Thread: Mayhem and Mecha (Kaybee and ChrisGabriel)

And sometimes life is just like you imagined it would be. Megan knew from a very young age that she would be just like her father, a soldier. One would call her a military brat, but what her adored father called her was a good little soldier. Lucky for her she could follow the right path, and even got accepted as a Marine. Years of studying and exercising behind it, she took to her chosen profession and life like a duck. It helped that she was already a certified diver, and an aspiring pentathlonist by the time she finished high school. She started dreaming about becoming a pilot, so she applied and went to mix and match something no one could have imagined. An air force school with NROTC program. It being a college level education with its own military regimen, she took an extra course here and there, and was aspiring to join up something that flies. But she was put on the sidelines, as most of the old equipment to fly jets as she wanted was built for smaller and male crew in minds. With her six feet tall lean frame and obvious feminine assets, she was put behind the more uniform and numerous male top pilots. Of course she still got airborne, but flying transports and fuel planes was not what she had in mind. She wanted to go fighting, and not pilot only drones from thousands of miles. The newly started program about driving mechanical armored things with not only by hands, but the whole body and mind agreed with her, and she was among the first ones to start the Virtual lessons - as it seemed that the physical manifestations of what one dubbed giant robots was still on the planning stage. Soon she was feeling more like a test pilot than a fighter, but seeing that it let her run around and occasionally fly from personal armors to whole robotic platforms fascinated her. And of course she was a pessimist enough to count on it being discontinued, and disbanded, because she could see the cost. It not only needed a highly trained pilot, but it put said pilot into more danger than the modern war was about. And the so called mechs still had a cost similar to a full fighter plane... They would even need a whole new armory setup, next to being able to use all conventional - and some unconventional - weapons. Who needed a walking tank, if you had a dozen ones made easily from the same money? Why would it be a god idea to put a whole arsenal into the hands of one pilot, when you can have two or three pilots guiding it? Corporal Magennis found herself at the end of her first term, and with an option to choose Air Force or Marines for her future. Near to fighter planes, but if her starting career was any indicator, never flying the supersonic wings of death and destruction. Being an adrenaline junkie, flying on a pre-approved flight path and only doing the emergency procedures, or piloting with a sophisticated game console was no longer an option. So, when a private military contractor asked her to suit up and go exploring and possibly fighting in a top secret command, she said yes and disappeared from the everyday life. What awaited her was cutting edge technologies, stable wormholes, aliens, and enough stressful situations that she was almost high all the time, only crashing when she had down time. Suiting up and working was now her whole life, and she would have forgot to eat and sleep if not for the inbuilt medical monitoring. She of course agreed to be the test pilot still, and had an agreement to have a first go at any augmentation when they finally had working cybernetic prototypes. For the next five years the Company had her ass. And she had her personal armorer, Cerise, who she could always count on to preserve her life and touch up her different armors. She had one that was almost a personalized space suit, just geared towards infiltration and surprisingly promising to fly around in some time in the future. Having able to use all military handheld hardware was always a plus. Then there was the ACPA version, where she had to don this oversized mechanical body, but would then be able to carry and lift - and use - vehicle mounted weaponry. And not only run fast enough for a jeep, but to toss said jeep on the side if she wanted. A promised future was adding armor and strength to it to do the same as a full tank, just still be able to jump and maneuver like a person. With hands geared more towards to demolition, but still sensitive enough to lift a wounded soldier. And finally there was planning for some transforming or modular platform that could go from ground to air and back any time, and maybe even function underwater or in space. No surprise that the new shielding was that big of a breakthrough.