The Mech Touch

It was surprising how a single charitable act completely changed Hopecrest Mech Academy and Centire Hill.

Ever since the Unicum Group lost a colony ship to an attack, its colonists suffered continual setbacks.

From trying to build a settlement with severe shortages in everything to going deeper into debt, the settlement of Centire Hill suffered under a cloud of depression.

Its citizens had to work harder than ever and often had to go on double shifts in order to get more work done with less.

Fresh food became scarce as the rushed and imperfect terraforming of Maylard II caused its climate to dump snow onto the region at random times.

A lot of crops couldn't survive the cold, so the settlers of Centire Hill were forced to build incubator rooms that put an even greater strain on the Unicum Group's limited amount of funding and construction supplies.

Fortunately, the colonists stocked up on an excess amount of nutrient packs since they were so cheap to acquire.

Still, eating them day in and day out became so monotonous that the meals no longer provided them with pleasure and satisfaction.

Amidst all of the shortages and sacrifices, the citizens of Centire Hill suffered even more depression when constant comparisons were made between their settlement and that of the others.

Though the L9 Alliance was nominally united, there was also an element of competition between its nine groups.

Though the other groups had been willing to donate their cast-offs to the Unicum Group in order to keep their ailing brother alive, they had not offered any further help.

Colony building was expensive! Not only were the other groups already mired in debt themselves, they also refused to sacrifice their own development in order to benefit another party!

Every group in the L9 Alliance secretly wanted to get ahead of the others and become the principal leader of Maylard II. There were too many advantages to becoming the largest, strongest and wealthiest party in an alliance.

Ever since the L9 Alliance settled down on Maylard II, a race had begun where the different groups competed to become primus inter pares!

In the ranking of the different groups, the Unicum Group unquestionably ranked at the bottom in pretty much every aspect!

This fact constantly weighed down the shoulders of the citizens of Centire Hill, compounding their depression and reducing their productivity even further.

However, much of that changed once the Larkinson Veteran Foundation made its generous donation.

No one knew why these rich and powerful Larkinsons chose to favor their colony settlement, but they did not look a gift horse in the mouth.

The mech cadets who attended Hopecrest were the first to break from their depression.

The brand-new War Squires were not only better than their awful second-hand training mechs, the amount they received from their benefactors were more than enough to give every mech cadet sufficient practice time!

No longer did the mech cadets have to wait their turn until they got an opportunity to pilot a rust bucket that was already in the process of falling apart.

The new and gleaming War Squires were not only at the beginning of their lengthy life cycles, but were also tough, resilient and easy to maintain.

The mech technicians in charge of servicing and repairing the War Squires found that it was not as costly and time-consuming to make sure they kept running.

The exterior armor plating that was usually the first to get dinged over the course of more intensive training sessions turned out to be easy to pull out and hammer back into shape.

The academy could even make its own replacement armor out of spare metals and attach it in place.

Of course, the LMC did not condone this behavior and would not provide any guarantees or assurances to any products that went off-spec.

All of this ultimately meant that the mech cadets could pilot their assigned War Squires on a regular basis!

Mickey Lankos and his other fellow cadets became completely reinvigorated as they poured their all into their studies.

This was because the mech instructors quickly noticed how much they desired to pilot the War Squires.

"Don't slack off and fall behind!" A teacher warned his class. "Physics is the foundation of reality. Learning how mass interacts with gravity at standstill and on the move may be difficult and boring to you mech jockeys, but understanding the formulas and numbers will save your life one day!"

The mech cadets sitting behind their desks still looked distracted.

"If you fail your next exam, your practice sessions with the War Squire will be cut in half."

What?!

"On the other hand, if you score high enough to rank in the top 3, then you will receive an extra hour of practice a week. Now pay attention!"

The mech instructors at Hopecrest learned how to leverage the War Squires to their advantage. By setting up numerous incentives and punishment around the use of their new training mechs, they comprehensively motivated the mech cadets into concentrating much harder on their studies!

The average performance of the mech cadets shot up by as much as twenty percent after a single semester!

The cloud of depression that hung over the entire mech academy disappeared as almost every mech cadet studied and practiced as hard as possible to maintain their access to the precious War Squires.

As the mech cadets began to enjoy their lives again, the rest of Centire Hill also became a little brighter.

Life was still hard for most of the colonists, but the joy and positivity spread by the mech cadets made everyone else's lives a little brighter.

There was hope for the future.

Mickey Lankos was one of the many mech cadets who studied earnestly in order to enjoy more time with War Squire #47.

Unfortunately, he was not that particularly intellectually gifted. He struggled to keep up during his math, physics and other theoretical classes.

There were usually ways to remedy this shortcoming, but as a member of a poor family of first-generation colonists, there was no chance that Mickey could solve his shortcomings through augmentation.

The best he could do was remain in the middle of the rankings of most of his classes.

Where he truly shone was when he had the opportunity to perform during live practice sessions and the rare but precious simulation training sessions with the new Mental Simulation Training System.

From the moment Mickey entered the cockpit of his assigned machine, he could already feel Rabarber welcoming him back.

Though Mickey had to share Rabarber with seven more mech cadets spread across different years, he had the illusion that the training mech liked him the most.

"Heya, pal. I missed you too." Mickey said as he activated the machine.

At his age, Mickey still had to learn the fundamental skills of piloting a mech. The difference from before was that his improvement rate skyrocketed when he started to train with the War Squire!

The training mech's ability to adjust its proportions to match that of their mech cadets was a huge help to someone like him. Although it was only useful during the early stages of their academy studies, this function actually saved them a lot of time.

Being able to skip most of the awkwardness in learning how to run, move and fight with a mech frame that did not match their actual bodies allowed them to spend more time on learning the more essential skills to mech piloting!

Of course, skipping this learning process also made it harder for the mech cadets to adapt to mechs with diverging shapes later on, but as long as they built up a solid foundation of piloting skills, they should easily be able to overcome this hurdle!

All in all, the mech cadets had many reasons to throw themselves into their training.

The War Squires were much more enjoyable to interface with due to their nature as living mechs..

The mechs were inherently more powerful and capable than any other training mech on Maylard II.

The mech cadets became addicted to growing stronger as their progress all accelerated by noticeable margins.

A positive feedback loop took shape as the positive results motivated the mech cadets into training harder, which subsequently caused them to attain higher scores!

Out of all of the mech cadets, few had improved as quickly or as drastically as Mickey Lankos!

While pretty much every mech cadet at Hopecrest achieved better results, Mickey practically turned into a demon when he piloted the training mech.

For example, during one training session, two War Squires tried to spar against each other with non-lethal stick weapons that looked fairly stiff but automatically softened when striking a mech.

The so-called softsticks served as adequate substitutes for mech swords as they still maintained their rigidity when striking against each other.

This made them the favorite weapons for any practice sessions involving swordsmanship and melee combat.

Thunk! Thunk! Thunk!

Dull striking sounds echoed throughout the training field as two different softsticks collided against each other.

War Squire #47 cautiously pressed forward and maintained an offensive rhythm against War Squire Squire #76.

Trey Macha, the cadet in control of Nolan, which was the colloquial name of War Squire #76, tried his best to regain the initiative, but his performance could not keep up against that of his opponent!

"Damnit, Mickey! You're embarrassing me! I've already decided to specialize in swordsmanship. How can I fall behind a cadet that specializes in marksmanship?"

Mickey grinned inside the cockpit of his trusted Rabarber.

"That's because my piloting skills and my control over my War Squire are already far ahead of yours!"

Under Mickey's smooth and deliberate control, his War Squire rotated its frame and put more force into its next horizontal strike.

Thunk!

Rabarber's softstick happened to batter Nolan's own practice weapon aside at a tricky timing!

As Nolan tried to recover as fast as possible, Rabarder moved even faster!

The circular end of the softstick pressed square against the exposed chest of Nolan.

An alarm sounded that immediately prompted both mech cadets to retreat by reflex.

"The match is over. Cadet Mickey has earned another point. With 28 points, he has reached the top of the ranking!"

It was not easy for Mickey to earn this ranking. The mech cadets had all become a lot more competitive ever since they started to train with the War Squires.

However, none of his classmates managed to sync up with their War Squires as well as Mickey.

Ever since his first session with the MSTS where he was able to pilot a simplified version of the Transcendent Punisher, Mickey deeply wanted to repeat this experience!

However, the MSTS only presented this scenario to the mech cadets only once. Every subsequent simulation session involved battle scenarios that were much more modest in scale.

After all, it took a large amount of effort and resources to simulate battles of such an immense scale. There was no need for mech cadets to fight on massive simulated battlefields all the time when they still needed to work on their individual battle skills.

Even so, the MSTS offered rewards and incentives to those that studied harder and obtained better results than anyone else, so Mickey fully invested himself in mastering the War Squire.

"How do you do it, Mickey?" Trey Macha asked as the mech cadets finally ended their practice sessions and changed out of their piloting suits. "How are you able to get so in tune with your Rabarber? My genetic aptitude is better than yours!"

It was a painful fact that Mickey's genetic aptitude was only C-, which was acceptable but not particularly noteworthy.

Mickey no longer felt bothered by his disappointing aptitude.

"Genetic aptitude isn't everything, Trey. The War Squire is easy enough for me to pilot that I can focus on practicing my fundamentals. I spent more time on that while you were getting ahead of yourself by playing with your softstick. If you can't maintain enough control over your training mech, it's too easy for me to break your balance."

Although his words sounded simple, Trey knew that Mickey's control over the War Squire had already reached an impressive level!