Chapter 17 - Naming the Team (1/2)

After they finished chatting and boasting to each other in the post game lobby, Gray and the rest of the team met up just outside the simulator pods to talk.

"Gray! Where the fruitcake did you learn military tactics?!?" exclaimed Geoff.

"Uhh, I like to read a lot and picked up on it." replied Gray.

"Bull crap, you barely even read the manual to this game!"

"Okay okay... I really love large scale strategic war games and used to play them all of the time on my old PC before getting into Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality gaming. 'Shogun Total War XXII: More Ancient War Killing' basically can teach you how to lead an army if you play the complete tutorial and solo campaign." said Gray.

"That game came out even before most of us were probably born..." said Caleb.

"...I am poor so this is my only VR game, I'm still using old Lindows 37 on my home PC." Gray lamented.

"Ah, so I bet you sold your soul or maybe your body to some rich old perv to get in on this, right?" giggled Yurika.

"No... just no... what made you even think that? I won a contest from Alterra Corporation and was given a Diamond-Tier copy of this game and VR bed."

"Oh, so no sugar momma then, I could really use one myself" said Geoff.

Stacia whispered to Yurika "What's a sugar momma? Is it food?"

Yurika leaned in to Stacia and whispered something in to her ear that Gray couldn't pick out. It was safe to assume it wasn't anything good due to Stacia's look of disgust while glaring at Geoff.

"It... it was a joke, honest!" Geoff replied sheepishly.

Ignoring Geoff's plea of innocence, they decided to give themselves a better name and walked over to the registration board again. Still, the same problem came up that everyone had their own idea.

"Ok, how about this, let's just press the random button until it gives us a name that we all are not completely disgusted with" suggest Gray.

Everyone nodded in agreement and so Gray started to click the random button for the name change. A rename cost 5 merits at their current rank, which was unranked, once a name was selected.

"How about this?" said Gray as he pushed the random button

'Delicious Devils' came up on the screen. Since Yurika was the only one that kinda liked it Gray continued to press the random button and check everyone's reactions to each name.

"Excitable Eels". "Fantastic Five", "Gregarious Gamers", "Horny Humans", "Indignant Iguanas"... at this point the names just became silly as it is clear that no thought was put into the random button by the developers. Eventually Geoff made a suggestion by combining a few of the goofy names in to a decent one.

"How about 'Steel Demons'?" suggested Geoff

"Hmm... maybe, but it sounds kinda like just an alternative name from 'Metal Murderers' that the random button came up with." replied Stacia

"Demons are kinda sexy though." said Yurika as her mind appeared to enter in to a far off fantasy world of its own. A creepy smile came across Yurika's face while her eyes seemed to be looking off into nowhere and a small amount of drool could be seen coming out of the corner or her mouth.

The rest of the group glanced at each other for a second then pretended like they saw and heard nothing from Yurika in order to protect their own purity.

"How about 'Steel Wolves'?" suggested Gray.

Caleb nodded in agreement with this and said "I do like it as it sounds very mercenary while hinting at the various qualities that make up a good team such as strength, teamwork and communication."

"Uh, yeah, that is what I was going for" said Gray while laughing and thinking to himself "I'm probably the only one here that is in to old Battletech lore"

"Eh, works for me, anyone got any complaints?" asked Geoff while looking at Stacia and Yurika. Yurika finally came back to reality and and neither her nor Stacia had any complaints about the name.

"Ok, then from here on out we will be the Steel Wolves!" exclaimed Geoff while Gray typed it into the name field and accepted the change.