For Katsuro, it was a basic, sure stroll to the hangar from his dorm. No hurry, no excitement; or at least, not any that showed on him. Though Katsuro had been a part in refitting the Silverhawk to the V4 chassis, he had yet to really test the new machine beyond a few balance trials. All the young pilot had to be sure of was that all of the instruments performed exactly as they meant to, and then the rest of it was up to the pilot's own skill. 

Given that this was going to be his first major outing with an MF, much less the new Silverhawk, Katsuro was expecting to wipe out at some point. There was no real reason that all of the skills and tactics that he learned throughout the time here so far were going to all work perfectly on the first go, much less work at all. Half of the curriculum of the Tsukino-Danvers Academy would not exist otherwise. You just had to learn some things using trial and error, seeing your strengths and weaknesses and working to iron them out. And for practically every student in the school, exactly what and how they were going to develop would be completely different, especially if they had a custom Mechanical Frame.

But now that was just being obvious. Katsuro entered one of the hangars where his MF was store, mentally steeling himself for the impending MF combat test. The sheer size and number of the Mechanical Frames stored just here would be impressive to anyone, but sooner or later it was just going to be routine. What did surprise Katsuro was the amount of variance in all of the Mechanical Frames. From modified models to custom chassis to several supposedly standard-make MFs that Katsuro had never even heard of, this gave the Academy a massive variety in their trainees and their arms. It would also give a lot more difference in practice, Katsuro thought, if every MF was pitted against a different one each time. 

For of all the things to learn in the Academy, one of the key concepts was to develop a strategy and stick to it, making it better and better until the strengths out-shined the faults. What made Katsuro rather different in that regard was the fact that his strategy would, in theory and hopefully in practice, end up varying around the opposing mech's design and strategy. Hopefully that didn't turn out to be a weakness in and of itself... 

[i]No, that's not the issue right now[i/], Katsuro shrugged off the doubt. He quickly headed out of the hangar, making a beeline straight for the gym.