A/N: Well here we go. For the time being this is just a teaser for what is coming. As of 20/01/2017, Armored Core: Scattered Ashes is now in production. I can't promise regular updates but I will do my best to post chapters as and when they are complete. So for now, enjoy this prologue and I look forward to reading any feedback you might have!

"I'll save you. I promise I will find you.

No matter what you hear me?

If it's the last thing I do, if I have to give up everything, I'll bring you back.

I swear I'll burn the world to ash if it means I can even hope to save you, you hear me Berlioz?!

I will be there for you!"

Alicia Lamond, 2106

I never wanted to believe in failure.

It just wasn't something I had allowed myself to consider, even during the lowest moments of my life, when all hope seemed impossible to reach. I knew had to keep moving towards my goal.

Everything else had been left behind the moment my life was ripped apart before my very eyes. The place I'd called home as long as I could remember. The family that had cared for me, raised me as one of their own. The girl who'd loved me for years.

When weighed against what I needed to do, it was incomparable.

That very night, I took the first of many lives I would end. The first stain, the first fleck of red on hands that would run crimson. The long arduous process of leaving my humanity behind started then.

In my uncontrollable need to complete my task, I killed and killed and killed, over and over again. Corpses formed the path ahead of me as I waded knee deep through their blood and filth.

I committed myself to the unthinkable and the unforgivable, all for the sake of saving one man. A man I slowly learned had carved the very same path I walked.

In a crowd of what felt like strangers in that moment, staring at a small flickering screen of a grainy video feed, I felt failure drive it's cold blade into my chest.

On the screen, I watched that man, my brother, die.

As if in slow motion, the broken, mangled frame of his AC was thrown off the edge of the Ark by a man who proudly announced himself as Maximilian Thermidor.

In those few seconds, my world ended.

#####

If I'm honest, I don't really remember what happened after that. The doctor's say I broke someone's arm as they tried to restrain me before they were forced to put me into an induced coma. Something about an abnormally violent development of psychosis.

Days passed, weeks passed.

I spent about a month drifting between a blurred and out of focus reality, and the hyper sharp world in my head, locked in that moment.

Repeating his death over and over. Trapped in something that went beyond a living nightmare.

When they finally brought me back, I had already come to terms with it, because I still had a goal. With my brother's passing, it was an easier enough adaption to keep the momentum of my will going.

I exchanged salvation for annihilation.

Instead of striving to save my brother, I would bring ruin to those that took our lives away from us.

I took a small joy in learning that during my coma, Maximilian Thermidor died days after killing my brother at the hands of a Raven. Rayleonard, the Corporation I had previously worked for had been liquidated and broken up, fragments of history sold to the highest bidder.

As it turned out, the majority of Rayleonard's standing military force, including the special forces division I was part of, was bought by Omer Science Technology. They integrated the standard forces into their own and we were reformed into a Tactical Assault Team, performing virtually the same jobs we did before.

Obviously Omer spent an exhaustive amount of time with psych checks and evaluations, ensuring that I wasn't going to become unhinged at the next sign of stress. I understood their worry, but it wasn't necessary.

All I need to push forwards was an anchor, something to hold me steady in the storm that I existed in.

Berlioz had been it before, now, it was revenge.

So long as I had that, I could keep breathing. Keep moving forwards.

As it turned out, they were more than happy with the results I produced. It wasn't to impress them, although getting in their good graces would make my job easier. Raising my status would mean access to more classified information, opportunities to meet VIPs and influencers.

I had all the time in the world. I could build my list of targets, both people and facilities, ready for the time when I could strike.

Barely months later, they made my task even easier.

Under the pretense of unifying the Corporations to prevent another war, Global Armaments Europe, Omer Science Technology, Rosenthal, Leonemeccanica, The Bernard and Felix Foundation, Aspina and Technocrat all signed into a new organisation called The League of Corporations.

The League would in theory remove any need for the Corporations to ever take military action against one another, for fear of being exiled from the group.

Of course, the League itself was a sham, but that was of no concern to me.

I was more interested in the new development to come out of this arrangement.

In the war leading up to the formation of the League, the Corporations destroyed the organisation that my brother belonged to. Mercenaries called Ravens, who were the sole pilots of the war machines called Armored Cores.

Pushed to the point of extinction, the few surviving Ravens were reformed into those now called Lynx and used to train new pilots for the League. Armored Cores evolved along with them, with the latest models rolling off the assembly line now called NEXTs, equipped with new advanced weaponry and defensive systems.

These Lynx and NEXTs would be the key to my victory. With that power, I could finally take my revenge.

I, Alicia Lamond, will take the lives of everyone who took my brother from me and tried to end mine.