The day of the Terra Prime Interschool Planetary Championship dawned with a sky the color of brushed steel. The air crackled with a different kind of energy—not the bass hum of industry or the sharp bark of drill sergeants, but the vibrant, nervous thrum of spectacle.
The championship wasn't held at the academy. It was held at the Colosseum of Convergence, a titanic arena built into the caldera of a dormant volcano on Terra Prime's equatorial belt. The arena was a marvel of Federation engineering: concentric rings of floating spectator platforms hovered over the main floor, which was itself a shape-shifting terrain of hard-light projections and physical obstacles. Massive holographic displays flickered above, showing logos and team profiles for the hundreds of military academies, martial temples, and psionic institutes competing.
Jaeger Academy's contingent arrived via heavy-lift transport. Ryosuke stood with Team Obsidian at the railing of their landing craft, looking down at the organized chaos. He saw formations of students from the Coruscant Academy of War practicing synchronized lightsaber forms that painted the air with green and blue light. A battalion of young Astartes Neophytes from a Schola Progenium stood like statues in ceramite-grey training armor. A group from Wano's Grand Kendo Dojo moved with a flowing, deadly grace, their practice swords cutting sonic booms in the air.
The scale was staggering. This wasn't a school tournament. It was a microcosm of the Federation's future military elite.
"By the Throne," Varg muttered, his augmented eyes scanning the competition. "I see a kid over there who's literally on fire and doesn't seem to care."
"Focus on our lane," Ryosuke said, his voice calm. His Six Eyes were already active, drinking in data. Energy signatures bloomed like strange flowers across his perception—the cold fusion of power armor, the psychic shimmer of warp-potentials, the vibrant swirls of Chakra and Haki. "Remember the drill. We're here for the team combat and the solo mech exhibition. Nothing else matters."
They were escorted to their assigned staging bay—a cavernous hangar carved into the arena's rock wall, one of dozens lining the perimeter. Their Steadfast stood proudly on its deployment platform, freshly painted with Jaeger Academy's colors—gunmetal grey with bold orange accents.
Waiting for them was Sergeant Kova and Commandant Idris.
"Final briefing," Idris said, his bionic eye glowing in the bay's half-light. "The championship runs for two weeks. The first week is individual and small-team elimination rounds across a dozen disciplines. The second week is the primary event: the Gauntlet. A continuous, multi-stage combat simulation involving all surviving teams. It is brutal, chaotic, and designed to test everything: endurance, tactics, adaptability, and will."
He looked at each of them. "Your performance in the preliminary events will seed your starting position in the Gauntlet. Do well, and you begin with advantages—better equipment loadouts, intel on the terrain, early resource points. Do poorly, and you start in the dark, with nothing. I expect you to do more than 'well.'"
Kova stepped forward. "Your first event is in three hours: Team Tactical Response (Urban). A hostage-extraction scenario in a simulated city block. You will have the Steadfast, but its heavy weapons will be locked. You will face opposing teams and automated defenses. Your goal: secure the asset and evacuate. No rules on engagement, save for the prohibition of lethal force against other cadets. Non-lethal is permitted." Her cybernetic arm gestured to a rack of equipment. "You will be issued stun-grenades, neural-disruptor rounds for the mech's secondary armaments, and capture nets. Dismissed to prep."
As they suited up in their piloting gear, the atmosphere in the bay was tense. This was it. The first real test, under the eyes of the entire planet—and, via FTL broadcast, much of the local Federation cluster.
Ryosuke ran a final diagnostic on the Steadfast's neural interface. His sync was holding at a preternaturally calm 70%.
[Ambient stress hormones elevated in team members. Recommend host project stability.]
He turned to the others. "Listen. Out there, it's noise. In here," he tapped his temple, then the hull of the Steadfast, "it's simple. We have a job. We know how to do it. We've done harder things in training. Sera, you're our scalpel. Chen, you're our eyes. Varg, you're our shield. Aris, you're our balance. I'm the hand that holds it all. Nothing has changed."
His words, delivered with utter, unshakeable confidence, settled them. Shoulders straightened. Nods were exchanged.
A chime sounded. A holographic countdown appeared above the bay's massive doors.
DEPLOYMENT IN 60 SECONDS.
They climbed into the cockpit, the harnesses swallowing them. The familiar hum of the neural link activated, weaving their consciousnesses together into the sturdy, stubborn mind of the Steadfast.
The bay doors groaned open, revealing not the arena floor, but a launch tube. Magnetic rails gleamed.
"Launch sequence initiated. Good luck, Jaeger Academy," a neutral controller's voice said.
Acceleration slammed them back into their gel-seats. The world became a blur of light, then they were spat out into the simulated cityscape.
It was a masterpiece of holographic and hard-light engineering. Towering, ruined skyscrapers stretched towards a fake sky, smoke poured from shattered windows, and the sound of distant explosions and small-arms fire echoed through deserted streets. Their objective flashed on their tactical map: a fortified bank vault three kilometers away, deep in the urban maze.
"Moving," Ryosuke said, willing the Steadfast into a ground-eating run. The mech's heavy footfalls shook the simulated ground.
They hadn't gone five hundred meters when the first opposition revealed itself. Not another mech, but a team of Coruscant Cadets using the urban canyon to their advantage. Four of them, using jetpacks and grappling hooks, flitted between buildings like angry wasps.
"Light infantry, high mobility," Chen reported. "They're armed with stun-bolas and ion pistols. They're trying to flank!"
"Varg, shield to full on the right flank. Sera, suppress the left building with low-yield plasma bursts—scorch the walls, don't collapse it. Force them into the open," Ryosuke ordered.
The Steadfast reacted. A shimmering blue energy shield flickered to life on its right arm. Sera's plasma bursts painted the left-side building with glowing splatters, sending cadets scattering into the street.
One bold Coruscant cadet, a Twi'lek girl with twin blue lightsabers, landed on the mech's shoulder, her blades plunging towards a sensor housing.
Ryosuke didn't flinch the mech. He used Blue.
A point of intense attraction formed just above the mech's shoulder. The cadet's downward strike was violently yanked to the side, her blades screeching harmlessly against thick armor before the unexpected force tossed her, tumbling and disoriented, onto a nearby rooftop.
"Neutralized," Ryosuke said. "Keep moving. Don't let them dictate the pace."
They pushed forward, a moving fortress. Automated turrets hidden in buildings spat stun-lasers at them. Aris used his telekinesis to subtly warp their targeting lenses at the critical moment, causing shots to go wild. Chen pinpointed their locations for Sera to disable with precise shots.
They were a well-oiled machine. But the city was designed to break machines.
As they rounded a corner into a wider boulevard, the ground fell away. A sinkhole, concealed by a hard-light projection, opened beneath the Steadfast's left foot.
"Instability!" Varg yelled, rerouting power to the gyros.
The mech lurched, began to tip. In that moment of vulnerability, their first real competition arrived.
From a parallel street slammed another Jaeger. It was a Mark-XII "Raptor-Class", a lighter, faster model piloted by a team from the Nordic Shield Academy. It painted the Steadfast with targeting lasers.
"Hostile mech! They're going for a capture!" Chen warned.
The Raptor fired its primary weapon—not a cannon, but a massive launch canister that exploded into a web of glowing, conductive cables designed to short out a mech's systems and immobilize it.
Time seemed to slow for Ryosuke. He saw the net's expansion vector, the Raptor's aggressive stance, the unstable footing of his own mech. He couldn't dodge. He couldn't block with the shield in time.
So he changed the rules of the engagement.
He didn't target the net. He targeted the space between the net and his mech.
He unleashed a controlled, wide-area pulse of Red—the repulsive force of his Limitless technique.
The air in front of the Steadfast shoved outward. The incoming net, the dust in the street, the very light seemed to recoil. The net hit the repulsive field and ballooned outward, its forward momentum violently reversed. It flew back and entangled the surprised Raptor, its conductive strands shorting out the lighter mech's leg servos. The Raptor crashed to its knees, immobilized.
At the same time, Ryosuke used a micro-burst of Blue on the crumbling edge of the sinkhole, pulling the Steadfast's fallen leg back onto solid ground. The mech straightened with a groan of stressed metal.
The entire counter had taken less than two seconds.
In the observation decks above, a murmur rippled through the Federation brass and military attachés. A decorated Ultramarines Captain leaned towards a Jedi Master. "Did he just… repel a physical net with a telekinetic pulse? The energy signature was all wrong for the Warp or the Force."
The Jedi Master, her eyes closed in concentration, frowned. "It was not telekinesis. It was… a localized reversal of causality. A 'no' made manifest in three dimensions."
Down in the city, Team Obsidian didn't pause. They moved past the disabled Raptor, reaching the bank vault. The door was sealed with a complex energy lock.
"Sera, Chen, on the lock. Varg, Aris, defensive perimeter. We've drawn attention," Ryosuke said.
As Sera and Chen worked—Sera melting key components with hair-thin plasma, Chen hacking the digital safeguards—sensor warnings blared. Two more teams were converging on their position: a squad of Astartes Neophytes in jump-pack-equipped training armor from the north, and a trio of Wano Swordsmen who moved across the rooftops with impossible agility from the south.
They were out of time.
"Varg, give me all non-essential power to the motivators. We're going through."
"The door's not fully—"
"Now."
Varg rerouted power. The Steadfast's systems whined. Ryosuke took two steps back, then charged the half-melted vault door. At the moment of impact, he applied a thin layer of Infinity directly in front of the mech's leading shoulder—not to stop, but to focus all the kinetic energy into a single, infinitely hard point.
The reinforced door didn't just break. It atomized in a shower of sparking metal and shattered hard-light. The Steadfast burst into the vault, where a holographic hostage awaited.
"Asset acquired!" Chen yelled.
"Extraction point is back the way we came, but it's hot!" Sera reported, watching the inbound hostiles on her screen.
"Then we go up," Ryosuke said.
He aimed the Steadfast's locked heavy cannons—not to fire, but to use their mass as anchors. He fired two grapple cables from the mech's wrists into the vault's ceiling, then into the building above that.
"Brace for lift!"
The winches whirred. The Steadfast, not designed for this, groaned in protest as it was hauled violently upward, crashing through ceilings and floors in a shower of debris. They erupted onto the roof of the skyscraper just as the Neophytes and Swordsmen arrived at the now-empty vault below.
On the roof, a single extraction shuttle awaited, its engines humming.
They sprinted the last distance. The Steadfast practically fell into the shuttle's open cargo bay as the doors slammed shut. The craft shot skyward, leaving the chaotic cityscape below.
In the cockpit, the neural link disengaged. They were panting, covered in sweat, but a fierce, wild grin was spreading across Chen's face. Sera let out a shaky laugh. Varg slammed a fist against his console in triumph. Aris simply smiled.
Ryosuke leaned back, feeling the adrenaline recede. The System scrolled data.
[Mission: Urban Extraction - Completed. Rating: Flawless.]
[Team Synergy Peak: 91%. Host Sync Peak: 79%.]
[New Tactical Data: 'Kinetic-Focus Breach' added to log.]
[Standing: Jaeger Academy is now ranked #4 overall after first event.]
Over the arena's main holographic display, Jaeger Academy's insignia flashed, and their team's call sign—OBSIDIAN—scrolled alongside their completion time, which was a full minute faster than the second-place team.
They had not just passed the first test. They had announced their arrival with the subtlety of a meteor strike.
As the shuttle carried them back to their staging bay, Ryosuke looked at his team. They were no longer just cadets. They were contenders. And the eyes of the multiverse were now firmly upon them.
The opening salvo had been fired. The Gauntlet awaited. And Ryosuke Tanaka knew, with a cold certainty, that the real competition had only just begun.