Inside a Morgenroete military hangar on Onogoro Island, a grey mobile suit was undergoing performance calibrations.

"Raise the right arm."

Arsenio, sitting in the cockpit of the Duel Gundam groaned as he did as commanded.

"Now lower it."
"Now raise it a little faster. Good."

Arsenio sighed.

"Now lower your right arm, and raise your left arm."

Arsenio continued to oblige, as they went down to leg lifts. Then a light array was placed in front of the Gundam's head. The lights blinked on and off, and it was up to Arsenio to turn the head to look at the lights. These numbingly boring procedures were to assess the most recent set of fine-tuning that had been done to the hardware and software. As the project was top-secret, they weren't exactly allowed to take the suit out for a test run or combat simulations.

"Alright, we got good data today, thank you for your cooperation. You may now go through the usual virtual training."

Arsenio remained in the cockpit seat while the inside lit up showing him a virtual environment. The suit ran a virtual combat simulator, a sort of game that he played to train his battle reflexes. Since it was all electronics, the controls were temporarily disconnected from actually controlling the suit while he trained, so he could move the controls around and fire his virtual weapons without the mech moving. Arsenio was told that all prospective mobile suit pilots trained on this program, though few of them actuality ran the program inside an actual suit. At least, Naturals used this same program, he wasn't sure what the Coordinators up in space used to train, or if they even needed training at all. As far as Arsenio was concerned, the Coordinators deserved to win the war as there was no such thing as an unfair advantage. Of course, he couldn't really voice his opinions out loud as the organization that created him got support from Blue Cosmos, a powerful, anti-Coordinator group. At any rate, world affairs were none of his business, his concern has and always would be his immediate environment and his standing within it.

He wished the program had leaderboards, so he could see how high he ranked against all these filthy Naturals. But then, the thought of the other Extended back at Lodonia Lab outscoring him made him grimace. The only reason he was here was because right now, only Coordinators and Extended like himself were skilled enough to pilot mobile suits, but being a 'weaker' Extended, he was here on this project to help them design mobile suits that even Naturals could pilot. The thought made him laugh but it also made him sick, and in a moment of distraction, his virtual mobile suit was destroyed. He stared blankly at it, wondering if he should stop training for now or if he wanted to just stay in the cockpit for a bit and cherish his isolation.