Chapter 11 - Running and Gunning

"BEGIN!" a female voice said to both Gray and Geoff. Immediately both Gray and Geoff aimed their laser rifles at each other and opened fire.

"Suck laser butthead!" said Gray menacingly.

"What are you? Twelve?" said Geoff expressionlessly.

"Heck yeah! Twelve inches!" said Gray with a huge grin on his face. He was truly enjoying this!

"The 'mm' on the ruler is millimeters, not inches."

Both Gray and Geoff exchanged shots, the heat could be seen radiating off of their laser rifles. Initially they were expecting to be running around, dodging, and taking pot shots at each other, but this was their first time and they could barely walk and shoot at the same time. Instead, they both opted to stand in place and fire at each other. Their aim was so bad that Major Valen would probably cry if he saw this.

Finally, both rifles stopped firing after the same time as both of them looked at their own guns curiously.

"What gives? I was getting ready to make my move!" said Gray. He noticed a little indicator blinking on his HUD that was blinking and saying 'OVERHEAT' in red glowing letters. The same was seen on Geoff's HUD as well.

"All part of my plan" said Geoff plainly.

"Plan my ass! You were just firing like I was!"

Finally both mech's rifles finished cooling at the same time and could be fired again, they noticed that the HUD would display a temperature gauge for their weapons so one could consider it a learning process for them.

Gray and Geoff eventually started to get the hang of the rifles and were able to hit each other's mechs. The laser rifle is extremely accurate so once they were able to coordinate the mech better with their thoughts and imagined actions, it became much easier to use the mech.

For twenty minutes or so both Gray and Geoff continued to dance around and take shots at each other, neither of them were accurate enough to score any critical damage as a laser rifle required you to hit the same area multiple times before punching through the mech's armor.

"Can't I adjust the power on this thing?" said Gray as he started fiddling with the weapon settings on his HUD. He discovered that he could adjust it and immediately cranked up the power as far as the slider would go. A bright yellow warning symbol flashed with a message: "WARNING: Exceeding maximum power can lead to a critical damage to weapon"

"Eh, no guts no glory!" Gray confirmed the override and saw the temperature gauge rise on the laser rifle before even firing it. "This might've been a bad idea, better make the most of it!"

Gray had stopped firing for a moment while adjusting his laser rifle and had made his way to some cover while pretending that his rifle overheated again. Geoff thought that Gray probably overheated his laser rifle again so he chased after Gray.

Gray was hoping for this as he knelt next to the wall hiding himself waiting for Geoff to come charging over, Gray wasn't disappointed as Geoff did indeed chase him. Realizing his mistake Geoff's first instinct was to use his own rifle to block and brace himself. Gray smiled victoriously as he held steady and pulled the trigger. A bright almost-golden light shot out of the rifle, it burst through Geoff's rifle and into his simulated cockpit in the torso of his mech.

Red emergency lights flashed on Gray's HUD as his laser rifle turned to slag in his Mech's hand after holding the trigger too long. His mech's hand became damage from the heat as some of the joints in the hand melted and seized up.

"Simulation over, winner Gray" said the same female voice from the start of the match.

"Yeah! How'd you like 'dem apples!" said Gray victoriously

Geoff glumly replied "Yeah yeah, I admit you tricked me."

Gray and Geoff both exited the simulator pods at the same time and Major Valen walked up to both of them.

"Private Gray! Private Geoff! That was the most sorry duel I've ever witnessed, you two were strutting around like peacocks while being unable to shoot the broadside of a barn and wasting your energy goofing off like grade schoolers!"

"Sir, it was our first time ever in a mech even though it was just a simulation..." Gray countered to Major Valen.

"... a simulation inside a game... I'm never going to get used to thinking about it like that." Gray thought to himself as he didn't want to incur the wrath of this hard ass.

"Indeed it is your first time! That is why you normally go through a basic course introducing you to controlling mechs instead of just giving them to you! Those sorry sacks that left are probably finding out right about now that controlling them properly isn't as easy as they thought and will make their way back here crying for Big Daddy Valen to take them back in because they walked like a toddler wearing high heels!"

Gray was impressed that Major Valen could keep up his boisterous voice and say all of that without taking a single breath.

"Sorry sir, then where can we get a course?" said Geoff.

"You two sad sacks missed the start of it already when you went to go off on your own, but the second part will be in one hour. Take this material to brush up on it and I expect to see you two in the classroom at the Pilot's barracks in one hour!"

Major Valen tossed them each a data chip containing the raw content of the first class. Luckily, since it was just the first class most of the content was just familiarizing with each other and going over the schedule for future classes and training.

__________

Gray and Geoff followed instructions and made their way to the classroom at the designated time, nine other classmates were at the desks when Gray and Geoff entered. All but one of the players that had left right away were in the classroom and Gray wondered where the last one was.

Gray got acquainted with everyone else while waiting for the Major to start his course. Only 3 others seemed noteworthy to Gray as the rest were not interested in making friends as they had came with a premade group from other games.

The three others were Caleb Waldowski, Yurika Winchester, and Stacia Oldland.

Caleb came across as a bit of a dork, but he seemed to really know his stuff. Fairly short for his age, his hair was long and messy while his face could be said to be above average but Gray really couldn't tell as he couldn't judge male faces... nor was he interested in doing so...

Yurika was very interesting to Gray. She reminded him those old vocaloids from the early 21st century as she had long teal hair that she liked to keep in twin ponytails, spoke very energetically, smiled a lot, and her body proportions were a little too perfect. She probably spent a lot of time in the changing room getting it just right.

Stacia stood out to Gray because she seemed the most normal. She would also be fun to tease Gray mused to himself, but she was very cute and seemed to keep her avatar the same as herself. She was fairly short with a cute face, her hair was short and light brown as she had opted to keep it natural looking for the game. Her body proportions were also kept the same as her natural self so when she sat next to Yurika it felt like Stacia was real and Yurika was a character from a novel or something similar.

Major Valen burst in to the classroom exactly when the class was designated to start and walked up to the podium.

"Glad we are all here this time!" Major Valen said while looking at Gray and Geoff, causing both of them to sink slightly in their chairs to try and hide.

"Now, we are going to assign you to a trainer and they will instruct you in the simulator about how to interface with a mech. You can't just stick the neural link helmet on and expect it to work perfectly or even the way you want it too."

"Sir, why not just stick us in our game mechs?" said one of the other players Gray wasn't able to get to know.

"Those mechs are worth more than your puny lives and take much longer to replace than you greenhorns. We do not want them getting damaged!"

"But sir, this is only a game, just respawn the mechs if they get damaged..." said another student that seemed to be annoyed with the lack of freedom.

Major Valen was about to yell at him then calmed down and stated "Yes, this is only a game, but as a true simulation, repairs are not handled by the system and instead by technicians and 3D printers."

The other players nodded in agreement as they understood that this game was aimed to achieve extreme realism.

Major Valen looked down solemnly for a second before looking back up and getting in to the lesson. Gray swore he heard the Major say to himself "...just a game to you all"