Era

29

"Fuel cells?"

"Check."

"Clear ventilation?"

"Check."

"Safety harness?"

"...you didn't give me a safety harness."

"Correct!"

"Hatsume, you didn't—"

"Start test!"

"I swear to- fucking shit."

Gym Sigma exploded in a burst of smoke and sound as Era was sent flying upwards at a sharp angle. She felt herself crash into the ceiling before slowing long enough to flip a switch on the jetpack, stabilizing just as she began to fall once more and finding herself hovering a few feet above the ground.

"Hm, it seems like the initial propulsion is still too strong." Hatsume scribbled something on her clipboard.

"Yeah, definitely needs to be more gradual," Era called down after clearing her lungs of smoke and dust. "I don't think I'd have been able to get it under control if there wasn't a roof above me."

"How's the flight feel?"

"After stabilizing? It's alright. A little hot on my back." That was an understatement; Era could feel her skin starting to sting with surface burns, but it wasn't extreme enough to comment on.

Hatsume hummed, marking down something else. "Okay. Try landing."

"You didn't tell me how to land."

"Support gear should be streamlined and intuitive! Telling you would defeat the purpose!"

Grumbling curses beneath her breath, Era gingerly adjusted the power output by slowly twisting a dial haphazardly strapped onto her wrist. The thrusters sputtered, and she dropped a few feet with a yelp before stabilizing once again.

"I think this needs better input. I don't have a lot of control with this dial."

Hatsume nodded. "That's what I thought, I'm working on a solution but genius takes time! Soon it'll respond to user feedback automatically without needing manual adjustments."

"Why couldn't I get that version," Era muttered.

"What was that?"

"Nothing, nothing." Era plummeted the last few feet, barely managing to brace herself with the unwieldy added weight of the jetpack. "Okay, anything else?"

"Yes, actually!" Hatsume hurriedly unbuckled the pack and almost reverently laid it back in its case. "I think I solved the MPS issue on your rifle design; just a matter of auto-adjusting the chamber between modes. You ready to give it a try?"

Era grinned in earnest, rolling out the strain in her shoulders from testing the jetpack. "Oh fuck yes."

"Language," called Power Loader mildly from the corner, where he seemed to be making adjustments to his mech suit. "I hope that gun isn't breaking the MPS cap I gave you?"

"Of course not." Era unzipped the rifle from its case while Hatsume busied herself with setting up the targets. Gym Sigma was designed with Support Course use exclusively in mind, set with workbenches and tools for repairs while testing gear, as well as a vast array of targets ranging from cardboard cut-outs to steel pillars. The firing range itself was set apart from the rest of the gym, though since the gear that they were testing was theoretically nonlethal restrictions tended to be a little more lax than the ranges Hero students used for actual weapons training.

"All ready here!" shouted Hatsume as she flipped the last switch and the final target swung into place. "Let's test our baby out."

"Please stop calling it that." Era walked up to the range and set her gun down on the table, examining the crude welding marks and harsh metal edges that she'd had to sand down. The hunk of soldered together metal wasn't pretty by any means, but it had a stock and a barrel and a place to load magazines, so it got the job done well enough. Era checked the ammo and the gas canisters before locking everything into place, switching the safety off as she aimed downrange. "Clear?"