My Mecha Academy

Orientation and all that

Wilhelm was about to file out with the others, silently thankful that the little feud between Noel and Yuliana had died down before the Headmaster decided to use the failsafe. That would have been messy...

And speak of the devil, as Will finds himself awkwardly responding to the high-five. "Uh, you're welcome, Miss Yuliana. I'm Ensign Wilhelm Fleming of the Terran Defense Army, but you can call me "Will." ...Yeah, I'm half-German."

He coughed awkwardly after admitting that.

"Nice, repping the hometown." Yuliana smiled. "I'm from Garden III, 35 years gone now in the war." She figured Wilhelm knew about shit like relativistic travel, she didn't need to explain that. Probably. "No defense force for me, but I think I've got a militia certificate myself. We didn't have it that formally."

"Guess it's to the boxing ring if you have problems with someone" Leo commented "Some old ways are fun"

He just smiled at Noel as he went to check his roommate.

Esto será interesante

NOEL

"I guess that is how it will work." Noel responds to Leo, smiling a bit. She also goes to check if who her roommate is. "If it is that one lady, I will swear to every god..."

SAYA

Trailing behind everyone was a petite young lady holding her kimono up. "Alright, Saya. Introduce yourself to whoever your roommate is." Saya gathered around the others to find her roommate.

"35... How far out is that, because that must be a few light years at least?"

Yeah, Yuliana has arguably piqued Will's curiousity now. Suddenly her cataloguing of the others' mechs made a little bit of sense.

Danny shot a quick finger gun at Yuliana, jogging up to the rest of the group.

"Sup guys? I'm Danny."

"Hi Danny." Joshua said in voice mimicking the greeting at an AA meeting. More naturally he added with a wave of his arm at the assembled group, "This is everyone."

Everyone now included a few more faces than had been in the intro meeting when he had slid in. Was that girl wearing a kimono? Joshua did a double-take but decided against making an issue of it. Feeling better about being late now that he had company, Joshua set about looking for his roomate according to the pamphlet they'd been given before arriving. Having already forgotten everyone's names, he wentwith the quickest method of finding his compatriot for the year.

"Yo, is there a Leo up in here?" He said loudly.

"Think I got the math wrong on that actually..." Yuliana pulled out her phone to do the math on this. "Okay, I left when I was 10... I'm 25 now... or 45." She frowned. "Call it 20 lightyears away, we were on the frontier at the time." She jerked her head up at Danny. "Sup man. I was just about to say, my Vlad's sort of a clearcutter colonial development rig left over from Garden III. They still make his like, cleaning up and rebuilding what we can out there. What's Earth like anyway? Wonder if it's what I've been told it's like."

Leo just checked his own pamphlet, noting the name of his roommate.

Of course, when someone was calling a Leo, he had to respond to the glasses wearing blond calling for him.

"I am Leo" he said, simply "Joshua, right? Nice to meet you" He offered a handshake.

Well, he seemed like a decent guy, and he could use the peace.

Danny just kinda shrugs.

"It's home. While it's nowhere near perfect, it's not really the hellscape the old media made it out to be. At least, not in the ways everyone thought it would be after an alien attack."

"Yep, that's me." Joshua accepted Leo's hand, taking it in with a firm shake. "Joshua Lian. La Palma, California. Piloting the Dolphin. Not the fanciest hunk of metal out there, but it helped Mom win the war."

"Does anyone else find it funny that these particular students...all end up in 1-Alpha?" Langsten asked, as he casually sifted through the files Quarum had been looking through earlier, his sensors looking up and glancing at Quarum in a way that only a robot could accusingly.

"Well, if you knew why, you'd understand. But these students are-"

"Confidential, I know." He said with a sigh. "But perhaps it would help us understand why these particular group are getting special treatments? Is it their Mecha? History? Lineage?"

"Something more than that." Quarum said with a sigh, as he rapped the back of his head with his knuckle. "Something telling me to put a little more time into this group in particular."

"The group with the genetically engineered student, the psychopath, the Logger amidst others?" He asked, sarcastically.

"Have I ever steered any of you wrong?" Quarum chuckled. "Just watch. When it comes time, I bet they'll show us all what they're capable of."

"I suppose we'll see in the simulations then, hm?" Langsten said with a shrug. "I suggest you keep an eye on them Quarum. Let them rest tonight before you decide to Martyr-ize them. They are still kids with a few things to experience before you force them into being child soldiers." He turned his back and walked out.

Quarum remained silent then sighed. He rubbed the gloved arm and looked out onto the grounds of Europa.

He hoped his instincts were right...

...

High, high in the stars, in the inky blackness of space, a long spaceship hovered amidst the floating rings of a planet. A ship that was as much organic as it was machine.

Inside this monstosity, several hideous monsters wandered around. Skin as dark as a frogs, eyes as black as the night itself and tendrils that hung from the bottom half of their face. They didn't speak, they didn't make noise, but their three fingered hands hovered over glowing purple orbs in front of them.

"Grk." Grunted one to another, turning his attention to one of the other three in the room. "Grk Alak Brk."

"Brk." Grunted the middle one, notably larger. "Brk Agaba Sr." He gestured, as the orb he was currently holding the purple orb in front of him...and he pressed a talon to the middle.

The massive screen in the middle of the room was replaced with the schematic for Europa. And then...suddenly, scattered amidst the campus...bright green orbs. Dozens of them.

The chuckling sounded like gasps of the dead...

Chris

In the midst of the students getting up and moving, Chris did not hear any response if there was one to his query to Sumire. He decided to just go ahead and move over to the post where the list of dorm mates was located. He pondered, there were a lot of really interesting questions and he was looking forward to making hopefully a new friend.

As he moved up to the post, he overheard some of the other students talking, one saying he was from California...

This resulted in Chris smiling and taking a higher pace as he jogged over near Leo and Joshua, "Wow, neat! A fellow Californian! What region?" He was admittedly hoping that he could find a familiar face outside of Maylee here.

"And I'm...I'm Chris Adenfield, from Silicon Valley..."

"Yeah, it's not that bad. I've been on Earth a couple times between assignments, and I'd say it's recovered well."

"...But seriously, relativistic travel sounds like a pain."

"I didn't really leave any people behind, we all fled at least. Mostly just gets me weird glances when I show my ID." Yuliana said back to Will with a laugh. "Yo, you want to room together? I like you." She turned around to the doors with her bag. "I uh..." Yuliana's eyes narrowed and squinted out the windows at what she could swear were a mech's funnels or something. "Huh. Weird. Anyway. Roommates?"

(Will thinks it over for a second.)

"Yeah, sure. I mean, what's the worst that could happen?"

(...Now, if he realised that he might have set himself up for a joke...)

"Leonardo Del Cid, from Barcelona" Leo introduced himself "I pilot the Meteoro Azul, might be a bit too much for me sometimes, but working on it" He chuckled a bit, but it was obvious it didn't bother him too much.

"This is gonna be fun"

Danny stops for a second; er, not exactly stops. While his body keeps moving, his mind stops dead in his tracks when he hears Yuliana skip a beat- and possibly sees a bit of a mech in his periphery, through a window.

Then his body stops.

"Huh, that's odd. Thought I saw something for a second."

"I was gonna say," Yuliana said, heading for the doors, "all these dumbahit edgelord children probably all have their pet superweapons out and ready to throw down over like, the need to protect some chick that looks like their dead sister or something right?"

Yuliana opened the doors and as far as she was concerned she got proven right. Without saying much more she fished out her phone and started up the remote control app to get Vlad driven over to her. A staticky dashcam display showed her way out onto the campus, and she mashed a thumb on the GAS button to get it peeling out and headed to her. "Can't wait to see whatever loser is inside one of those things."

Quinn – Orientation

“Anyone who could be bothered to room with some mangy bastard volunteer yerself. I ain't offerin',” rang out a monotone of a drawl as Quinn practically peeled off of his seat and stalked over to the doors. “I ain't into all that mushy s*** or whatever, so don't expect me to be smooth sailin'. I don't bother.”

Sniffing as he wiped his nose with his sleeve (he did look rather sick with cold for whatever reason), he practically shoved past the others on his way to the doors.

“Oh yeah, an' scratch the dead sister crap and yer pretty much on the nose,” he smirked, leaning back to face them as he lazily saluted Yuliana. “In this for kicks. Plain an' simple. If you doubt that for whatever #$&%ing reason then just poke your head in the garage. Widow ain't no kiddie toy.”

He frowned, momentarily pausing in his steps, before shaking it off and clearing his throat.

“'Course, ah... bit of a problem sometimes, uh... kinda screw up on the parking. Regular, like. Sue me. Seriously. Do that. It'd be #$&%ing funny.”

After a brief silence, he tilted his head back a fraction in faux-contemplation.

“Say uh... any of you paint yer own mechs? No... uh, particular reason. Just askin'.”

Will Fleming - Orientation

"Uhhhh, riiiight." Will was about to answer Yuliana (he was tempted to start calling her "Yulie," for some odd reason), but then Quinn had to interrupt the bloody conversation.

"Guess who's gonna be on the watch list," he whispered discreetly to Yuliana.

Chris

For his part, Chris was just left standing there somewhat awkwardly as Yuliana went on some weird sort of tear about people being "edgelords" and "protecting chicks who look like their dead sisters". He had utterly no idea what she was going on about, but it certainly did not come across as a cooperative spirit.

Walking up to the board, Chris gave it a look.

"I don't think any of us here are losers, and we're all here to protect humanity one way or another. So I don't really know what an edgelord is, but I doubt many of the people here are one."

Of course, Chris then heard Quinn go on about his mech, paintjobs and implicitly threatening to mess them up just for kicks - Chris was left wondering how one person can be that egotistic.

"...the roommates situation does seem voluntary, based on people seeking out their match. And I hope most of us can find a friend to room with."

Edited by NickTheSwing on Dec 24th 2018 at 11:27:09 AM

Sev shrugged, "I am taking Diana as Roommate. No one can stop me."

Diana shrugged, "Probably for the best, he and I get along the easiest, and I didn't see any scratched Mechs where I parked."

Sev and Diana walked off, presumably to find their room.

"So, did you have any plan for coming to Europa?" Leo asked Joshua "I feel like I haven't thought anything long term for coming here"

As a matter of fact, he considered being anything but to make these machines. In the end, being a pilot feels fairly natural for him. And maybe he could actually protect people now.

"OC!" Joshua shouted at Chris as the other pilot turned his attention to the already squabbling other students.

With that conversation ended, Joshua turned his attention back to his roomate.

"Keeping my options open." he explained to Leo. "There are tons of jobs coming out right now that could used a trained mecha pilot. Well, a trained, licensed pilot. Figure I can put my old 'bot to good use and snag a higher paycheck. Also, you know, save the universe from xenos and all that jazz. But what are the odds of that happening twice in a lifetime, right?"

Somebody who could barely speak comprehensible English mentioned something about a robot with a paint job, but Joshua shrugged it off for now.