from the needles sticking in only barely felt before the rush of being totally connected to the systems of my mobile unit. In a way it felt slightly less connected than whenever I projected the mech from wherever it was stored when not in use, but since everything was online it was clearer, more in focus.

Holo screens filled up my cockpit, displaying visual and exotic sensory feeds, detecting any presences within at least a hundred feet of me. There was enough precision here to detect a rat skittering away from a dumpster a building over from me, the system easily filtering false-positives away and scoring threats as they approached.

Of course, the ‘system’ is at least in part my brain. More than just the neural link, the cockpit had manual override controls and levers within the cockpit, and I somehow instinctively knew how to use them all. Even if I took the helmet off or was sitting outside of the mech, I’d be able to recall how to control and operate the frame.

It also showed the status of my drones and exposed systems. Right now, all I had active was the ‘Atlas,’ the small flying beetle-like drone I’d used earlier to slip out of my home. It had a light forcefield that it could use to deflect attacks as long as it stayed nearby me, while the frame deployed a similar field to protect any of the various systems I could deploy nearby it.

Charging up the jump jets, I made a short, but controlled leap, jump jet triggering the moment my mechanized feet left the ground. The boost gave me a feeling of weightlessness as I travelled through the air, a brief moment of beautiful flight before gravity reasserted itself. By that point however, I was already above the rooftop of the three story building I had been beside. 

The landing was smooth, so smooth I stumbled more from the fact that I had felt practically no roughness in the landing. I’ve practiced a tiny bit with the stabilizers and everything, but this will be my first night truly using my mech.

A few more jumps like that and I was deep into the docks, nearby all the ABB spray painted territory. I’m just going to scout for today, no need to get in a figh- before I could finish that thought, my sensors started pinging mass movements. Ducking down behind the AC unit of the building I was on, I sent out a low level scan of the area. 

Dozens, possibly hundreds of gang members were gathered on the street below me. At least, I assumed they were gang-members from the weapons they carried. Most had bats, chains, a pistol or two. Some of them had heavier weapons however; machine guns and other gear that triggered pings with high energy and electrical systems incorporated within.

At the head of it all was a lone man within a ‘hardsuit,’ a type of small power armor. Not a mech, but the toughest of those can just shrug off regular bullets and the like, or so I’ve heard. His voice echoed out through the square as he addressed the gang, my audio receptors perfectly picking up on his speech (surprisingly in English; likely just a result of being the most common language between the various Asian gangs he’d drawn together in his orbit).

“You know the mission today,” his voice was deep, brimming with restrained rage. “Those children have interfered in our operations for too long.” Children? He’s thinking of killing kids? 

He continued. “Today, we end them. Their frames are weak - tricky, but weak. Soft. I will draw their focus, you will wear down their defenses and then I will break them. They have no backing, no partners waiting for them. If either one flees, ejects out of their frames, shoot them. They’ve cost us too much, angered our partners with missing merchandise to just run them off; we will send a message to any other fools willing to test us through their corpses. Understood?”

All of the gang members nodded. Perhaps some were nervous, or pained in their agreement, but none refused. Not against Lung, the ‘Dragon of Kyushu.’ One of the few Lancers to escape a Metavault and remain sane enough to tell the tale. Why he’d set up in Brockton Bay, no one knew, but it was hardly something I could worry about at this point in time. 

He’s trying to kill children? What the hell! I mean, it sounds like those kids are Lancers too but- I had no more time to deliberate; the gang was marching out, and around Lung, I felt the weird spatial shifts as the components of his mech began forming around him.

Without a second to spare, I launched my strongest attack first. Launching the ‘head’ unit of my mech out above the open street, I fired one of the missile clusters from it straight at Lung. He gave a howl of pain, the detonating blasting his armor into shards of metal.

The gang members turned, filling the air with fire. Literal fire, in some cases, shooting out in streams from handheld flamethrowers amidst the barrage of bullets and even a few laser shots. Most of the attacks plinked off of ‘Hornet’s armor, but some chipped even it, the strongest drone I had. 

I must have not seen the full picture of how heavily armed they are. With so many of them, it was hard to track while behind cover, but I didn’t wish to leave and expose myself to that kind of firepower. Especially not when one thing I could detect more clearly was that Lung’s frame was still growing, and was already twice the size of my frame.

A flurry of mental commands sent my Atlas over to guard Hornet as the latter launched another missile strike at Lung. Peering through my drone’s visual sensors, I saw how the outside armor of his mech shifted with the attacks, spikes sticking out while the ferrous fluid hardening beneath them. Like a dragon’s scales.

The comparison, and his moniker, were apt. The mech he had created looked more like a beast than any man. It pulled itself up, standing on four limbs. The front two were longer, thinner, with claws on the end that radiated heat, glowing hot. The rear legs were stockier, clearly designed more for mobility and stability than the weapons systems at the front. They weren’t the only method of movement he had, with two large pairs of wings sticking out the back of the lizard-esque frame. Each had massive thrusters attached, to let him soar through the air, though I had no idea how he dealt with the heat from lifting such a massive frame. From head to toe, the frame must have been thirty feet, some of that height admittedly coming from the sinuous neck and crowned head, with a ‘jaw’ holding some spikes and more importantly, a potent flamethrower.

A system he demonstrated immediately, rearing up and unleashing a massive, fifty foot cone of fire to ignite the sky above him. Particularly, the area where my drones were centered on. Atlas’ shield system guarded Hornet against the attack but itself was starting to melt under the immense heat. Shit shit- no, no, calm. This is fine, it’s what that drone is designed for.

As the gang members continued their assault on the drones, I realized I still needed to even the playing field. Another drone shot out of my back, hovering above the gangsters on the ground for a second before releasing the nanites. Like a swarm, they descended upon the people, eliciting screams as the miniscule machines began eating away at the gang members.

Why won’t they just run? The greywash isn’t designed to be lethal - not instantly at least. It only eats into anything defined as an enemy within the drone’s area. Its placement beneath my other drones meant the nanite ‘cloud’ formed a field of cover, obscuring any attacks on Atlas or Hornet. With jerky motions, I adjusted the IFF settings, marking any downed gang member for non-consumption, leaving them safe if they were unconscious or too badly hurt to be a threat. At the same time, I filtered the volume, blocking out their cries of pain distracting sounds.

Not that this deterred Lung, the villain spraying the air with fire once more. He got lucky, managing to hit both the swarm drone and Hornet this time, the flames cutting through their defenses. Atlas’ shield blocked the fire around itself this time, but it was still burning from the previous attack, its systems slowly melting as I failed to engage the self coolant mechanisms within it. Dammit!

Even more worrying than that was how Lung took to the air, flying after my drones. A wild swing missed Hornet entirely, but as heat poured off of his mech, he pushed it further, lashing out with the other arm and rending Atlas to nothing more than wrecked, burning wreckage that fell to the ground below.

Most disturbing of all however, was the fact that flying up, even through the grey swarm obscuring everything around him, he turned the face of his mech to stare at mine, huddled on the rooftop.

Turning, I tried running away, jumping off from the roof and jetting down to the street below. I raced across the road, hoping I could get away from him, to no avail. He streaked after me, burning like a comet as he flew out of the swarm. Despite the size of his mech, he was ungodly fast, soon reaching me and swinging out with those burning talons he had. I dodged out of the way, his strike jerky and awkward. I could see motors and joints sparking, but he soon fixed that.

That fix also came with venting his heat in an explosive manner. Exhaust vents shuttered open and released a wave of burning hot air onto my mech that I couldn’t dodge. 

Crying out, (mostly in shock; the neural link didn’t transfer any pain for the most part) I fought back, directing the drones to come back to me. The regular gang members are pretty much all defeated in any case. Hornet fired another blast into Lung’s back, but each successive attack chipped away at him a bit less than the shots before. My swarm drone ate into his mech a tiny bit, but only a tiny amount while his armor grew tougher and tougher.

How can he be this strong? I wondered as I released another blast from Hornet into him. His frame shuddered at the impact, three of four wings destroyed in a chain reaction explosion. My joy was short lived as the explosion had him releasing another wave of heat out at everything around him (i.e. me and my drones).

Flames licked my mech, causing me to gnash my teeth as I desperately reached for the extinguishing backup units, having just put out the last fire ravaging my systems. The drones were looking much worse for wear, the swarm drone shuddering while Hornet limped along. 

A swing of his claws tore apart the swarm drone, and the grey wash fell, instantly inactive. A down side of that drone is that I can't control the wash even if my frame is still fully functional… but I suppose that’s better than a potential Black Wash incident.

Hornet fired another blast into Lung, but this time it did nothing to him. Didn’t even scorch the outside of his frame. Time to go. Well past time to leave- My efforts were stopped as I turned and got ready to fly away with him launching a clawed arm out, not to cut into me, but to grab and pin me down. 

My system strained, thrashing. I tried to break free, but nothing worked. He was too big, too strong. Point blank flamethrower burst had me screaming in pain, this time not from any sympathetic pain, just from the heat conducted straight to the cockpit. He hacked off an arm with his free claw, melting and shredding it apart.

An incoming transmission carried his voice to me. “I don’t know why you interfered with me, but it was foolish. Whether you belong to the Outsiders or not, I will mount your head on a pike and show everyone why they still need to fear my na-” There was a squelching sound as his transmission cut off, along with the pressure of his mech atop mine.

Another voice cut in, this time a girl’s, and very young at that. “Get out of there! I can only hold him for a moment!”

I hardly needed to be told twice, scrambling, I got to my feet. Shutting down burnt system, rerouting power, I reoriented myself, making space between me and hole disturbing hole that had been conjured above me. Light seemed to bend into it, giving me only the barest glimpse of Lung trapped within the pinpoint hole.

“Wha- what was that?” I asked aloud, unconsciously pressing the controls to transmit my voice to other mechs in the area. Glancing over at them, I made out my saviours. They both were in mobile units closer to my size than Lung’s, but with very unique builds.

In the back stood a tall, slender, humanoid robot, with long legs and arms. It carried a weird rectangular gun loosely in one hand, with a combat knife sheathed on its other side. A number of thin spikes stuck out from the suit’s arms and two larger prongs sticking out the side of its head; clearly all an advanced sensory array system. There was a large clock symbol painted on the torso and in place of a face on the head of the mech, the entire frame made of gleaming white plates.

Waving its free hand in the air it did something. The air around where Lung had been shifted, ghostly images of pedestrians and mine and his mech wandered through the space, filling it with intangible obstacles. As the gangster pilot broke free from the pinhole of space he had been trapped in, he moved towards us as if wading through honey.

A stream of digital transmissions brought the other friendly mech to my attention. This one was a stocky thing, with four bulky legs and a stubby pair of hands. The hands held an odd glowing rifle and pistol in their grips. The most curious feature was the missing head of the mech, which had two very long, pronged ‘horns’ sticking out the sides and atop as sensors, but an empty void in the center. Within it, the small pilot, wearing a heavy hardsuit, floated, seemingly untouched by the rest of the world. The thicker sections of metal around the ‘head,’ legs, and sides were a light green, with some of the under panels a pale white.

Whatever technical attack it was that they used, it caused the joints on Lung’s mech to seize up and glow cherry red from the strain. She followed it up with another burst of energy, and the space twisted around Lung, leaving him mired even further in place. What even is all that? I knew that Lancers could use their mechs better than most people come dream of even with years of training and had powerful systems, but bending time and space?!

“Stop gawking and help us out,” the girl’s voice rang out through my communications systems again. A tiny data packet came attached and I opened it, designating the girl in the bipedal mech as ‘Callsign: Infinite,’ and the other as ‘Callsign: Clockroach’ and marking them as friendlies on my HUD. I accepted the changes, scrambling to react, and then jumping to the side as Lung released his counter attack, a large cone of fire blistering towards us.

I dodged the assault while Clockroach and Infinite were caught up in it. Clock’s mech burned, seeming on the verge of melting to slag instantly… only for all the damage to be undone in blur, the metal unmelting and sliding back into place as time rewound before my sensors.

Infinite was hit, but her bulkier mobile suit shrugged off the worst of it. Interestingly, all the flames that would have entered the exposed cockpit rolled over it, the spatial distortions that made it shielding the pilot from harm.

With an unnecessary roar, Lung vented the heat building up once again, the flames washing over the ghosts swarming around to no effect. Seeing that he was still stuck in place at least, I  backed away and fired off a few quick slugs from my smaller, modular drone system. They hit, but couldn’t damage the draconic mech, just causing more ferrofluid to harden around it.

He managed to break free of the traps Infinite and Clockroach had woven around him, driving towards them, albeit slowly enough that they had time to split up, retreating backwards and limiting how many of us he could hit at once with that flamethrower. “Whoa!” Came a boyish voice, as Clockroach narrowly leaned away from one of Lung’s burning talons as he got closer to the lanky mech.

“Nothing I do works!” I shouted, futility trying to blast him with the drone arms, configured to laser mode. The different kind of attack was just as futile against the thick armor that had formed around Lung’s mech. He ignored me, sending out roaring flames to try and consume Clockroach, melting him down- and once again being undone, the mech rewinding time around it and shifting a dozen meters back.

“Hack him, dammit!” The shrill voice blared over my comms once more.

“I- how do I even do that?” I know that every mech has some basic systems to connect and interface with other tech, like how ‘Infinite’ over there was able to send over a ‘friend’ ping and let me update my scanners, but I’ve never used it for electronic warfare before.

It appeared this would be a trial by fire however, as Infinite and Clockroach were much too busy twisting time and space like pretzels around Lung. For all that though, they were barely able to contain Lung. His mech had grown and shifted to the point that it looked more like a raging beast than anything made of steel and wires.

Flicking on her systems, Taylor probed Lung’s. He was distracted, waving that flamethrower of his around and trying to roast Clockroach, which made getting in easy. Now what to do… It would take a far more specialized mech than mine to actually force his frame to do anything he didn’t want it to; all she had were her drones, and few of the combat capable ones left. My drones, that’s it! 

Hooking up the feeds she ran from all of them, Taylor plugged them straight into Lung’s mech. The videos crowded his viewscreen, replaced movement command inputs from his machine with the movement patterns of the drones, dumped all the memory they had into his databanks, all in short order.

He quickly cleared through the chaos, but it was too late; with that and what my temporary comrades were doing, we manage to override Lung’s systems together. His heats vents were shut down and I could hear the sizzling within. For a minute, I thought he might have melted inside the cockpit, but he managed to rip open a hole in his own armor, a wave of heat pouring out of it.

He made it through all that?! It was insane, but then again, he’d fought whole teams of Lancers and won. My eyes narrowed as I examined the opening he made again. There’s still some armor trying to spike over it, but the nature of the opening limits it. It also needs to be somewhat open to let the heat out. Wide opening for us.

“Go, strike him here!” I shouted over the comms, highlighting the exposed mark. My Hornet drone, somehow still limping along, fired off another shot, well aimed and blasting off plenty of metal from his side. The outer layer of the enemy mech shifted and writhed, but it appeared to have reached its limits, unable to grow further.

Clockroach swung into the designated weak spot, firing with a spike launcher and surprisingly accurate shoulder mounted rifle. The latter plinked away at Lung, doing little even as it hammered into the weak point, but the former sent a ridiculously large nail through Lung’s frame and one of the mech’s legs.

Infinite took the odd, glowing rifle strapped to the side of her mech and fired off a pulse. It created a small distorted green glow that seemed to warp light around it, making it difficult to view directly. As the bolt hit Lung, it enveloped him - and then made the whole mech blink out of existence.

“Wha- you killed him?” I exclaimed, shocked at how easy it had been. Infinite shook her head, following up the attack by launching a small cluster of missiles up in the air, landing down over some buildings a block away.

“Just teleported him away from us. It won’t hold for long - we need to leave, now.” As if sensing my hesitation, the girl pressed. “We don’t have the tools to beat him, not as amped up as he is right now. Best to flee and fight another day.”

“You heard the lady, time to skedaddle,” Clockroach chimed in, waving his hands through the air. I felt the world slowing down in response. Or more like I’ve sped up. Pushing my controls, my frame practically soared through the air, racing over pavement and past buildings.

Eventually, they came to a stop in the shadow of a warehouse, the time dilation wearing down. “That- that was-” I gasped, not quite out of breath but unable to articulate all the emotions coming from her first mech fight as my adrenaline crashed.

“Yuuuuup. You get your ‘nearly died today badge, huzzah!’” Clockroach’s sardonic words reached her. “What exactly were you thinking by fighting the toughest Lancer in the Bay by yourself again?”

“He said he was going to kill a couple of kids, which I presume meant you two!” They don’t sound that old, I think Infinite is even younger than I am, though it’s hard to tell with that armor she’s wearing. 

“Calm down Clock, she was helping us.” Then the girl turned to me, floating around in that odd space above her mech’s head. “You could use a rundown of the basics, however. Lancer fights aren’t-” She cut herself off, as if she realized she hated what she was saying. “There’s just some things you should learn before you get too involved in this kind of lifestyle. If you’re interested, meet us at the Boardwalk, just past Fugly Bob’s. Tomorrow, 3:30. Keep your mobile unit and drones tucked away.”

Yeah, I figured that. There wasn’t time to say anything else as they turned and headed down the street. They soon left sensor range, but just before they left, I could see their signatures shrinking.

The warehouse was deserted and a quick scan revealed any nearby cameras had been shut down, so I did the same, drawing the frame back into herself. The process was as odd as projecting it out had been, but it went smoothly. The outer plates, dented and damaged as they were went first, then electrical systems, certain mechanisms. The skeleton of the frame was last, but before it did, the emergency eject triggered, letting me down gently to the ground, the frame fully absorbed by the time I touched down, before pulling the seat in as well.

Tonight hadn’t gone like I had planned, but I was still alive, to fight another day. Adjusting my glasses, I trudged back home, just another faceless girl in the city. 

A/N: So, here’s a Worm/Lancer fusion idea I had. Seeing all the cool, funky options mechs in Lancer have, I thought it’d be fun to see how they could map onto Worm characters. To do that though required shifting a bunch of things around.

Enter RA, the big Entity-like being of Lancer! Entity-like in the sense of being alien and hard to comprehend, not that they follow the same pattern that Entities do in consuming worlds or trying to solve entropy.

Basic idea goes that RA encounters Zion and Eden, they clash, and after winning, RA takes a look at what they were doing and decides to run a similar experiment, but instead of giving humans the powers like the Entities would give, instead gives them Lancer tech (as well as dropping down the First Contact Accords on Earth) to see what the earlier humans there would do with it. Remnants of Zion and Eden’s are sorta used as a base to pick out humans to become Lancers, as well as the energy/mass needed to project Mechs.

As seen from Taylor’s cybernetic left arm, people have studied this tech a lot and come up with some pretty significant advancements. It’s not Tinker tech or black boxed like that, but it is still quite complicated, so even after thirty years or so, a lot of the more advanced details still elude them. I’ll get more into that and the other world change stuff in the next segment.