"Have you done this before!?" Neil called back at her, but all she did in response was lift an arm out of hiding and wave him off. 

Well, if he had been in the crowd she would have gotten his attention too, so she did her job. He turned and set his eyes on the mech to his front. Neil cleared his throat, checking the integrity of the gears. Before him was a decidedly simple, haul operator's console, with six levers, a load indicator display, which also listed his power level. To the left of the display and levers were five knobs and a large red button. These had been added to improve its combat capacity. It gave him extra control of his limbs, allowing them to move vertically and not just horizontally, and granted him use of the mounted weapon, as well as various applications in the utensil movements of the fingers. 

It was pretty shit in Neil's estimation. The 189 was a far better war machine from within and without, and that was not even accounting the size and power difference. His opponent's APC was a foot taller in height, sleek white with gold filigree and a red emblem straight center on its chest. Within, a man about ten years Neil's senior sneered at him, clearly amused at his first match being against a no-name in a machine that was about eighty years too old to be in operation. Despite Jocasta's showmanship, Neil couldn't blame him. He would feel the same in that dude's shoes. 

Apparently his mascot had already performed before Neil and Jo had even arrived, as the headlights from above suddenly erupted in brightness, all lights staged around the stadium zooming in on the arena. Neil saw the word 'Varkin' splayed on the left limb of his opponent. A telltale ringing banged against their senses just after the lights honed in, reverberating across the battlescape. Neil shoved his pinky into his ear, surprised. 

"Begin!" 

The voice came from all around, Varkin so used to the sound Neil blinked and he was already six meters closer. Neil pulled the L4 lever and grabbed the operating controls, setting his clunker's legs into motion. 'Hunk' staggered forward, every two steps a jumbled mess from the bow-legged lack of design. Neil's head bobbed up and down, and while he knew how silly his situation was, it was at that moment he truly realized it. Neil started to laugh, and he seemed to find it funnier as time went on. It rang in Jocasta's comm piece, sounding for all the world like someone just told him the most hilarious joke. 

Even moving at likely half his APC's normal speed, the two APC's stepped almost 3 meters every footfall, and five seconds after the battle had begun, Varkin was close enough to see Neil's dimple past two plates of plexiglass. His opponent lifted its right limb, a twin autocannon mounted atop it, replacing a hand for firepower. The barrels erupted in fire as bullets punched into Hunk's armor. Funnily enough, due to the up and down motion, the aim was off, and no two bullets hit the same space on the APC to better pierce the armor. Neil closed the distance, arm up before his cockpit, eschewing vision for protection on the plexiglass in front of him. The massive limb craned before him, the bullets bouncing off the steel telling him the gun was still firing. Above, he saw the lightest bit of movement past his field of vision, and just as he thought, Varkin sent his melee hand crashing downwards to batter Hunk's arm aside to better cut a swathe through the plexiglass and end Neil's life. 

Neil stepped forward, his bow-leg sending his mech leaning to the right, exposing the largest piece of armor on his APC to tank the melee blow, just as his arm battered the gun aside. The force of ten thousand pounds crashed into Neil, but the gun went wide, spraying bullets across the arena, bouncing around the glass in endless ricochets. Neil moved Hunk's free arm, accompanied by a mounted flamer, over the fallen limb of his opponent and shoved it forward with all power, fist crunching into the plexiglass of Varkin. It didn't end the fight, or even end the integrity of the glass, but cracks ripped across it. Neil saw Varkin's eyes bugged out, and with the flip of a switch and the press of a button, promethium roared out of the limb and cascaded across the mech, finding any crevasse as if it had a mind. 

Varkin's screams were barely audible from Neil's end, but when he removed his arm, his face twisted in disgust as he saw the man's clothing and half his limbs aflame. His mech shuddered as his hands slapped the controls, and all Neil had to do was block whatever haphazard blows went his way, and push Varkin over. It teetered on the 'heels' of its feet and hit its back onto the ground with an audible crack. Neil watched as he desperately tried to bat the flames out, and he decided he couldn't watch this. He raised Hunk's fist high into the air, before letting it fall atop the cockpit of Varkin. Instead of crushing him, however, Neil gave just the pressure needed to break the glass. 

Swiftly, Neil opened his cockpit and stripped his shirt off, hopping out of Hunk nimbly and climbing up the fallen body of Varkin to get to its pilot, slapping the flames out of the screaming man with his shirt. It was another minute before paramedics could arrive and the flames could truly be doused, and he would likely lose an arm and a leg, but bio-modifications were common and while Neil felt a touch bad, he knew the victor was clear. 

As the pilot was carried away, Neil draped his shirt over his shoulder as the crowd roared, voices so loud he doubted even the vacuum of space could quell them. Neil waved, giving bows. He blew a few kisses randomly, and then turned around, cupping his hands for Jocasta. 

"YO! IT'S SAFE NOW! COME ENJOY THIS WITH ME!"