WMG / Armored Core VI: Fires of Rubicon

V.IV Rusty is an RLF spy.

Rusty isn't just a friendly mercenary who abandons his corporate contract for the good of Rubicon. He was the RLF's inside man.

Immediately after Operation Wallclimber, 621 takes a job to follow Rusty's trail of destruction, investigating RLF wrecks for communication logs that can tell them anything about Rusty. The logs suggest that there is more to Rusty than meets the eye, as some of the pilots say they know who Rusty really is and ask him why he would betray them like this. Rusty is already unusually forthcoming for a corporate soldier, warning us that the corps planned to sacrifice 621 during Operation Wallclimber. He also repeats a few times that Rubicon still needs him, which is a pretty sympathetic sentiment for a corporate drone.

We also know from Middle "Uncle" Flatwell's Arena profile that he has some old ties to the corporations. When Flatwell and Rusty show up for a 2-on-1 fight underground on NG+, the two talk as if they have known each other for some time.

• To be more specific, Flatwell's arena profile mentions that he has significant sway over a contact in Schneider HR specifically — the same company that "discovered" Rusty in the first place.

The end result is clear (or as clear as that bread crumb style of storytelling that From Software loves to use). Flatwell used his contacts to insert Rusty into Arquebus as the RLF's inside man.

Rusty is a former RLF soldier that is using Arquebus.

Related to the above theory, though without the element of Rusty working as a mole/spy. Throughout the game it is repeatedly shown the RLF lack the modern firepower of their enemies, being forced to rely on outdated AC's that are 'barely better than MT's', and their 'flagship', the Strider, is little more than a piece of mining equipment jury-rigged into a makeshift battleship, and poses so little threat the corps contract a single mercenary AC to deal with it. When Rusty reemerges in the 'Fires of Raven' ending, he implies he's severed ties with Arquebus now he has his new AC, and the player's support team specifically note that it looks as if the player wasn't the only one using the corps.This would indicate that, frustrated trying to fight a war without the equipment necessary to do so, Rusty defected from the RLF and made a deal with the devil with the intent of using Arquebus and his new corporate paycheck to secure the kind of powerful modern weapons and AC parts that were beyond the reach of the RLF's obsolete stockpiles and black market contacts, always intending to betray them in turn once he'd got what he wanted from them. Naturally this would have been perceived as a betrayal by his former comrades, but also the type that could have been easily explained to and forgiven by Flatwell, especially considering the RLF's increasingly desperate situation thought the game.

If a DLC is produced for Fires of Rubicon, the story may involve Furlong Dynamics.

The arena bios for several characters mention a "Jupiter War" between Furlong Dynamics and Balam Industries occurring in the vicinity of the Jupiter colonies some years before the events of the game. G1 Michigan was the commander of the Furlong Armed Fleet at the time and earned fame as the "Hero of Jupiter". During the game, several data logs can be found that indicate third parties are quietly monitoring the Coral War between Balam and Arquebus on Rubicon 3, and one of them is Furlong Dynamics. Not only does Furlong aid the Rubicon Liberation Front by providing Elcano Foundry with technical assistance to make Rusty's second AC, STEEL HAZE ORTUS, but one of the data logs hints Furlong was also secretly aiding Arquebus. It can be surmised that Furlong, likely motivated by their old Jupiter War rivalry, was tipping the scales in the Coral War to ensure Balam would lose.

But this all raises the question, why would the game's writers go to the trouble of including so many subtle and unsubtle details about Furlong when Furlong doesn't appear in the game? Simple world-building, or laying the groundwork for Furlong to have an expanded role in potential future content?

"Cinder" Carla still appears to be young fifty years after the Fires of Ibis because:

Two possibilities:

• Carla had herself implanted with Old Generation (Gen 1-4) augments, which use Coral. Several pilots who are confirmed to have received Old Generation augmentation surgery (C4-621, V.III O'Keeffe before he joined Arquebus, Sulla, and G5 Iguazu), which was only possible before the Fires of Ibis consumed the only known source of Coral, are still working as pilots fifty years later with no indication of experiencing any age-related physical or mental decline. So perhaps Coral-based augments possess anti-aging properties, and Carla is keeping the fact that she's augmented to herself.
  • The developers' penchance for alchemy-related themes in their games supports this theory; alchemists viewed earthly coral as a kindred substance to the Philosopher's Stone, and coral was used to symbolize eternal life/youthfulness in medieval art. Carla's exposures to Coral may very well have caused her to age much more slowly.
• After taking the child Walter to safety in the Jupiter colonies to escape the Fires of Ibis per Professor Nagai's last wishes, Carla entered some kind of suspended animation (cryostasis?) for forty-seven years. She then awoke three years prior to the game's events, traveled back to Rubicon 3, and joined RaD intent on taking it over to serve Overseer's purposes. There's no mention of suspended animation tech of any kind in the game, but the pre-release story trailer showed 621 (who has Gen 4 augments and, as explained above, would have received them pre-Fires of Ibis) being revived from a state that looked like suspended animation to begin working for the adult Walter.