The morning after her match with Sardar found Beth in her main hanger, watching the repair work on the<em>Lissa.</em>Unlike some mech pilots, Beth was no mechanic. She did have a strong layperson’s understanding of how things worked, and she could do a few minor repairs and maintenance tasks—but overall she had to defer to the expertise of her technical crew. Her only direct contributions to her mech had been decided the overall design philosophy, weapons loadout, and modifying the operating system. Beth was at least good at programming, as it was something she had studied extensively to make up for putting off college.<br/><br/>The young mech pilot approached her crew chief Mike Carson, an amiable and grandfatherly figure who had been with her since she had gotten sponsored for her first professional-grade mech. “Beth, how are you this morning? We’re still on schedule, if that’s what you’re wondering?”<br/><br/>She laughed. “No, it’s not that. I trust you to tell me if something’s wrong.”<br/><br/>“By the way, I never remembered to thank you for continuing to pay the team for... well, basically sitting with our thumbs up our butts while you were away.”<br/><br/>“What? You shouldn’t mention that—everyone has bills to pay, I couldn’t very well leave you all high and dry. But that does bring me to what I did want to talk to you about. How would you guys like to earn a lot of overtime pay?”<br/><br/>“I’m listening,” Mike said, grinning.<br/><br/>“I’d like to build a complete second<em>Lissa.</em>I’ve got a lot of money kicking around from my recent endorsements, so I think we can swing it without a bank loan.”<br/><br/>“Oh, this isn’t about what happened to that Malrain girl, is it?”<br/><br/>She smiled sheepishly. “Well, yeah. If I get put against Jareth Herman I figure I can probably beat him, but...wow. That guy was quite a bastard to trash her mech like that, you figure he could tone down the damage a bit from that attack. Anyway, I don’t want to be on the sidelines for a month if my luck runs out.”<br/><br/>“Alright. If it’s what you want, I’m sure most of my team’s up for it. We’ll get started once we finish this repair job.”<br/><br/>“Great. I’ll leave you to do your thing, just call me if you need anything.”<br/><br/>“Will do.”<br/><br/>Beth walked away from Mike and activated her comm to record a message. “Mira, it’s Beth. I just wanted to remind you again about the public service announcement we’re shooting in two days. You should have just gotten an email with your part on it, it’s only three sentences to read to the camera, as many takes as you need—should be a piece of cake. Also, I’m sorry we’ve had so little time to talk since your match, but I was crazy busy prepping to face down old ‘Plasma’ Sangma. I hope you’re not too upset about what happened, and I’m here now if you need to talk. We could even get lunch if you’d like. Anyway, take care.” She then transmitted her message to Mira.