Chapter 2
It was my turn. Colen stepped up to the feet of my suit. dwarfed the shadow of my suit he opened the access panel installed into every students suit on the right foot. It always made me feel bad when he went through my suits systems. He had access to everything in my suit. Tactics, weapons, armor, personal log, cameras, and self destruct system. This was just a routine morning check. He looked through my weapons readouts to see if I had anything equipped outside of academy standards. We have to use terribly inaccurate guns, dumb missiles and one melee weapon. It wasn't always this way. Five years ago kids could use any available weapon during academy exercises, but a someone's suit was destroyed and so was the kid so we have to use less lethal means of combat now. It pretty much means shitty weapons that use none of our suits true ability.
Scott, get down here now!! Colen screamed from forty feet below me. Great. He had just looked in on me through the cockpit cameras and seen the absence of my uniform. Using the grappling leash on every cockpit door I repelled down the broadside of my suit.
Yes Mr. Colen? I asked in a sarcastic way. I didn't need to act suprised, I knew it was a matter of time before he checked my uniform. I didn't need to give him more respect than necessary.
Where is your uniform boy?! Colen barked in my face, giving it a second wash of the day.
Probably in the washing machine right now, I told him whipping my face off with my shirt. After that it became the same old thing. I knew how to tune it out by now. He went into his usual ranting and raving about how disrespectful I was to this establishment, how my clothing was a threat to the integrity of this academy, and how much I had a disregard for authority. Same old thing, I get this talk probably every week. He gave me an envelope with my punishment and moved onto the next suit.
Inside I closed the door and started up my systems. I took the envelope and ripped it open. Just as I had thought, for breaking schooled dress code I would get four hours in the hole. On the bottom of the envelope was a question. Why do you refuse to fall in line and become a good obeying student? Questions, they had plagued me through my entire life of piloting mobile suits. Why do I have the disorder? Why me, why now? I had seen no combat like the flashbacks showed me. I was almost as if there were two people inside my head fighting for power. One was myself, normal kid who just loves piloting and fighting mobile suits. The other is the deranged evil psychotic battle junkie that comes to me every night and tries to take me over the edge. Tries to win the struggle. He wants more than anything to take me over the edge and derive me of my sanity, of the humanity I have left. He wants to turn me into a machine. To steal the blood, the life from my veins and bring me down into his private hell. Well I am not going to let that happen. I am going to win. But how can I when my whole student life revolves around mobile suits.
Students you have two hours before you need to report to fight one of the day. Your suits will remain here and you are free to move about the school grounds, Colen said through the loudspeaker in his head. I brought my eyes to open and looked at the man through a screen. He was tall, lean and filled out with muscle. dark yellow hair filled out the top of his hair and cam down into a tiny rat tail. It had been my continuous ambition to give that thing a slight yank. His face was completely shaved and he wore the adult uniform of MSIR academy. A pistol clung to his his inside a holster.
I had two hours and I had already done too much thinking. I headed to the locker rooms. I was going to take another shower. A long long shower.