Hours, long baithaizan hours spent in a chair that mimicked the motion of an actual mech, going through increasingly complicated movement tutorials - walking, running, jumping, jump-jetting - had Elytra feeling as if she'd been halfway rattled out of her carapace.
It somehow managed to give her an appetite enough to look forward to the luncheon of cubes that awaited her. It also left her with the feeling of being back on land after a boat trip on stormy seas.
And by the motion sick look of some of her fellow captives, she wasn't the only one who felt that way.
She was certain that the sharp commands of the tan and orange baithaizan were going to be repeating in her dreams once she fell asleep, which would hopefully drown out the memories of the dying that had haunted her the night before. They were certainly overpowering her thoughts in the waking world, as she barely noticed her collar pulling her out of her chair and into another room, and only snapped to attention when something looped around her shoulders and guided her into another seat.
"I take it you've never experienced a full immersion sim before?" Pryseia said as she took a seat on the bland bench next to her as Elytra came back to her senses.
"No. That was definitely… full immersion." Elytra blinked hard to try and help drive the brain fog away. She took in her surroundings, trying to use her senses to ground herself in the present.
The sight of the other combatants scattered about the room, more grouped together in little knots as opposed to the mostly solitary standoffishness of the night before.
The quiet sounds of chatter among those groups, not anywhere near boisterous, but not as hushed as they'd been the last time they were all together.
The strange, alien smells of beings with biologies very different from her own.
The texture of the bench beneath her, rough enough to prevent slipping, but not so rough as to cause discomfort.
The body heat rolling off of the alien seated next to her. Easy to assume, then, that Pryseia's race came from a world much colder than her own.
"It's a decent enough way to train a lot of people all at once," Pryseia mused before shooting her a glance, "But it's odd too. This training program and the majordomos in our cells are both virtual intelligences. Not including the announcer in the arena, none of these baithaizan have directly interacted with us."
Elytra glanced up at the guards patrolling the walkways above them. Aside from hovering menacingly in the vicinity of anyone who looked like they might be thinking of getting into trouble, they'd never gotten closer than the walkway above them allowed.
"That's odd for baithaizans?" She asked.
"Very." Pryseia told her, "Individual personalities always vary, regardless of species, but the baithaizans I've encountered before were always keen on getting into shouting matches with anyone willing enough to scream back, friend or foe alike, and as in your face as possible. The noise from the crowd is more like what I expected from them, but the distance they all keep from us…"
"They're treating us like livestock, not people."
Pryseia hummed a noise of agreement.
Dropping her voice to a whisper, Elytra asked, "Will that affect things going forward?"
"For the better, so long as we stay out of mischief," Pryseia shot her a sly grin at that, "The shepherd only keeps an eye on unruly fawn."
The next handful of days progressed almost indistinguishably from one another.
A quiet wake up call, followed by a bland breakfast, and then the majority of the day spent in the mech simulator.
Basic movement within a planet's atmosphere, the more complex movement within the three dimensions of open void, evasion and tracking, long range combat, short range combat, fighting in a unit versus fighting on your own. Progressing further and further in the gamified training sims were the only real way Elytra could be certain that she wasn't stuck in some kind of temporal loop, with how identical the days were.
That, and the conversations she had with Pryseia during the mandatory socialization period after they were given their last meal of the day before being sent off to bed.
"And just what is the point of this?" Elytra asked three days in, "Aside from us, everyone else is grouped up with their races or on their own. Why have this farce at all?"
"I think it's something left over from the actual training that baithaizan troops go through," Pryseia speculated, "They're generally a more sociable people than the ones we got captured by. And more keen on aesthetically pleasing decor. Or speaking, for that matter. These ones… they behave like they're in a cult."
"A benediction for us." Was Elytra's dry reply.
Thankfully, the intensity of the mech training proved to be more arresting in her sleeping hours than the echoes of those she felt die. Their dying thoughts still sat heavy on her soul, but they dimmed in intensity with every passing day. Instead, her dreams were dominated by the screens and controls of the mech sim, the tan and orange program barking nonsense at her all night long.
There were a few times where the screens in her dreams showed her family being obliterated by her weapons' fire, forcing her awake as she choked on her own sobs. Thankfully, whatever mechanism that had knocked her unconscious in the elevator from the arena seemed to be in place within the cells, because she was sent back under every time a nightmare had her up before her captors required her.
"The rigid schedule is certainly giving credence to the cultist theory." She had mused to Pryseia at one point.
"Fanatical, at that," Pryseia had replied, eyes closed and head tilted back slightly, "I'd done a little digging before I got myself a place in this tournament - I will explain once we're no longer here - and I found that only the ground troops that are permanently stationed for on-world defence are baithaizan. Those who fight off-world? Their mech units? All alien. And the rate of defection is embarrassingly high."
Elytra couldn't help the scoff that escaped her. "It can't cost nothing to house and maintain so many people, regardless of how they were recruited into service. How is any of this logistically sound?!"
Pryseia snorted out a silent laugh through her nose. "An example on how the universe beyond your planet works: those in positions of power are seldom in possession of common sense. If they want something done a certain way, it will be done that way."
And that certainly seemed to be the case with whoever was in charge of the facility where the tournament was being held.
Day in, day out, the routine remained the same: wake, eat, train, eat, socialize, sleep, repeat. Six uncomfortably long baithaizan days had passed monotonously by in such a fashion.
But that all changed on day number seven.
"Good morning contestants." The yellow and black program began with the wake up address, "Today marks the first day of armoured eliminations! Training will continue as per usual for the rest of you, but the following contestants will be reporting to the arena."
Elytra paid rapt attention as twelve alien names were rattled off. Some she recognized as the names of people from her race, but none of them she personally knew. Neither her nor Pryseia were set to compete this day, if nothing else.
"Winners from these matches will advance to the next round. Losers will be sent to join our active duty forces stationed on the moons Frenatus and Garnotii. We wish the best of luck to you all!"
As the baithaizan faded away to the useless clock, Elytra let out a breath. On the one hand, a variation in the monotony would be a welcome change of pace, but on the other…
With the promise of actual armed combat looming at some unseen point beyond the horizon, she didn't know if her nerves could handle the wait.