This is not a good day for Dan Gotanda
Summer, roughly a year ago, he went for Hokkaido with his family, meeting his Scottish grandmother for the first time since he's 10, it was good. The girls are modest in a sense and active in another, the scenery is eye pleasing, all in all, a nice break from the horrendously cramped Tokyo, even in rural area.
After getting himself a 'date' which veer dangerously into unyouthful activity he might regret, he managed to somehow slip out suppressing his hormonal reactor, which is dangerously overcritical. As he gaze to the stars above, he saw a meteor and make a wish.
"Maybe a male I.S. pilot or something... as if"
And then, the meteor changed it's direction... directly toward the hill he's standing. He almost jump off the nearby cliff if he didn't notice it's gradually slowing down, so he simply run aside aside taking a lot of range a possible without injuring himself.
The meteorite in question landed smoothly like a helicopter, without apparent burn whatsoever, somehow.
"What the hell"
Kneeling like a knight bow to it's lord, the humanoid metal object is about twice as tall as normal human, and over three times as wide. It's Ashen Grey polish is tainted with dried blood and burn marks, however the machine itself is mostly untouched.
Dan wondered how exactly those spotting didn't burned out during a reentry like that, common knowledge that reentry temperature can reach over 7000 Degrees of Celsius depending on the velocity.
That aside he noticed something, the chest is hollow, just enough for a human of average height to fit in.
And alas the temptation, he managed to fit in as he removed his considerably thick coat (even at summer, Hokkaido can be a little cold). Something vaguely resemble barcode scanner went right to his eyes, scanning each and every movement he made.
[Retinal scan complete, began Biometric rechecking....]
The closest thing to the sensation he felt as he squeezed inside is being smothered by a couple of all-metal terminator... however that works, at least he didn't change to a bag full of broken bones and crushed organ.
[Biometric result confirmed, welcome, Dan Gotanda]
"Wait what?"
He squirmed in response and raised his eyebrow, how exactly this machine knew about him. It became frightening and yet at the same time intriguing. The ambivalence of the situation confused Dan.
At least until that video popped up, the quality is quite high, but the fizzle and blink on the video indicated something is wrong with the recording instrument.
"[This is First Lieutenant Dan Gotanda reporting, seventh and eight squad is eliminated, and my machine suffered a catastrophic failure and unable to move... judging form the situation, I'll decide to run on foot. I leave this message in case someone form UNAF found my Gun Wolf and whether I dead or alive, my loyalty stay true to our ideal]"
"[For the survival of the next generation]" the video disappear, and Dan is shown what to be a 'modernized' Irix interface, he have heard that military prefer it simple and rugged than flashy, so it's justified.
DAFUQ was probably correct expression, though, Dan doesn't remember the last time he tripped on dangerous substance and record a video inside four meter tall robot's cockpit, oh wait, he never did.
Apparently, the sensor tracked where he want to check and the cursor pointed at several archive he want to see (or at least he thought he want to see), showing battle log he could not understand what about, and the second is...
Operation Manual
"Holy shit"
Feeling something odd under his buttocks, he pulled what appear to be a handwritten manual, with big [Ichika Orimura] printed on the cover.
And he began to read
One year has passed, he made sure to hid that mysterious machine somewhere in his house without anyone able to intrude, at least intentionally.
Dan had checked it's condition regularly and after studied the manual carefully, he found that with minimum intervention and constant supervision by the pilot, the machine is practically self-maintaining.
The oddest part of course, that it literally ATE inorganic material and electronic component to heal itself (if told to do so), it regrow what amount to be missing eye and unfinished armor plating from the old bike and broken Cam-D he fed it. It took Dan one week sneaking some junk into the hidden room to fix the robot, and satisfied that despite him not knowing anything prior, he managed to keep the error rate to under 10%.
And since then, one years had passed.
Now, some group that most definitely not from government is hunting him and his pet giant robot.