Writer's Statement: I chose to name my story “Harmony” because it’s the name of the planet they were training in while they were in the simulation and it was the home planet of Lastimosa. My other reason for choosing that as the name is because my favorite map in the multiplayer is based off of Harmony. My story connects to the pandemic because I’ve been able to play video games more and Titanfall 2 was the one I most enjoy out of the ones I’ve played. I chose to write a story because I always like to write stories every now and then. My inspiration was the first part of Titanfall 2’s campaign.
Very faintly there was the sound of people talking over the intercom. All he could see were black metal plates only a few inches away from him with a few buttons and 2 red lights, he looked at the lights until they turned green and a voice came out from the speakers behind him: “Does that feel right to you, Cooper?” after calibrating the machine a bit further Cooper replied with: “Yeah, It feels alright.”. Green lights flashed from every metal panel as everything went white.
When Cooper could see again he saw he was in the end of a wide corridor, the walls were made of large white bricks, sunlight shone through wooden beams covering the top of the walls in a diagonal pattern, on the left side of the corridor there was a small path with water in it, looking up Cooper could see cherry trees beyond the walls. He’d never been in this simulation or even heard of a planet that looked remotely like this one. He was curious where it could be if it even still existed. He saw his captain, Lastimosa, sitting on a bench at the entrance of the corridor and walked towards him. Lastimosa was similar in height to Cooper but much older , maybe even twice his age. “Technically, I’m not supposed to be training you. But in you, I see potential.” Cooper frowned in confusion when he heard that, he had been training with Lastimosa for months, possibly years at this point and he never knew that there were protocols or something in place for training possible future pilots. Before he had the chance to say anything Lastimosa vanished and turned into blue lines that quickly shot to the end of the corridor where there was a tree with the path of water circling it.
Cooper followed until he caught up when Lastimosa vanished again and reappeared at the top of a small set of stairs looking outwards towards a path. Again Cooper followed. “It’s inspired by my home planet of Harmony.” “This is where I grew up.” “This is what we’re fighting for, Cooper” Cooper looked around, There were small stone pillars floating everywhere, the grass was a golden color and the buildings closest had the same design as the path Cooper was following with small stone squares suspended in the air. It looked peaceful unlike most other planets Cooper has been to. He was sad that the war has taken away many planets like this and either turned them into factories or made them almost impossible to live on. He tested his jump kit on a wall that was ahead of him to make sure it was primed, he ran across the wall like it was just ground proving the jump kit was in fact primed.
He followed the path and made it into a building where Lastimosa was sitting when wooden pillars fell from the sky in a circle in the middle of the room, each pillar had 3 guns on them, each pillar had different weapons. “Time to hit the range,”Llastimosa said before disappearing to a nearby room with targets at different distances with a cherry tree in the middle. Cooper tried out some of the guns to get an idea of how they worked, there were assault rifles, snipers, shotguns and almost any you could imagine.
When he was satisfied with shooting, he followed Lastimosa into another room with more guns and a leaderboard with an entrance to a large room saying “Start” on it. It was a gauntlet, Cooper had run many different gauntlets at this point and knew what to do, get from the start to the end within 2 minutes while shooting as many holograms as possible, each hologram that remained would add a few seconds to the timer. He ran through the gauntlet multiple times trying to come up with the fastest way to complete it without missing a hologram. Each time he wasn’t satisfied, he felt like he could shave a few seconds off here or there by jumping sooner or wall running at this section instead of running on the ground but each time he wasn’t able to get the perfect time.
He wanted to go through it more but knew there wasn’t enough time. He found Lastimosa standing next to the leaderboard waiting. Lastimosa noticed that he was done and fiddled with the screen on his wrist as everything went white. When Cooper could see again he saw he was on the same planet but he and lastimosa were on top on a disc shaped surface with trees and pillars everywhere, there was a 2 story tall dark green titan standing right infront of him. “That’s my partner, BT. He’s a vanguard-class.” the titan shifted as lastimosa said those words. “Homegrown militia technology.” the titan shifted more. “Go ahead Rifleman - call in your first titan.” Cooper was excited, it was only a simulation and he didn’t actually have a titan but this was most likely the first time he would be able to feel what it’s like to be a pilot. He called down his titan when everything started glitching. His titan was suspended in the air only a few meters above ground when everything went black with the words SYSTEM ERROR: LOW POWER in bold red lettering on the top left.
Everyone was running around panicked when Cooper left the simpod, he was confused as to what was going on. They were at least a few hours away from the drop zone and even then people wouldn’t be running around scrambling to get their gear because they were only hitting a small IMC research facility with minimal protection. It wasn’t like they were trying to attack a military base. Everything changed when Lastimosa informed him of what was happening, the ship they were on was being attacked. He felt confused and scared, The James MacAllan was a massive ship there was no way a research facility had enough firepower to take it down, let alone touch it at this range. Cooper sat in his simpod not knowing what to do when his commander ran up to him and handed him his rifle telling him to get ready. Cooper got ready and followed everyone. What was about to happen, he had absolutely no idea.