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Freelancer Barracks, Housing unit #187

Michigan smashed the alarm snooze button down as the time reached 0500. With a groan, he hauled himself out of bed and into the bathroom for a quick shower. A couple minutes later he hears a bang on the door. And an anonymous voice calls out, "Hey Mitch, are you ready for training yet?" Michigan instantly recognized the voice of Agent North Dakota, whom he just met yesterday.

Michigan, still not used to being called 'Mitch', yells back, "Yeah, just let me put this armor on." Ever since he enlisted in the army, he has never asked to wear armor or a helmet, so this preparation was new to him. Shortly after he left the councilor's office he was paged to go to the Armory. Once he got there, he was given his own Battle Rifle, for training, his own M6D Magnum, and his own suit of sapphire full body armor. He was told that the helmet was equipped with a Hi-Fi wireless radio, voice amplifier (with volume control), and a voice changer. His visor was equipped with night vision, thermal vision, and combat vision, apparently this turned his friendlies green, and the enemies red. The lab technician told him that function only when he got his AI.

On the body, the technician told him that the right arm piece had the controls displayed, and everything was controlled from that one spot when his AI was either offline, or working on something else. There was a gravity alteration module. And of course the standard HUD options, like vitals, and com channels. When the technician was done, he just rushed Michigan out the door, without explaining how to put any of the armor on.

After the shower, everything was still wet, so parts easily slid on, but he was still having trouble. He was struggling with his chest plate, when North bangs on the door again.

"Dude! You almost ready? We're going to be late!"

"Sorry North, I'm just having a little trouble with my chest plate! Can you come in and help? Door, command; Open" With that voice command, the door slides open with a swoosh and North, fully dressed in his purple battle armor walks in and grabs the chest plate and snaps it in place. Michigan just stares at him in amazement. "How-how-how…"

North looks at Michigan, annoyed with his incompetence, "Listen we don't have time, just hold still while… I … there. Now we can go"

Michigan picked up his helmet and holstered his side arm, and walked out the door saying, "Thanks North, you have to teach me how to do that… It's going to get really awkward when we have to go into war, and you're standing there, dressing me up."

They both laughed walking down the hall towards the training complex.

Freelancer Shooting Range 51-A

"Agent Utah, and… Agent Michigan! You're first up. You each have one clip of BR ammo, and one clip of Magnum ammo. Take out as many enemies as possible. You will be working as a team, you need a combined score of 50 kills to pass." Drill Sergeant O'Riley looks up at the control room, and says, "We're ready, start simulation number three-delta."

Utah walked out on the range, putting on her helmet as she walked up to the firing line. She turned to face Michigan, and says "You know, I've heard you're a pretty good shot, so there's noting to be nervous about… right?" Agent Michigan looked up at her, his gaze penetrating the yellow of her visor, and he could tell that she would be a good person to get to know.

Agent Michigan fastened his helmet to his head and walked confidently up to the firing line. Pulling out his pistol. He looks over at Utah, wearing the biggest smile he knew that she couldn't see and he said, "Let's do this."

Freelancer Mess Hall

"100% accuracy! You and Utah make a great team! That's really impressive! Oh man. I am so glad I made friends with you!" North said to Michigan for the umpteenth time. Michigan couldn't help but smile at this accomplishment. South said that the drill sergeant had the people in the control room take the simulation to it's highest difficulty right in the middle, and they still got 100%

This time he knew that he was going to be called somewhere so he just stood by their table and waited for the announcement to come over the loud speaker. It wasn't until about 15 minutes later that he was finally paged to the science complex.

"Hey, North, stop by my room tonight, so you can teach me how to put my armor on." Michigan says quietly to North before he walked out. I could hear South choke on her burger as she struggled not to laugh.

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AI Implantation Room 12

Michigan knew how to get to this room from past experience. This was one of the wings he had to pass in order to get to the counselor's office, he knew that he'd have to go there at one point, so he made a note of it in his head.

The counselor came into the implantation room with Michigan's file in hand. "Hello Agent Michigan. We, the Director and I, have chosen your AI carefully. We have decided to give you the AI Xi. Now, if you just lay back and relax, the sugary will be complete shortly."

Michigan felt the pinch of a needle at the base of his skull and then numbness from the neck down. One of the nurses placed the anesthetic mask over Michigan's mouth and he drifted off to sleep.

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Unknown Location

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Agent Michigan woke up and for a second, forgot where he was. He tried to rip off the wires leading into his skin and but he soon found his arms were bound to the bed. He tried to move his feet up but found that they were bound too. "NURSE!!" He yelled at the top of his lungs. A woman walked in and she was young and attractive, and somehow familiar.

"Good morning Agent Michigan, I'm Agent Arizona. You're in the sick bay at the Freelancer facility. What do you remember?" She said, undoing the bonds that held Michigan to the hospital bed.

"Well I remember doing really well in a shooting exercise with Agent Utah, and then going to the science complex for the AI implantation process and then succumbing to the anesthetic, and waking up here." He said, rubbing his wrists where the straps held him. "But I thought I was getting the AI implantation, where's the little guy, so to speak."

Arizona chuckled. "That surgery was for the AI module, the actual implantation happens when you recover from the surgery."

"When do I recover?"

"About 2 days ago." Arizona says.

"What? How long was I out for?"

"Oh, about 8 days? The anesthetic was more powerful than we thought, so you were out for a while. But, now is implantation time. Get up, and put your armor on." Arizona says as she leaves the room.

Michigan flushed; he still didn't know how to put his armor on. He got up and searched for the pieces that he knew how to put on.

About 5 minutes later, he had everything but his enemy, the chest plate, on. Michigan took a couple seconds to study the chest piece. There were a series of large metal discs on the inside ridge. He remembered North using a lot of force to make it stick, so he slammed the chest piece on, hearing the click, but also knocking the wind out of him. Michigan fell to the ground and took a couple deep breaths.

Arizona poked her head in and said "Ok they're ready for you, just head back to the science wing." She waved good bye to Michigan. " I hope I see you around. Well not here obviously… but you know what I mean."

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AI Implantation Room 12

The counselor was waiting for Michigan again. "Hello again Agent Michigan, I'm glad to see you made a full recovery. Are you ready for your Implantation?"

Michigan nodded and for the first time felt the back of his neck, feeling the small plug at the base of his skull. A look of terror spread over his face as he realized what the surgery did to him.

The counselor was ready for the look of terror, he's seen it before, and this time was no different. "Please, Agent Michigan, sit. The implantation process is relatively painless. You may feel nauseous and disoriented for a moment, but it will pass." With that, the counselor pulled out a cable from the computer and attached it to the plug in the base of Michigan's head.

When the plug went in, a hot sensation started at that point and spread all through out his brain. He heard tapping on the keyboard and then one quick tap, and he felt something warmer than the surrounding area sink into his brain, and it makes his eye sight go blurry for a second. Then, without warning, he threw up. He hasn't eaten anything in over a week so all that came up was fowl tasting bile. He retched over and over until he thought his stomach was going to throw itself up. Then it stopped. All the warmness was gone. His eye sight returned to normal, and he was okay.

Then a little gold holographic figure about a foot and a half high, fully clad in armor, projected itself on the floor in front of Michigan.

'Hello, I am the AI Xi.'

Michigan looked at the little gold Spartan in disbelief. "Hi Xi, I'm… Mitch."