Beth walked through the park at a leisurely pace, mostly lost in thought. She was dressed in a sweater, skirt, and high heels, all of it inexpensive stuff one would not expect a famous mech pilot to be wearing. All of her registration information was held in the comm strapped to her wrist. The young woman always found this archaic ritual a bit amusing—instead of just filling out the forms online, everyone had to come to the same location. It made for an interesting social environment at least, which she supposed was the purpose of it.<br/><br/>It was hard to believe she was back. She had missed the final month of the last season’s MBF events, and had not even resumed practicing with her mech until a week ago. Fortunately her piloting skills had not atrophied much at all, and she expected to be back in top form by the time the preliminaries were over with. Beth had mixed feelings about her return—she enjoyed the excitement of a good match, but the whole thing seemed so frivolous. Though she had always told herself that entertaining people was a worthwhile pursuit, even if it meant putting off more productive goals.<br/><br/>She had had these feelings ever since she had decided to forgo college for the MBF, but with Melissa gone her doubts had become more intense.<em>Melissa.</em>The pain of her death had slowly diminished as the months went by, from intense grief and depression to her current troubling emptiness. Beth knew her lack of enthusiasm for being back was just lingering apathy caused by her pain—she was going to push through it and go on with her life. She knew it was a horribly cliché sentiment, but Melissa would have wanted it that way.<br/><br/>Beth walked by a small crowd of pilots and heard them murmuring in excitement. She heard the word “railgun” a couple times, and there was no doubt she had been recognized. Hopefully this year none of the star-struck newbie pilots would pester her for an autograph, though she doubted she would be so fortunate.<br/><br/>She arrived at the building and found that number 119 was be called for—unfortunately, she was 898.<em>I guess this will be a while.</em>She looked around her, seeing if there was anyone she recognized.