Blue Horizon: Sequel of Eleven

Out of Control

Prologue

THUD-THUD! THUD-THUD! THUD-THUD!

Kobo Kanaeru's Mechanical Labor Walker walked down the long length of the Yokosuka Naval Base quay, towering over the smaller hangars, buildings and drydock facilities. Compared to the tall dock cranes and most of the international contingent of warships in transit through Tokyo Bay, the ML Walker's eight meters was a dwarf.

And yet, sitting inside that cockpit, Kobo felt incredibly tall! Much taller than her meager height ever permitted.

She savored every sight that her new perspective gave her, and the makeshift HALO module strapped around her head glowed bright powder blue.

Through that radiant HALO, Kobo's thoughts were translated and coursed through a crude spaghetti spread of cables manually plugged to her ML Walker's control panel. That unwieldy mix of high tech, low tech and borderline sci-fi bits and pieces came together and allowed Kobo to power her mech with the power of her own mind.

Kobo remembered seeing the term during her lectures in the Academy.

' Digital Telepathy ' it was called.

Kobo didn't truly understand the mechanics of that concept, but it was clear that the HALO worked. It made Kobo's mech follow her mental commands and her movements with human-like grace and fluidity. The entire machine stopped and moved as Kobo willed it - just like how the human body followed the whims of the human brain.

Inside the cockpit, Kobo Kanaeru was the brain of the mech.

Knowing that was intoxicating for her.

Kobo turned to the naval warships sailing out of Yokosuka and waved to them. Her mech followed suit and the warships answered with blasts of their fog-horns. All the while, Kobo had a big, wide smile on her lips and her imagination ran wild.

Just how far would she be able to make that machine move?

Kobo pondered with rising excitement. If she busted some moves right there and then, would she get the mecha to dance and twirl and follow the dance routine of that viral but anonymous idol group she listened to so often?

Could she follow the choreography of Id:entity Voices ?

Would it be Twitter-worthy?

As Kobo's thoughts wandered further and further away, her HALO module started to dim. Her mech's once-smooth movements started to become stiff at first - and then outright unresponsive!

The ML Walker stopped moving!

"What the hell...!?" Kobo complained.

Kobo furrowed her brow and searched the cockpit for manual controls of any kind, only to find none - aside from a bright red emergency escape button by the hatch of her cockpit. She looked at the button and frowned at it, hoping that she didn't have to resort to that again.

At a loss for what else to do, she even tapped on her HALO. By then, the HALO was flickering dimly and its powder blue color was much less vivid.

While she was fiddling around, a formless screen appeared and hovered over her cockpit dashboard - just like it did in the cockpit of her Strato-Hornet in the flight simulator.

On that screen, the face of her guardian, Olivia Kureiji, appeared.

" Something wrong, kiddo? " Olivia asked with concern. But then, she cleared her throat and corrected herself, " I mean... uh... what is your status, Zero-Eight? Your MLW stopped moving. "