“Hey Jeff, welcome back to a fresh semester,” the informal repair notice read, “I know you’ve only just gotten back from holidays, but some students have declared war on the first day, so work needs to be done on their rigs by tomorrow. Sorry about that.”

Needless to say, Jeff was irritated by the note left beside his computer when he arrived back at work. The ‘holiday’ mentioned in the note was three days off to work at another school’s mechanics department in the lead up to the start of the semester. Unpaid work at the request of someone he owed, and, in order to do that, he had to use up the sick days he had saved up. Although his official role was called a rig mechanic, though to most people he would be called a mechanist, the job itself would appear more closely resemblant to an engineer or a lab technician, simply due to the strange nature of the devices he worked with.

Rigs were human-shaped, piloted weapons made to outperform any cannon in damage, shield in protection or jet in speed. The material they were made from could even be programmed to take on different shapes and were controlled through a pilot’s mind. As they were not much bigger than their pilots, rigs were even hard to detect on conventional radar detection systems. They would be the best weapon ever made with human hands if not for one problem; their inventor put in place systems to ensure no one could ever learn how the cores work and prohibited their use in any combat aside from self-defence and sport.

Obviously, some members of military organisations didn’t take to those threats well and attempted to dissect one of the cores in a secret lab. The resulting explosion was said to have turned more sand to glass than at the trinity test site. Other attempts simply resulted in the death of researchers and destruction of facilities, but, eventually, the creator’s wishes were agreed to. It certainly helped that the supply of new cores stopped to any nation that attempted to analyse them.

That, in turn, led to a sudden and strange change in global conflict. With the option to attack neutralised by the power of rigs, a nation’s borders became essentially fixed, and the independence of a country within could be guaranteed if they possessed even a single rig. Then, a strange case set a twisted precedent. One of the largest nations placed a bet with one of the small nations that had separated from it. A battle between the best rig pilots of each country, with large tracts of land as the wager. Since the creator didn’t prohibit rig-based sport, the bet was approved, and the contestants met.

At the end of the fight, that small nation was once again a part of the large one, and the interactions between countries were changed. At first, people across the world were outraged by the possibility that their country could be gambled away. However, slowly over time, the outrage passed and it simply became normal. It was so natural and a part of everyday life, that the youngest generation seemed entirely unaware that the changing of lands was once a bloody and vicious affair.

The desire for national growth led to heavy investment into all fields involving rigs, both in terms of training and research, with the development of pilots being a national priority in every country. After a while, piloting schools sprung up in capital cities, allowing the hopeful and desperate to claw to the top. As resources started to pool in more wealthy and prestigious countries, the local schools started to open their doors to international students, teaching everyone equally in the hopes of poaching talent.

One such school was where Jeff found himself overworked and underpaid. He was in his early thirties, though the stress of his work had led to the emergence of some grey hairs in his otherwise tawny brown, messy hair. The unkempt hair had grown out enough that it started to cover the thick dark circles around his eyes, masked by the frames of his prescription glasses. His pale skin could also be attributed to his working life, as it left him in a basement lab for most of the day, though his life before working there was also indoors so the blame wasn't entirely there. With his normal-looking appearance and generic lab coat uniform, he sank entirely into the background around him.

Rig mechanics like Jeff were some of the most highly trained workers, and Jeff himself had to study for nearly ten years just to gain the basic qualifications. He was lucky to have entered that field straight after graduation, entering the workforce directly after he finished his degree through an application made while he was still there. As such, he had more than five year's experience as a rig mechanic; more than most his age could boast. If measured in hours, however, he would likely have more experience than someone with twice as many years; simply do to the unethical way that the school worked him.

In the early stages of his degree, his GPA wasn't particularly high, a product of his working side jobs and hobbies, and the scholarships available to him were therefore limited. In desperation, he signed a contract with the school he was now working at and was unable to quit until that debt was paid off. The wage he received from working as a rig mechanic for a school was much lower than what he could get in the international league and, as such, he would still be stuck at the school for a couple more years. Originally, his wage, minus living costs, would have paid off the debts in fifteen years, but Jeff had shortened that to a predicted seven, and mostly through hard work.

Well, hard work and gambling. Not only did nations bet on rig battles it was very popular amongst normal gamblers too. Since he had access to the basic data of the rigs in the fights, and the repair history, Jeff was able to place far more accurate bets, though that was done through an anonymous co-conspirator. If he placed a bet after accessing the data himself, he could have his licence suspended, and instead relied on secret transactions with a partner. As such, when his partner in crime needed him to help get her school ready for the start of the semester, he could only resign himself to helping.

And that brought him back to his present situation; a new kid and an international student were having a fight over who got to be the class representative, so he had to spend his first day of the semester doing complete overhauls on two rigs far sooner than he normally would have to. Not only was that extra work; it also disrupted the schedules for the other projects.

Noticing a problem, he swore in frustration and left an informal maintenance note on his missing colleague's desk.

“Hey Sam, that American rig uses imperial parts and we don’t stock any. Can you have someone check with the student if they're willing to either foot the bill for importing parts or willing to use a school model? Honestly, what kind of idiot gets a personalised rig, but doesn’t even have a mechanist competent enough to prepare it for long-term travel?”