06-01-2023, 06:47 PM
(This post was last modified: 06-02-2023, 09:12 AM by Aneeqs. Edited 1 time in total.)
Press has asked “how on Earth could a giant mech compete in a game of professional football?” It is my hope that this article clears up those questions and earns me a small pile of cash at the same time. Without further ado, I give you all the origin story of DSFL defensive end prospect, Wing Gundam.
Wing Gundam is simply a reasonably fit middle-aged dude in a very modern exosuit made to look like Wing Gundam from the anime. His real name is Glenn Spinach, which just might be why he avoids using it. Glenn used to play football in high school but was a lackluster player because he didn’t have the drive and ambition that he needed to rise to his potential. His career as a defensive end was over on the final day of the regular season of his senior year – his team didn’t make the playoffs.
Years later, Glenn Spinach leads the quiet life of a corporate sales manager for a tech distributor. It’s incredibly boring and in no way satisfying, but the pay is decent and he is allowed to work from home. The downside is that all the time alone at home allowed him to consider the regrets, mistakes, and missed opportunities of the past. This mentally broken man yearned for an opportunity to redeem himself – to become what he could have been, if only he knew what unfulfilling end waited him here in the world of milquetoast mediocrity. His fondest memories were of the football team – the adrenaline and excitement of game day as well as the camaraderie and fellowship of being part of a team. Those were the days.
Glenn Spinach refused to let go of those (perhaps childish) ambitions of greatness. He would not be stopped.
With an excess of free time at home surrounded by demo units of bleeding-edge technology, Spinach began to tinker with a goal in mind: upgrade this broken down old body by any means necessary. He drew inspiration from all of the media he could consume about exosuits, giant robots, mechs, etc. An exosuit of sufficient quality would allow him to play football at peak performance even at his age and physical condition.
The early attempts were ugly and ineffective. We won’t linger too long on the failures, because with enough iterations on the design, Glenn was able to produce an effective exosuit which put his physical abilities on par with a collegiate athlete. The success was a life raft for Glenn’s mental state; the possibility of living his dream was starting to seem more and more real.
Glenn’s drastically improved speed, strength, agility, and endurance made him feel godlike. Unfortunately, the secondary effect of the exosuit was that it made his lack of skills and experience that much more obvious. There was simply no substitute for good practice. If Spinach wanted to have any chance of competing at a professional level, he would have to find a way to practice at a high level. Given that he used technological fiat to solve his first problem, why not return to that same well for the second?
VR tech is pretty common these days, so that’s a good start. Creating custom controllers that fit into athletic gloves allowed Glenn to simulate the experiences of a live game very closely. He split his training 50/50 between practicing with the exosuit and logging into the training program. The effect was immediate and incredible – where he fell short, faltered, or lacked confidence before, Spinach was now a force to be reckoned with. He was a pitiful disgrace of a defensive end when he began, but he emerged from the metaphorical Hyperbolic Time Chamber totally evolved.
Glenn barely recognized himself in the mirror these days. The disheveled, world-weary man who had all but given up on life was gone. Instead, a more physically fit, confident, and capable man stared back at him from the reflection. This personal passion project was exactly what Glenn needed at this time in his life. Armed with a new can-do attitude, Glenn was ready to try out for a team. A person doesn’t simply walk onto the field to try out for a major league team, however, so Glenn resorted to some minor league outfits to try and get a foot in the door.
He drove to Chili Dog Stadium to meet with coaching staff. The Big City Dogs just lost a defensive end to a season-ending injury and were desperate for a replacement. He wouldn’t have been able to secure a meeting if they weren’t under dire circumstances, so he wanted to put his best foot forward.
Fate would not be on Glenn’s side that day, however.
He stood at the trunk of his car in the parking lot, stepping into the exosuit and testing its sensor and hydraulics systems. The unpainted steel exosuit was functional, but not pretty. Support struts ran in line with the primary skeletal and muscular systems of Glenn’s body, but the suit still had no ‘shell’ – his body was visible and exposed to the elements rather than being sealed up like an Iron Man suit. He sighed in relief that everything was operational. He allowed himself an optimistic smile as he scrolled through sensor readouts.
“Oh my god! Dustbin Glenn? Is that you?”
The voice that issued from behind Glenn sent a shock through him as though he’d seen a ghost.
Chip Tanner. What the fuck was Chip Tanner doing here?
Glenn turned, trying not to let his contempt show on his face. “Ah, Chip. Good morning.” His tone was colder than he intended. Oops.
Chip looked nearly the same as he did in high school – the same close-cropped crew cut hair style, the meticulously shaved face, even the navy blue track suit was in the same style as the one popular back in the day. He retained his fitness too, truly living up to the Quarterback Archetype. “It is you! I haven’t seen you in years! You look, uh… say, what brings you to the stadium on a Monday morning? You got some sort of a geek conference nearby you’re wearing that suit to?”
Glenn looked down at the exosuit, and for the first time he felt self-conscious about it, almost ashamed. “It’s an exosuit. I’m here to meet with the Dogs coaching staff.” Glenn said defensively. The hair on the back of his neck was standing on end. Chip was always the biggest bully of their graduating class, and he never saw any comeuppance about it. When the two of them played on the same team, Glenn did his best to avoid interacting with Chip at all costs. How unlucky that this insufferable jerk would show up today of all days – how would Glenn be able to concentrate on his tryout after this conversation?
Chip burst out laughing. “No way. Absolutely no way. You’re shitting me. You’re the walk-on tryout? Donna told me that there was someone coming in this morning who might be able to fill the position, but this is ridiculous.”
Glenn’s heart was racing. He talked to Donna in the head office the day prior. Chip is affiliated with the Big City Dogs? He didn’t see any other explanation. Fuck. When was the next time an opportunity like this would come up? As much as it pained him to do so, he tried to smooth things over. “I’m 100% serious. Put me into a tryout and I’ll show the coaching staff I’ve got what it takes to fill the position for the team.”
“Dustbin, I AM the coaching staff. This is minor league football, and I’m not sharing the limited salary budget with anyone else. If you wanted to impress the coach, you would have done it twenty years ago. You weren’t even good back then, when you were in your prime. Why would I waste my time with a tryout for a washed-up nerd with a toy robot? Get out of here, I have to find a real athlete before the game on Sunday.” Chip dismissed Glenn with a look of contempt, then stepped past him toward the stadium. The coach didn’t so much as look back as Glenn stood, mouth agape, trying to process the reality that he had just lost his golden opportunity.
Just like that, Glenn was reduced to the pitiful former self that he tried so hard to escape.
He removed the exosuit, packed it carefully back into the trunk of his car, and drove home in silence.
Back in his workshop, Glenn sat in front of a shelf filled with action figures – Transformers, Gundams, Voltron, Megazords, and many others. He looked over each of them with mixed emotions. On one hand, he loved the wild ambition and effect of these fictional machines. They captured his imagination so fully that he couldn’t imagine his life without them. On the other hand, they represented an unachievable ideal. Chip Tanner wouldn’t dare to dismiss a real Gundam as useless and incapable, but he had done so to Glenn as though it was the most natural reaction in the world.
He let his gaze rest on the Wing Gundam model on his shelf for a long time. He looked over the incredible detail of the model, appreciating the design from top to bottom. That’s when a realization hit him: aesthetics! Glenn’s current model was an ugly but functional prototype that looked nothing like the mechs that he loved. The mechs of popular culture took on an identity of their own, where Glenn’s suit was more like an article of clothing that he could wear. To complete this exosuit, Glenn would have to enclose the unit entirely with armor, allowing the suit to present as an individual rather than a vehicle.
As an homage to the media that gave him the inspiration to build an exosuit, Glenn designed it to look as closely as possible to the Wing Gundam. It wasn’t a perfect replication, but it was close enough to fool any casual observer. The paint job, he reckoned, could be changed to match the team colors of whichever organization signs him.
Armoring the exosuit was neither quick nor easy, but when it was done, Glenn marveled at the finished result. This was even better than he could have imagined. By the time final touches were made on the suit, the football season ended, and open tryouts for minor league teams was swiftly approaching. He decided that he would try out anywhere who would allow him, except for the Big City Dogs.
Rather than be judged based on his true identity, Glenn signed up for these tryouts as Wing Gundam, taking on the identity of the machine he pilots. It raised a lot of eyebrows, to be sure, but Glenn gave no ground to questions about it. Truthfully, the coaching staff overseeing the tryouts weren’t entirely sure if Wing Gundam was an exosuit, an artificial intelligence, or remote controlled. According to the extremely lax roster regulations, it wasn’t something that anyone was particularly concerned about. As long as Wing Gundam was able to produce on the field, issues of his identity would be immaterial.
The tryouts turned out to be much better than he could have hoped for. The team that Wing Gundam tried out for was the Small Town Sawblades. The team was in relatively good shape, having made it to the playoffs last season, but falling in post-season to the Big City Dogs. The coaching staff was warm and welcoming of his unusual circumstances. His performance was admirable but not earth-shattering: talented enough to be a starting defensive end for a minor league team. Glenn believed that the Wing Gundam would hold up to the physical aspect of the game, and he was mostly correct. Wing Gundam wasn’t the stalwart immovable object that Glenn secretly wished that it might be, but already he thought there were some improvements that could be made in that regard.
In terms of his own skills and instincts, Glenn was clearly lacking compared to the other players trying out – being away from the game for so long didn’t do his mental game any favors, and it wasn’t 100% sharp even in his physical prime. With more experience and time in the league, guidance from coaching staff and learning from teammates, Glenn had total confidence that he could continue to grow to match pace with his competitors.
Wing Gundam secured a starting position as a defensive end with the Small Town Sawblades. As far as the team was concerned, Glenn didn’t exist. The staff and his teammates referred to him a Wing, big block letters on the back of his chassis said GUNDAM. Glenn was startled and surprised at the way he was treated – in many ways, Wing Gundam elicited more compassion and humanity from others than Glenn ever did. He made connections with people. Shared laughs. Formed bonds.
In what seemed like no time, the off-season was over and preseason was beginning. Wing Gundam took the field in a real football game for the first time. Glenn’s mind was a blur from the coin flip until the game clock expired. At halftime, he realized in frustration that he had been playing on “autopilot” – treating the game the same way he would have treated the simulations he trained on. A few deep breaths helped to clear his mind and allow him to be more alert and receptive in the moment.
The second half of the first game was a marked improvement in mentality and effectiveness. He did his best to make sure to be mentally present and aware for each and every play. The sensor feed from the suit was helpful during practice, but proved to be too distracting at full speed. Glenn disabled that functionality and relied on muscle memory and instinct to make his decisions.
Finally, Glenn felt like he was living his dream. With the sensor feed off, there wasn’t anything to distract him from the play unfolding around him. He was in a flow state for the first time in his adult life. His body and mind were perfectly aligned and operated the exosuit as though it were a second skin. A wide, gleeful grin went undetected beneath the metal exterior of his mech. Late in the fourth quarter, the Sawblades held a narrow 21-20 lead. The quarterback threw an interception, putting the Sawblades back on defense in a must-stop situation. The cornerback who got the pick was grounded at the 60 yard line – any movement up the field could lead to a field goal, which would spell disaster for Small Town.
On the first down, Wing got just enough contact with the quarterback to send his pass wide of the receiver. Incomplete pass. Second and ten was a different strategy, and a successful short run put the offense on the 54-yard line, close enough to make a field goal seem likely. Third down, the quarterback dropped back from the line, eyes up toward his receivers. He found a target: a wide receiver racing toward the 40-yard line. He cocked his arm back, ready to send this ball on a string to his intended receiver.
CRASH!
Somehow, Wing Gundam broke through the offensive line and absolutely hammered the unsuspecting QB. The force of the sack knocked the ball free from his throwing arm, and the loose ball sailed sideways, landing on the turf squarely at the feet of the Small Town Sawblades’ star Linebacker, who smothered the ball like it was hash browns at the Waffle House.
With only a minute left in the fourth quarter, the Sawblades managed the clock before making a final field goal attempt from the 50-yard line. The kick was good, and the Sawblades won their first game 24-20. It was very much a team win, and Wing Gundam felt like a meaningful contributor to the team. The team celebrated together, and Wing Gundam got a lot of praise for his clutch play. Inside the steel exosuit, Glenn beamed with joy. Who knew that life could be as fun and rewarding as it feels at this moment?
Glenn was on cloud nine. His hard work was being rewarded with good results. People respected and appreciated him. With each game of the season, Glenn got more comfortable piloting Wing Gundam, and the team crept ever closer to the post-season. Wing Gundam brought new energy to the team – his teammates mostly believed him to be a robot, and he didn’t tell them any differently. They suffered a few losses, true, but they found more wins than losses and hopes were high for a championship run.
At the end of the season, Small Town Sawblades sat at second position in the league standings behind the Big City Dogs. The championship game loomed large in Glenn’s mind. This would be the first time since almost a year ago that he would be in the same place as that absolute trash bag, Chip Tanner. The way that Chip brushed off Glenn and his exosuit was a huge motivating factor that kept Glenn’s nose to the grindstone. Chip would regret not signing Glenn on as a defensive end that day last season, come hell or high water.
On the evening before the big game, the team met to watch game tape and strategize. It was only then that Wing Gundam learned a very interesting piece of information: the Big City Dogs’ star quarterback was Chad Turner, Chip’s son. As he studied the tape on his opponents, he realized something: he knew this playbook. Chip was running the same plays that he relied on as a quarterback himself when he was in high school.
“Guys, you’re not going to believe this. I know this team’s entire playbook.” Wing Gundam said hesitantly. Glenn didn’t want to reveal his true identity, so he told the team that the play-by-play from those games in the late 90s were stored in his memory banks. It was pretty close to the truth, if not exactly factual.
The team took in everything that Wing Gundam had to say. The coaching staff took notes and made plans to take advantages of the known weaknesses in the Big City Dogs’ playbook.
During the big game, the Sawblades defense was absolutely electric. Big City didn’t have time to so much as spin up their offense; the way that the defensive line absolutely smothered the quarterback proved to be catastrophic to the Dogs. What was hyped to be a knock down, drag out grueling battle of a championship game was anything but. The Sawblades lived up to their name and cut through the Dogs like butter in the first half of the game. During the second half, Big City played more conservatively, allowing the Sawblades offense to take less advantage of their opposition playbook study session.
The switch to a conservative playbook ultimately meant that the Dogs could never mount a comeback. The Small Town Sawblades won the ultra minor league regional championship, an underdog story for the ages.
When the teams met to shake hands after the game, Glenn finally had his delicious moment. As the teams came off the field, Wing Gundam made sure to walk past Chip, who was red-faced and fuming, broken clipboard still clutched in his hands.
“Good game, coach. Your team played hard.” Wing said as he passed.
“Bullshit. It was a fluke!” Chip threw the clipboard to the ground and stomped the pieces.
“Tough break, Chip. It must really hurt to lose to a washed up nerd with a toy robot.” Wing walked down the tunnel at that, leaving Chip speechless on the field.
—
Glenn has tuned up the Wing Gundam a bit since then, but there’s still room for improvement. His enrollment into the DSFL draft is the biggest career step he has taken since he first put on the exosuit.
Will Wing Gundam grow with the competition and become one of the ISFL greats? Will he explode on the field and leave a bus-sized crater? Will Glenn poop his pants during a game? All of these questions and more will be answered in the coming seasons.
Wing Gundam is simply a reasonably fit middle-aged dude in a very modern exosuit made to look like Wing Gundam from the anime. His real name is Glenn Spinach, which just might be why he avoids using it. Glenn used to play football in high school but was a lackluster player because he didn’t have the drive and ambition that he needed to rise to his potential. His career as a defensive end was over on the final day of the regular season of his senior year – his team didn’t make the playoffs.
Years later, Glenn Spinach leads the quiet life of a corporate sales manager for a tech distributor. It’s incredibly boring and in no way satisfying, but the pay is decent and he is allowed to work from home. The downside is that all the time alone at home allowed him to consider the regrets, mistakes, and missed opportunities of the past. This mentally broken man yearned for an opportunity to redeem himself – to become what he could have been, if only he knew what unfulfilling end waited him here in the world of milquetoast mediocrity. His fondest memories were of the football team – the adrenaline and excitement of game day as well as the camaraderie and fellowship of being part of a team. Those were the days.
Glenn Spinach refused to let go of those (perhaps childish) ambitions of greatness. He would not be stopped.
With an excess of free time at home surrounded by demo units of bleeding-edge technology, Spinach began to tinker with a goal in mind: upgrade this broken down old body by any means necessary. He drew inspiration from all of the media he could consume about exosuits, giant robots, mechs, etc. An exosuit of sufficient quality would allow him to play football at peak performance even at his age and physical condition.
The early attempts were ugly and ineffective. We won’t linger too long on the failures, because with enough iterations on the design, Glenn was able to produce an effective exosuit which put his physical abilities on par with a collegiate athlete. The success was a life raft for Glenn’s mental state; the possibility of living his dream was starting to seem more and more real.
Glenn’s drastically improved speed, strength, agility, and endurance made him feel godlike. Unfortunately, the secondary effect of the exosuit was that it made his lack of skills and experience that much more obvious. There was simply no substitute for good practice. If Spinach wanted to have any chance of competing at a professional level, he would have to find a way to practice at a high level. Given that he used technological fiat to solve his first problem, why not return to that same well for the second?
VR tech is pretty common these days, so that’s a good start. Creating custom controllers that fit into athletic gloves allowed Glenn to simulate the experiences of a live game very closely. He split his training 50/50 between practicing with the exosuit and logging into the training program. The effect was immediate and incredible – where he fell short, faltered, or lacked confidence before, Spinach was now a force to be reckoned with. He was a pitiful disgrace of a defensive end when he began, but he emerged from the metaphorical Hyperbolic Time Chamber totally evolved.
Glenn barely recognized himself in the mirror these days. The disheveled, world-weary man who had all but given up on life was gone. Instead, a more physically fit, confident, and capable man stared back at him from the reflection. This personal passion project was exactly what Glenn needed at this time in his life. Armed with a new can-do attitude, Glenn was ready to try out for a team. A person doesn’t simply walk onto the field to try out for a major league team, however, so Glenn resorted to some minor league outfits to try and get a foot in the door.
He drove to Chili Dog Stadium to meet with coaching staff. The Big City Dogs just lost a defensive end to a season-ending injury and were desperate for a replacement. He wouldn’t have been able to secure a meeting if they weren’t under dire circumstances, so he wanted to put his best foot forward.
Fate would not be on Glenn’s side that day, however.
He stood at the trunk of his car in the parking lot, stepping into the exosuit and testing its sensor and hydraulics systems. The unpainted steel exosuit was functional, but not pretty. Support struts ran in line with the primary skeletal and muscular systems of Glenn’s body, but the suit still had no ‘shell’ – his body was visible and exposed to the elements rather than being sealed up like an Iron Man suit. He sighed in relief that everything was operational. He allowed himself an optimistic smile as he scrolled through sensor readouts.
“Oh my god! Dustbin Glenn? Is that you?”
The voice that issued from behind Glenn sent a shock through him as though he’d seen a ghost.
Chip Tanner. What the fuck was Chip Tanner doing here?
Glenn turned, trying not to let his contempt show on his face. “Ah, Chip. Good morning.” His tone was colder than he intended. Oops.
Chip looked nearly the same as he did in high school – the same close-cropped crew cut hair style, the meticulously shaved face, even the navy blue track suit was in the same style as the one popular back in the day. He retained his fitness too, truly living up to the Quarterback Archetype. “It is you! I haven’t seen you in years! You look, uh… say, what brings you to the stadium on a Monday morning? You got some sort of a geek conference nearby you’re wearing that suit to?”
Glenn looked down at the exosuit, and for the first time he felt self-conscious about it, almost ashamed. “It’s an exosuit. I’m here to meet with the Dogs coaching staff.” Glenn said defensively. The hair on the back of his neck was standing on end. Chip was always the biggest bully of their graduating class, and he never saw any comeuppance about it. When the two of them played on the same team, Glenn did his best to avoid interacting with Chip at all costs. How unlucky that this insufferable jerk would show up today of all days – how would Glenn be able to concentrate on his tryout after this conversation?
Chip burst out laughing. “No way. Absolutely no way. You’re shitting me. You’re the walk-on tryout? Donna told me that there was someone coming in this morning who might be able to fill the position, but this is ridiculous.”
Glenn’s heart was racing. He talked to Donna in the head office the day prior. Chip is affiliated with the Big City Dogs? He didn’t see any other explanation. Fuck. When was the next time an opportunity like this would come up? As much as it pained him to do so, he tried to smooth things over. “I’m 100% serious. Put me into a tryout and I’ll show the coaching staff I’ve got what it takes to fill the position for the team.”
“Dustbin, I AM the coaching staff. This is minor league football, and I’m not sharing the limited salary budget with anyone else. If you wanted to impress the coach, you would have done it twenty years ago. You weren’t even good back then, when you were in your prime. Why would I waste my time with a tryout for a washed-up nerd with a toy robot? Get out of here, I have to find a real athlete before the game on Sunday.” Chip dismissed Glenn with a look of contempt, then stepped past him toward the stadium. The coach didn’t so much as look back as Glenn stood, mouth agape, trying to process the reality that he had just lost his golden opportunity.
Just like that, Glenn was reduced to the pitiful former self that he tried so hard to escape.
He removed the exosuit, packed it carefully back into the trunk of his car, and drove home in silence.
Back in his workshop, Glenn sat in front of a shelf filled with action figures – Transformers, Gundams, Voltron, Megazords, and many others. He looked over each of them with mixed emotions. On one hand, he loved the wild ambition and effect of these fictional machines. They captured his imagination so fully that he couldn’t imagine his life without them. On the other hand, they represented an unachievable ideal. Chip Tanner wouldn’t dare to dismiss a real Gundam as useless and incapable, but he had done so to Glenn as though it was the most natural reaction in the world.
He let his gaze rest on the Wing Gundam model on his shelf for a long time. He looked over the incredible detail of the model, appreciating the design from top to bottom. That’s when a realization hit him: aesthetics! Glenn’s current model was an ugly but functional prototype that looked nothing like the mechs that he loved. The mechs of popular culture took on an identity of their own, where Glenn’s suit was more like an article of clothing that he could wear. To complete this exosuit, Glenn would have to enclose the unit entirely with armor, allowing the suit to present as an individual rather than a vehicle.
As an homage to the media that gave him the inspiration to build an exosuit, Glenn designed it to look as closely as possible to the Wing Gundam. It wasn’t a perfect replication, but it was close enough to fool any casual observer. The paint job, he reckoned, could be changed to match the team colors of whichever organization signs him.
Armoring the exosuit was neither quick nor easy, but when it was done, Glenn marveled at the finished result. This was even better than he could have imagined. By the time final touches were made on the suit, the football season ended, and open tryouts for minor league teams was swiftly approaching. He decided that he would try out anywhere who would allow him, except for the Big City Dogs.
Rather than be judged based on his true identity, Glenn signed up for these tryouts as Wing Gundam, taking on the identity of the machine he pilots. It raised a lot of eyebrows, to be sure, but Glenn gave no ground to questions about it. Truthfully, the coaching staff overseeing the tryouts weren’t entirely sure if Wing Gundam was an exosuit, an artificial intelligence, or remote controlled. According to the extremely lax roster regulations, it wasn’t something that anyone was particularly concerned about. As long as Wing Gundam was able to produce on the field, issues of his identity would be immaterial.
The tryouts turned out to be much better than he could have hoped for. The team that Wing Gundam tried out for was the Small Town Sawblades. The team was in relatively good shape, having made it to the playoffs last season, but falling in post-season to the Big City Dogs. The coaching staff was warm and welcoming of his unusual circumstances. His performance was admirable but not earth-shattering: talented enough to be a starting defensive end for a minor league team. Glenn believed that the Wing Gundam would hold up to the physical aspect of the game, and he was mostly correct. Wing Gundam wasn’t the stalwart immovable object that Glenn secretly wished that it might be, but already he thought there were some improvements that could be made in that regard.
In terms of his own skills and instincts, Glenn was clearly lacking compared to the other players trying out – being away from the game for so long didn’t do his mental game any favors, and it wasn’t 100% sharp even in his physical prime. With more experience and time in the league, guidance from coaching staff and learning from teammates, Glenn had total confidence that he could continue to grow to match pace with his competitors.
Wing Gundam secured a starting position as a defensive end with the Small Town Sawblades. As far as the team was concerned, Glenn didn’t exist. The staff and his teammates referred to him a Wing, big block letters on the back of his chassis said GUNDAM. Glenn was startled and surprised at the way he was treated – in many ways, Wing Gundam elicited more compassion and humanity from others than Glenn ever did. He made connections with people. Shared laughs. Formed bonds.
In what seemed like no time, the off-season was over and preseason was beginning. Wing Gundam took the field in a real football game for the first time. Glenn’s mind was a blur from the coin flip until the game clock expired. At halftime, he realized in frustration that he had been playing on “autopilot” – treating the game the same way he would have treated the simulations he trained on. A few deep breaths helped to clear his mind and allow him to be more alert and receptive in the moment.
The second half of the first game was a marked improvement in mentality and effectiveness. He did his best to make sure to be mentally present and aware for each and every play. The sensor feed from the suit was helpful during practice, but proved to be too distracting at full speed. Glenn disabled that functionality and relied on muscle memory and instinct to make his decisions.
Finally, Glenn felt like he was living his dream. With the sensor feed off, there wasn’t anything to distract him from the play unfolding around him. He was in a flow state for the first time in his adult life. His body and mind were perfectly aligned and operated the exosuit as though it were a second skin. A wide, gleeful grin went undetected beneath the metal exterior of his mech. Late in the fourth quarter, the Sawblades held a narrow 21-20 lead. The quarterback threw an interception, putting the Sawblades back on defense in a must-stop situation. The cornerback who got the pick was grounded at the 60 yard line – any movement up the field could lead to a field goal, which would spell disaster for Small Town.
On the first down, Wing got just enough contact with the quarterback to send his pass wide of the receiver. Incomplete pass. Second and ten was a different strategy, and a successful short run put the offense on the 54-yard line, close enough to make a field goal seem likely. Third down, the quarterback dropped back from the line, eyes up toward his receivers. He found a target: a wide receiver racing toward the 40-yard line. He cocked his arm back, ready to send this ball on a string to his intended receiver.
CRASH!
Somehow, Wing Gundam broke through the offensive line and absolutely hammered the unsuspecting QB. The force of the sack knocked the ball free from his throwing arm, and the loose ball sailed sideways, landing on the turf squarely at the feet of the Small Town Sawblades’ star Linebacker, who smothered the ball like it was hash browns at the Waffle House.
With only a minute left in the fourth quarter, the Sawblades managed the clock before making a final field goal attempt from the 50-yard line. The kick was good, and the Sawblades won their first game 24-20. It was very much a team win, and Wing Gundam felt like a meaningful contributor to the team. The team celebrated together, and Wing Gundam got a lot of praise for his clutch play. Inside the steel exosuit, Glenn beamed with joy. Who knew that life could be as fun and rewarding as it feels at this moment?
Glenn was on cloud nine. His hard work was being rewarded with good results. People respected and appreciated him. With each game of the season, Glenn got more comfortable piloting Wing Gundam, and the team crept ever closer to the post-season. Wing Gundam brought new energy to the team – his teammates mostly believed him to be a robot, and he didn’t tell them any differently. They suffered a few losses, true, but they found more wins than losses and hopes were high for a championship run.
At the end of the season, Small Town Sawblades sat at second position in the league standings behind the Big City Dogs. The championship game loomed large in Glenn’s mind. This would be the first time since almost a year ago that he would be in the same place as that absolute trash bag, Chip Tanner. The way that Chip brushed off Glenn and his exosuit was a huge motivating factor that kept Glenn’s nose to the grindstone. Chip would regret not signing Glenn on as a defensive end that day last season, come hell or high water.
On the evening before the big game, the team met to watch game tape and strategize. It was only then that Wing Gundam learned a very interesting piece of information: the Big City Dogs’ star quarterback was Chad Turner, Chip’s son. As he studied the tape on his opponents, he realized something: he knew this playbook. Chip was running the same plays that he relied on as a quarterback himself when he was in high school.
“Guys, you’re not going to believe this. I know this team’s entire playbook.” Wing Gundam said hesitantly. Glenn didn’t want to reveal his true identity, so he told the team that the play-by-play from those games in the late 90s were stored in his memory banks. It was pretty close to the truth, if not exactly factual.
The team took in everything that Wing Gundam had to say. The coaching staff took notes and made plans to take advantages of the known weaknesses in the Big City Dogs’ playbook.
During the big game, the Sawblades defense was absolutely electric. Big City didn’t have time to so much as spin up their offense; the way that the defensive line absolutely smothered the quarterback proved to be catastrophic to the Dogs. What was hyped to be a knock down, drag out grueling battle of a championship game was anything but. The Sawblades lived up to their name and cut through the Dogs like butter in the first half of the game. During the second half, Big City played more conservatively, allowing the Sawblades offense to take less advantage of their opposition playbook study session.
The switch to a conservative playbook ultimately meant that the Dogs could never mount a comeback. The Small Town Sawblades won the ultra minor league regional championship, an underdog story for the ages.
When the teams met to shake hands after the game, Glenn finally had his delicious moment. As the teams came off the field, Wing Gundam made sure to walk past Chip, who was red-faced and fuming, broken clipboard still clutched in his hands.
“Good game, coach. Your team played hard.” Wing said as he passed.
“Bullshit. It was a fluke!” Chip threw the clipboard to the ground and stomped the pieces.
“Tough break, Chip. It must really hurt to lose to a washed up nerd with a toy robot.” Wing walked down the tunnel at that, leaving Chip speechless on the field.
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Glenn has tuned up the Wing Gundam a bit since then, but there’s still room for improvement. His enrollment into the DSFL draft is the biggest career step he has taken since he first put on the exosuit.
Will Wing Gundam grow with the competition and become one of the ISFL greats? Will he explode on the field and leave a bus-sized crater? Will Glenn poop his pants during a game? All of these questions and more will be answered in the coming seasons.