Greg

Mecha Skirmish 1

Added 2025-05-26 18:47:03 +0000 UTC

On the Discord server (which you should join), everyone's always pushing to add mechas into HC, but I'm the kill-joy who always resists, so here's some giant robots in HC.

———

Neakli sprinted from the graveyard the moment that the gate opened. “It’s the stadium battleground!” announced the geroo as soon as she recognized a familiar landmark.

In her headset, Rolanz shouted, “Ooh, I love the stadium!” The geordian grunted as he gunned his mecha’s engines. “Sniper. I’ll take the control booth.”

Somchai growled a deep, menacing sound. The lio roared, “You always take sniper!”

“Well, she’s the best shot,” laughed the coosa. Tota added, “Get good and you can snipe. Who we up against?”

Neakli darted through a storm drain and popped back onto the road. “Dunno. Haven’t seen them—” Then, she groaned. Leaping over a hill, four identical mechas, each painted bright red, ran shoulder-to-shoulder. “Shit! It’s Ace and the Jokers.”

She dove for cover and rolled. An instant later, a missile streaked by, converting the spot where she’d just been into a smoking crater. “I’m pinned down behind the vendor carts. Can anyone cover me?”

“Not in position yet. Be there in a sec,” said Somchai. “Which is the ace?”

“No idea,” said the geroo. “I hit the deck the moment I saw them.”

Neakli’s team, gold-black-gold, was a stellar group—quick acting, well-coordinated, deadly. They usually ranked second on the server each week. But red-red-red—or Ace and his Jokers to Neakli’s squad—always held that first slot.

In reality, Ace was the only part of the red-red-red team with any true skill. The other three were just wildcards. Sometimes they shot well, sometimes they ran in the wrong direction. There was no predicting what they would do. But Ace was a master at the game, and he had a real knack for not only keeping his teammates alive, but in knocking out enemy advances with a devastating precision.

“Got one!” shouted Somchai, but his laughter was short-lived. “Nope. I’m out.”

“Damn it!” grumbled Neakli. Her mech got up on its knees and prepared to peek over the carts only to spy the blinking light on a limpet mine glued to the cart’s side. Her screen flashed white, and she was back in the graveyard, waiting for the cool-down gates to open once more. “He got me.”

And so, the game went as it usually did when Neakli went up against Ace. Her crew quickly gave up on winning and focused instead on trying to score as many kills against the jokers as they could manage.

“Hey, what the heck is this?” called Neakli as she stepped up to a microphone in the middle of the stadium field. “A mic stand?”

“Oh! They added that in the patch yesterday,” said Tota from the graveyard. “Your bumpers and triggers give you four different voice filters to talk cross-faction.”

“Why would I want to talk to the enemy?” asked the geroo.

Sniper fire dropped her to the playing field, and a moment later, a heavily filtered voice—like a robot shouting into a megaphone—trash-talked her, “What kind of idiot stops in the middle of a battle to stare at a mic stand?”

Neakli groaned. “Six hours of downtime yesterday just so they could patch in a way to trash talk each other?”

“Yeah, isn’t it great?” asked Tota.

Neakli rolled her eyes. This sounded like the dumbest feature ever. The inability to communicate cross-faction was one of the things she liked so much about Mecha Skirmish. “I hate it already.”

“Try the left trigger voice,” suggested Rolanz. “That’s my favorite.”

So, when the gates opened once more, Neakli trudged back toward the stadium. Along the way, she spotted one of the jokers running in place, like the mecha was trying to push through a wall. She launched a stinger barrage as she ran by and took the easy kill.

Somchai was locked in a heated firefight with a red mecha—both popping up from opposite sides of a concrete bunker, emerging too quickly to aim a shot, ducking back quickly enough to keep from getting shot themselves.

Neakli gave the pair a wide berth. She ran through the southern tunnel, hopped over a trip-line someone had hidden in the shadows, and emerged onto the stadium field. She didn’t see anyone else, so she sprinted to the mic and keyed the left trigger. “Hello?”

Her voice sounded like flatulence, and all three of her teammates laughed into the com-channel.

Neakli rolled her eyes and tried again with the right bumper. This time her voice sounded musical and lovely. “Hey, Ace! You wanna hang out with us after the match? Food court on thirteen, in front of the burger bar.”

“What?” shouted Somchai. “You’re not supposed to invite the enemy out to lunch!”

“Yeah!” chimed in Tota and Rolanz.

“Why not?” yelled Neakli and she ran for the stands.

“The mic is for trash-talking!” whined the other three in unison.

Neakli heard the robotic voice behind her, so she spun to face one of the red mechas. “Okay, sounds fun!” he said. Then, he blasted a concussion grenade to his side and leapt just as it went off before performing a perfect cartwheel.

“No! No! No!” shouted Somchai. “We are not hanging out with the enemy. Get back on that mic and tell him we’re not coming.”

“Really?” asked Neakli in surprise. “Are you sure?”

“Yeah, cancel,” said Tota and Rolanz.

“Okay, fine, whatever,” she grumbled as she ran back to the microphone.

But no sooner had she keyed the mic, one of the jokers popped up from the stands and tagged her with a heat-seeker.

Neakli groaned. “Where was my sniper? You were supposed to be covering me!”

Rolanz waved from his seat on a tombstone. “Sorry, Ace got me while you were asking him out on a playdate.”

“Fine,” she grumbled, “I’ll run back and tell him, ‘never mind’.”

Neakli waited and waited for the cooldown timer to expire, but only a moment after the gates opened, the match came to an end, transporting all four back to the lobby.

“Uh, sorry guys,” said Neakli.

A pop-up detailing the four’s dismal kill and death statistics filled the screen.