6 years ago...

Arnold was still wearing his training gear. With black shorts and maroon shirt stained with sweat, he handed the folder over to the woman engineer who skimmed through the file.

"Have you seen the report?" Arnold asked.

She looked at the summary page. "Looks like a stuck command box?"

Arnold nodded. "We already know that though. The combat engineers already looked at it."

Miu Hotaru was the young woman he walked next to. She strode around in a green engineer's overall. Her brown hair was tied into a short bun protruding from a green beanie. Her thick black boots thumped against the metal floor.

She asked, "What did they say?"

"The com-en? Something about the fight shorting out the command box, so the Regalia mech is now stuck on Shou's command signal."

"And you want me to what? Break the connection?"

"That would be nice. It'll be another ten days before a new command box arrives. Don't want him stuck on Reggie's back if there's a fight."

"Reggie?"

"Yeah... he started calling the mech, Reggie."

"That doesn't seem healthy," she noted in worry.

"He's convinced the mech is alive," Arnold laughed at the words leaving his mouth. "Machines, right?"

Miu was attentively looking at the folder he had handed to her, this time flipping and stopping every other page, clearly scanning through the details and statistics.

He raised a brow. "What's wrong?"

"Huh?" She looked up, almost surprised he was still there. "Oh. Nothing. Just... where's Shou and... Reggie?"

"They're in the hangar. He insists on showing the thing magic tricks and weird toys. Maybe you want to explain to Shou that it's all just tech and gizmos?"

"Yeah. Sure. Let's head over there."

She followed him through the building's corridors. Past the indoor barracks where the Titan Hunters trained, they headed through an open foyer towards the extended wing of the main building. Made of a variety of silver metal, the building shone through each step, the lightbars above head reflected on the spotless floor. Stepping through an automatic double door into the mechanic's wing, the scenery immediately changed. The walls were still of the same silver metal, but the ground was concrete at the side and tar in the middle. Under the tall ceiling were rows of mechs - from parts to full smaller models - housed in neat rows and partitioned in their makes by a metal fence that could extend and retract from the ground. Between each support pillars of the seemingly endless hangar were gantry cranes that could lift the parts or mechs up through the skyroof to the aboveground dock where they were assembled and deployed. Given the late hours, the only mechanics on duty were those inspecting the far corners of the hangar.

Sitting on the ground at the front of a row of Regalia models was Shou, who was surrounded by junks and trinkets. His white hoodie overlaid his combat slacks of mud brown shirt and black cargo pants. He looked up as they approached and his eyes widened in childish excitement, hair glistening under the heavy tube lighting.

"Hey! You two are just in time. Watch this!" He randomly picked up an oversize novelty mug and held it out front.

Before him, towering over them at the height of two bus length was Reggie the Regalia mech. Its armour had been stripped as it awaited repairs to its command box and bio-cell. In the meantime, it looked like a skeleton outfitted with metal muscles, though its damaged head had been replaced by a winged sensor helmet that acted as its 'face'.

Arnold asked, "What are we waiting for?"

Shou then told Reggie, "This is a cup."

The robot tilted its head, almost as if quizzically questioning the statement.

"Look!" Shou said excitedly. "It's curious."

"It's not curious," Miu replied sceptically. She walked around and behind the mech, popping open a control panel at the back of its legs to check its stats. "The camera in the WING-TR helmets can only rotate so far, so it needs to turn the head to fully scan an object."

"Reggie didn't use to do this."

"The old models weren't updated for this flaw. The AI probably figured out a solution."

"So it's learning?"

"I-" Miu tried to retort but her tongue got tied by the glow of the screen. Her eyes flicked through the data being shown. "I need a minute." She got to work.

Arnold walked up to Shou who was picking up a bottle of cola. "Look, I know you like Reggie, but you need to stop this whole mechs are alive thing. If the army finds out, you're in trouble."

Shou looked at his bottle of cola and for a moment, he looked as if he wanted to show it to Reggie. Instead, he decided to pop the cap open and take a whiff of the drink he was so clearly addicted to.

"I know, Arnold, that you don't believe me. But I'm pretty sure I'm right. And if I am, we're going to have to ask ourselves some hard questions. Are we training these Titans to fight? Or are we enslaving them? If they are self-aware, sentient, and intelligent, what does that make us, forcing them to die on our behalf?"

"It's not-"

Before he could finish, his belt radio sounded out. "This is station Wilco-Seven on all channels. Com-en's looking for Echo-Two Squad leader on channel two-one. Copy on channel two-one if roger, over."

It was not a message for them, so Arnold continued, "As I was saying, it's not safe for you to-" But Shou was no longer focused on Arnold. He had his head turned to Reggie, mouth slightly agape. "Are you listening to me?"

"Look," Shou ignored him.

"What now?" Arnold turned to Reggie who was looking at them with the curious head tilt.

"It's doing the head tilt thing."

"So?"

"I didn't show it anything, so it shouldn't need to scan anything."

Getting it, Arnold finally saw the mech, as if for the first time. Every dent in its body structure and shift of the lenses in its camera eyes. It was looking at them.

"It's looking at us," Arnold whispered."

"It heard the radio and it got curious."

They looked to Miu for answers, and the latter simply replied, stunned, "It's visual scanners aren't activating. And..."

She paused, almost as if to double check her findings.

Shou egged, "And?"

"The command box is fully functioning. There's nothing wrong with it from a diagnostic standpoint. It just deleted all the previous commanders in the registry."

Arnold asked, "What does that mean?"

She scrolled through the screen for a couple more seconds. "The deletion command was generated internally." She looked warily up at Reggie. "The AI administered the deletion."

"Is that possible?"

"It's not supposed to." A buzzing sound came from the control panel. "I just tried to enter my credential as a commander, and it deleted me immediately. It registered and the AI immediately overrode the entry."

Arnold noted, "Isn't this something com-en would test for?"

"No." Miu began to explain. "It's not supposed to be able to mess with the override privileges. It's coded in a completely different language. The AI will need to knowingly learn something that is technically useless to it. It shouldn't even know the override codes exists."

Shou waved to Reggie. "Hey, Reggie." The robot turned its giant head slightly towards him. "That's my friend, Miu Hotaru. You can trust her."

The camera in Reggie's head seemed to adjust, almost as if the mech was thinking. A moment later, a ping came from Miu's control panel.

The girl looked up and noted with wide eyes. "I've just been registered. Hey, um... Reggie?" She called out to the mech and it turned its head to look under its arm at her. "That guy over there is Arnold Wyndham. W-Y-N-D-H-A-M. Wyndham. He's our friend too."

A couple of seconds passed.

Ping.

The three humans crossed glances. They felt as if they had stumbled onto something forbidden. A question which answers they were not supposed to know.

"Wait a minute," Shou piped up. "What happens when they change the command box and find out it's still not working as they want?"

Miu looked down to her control panel, a sign of trying to avoid the conversation. "Protocol would be to tear the mech for scrap. They can't have a rogue mech on the field."

"H-hold on," Arnold stammered out. "Isn't that too hasty? What if we just tell Reggie to accept new commanders and fight? At least it won't have to be scrapped."

Ping.

They turned to Miu who stared at the screen. "Testing," she said. "That's what it says."

Ping.

"Hello world."

Ping. My name is Reggie.

Shou mouthed, "Woah..."

Miu explained, "It's using the commander list to speak."

Ping. Friend Arnold. I do not want to be destroyed in war.

All of them were on the same page now. Any semblance of doubt that Reggie was not self-aware had fallen away.

Arnold asked, "What if we report this to the higher-ups? It'll have to go through committee. Buy us time?"

Ping. They already know.

Of course they did. Somewhere inside, Arnold knew that. While he had volunteered to be in the army, Shou and Miu were conscripted. Every year, the Republic had a quota of soldier they had to recruit. Any lacking spaces were filled up with conscriptions. Even Arnold only joined so as not to have someone else unwillingly fill his spot. This was a society that would throw bodies at the war to protect the riches garnered. And the bodies thrown were mostly the poor. Even if they discovered new sentient life in the form of mechs or Titans, they would not hesitate to quiet the dissent.

"We can't hand Reggie over," Arnold concluded. "This is a new... intelligence. It'll be like sending a child out to a battlefield."

He wasn't sure if Shou and Miu agreed with his reasoning, but they definitely agreed with his premise, for the latter asked, "So, what do we do?"

Without hesitation, Shou answered, "We have ten days before the new command box arrives. We make a plan to run. Miu, call in all the favours you can from the Star Trekkers and clear out my dad's old warehouse to relocate to. If it comes to it and they attack us, we fight."

"With what?" she asked. "They have an army."

"I don't know if you've noticed, but we have Titan on our side now."