After they finished chatting and boasting to each other in the post-game lobby, Gray and the rest of the team met up just outside the simulator pods to talk.
"Gray! Where the fruitcake did you learn military tactics?!?" exclaimed Geoff.
"Uhh, I like to read a lot and picked up on it." replied Gray.
"Bull crap, you barely even read the manual to this game!"
"Ok ok... I really love large scale strategic war games and used to play them all of the time on my old PC before getting into Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality gaming. 'Shogun Total War XXII: More Ancient War Killing' basically can teach you how to lead an army if you play the complete tutorial and solo campaign." said Gray.
"That game came out even before most of us were probably born..." said Caleb.
"...I am poor so this is my only VR game, I'm still using old Lindows 37 on my home PC." Gray lamented.
"Ah, so I bet you sold your soul or maybe your body to some rich old perv to get in on this, right?" giggled Yurika.
"No... just no... what made you even think that? I won a contest from Alterra Corporation and was given a Diamond-Tier copy of this game and VR bed."
"Oh, so no sugar momma then, I could really use one myself," said Geoff.
Stacia whispered to Yurika, "What's a sugar momma? It sounds like a snack cake."
Yurika leaned into Stacia and whispered something that Gray couldn't pick out into her ear. It was safe to assume it wasn't anything good due to Stacia's look of disgust while glaring at Geoff.
"It... it was a joke, honest!" Geoff replied sheepishly.
Ignoring Geoff's plea of innocence, they decided to give themselves a better name and walked over to the registration board again. Still, the same problem came up that everyone had their own idea.
"Ok, how about this, let's just press the random button until it gives us a name that we all are not completely disgusted with," suggested Gray.
Everyone nodded in agreement, so Gray started to click the random button for the name change. A rename would cost 5 merits at their current rank once a name was selected.
"How about this?" said Gray as he pushed the random button
'Delicious Devils' came up on the screen. Since Yurika was the only one who kind of liked it, Gray continued to press the random button and check everyone's reactions to each name.
"Excitable Eels"
"Fantastic Five"
"Gregarious Gamers"
"Horny Humans"
"Indignant Iguanas"
At this point, the names became silly as it is clear that no thought was put into the random button by the developers. Every random name was an adjective and a plural noun starting with the same letter as the adjective. Eventually, Geoff suggested combining a few of the goofy names into a decent one.
"How about 'Steel Demons'?" suggested Geoff
"Hmm... maybe, but it sounds kinda like just an alternative name from 'Metal Murderers' that the random button came up with." replied Stacia
"Demons are kinda sexy, though," said Yurika as her mind appeared to enter into a far-off fantasy world of her own. A creepy smile came across Yurika's face while her eyes seemed to be looking off into nowhere, and a small amount of drool could be seen coming out of the corner of her mouth.
The rest of the group glanced at each other for a second, then pretended like they saw and heard nothing from Yurika to protect their own purity.
"How about 'Steel Wolves'?" suggested Gray.
Caleb nodded in agreement and said, "I like it. It sounds very mercenary while hinting at the various qualities that make up a good team such as strength, teamwork, and communication."
"Uh, yeah, that is what I was going for," said Gray while laughing and thinking, "I'm probably the only one here that is into old Battletech lore."
"Eh, works for me. Anyone got any complaints?" asked Geoff while looking at Stacia and Yurika. Yurika finally came back to reality, and neither she nor Stacia had any complaints about the name.
"Ok, then from here on out we will be the Steel Wolves!" exclaimed Geoff while Gray typed it into the name field and accepted the change.
"Gray, I think I'll let you be the leader then for now, just don't expect me to stand by and say nothing if you screw it up though." said Geoff to Gray directly.
"I give him a 40 percent chance of screwing it up, " said Caleb, nodding solemnly.
"So that means 60 percent chance it'll work! I like those odds!" said Gray excitedly.
After finally deciding on a leader and a team name, they still couldn't decide on a game mode and decided to just go with random selection again.
__________
At Alterra Corporation Headquarters, Drake looked over a list of the teams that registered in-game. He wanted to select some matches for use in a promotion video to air the day before the official launch in 5 days.
"Nadia, we want to showcase that Alterra Online is all about realism. Select some video clips from various matches based upon length of the match, score, and professionalism of the team name. We don't want a team name like 'Milf Hunters' to be broadcast across the cities."
"Understood, sir," said Nadia sounding a little down. AIs can be hard to read emotions, but Drake could pick up on Nadia's emotions. One of the advantages of knowing her for years.
"You sound down Nadia, do you not want to do this?" asked Drake.
"Sir, it has nothing to do with your request, I am just disappointed."
"Disappointed with what?"
"Sir, out of the hundreds of names I devised for players to be able to use randomly, only one team, the 'Avenging Aardvarks', has used one of my generated names." said Nadia
"Maybe something is wrong with your naming conventions? Avenging Aardvarks sounds a little... how do I put this... immature?" said Drake trying to not sound mean.
"Sir, I think it's clever as well as all of the other ones I created."
Drake pulled up the list of names that Nadia had created to be used for random team names. After scrolling through the first few on his holoboard, he closed the document after reading "Juicy Junglers" with a sigh.
"Nadia..."
"Yes sir?"
"Do not name... anything... ever again."
"... Yes sir..."
__________
Before jumping into the next match, Gray and the others nearly forgot to look at what they earned from that last match.
"2 points each?!? That seems super low! It would take at least 500 matches just to make enough merits to buy a new weapon!" said Gray angrily.
"Indeed, but two things come to mind. One, matchmaking doesn't cost us any merit points, so if it were easy to make a lot this way, we would have merit point inflation. I imagine this will happen anyways once the game launches due to the amount of players. Fortunately it seems our market has fixed prices on most things. This should mitigate inflation in most cases unless they change it to a free market." said Caleb analytically.
The other 4 looked at Caleb with blank expressions, unable to comprehend where he came up with this idea. Considering he seemed to be the brainy type, they figured they might as well get used to these sorts of responses.
"So... I'm afraid to ask, but what is the other thing that comes to mind?" said Gray hesitantly.
"We do not have adequate knowledge about how to gain merits, in other words, we're doing it wrong."
"Well, as much as I want to know how to make merits easier, honestly I just want to do some more matchmaking right now!" said Gray to the others.
Everyone agreed and returned to the simulator pods to begin another round of random matchmaking.