Test drive

Sunday arrived, nothing much to do.

I has thoughts of wondering again through the city to familiarize myself but before I could leave my new home B.B. gave me a call.

"Hey newbie, I forgot to ask yesterday but are you free?"

"Yes, I got no plans today."

"Great! Then I will pass by your house in 30 minutes and give you a ride to the garage. Although you showed what you can do in the simulator, I still would like you to adapt to your new partner before we venture inside the Dungeon so that we lower the risks of having any surprises."

"Sure. That's great. I can't wait to pilot the real thing!"

"All right. Caught you in 30 minutes."

"Deal. Thanks."

Since I was preparing myself to head out, I didn't need to change clothes, but even so I looked at myself in the mirror...

"Yeah, this is no good. My clothes are screaming tourist no matter how I look at them."

I opened the wardrobe and looked around but honestly there was nothing much better than what I already had.

"I shouldn't have let my cousin prepare my clothes. Fuck! Now it's too late! This will have to do for now! Once I have more money, I can buy as many as I need!"

...

45 minutes later, B.B. and I arrived back at his Titan Garage.

Because now was daytime, everything was now better illuminated so I could see all details that I missed on my first time here.

"I forgot to get the keys, I will be right back!"

Saying so B.B. disappeared by the inner door that led to God knows where.

The first Titan in the front was B.B.'s Titan. A Heavy Melee standard model from 4 years ago made by Samurai Emperors, a Japanese company. It carried a huge laser sword on it's back, and had a built in laser on each arm. It's legs were quite powerful, allowing quick moves despite the Titan's huge weight and the multiple small thrusters allowed for jumps and other acrobatic maneuvers.

The second Titan was Thomas'. It was a rare Patriot's Light Weight Melee Titan. The series was discontinued after the release of this exact model a few years ago. Compared to B.B.'s Titan, it's quite outdated, but it's fast and agile and it seems like they exchanged the dual knifes for modern rifles, which is not a bad choice. I just worry about the ammo, as it should not have enough pockets to carry a lot of them.

Elise's Titan was the next one. A classic Patriot's model equipped with a Gatling gun. On the other hand there was a small Ax, and if I remember it right, it should also have some grenades inside it's arm, so it packs a lot of fire power and is ideal to kill many mobs at once.

There was no doubt that Thomas' Titan was the Tank of the party. It carried a gigantic shield as big as itself, which was no surprise considering this was a trade mark of it's manufacturer, The Queen's Guardians, a company specialized in Heavy Defensive Titans. Despite all the weight, it should be not much slower than B.B.'s Titan, and the only downside was that it had no other weapons aside it's shield.

The last Titan, Gary's Titan, or maybe I should say my temporary Titan. This one was a Light Weight Sniper made by Patriot. It's main weapon was a railgun and it's secondary weapons were two light machine guns. It was light and agile and at the same time it's armor was quite frail as it was not made to fight in the frontlines but support from behind.

"Looks great!"

After taking a closer look, I noticed not everything was as good as it looks. There were many damaged parts with cracks due to poor maintenance.

Right now these cracks may not be affecting the Titans but if left alone they could break anytime during a battle, due to not being able to handle the heat and strain.

"Hey, newbie. Catch!"

"Wha!?"

Suddenly appearing behind me, B.B. said something and threw something at me, which I caught reflexively.

"These are Gary's Titan's keys. Go ahead and start it out. We need to put in on the truck."

He didn't need to say another word. I quickly ran to the Titan and pressed the button on it's legs, making it crouch down so that I could enter it's cockpit. Inside the Titan there was a strong smell of cigarette, there was no need for one to be a genius to figure out that Gary had the bad habit of smoking here, for now I would have to endure it but inside my head I added a note on highest priority to take care of it once we got back.

"Damn! This place stinks! I will have to exchange air the filter and take out the seat to air it outside. And since I'm going through this trouble I might as well wash it at the same time!"

Turning the key made the whole panel in front of me lit up at once, the booting sequence started and just had to wait until this whole beast wake up. Message after message appeared on the screen as the Titan did it's automatic checks on the machine's integrity and to my surprise more than a few errors and warnings were found while doing so.

"The state of this guy is way worse than I thought..."

As the booting finished B.B. contacted me through the team communicator.

"Hey newbie, are you ready?"

"Man, there were multiple warnings and error while booting up. Is it always like this?"

"Don't worry about that! It always happens but never stopped the machine!'

"...Okay, since we are just going to test moving around, I think it's fine, but before entering the Dungeon I would like to check them out."

"I would like to tell you to not bother, but it's your machine now so fell free to do whatever you want. As long as you don't break it and know what you are doing, I have nothing against it at all."

"Right. I will do that. By the way, you never told me, when are we entering the Dungeon?"

"Eh? Did I forgot to tell you? We are doing it tonight!"

"TONIGHT!?"