High Spirits/Don't Drink And Drive.

A neon sign sputtered behind the bar counter, casting a flickering light onto Yseni's glass. Drinking was rare for him, but tonight's success warranted the exception.

Limitless never slept. Time here was just a suggestion, what with the never setting sun and the constant artificial lighting. There was always something happening, and the bars thrived with the ceaseless commotion.

Yseni sat at a corner at the bar counter, away from the screen broadcasting a live match at the Overburn. A small crowd had gathered at that end, cheering and booing at each punch, swipe of the blade, or gunshot. There was an active bet, apparently, as he had overheard.

In the rare quiet when the crowd didn't overpower the rest of the establishment, Yseni could hear the clinks of glasses and the quiet murmurs of conversation. It seemed a soothing counterpoint to the chaos at the screen.

Yseni stared at the reflection of the sign in his drink, and a grin found itself onto his lips. The flickering light blended into a memory. One of the eye-lights of his mech flickering to life as he inserted the energy lattice. He had succeeded. The slow accumulation of the materials over the past years, and the months of tireless work during the few free hours he had, they had paid off. He had made a working mech.

Of course, just because he had a mech didn't mean that he could pilot it. He didn't even dare to Sync with it just yet. Moreover, It was dangerous to publicize it. He wasn't licensed to design and build mechs, and anyone he told could rat him out to the Ceres Empire. They had little hold over Limitless, but apprehending an unlicensed and weak mech engineer with no backing would be trivial for them.

His surroundings burst into a cheer as the match on the screen drew to an end, with one of the mechs holding the other up as if it were a trophy. Yseni let out a whoop as well, despite not being too invested.

"There she is!" The bartender's voice startled Yseni. "Saw the match! You gave them hell!"

He followed the bartender's gaze to find a new entrant into the bar. A woman, perhaps a few years his senior. Muscular, tall, and with the scuffs and scars all over. One of her arms seemed to be in a cast, but that didn't stop her from having the biggest of grins plastered on her face.

"You should have seen their faces!" The woman laughed and approached the counter, her movements belied a grace that confirmed her as a Pilot. She already had a bottle in her good hand. "Bracket damn near cried!"

"Oh, I knew that one had no backbone!" The bartender laughed with her as she settled in the seat next to Yseni. "Tell you what, I'll give you one drink on the house. You deserve it."

"Just one!?" the woman exclaimed. "Sedge, you're killing me!"

"I'm not letting you run me dry again! I've learnt my lesson," Sedge smirked. He leaned on the counter and rested his head on a hand. "So? How did it feel? I'm sure you're dying to tell me all about it, Daryll."

"Oh, it was nothing," Daryll waved, though the spark in her eyes betrayed how much she wanted to share about the experience. Then her words flowed as freely from the liquor in her bottle.

Yseni couldn't help but be enraptured by it. She was, as he had suspected, an Overburn Pilot, and she had won a 1v5 match earlier in the day. She'd made a passing comment about her opponent being too weak and that she could take on five of them during a tournament match, and before she knew it, five Pilots that had lost to her before got together and challenged her.

It was an unfair match and she knew it, but she was not one to back down, and gave them a thorough beating. Se recounted, with great inebriated zeal, how she broke through their formations and isolated them one by one, and eliminated them. She had a particular fondness for how pale their faces went as she took care of them, to the point where Yseni thought she had a prior grudge with them.

Her account seemed interesting, and Yseni made a mental note to check the match out once he'd reached back home.

"Shame about the mech, though," Sedge sighed. "I liked that one."

"Ah, but what a way to go!" Daryll raised her bottle in a toast to herself. "A warrior's exit, breaking apart for the win. Worth every bolt and circuit!"

"The mech fell apart?" Yseni spoke his thoughts out loud in a moment of inebriated carelessness, then blushed at the impropriety.

Daryll slammed a hand on the counter, leaned towards Yseni, and exclaimed, "Those faces! Were fucking! Worth! It!" She slammed the counter with each word.

Yseni recoiled, taken aback.

"You should have seen her," Sedge grinned. "She grabbed her broken arm and speared it into a shoulder! It was amazing."

"Best fight of my life!" Daryll added with pride. It seemed like the two didn't mind his intrusion in the slightest.

Across the bar, someone signaled for Sedge.

He exhaled softly, "Duty calls, Ryll. I'll be back," and he drifted away to attend to his responsibilities.

"Aw," she waved him away, then turned to face Yseni.

Yseni froze mid-sip, not knowing what to make of it.

"So," she said, "... Where was I?"

And before he could reply, she continued with her story.

It was hard to resist Daryll's charisma, and before he knew it, Yseni had become an unwitting drinking buddy.

They chatted for a while, mostly Daryll recounting her matches and Yseni chiming in to sate his own curiosity. Before long, Sedge joined them as well, and pressured the two to drink till they were wasted. Daryll did so willingly and helped Sedge pressure Yseni into the same.

Every once in a while, Sedge would pop away to fulfill his duties at the bar. During one such occasions, Daryll turned to Yseni.

"So?" she asked.

"Hmm?" Yseni tilted his head.

"Why were you here?" she pointed at his nose.

"Here?"

"At the bar!" she exclaimed.

"I... Uh... I was celebrating!" Yseni grinned.

"Oh?" Daryll questioned. "What happened?"

"I can't tell you!" he refused immediately.

"Oh come ooon!" Daryll whined.

"Okay, fine fiiine..."

Yseni looked around, then gestured Daryll closer. In what was perhaps a fit of intoxicated carelessness and liquor-boosted trust, he whispered in her ear.

"Keep it.. keep it a secret, yeah?"

Daryll nodded enthusiastically.

"I made a mech," he confessed.

---

"... And you made it? Not modify, make?" Daryll supported a drunk Yseni as he guided them through a section of deserted corridors and streets to where he apparently lived.

It was a well-hidden section of Vesra. One such as herself, who typically kept to the streets and the key passages of the Overburn, wouldn't likely have found it. As a consequence, the pathways were not well maintained at all, and Yseni often tripped.

"Shhh-" Yseni made a shushing motion, then nodded exaggeratedly.

Supporting Yseni wasn't much of an issue for Darryl, despite her out-of-commission arm and how drunk she was. The Piloting institutes had drilled enough muscle memory and willpower in her for that.

"We're almost there," whispered Yseni, his voice barely carrying over the sound of their footsteps. They turned a corner, and a well-hidden rock-side warehouse loomed before them. Yseni fumbled with the locks, his hands unsteady, but eventually, the door creaked open.

Daryll could spot the outline of the mech even before Yseni succeeded in his attempts at flipping the light switch. But as the light revealed more of the details, she could not help but stand there in awe.

"That. Is cool."

In front of her was a close-combat mech, built of what were obviously reused and scavenged parts. She recognized some parts from different mechs models by different manufacturers. This was definitely a custom design, and not just something she hadn't seen before.

"I know, right?" Yseni chuckled. He waddled over to a modest living space in the corner and plopped down. "Keep it a secret!"

"I know, I know," Daryll reassured him as she took in the surroundings.

A dwelling in such a dilapidated space, and most of it filled with tools and parts of dubious nature. A tiny living space, seemingly shoved into the corner as the mech grew and consumed the rest of the place. Daryll had never seen a mechanic willing to work in such a condition, let alone live with it. Add in the insistence of keeping it a secret and she was fairly certain that Yseni wasn't licensed to build mechs.

She wasn't a mechanic, so she couldn't comment on the actual build of the thing, but she did like the piecemeal, beat up nature.

"Ah, I can't help it," she grinned as she approached the mech. "I'm hopping in!" she announced, ignoring Yseni's slurred objections.

The interior was less than ideal, but Daryll didn't care. She just hopped in the pilot seat, rushed through the startup procedures, and yanked the helmet on her head.

A burst of sensory information washed over her mind. She welcomed it with open arms, getting to work at making sense of it, piecing it together like a jigsaw with herself in the middle. Mechs were a second home to her. Outside of them, she felt as if she were incomplete and vulnerable.

Slowly, she probed at the mech, understanding its structure, integrating it into her consciousness and body. She was the mech.

And she was very uncomfortable.

"What the—" Daryll started. "Didn't you learn how to calibrate this thing?" She gave Yseni a side-eye using the multitude of the onboard visual feeds, and saw him passed out face first on the barrel he used as a table.

She grumbled, and busied herself with modifying the various operating and sensory parameters of the mech. It was arduous, with a lot of educated guesswork. Even after her fine-tuning though, the mech's performance was average at best, hindered by the less than ideal parts and some apparent inexperience. Still, to wrangle such performance from the parts at hand, let alone designing and building it alone and with no help, was a testament to Yseni's raw talent.

She wondered how he would fare in a better environment? With more tools, materials, and some guidance?

She stowed the thought away. After all, she had gotten a new toy to play with!

---

Yseni woke to a grumbling stomach and a considerable hangover. He grumbled as he opened his eyes to the dimly lit room—

"Morning, sunshine!"

—And a widely smiling Daryll looking over him.

An immediate sense of dread struck him, which only intensified as he recalled the events of the previous night. He had shown someone his mech!

"Well, aren't you in deep trouble," mused Daryll with a cheerful voice, "Building a mech without a license..."

Yseni stumbled to the floor as he tried to shoot up out of his bed. He was dumbfounded, terrified. How had she found out? What was going to happen to him now? He turned to face her.

And saw a hand stuck out towards him.

Daryll moved her lips, and it took Yseni a minute to figure out what she had said.

"How about you make one fit for the Overburn?"

His brain short-circuited, overloaded by the whirlwind of events. Dumbfounded, he could only say one word.

"... Sure."