Chapter Text
You were a relatively normal citizen of Earth, living alone in a small apartment in Tampa, making enough to make ends meet when the MDU announced the contest.
You scrambled to sign up as fast as you could. You have always wanted to be a mech pilot and travel the galaxy, wielding overwhelming power to defend the worlds of humanity and monsterkind from the dangers of the universe.
However, because you don't have magic since you aren't a monster, no pilot schools would take you. Without a formal pilot training, there was no way for you to join the MDU. In place of piloting mechs, you worked as a mechanic for commercial mecha used in construction and such, and satisfied your craving for mech based violence by being an extremely avid fan of the training battles the MDU would stream.
The contest was simple. Submit a few paragraphs detailing why you want to be a pilot, and what you could potentially bring to the MDU that would help you stand out. It was quite easy for you to fill out quite a bit more than that about how and why you could be a combat pilot with some training, and it only took one long month of waiting to get back the results of the contest.
You had been expecting a letter in the mail thanking you for participating and the inevitable sadness that came along with getting your hopes up on such a long shot. What you weren't expecting was a knock on your door at 10 PM, about an hour after you had gotten home from a job involving a mech that had gotten stuck on the road.
You almost never got visitors, and at this time of night you were quite suspect of any knockers. Slowly walking over to the door, you spy a man in a suit standing outside through the peephole. His suit is pristine, and you can make out a small 'MDU' pin near his breast pocket.
"Can I help you?" You ask through the door, watching the man as he simply stands outside your apartment. You get a feeling you've seen his face somewhere, his slightly greying hair and sharp features vaguely familiar.
"You're Y/N, correct? I'm Major Lang, here to inform you that you've won the contest to become a part of the Mecha Defense Unit and to provide an escort to the base you'll be taken to. May I come in?" His voice is rough and instantly recognizable as the man he claims to be.
Your mind is racing. That's the real Major Lang, decorated war hero and commentator for most of the MDU training matches you've seen. An actual hero is asking to be let into your apartment to bring you to join the MDU. Holy shit.
"Sure, come in. Feel free to take a seat sir." You try and keep your voice calm and level, but you're still freaking out on the inside. You quickly open the door, inviting him into your apartment and gesturing for him to sit down at the small table you have in the kitchen as you do so yourself.
"Thank you." He walks in and takes a seat across from you, before pulling out a small holodisk. He sets it on the table and what appears to be a contract pops up, a few dozen scrollable pages of info with marked places to tap for a signature.
"This is the offer we have for you. I know this is sudden, but the timetable we're working on is quite small, so I'm going to need you to be fast about this. Read through this and sign it, then we can get you packed. We're going to need to leave tonight to make the offworld flight planned for you." His tone is friendly but clipped, like he's trying to be cordial but clearly needs you to get a move on.
"Wait, tonight? That fast?" The words leave your mouth almost instinctually as you begin scrolling through the document. You've become somewhat of an expert at reading through these with how many liability forms you've had to sign for your job, and you quickly manage to get through about half of the document before he responds.
"Yes, the timetables are very rushed for this whole deal. Flights to where we're going are few and far between, and the next one is in three months time. Your background seems quite promising, but you're going to need as much time as possible with the mech to get properly acquainted with it." Lang says, his voice a bit less rushed as he sees you quickly parsing the contract. After a minute more of contract reading, you finish, pushing the disk back towards his side of the table before responding.
"Where will I be going? I didn't see anything about a specific base or even a job title. I am going to be a pilot, correct?" You ask, a small bit of concern creeping into your voice. Maybe you should have asked these questions before signing on the dozens of dotted lines.
As you respond, Lang looks you in the face and purses his lips slightly. He sighs, before speaking, "You're gonna be a pilot, but I can't really tell you more than that. The actual position we're offering is pretty secret, and until we get there we can't tell you any of the details."
He stands and looks around your apartment before continuing, "Pack for two days, and meet me outside. Don't worry about the apartment, the MDU will send some people to hold onto your stuff until the next ship over." With that, he grabs the holodisk and leaves out the front door, closing it behind him.
You stand there for a moment, stunned by the news, before quickly packing a bag and meeting him outside. The warm summer night hits you as you step out of the room, and as he starts walking you follow and ask him a question.
"Can I tell anyone about this? I gotta let my boss know I'm quitting and let my friends know I didn't just drop off the face of the planet"
Lang quickly responds, not looking back at you "You can let your boss know you're quitting and let people close to you know you're heading offworld, but you can't tell them anything about it being MDU related until we're offworld."
As he finishes, you make it down to the ground level and he gestures for you to get into a personal shuttle. It's thrusters and wings look incredibly out of place in the parking lot mostly full of rollers and hovercraft, and you realize it's probably worth more than the whole building you lived in. You step into the vehicle, it's interior resembling a limousine with how the seats in the back faced each other, and take a seat in one of the push seats, Lang sitting across from you.
As he closes the hatch, the machine lifts off, the noise surprisingly quiet given how fast you seem to be moving from the windows. The view of the city quickly fades from the windows, replaced with the sparseness of the center of the state. As you're staring out the window, Lang begins to speak again, voice much more relaxed.
"Now that we're in a properly secure setting, I can tell you where you're heading. The MDU has a base located within a deep space planetoid cluster, which holds the mechs you'll be working with. It's one of our larger space facilities, so it won't be too dissimilar to living in a large city, but it may take a bit of adjustment. The shuttle we're in will be directly transporting to the ship, so if you want to let people know you're gonna be gone for a while, best to do it now."
You look at Lang, confusion evident on your features as you look down to begin quickly messaging your few remaining friends and your boss. The messages are sparse as you don't want to risk anything from the MDU and you're honestly not sure of most of the information yourself.
A few minutes pass in silence, with the tapping of your fingers on your phone and the small raps of Lang's fingers on the armrests the only sounds present. The shuttle then begins to noticably slow down, with Lang peering out of the window as well. Outside, you can see a massive ship prepped for interstellar flight, and the close proximity. It doesn't take long for you to notice the space that seems built for the shuttle in the area you're approaching, and the shuttle soon comes to a halt, firmly lodged in the much larger structure of the spaceship.