#this is in the confluenceverse

[riversidewings]

The dolls sit in a circle after their debrief. Their line of mechs, kneeling and hooked up to umbilicals, wait in their revetments.

They have slung tungsten downrange, pounded up and down the slopes of the Ōu Mountains.

Now they share beer as skewers of meat cook over the fire.

It is the blue haired tachi fanning the flames. Her duty discharged, she has come back from fierce metal guardian to ample-curved mother to the team, singing softly as she tends the cooking fire.

She is everything of which her foremothers once dreamed.

Back home, across the bay, her wife and daughter are waiting for her. But here, tonight, with her kinfolk in cybernetics, she is also among family.

[riversidewings]

Morning on the Ōjōjihara range. The crew chiefs clambering over the line of kneeling mechs. It's a full day of evaluating the new hardware ahead, and the combat doll pilots are going to be sending APFSDS downrange. Everything is nearly ready.

There are many tachi, but this one with the blue hair has a reputation. She comes to the maintenance stand with coffee can in hand, to begin her preflighting checks on the mech.

Its name, stenciled on the hull in script from half a world away, is Թուր Կէծակի: Sword of Lightning

The mech's not even online yet, but she speaks to it as she inspects exhaust ports and folds panels closed.

She's learned well from her foremothers, this doll from faraway mountains now home on Michinoku's peaks, that one must care deeply for one's mount.

She's heavier and older than most of her colleagues in the unit, but she enjoys it, being the steadfast rock from Nemrut's peak in the shadow of Mount Sasakura and her sisters.

Helmet in the crook of her arm, she goes up the ladder, through the hatch.

There's work to be done.

"Է, հէլէ իրդա՞նկ" she asks the control panels, flipping the switch cover off to begin startup. ‹Well, shall we be off?›

She dons the helmet, straps into the seat. Her fingers fly from one corner of the control panels to another as her eyes flit between her HUD projection and the physical displays.

Then the mech's cables connect with her neural interface, and the doll feels her toes clench. The euphoria never gets old, even this many years on, as she becomes one with the mech and rises to stand, fifteen feet tall, taller than a main battle tank.

Here, in these mountains, she will keep doing her best today.