Last Bastion

Looking at the small 3 by 2-meter room, and seeing that it only had a bed, a nightstand, and a lamp in it, Uria had the look of a dead fish in her eyes. 

Tired as if she had undergone a massive battle recently, she simply collapsed on her bed. 

Let's go back to 3 hours ago...

After arriving at the guard post, simply called the Last Bastion, she started appraising the defenses set up: a massive steel door that blocked the way forward, currently only slightly ajar, more than 50 meters tall, with many small windows on the walls next to it through which soldiers could faintly be seen moving about.

"Don't you think it's impressive regardless of how many - ah right, sorry." Anne wanted to chat with her new friend, but then remembered Uria's amnesia.

 "... It is impressive indeed," Uria replied with slight interest, while observing the dozen mechs stationed in front of the gate and the cannons set up on the sides of the tunnel, ready to shred anything that came here.

Kraft, who had gone to make a report, returned and handed Uria a tiny strip of nanomaterial. After Anne helped her remove her gloves, Uria pressed her thumb's fingerprint onto the strip as Kraft had just instructed. The Identificator emitted a slight humming noise and glowed green.

"What's this thing?" Uria asked.

Realizing everyone had silently distanced themselves from her, Kraft and the others relaxed upon seeing the green glow.

"It checks if you're actually from our Arcology by comparing fingerprints of everyone born here, or if you're even human in the first place. We've had occasions when Mimics sneaked in, similar to your scenario of "being the lone survivor", killing dozens of people. If you were a mimic, we could have had profited, you know? Their hides are sought after by noble families for fashion. It'd be even better if you were a spy from another Arcology, for a much heftier reward by the intelligence agency."

"..." Uria thought something wasn't right with their heads.

"Well, that settles it. Take her to Inspection Facility 7 to check if anything's wrong with her. Disperse, but stay in touch, and no alcohol." "Roger."

Kraft and some others returned to standby near the gate, awaiting their next mission, while others simply went to relax at the local bars, where they wouldn't drink, definetely. Anne quickly navigated the facilities near the gate and showed Uria a facility called simply the "Inspection Center."

After entering a completely white room with three chairs resembling dentist's chairs. Feeling exhausted, she felt like she could easily fall asleep there even with the lights on with how comfortable it looked. An old woman in the adjacent room, polishing her spectacles, pointed to the middle chair upon Uria's entrance.

After sitting down, Uria saw the woman take a bored look at her, and seeing that nothing was wrong outwards at least other than a broken arm, began pressing buttons on her desk to determine necessary procedures. A big red "CONTAINMENT TERMINATION" button was also on her side.

Uria felt a slight prick in her broken hand from the chair itself, then lost sensation in her entire body as two mechanical arms emerged from the ground to swiftly treat and splint her hand. However, the nightmare began shortly after: cornea scan, blood analysis, neural interference scan, neuron sampling, bone marrow sampling, and questions from a simple AI program that kept restarting due to repeated failures.

Emerging from the room after 2 and a half hours with the look of a dead fish, Uria stared at the paper assigning her to a recovery room for monitoring in case her condition "suddenly worsens," and her new wristwatch providing information to help her return to training as a pilot and resume a normal life, in exaggerated detail. Unable to find Anne, she searched for her assigned recovery room. After asking around for a while she finally found the room assigned to her. 

Present time.

Currently, she was trying to learn everything about this world from the watch provided to her. Apparently, if she forgets things as she did, she'll be sent to the mech academy for two weeks to review the basics. If she fails the test at the end, she'll be reassigned to a rear position, similar to the woman handling inspections.

In addition, she discovered the supernatural force of this world: Quietus. The combat prowess of mechs is determined by the amount of a pilots Quietus. A high amount of it allows smoother operation of a mech or armor and, with sufficient Quietus, pilots can exceed their specifications and manifest abilities akin to telekinesis or material strengthening. Some of the more advanced abilities include regeneration, where damaged parts can regrow, both on the mech and pilot, and acceleration, which greatly speeds up the user's time flow at the cost of burdening the mech and pilot.

The surprising part was that multiple abilities could be manifested at the same time and anyone who practiced could learn new abilities, however it was both troublesome in the long run due to difficulty of learning abilities and how much some of them cost.

Regenerating the arm on the lowest tier of power armor would leave the average soldier completely spent and incapable of moving for a good few hours, maybe even plunge them into a coma.

So it was mostly those who had a high amount of Quietus from birth, due to their talent or their parents being powerful pilots, who practiced the really difficult abilities.

Take the girl who she took over as an example.

Asa only had a recon ability that worked by picking up vibrations, called "tremorsense", and a very simple body strengthening ability almost every pilot had, called "harden", which is only used when youre about to get hit due to its high cost to power.

Having read up until there, she set her alarm for 6 in the morning and went to sleep, feeling a slight pang of excitement and expectation. A battle junkie like her would always welcome new ways of fighting, and the entire fighting inside of a mech thing was new to her. 

Even in her previous world she looked down on people who had a mount due to their reliance on their companion, but this seemed more interesting as it was you who controlled it fully. The scam- subspace shadow didn't lie, this world did manage to pique her interest. Slowly closing her eyes she awaited the new dawn.