24 Behind The Scenes

Seeing that the two teenagers managed to finish off all the drones without problems, Amelia could not help but give out a sigh of relief. It was then that she finally had the time to scold the people before her within the operating room that had activatead the training module without her knowing.

"So why the heck did you activate the training module when there are still students playing around in the training field? Were you looking to get fired?!" Amelia shouted, pointing her finger towards the manager, who's currently sweating and bowing repeatedly before her.

"My apologies, Ms. Amelia." The manager replied, giving off the most apologetic gaze he could manage. "It's just that usually, one of our students would train during this period of time, thus one of our staff just presumed that the student had came and out of habit activated the training module without thinking."

"Can't you see the identification signatures of the two teenagers in front of your operation screen? It clearly state 'VIP Guest', not 'Student'! If it weren't for the fact that it's classified for guests to experience a higher difficulty training module due to the classified weaponry involved, our two guests would have been instantly turned into mincemeat, while our mechs would have been turned into a crisp!"

The manager seemed to have ran out of excuses as he could only bow repeatedly while stating how sorry he was, without managing to explain further. Just as Amelia had the urge of kicking that stupid manager right in the face, someone had suddenly come up from behind and lightly patted her on the shoulder.

"That was an interesting show, Ms. Amelia." The person spoke right next to Amelia's ear softly, immediately arousing the hairs on the latter's neck. "May I get to know the identity of the one piloting our mobile operating unit M0-X? He seems quite agile and experienced, even though this mech had only gone through federal approval and produced for military use about two weeks ago."

Amelia had the urge to instantly jump away and defend herself but when she tilted her head and saw who it was behind her, she could only stay frozen in a docile manner and replied with a tiny and submissive voice, "David! What a surprise! How long have you been here!"

"Mhm... Since the part where your guest managed to dodge the first attack from the drone and destroy it within a second." The person behind Amelia said nonchalantly after placing his finger at the tip of his jaw as he recalled everything that had happened since entering the operation room.

"I see..." Amelia spoke, trying to mask the annoyance within her heart as much as possible as she continued, "Since I was too busy with the situation before me, as you've seen just now, I apologize in advange if it seemed as though I was acting inhospitable and not noticing you until now."

In fact, even when the crisis had passed and both Daniel and Jake were confirmed to be safe, Amelia still did not detect anyone near her until that person had suddenly tapped on her shoulder from behind, almost making her heart burst out from her chest for a second there.

"That's fine. I've been silent since entering the room, so it wouldn't be surprising for you not to have seen me until now." David waved his hand noncahalantly, appearing to accept Amelia's apology.

It was also at this time that Amelia could not help but retort within her mind, "No, no, no! Even though you say that as though it's nothing, I would have heard the automated doors to the operating room opening by themselves right? How did you manage to mask the noise of the doors, your footsteps and your body from my senses at the same time?!"

However, she did not have the guts to voice her concerns out loud and could only swallow the indignance within her heart. In an attempt to smoothen the atmosphere, Amelia instantly changed the topic and asked, "So are you the one who usually train with your mech at this time, David?"

"That's correct." David nodded. "Which is why I was a little surprised that someone had occupied the training field before me since it's common knowledge that I would usually reserve this place for my own use for the afternoon."

"Oh! I'm sorry! I didn't know-" Amelia was about to apologize frantically, similar to how the manager acted towards her before, but David instantly waved her off and cut her off with an amicable smile.

"Don't be. Due to this pleasant surprise of yours, I got to see a rather interesting spectacle. Tell me, are those two teenagers going to join our academy in the future?"

"Yes, Daniel said that he had thought of applying to our academy and transferring to our school before December. Though, I don't know about Jake, who just tagged along for the tour." Amelia stated, not realizing that she had just revealed the identity of the two teenagers unknown to David earlier. It was only after blurting out their names that she realized what she had done wrong.

Ignoring the panicking gaze of Amelia, who had failed to maintain the anonymity of her two guests, David acted as though nothing had happened and simply spoke, uttering underneath his breath, "I see. Then I'll be looking forward to it."

Then, he simply left Amelia to her own devices as he walked out of the operation room. Before that though, he gave the manager of the room a command. "Prepare Unit G0L1ATH for me, I'm taking it out for a spin. Use training module 'Hell Mode'."

"Acknowledged! I will go prepare your mech now!" The manager saluted David before running off, not wanting to be near Amelia any second longer lest the latter decides to start scolding him again.

David simply walked leisurely out of the operation room as he saw the frantic manager sprinting in front of him while subconsciously giving out a smirk. "I guess the next semester wouldn't be as boring as I had originally thought." He commented while walking away.

***

After the battle, which seemed to have taken a long time within Daniel's mind even though the whole period started and ended within 5 minutes, Daniel had to pilot his mech back into the factory for maintenance work, since it had become quite damaged as a result of the battle.

Excluding the attack by the laser beam damaging the mech's ankle, the bullets fired from the machine gun of those short-ranged drones managed to do some surface damage towards the exterior of the mech. Luckily, there were no serious internal damage, so the engineers would be able to repair the mech and make it good as new within half a day, with most of the time spent repairing the electrical circuits of the ankle.

Jake, on the other hand, did not really go through any intense battle unlike Daniel, so he simply parked his own mech back to its original spot before getting off, running over towards Daniel cheerfully when he saw his best friend walking down the ladder from the center of the mech as well.

"Yo! That was intense!" Jake exclaimed. "Did you see how awesome I was back there! I managed to destroy two of those drones at the same time!"

"Sorry, I was too busy trying to safe my own skin to even pay attention on you showing off." Daniel replied with a sneer, even though there was a smile on his face. "Should you be bragging this much when you can't even handle moving the mech past a few meters without any external help?"

That's right, since Jake had tumbled on the ground an inumerable amount of times before he even arrived at the training field just in time to save Daniel from the snipers, the latter decided that he would just carry Jake along with his mech back towards the factory to safe time, since the both of them still have many places that they wanted to explore within the academy.

"Say what you want, but if I hadn't been there saving your ass at that time, you would probably be on your way to heaven by now!" Jake scoffed, looking quite dissatisfied by his friend's lack of enthusiasm towards his bad-assery.

"Yeah, yeah." Daniel said, patting heavily on Jake's back to the point of making the latter choke for a little bit. "Thanks for saving my ass. I'll buy you lunch at school tomorrow, okay?"

"Hah! You think you can trick me like that?" Jake sneered. "You're probably just going to give me one of those disgusting nutrition tablet of yours and call it lunch, right? Sorry, but I would rather eat sh*t than take a bite of those disgusting lab-made things."

"Most of the snacks you eat are also lab-made as well! Would you stop eating those?" Daniel retorted.

"That's different! At least I get enjoyment out of eating crisps and biscuits!" Jake replied. "Whereas those nutrition tablets of yours don't even taste like anything!"

The two friends continued to bicker about until Amelia finally arrived to pick them up.