[b]Collaboration between Roger Rooney and Zim Hero[/b]

It really wasn't too surprising who wound up winning the position of squad leader. Harold had previous military experience and he seemed like he could hold himself together. That there would be a second in command and the fact that they both got tasers was a far more surprising. Hopefully nobody would have to be on the receiving end of one. 

Honestly? He didn't care all that much. Rooney didn't really care much for leadership positions. Right now, all he was concerned about was becoming the best pilot in the place. But he wouldn't be able to do it alone. At least, not initially. He was too inexperienced to count on sitting in a VR simulation alone. He'd need a partner. As he walked down the halls he spotted Zim leaving the cafeteria. He had gotten the least criticism and the most praise from Lorenzo. Roger didn't really know the capabilities of anyone else, so he'd use what he had. Solely going off of the verbal lashings it would be best to pair up with Zim. Roger ran to catch up with the older pilot.

"Hey, train with me in the VR room." It was more of a demand than a request. It might have done him better to be more polite, but right now he didn't give a damn.
Zim looked up from his data card as he heard the approach of running feet. When he was addressed with a demand he raised an eyebrow slightly at the younger pilot. "Alright, I was just heading there myself. I wanted to get a chance to see how this new equipment would operate, it'll be better for both of us to have partners. I'll need to get my plug suit on again, but I'll catch up to you in the room shortly."

Soon, Zim was changed back into his plug suit and in the VR room. "What did you want to work on?" Zim asked Roger as he started to take his seat, "I know you are built for speed, from what I saw on the battle field, but it seems you need a little help on controlling your thrusters while in flight?"
Rooney was still wearing his plugsuit, so he went ahead into the VR Room and set everything up. Roger wasn't all that experienced with VR, so he merely kept the settings to as simple as he could get it. One on One would be sufficient. Alone, he couldn't rely on others to shore up his weaknesses, and he could get feedback directly on weaknesses that could be spotted by an enemy.

"I'm not looking for anything in particular to improve on, right now I'm too inexperienced overall to effectively pilot Yeager, and I can't rely on my Synch rate to pad out my skills. This VR mission's going to be one on one." Rooney replied strapping in. "Any problem with that?"
"Nope, that works for me," Zim said as he strapped himself into the VR pod. A few quick button presses and the system booted up and linked the plug suit into the system, exporting bio-metrics and downloading the Framewerk specs. It was a massive amount of data being exchanged, modified, and rendered into visuals, but it happened in a matter of seconds. Zim's body tensed and seized for a moment as the synaptic input of the VR system kicked in, shutting out the rest of the real world. His body relaxing, Zim found himself in the cockpit of Black Star, sure enough, on the HUD was the new targeting system for the Wave Surger, near his right hand were indicators for the new active cloak system, and near his left hand were the mode toggles for the Wave Surger.

Zim looked around to check his surroundings and see what terrain Rooney had selected.
The VR system took the two pilots to a desert location. Black Star and Yeager stood on opposite sides of a deep canyon, whose depth went down several hundred meters, which in terms of Framewerk size wasn't [i]too[/i] much. The width of the canyon was about 60 meters. The ground that both Framewerks stood on was a reddish brown, but was solid. If one looked closely, patches of brown desert grass were visible, but there were no natural features large enough to conceal a Framewerk to any significant degree, other than the canyon itself. A strong breeze came in from the East, but it wasn't strong enough to impede Frame movement, only the trajectory of projectiles.

Roger took a few seconds to adjust to the Virtual World before addressing Zim. He made a check on the virtual controls to make sure that his settings were correct. Synch level: 45%. So everything was correct. He made sure to cap his Synch rate at 50% so that he would have to learn control without the training wheels of a decent synchronization.

"Are you ready? The simulation ends when one of us becomes incapacitated."
A deep canyon, no cover, not a whole lot of options for a melee frame to work with. Good thing he had his new toys to play with. His sync rate came in at 48%, Zim noted the improvement, but wondered if it was a true improvement, or if the simulator had generated a random number...

"Ready," Zim said into the comms, he continued off channel, "Isn't that right Black Star?" Zim moving Black Star into a fighting pose, his armor wings were down and his thermal blade was still disabled. Once Roger gave the clear that he was also ready to begin, Zim would immediately give his active cloak a punch, using the first mode, stealth mode. It should have made Black Star invisible to any form of electronic observation. Zim had Black Star jump back away from the edge first, before cutting west. The dust of the desert might give away his movements, so he zig-zagged to try and make it harder to guess where he would be. With the active cloak on, making Black Star invisible, it should also make auto-targeting impossible, forcing Rooney to use Jaeger's gun manually, if he notices the puffs of dust displaced by his movements.
Before Rooney had a chance to even think about going after Zim, he'd have to get across this gap. If he was just going to stand and shoot, why even use Yeager? Why even bother training. No, he had to learn, and the best way to do that now was to act aggressively. And the only way forward was across this gap. In his head for several seconds he ran over the manual steps he would need to perform to cross this gap without assistance from his synch rate.

Roger took in a deep breath to calm his shaking hands. This was VR, he could make mistakes here, at least for now. Shakily, Yeager took a few steps before breaking out into a run. Right before it reached the edge of the chasm, its thrusters activated in a quick, powerful burst, launching it upward. At the peak of its arc, Roger re-angled the thrusters and activated them again, propelling it across the chasm successfully. It wasn't efficient or very fast, but it was enough to make it across. What he didn't account for was the landing. The machine botched the landing, ending up on its rear-end, unable to do much in the realm of maneuvering, let alone attacking an invisible target.
Zim continued making space between he and Rooney. He came to a stop somewhere that he felt was outside of Jaeger’s firing range. Of course Zim had no specific idea, but he had an idea based on the training mission previously. Once there he stopped and waited for Rooney to get his Werk to its feet.

"I hate to state the obvious, but that is what you need the most work on, thruster maneuverability and landings," Zim said. "What is your Sync rating at? Also, on a scale of 1-10, how invisible is Black Star right now?"

Zim waved Black Stars left hand around to see if it grabbed Jaeger's attention.
"Shut up and focus on the fight." Roger snapped, Yeager now back on its feet after taking a good half minute to get back up. Why was he asking about the systems of his machine in a VR mission? How it worked here was completely independent of what it was like in reality. The real problem, at least for Roger was fighting an invisible enemy. From the dust it was kicking up earlier, he had a vague idea of the general direction he had gone, but not much else more than that. Well given what he had, there was one thing he could do: wait and see if anything happened. Black Star was not a long distance machine based on its equipment. If he wanted to attack, he'd have to move before Yeager did.
"Focus on the fight?" Zim replied, "At this point, this isn't about fighting, this is about teaching you to control your machine. Can you do anything other than straight line thrusts?" 

Zim noticed that Jaeger wasn't moving, he had decided to wait him out because of the advantage of range. Rooney knew that Black Star would have to close in on him before Zim could attack... except he didn't know about the capabilities of the Wave Surger, Zim's other new piece of equipment. Zim decided not to give up his cover just yet and attempt a launch or a long charge blast yet. "Does Jaeger have thermal imaging on board? I wonder if that could pick up Black Star right now?" Zim asked another question. Based on the abstract, any form of digital observation was neutralized, so he doubted it, but how did such a thing work on thermal imaging? Zim wasn't an engineer, all he knew is that in theory it worked, guess there wasn't much else to worry about. 

Rooney ignored Zim's probes and questions. Thinking about them would distract him from the already difficult task of piloting the damn machine with such a low sync rate. He glances at it, 39%. Fan-fucking-tastic.
He waited for Roger to reply about the thermal image before he started to move again, but being ignored Zim started to move after another few moments. Black Star circled wide, heading away from the canyon as he went around Jaeger in what would be his visual blind side before he would start to close the gap. He would move slowly at first, not wanting to give off too much noise, but as he got within one last lunging distance from Jaeger, Zim would toggle Black Stars active cloak from stealth to decoy mode as he opened up his armor wings and reached with the Wave Surger for Jaegers weapon carrying arm. 

Decoy Mode has an opposite effect on enemy radar as stealth mode. Rather than masking the presence of the Framewerk at all, this mode made enemy digital observations see Three of Black Star, it would confuse the targeting systems, panic pilots, shock their sync rates, or do absolutely nothing at all as they would attempt to strafe fire and hit all three targets, and disable the active cloak. In theory, it would be too late to do any real damage to the Framewerk, as he would close in and cut his opponent down with the Thermal Scythe, or he would 'nuke 'em with his Wave Surger.

The ladder was what Zim was attempting to do now. The triple flash on Jaegers's Radar would surly alert Roger to Black Star’s position. Jaeger should turn to fire, the Waver Surger would clamp down on the firing arm and deal a "high-discharge thermal attack via controlled radiation" on that arm, which would mangle the arm, and therefore the weapon, beyond use.
Suddenly, there were 3 Black Stars in a line behind Jaeger, the decoys flanked on either side of the true Black Star. [i]Oh shit![/i] In the back of his head, a voice said that it was impossible for a machine to multiply into three, but the rest of his mind was more focused in trying to respond. Pulling a trigger while rotating in place was something he could do. And that is what he did. Even if they were fakes, maybe spraying and praying would hit the real thing.

The real thing happened to get to him first, destroying Jaeger’s arm in a spectacular explosion. The nice thing about Roger’s artificially low sync rate was that even an injury like this didn't feel all that painful. Well, he didn't have a weapon anymore. Yeager's other hand balled up into a fist as Roger threw a haymaker at Black Star's face. Even if it did land, it wouldn't do much damage, but you work with what you have.
The reach extended Black Star beyond his center of gravity, Zim realized that, and attempting to recover proved ineffective as the blow from Jaegers haymaker threw him further off balance. Too much, and much too late, Zim pulled up on the controls for his armor wings to close down and cover Black Stars body as he fell onto his back. Even Rooney would feel the vibration from the impact through Jaeger.
Using his Scythe for the first time, Zim opened his armor wings again and swung the scythe at Jaegers legs, hoping to catch them and bring Roger to the ground with him.
Yeager fell to the ground with a boom. Its arm and legs splayed out. Panicked, Rooney looked all over for anything he could use. In the distance he spotted his gun, but he quickly found that Yeager couldn't reach it. Zim would be able to get up much faster than Roger, even if the latter was an experienced pilot. Only having one arm made these things difficult.
With Rooney on the ground, Zim had a chance to get up. Even as Jaeger struggled, with only one arm there was only so much it could do. Once back on Black Star’s feet, Zim activated the scythe. Drawing back, Zim easily swung the blade and took of Jagger's head, a second swing took off the left arm. Zim then shifted the scythe into spear mode and impaled Jaeger to the red and rocky sand of the desert. 

The simulator brought the session to an end, and Zim's mind was released to the real world. Swinging his feet out of the pod, Zim waited for Roger to do the same.

"Learn anything?" Zim asked.
"...Yeah," He replied, not moving from where he was. "But why are you getting out? We're going again. When I told you to train with me, I didn't mean for one round. We keep going for the rest of the day."
"After that last round, you think you are in a position to tell me anything?" Zim retorted with a smirk. Zim plugged back in and the pair continued training for the rest of Flex time.