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cassettesocialism · 1 year

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hi i have been Cooking lancer fic

Once again, we meet Union Auxiliary Pilot, (28th Voidcombat Division, Mercenary Wing Bravo,) ["Kingfishers",] Callsign- VI The Lovers. We meet Miss Allison Wax (she/her) [Her Body, a borrowed face]

And her Loverboy (he/him) [Stone Butch Death Machine]

(both art gotten from @skycrimedraws who NAILS IT EVERY TIME BABY)

"Hey boss man," The words fell out of her lips, halfway through (the next words were a question) when her CO interrupts with "I told you not to call me that." She stops. (She doesn't flinch, its not flinching.) [She kind of just needs to run through some maybes.] For just that moment, there's no one in the body in front of the CO. And then she starts again, words coming back out. "Alright, alright. CO, what's the job you got lined up for me and my Loverboy?" The CO gestured to the spare chair with a file, and Allison picked her way across the floor. (She walked on the tips of her toes, even in the sneakers.) [She walked with a gait to big for her body, like her legs were blades.] {She's En Pointe} She pulled out the chair and sat, crossing a leg across her lap and looking at the CO through her bangs. "The next mission shouldn't be for a while yet, Miss Wax." The CO's voice was always even, collected. That's why they were the CO. That's why they wore Union Grays and Allison wore what she always did. (Just put clothes on Her body) [What kind of clothes did She wear before Allison?] A thought dismissed with the disappointment of nearlight engines. "Really now, CO? How long are you gonna keep me up? More time in medbay?" The CO shakes their head, opening files, going through them. The work seems endless, running a Merc Lance. (But what's Alllison gotta worry about work?) [Gets to wound up, being in a ship conapt too long without her Loverboy.]

"So is it more time with the headmeds?" The CO looks up from the papers and gives that kind of pained smile as Allison snatches a file off the table to read. (One of the ones with the Mission Seal on it.) [Can't read Unionite Legalese for shit.] "No, Miss Wax, you're scheduled for wind-down, but you don't need to go see one of the after-action therapists- unless you feel the need of course." So she started paging through the mission file, going over the after action reports compiled from her Loverboy (From his eye, from his soul.) [The stars are beautiful at 2,000 kmph.] "So there's really no jobs, CO? Not even basic patrols? I get bored when I'm stuck down too long." The CO holds out their hand, and she returns the file. (She likes to feel like she earns her keep.) [That's just polite, for all the things Union offers.] "Miss Wax," the CO begins "I understand that talented pilots get odd without flight." That's the thing about Grays- they're willing to work with you more than they aren't. (Its not that Allison thought they were pushovers.) [Just the most reasonable kind of people, mostly.] I can organize testflights for you, if you see that there isn't more work for the technicians." There's what she wants to hear (But not quite).

"Work's good for me, CO. You wouldn't let a butterfly starve in a jar, would you?" The CO folds the file closed. (Her file.) [The one that says "Obvious signs of long-term Chronos exposure."] Doctors let you read files out this way. Its nice to know they care, at least. CO gives their answer. "Miss Wax, war's a failure and you're a contingency. Glory only comes with time. Take your mech out, call it a patrol if that helps, but my job is to make sure the mercenaries stay healthy and stay flying." There's more, Allison knows there's more, and she stops a moment. For that split second, she's not in Her body. Allison is watching Her sit there, in the chair, in Allison's clothes, across from the CO. (The look on their face is kind of worried.) [People still caught in their meat don't like being reminded of it's hold on them.] Allison picks a maybe, a series of words that seem right, and then the moment is over, and she's back in Her body. "So where are we headed, CO? You can at least let me prepare for the future."

"We're headed to Dawnline, Miss Wax. There'll be work aplenty for you in the Long Rim and beyond."

======

The cavalry technician looked up at the frame he was gonna work on. It was a custom job, one of the Lancers that the Aux had brought onboard when coming out of the Range. Long haul ships for Union do that sometimes, guard presence in exchange for amnesty and escape. Good people get trapped places. He just wasn't sure whoever flew this thing was the best kinda people. "Beautiful damn monster you are." The mechtech murmured under his breath, looking through a sheaf of printouts. Specs for the machine in front of him, an IPS-N Frame the pilot apparently fit together herself. He didn't, really trust the speed listed under its maximum output. That kind of speed would make someone grayout (The speed at which the blood of a human body begins to pool in the limbs, causing the pilot to lose consciousness). Redout even. [The point of g-force at which the brain is starved of blood, and dies.]

He looked up again at the machine and saw it was staring back at him, great singular eye tracking along its axis, to cast its baleful red upon him. He noted it, and looked back to his notes. Looking for if this thing had a casket it in, a C/C programmed to play tricks. The normal shit pilots pull on their technicians. He came up around the great black thing in its bay, and stared it in the eye from the gantry. It stared back, body making the clittering hiss of a mech at rest. (Mechanized Cavalry frames that are in regular usage are rarely quite things.) Coolant pumped through the entire frame, keeping the coldcore under wraps until it really needed to go. Fusion engines, power-reroutes designed along the Albatross style… where the verniers and thrusters aren't shaped for an RPV. (Remote Pilot Vehicles aren't uncommonly retrofitted for pilot use, he notes under his breath) [Under that red eye.] He eyes them again, as the giant thing keeps staring. There isn't any record of a computer smart enough to do anything of worth on this machine.

It was strictly Turning-Compliant, according to the CO's paperwork. That left the damages to repair. Bits of slagged armor along the leg-blades and shoulder plating. Nothing a few hours work with the rigs wouldn't fix. The mechtech flicked a few switches and brought the frame up to the light, to the arms that pulled and printed in smooth motions as his fingers danced across the keys. It was slower going than he thought. And the mech was making a noise. It was keening, a clatter-chatter at once both rumbling low and piercingly high. Something was wrong with the feedback from the mech-harness, reporting simple and blunt legionspace attacks. Best the cavalry technician could manage was to remove the offending plates before the assembly limbs gave up and stalled. That's when a hand touched his shoulder, and a voice rang in his ear. "My Loverboy doesn't know you, mechtech, but I do. Gimmie a minute to settle him down and you can get back to work."

The girl walks past him then, almost teeter-tottering as she glides across the floor on the tips of her shoes. She moves her legs wrong, picking her way as much as stepping. The cavalry tech looks at the mech's legs and puts together the kind of pilot he's dealing with. The kind that have gone in a direction past human, hunting for something else. (He'd never really known someone in full body prosthesis) [Was rare, in his neck of the galaxy.] She moves like her mech even as she steps off the gantry and onto its chest, placing hands against the grinning skull. Ever since she came in, the eye's been locked onto her alone. He worries and wonders what kind of monster he's got to work on now.

===

He screams for her, against the void, he tears away from the cling-gravity of the UNS-CV Paris (Like the commune, she offers) [Like lights, the therapist offers back.] But the past doesn't matter when the future is laid out in the bleeding world of 2000 kmph. She was safe from everything, safe from Gravity itself as she lay coiled in her Loverboy's guts, aching through Chronos haze and picking his flight path for him as a beautiful dance. She wanted him to run through his paces, and he was eager to please. To show her what he could do. How he was built for her. Like a butterfly flitting across a windless sky, like a shark dancing through a school of fish- Loverboy puts on a show for his girl.

She's spinning him a dance, putting the engine to its test. Her Loverboy screams for his girl as he dances, frame keening against the speed and void. (Allison watches Her legs twist against the seat.) [That's how she knew the engine was art] {State-of-the-art affection} She doesn't like to think about home. Not home anymore, and not worth thinking about. More Gravity shorn free from her under the speed. So what's it worth if its pulled away so easily? Home wasn't ever home, no matter how much anyone told Allison it was. What's where you're born compared to where you'll be? (What's the flesh you were born in but another place to be trapped in?) Allison feels her brain reel as Loverboy spins in a piroutte ascending. It doesn't spin in place, but it recognizes the forces working upon it as her Loverboy pulls into a rise. (The snap from horizontal to vertical would snap necks.) [But when you don't have Gravity, moving is easier.]

Verniers howl with force as Allison considers Her. (And the changes Allison had made to Her.) [Would She mind? Would She understand?] There are protective tendons, built from the same kind of whipcord steel that run through Loverboy. There are stabilization systems built into her braincase, that absorb and disperse the shock of sudden shifts of g-force. There's a dozen, a hundred little aftermarket touches to Her body that Allison has made. (But is it really that bad, when the body is aftermarket?) [When the body wasn't built for you.] Allison still watches Her, curled as Allison left Her. (Back curved gentle. Arms on knees, resting eyes against forearm.) [The clunky implants hooking Her to Loverboy peek their tubes from beneath Her shirt] She was still perfect. Still beautiful. Everything Allison had wanted to be back then. There She was, with Allison's brain in Her body, Allison's Loverboy hooked through feeds to Her back.

Allison reached in the stopped little flaring moments between directing Loverboy through his dance. They were all the same moment. Allison reached out, and cradled Her face, and said Her name. Something Allison couldn't ever know. (How was she supposed find Her? Long way from Ketherese.) [From everything from that life.] Everything but her Loverboy. He counts the micromovements of her eyes. His own whirrs and focuses, keening as the scopes hone in on a target and his body twists with his girl's desire. He counts the times she stops existing as a presence registered at the controls. He rolls over and considers in his clicking thoughts the ways he loves her. His adoration burns in him as retros flare and he lands blades first, touching against an asteroid with the grace of a butterfly upon a blossom. His thoughts turn and his computers chitter and churn. His whitewash tanks purge into rawmat resivors and a new batch is rapidly encoded, new chains of acids and code written by mute-drive, a silent organ buried deep in his frame, coiled round and through his girl.

The Hyperkinesis Module develops a novel admixture of nanites and adrenaline and feeds through the connection to Allison, filling her endocrine system with a soothing electricity synchronized to readouts and full reports of engine efficiencies, micrometeor grazes, and heat venting. (His body hisses for her, waste gas for heat disperial in null atmosphere environments) [He bares his heart to her, reactor dropping as he stretches against the asteroid.] Allison leans forward, the Chronos uptake stretching from her back and into the cockpit's back wall. (Little tubes running up to her spine and kidneys) [One of the other aftermarket touches to Her body.] Allison's face reaches through the holoscreen outputs of Loverboy's eye. She kisses the armored outer hull of her cockpit. (She stands to her toes.) And her Loverboy gently touches off the asteroid, into the void, gently floating in the empty place beyond Gravity.

Allison lowers her oxygen uptake, and rides the Chronos her Loverboy made for her. (She dreams like an editor.) [Looking at scenes and picking them.] A wash along the nervous system, stuttering climbing up her spinal column and into the brainstem. She dreams of Ketherese, and what was left behind. Consider the Gravity that's been shed. (In the embrace of her Loverboy.) [Memories are the only thing you can't shed.] Her grandfather's dirt is far from everything she'll ever see again. No one will see the frontiers she sees. (Allison will see things even She'll never see.) [Or maybe they'll see the same stars some day.] {Face-to-borrowed-face.}

No one she had ever known would see what she sees, know what she knows. (She'd shed them, like her old body.) [Like Gravity.]

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