Back at the Alliance Military base south of New Venice, an announcement was made to all players that the military would be accepting players of all skill levels into their ranks. If you joined, you were promised a salary of merits, exclusive mechs, exclusive missions, and advanced mech combat training. Gray and the rest of the team were sitting at the cafeteria enjoying dinner while discussing the announcement.
"Wow, that sounds too good to be true..." Gray thought.
"Yeah, I bet there is some sort of catch, but on the other hand you could consider it the cost of receiving such things." Geoff said.
Paul's armlet chimed indicating he received a message and opened it to look at it. "Xyra, it looks like our old team decided to join up with the military..."
"That's good... they need direction" Xyra said quietly.
"Huh? It sounded like you said 'They should they need an erection'" Geoff said as him and the others, except for Yurika who was sitting next to her, couldn't understand what Xyra said.
"She said they need direction you creep!" Yurika threw a carrot at Geoff that deflected off his face into Gray's cup of milk while Gray was lifting the glass to take a drink. Gray ended up choking on the carrot as he wasn't expecting anything in the cup and ended up spraying his milk all over Yurika as he started choking and then finally knocked it loose.
"Payback is a bitch!" Geoff said with a grin as Yurika blinked and wiped the milk off of her face.
Yurika looked deadpan at Gray and, while glancing at Geoff, asked "Gray, what's the penalty for team killing?"
"No penalty in this case... in fact I might help..." Gray said while looking at Geoff.
Geoff scooted further down from Gray and the rest just in case and kept his head down while eating.
Paul received another message and was surprised, then he forwarded it to everyone else. "Check it out, one of them sneaked a photo of the contract you have to sign. Pen and paper sign even which seems a little old-fashioned, but you can't hack a piece of paper after all."
Everyone opened their message and started to read the contract.
"Looks fairly standard to me..." Gray said.
"You read it already?" Geoff said with surprise.
"Of course, I'm a fast reader!"
"He's lying, he didn't read it completely or just skimmed it. Gray's eye's close slightly and he purses his lips a little bit when he's unsure of something." Stacia said.
Everyone turned to look at Stacia, then Yurika jokingly prodded her with her elbow and said "Paying really good attention to Gray, huh?" with a cheesy grin on her face.
Stacia's face blushed and she waved her hands and said excitedly "N-No... Well, I mean yes, but I mean... I don't know what I mean!"
Stacia looked down and stabbed her fork into her food without looking up and continued to eat quietly.
"Allow me to go over the key points of the contract." Caleb said informatively
When everyone turned their attention to Caleb, he continued and said "Overall, this contract is fairly constricting. We would be forced to partake in certain missions after our training period, which is expected, but we'd be unable to do any matchmaking except when we're on leave. The salary is fairly generous but we still make more from matchmaking. The type or any statistics of the exclusive mechs are not included, only that we would be given access to the next generation of mechs for missions."
"Hmm... knowing what we know as Diamond-tier players leads me to believe this was targetted to the other players. My biggest concern is that if we don't join, will we continue to be able to use this base or will we be kicked out?" Gray said with concern.
"Since they're keeping it a secret from everyone else, I speculate that they may continue to keep it a secret as long as possible since players are not afraid of dying." Paul added.
"I disagree, but only on the reason they are keeping it a secret. They want to keep it a secret because they want to keep the players trapped in the fantasy that this is a game so they can control them." Caleb said.
Gray thought for a moment then added "That... that sounds like a ticking time bomb."
"It is, I suspect they want to end the war as fast as possible and thus are giving the players everything they need to complete it. Haven't you guys noticed a complete lack of aircraft here?" Caleb added.
Gray had also noticed that and said "Yeah, that seemed a little odd, but it could be that after the war it was considered wasteful to use air trasportation due to lack of resources. Plus there is a VTOL on the helipad, but I've never seen it go anywhere."
"Indeed..." Caleb said, then Caleb took out a small notepad and pen, wrote a message on a sheet of paper and passed it to Gray.
Gray didn't know what to expect so he just opened up the folded note and read to himself "I have a proposal I would like everyone to consider, but I'd rather not do it here at the base. We don't know who or what is listening in on us."
Gray glanced at Caleb, tore up the note hastily then said to Caleb "No need for that, we're just going to discuss the future plans of our team."
Gray then faced everyone and said in a loud voice that any eavesdroppers could hear "I am for joining the military personally, we can use the support and the extra training and mechs will benefit us more in the long run." while saying this Gray took the pen from Caleb and wrote on his hand 'Caleb's room, midnight' and made sure everyone read it before he rubbed it off his hand.
Caleb whispered to Gray "Why my room?"
Gray whispered back "Because I'm sure your paranoid ass has already swept your room for bugs and what not, the rest of us probably do not know how to do that."
"Fair point..." Caleb whispered back then got up to leave and added "I have something to do, I'll see everyone later"
"Ok, see you later!" Geoff said and everyone else added their various goodbyes.
"Well, we've got a few hours to kill and personally I'm burned out of matchmaking for now, so let's all just do whatever we want until later." Gray said.
Yurika pouted and said "Awww... but I haven't destroyed enough things yet!"
Gray thought for a moment "I wonder if Ginro would let her play around in monster movie mode in a sandbox for a bit. She's not as beautiful as Felicia, but she is definitely cuter so I'm sure that pervert wouldn't mind."
"I'm going to go nap for a bit then." Stacia said as she headed back to her pilot quarters.
Xyra leaned and whispered something to Stacia that made her eyes light up.
"Actually Xyra and I are going to the rec room!" Stacia said
"Hey! What's going on?" Yurika said not wanting to be left out from the other girls.
"...sauna..." Xyra said with her usual barely audible voice.
"Hmmm... that sounds good, but I'm feeling aggressive and want to destroy stuff" Yurika said while biting her lip.
Gray, Geoff, and Paul felt a tinge of fear and all of them gulped loudly.
"Ermm... I got an idea of what we can do if you want to destroy stuff..." Gray said meekly to Yurika.
"Yeah?!? I've been waiting for you to offer that! Come on! Let's go!" Yurika got up excitedly and took Gray's hand and yanked him over towards the simulator pods.
"Wait... no... this..." Gray tried to say something but Yurika kept stopping him.
As Gray was being dragged off Paul and Geoff saluted Gray. "We will never forget your brave sacrifice Gray!"
"I'm not going to die idiots!" Gray finally yelled out, but when he saw how excited Yurika was he thought to himself "At least I hope I don't die."
Gray saw Paul and Geoff also head to the rec room following Stacia and Xyra and had an evil thought and yelled "Geoff! Paul! You can't go into the sauna with the girls!"
Paul and Geoff looked at Gray with a look of "WTF dude!" while Stacia yelled "Don't follow us creeps!"
Gray felt better... why should he be the only one to suffer...