Chapter 49: If a tree falls in a forest...
Terran Hegemony, front line base near Vienna in the former country of Austria.
The Princess thought the best way to help with the war effort without fighting would be to put on a concert since she loved to sing. Her mother, Queen Manyeo, only agreed to it since the Princess said it was to raise the soldier's morale and get them excited.
Princess Bang-gwi worked hard and had a stage setup inside the training grounds of the base earlier that day. Currently she was busy making the final touches to her set list and costumes from a trailer near the stage as it was almost time for the performance.
"It's done! It's finally done!" Princess Bang-gwi jumped around excitedly while looking at the finished dress.
"What's done?" Chuhan Jwi asked the Princess.
"Uhmmm, my preparations! I'm going to give them a concert they'll never forget!" the Princess exclaimed.
"I'm sure it will be amazing Princess. The pink gown of Miss Maven's you had us mimic for you is spectacular on you! Just don't cut the timing so close, you almost didn't have enough time to get ready!"
"I know, but I knew I could make it, and I wanted to do it as soon as possible!" The Princess resisted the urge to twirl in the dress since she didn't want her modifications coming undone. "Wait for me at the side of the stage Jwi, it's almost time!"
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"Team 3 status?" Giacobbe asked in the team leader chat.
"Team 3 status?!?" Giacobbe messaged again.
"Team 3 status update!!!" Giacobbe messaged again sounding impatient this time.
"Ah, sorry, we wanted to picnic by the river first..." Gray messaged back.
Gray figured Giacobbe would be fuming from this and couldn't help but think to himself "Why do I love to torture people like this?"
"I'm going to assume that was a joke, ETA to hills?" said Giacobbe
Gray was slightly disappointed he didn't take the bait and get mad so Gray decided to play with fire and said "Give us 10 minutes, I am enjoying a fresh salad."
Everyone else shook their heads at Gray for being such a butthead, but it was funny so everyone was still laughing to themselves.
"...just let me know when you're in position." Giacobbe said exasperated
"Moving to position." Gray said with a serious expression finally.
This seemed to satisfy Giacobbe as he left Team 3's channel finally.
"Ok, everyone, move to sector B12, Geoff, Yurika, Paul, and Myself will provide cover if needed, no need to draw attention to us." said Gray
"Aren't we supposed to be feinting and drawing attention to ourselves?" asked Alice.
"We will, just not yet. Need to find a way to get up to that Solar farm." replied Gray.
"Gray, not to be a hindrance, but we should assume this map was designed to make it impossible to get up to that area from outside of the base." Caleb said.
"Oh, they probably did design it that way, but I'm sure they didn't think of everything."
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A few minutes later, Gray and everyone else had climbed up the hills and through another forest before coming up to a 25 meter tall 'cliff'. The top of the cliff appeared to run behind the base and was where the solar farm presumably was.
"Ok, now how can we get up there..." Gray thought to himself, he jumped as high as he could in his mech and realized this mech wasn't designed to jump as it was more like a hop than a jump. Still, it was enough so the head of the mech could peak at the solar farm on top of the cliff.
Giacobbe went in to Team 3's channel again and yelled "What is taking so long?!? We've already used up a third of our time!"
"Oh yeah, sorry, took us longer to reach the designated spot, we will be ready to begin in 10 minutes." Gray replied.
"You were supposed to be ready 5 minutes ago, now you want 10 more minutes?!? We're going to start without you, just do what you want!" said Giacobbe angrily.
"Well, he's not very patient is he..." Gray said without any hint of urgency.
"That's a bad habit you got there Gray..." Geoff told Gray.
"I can't help it, I just enjoy giving those types of people a hard time!" Gray admitted. "Caleb, how much do these mechs weigh?"
"That statistic is not included in the overview of the mech selection screen." Caleb answered.
"I know, just give me your best guess!"
"Hmmm, well, given the thickness of the armor and using the standard uncompressed iron fiber armor with carbon dampening plates and the high-grade steel, aluminum, and titanium alloy skeleton I can estimate that these weigh about 600 metric tons, but that is only an estimate." Caleb
"... just the estimate of the weight will do next time..." Gray said "I have an idea though..."
Gray walked his mech over to a tall pine tree and gave it a push, the tree just shook a little as it was around 3 meters in diameter and was placed here to be used as cover by the designers of this map.
"Geoff, gimme a hand here. Help me push this tree over!"
Geoff came over to Gray and the two of them pushed as hard as they could trying to force the tree over, it started to move a little bit but it still stood firm.
Caleb figured Gray was trying to knock over the tree so he suggested "Gray, the amount of force you would need to break the tree is greater than the force you would need to uproot it, might I suggest you break the roots first then try pushing it over."
"Good idea, we don't have much time though, so everyone split into teams of 2, we're going to need to knock over at least 4 trees, maybe more!" Gray said.
Everyone was able to quickly knock over 4 trees using their backup combat knives to slash away the roots then Gray instructed everyone to push one of the fallen trees against the short cliff, then another against it. All 8 of them worked together to lift up a third tree and lay it on top of the other two making a small lumber stack about. Lastly, the fourth tree was rolled perpendicular to the other three trees forming a 'T' to keep the 3 logs from rolling away.
"I'll try it first" Gray said then he tried to step on one of the lower fallen trees. Unfortunately it didn't have enough area for his mech's foot to gain traction on so he slipped. Gray noticed that the tree holding the other 3 had nothing on top of it so instead of trying to climb on the lower tree first, he stepped on the supporting tree and then stepped up on to the second fallen tree in the stack. The fallen trees made a horrible sound of wood snapping and cracking as branches were crushed under the weight of the mech and Gray had to maintain balance on top of the second fallen tree until it finally settled down.
"Whew, that was fun..." Gray said laughing nervously.
Everyone's attention was drawn below to the base when Team 2 started to create a diversion for Team 1, but it wasn't going so well as they had already done this before. In order to sell it, Team 2 broke from cover and started to advance across the bridge while firing at the defending enemy mechs on top of the base walls.
"Need to hurry up" Gray thought. His mech was now able to put it's arms on top of the small cliff, but without an extreme jumping ability he couldn't just hop up on to it. Instead, Gray decided to just go for it and try jumping an then "falling" onto the top of cliff. Gray jumped his mech on to the top of cliff as best he could just getting the hips of his mech over the edge which allowed him to drag his mech up to the top. Several alarms in Gray's mech blared as his internals were partially damaged when he landed, but luckily nothing major since he really didn't fall more than half a meter.
"Whew, that was rough, but I got up!" Gray said. "Think the rest of you guys can do that?"
"So you want us to belly flop our mechs up to the top of the cliff?" asked Alice.
"Yep, hurry up and flop up here so we can save this battle before a certain leader leads it to a defeat."
CREATORS' THOUGHTS 
LordSputnik
LordSputnik Totally flaked on the chapter title this time...
...and based on the amount of pressure required to smash a tree, a 600 ton mech should be able to step on a 3 meter diameter log without breaking it since the amount of pressure needed break it would be a few million psi I think. We'll just chalk it up to plot convenience if you don't buy that though.
Weekly Power Status
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Ranking 
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