Chapter 1

I was always able to deal better with animals than people. Too many times in that first impression with people my personality would come across as the equivalent of very rough sandpaper, my work ethic would see me past that as people would get to know me. It did help with my job skills, those of farm hand. It didn’t matter what the animal was, horse, cow, dog, even rats, I could talk to them all like a person, though I am so glad that it was like a switch that I could flip on and off or there are times, I would have failed to get any sleep. I hid this though, all the while I used this skill to give me an edge over my fellow workers, taking the toughest tasks when dealing with the animals and making it seem simple. Don’t get me wrong, I never commanded the animals I worked with, asking more and explaining what I needed them to do, got way better results. I never questioned this, but I had a tendency to wander, rarely staying in the same place for more than a few seasons. I tried to explain, many a time and the closest I got was trying to find the song that was calling me, a voice on the wind. For several years I did this, everyone I worked for would end up pleading for me to stay, from my foster family that I left when I was barely thirteen, to the young woman who offered me her everything to stay halfway through the year I turned seventeen. By everything, I do mean everything, the morning I was set to leave, Amanda ambushed me with her naked body. With breasts that overflowed my hands, brown hair past her full ass, and the rest of her was no slouch of a figure either, at twenty-five she had worked on the farm all her life, and had that toned, sun kissed figure, but my song didn’t end here, and combined with how intimidated I felt by her forwardness, I was still being urged to go on by the song that never steered me wrong, so I would ride the transport to the next town, inquire about work and start over. At five ten, with strong broad shoulders, farm life was good to me. Spare time at the many farms would have me learning from my fellow farm hands, many of whom were former guards or soldiers, as a result, I knew fairly well how to take care of myself. Combined with my skill for talking with animals, and the few times that I encountered bandits were no issue so long as they were on foot. My only real possession, other than my clothes, was a blade gifted to me by my foster family that had seen much better days.

Just after I turned eighteen, I ended up at the biggest town I had ever been too. There was even a festival going on at the time. I played several of the games as I moved around the area, but then the song that urged me to move on every few months almost blared in my head at one point. As I turned my head, it achieved a higher harmony than it ever had before, almost heavenly in the quality of the song. A couple hundred yards away in that precise direction was a huge stall being unloaded, with the object that captivated me was a huge, almost transparent egg, with a giant humanoid body inside. I got closer, not quite in a daze, but almost willingly enthralled by the song that I wanted to embrace. As I got closer, I could hear what was being said by an older woman next to a big computer that was hooked up to the cocoon. “Come one, come all ladies, step up and see what your capability is. The longer you can stay within, the higher your rating. If you can somehow activate the Sacred Mechanoid, thus having it emerge from the cocoon form you see before you, then you could even be admitted to the academy in the Holy Land, raising your status so very far. You also don’t have to worry about the Ahou poisoning, as this computer will monitor your vital limits with me being able to manually eject you, should you exceed the threshold before the pain gets to be too much for you that is.”

I get to fifty feet away and the song for so long that it has been a nameless tune, actually has words to it now. “Fly along with me in the sky, show the world where you belong, be the hero of your story as you fly away with me now.” I bask in the song with those words sticking with me, but I can somehow tell that this Sacred Mechanoid is both damaged and incomplete. As I’m trying to puzzle why that makes sense in a strange way, several young women have tried their luck, with only one making it to the humanoid body within, but only one arm of the mechanoid emerges before she screams in pain as the computer throws out an alert. She is quickly retrieved but with light burns apparent on her arm from the Ahou poisoning. This discourages the next few women in line. I realize as I look around, that I’m the only guy in this crowd of over one hundred women, and I don’t know why the operator of this has only called out to women. Yet I would feel like an idiot if I asked a question that put the spotlight on me. I decided to wait towards the end of the day to try my luck to see if what the song was singing to me was true.

Five more hours go by, and with night almost upon us, the crowds have thinned considerably. I won many a food item or other small prize while enjoying myself, along with being slipped more than few numbers by interested women. I head back over to the mechanoid and call out to the operator of the stand as she gives a last call out to the few women still wandering around. “Mamam, I didn’t want to ask earlier, but why did you only call out to women? Can males not pilot a mechanoid?”

The woman presiding over this looks at me in a patronizing manor as she turns to me. “Do you not know, young man? While female mechamasters, the pilots of mechanoids are maybe one in a hundred for bare minimum ability, males mechamasters are so very rare, maybe one in thirty thousand or even rarer but are always at the bare minimum equal to a female of average ability. The fact that it is the noble or royal bloodlines that have the greatest chance at having the ability, but those from the common population do appear from time to time. What has drawn you here?” She asks at the end.

“I actually came to this town looking for work, but was distracted by the festival, yet I didn’t want my ignorance to be broadcast earlier, or I would have enquired much earlier.” I speak some of the truth but keeping the song I hear close to my chest.

She then has a curious look as she wonders. “It won’t hurt to see. You can try, but if you can even enter the cocoon, let alone the cockpit of the mechanoid, your life will be forever changed. If you proceed and are even minimally successful, so many women will fight for the chance to be with you, to have you impregnate them.” Her words leave me on edge, so very much, as while I have had the attention of women, should I succeed, I could very well be mobbed. I debate the actions I could take in my head with their consequences, but the song that I have followed most of my life has helped me make my choices and not steered me wrong before, so let us see what the path in front of me has in store.

I walk up the steps after setting my bag down and resting my sword against it, my heart thumping to the beat of the song. I place my hand against the shell of the transparent egg, and magic happens. For the young women I saw earlier, it was slow progress for even the best of them, like they were moving through sludge, but not me. One moment my hand is on the egg, the next has me taking a breath from within the cockpit, a phantom liquid-like sensation settling all around me. I hear a deep female moan and my point of view becomes higher as the Sacred Mechanoid activates, the cocoon shrinking as the humanoid form emerges, with more armor and a distinct shape, to the astonished excitement of the woman that I talked to. I then hear a female voice in my head. “I will gladly serve you for however long I last. I am old and weary, having been in many a battle over the last two hundred years, but now that I have found you, I will gladly serve you until I am but dust on the wind.” The mechanoid moves with ease, no hesitation with the controls, a combination of instinct/direction from the voice, though I somehow feel many small pieces missing, and I ask the voice in my head why? “You can feel those gaps in my frame, simply astounding. A very high sync rate is needed to get me back to prime shape, with the maintenance only slowing my demise. Please stretch and push like a muscle, just beneath the surface, ohhhh.” I follow the voice’s instructions as she tells them, and when I try to push, I feel a push back from within my head, like the very last piece slotting into place. As the female voice moans in pleasure at the end, I match her as my pants suddenly become so very tight, a current shooting through my body, lighting up my nerves like so many fireworks, and suddenly I see more than what is in front of me, I can see miles away with ease as I focus my vision, along with no need for adjustment when I switch the view back to being at my feet. The controls within my hands flow away and back into the frame, my movements become the mechanoids movements as I go from sitting to standing, as boots form on my feet with a small platform for me to stand on. I feel incredible, so very strong, even as I feel that a slight touch would have me shoot off in my pants, stimulated as I am. I look down and see that I had drawn the attention of the stragglers. The few women present are stunned at what has happened, but as they yell out for me, I take a step back in shock and it’s like a leap, clearing many meters with ease. A couple of female mechamasters, having just activated their own mechanoids at the sound of the commotion, run towards me, their ‘suits’ having my jaw drop, ‘is that what they wear when piloting the mechanoids’ leaving very little to the imagination, my face turning red with blood, making my condition easier to bear as the blood shifts locations. What can only be very skimpy underwear that enhances their forms with what is covered. Before I can do anything else, my vision starts to get dark with the voice chiming in, “The awakening you have done and taking me back to such prime shape has unfortunately taken a toll a on your currently meager reserves. Until we become one once again but know that I will serve you and no other forever more.” The mechanoid reverts to the egg with him being gently deposited on the ground, like a protector and their charge.

The presenter is picking her jaw up off the ground along with everything else as the computer being used to measure the rating of anyone who enters the mechanoid explodes, the last number of two thousand, with only her seeing it, being visible before it fades to black. “That boy is a treasure, a fucking national treasure.” She mumbles to herself. Ratings are known to grow with time and experience, with a seasoned strong female mechamaster possibly reaching three thousand at the most, so two thousand on what she has to believe is his first time, she has to hide him for her benefactor, the princess Lashara, as he could be the key to cementing her rule when her father passes, or even starting her own faction.

While the other women are stirred into a frenzy and rushing to the young man, almost bring the ember of the winding down festival back to a raging bonfire of intensity, the two mechamasters are torn between the want to guard the young man from the mob and the want to take him for themselves, damn the consequences.

Fifteen hundred miles away, the royal palace.

“AHHH.” Lashara screams as her phone awakens her from her attempt at an early day, her eyes having closed a scant fifteen minutes before. Scrambling over to the station, she slams the accept button to stop the ungodly sound, about ready to give an earful to whoever called her at such an hour. When she sees who called her, she almost scowls, but huffs more in a ‘let’s get this over with pronto’ kind of manner. “What the hell Renee, you could have waited until the morning to call me on possible mechamasters, I need my sleep after all.”

“I will not apologize, not to you or even your father at this urgency. You should be glad I’m so loyal. You need to get here last week, this is so urgent, at max speed if possible. Code Academy ten, sub thirteen. see you by tomorrow night, coordinates to follow.” Renee then hangs up before even a rough location of the call is determined.

Lashara is so shocked, she almost brains herself on her dresser as she misses a few steps as the quick code is translated. The minimum rating to enter the mechanoid academy on scholarship for ability is two hundred. So, two hundred times ten, two freaking thousand, and thirteen is M. She almost has a heart attack as the implications percolate through her head. Whole abet small nations have been destroyed in attempts to obtain a seasoned male with a one thousand rating. For what has to be an amateur with twice that, the reactions would be incalculable as nations the world over would burn as fights break out to try and claim him. She speed dials her personal ship and knights to make ready, immediately. She doesn’t tell them why, but they are used to her antics enough to not question her sudden desire to travel.

“Something is up with Lashara, Wuhanly. She sounded almost scared but still her very much calculating self.” Chiaia remarks as she quickly packs her bags alongside her roommate and fellow knight at the palace, Wuhanly Shume.

“You are overreacting, Chiaia. Surely it can’t be that bad.” Wuhanly replies back, her own bag almost packed.

“You don’t know her like I do. You would think I would be used to this, having grown up with her, but no this so odd.” Chiaia says as she finishes, leaving the room for royal hangar and Lashara’s personal ship, the Swan.

Ten hours later and they finally arrive at the valley mentioned in the coordinates, the crew having flown through the night by pushing the engines hard. Her father the king was told by Lashara herself about her imminent departure. His fifteen-year-old daughter was like her mother in many ways, very impulsive, and greedy as hell, but never doing things without a purpose, so he hopes to be told the full story when she returns.

‘Where the hell am I?’ I think as I push myself up from the couch, I find myself having rested upon. “Good, you’re awake. Can we have a chat?” A husky female voice asks, bringing my attention to the doorway that I hadn’t had time to notice, but I’m drawn to the sound of her casually unbuttoning her shirt, revealing a lacy, leaf-patterned bra that doesn’t so much lift as enhance, giving all the appearance of enticing one to partake of the treasures within. The woman is tan, lightly so with the color only being a few shades different with a possible line of distinction being shown half-way up her biceps, is slim of shoulder but sleek of body, several inches shorter than me, with what must be an on-purpose gait as every step she takes sets her assets to lightly shake. Her feet are bare, and her shorts can barely be called such, as they stop just before the meat of her ass would be revealed. Shoulder-length black hair with a few yellow streaks finishes off her appearance. With a gulp I try to back away, almost falling off the arm of the couch, as I think I have an idea of what she wants to ‘chat’ about, and despite being a red-blooded male, I have my own ideal wants when it comes to romance and relationships, thus me refusing the almost frank invitation being presented to me.