This is a legacy article; its contents no longer apply to the current iteration of the Frencoverse.
PTFS In Chaos (properly entitled Error: Leader.exe Not Found) is the first major Alternative Canon story of the Frencoverse. It depicts the events of the civil war in the People's Technocratic Federation of Singapore, a client state of the Syncretic Combine, from its beginning to the conclusion of the Battle of Kuala Lumpur, along with the concurrent Mecharussian invasion and interventions by other nations.
The link to the story can be found here.
Plot summary
PTFS In Chaos opens with a three-way battle between Harmonist, Stratocratic and PROMEK forces over a huge dark energy reactor near Jakarta. After a heated battle, the Stratocrats seize the power station, but accidentally trigger its self-destruct function; the resultant destabilisation of the core creates fluctuations that resonate throughout the universe, weakening the otherwise-impermeable defensive systems guarding it from the outside.
In Mechanocratic Russia, OTAN detects these resonations, and sends a robot disguised as an osprey through a portal to investigate. After communicating with pro-Russian forces stationed in Yogyakarta, the Supreme Leader discovers that they are in control of a laboratory on nearby Mount Merapi. Intending to conquer the country and steal its technological wealth for his own, he offers the pro-Russians assistance. This assistance comes in the form of the Special Purpose Guard Brigade Alfa Group, Colonel Victor Golovkin leading the strike team into Yogyakarta.
When Golovkin and his troopers arrive, they find the city silent. After trying to communicate to PROMEK forces via their radio, they learn that the city is under aerial attack by Harmonist forces; the Merapi laboratory is one of the only surviving PROMEK strongholds in the area. Escorted to the base by PROMEK troops, Golovkin encounters Tengger Deming, and are led to their destination inside the laboratory. Upon reaching it, they begin to evacuate specimens of Synkomese technology in a dropship.
Deming and several other Singaporeans fly the dropship and the Alfas out of the laboratory, and make it to the portal back to the Home Dimension despite being chased by several enemy gunships. However, just as they are about to make it through, the dropship is struck by a missile barrage and careens through the portal, crash-landing on Moscow's Red Square. Following an altercation between Golovkin and a belligerent Civil Pacification sheriff who believes that the Singaporeans are illegal immigrants, they load their bounty aboard a train destined for Sunikagrad. From the camera installed into the group's carriage, OTAN listens in to a conversation Golovkin and Deming have regarding the situation in Singapore, which has descended into complete chaos.
On landing in Sunikagrad, they are greeted by Grand Curator Prokhor Stahlrim; the Alfas depart to take the tech to the Solstheimmetall Research Bureau for analysis, while Stahlrim offers the Singaporeans accommodation in his estate. As they arrive, however, the Ka-91 Gus dropship aboard which they travel is instructed to take a sudden detour to the National People's Senate on OTAN's instruction. When they arrive, the Leader makes a speech announcing the Mecharussians' intention to invade Singapore, the true intention of conquest masked under the pretext of suppressing National Socialist influence. The landing site for the invasion force is marked as Banyuwangi, under the control of the Antic Order; the first wave, codenamed 'Iskra', consists of a platoon of Spetsnaz troopers under the personal command of General Elena Trotskaya, supported by Black Coats and the Third Aerofleet under the command of General Pyotr Shuvalov.
Despite several close calls, the Spetsnaz succeed in penetrating the city and bringing down its power grid, allowing the Aerofleet to attack, but Trotskaya and Vympel Group disappear, having been teleported away from the city as a result of a devious trick concocted by the Antic Order's leader, a Singaporean adopting the nom-de-guerre 'Hermann Fegelein'. The subsequent battle of Banyuwangi is fought and won in a matter of hours by the Mecharussian troops, and Shuvalov enters the city unopposed.
Trotskaya and the Spetsnaz team survive Fegelein's ambush, but learn that they have been transported straight to the city of Kuala Lumpur, administrated by Overwatch, yet another faction in the ongoing civil war. They lure a patrol into an alleyway and steal their weapons, but alert several others who promptly converge upon their location - most of the Overwatch troopers are killed in a firefight. Trotskaya orders the troopers to disperse until the heat dies down while she locates a transport; mere minutes after leaving the building where she has been hiding, however, she is confronted by a large mob of soldiers and militia responding to the earlier shootout. Obtaining a grenade launcher-fitted MP7 submachine gun, Trotskaya lures a group into a back alley to try and take them all out at once, but quickly discovers that even when she bottlenecks them, she will be overwhelmed.
Before she can be apprehended, however, a barrage of parasitic shells lands in the middle of the square, unleashing a swarm of head-crabs onto the attackers: PROMEK infiltrators in the city have learned of Trotskaya's arrival and have acted to protect her. The subsequent chaos caused by the head-crabs buys Trotskaya time to race to the high ground, parkouring her way up to the roof. Trotskaya encounters a synth-gunship, and opts to hijack the machine and ride it out of the city. When she lands on the gunship, however, it is disintegrated by a warp cannon blast from a nearby Strider synth - Trotskaya unceremoniously lands on the mechwalker. Realising that it is under PROMEK control, she opts instead to ride the walker out, battling a large number of enemy soldiers, hovertanks and helicopter gunships with the help of a MULTIBLAST swarm-rocket launcher.
They make it a great distance and take down thousands of soldiers, but the battle takes its toll on the Strider and it dies after taking heavy fire from the gunships. As Trotskaya is surrounded and about to be swarmed by vast numbers of enemy soldiers, another parasitic shell, this one loaded with weapons and ammunition (courtesy of PROMEK), lands in the middle of her. She takes a pulse-HMG and thousands of rounds of ammunition and returns fire, but after being pressed into cover by overwhelming fire, she realises that she has no other recourse than to activate her TITAN stim-injectors. Driven into a focused berserker state by the stims and armed to the teeth, Trotskaya proceeds to shoot her way through the Overwatch forces to great effect.
Meanwhile, Shuvalov learns that Trotskaya has vanished from one of the Spetsnaz commanders who remained in Banyuwangi. Rightly afraid that the Supreme Leader will kill him should he learn that she is missing in action, Shuvalov orders his troops to search the stadium, her last known location, to no avail. They do, however, uncover a surviving Antic Order soldier, who - after Shuvalov beats him to within an inch of his life - points to an internet livestream depicting Trotskaya in action. Unbeknownst to anyone, OTAN has already learned of Trotskaya's disappearance, and has dispatched a flight of prototype drones to recover her.
The General has by this stage slaughtered thousands; as a last resort to stop her, the Overwatch AI deploys a twenty-strong Mabuhay squadron - extraordinarily sophisticated livingmetal hypersoldiers. While Trotskaya continues to battle in Kuala Lumpur's main square, the hypersoldiers surprise her from the sewers and bait her into close combat, disarming her in the process. She discovers that, despite her best attempts to stop them, her 6Kh30 gauntlet blades are not enough to subdue them; worse still, her TITAN stims are about to wear off, granting the hypersoldiers a window to kill her.
Trotskaya narrowly escapes death, however, when OTAN's drones and a PROMEK strike team arrive at the last minute to rescue her, forcing the Mabuhay soldiers into retreat. The team, carrying medical equipment, manage to restore Trotskaya from her induced stasis to assist in coping with the overdose. The surviving Spetsnaz soldiers, in the meantime, are located by a group of ASh-P4 androids deployed by OTAN to evacuate everyone, and link up with advancing PROMEK troops to take over a hospital for use as a relief point.
It is at this point that the Mecharussian narrative ends, just as the battle between PROMEK and Kuala Lumpur jumps into full swing.
