Theodore Davis opened the door to his room. His birthday party just ended, and all of his friends had already gone home. His mom and sisters were downstairs cleaning the aftermath of the occasion. In his hands, a gift card for 1,000 A.M.S. Vouchers. The card was sent by his father, who was a no-show for the event.
After the divorce, Theo's father had become more distant. The boy suspected that his mother's new friend was probably the reason the man did not show. Instead of his father, Theo got a gift card. The boy was upset by this but said nothing. He would have preferred to celebrate with his father, but the grown-up issues always got in the way.
Theo decided to forget about the matter for a few hours. He sat on the bed and grabbed his comm-pad. Then, he logged on to his A.M.S. wallet account and added the value of the gift card.
After that, the boy grabbed a fully charged VR headset from the charging port on his nightstand. The clock on the charger read 9:45 pm. Placing the helmet-like device on his head, he lies in bed and logs in to the white room. Making a few gestures with his hands, he logs on to A.M.S.
With that, he was no longer Theo, the boy who just turned 13 today. He was instead, T-Beater, the mech pilot, Beater for short. He had no father or mother. To Beater, there was only the battlefield and mechs.
T-Beater loaded his mech hangar. The customary gunmetal-gray walls and polished concrete floor appear before him. There were only 2 mechs in his hangar.
The first one, the one A.M.S. included with the purchase of a pilot account, was a light mech with only 2 weapon options. A pistol and a vibrating knife. The model was called The Runner, and it was an A.M.S. creation. It never existed in real life. The machine had a humanoid shape; it looked very agile, almost like a speed runner athlete. As with all agile mechs, its armor coverage was paper-thin. The machine was meant for speed and evasion, not face-to-face confrontations.
The second was a medium mech that he bought with the vouchers earned by winning matches. The model was named the Beam Star. It was a medium humanoid rifleman with a slender, feminine figure. The mech had good mobility, but it lacked durability. The machine had very thin armor coverage, perhaps to allow for good mobility. But two or three shots will usually take it down. However, for a rookie pilot, it was not the worst machine. A laser rifle and a small laser pistol came included as the standard weapons load-out.
The color of both mechs was gunmetal gray. This bothered Beater a lot; his machines would blend with the walls. But to paint them, he would need to pay somebody with a repair shop account or get a repair shop account himself.
Beater shakes his head, "No, instead of spending the vouchers painting my mechs, I'd rather get a new one. He moved to the second floor of his hangar. Since he had no facilities, all he had was a catwalk overlooking his two gunmetal-gray machines. At the end of the catwalk was the Shop Catalog.
Moving over the boring sight, his decision was reinforced. After reaching the catalog, he starts to browse. Using the filtering option, he removed all the unpainted mechs from the list. Still, there were over one hundred thousand entries.
He then filtered by price. Setting a margin between 500 vouchers to 1,300 vouchers, which was the maximum amount he had. This cut the list further; this time, the list had a little over three thousand entries.
After that, he notices that some of the entries had a special marker; this marker showed the fabricators who sold different paint-job options for the mechs. Beater decided to filter the list again to only show mechs with these options. The list was cut down to 230 entries. With a more manageable list, T-Beater started browsing.
A few minutes later, he finds a mech with only two paint options; the mech was being sold by 1,200 Vouchers or 3,600 L-credits, but it had a B-grade rating. His own machines had a D-grade score. The better the grade, the better the mech.
The grading system for mechs was a system used to determine the quality of the product. This was calculated by a combination of performance, endurance, and the quality of materials used on the mech.
"Why is a medium mech with a B-grade rating being sold for only 1,200 vouchers? My Beam Star cost me 900 vouchers, and it's a D-grade." The mech had picked his interest.
He decided to use the trial run function of the catalog. After all, he was a rookie, but not a fool. With a flash of light, Beater found himself inside a McCain Reaper. He was in what appears to be a testing facility.
The cockpit of the McCain Reaper was bare bones. It had only the essentials and nothing more. He chose to move to a shooting range left of where he spawned. When the mech started to walk, Beater noticed the easy flow of movement of the machine. It felt like piloting his Beam Star. He was surprised by this because the McCain Reaper had more mass. The bigger a mech is, the more sluggishly it moves. But that did not seem to apply to this mech.
Arriving at the shooting range, T-Beater raises the modified rifle. Even looking at it from the shooter's perspective, it felt intimidating. The cooling system of the gun looked like something you put together while someone is firing at you. He pulled the trigger, but, instead of the gun firing a single shot, three shots came out.
This took him by surprise, throwing off his aim. One shot hit the corner of the targeting card; the other two missed the card entirely.
Beater, feeling a bit ashamed of this, decides to fire a few times to get used to the rifle. "Thank my lucky stars nobody is watching this." He said to himself.
After the eight or nine consecutive pulls of the trigger, an alarm rang in the cockpit. He felt something activating, and a thick white mist came out of the crevasses of the rifle.
"What the hell was that?" Looking over the data displayed on the HUD, he noticed the heat of the rifle dropping. He realized what had happened. "That was the coolant thingies activating." After half an hour had passed, he felt more comfortable with the rifle. T-Beater then decides to change to moving targets.
Every mech, came with a shooting guide integrated into the operating system software for the machine. Also known as a shooting lead. The software helped pilots to predict, to some extent, the movement of targets. As the target bots began to move, Beater waited for the small reticle to appear. He quickly started shooting once he saw it.
After half an hour and a couple of coolant ejections, Beater started to get the hang of dealing with moving targets. "This rifle is very different from the one on my Beam Star. I think I'm starting to like it." The joy was visible on his face.
T-Beater shot the mobile targets until he was satisfied. He decided to stop shooting and perform one final test.
He then moves to the obstacle course on the other side of the facility. The McCain Reaper ran, evaded obstacles, and jumped over hazards. It was clear that the machine would not win any performance competitions, but, for a level 1 machine, it was a dream. Even his Beam Star could not move like this.
"I have decided, I will buy this mech." The pilot expressed with conviction. Using the vouchers from the gift card plus some of his previous earnings, Beater had more than enough.
Loading the store page, T-Beater was surprised by the simplicity of the site. Most shops will have a background displaying pictures of their mechs in action, and some even have background music. Their catalogs would be displayed with fanfare. Some will even have sound effects like gunshots or bell rings whenever you tap on a selection in the catalog.
This store had nothing, not even a background. It was just a 1 mech list with a black background.
"Is this a new shop?" Beater wondered..."Well, let's get on with it," the pilot said, regaining his conviction.
Beater tapped lightly on the only mech of the catalog. He was presented with a choice. On one side was the red version of the mech, on the other, the blue version. The pilot pondered his choices for a moment.
The blue version had a more polished look. The lines and contours had a neater feeling. The skull that was painted on the face plate had an artistic sense to it. Details such as the mounds of bones painted on the shoulders of the machine were eye-catching. Even though the blue version was beautiful, it did not move the young mech pilot.
On the other side, the red version. This Mech had a more primal look. The skull on the face plate looked like it was painted by a giant hand. The red light of the face sensors looked like eyes on the skull. A hint of savagery gleams from them. Some of the red paint had dripped onto the black contours, as if the machine was drenched in the blood of a recent kill. This spoke to him. Sparing no other thought, he purchased the red one.
Since the owner of the "Grease Monkey Workshop" had never configured the factory portion of his shop, the system was still running on the automatic default setting.
By default, the factory will process the shop requests and automatically fabricate the mechs. This, however, added 200 vouchers to the cost of production. Producing a McCain Reaper in the game had a cost of 800 vouchers. With the cost of automation, that went up to 1,000 vouchers. Leaving the factory owner with a paltry amount of 200 vouchers in earnings.
As Beater paid the vouchers to the shop, the machines on the factory floor roared to life and started fabricating.
In the real world, building a mech using a 3d printer and an assembler could take anywhere from 2 weeks to 2 months, depending on the size of the mech and the skill of the fabricator. Factory quality assembly lines cut this time greatly, but it was still around a few days per mech.
In A.M.S., however, automated fabrication times took a few minutes. For this reason, a lot of fabricators paid the automation fee without remorse. Using manual fabrication for special orders. Or when they wanted a higher quality product.
With an almost comical speed, Beater's order was completed. With a sudden flash, a new McCain Reaper of normal quality had been delivered from the factory.
He ran from the shop catalog, down the stairs, and into the hangar with excitement. Stopping in front of the new machine, Beater touches the tip of the mech's foot. Proving to himself that the machine was real, at least in the simulated world. "I have to use it." The pilot exclaimed.
With a gesture of his right hand, Beater opened a menu. After equipping his new mech. A second gesture made the first panel vanish, and a second panel appeared before him.
It was the game mode selection menu. He skipped over team death match mode, passed on mech duels mode, and ignored the Warlord Battles mode. Since he was a rookie, he hated the way some players targeted him, looking for an easy kill.
Instead, he chose a game mode called Operations. In this game mode, six players were assigned to a fire team. They were later dropped on a random map and given different objectives to fulfill.
While party members were assigned together, more often than not, the fire teams were put together with random players. This, sometimes, created problems between the players. But the friendly fire setting was turned off for the beginner pilots up to level 3. A lot of rookie pilots use the Operations mode to farm for vouchers and get experience.
"Well, let's put you to good use, after all, you are my father's gift," Beater said to his mech. With the flashing of a light, the boy and his mech vanished from the hangar.