After getting home with little to eat after a long examination, he decided to cook up a meal for himself. Henry considered himself a great cook when no one was around to judge his skills as a chef. Most of his meals were not nutritious but they did taste good.
He sat in the living room watching the time go by while staring at this blueprint he found in the bottom of his rucksack. It was a mech design book that was given to him from Mr Telverk two years ago that he kept all this time. Oftentimes he would look at the book for inspiration but somethings he never understood so he didn't look at it for over a year until now.
Page 12 to Page 15 was the Jargon series, page 32 to 25 was the IAC series, Page 122 to 150 were blueprints and history which were filled to the brim with descriptions and details about mechs. But upon reading these descriptions Henry slowly filled up his time reading about mechs that he didn't even know existed.
Well to begin with, there was the Yojurn, which was a one of the few saviour mechs that the SID kept in their arsenal and one that saved the war in Lianos of the blueprint conflict but is said to be discontinued due to leaks. It was often referred to as the angel mech, a mech that was driven by a dead pilot but it was then taken control by artificial intelligence destroying a fleet from Phoran militants.
Pilots Weste Quin and Sam Eubek were the ones controlling the mech. A recreation of the Yojurn has been done multiple times but yet none of them could come close to the one that was made first. There are many conspiracy theories about if the mech is actually real or if it's just a fake and the Space Intelligence Defence wanted to clear their name. Others are thinking that they are going to start a war with that mech alone in other regions so that they could make materials for their own gain. A small group of people think that it has actually been destroyed or never been restored at all since there has been any real sighting of the angel mech.
The angel mech was a 12 star mech which was insane to Henry. He couldn't fathom how they even made this mech in the first place, and what use it was for. Of course for the Blueprint conflict in the year 2069, but there must have been a deeper reason for its existence than just for some low grade militants. The Blueprint conflict lasted for 7 months, how did it get manufactured, beta tested, approved and out on the battlefield in 7 MONTHS? There's no way. Henry had to look further into this.
The mechs description:
Angel Mech: ★★★★★★★★★★★★
Design and appearance:
Class: Striker
Height: 230 ft, (70 m)
Weight: 1600 tons
Mark: Jorgan II
Nationality: unknown
Pilots: Weste Quin and Sam Eubek
Physical Features:
White matte coated colour with pale blue accents
Dual heat seeking missiles on both forearms
Dual rotating blades underneath both forearms
Large dual katanas placed on the back area of mech.
X wing mech wings, designed like a butterfly
Cluster rockets: enhanced thrusts up to 500 miles above earth
Heavy armoured except the head of the mech which was apparently "in development" - SID design team.
This mech was out of this world. And Henry needed to make this. But then stopped himself from even trying because there was no way of making a behemoth like this happen when he was in high school. He needed to learn more and more about mechs. Faster than ever. His brother? He was too stubborn. His sister? She's on her own path. He was really lost now.
To make a mech like this you would need at least 10 years in development then stage testing then improving then approval from the UMEO (United Mechanical And Engineering Officials). There was a large list of names below the details, they were mechanics, designers, technology innovators, creatives, and an approval team from UMEO. So many people had worked on this.
'So I guess it was impossible to make something as great as this' is what Henry thought to himself.
He decided to call Cameron on his phone to ask him about what he was going to do for the MAU mech assignment. After a few dials he didn't pick up. Henry was sceptical since it was rare that Cameron didn't pick up his call.
Cameron suddenly messaged Henry:
Cameron: What's up man?
Henry: nothing I just needed to talk to you about the assignment.
Cameron: I'm kind of busy right now
Henry: Alright, doing what?
Cameron: sends an attachment file
It's a pic of everyone from class having a dinner party. Henry looked at the pic for a long moment. Looking at all the faces and cheers. Even Izzy was having a good time around everyone. Isaiah was looking better than earlier, Samuel and Frederick were having a laugh in the corner. Mrs Moretta was there looking fabulous with the overhead restaurant light shining on her and her casual clothing.
Now this was painful. Everyone was cheerful without Henry around.
Cameron: What are you doing?
Henry: Ah nothing just chilling.
He wasn't chilling, he was completely uncomfortable with knowing the fact that his own class didn't enjoy having him around. He quickly turned off his phone processing what happened. Soon after he left to go to his bedroom and use his IVR headset and decided to play some mech matches against other players.
There were a bunch of applications on his IVR console that Henry forgot he installed. Whenever he opened the main menu he would only focus on one game and that was Turbo Launcher. Turbo launcher was a mech simulator where trainees, students, mechanics and other mech related people would come online to build mechs, fight mechs and have fun.
Henry would usually do practice matches with Isaiah to prepare for the examination. Henry and Isaiah would usually do 2v2 matches against other players from around the world. Especially in ranked mode where it was more challenging but also fun. They weren't the best, they were hard stuck at Platinum V and struggled to get into diamond I before the season reset.
Henry wondered if Isaiah would play Turbo Launcher with him again after what happened today. Henry tried to take his mind off of it as he opened the application up. Upon the loading screen there was an alert that said: "Season 9 Winderak Champions Cup games, you could win up to 500,000 bons!" It had further details about guilds, crews, teams but Henry wasn't interested in the slightest since he only had one other teammate.
The main menu for Turbo Launcher was a lot different than what it was before season reset; it had only been two days since Henry opened it. He then navigated to the mech designer section. But right before clicking onto the tab he noticed in the corner of the screen where there usually would be the levels and achievements were not there anymore. Henry looked around the menu for his profile and found it to be completely reset to new.
"Huh?" He audibly sounded. He refreshed the page over and over again to see if his profile would show up, but after nearly hundreds of times it didn't work. There were more than 16 million players online today. He then logged out of the main menu for Turbo Launcher and opened up the web browser for Threddit.
The news tab for Threddit was buzzing with users complaining about how their profiles had been deleted and disappeared. Other users began to dox developers and say cruel and unjust things towards their co workers. Everyone was upset at this.
Henry logged back into Turbo Launcher and opened up multiplayer. He needed to get to level 5 to open up the mech designer tab. This utterly pissed him off today. He breathed in and out deeply as matchmaking was happening waiting for someone to fight with. He was using the Eron I mech, the one that was given to all players to use. Its class was striker which Henry enjoyed using already.
Tusk: ★★
Design and Appearance:
Class: Striker
Height: 10.9ft (3.3 m)
Weight: 200 tons
Mark: Eron I
Nationality: Winderak
Physical features:
Grey and Turquoise colour scheme coated paint.
Rotation body - spin body around 360 degree
On the left side 8 pack missiles 60 seconds cool down.
On the right side (light) energy bullets.
Speed: 160 mph
His opponent was level 2 unlike him level 1 an absolute noob. They were on the map Tressarch. Very small map. A tree filled map with rock formations and old broken down buildings. It was based off of an old street in Imer, a small town in Lianos. Henry never has been to this place in real life although he thought it would sound like a good place to go exploring by himself.
Henry knew all the good spots and where players would usually go. The match started. Henry sent shoulder missiles (2) towards the middle of the map. That's usually where people would go instantaneously and it was funny because they never learnt not to go there. He began crawling on the edge of the map circling his opponent, there was 10 minutes until they made it to 30 kills in total.
The missiles did not hit, now he knew that the player wasn't in the middle and was experienced. He heard crawling from nearby, very fast paced. Same mech as Henry. Henry waited for a moment to allow his opponent to come forward… very tense. But after a while nothing happened. No sound of forward movement. Just disappeared. Henry followed the direction that the noise once was and it ended up leading him into the middle of the map. He was lost as to where the hell this player went? Henry spun the Tusk around swiftly looking at high buildings that could be hiding a mech.
Suddenly a large blast that shook Henry's mobility from behind alerted his body to move quickly. As soon as he was about to evade the next attack, he was then quickly finished completely with the next shot being energy bullets. The momentum was killed.
'So fast fuck' Henry cursed to himself.
[1 - 0]
Henry was fucking frustrated. Today was not the day. Absolutely not.
Henry began to charge into battles with the opponent blindly hoping to land a good hit on them and getting the next point…
This went on for a long time
[5-8]...
[8-10]
[19-21]
[28-29]...
One more kill and they win. Henry had to be careful now. His reckless behaviour clearly hasn't helped in his favour. He knew how they moved and operated and with this knowledge he had to make sure he wasn't being flanked in the endgame.
He heard a couple of footsteps nearby and pushed forward, right before he was about to land a good hit with the energy bullets, the opponent turned around swiftly with all the 8 packs onto him in a second. Without time to dodge properly he ended up losing with 18 seconds left on the counter. It was over. The opponent didn't even spend any time in the lobby with Henry, they left the moment they won and most likely joined a new match.
'Everyone is so eager to level up again. I need to work faster.' Henry was determined. It took his mind off all his troubles, all he had to do was grind 1v1s and eventually get to level 5. That's all he had to do. Hours had passed while he was in the IVR, going from match to match, he didn't stop. Henry loved the thrill of mech battles.
After a while he eventually made it past level 5 to level 10 where he could now work in the mech designer section. There were pieces he needed to unlock and bodies he had to get to even begin working on them. He needed to get to level 100 before he had all the mech bodies to work on. It would take him near weeks to get to that point and he didn't know if he had that time. Henry started to yawn at the thought of work he had to do to get to level 100. He wanted to recreate the Angel Mech and someday make it in real life. Or even something better than the angel Mech…