CRIMSON DRAGON

"Oof," Sean grimaced, seeing Louis getting his insides churned by the centrifuge, covering his mouth with his hands. This is the second round of centrifuge training, and there are already 5 cadets who got eliminated after they pressed the emergency stop button on their own.

Louis' face is squashed into an unrecognisable meat pile.

"Hold on!" he screamed internally. "Cannot get eliminated here!"

The centrifuge came to a halt. Louis gasped wildly as the doors opened.

"Biometrics?" asked Xiao Tian.

"Normal. Spooked out," replied Singh, removing his spectacles to clean.

Louis staggered out of the centrifuge room, dazed.

It was not long before his shaky legs gave way and he fell, Sean immediately caught Louis.

Ariel then stepped out of the other centrifuge, staggering back to the cadets. Seeing her in such a state Phineas subconsciously moved to Ariel, wanting to help her, only for Nanami to stop him, the second time, first when he tried to help Sean after Sean's second centrifuge run.

Phineas looked at Nanami, who shook her head. Resigning, Phineas stepped back, knowing that his relationship to them now is no longer friends at this setting and time.

After all the remaining cadets passed the second centrifuge test and recovered, the cadets are then ushered out, marching to another room. The huge metal doors are 30m high, which opened with a loud clang. The cadets stepped in, and the doors closed with a loud "thud" behind them.

The room is pitch black. Louis raised his hands, the white sections on his skin cannot be seen at all, not to mention the black parts of his skin which already camouflaged itself into the light less environment. Sean looked around, not able to see anyone despite being able to hear them. Karl who is standing close to Sean generated a fireball in his hands, keeping it small. Sean and the rest of the cadets followed suit, generating small balls of flames, acting like little lanterns.

Of course, to ensure that these flames do not become fire hazards, the cadets all deliberately kept their flames as small as possible, carefully controlling the input of Cosmic Energy. Hence, the light from the little orange balls in their hands is just enough to light up the surrounding areas and allow them to see each other.

Xiao Tian clapped his hands, and soon a binding white light shone, then more and more lights shined down on the cadets, bit by bit, lighting up the room like daylight. The cadets all extinguished the balls of flames in their hands, looking in awe at the sights that behold them, some of their jaws wide opened.

Rows and rows of Mechas stood in front of them, those in the first row are unarmed, painted white, having black 3-digit recognition numbers on them, with marks of wear and use visible on the paint job.

"Welcome to the "arcade"!" announced Xiao Tian proudly. "Here is where grown boys and girls have fun. These T-01 training Mechas will be the first step for all of you."

"Afterwards, you will move on to those," said Xiao Tian, pointing to 2 Mechas in the green-blue colour schemes of UNSSD Space force being lowered using platforms into this maintenance room. These Mechas are armed, with hand mounted plasma cannons, shoulder mounted missile pods, twin plasma blades for close combat, shield and point-defence batteries.

"UNSSD standard MS-9853, Mark 5s, the current backbone of the UNSSD Mecha fleet, this is when you can perhaps live your childhood dreams of tearing apart Eldritch abominations with fists of steel. You will experience all of its specialisations too," joked Xiao Tian.

Seeing the cadets all directing their attention at the rows of black and grey painted Mechas in the back, Xiao Tian laughed, surprised at how greedy the cadets are at when it comes to choosing their steeds to deploy out in.

"The Commando Class, MS-1870C, will have to wait, unfortunately, same applies to the Mark 6s which are still being rolled out," said Xiao Tian. As if on cue, a Mecha is rolled in, stunning the cadets.

This Mecha is crimson red in colour, and sports a mono-eye styled cockpit as opposed to the more human like heads of the other Mechas they had seen, it has a huge set of "wings" that housed additional repulsion lifts and 2 heavy fusion cannons, similar to the ones deployed on the Einstein-class.

"Wow," Louis exclaimed.

Sean is shocked to see it here, as this was the unit that was being sent for maintenance on the day he reported at the Hokkaido factory.

"Crimson Dragon…" he muttered, it's the name of this Mark 6, the first ever built.

A surprised Albert and Vera turned to him. "You know the name of this Mecha? Only hero units or units of special purposes have names given to them," exclaimed Vera.

"So, this is the Dragon, Lieutenant Colonel Zhou's Mecha," said Albert, surprising Sean. He did not know this, having only overhead the name of this unit from the workers.

Xiao Tian then spread his arms, "want to deploy out in Commando Class and Mark 6?"

"YES!' replied the cadets in unison.

"SUIT UP!" ordered Xiao Tian, and the cadets put on drive-suits, the full body bodysuit used to achieve neural handshake with the Mechas to pilot them using their minds.

Sean stepped into the cockpit of a T-01, situated in the head, looking at the familiar yet foreign controls around him, recounting the variant of MS-1870C he had piloted before, the MS-1870AC. The "A" has a double meaning, standing for both "Aggressive" and "Artemis".

The fusion reactors of the Mechas powered on, activating the Mechas, forming a blue aura underneath the white plates.

"Neural handshake initiated."

A tingling sensation enveloped his body, with a metallic taste in his mouth.

"Successful. Begin configuration."

Sean moved his hands as per the instructions laid out by the system AI. The giant robot hands of the Mecha moved along, albeit slower. Sean shook his fingers, the fingers of the Mecha moving along.

Sean's T-01 is then moved forward on a guided rail to the "launch" platform. The Mecha is then pulled up into a launch room, locked onto the electromagnetic catapult to launch out the Mechas into space, together with the rest of the T-01s piloted by the cadets, and Xiao Tian in Crimson Dragon, Nanami in her MS-1870AC, call-sign "AC-3". The "A" variant is distinguishable by red and orange colour plates among the black and grey colour scheme. Franz, Herbert, Reza and the other instructors got into T-01s marked with blue "INSTRUCTOR" labels and deployed out.

"Stats report," said Xiao Tian.

"Cadets' moods seem excited and nervous," replied Singh. "Except for 3 of them, numbers 23, 100 and 9."

Herbert laughed. "Then let's add a little terror on them."

"Deploy!"

The Mechas are accelerated downwards out of the station, the repulsion jet engines in the Mechas's lower back and legs, used to travel in space are activated, sending out blue flames.

"AHHHH!" the cadets all screamed, caught off guard by the acceleration of the electromagnetic catapult, soon hitting 9Gs. The equipment in the cockpit shuddered and rattled. The cadets would have been thrown into the ceiling and smashed into paste if not for the anti-G function of the drive suit and the cables holding them down firmly into the floor of the cockpit, which relays their brain waves to the central processor of the Mecha that then controls the limbs. The other automated equipment are controlled by AI systems, and the pilots can control these AI using the holographic touch screen interface in front of them.

"That's more like it," mused Nanami.

Xiao Tian remained silent, contemplating the next part of his plan.