Gray and Kelly finished reviewing each other's team and doing their best to pick out flaws. Gray was happy that he was able to get a second opinion as he was too nice to actually find the negatives in his own team. Instead of working on it right away, they instead decided it would be more fun to just join in on the fun instead of spoiling it.
"I got the flag! I'll cover you guys!" Gray yelled during on match.
"Damn it Gray! Stop using the flag as a weapon!" Yurika yelled out back.
From the other teams perspective it was hilarious seeing Gray try and stab them with a flag pole during a Capture the Flag game, but his own team was in tears as he was wasting time doing something silly.
When Paul saw Xyra lining up a sniper rifle round on Stacia, he ran his mech in between her and the shot with his arms straight up and yelled "Save the President!"
Even Xyra laughed slightly at this and her shot ended up missing anyways causing Paul to just stand there with his mech between Stacia and Xyra.
Stacia politely said, "Get out of my shot ass hole!"
For the last fun match, everyone eventually agreed upon grenades and grenade launchers for everyone and a simple death match, the map was randomly selected and it ended up being a small urban map with a junkyard in one corner.
As everyone started tossing grenades at each other, they found it was quite hard to damage themselves as the mechs had enough armor to resist most of the blasts unless the grenade was right next to the mech when it went off.
Caleb inspected one of the grenades after seeing a crane with a large electromagnet on one end for lifting scrap metal. He took a grenade and held it up to the electromagnetic crane and saw it grab the grenade. When he moved his mech near the electromagnet, it tried to grab some of his larger armor plates, but the smaller ones were not attracted. A big smile crossed Caleb's face.
"Yurika, can you protect me for a few minutes?" Caleb asked
"Uhhh, sure, this isn't as fun as I thought it would be so if you have some idea of sorts that would help!"
"Oh I do!" Caleb said with a grin.
"Okay! I'll keep them off of you!"
Caleb then dug through the scrap metal with his mech and found some old copper piping. Using the strength of his mech, he was able to coil it around the grenade like it was string almost. Caleb then pulled the cover off of the fuse.
Modern grenades for mechs and foot soldiers have multiple options for delivery. Time, Impact, and even distance can be used. Caleb wanted to use time and impact so he set the grenade to explode a few seconds after impact. The grenade has a decent power supply since it had an electronic ignition system.
Twisting each end of the copper pipe, he managed to twist each end around the power supply for the grenade then force the cover back on the fuse. The grenade looked the same as before, except for the copper coils around the entire thing making it look like a strange futuristic grenade.
"Ready!" Caleb shouted to Yurika.
"Ok! What now?"
"Get Gray over here by himself, I can't wait to try this out!" Caleb said excitedly.
Yurika grinned and then said in an open channel, "Gray! Caleb says he will duel you for my affection! I'm considering it! We're by the junkyard!"
Everyone watched as one mech split apart from the others and headed towards the junkyard.
"So Caleb, you want Celes and Yurika! Have you no shame!" Gray wasn't serious as he knew Yurika wasn't serious, but he didn't mind playing the fall guy to whatever they had planned.
"Yep! Have a grenade!" Caleb yelled.
Gray watched Caleb lob a grenade at him and thought it looked a bit strange, still, the throw was going to be a bit short so Gray started to approach Caleb and keep a short distance from the grenade.
As soon as the impact sensor triggered, current went through the copper pipe now turned wire around the metal grenade creating an electromagnet.
Gray expected the grenade to explode on impact, but instead it bounced and rolled towards Gray. Gray watched in fascination as the grenade rolled towards his mech, then it started to accelerate once it got closer.
"What the heck!" Gray said in surprise as the grenade started picking up speed, hit some rubble, and bounced up towards his mech. Gray tried to sidestep the grenade but it followed his mech and then stuck to the lowest piece of thick armor, which happened to be Gray's upper thigh.
The grenade stuck to Gray's leg, then detonated, his leg ended up being blown off and his mech fell over with a scorch mark on his mech's pelvis and opposite leg.
Gray's mech fall over on its back after losing a leg and Gray yelled, "What was that thing!?"
"Electromagnetic sticky grenade!" Caleb said proudly.
"Hah! Didn't expect that! Ok, I'll take care of Celes for you then if you really do want Yurika." Gray said jokingly.
"Hey, everyone, I think Gray wants to see how high we can blow his mech up in to the air" Yurika said coldly.
Everyone readily agreed regardless of which team they were on and started piling up their grenades to make a bed of grenades on the pavement near where Gray fell over.
"Wait, I was just kidding!" Gray made it look like he was struggling when Yurika, Caleb, and Geoff picked up Gray's mech and placed it on the bed of grenades.
"Begin the countdown sequence!" Stacia suddenly yelled!
"Wait!" Jono suddenly said, "We're missing one final touch!"
"What are we missing?" Stacia asked.
Jono's mech walked over to Gray's mech, then poured out all of the grenades from his grenade launcher next to the head of Gray's mech, "We want the head to get extra distance after all!"
Everyone except Gray's mech moved a good distance away as they had never tried setting off this many grenades at once, but since they were in a simulator they were safe anyways and instead just made bets upon where they think the different parts will land.
"Resume countdown!" Jono yelled.
"3… 2… 1!" the group chanted. As a group, everyone detonated their grenades at the same time.
Over 80 grenades roughly the size of a propane tank exploded simultaneously causing a blinding light to everyone watching. Unfortunately for Gray he was unable to see what happened as his mech was registered as destroyed and he was returned to the simulator lobby until he respawned.
Everyone else however watched as Gray's mech was disintegrated from the explosions, due to the excessive amount of grenades near the head, the remains actually spun end over end making it look like a goofy swan-dive. Various pieces of armor and debris flung away from the rest from the rotational force of the spun.
Amid the cheers of everyone, the carcass of Gray's mech finally landed with a crash next to the scrapyard.
Gray could only watch the recording of it, but that was just as satisfying since he could speed it up or slow it down as he wished.
When Gray respawned in his mech, he ran back over to everyone else, then dropped all of his grenades and emptied his grenade launcher in a pile. He set the timer for 4 seconds, started it, then jumped on the pile of grenades and yelled "BANZAI!!!"
The explosion wasn't as big as the first one, but it was still enough to cause his mech to get launched about 40 meters and flip over at the same time.
Inspiration suddenly struck everyone and everyone ejected from their mechs to force a respawn. The true disaster began at this point as everyone was making piles of grenades to launch themselves, sometimes alone, sometimes in groups, but either way the map was littered with mech corpses and fragments of armor.
Kelly looked at the time and shouted "Crap, guys, we gotta go! It's already past the time we were allotted!"
The girls on Kelly's team were all disappointed, but they understood it.
"Wait, just one more, I have an idea!" Gray said excitedly.
All of the girls on Kelly's team started to say "Pleeeeeaaasssseee?" to Kelly and she eventually relented, "Fine, what do you have in mind Gray?"
"Paul! Get your shield! Everyone else, pile your grenades against that bunker and keep it as tight as possible!"
A small mountain of grenades formed next to the bunker and Gray walked over to Paul and took his shield, he then laid it flat against the bunker with as high of an angle as possible, then laid down on it.
"Tuck those grenades under me that fell out and then prepare for the launch!"
Everyone wedged the grenades in as tight as they could then backed away to begin another countdown.
"3… 2… 1!"
The grenades went off with another massive explosion, the bunker Gray used to prop up the shield was obliterated and Gray and the shield were nowhere in sight. Looking up, they saw Gray's mech flying up and well overhead while the remains of the now shattered shield rained down from above.
"I believe I can flllyyyyyy" Gray started to sing, but before he could get into any more words of the song, his mech came to a crashing halt as he hit the invisible barrier that bordered the edge of the map causing his mech to fall apart instantly.
"He always did say he wanted to go out with a bang..." Kelly said whimsically.