The Undying Mecha Emperor

"HEY!" Sheera yelled through her exhaustion. "Oh, hey - that actually feels good. Do it again!" She commanded her cousin.

"Again your head!" Sherry dropped the empty bottle on Sheera\'s face.

PLONK!

"HEY! That hurts you know!" Sheera shouted. However she didn\'t even bother to remove the bottle from her face. She was too tired!

"I know. That\'s exactly why I did it." Sherry replied smugly. "That\'s your punishment for making me lose a prestigious record!"

"You\'re not a nice person, Sherry." Sheera told her cousin seriously. "You need to be nicer, or else you will not have any friends. And if you don\'t have any friends to hangout with, then you\'ll keep bothering me. That\'s not a good thing at all."

"I don\'t need friends." Sherry scoffed. But she did stop pouring and dropping things on Sheera\'s face. "I\'m fine by myself."

"No you\'re not fine by yourself." Sheera replied automatically. "You\'ll go crazy if you\'re alone all the time. And if you go crazy, you\'ll probably drag me to do crazy things. That\'s also not a good thing at all."

"Errr… you girls want a sandwich?" Veronica Wu smiled at their childish conversation.

"A sandwich sounds good." Sheera said from the ground.

"No thank you, Miss Veronica. We\'re fine." Sherry shook her head and declined.

"Hey! I said a sandwich sounds good!" Sheera protested.

"Shush. Weak bodied little girls like you have no say on what to eat after strenuous exercise." Sherry shushed her cousin.

"Gahhh." Sheera just groaned in resigned acceptance and closed her eyes.

She seemed very used and resigned to her cousin\'s domineering ways.

"Well, if you change your mind, I still have five-"

"Two!" I shouted. "You have two left, Miss Veronica."

"What? I brought seven! And I only had one!" Veronica Wu stared at me in surprise.

"Ah hahaha. I was hungry so I ate another three." I scratched my head sheepishly.

"You… Haiya." Veronica Wu could only sigh and shake her head helplessly. Her plan on bribing the top few kids had disappeared into my stomach.

"Hehehe."

"Who are you?" Sherry asked while looking at me curiously. "Which organization are you from?"

"I am Justin from the White Tiger Hunters." I gave her my standard answer.

"WHAT? WE LOST TO A WHITEFROST?!" Sherry shouted in shock as her eyes opened wide and bulged outwards creepily.

"Ah shucks. This is bad." Sheera sat up with a big frown on her face. "Gramps won\'t let this one pass easily. I might even get my allowance reduced!"

"Justin from the Whitefrost Clan huh." Sherry narrowed her eyes as she scrutinized me from head to toe.

"Finally her eyes got smaller!" I sighed internally. "That was creepy. I thought her eyes were about to pop out!"

"You must be quite an important person for them to invest so many resources into making your body so strong." Sherry continued.

"Who are you really? Uncle Jason\'s bastard son? Or Uncle Phil\'s? Oh! You must be the descendant of the crazy old man\'s secret mistress! And you\'re here to snatch the Whitefrost Inheritance from Emma and the other Whitefrost losers!" Sherry\'s eyes shined at the her own make-belief fairytale on my background.

"Stop making up stories about other people! Especially one as implausible as that!" Sheera snapped at Sherry and her absurd story. "He\'s probably just a secret assassin assigned by the Long family to kill the crazy old man!"

Veronica Wu chuckled at the two girls and their overactive imagination. "The Whitefrost Clan and the Lin Family are still at odds huh? Do you kids even know why?"

I shook my head.

The girls shook their heads too.

"It doesn\'t really matter why. Gramps promised to give me a Modular Mecha if I defeat all the Whitefrost kids in this entrance test. That\'s a good enough reason for me to go all out!" Sherry said.

"Modular Mecha? You mean the two hundred fifty billion dollar mecha that\'s the reward for the first prize in the Mecha Tournament?" I asked in surprise.

"Hahahaha! What are you talking about? Do you think the Lin Family prints money? Of course not that one! That\'s the latest and the best Modular Mecha produced by the National Mecha Corporation! Gramps merely promised the Lin Family\'s own Modular Mecha. We produce mechas too you know, unlike your pathetic clan." Sherry sneered at me.

"Alright enough." Veronica Wu finally had enough of Sherry\'s aggressiveness. "Compete with all your strength, that\'s good. But there\'s absolutely no need for insults. After all is said and done, we are still from the same country. The Whitefrost Clan depends on the Lin Family for mechas, but the Lin family depends on the Whitefrost Clan to lead our soldiers to victory. We are all brothers and sisters!"

"The Lin family can lead our soldiers as well as the Whitefrost clan." Sherry sulked, unwilling to go along with Veronica\'s attempt to reconcile them with such an unacceptable reason.

Veronica Wu\'s eyes gleamed slightly at her words. It was very slight, but I could feel a dash of competitiveness in her gaze as she looked at the two girls. But that feeling disappeared as quickly as it appeared, and the two girls did not detect anything.

"Well! That\'s the spirit! Don\'t ever think that you\'re second best until you\'ve fought to your very last drop of blood!" Veronica said encouragingly.

"Yeah! I agree!" Sheera shouted passionately in agreement.

"Hmph! I\'ve never considered myself second best." Sherry said. "Whether it is theory or practice, close combat or marksmanship, as long as its related to mechas, I\'m definitely the best of the best!"

"We\'ll find out soon enough." Veronica Wu said with a mysterious smile.

We all sat down near Veronica Wu\'s white mecha and waited for the rest of the kids to finish their hike.

Surprisingly, the fourth, fifth and sixth finished less than fifteen minutes later. If they were in any other batch, they would have broken the previous record and came in first!