Fitz was having a bad day; well, it started well enough, but as everyone learns, no plan survives contact with the enemy. And what a magnificent plan it was, hide behind things, use superior sensors and a highly accurate coil gun to delever sharp tungsten rods directly into enemy vehicles, then run away at top speed. Admittedly, it wasn't the flashiest plan, nor did he think the audience would like it that much, but It would probably earn him a spot in the top ten. A solid foundation, if he did say so himself.

It should have been if 3 champion-level teams didn't use this specific off-season unofficial tournament to train new recruits. With Fitz's luck, he should have expected it; why he didn't was a mystery to him; maybe his unending Sudo optimism was finally catching up to him. He was hoping to compete with other solo designers and perhaps some rookie teams; instead, he was going against Black Hawk Robotics, a team that worked directly out of a United Coalition military base, with access to some of the best tools around and direct mentorship by world-renowned engineers and designers most of which were hard at work designing the UC's next warship design to help fight off the silicates, they were wildly considered the best team in old Florida. If that wasn't enough, he also competed against Spartan Robotics, Silicon Valley polytechnical highschools team. A remnant of the Old Valley, created before it was turned into the central hub of weapons research and technological development, was rivaled by only japan, which was highly debated. However, almost every student that graduated from SVPT that had spent four years on the wargames team went on to be accepted by the best military academies the UC had to offer. To add a cherry on top, they also received sponsorships and donations from all the major companies in the area. Finally, The team from luna they were indeed not better than the other two, not even close, but they were better than him.

Just then, he slapped himself; Fitz could not get distracted by things he couldn't do anything about. He glanced down at the corner of his vision yup, it was just about the time he took his meds. No matter, a few hours wouldn't matter in the long run. As he glanced back at the tactical display, it flashed red, then orange, then back to red before returning to its standard configuration of panels. "shit, shit, shit, not good, not good" that specific pattern meant an object moving 50m above ground level or higher. That told him it was either a missile, in which case he hoped his repositioning worked, or it was one of the new grav gunships. He hoped it was just a missile on its way to ruin someone else's day, but with his luck, he knew it was coming straight for him. He ordered the control program to retreat into the trees behind him. While he was at it, he canceled the orders of the commanding program to switch to flechette, the best antimissile round he had designed just before this competition. Seconds later, a second ping came back, which told him several things; it had a mediocre stealth package; if it had been good, he would not have been able to detect it before it was on top of him; if it was terrible, he should have gotten 15 pings on its location and direction. He grinned that, in combination with the fact that it was not moving at missile speed, it was not what he had feared. It was a rookie team that attempted to make a grav ship, which was quite a grave mistake. Based on the fact that it was flying, he guessed it was a private school team with some cash and a few skilled members but not the history and reputation to back it up.

He was so happy because he knew that they must have sacrificed a lot to get it in the air and even more to get it to the speed that his sensor program was reporting to the rest of the "crew." They probably didn't have any advanced sensors, most likely some cameras and maybe infrared if they were lucky. As for weapons, it was either some rocket pods or a rudimentary gunpowder canon, likely rapid fire. They needed more energy to power a directed energy weapon or a light coil gun like most high-level teams used on gunships. Unless they wanted to cut engine power to shoot a few times, he doubted anyone was that stupid. The gunnery AI was already plotting a trajectory and loading his most advanced round. A shell with no explosives but a lot of penetrating power and fins that extended after it was fired to provide guidance mid-flight; he intended it to be a sudo artillery shell meant to home in on the unarmored top of the enemy command vehicle. If only his team was competent enough to spot it instead of changing at the enemy's main force while leaving his light vehicle to guard the flacks. He spent the entire 12-hour game shooting other scouts and lightly armored vehicles while occasionally taking out a few medium tanks when he got close enough to the primary battle. However, close was a relative term as his weapon outranged most long-ranged sensors, let alone weapons.

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Hoping off that side track, he went back to monitoring the gunner. It had loaded the shell and was commuting firing solutions; the gunship would be in range in less than 30 seconds. The hit probability steadily rose as time ticked by, and his vehicle's central computer chugged through the calculations. He heard a whining sound as the capacitors charged, then a sudden thump as the kinetic kill vehicle left the barrel and sailed at an astonishing speed toward its target. He was still proud of his coil gun design. It might not look pretty, but it packed a lot of energy and had a respectable fire rate. as the gunship rise above the line of buildings it had been obscured by,

he began grinning with anticipation as his visual camera locked on and sent minute corrections to the KKV. His face paled just as the camera feed appeared on the main display. He expected to see a halve-baked grav platform looking like it just fell out of a junk drawer; instead, he saw a reasonably clean-looking gunship. Usually, that would have made him a little nervous; no, what terrified him was the gaudy impractical paint job; it was black with bright red accents and trim, and to make it worse, there were tiny bits of reflective gold sparkling in the mid-day sun. Only one team competing at this event had that color scheme, SVPT. Just then, the KKV landed a direct hit; he saw in slow motion as it passed cleanly through the main unarmored sensor package sliding through lots of essential bits; from how it instantly started plummeting, the turret stopped pivoting. All outgoing digital telemetry stopped; he was reasonably sure he had hit the central computer core, a fatal blow. Not even the microrobot repair systems utilized by the best teams could fix that.

Before seeing it hit the ground, he ordered a full retreat with evasive action. Cut all active sensors, dropped power output, and sealed all the slits covering the reflective lenses on his cameras and infrared sensors. If he was going to survive the incoming shitstorm, he would need stealth. He had no doubt that there were already incoming artillery shells and cruise missiles incoming. He barely escaped the counter-attack, only losing one wheel to the shrapnel. He fired some counter-battery shots using the calculated trajectories to predict the locations of the artillery pieces. Hoping he would hit something even though he knew he would not. He was monitoring the diving AI's path-planning algorithms rejecting the ones that would leave him exposed and the ones that would slow him down too much.

In the end, it didn't matter. Alarms blared as the sensors detected a target lock. Fitz knew it was too late to do anything, so he sat back; he might as well use this as an opportunity to test the AIs from here on. Everything was their decision. A small smile appeared as he saw his right command panel go red, every symbol turning red to indicate overclocking. The output of Every computer sored, even the tiny ones that had the mundane task of keeping track of tire pressure contributed to calculating a battle plan and firing solutions. The quiet electric motor that propelled the entire thing was silent no more. The coil gun extended its length and preheated the coils. The actuator in charge of pushing the projectile into the magnetic field clunked a few times, preparing for what was to come. It was a hell of a battle, but once he understood he would lose, he stopped caring all that much. He looked on as the ais got a few shots off before being hit by three massive shells ejected from the large rail guns mounted on three medium tanks. The armor didn't stand a chance, crumbling under the sheer kinetic force transferred to it. And with that, it was over; even with the best design he had ever made, he still couldn't get anywhere close to his previous team. He hadn't intended on fighting them here. He had hoped he could prove them wrong; he wasn't just a special ed kid with dreams far too big for him to ever achieve.