Credit to velladonna on DeviantArt for the fanfic cover art!

Sometimes Hana thought back on her old life. Not often, but sometimes. A life of relative luxury, with a helping of minor celebrity status from a rising MLG career on the side.

That all went away when a bunch of idiots decided to blow up a radioactive omnium factory a couple hundred kilometers from her home. It was almost incredible how many people died. Her own parents sickened and died from radiation poisoning in a matter of days. Hana fell ill as well, but somehow, for better or worse, she survived. Never quite the same – the skin of her hands and forearms began peeling off in chunks, leaving pure white bone visible in several places, and she developed a terrible cough, like a middle-aged smoker. Her legs were also littered with scars from crawling through shrapnel and scrap.

But Hana Song was too young to die. She scavenged a pair of thick leather gloves, some boots, and a scratched-up pair of motorcycle goggles to withstand the unencumbered harsh winds that gusted across the leveled wasteland. She sought out other survivors, but all were either dead or dying by the time she found them.

The radiation, while apparently not fatal to Hana, changed her in more than just physical ways. As she consumed irradiated food rations and drank contaminated water in a desperate stab at survival, her thoughts clouded, and she often found herself struggling to recall older memories. But there was something in the back of her mind that she could not forget. A sensation…a comfort. Something that had brought her great joy in an uncertain and tumultuous childhood.

That dormant memory reactivated when she came across a familiar-looking object sticking out of a scrap heap. Her eyes lit up as she latched on to what initially appeared to be a joystick of some kind – and they widened even further when her pulling on it exposed the rusty skeleton of some sort of mechanical suit. She arrived quickly at the conclusion that it must have been the remains of one of those power loaders they used to use in factories to lift heavy objects, back when human factory labor was still a thing. It was beat to hell and blown open in several places, having apparently taken the brunt of the impact of an explosion somewhere along the line.

Hana's first thought beyond identifying the object was finding a use for it. She cleared away the debris that had settled over most of the mech. The suit had a cockpit that could potentially be crawled into for shelter on three sides. All she would have to do was throw a tarp or something over the front, and she'd at least have some shelter from the unrelenting Outback weather. As it was she was already a bit loopy from heat exposure. Or maybe it was the irradiated rat she'd caught and eaten earlier in the day. Hard to tell.

The mech felt like a perfect fit when she crawled inside it. Her gloved hands wrapped around the joystick things, bringing her an immediate sense of comfort. The control panel was in surprisingly good shape considering the suit's wrecked exterior. She could remember fixing things like this in the past. Controllers and such…she had always liked tinkering with electronics. That much she could clearly recall.

The wind was beginning to pick up again. Securing her goggles, Hana hunkered down inside the mech. Maybe she could spend the night in here. Sure it had some holes blown in it, but any bit of shelter was better than where she was currently staying…which was nowhere.

The wind kicked up dust all around her. Hana coughed, a wheezy, rattling sound, and shielded her face in the crook of her arm. Thankfully within the mech suit the strong wind was abated, granting her a moment of precious retreat from its otherwise-constant battering.

Unfortunately she had to venture back out into the elements to find some cover for the front of the mech. She managed to find a sheet of metal with only a few holes in it. Hana positioned it in front of the cockpit as she clambered back inside. It was so nice and quiet in there, the howling wind unable to penetrate the metal exoskeleton. After listening for several minutes to ensure nothing was coming after her, she managed to get comfortable enough to allow herself a short nap. Curled up inside the giant machine, she almost felt safe. Almost.

Days of tinkering with the power loader suit revealed to Hana something quite surprising. Apparently she was more adept at tinkering than she gave herself credit for, for when she was finished messing around with the discarded mech it was actually in decent working order. Well, physically anyway – it didn't have any juice left in it to power on. It was basically a giant scrap metal shelter for her to sleep in – until the day she stumbled across something potentially quite useful. That "something" was an old-as-hell car battery. With a little rigging, she actually managed to get the mech groaning to life. "Whoa!" She nearly fell out the front of the machine as a tug of its controller sticks sent it leaping to its feet. A few giggles escaped her as she pushed the sticks forward, suddenly reminded of an old PC game she used to play years ago. Mech…something. Mech…Mech Warrior! She loved those games. She'd been damn good at them, too.

The old mech wasn't the most mobile thing on the planet, but it could certainly get around. With some modifications she could easily turn it into her go-to method of travel through the Outback.

She was, in fact, stomping gleefully through the wasteland when a loud noise, an explosion of some kind, stopped her in her tracks. She turned the mech clunkily around in time to see a plume of smoke rise on the distant horizon. "Hm?" She took a few steps toward it, shielding her eyes from the sun to try to get a better look. She didn't see or hear anything after the initial explosion. Could it have been a human survivor? Maybe it was an omnic. Or maybe it was a confrontation between the two.

Either way, Hana decided to steer clear of it. She gave her mech a light pat on its control panel and encouraged it to take her where she wanted to go without falling apart. With a whirr of its tired old engines it planted its "feet" into the dirt before them and carried Hana away from whatever lay in the direction of the now-dissipating smoke cloud. It didn't turn her thoughts from it, though. She pondered it for the rest of the night.