Date: April 1st - Isokaze, Ace Academy - Time 3:40 [youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IZqSMT2h694[/youtube] Prologue: Reach for the Stars! ==== Pilot's Lounge: ==== Today was the first day of school at Ace Academy and for some of the people classes were starting to slow down, or end for the day. Many of the academy's pilots were scrambling here and there preparing their gears, and meeting up with their teams. The day itself was beautiful with a nice cool temperature, and the wind was cooling and refreshing. The school itself, while divided into engineering, psychological, and other divisions was mostly know for it's prized courses regarding basic, and advanced piloting of the amazing gear machines. It had sponsor organizations, and many famous students who graduated to resume respectable positions in, and out of the world of Gears. As such there were plenty of students at the moment in the library researching for classes just as there were people hurriedly checking some of their weapons through customs. There were some students hurrying to find teams here and there as it was the school's policy to make teams form during the summer but they had about a couple days inside of school to hammer out the details for certain. Right now the pilot lounge was full of students meeting up with their teams and heading towards the hanger entrance swiping their pilot passes to get in, and out though it seemed more like a revolving door than anything. Others were watching TV, or simply relaxing on their own time. Some of the top teams were probably off meeting somewhere though there were probably more teams currently in school than not. Bill saw some familiar faces, and some not so familiar. The bar keep for the lounge was still the same man in his forties named Yukimura whom had been doing this job for about 13 years now and had seen some of the best pilots in the academy's history graduate. Bill took a look out the large windows to his right in the lounge and saw that there were students walking all about campus doing their things some where muttering, and other laying around on the grass discussing all sorts of matters. But one thing he did notice was he a lot of talk around the lounge had some of the other students worried about the prelims, and the scoring tests. Scoring tests determined what sponsors some teams would get. There were various organizations around the city though the major one was the SBA an organization meant to help find students find sponsors. There was even a few students associated with them in someway throughout the campus. He wondered how many of the kids has recreational weapons this time around he remembered the boss from last year informing everyone Team Death Spike last year accidentally brought in a gear with military gear instead of proper recreational mech weapons that prevented death blows. Of course some weapons could have adjusted power setting to allow them to be used here to de-power the mechs instead of destroying them. He fondly remembered Hakuno Sasaki had led the team to many a victory only to be led down by in fighting in the team. It led to the creation of rifts in the team not unlike the bigger teams over in America. Many people only fought together if Hakuno called the shots now that Hakuno was no longer a student the Celestial Star team coveted for it's legacy now was a shamble. The Throne Trinity was a team filled with the older students with more skills, and intelligence than High Blade but High Blade held a lot of potential, and skilled gear fighters despite their aggressive attitude. Both of those teams were the remains of the team that had once been a whole. Now Bill was left with Jun, and Yasumi whom was sitting right now to him. Jun was not a pilot, and Yasumi was a slacker who only did well in classes. Though he was a force to be reckoned with in battles he was always a back up pilot. And so was Bill before the year had started. Now he was scrambling to put together some sort of functional whole. Bill can only use his last name so much to bring in new people after all. Yasumi was playing on his Driveboy DX at the moment but he had told him earlier when they met on the bus that he had tried to convince the others who were not in High Blade, or Throne to come join them but they were unsure. Two pilots didn't make a team that left them two days to finish their team composition. As Bill sat on the couch he wondered if anyone else would should up today all he could do was bite down on his burger he had in his hands and hope that things would get better today. Despite trying to concentrate however all he heard in the background was cheering as a group of students watched Team Siegfried from Germany fight against the LAX (The Latin American Exchange). Schools over in the west had already started competing with each other though Japan, and other eastern nations usually adhered to a different schedule than them. Still on occasion China, India, and Japan sent over teams to compete with other colleges. As he heard from the announcer apparently LAX was having issues with Siegfried's defensive strategy as LAX was majorly a offensive heavy team known for their brutal methods of attacking enemy gears.