The New Recruit

Year 36 of the Age of the Dragon…

“I have a theory about why you lost the fight…”

The two units slunk out onto the battlefield, the glistening white Tora and the sleek gray and black Iron Bison. The Bison came from Garden School, one of the most well know technological prep schools in the world. It was a private school that also received huge donations from surrounding electronics firms, and had the money to poor into its mecha. They had even received a large sponsorship from Fluffy Cloud Enterprises until quite recently.

The Tora came from PS No. 117, an over crowded under funded public school that had scraped together enough money from fundraising and donations to keep a small mecha running, until one Joshua Jusenkyou found himself on the roster, and brought with him the sponsorship from Cloud and the mysterious white Tora. Garden School had an understandable grudge to pick with them, and it showed by there determination.

The Iron Bison was a formidable mech with some pretty substantial weapons, but its primary function was as an artillery piece, and it was ineffective against a single fast mobile suit. Now it faced Joshua and his Tora, for the tenth time in the past year.

“I’m gonna blast you and your mech to smithereens!” Rowena Townshend growled as she took aim with the Iron Bison’s powerful guns.

“Hold on just a second,” Joshua hesitated. “Don’t you want to take some time out for our usual witty banter?”

“You idea of wit grew in a sewer!”

“Now that’s what I’m talking about,” Joshua laughed. “Hey, I see Garden School is still going to the junk shop for its mechs.”

“At least po-dunk public high finally got a half decent mecha, you guys really were shopping at the junk shop!”

“You kidding?” Joshua laughed again. “The junk shops were way to expensive! We went strait to the dump for our parts.”

“Until you worthless rats stole our sponsorship.”

“Its not my fault Cloud’s an old friend of the family,” Joshua apologized with mock sincerity. “I guess you’re not happy he likes our team better!”

“What team? Cloud gives you guy’s money and special parts, and who knows where the hell you guys got that Tora!”

“Well, in that case you’re going to hate my new toy,” Joshua roared. “The final creation of the Red Storm Company that built the Tora, return to me… RECXC!”

“Rex?!?!” Rowena bellowed with laughter. “What the hell kind of a secret weapons is that?”

From his hiding place in the maintenance bay Recxc shot out into the air and roared with power. He dematerialized into a wad of white light and shot up into the air, coming straight down on the Tora.

The joints and gears of the mobile suit glowed as the Arkinoid fused with the core. The self-recovery statistics went clear of the charts and the Bladeth armor deployed.

“What the hell?” Rowena yelled. “Okay—BURN OUT!”

Her Iron Bison fired a full power shot from all seventeen of its cannons and hit the Tora dead on, obscuring it with a cloud of smoke and dust.

“Well that was a lame trick,” Rowena laughed. “Looks like I—”

The smoke and dust cleared with a whirl and the Tora stood in grand form covered in its glistening silver armor.

“That ‘trick’ was an Arkinoid,” Joshua replied. “My Bladeth System is at full power, and my armor recovery is at three thousand percent, plus I can move as fast as a Jagar, but turn twice as sharp!”

“Arkinoid’s don’t exist!” Rowena yelled. “Whatever you’ve done is some obscene trick out of the mecha core, and I don’t want to know what it is!”

The Iron Bison crashed right up to the Tora and made a well-placed strike with its horns.

The Tora dodged the attack by inches and grabbed the horns in its jaws, holding firm.

An Iron Bison had a huge strength and size advantage over a Tora. It could easily have picked the smaller suit up and thrown it, but for some reason the Tora was holding its own in strength.

The Iron Bison tried to pull out of the lock, but the Tora held fast and started pulling it back, dragging the massive suit through the dirt of the battlefield.

Rowena immediately changed tactics and began pushing the Tora. Joshua responded by using his light Tora to push her back instead.

“I thought the Iron Bison was know for its strength,” Joshua grunted as he pushed on the controls.

“And I thought Tora’s were good for their speed,” Rowena replied, pushing equally as hard. For a moment the two suits seemed evenly matched.

“The Styx is faster,” Joshua replied. “Tora is known for its reflexes, and now this!”

With that the Tora let out a mighty growl through clenched teeth and flipped the Iron Bison into the air, then raced under it.

“To bad money can’t change the laws of gravity,” Joshua hissed as the Tora skidded into a turn and charged its strike laser claws. “But it ends now!”

With blinding speed that surprised even Joshua the Iron Bison flipped over and landed on its feet, and dodged the Tora’s charge.

“Well that’s not to shabby,” Joshua grinned. “Guess this isn’t going to be as easy as I thought.”

He charged again and the Bison dodged, this time firing off a few missiles from its forward bay at close range.

The fire glanced off the Tora’s armor, but Joshua was annoyed that she had evaded his attack.

“You’re very skilled m’lady,” Joshua growled. “But you still won’t win—”

A shower of missiles rained down on the battlefield and a scream erupted from the half circle of stands. A sea of new units had appeared so quickly he hadn’t even noticed until they fired, which he guessed meant they had come in from off world.

“Bio-roids!” Rowena screamed. “What are they doing here?”

“You’ve seen these—things—before?” Joshua shouted back. The mobile suits were insect like, and moved with a kind of fluidity unlike any robot he’d seen, and he had seen quite a few.

“Yeah… they’ve been popping up all over the place, they come through some kind of warp gates and make sneak attacks, then they disappear back through the gates and leave destruction.”

“Doesn’t sound good,” replied Joshua. “Wanna trash em?”

“Well, we can’t very well finish our battle!” Rowena snarled as she loaded her guns.

Joshua charged straight into the thick, there were a lot of enemies. They weren’t putting a dent in his defenses, but all the fire was slowing him down, especially when all his weapons were packed into the front.

He watched another volley from the Iron Bison. The heavy weapon mech was powerful, but it didn’t carry a lot of ammo, she would be out soon.

“Recxc, I need more power,” Joshua growled. “Can you switch me to the Seven Blade Unit in the field?”

“Gwarl!” Recxc snarled, and the Tora came to a halt. He deployed his energy shield and a new, differently shaped layer of the Bladeth Armor coated him. As soon as it had finished, the armor pulled back and revealed the orange and purple armor unit with seven strong blades.

“Right!” Joshua shouted. “Now drop those main side blades and lets kick some ass!”

“Gwarl!” Recxc replied excitedly. The Tora charged forward and knocked down several of the Bio-roid suits. They were small and fast, but their weapons were light. The only problem: there were just to many of them.

“Rowena,” Joshua raised her on the COM. “You said they came through warp gates, if we take out the gate—”

“This isn’t even a tenth of what they normally send through!” Rowena shouted back. “We need to take that gateway out quick or run like hell! I’m out of ammo!”

“Iron Bison has good combat scanners, just sight it out for me while I pull out the Heavy Arm CASTS!” Joshua was already bringing up his link with Recxc as he spoke. “Recxc, give me guns.”

* * *