Part 2: From Faded star to new recruit.
Peewee? Well, imagine an obese Shiji Ikari, most likely. I'll get as many people as I can just so I can have an almighty
on the final level (which IIRC allows you to use everyone you have). EDIT: An update!
If you read the papers around the time of the war, this won't be new to you, but I'll recap anyway.
Missing in action my arse. I was in a field hospital drugged off my head on painkillers. And I'm sure there were memory suppressants there too.
The grunt tried to go public. He vanished.
And that's when things got interesting.
I'd been working in the combat sport industry for a while, making a few credits. Sometimes a director needed a pilot for an action film, and I leapt at the chance. But life wasn't good, and I'd been reduced to scrabbling around in the dust with the other vets.
My training had paid off, and I was able to make enough to live. But it's boring seeing one man dominate, they said.
It's boring to force a worthless pilot like that to eject. No value in it, just another notch on the score board.
Then I met someone oddly familiar.
He trained me once. Taught me to fight, to handle a rifle.
Impossible. I couldn't believe it. They even had a TV show.
I couldn't help but roll my eyes at this. Any one of our regular units could beat the enemy. Hell, three hundred infantry saw off an entire armoured company the other day.
I told him I wouldn't fight. My vow to avenge Karen was long forgotten after evenings of solitary drinking.
Then he reminded me of her. Pulled a little picture from his wallet and the sight of her red hair woke me up right away.
I was understandably shocked. In fact, I wasn't sure if I hated him for doing that or if I loved him for helping me get vengeance.
And all of a sudden my war certainly wasn't over. He was talking about secondments and pardons and all I could think about was Karen.
As if things couldn't be better, he gave me money as well. Enough to pay off all my debts and then refit my wanzer. My life had turned around.