Chapter 26

“See you next time.”

A couple months had passed since Sam read those words, and in that time things remained constantly busy for her. After returning back to the school, exam block started and everyone within the School and Weapons Maintenance Department worked constantly to ensure the school model rigs were ready during that gruelling three week period. That level of constant work kept her from thinking, kept her from dwelling on the loss.

When the results were announced there weren't any real surprises. All of the students that possessed their own rig cores filled the leader board. Students were ranked based 70% on their practical skills and 30% from their academic performance. With Sachiko Kaya being the granddaughter of the woman who invented rigs, there was little doubt that she would lead the ranks in terms of academics. Her experiences at the friendly international tournament also went a long way towards improving her practical skills. While she didn't score highest in practical, her total score was still first place.

The student with the highest piloting score was Satou Campbell. With his earlier elimination from the competition, he returned to the school to find that his already dramatic fame had drastically increased. He was already the holder of the world’s highest DC, the genetic factor that allowed for the controlling of rigs and other thought controlled technologies, but with the revaluation that his mother was the legendary pilot Sara Campbell an even greater stir was kicked up. The fearsome reputation, however, didn't help his grades. Despite his mechanist Mia's best efforts; he still only barely managed to pass the academic portion, putting his placement in fourth.

Overall second place went to Lucy Riveria. When her twin sister Lauren was injured, Lucy took a small leave of absence to help her recover, and in that time learnt a lot from the recovering pilot. Their relationship had been strained before Lauren was hurt, and Lucy moved to study internationally to get away from the shadow of her more talented sister. But while Lauren was recovering, Lucy put all of that aside to care for her. In the process, she saw, step by step, how her sister operated her rig and improved by leaps and bounds from that.

Third place went to the North American international student, Jenna Baker. While other students were busy with the friendly international, she dutifully spent her time practising and studying and otherwise filling her role as her class representative.

The homeroom teacher that had, Satou, Sachiko and Jenna in her class, Deborah Burgess, apparently received a pay rise for her student's performance. If Sam had been an actual employee of the school, and not just a contracted university student, she might have found that kind of blatant credit stealing distasteful. She might have even taken to grumbling about it under her breath and passive-aggressively tightening bolts too much; much like what her colleague Jared was doing. Jared had a particular grudge against Deborah, one that he made sure everyone in the department knew.

As his research lab was closest to the piloting department, whenever Deborah needed something done, she would just kick him out of his room to get it done. The number of times his results were contaminated or lost because of her couldn't be counted on just two hands. He had complained to administration plenty of times about it, but the school's alumni were pilots not mechanists. That meant donations came from pilots, which meant keeping pilots happy meant more to them than keeping mechanists happy. It was a skewed and unfair system, but most of the staff in the maintenance department had contractual debts to pay back before they could quit.

With the ending of exams, Sam's workload briefly reduced. That was until the school took a mid-semester break. For ordinary students that was a time to relax, but for the top five, it meant a week long training camp with Deborah. Since real rig combat was a large part of that training, it meant Sam and Mia had to attend also.

Deborah spent the week making damage for the pair of mechanists to fix, as she showed the pilots just how much of a difference there was in their skill. Before a bad injury contaminated her blood and prevented her from every using a rig with a core again, she had been a professional level pilot that represented her country in several high stakes matches. At the time of her retirement, speed builds like hers were only just becoming the current fashion, showing just how much more she could have achieved. That might have led to some resentment, as she tended to get aggressive in her lessons. On the final days of the training, Deborah even let the students use their full cores, instead of limiting to a school rig level. When they still failed to land a decisive victory, it really hammered home the gap between them.

Despite the domineering appearance Deborah showed in front of the students, when Sam went to ask her about her rig's performance, she found her clutching her leg in pain, with tears flowing while clutching at a bottle of suppressant pills. Anyone who saw that would immediately know that her condition had gotten worse. Even the power from a school model rig was causing the formless particles that poisoned her body to activate. Since she hadn't been noticed, Sam slipped out, not knowing what she could possibly say in that situation.

Before Deborah could even reach her peak as an athlete, her injury ended her career. When she finally recovered and was starting to gain some success as a coach, the same injury started to show signs that it would once again end her career. With Deborah's small and underdeveloped body, that scene seemed like despair made whole. There wasn't anything Sam could do; nothing accept keep it secret and hope that the deterioration would pass with time.

After the camp the start of a new term came; a strange and unfamiliar chill filled the air about the campus. Another school within the same country issued a challenge. Even though Sam's school had the best piloting students in the country, including more core rigs than anywhere else, the atmosphere was still lifeless. Sam racked her brain thinking about it but none the less couldn't understand why everyone was so worried. Their opponent's didn't even have a core in their arena, and trained using power from the national power grid. How could a school like that be a threat?

While asking around, Sam heard what the wager was. Her school was betting the arena's core and their school was betting 2 year's budget, after expenses. It seemed that the principle was confident, since betting a core would normally be unthinkable. But that only confused Sam more. That school wouldn't survive without their budget. Were they just betting everything on the result? How desperate could they be? It was only at that point that the school's name registered with her. It was that school. That one!

It was the school that Jeff's mysterious friend worked at.

With that realisation, Sam did her best to dig up everything she could remember that Jeff had said about her. There really wasn't a lot; Jeff tended not to talk about things that didn't relate to either their work or her training. She could remember one time, however, when he started to talk, half-delirious from lack of sleep, about her. She was in his classes when he did his degree, and took a low grade scholarship despite having the grades to apply directly for a position on a professional team. He described her as a force of nature; a powerful wind that could be ridden but not opposed.

With a draining kind of dread in the air, two weeks slowly crept into the past, and trucks filled with equipment pulled into the guest buildings of the arena. Their opponents finally arrived. With an unseasonable cold and an unreasonable wet, shivers were common throughout the school. Even Sam's hands were shaking worse than when she was suffering from Sleepless withdrawal.

With some effort, she pulled out her phone to simply clutch for support. Even before she realised what she was doing, Sam messaged Jeff.

“Diana Reilly is here. What should I do?”