Wake up!

"Wake up, sleeping beauty! We've got a war to win!"

"H-huh!?" That yell right in Scythe's ear wakes him up. He isn't in the classroom anymore. After twisting around this way and that to look at his new surroundings, he realizes he's in the cockpit of one of those mechs from the anime he'd been watching!

Every surface is made of cool, sleek metal and nearly all of them feature some kind of flashing button, screen, or gauge. Beyond the consoles are what Scythe at first thinks are windows, but he soon realizes they're screens displaying what's outside. They're in outer space, surrounded by whorls of fire and shrapnel. Mechs are fighting all around, and the only indicator of friend or foe is that some have the vaguely human-like faces of those piloted by the main character and his allies in the intro Scythe had watched.

Speaking of, that spiky, flared-up hairstyle eclipses Scythe's view the second he looks forward. "You got knocked out by the impact," he shouts, his voice at once youthful and tempered by a masculine growl. "You okay back there?"

"Um." Scythe is overwhelmed. He looks down and sees he's dressed in a black spacesuit with a plunging V-neck showing his chest and stomach, with a bulky red jacket over it. "I'm... yeah, I'm okay." His voice starts to tremble. Usually he's pretty good at remaining stoic in every situation except one where he's getting molested, but right now, he's so out of his depth that he can't conceal his vulnerability. "What do I... what do I do?"

"Did that hit make you lose your memory?" There's laughter in the pilot's voice, but he clearly means what he's asking. "I've got things under control. We've nearly routed the enemy! Just hang tight and we'll get you checked out back at base!" He pushes a pair of levers forward, and the mech accelerates towards a clash with an enemy.

At first the enemy mech doesn't look all that different from the ones their allies are piloting, but Scythe quickly notices that something's very wrong with it. Other than having an oddly shaped head - a little like a hammerhead shark - it's got deformed limbs and gaps in its armor plating, out of which peek some kind of undulating cilia. Just looking at them makes Scythe start to protectively cross his legs out of instinct. He's seen enough hentai to know what tentacles would do to someone as cute as him.

Yet Scythe notices something the pilot clearly doesn't. There's another enemy mech, its body strung out and deformed into a mechanical space serpent, trying to flank them! It's coming in hot, intending to strike while they're committed to fighting the enemy in front of them!