The tournament was off to an incredible start with blades slashing and guns blazing. There wasn't a dull moment in the competition or an empty seat in the crowd. This was turning into quite a spectacle and I was hoping that I wasn't about to embarrass myself in front of everyone. Many fierce competitors had shown up. Some of them were fearless mercenaries. Others had been stars of arenas far and wide. A few more were mysterious ravens with shady pasts and unknown motives. To say the least everyone who showed up today was in for something big. My AC preparations were complete and I decided to relax and calm my nerves by watching a few battles before it was my turn to fight.

The first match featured a former champion from a big city arena. His name was AC Quick Draw. He piloted a lightweight quadruped type with left and right arm hand guns and a dual chain gun unit on his back. He was known for his excellent accuracy and quick aim. Nobody told him that the wild west died a long time ago, but he didn't seem to notice and I wasn't about to be the man who attempted to inform him. It was said that he probably fought more outside of his AC than in it and he possessed many qualities that made him a great choice to hire on the battlefield. His opponent was a newer raven that hadn't really proved himself on the battlefield yet. He had not taken part in any missions that were considered tough and participated only in a few low ranking arena events. The design of his AC, Mutilate, was an odd one. The legs were lightweight reverse joints, but the core and head were designed for heavyweight AC types. It featured dual four barrel bazooka arm types (stacked vertically) that could fire in either four or eight shot volleys, an expensive and powerful radar, and an orbit cannon. He could clearly dish out some damage, but had to be careful with his low ammo reserves. The strategy behind the setup was the ability to move fast, do damage, and be able to take a hit at the same time. We would all see how this worked out for him shortly.

The announcer soon cut in over the deafening speaker system. "Ladies and gentlemen, if you so wish to call yourselves as so, the next battle taking place will be between AC Quick Draw, he paused as the crowd let out there cheers, and AC Mutilate. I have a feeling that this one could be over quickly so stay seated and try not to blink. Ready………..FIGHT!"

AC Quick Draw started off the fight with a pair of well aimed handgun rounds that struck AC Mutilate in the chest. The next two rounds missed which surprised me as well as the rest of the crowd. At first I thought it was a fluke but the next several shots missed too. Mutilate was using the speed of his lightweight legs to evade everything fired at him, or maybe he was just getting lucky. Mutilate deployed an orbit cannon close to Quick Draw. Although it was scoring some hits it did very little to discourage Quick Draw from changing his strategy. Mutilate fired an eight round wall of bazooka rounds on the run and managed to connect only one to the leg of his opponent. He then fired another volley in this fashion and this time managed to score more hits to the arm, core, and same leg of his opponent. It didn't seem like He caused much damage, but I assumed that the structure of the leg couldn't be holding up to well. I was familiar with the bazooka arm type and knew that he could only fire about seven more volleys in that fashion until he would be relying solely on his orbit cannon. Quick Draw changed the pace of the fight by switching to his dual mounted chain guns. He let loose in quick streams of rounds and boosted around to lessen the frequency of being hit by the orbit cannons now filling the sky. Mutilate was not quite able to adjust to this change and missed his next three bursts of bazooka rounds. In a lucky pot shot, Mutilate scored eight direct hits with his bazooka arms. These rounds connected with Quick draws front two legs and his AC hit the ground hard and skidded almost 50 feet. Just as it seemed he was out of luck he released his remaining chain gun ammunition. The trail of deadly bullets started at the two tops of Mutilates Arms and walked themselves down perfectly to the bottoms. An explosion briefly covered AC Mutilate and when the smoke cleared it seemed that his arms had been all but destroyed. All that remained was the top portion of two bazookas. I doubted that they would even fire, but it may have been worth a shot. For a second both ACs paused and just faced each other. The crowd watched with confusion as neither AC had been announced no longer able to fight and it was clear that neither one was completely out of commission. Finally both ACs fired at the same time. When the dust settled Quick Draw was left standing and Mutilate was all but mutilated. A replay was brought up on the screen quickly and we could see that the bazooka rounds had skimmed both sides of AC Quick Draws head and that both handgun rounds connected directly to the front of AC Mutilates head. The announcer came back on. "Wow folks, what an amazing match! It seems that AC Quick Draw is victorious and will be moving up to the next battle later today. Please watch that replay again…man that fight was awesome!" The crowd let out another roar. We found out in an interview after the match that both pilots found themselves with only two rounds and had both made the decision to take steady aim for the head. A true Wild West shootout I guess. No wonder Quick Draw emerged victorious. I couldn't wait to see how the next battle would turn out.

I hardly had enough time to relieve myself and grab something to eat before the next match was on its way. With all the battles taking place today they would have to clean up from one fight and begin the next one at a rapid pace. I took a quick glance at both ACs and quickly realized who they were. Both were mercenaries that we had hired out for consorts on a few missions. They had both shown themselves in battle and although I had never worked with them directly, I would not want to be on the receiving end of either of their weapons. AC Rocket Man piloted a medium weight hover type that was loaded to the teeth with manually aimed death. He sported a single tube heavy right hand rocket launcher that held about 10 rounds, about triple the amount it would take to put an average AC out of the fight. In his left arm was a small three barrel rocket launcher designed for quick firing capability of one round at a time. On his shoulders he mounted a small triple shot small rocket launcher for a nice spread while moving quickly. To top it all off his right should carried another large HECTO rocket launcher that held 18 powerful rounds. He was an infantryman and heavy weapons specialist before becoming a pilot and he liked to rely on his own steady aim rather than a computer system to assist him in combat. His opponent would be AC Lock-on. I classified his type as a missile boat. He had a similar medium weight hover type to AC Rocket Man. He had powerful dual missile type arms that could fire two or four missiles on a single lock. Although gaining the lock would take time and the weapon arms had a terrible firing rate and only held eight missiles, just one or two of these deadly payloads were more than enough to send the best AC to the scrap yard. His back held increased capacity dual missile launchers to make up for the lack of ammo. The pilot preferred to concentrate mainly on maneuvering while letting his missiles lock on and do the damage without worrying about taking aim. Although the AC designs were so similar, their weapons systems and strategies made them complete opposites. It would be very interesting to see how this fight would end. No more than five seconds after I had inspected the ACs the announcer started the match.

AC Rocket Man started off by firing a rocket from both hands. AC Lock-on evaded the larger of the two but was glanced by the other. It was a close call this early in the match. Lock-on boosted quickly and tried to evade the rocket attacks long enough to gain a steady lock. Rocket man boosted in the same pattern and started firing his triple rockets in a rapid manner hoping to get a lucky hit. Most of the rockets missed or skimmed along the sides of Lock-on's armor and it wasn't until Lock-on stopped momentarily to gain some energy for his generator that the three rounds hit him square in the core. It was a good hit against a lightweight opponent, but the small rockets weren't enough to cripple Lock-on's performance. Due to the similarities between the two designs Rocket Man was also forced to stop to regain energy. Lock-on used this time to fire a quick spread of missiles from his back's dual missile launchers. Rocket Man was not able to dodge them all and took a two or three missiles to the core. It seemed like both ACs were still pretty even and it was too early in the fight to choose a victor just yet. The two ACs continued to battle it out in the same manner, rockets and missiles flying in every which direction, but few hitting their designated targets. Realizing that nothing was working and that his ammo reserves were depleting, Lock-on switched to his weapon arms and let loose four incredibly large missiles in an attempt to end the match in one shot. Rocket Man took this chance to switch to his Large HECTO rocket launcher. The first shot hit Lock-on dead on in the core. Rocket Man hoped this would be enough to end the match, but the missiles were still coming and his enemy started slowly boosting, almost limping, away from him. Rocket Man decided to let it all go to chance and hit is over booster, he fired both his left and right arm rockets and destroyed two of the incoming missiles. The other two scraped against his side and exploded extremely close just behind him. Considerable damage was done to the back of his core and legs, but the force of the explosion pushed him forward. He took aim once more and fired two more rockets that hit their target so hard that AC Lock-on slammed against the other side of the arena. Rocket Man had won the match and a medical team rushed in aid Lock-on. Before they made it, Lock-on emerged from his AC and it seemed that his injuries very minor. He had gotten very lucky. I now started to see why AC Demon Seed had warned me of the perils of the arena.

I waited outside of my AC for the call to suit up and go fight. Out of the corner of my eye I noticed a figure approaching me. It was a bombshell. It wasn't the kind that I had been witnessing being thrown around without mercy in the arena all day though. It was actually a very attractive woman to be more precise. She had dyed her hair green to match her eyes. Her tie-dye jumpsuit made her look like some kind of Hippie from days long ago, but she had somewhat of a more serious look about her. She was a little shorter than me and had some wonderful curves to compliment her small frame. It really wasn't the type of women that I expected to be hanging around such a sport full of blood and raging testosterone. But I welcomed it nonetheless. The first thing she said to me could not have shocked me more. "That AC looks like a piece of crap." Wow, no greetings or introductions from this woman. Just an insult at my AC…even if she was not too far from the truth. "So what did you do? Just throw together a few pieces you could afford, strap a grenade launcher on it and call it a day?" I informed her that I was, until recently, just a mechanic and that it was a side project of mine that I had been using since I became a Raven a few weeks ago. "She told me that I should build something else once I get the money." I told her that I had been thinking over designs in my head and that although it would be expensive, I had almost enough money saved up to do the trick. I didn't tell her that it was hard for me to throw all the money I had made working long hours as a mechanic into a brand new AC and I was hoping to hold on to this Junker for a while until I had no other choice but to build a new one from ground up. She said I should "part it out and build the AC of my dreams if I could afford it. All the money I've saved up and don't want to spend won't do me a whole lot of good when I'm dead in the dirt of some unknown battlefield. "Well, I said, if you would excuse me miss, I actually have to take this piece of crap to the next arena battle. Maybe we can see each other again soon?" She hit me with the shock factor one final time before walking off. "Sooner than you think, she said with a smile, I'll be your next opponent. Good luck. You'll need a lot of it!" I quickly checked the roster to try to catch her bluff. But it was no lie. She was the only women Raven competing today. It seemed that she fought with a type that featured only energy weapons. She was all about the environment and donated the majority of her winnings and time to charity work. She held a decent record in the arena, but had only been part of two or three AC missions that were little more than MTs disrupting the peace or assaulting small terrorist groups that would be lucky to have an AC half as good as mine. But still, her confidence worried me. Although the missions that I took part in were incredibly difficult, I really had just started my career could have been surviving on luck alone until now. Would this battle really end up in my favor?

As we entered the arena I finally got a good look at her AC. She called it AC Saw Grass. It was a lightweight quad AC painted leaf green with dual blade arms and a quad back laser cannon that could fire in pairs of two or four. To help with her energy consumption she equipped an extension that would quickly charge her energy supply. She definitely had the capability to do some heavy damage quickly. This would be one heck of a fight. Or so I thought. The announcer said fight and AC Saw Grass charged at me right away. I realized that she planned on using her blade arms and I knew that my AC would not win a blade war against hers. She was quicker and had a stronger blade, two to be exact. I would be cut to pieces so I boosted away from her. I didn't want to use my grenade launcher because that meant that I would have to kneel and would be an easy target. It was a good thing that I had equipped my machine gun for this battle because it gave me some sort of offense, even if it was weak and had little ammo. I sprayed a few quick bursts of machine gun at her and managed to put a few small dents in her armor, but to little effect. I continued spraying as I boosted away from her in a cat and mouse game that would surely end when I ran out of energy. She started firing two lasers at a time which I managed to dodge with some effort by zigzagging left and right quickly. It was working pretty well and I hadn't taken any direct hits, but she was gaining ground on me quickly. I noticed that she used her extension, but running her out of energy wasn't going to happen before my AP depleted to zero. She finally reached me and swung both of her arms at me quickly. I side stepped quickly with the blade just grazing my side and countered with a quick burst of about 15 machine gun rounds. I further damaged some of her ammo, but didn't destroy anything vital. I retreated while she turned around. I knelt down with my grenade launcher and fired my first round. It hit close and the shrapnel stuck in the core of AC Saw Grass. I lined up another shot as she charged me and realized that she was going to cut me in two pieces, or more, before I hit her with it. Right before I fired my grenade she halted and I got a message saying that I had won the battle. She immediately left the arena and I followed her out. Although I had technically won the right the crowd didn't look quite pleased and I wasn't sure why she would forfeit the battle with over half of her AP left, a decent amount of ammo, and no obvious signs of major damage. I opened up a communication link. "Hey, why are you forfeiting the battle? What the hell is going on?" After a few seconds of silence she answered me. "One of the projects that I was helping out was just attacked by a bunch of construction MTs. I figured that it would be best to go stop them while I still had some fight left in my AC. Sorry to have ended the fight so suddenly, but I have to go. There might be an AC there that wasn't spotted yet and since I'm not at 100% how about going along with me as a Consort just in case. I'll pay you 10,000 credits plus repair and ammunition" This sounded all right to me. It was the only match I had scheduled for the day anyway. I needed some more mission experience so I decided I would assist her. "I'll do it for a Kiss and 5,000 credits" I told her. She came back with "How about a smile and 9,000 credits." I laughed and said "No thanks 10,000 credits will do and we'll figure the rest out over lunch or coffee sometime. No time to argue with me either, we need to go stop those MTs." The mission area was close so we were just going to travel by AC and figure out what was going on.

We arrived on the scene shortly and found the whole place in chaos. I tried to talk to some of the MTs but they just continued to destroy everything. The majority of them had small solid blade arms to punch through material and the rest were little more than a Tracked crane with a small laser. There were about 10 of them all together. We decided to just take them out and investigate later. I boosted towards them and destroyed the first two with my machine gun. They weren't meant for combat and didn't take many rounds to knock out. I slashed through a third target with my blade and watched it crumble to the ground. AC Saw Grass had made quick work of half of them by firing her back mounted laser cannons in rapid succession. Two stood in front of us and we boosted towards them. At the same time I ripped through one with my blade and she cut one in about four nice pieces by slashing in a quick X pattern. It was all over in less than a minute and we looked around at the destruction. It would take some time and money to rebuild this place. But why would they attack a park? A strange frequency requested to speak to us and we both accepted it. "The Iron Fist will have its way. We will take control. This was just a test of our new equipment. When installed in MTs and ACs it controls the user to our bidding. Some sort of…mind control you could say. We can pilot any mech from anywhere and our little gift is untraceable. We can trigger it at the moment it best suits us. You cannot stop us. Good Bye." We boosted towards the mystery AC, but a large explosion went off in front of us. The place was rigged before we even got there. We managed to sustain little damage from the blast. This was too much. Was he serious? We didn't talk on the way back, but I know that our minds were racing. I made the decision then. I was going back to the base, building the all powerful AC of my dreams, and stopping this lousy terrorist group one way or another. Even if I had to die trying…