Mech Pilot who all-channels out taunts as a 90s eurodance dj.
“We’re taking heavy fire over here!”
“I need backup!”
“There’s three Eagles descending on my-”
The voices were a cacophony over the radio, and Ariel shook her head, turning them down. “Someone with command give me a sitrep” she said. The silver suit she wore was tightening around her, comfortably snug as it adhered to every contour of her body. If not for the sports bra and boyshorts she wore over the suit, everyone in Hive-hanger seven would have seen exactly how her transition was progressing in more detail than she was comfortable with half of them seeing.
“Division Jouster Ari-“
Ariel shot the speaker a glare. Being a Division Jouster had its perks. One of them was a custom handle. The man swallowed. He might be a Captain, but she technically outranked him in a fashion. She could ignore any orders that were below an Admiral. She couldn’t override his commands, however. But she could make him wilt with a glance. “Division Jouster Atrocity,” he corrected himself. “The Crystal Skull holdouts have hit a regiment of Mark 8 Scrappers. The Crystal Skull are in Queen of Diamonds series twelves. We need them dealt with, and you’re the closest Division Jouster.”
Ariel frowned but nodded. Queen of Diamonds… “Series 12, you said?”
The Captain nodded. His step faltered as he looked over her shoulder.
She followed his gaze. “I’m not piloting him. He’s safe.”
“I just…” he swallowed hard. “Sorry, ma’am.”
Her mecha sat there. It was a Chimera class mecha, part of the Joe series, part machine and part biotech. It was deep blue where the metal was, and the deeper purple of a bruise where flesh showed. She could feel it, calling to her. The shape was humanoid in the same way a tyrannosaurus was humanoid - bipedal, yes, but closer to a monster than a person. The seven tentacles that came off its back didn’t help, nor did the eight milk white eyes on each side of its head.
Ariel sighed and strode towards it. “Cotton-Eye doesn’t bite unless I’m serving as his brain, Captain. Tell the Scrappers to hold on.” Cotton-Eye opened his mouth when he sensed Ariel come close, and she stepped onto his tongue. “ETA until drop?”
“Five, ma’am.”
“Then get out of here before the hanger door opens.”
The captain scurried off, and Ariel let Cotton-Eye press her to the roof of his mouth. The top split open, letting her slide through his sinus cavity and into the mechanical dome that served as his skull - where Ariel would sit suspended in neural fluid that was already flooding the room, ready to serve as his brain.
“Cotton-eye!” she shouted as the fluid reached her neck. “Give me the 7 special once the bay doors open.”
Then she swallowed, and the fluid filled her stomach and lungs, and the bay doors were open.. Cotton-Eye was falling. She was falling with him. The beleaguered Scrappers were taking heavy fire from the Queen of Diamonds mechas, and Ariel needed their attention.
The 7 Special started to play.
The opening notes blared at sounds normally reserved for jet engines as Ariel folded in her biomechanical wings and dove.
Ariel shouted, and her mecha responded.
“Yo yo, this is DJ Atrocity, here with Cotton-Eye Joe, bringing the last dance of the 22nd Century with the greatest hits of the 90s!”
The enemy mechs looked up and opened fire. She rolled her wings, raising her primary energy cannon and pointing it at the enemies. “This is Last Call for Crystal Skull Fascists. You can go home, but you sure as hell can’t stay here. We’ve got a bass drop coming in three…two…one-one-one-oneoneoneoneoneoneeeeeee”
The main cannon fired in time with the music, and three Queen of Diamonds were blown apart in a single sweep of the weapons. She landed among them, and the music gave her the cues she needed.
”I’m the scatman!” blared out of her speakers.
A Queen of Diamonds moved in behind her, and Ariel was gone.
She was DJ Atrocity now.
The problem with Fifth Generation Rave-Grade biomecha like this was they overwhelmed the human mind to link with. Or at least, they had. Until someone had noticed the single longest surviving pilot was a master of a 20th’s century game called Guitar Hero, and had smuggled in his earphones to listen to during the test pilot.
The interface had changed from omnidirectional input from sixteen eyes in a nonhuman body plan to a rhythm game.
And DJ Atrocity knew all the beats to these songs by heart.
The enemy’s were highlighted with the rapid-fire beats of the Eurodance mix, and all she had to do was dance and hit the right notes to dodge, block, fire a ranged weapon, or strike with the tentacles. As long as she kept the beat, her mind was protected. As long as she kept the beat, her opponents looked like they were moving in molasses by comparison.
DJ Atrocity danced, and around her, men in clunky mechanical suits that thought their vision of a perfect world superceded the rights of others died. They struck back, but she moved like water, she moved like a dancer, she moved like death. She ducked under one blade to a ski, raised a tentacle to a bi-bity-be, and fired a laser to a -bah. She spun on Cotton-Eye’s heel to bring her tail around in the brief window before the next ski- started, and let loose a gout of plasma from her throat in an arc as the bass dropped again.
The last enemy died two tracks later, the last words he ever heard ringing over the battlefield.
“Da-ba-dee-daba-die. I’m blue.”
And DJ Atrocity took back the microphone to the cheers of the Scrappers. “Ladies, Gentlemen, and those of you with better sense than those terms imply - enjoy the rest of your evening, drinks are half off. Tell them DJ Atrocity and Cotton-Eye told you to have a good rest of the night. Peace out!”
Then she took off, Cotton-Eye’s engines thrumming. Later on the scrappers would think to ask questions. But there would be no well known answer. Years later, they’d tell their children and grandchildren, and always be asked the same question, to which they could only shrug.
“Where did she come from?”
“Where did she go?”
“What ever happened to Cotton-Eyed Joe?”
