He did not have to wait long. The voice continued. "You had the poor luck that no one cares much about you. For those that are not orphans, your guardians signed you over for a pretty penny." it said. All the other subjects in the hall began to speak up and complain. Some even threatened the owner of the voice. When a lull had fell over the group the voice said "Are you done whining!? Alright. Now to tell you what you will be doing for the next few days. We want to train gifted individuals for our new task force. In that vein, we have decided that out of your cohort of 100, we need 20 finalists." "How the hell are we going to get that far!? Just let us go already." one of the older boys said." Actively looking at the others with him now, Terry took stock of them. They ranged from all the scrawny 13-year-olds to the big and husky 18-year-olds and everything in between. He himself was a pretty athletic girl right now. He was a pretty scrawny 16-year-old highschooler in real life. The type that had several bullies trying to make his life hell on a daily basis. "Is it better to be a girl here?" he wondered.
Not giving much time with his thoughts, the voice said "Alright. We have an extensive orientation for you. All four walls will display the same information so feel free to get comfortable." This was where Terry learned the lore of the world. The world was under constant threat. Tears in the time-space continuum were allowing entities to come through. Apparently, they were giant children that wanted to romp around and destroy cities. Whenever they did a rampage, millions would die before they got bored and left. Due to this, most of remaining society had abandoned urban living and moved to suburbs and rural areas. However, humans can't just spread out in mass like that. It is a logistical nightmare to resettle everyone for one. Two, what will they even do when they get to the boonies and there's nothing to do and not enough to go around. To fix this, humans will naturally build infrastructure to support the growth of population with housing utilities and resources. That unfortunately means building a city. A much smaller, less defensible city. One that becomes much easier for the giant kids to pick off.
That did not sound good to Terry. "The fact that they can appear anywhere on the planet at any time also strained the relations between all of the nations. There is an ever growing need for practically everything these days and rival countries don't want to share and risk losing out if attacked. In order to get resources, the nations have resulted to taking what they can by any means necessary. Those too weak to defend themselves have no recourse other than to accept it bitterly. We certainly will not be the same as them. With out technological advances, we will not only be able to stop the giants from rampaging in our lands, we will be able to become the world leader. It will all be on the back of your success that starts today." the voice droned on. Next was an explanation of the mechs. They took 2 pilots each. There were only 10 of them made, hence the need for only 20 pilots. Terry thought the cockpits looked familiar. Basically, one pilot was on their hands and knees while the other pilot sat behind them to move it. The positions were called Top and Bottom. You had to have an affinity for it.
