What is a writer?
A miserable little pile of words!
Call me MP or Miz
Fiction attempted, with various levels of success.
Yes, I do need help, thank you for noticing.
Breaking: Galaxy-wide mech shortage due to lack of girls to form the top
... and that's why, when a handful of Feddies discovered the Convertible Mech configuration by accident one day while fooling around, their side started to sweep the field at an alarming rate... until the rest of the sides could scramble to catch up...
— Excerpt from Jane's History Of The Early Sapphonesic Campaigns
Mech Pilot who? There’s a Mech Pilot here? Form wings of 3 and watch your 4 and 8.
Shit.
Shit.
Do they know?
She falls into formation behind rogers, Honda on the other side of them. She's trying to keep calm, and something rolls over her that calms her nerves.
They're not expecting a fight, but forming up means that someone's nervous. She's trying not to let the independence of her MP days make her second guess the Air Force's emphasis on a chain of command.
Rogers might know. She thinks rogers might have known from the beginning and said nothing. She trusts rogers but now she's afraid. She's so afraid what if he—
Calm rolls over her again. Right. She shouldn't worry.
Mech pilots aren't allowed to serve as air pilots. Or boat captains. Or truck drivers. If one owns a car, they're paying several people off to do so. Being a mech pilot changes you, and no one trusts you around moving machines any more. Most pilots that live long enough to get out or retire never touch machines again anyway.
So what she's doing is illegal, even if she is one of the better pilots in the whole of the conflict, either side.
She's very possessive of her plane. Most pilots are. But if they knew that the fighter jet spoke back to her, they'd dismantle the vehicle and do whatever the fleshy equivalent of that is to her.
See, a mech changes you. and once you've been the spark of a soul in one, you know the language of machines forever.
And you can't stop waking them up.
Mech Pilot who? There’s a Mech Pilot here? Form wings of 3 and watch your 4 and 8.
James Raleigh looked... confused. "... sir?"
"Private Raleigh, I thought I made myself cle-"
"Sir, you are the mech pilot here. I... thought that was clear."
"I- Private, we fight mech pilots! They're a blight upon the Territories, and"
"... the No Contest, sir? Your mech?"
"THE NO CONTEST IS NOT A MECH, PRIVATE RALEIGH! She is a BIPEDAL WEAPON that I MAN!"
"Sir, with all due respect, the Sunlit Side's mecha are bipedal weapons."
"THERE IS A TECHNICAL DISTINCTION, PRIVATE! COMPLETELY DIFFERENT!"
"I feel like you are being incredibly bullheaded about this, si-"
"... Raleigh, if you attempt to argue further about this," Commander Activity Moonside bitterly replied, "you will be up for discipline."
the muse is sort of back and made me write 2000 words for a thing on Tuesday right up until The Good Stuff, but I somehow fucked up my back and left arm that night in a way that makes it feel like pins and needles, making typing extremely difficult, since my muscle memory is misfiring in the same way my main memory is now, which is Fun1.
or if it can wait until the 'almost ER' is open later
I don't want to take away time and resources that could save lives
Just spent 4 days in the hospital being tested for... a whole bunch of things, but they have no idea why my left arm and hand are now active enemy combatants. Since I'm not currently noticeably deteriorating any further, I was allowed to go home, with further testing planned for next month.
If, you know, things don't suddenly deteriorate even more.
So that's great. /s
Anyway, the long and short of it is:
I will be drastically less active online, and all writing is effectively cancelled for... the foreseeable future. However the fuck long this will continue for. Hopefully not years, or even months, but with my luck, this is my new reality.
Sorry.
as it stands now, I feel like I'll be back in the hospital before end of day
now my right hand has started to do the "nice fine control, would be a shame if anything happened to it" bit
so that's great
been sitting in secondary triage in the ER for the last 4 hours as what seems like every pensioner in the city, who all decided to have a bad fall today apparently, gets rolled in past me and cuts in line
6 and a half hours of just fucking sitting here for what will probably take 5 minutes
I repeat, intake doctor showed up
this is not a drill
same guy as this weekend, who was all "wait, you're back?"
me and the old guy that arrived at the ER just before me, nodding at each other like war brothers as we pace the hallway of our triage section while we wait for our transport to Valhalla our respective next steps
guess the neurological department doesn't have beds free
unfortunately this is an RNG heavy run
you're typing something on your phone to a friend, yet another new doctor comes in to hear the whole story, and you forget to switch "voices", so you tell the poor woman "... so I was like 'yeah no fuck this I'm going back to the hospital', you know?"
half the channels on this TV are "unavailable", so I'm stuck with these options:
things are getting worse
I've very much started losing grip and tracking in my other hand as well now
"I don't know why you're not already hooked up, but we obviously can't wait any longer" is not something you want to hear, but hey, something is finally happening
"well we definitely need to fast track you for your brain and spine MRI today or we need to move you on to another hospital" and other fun things doctors say
who named it "MRI scan" instead of "slow fax to Cybertron"?
well I can scratch a lumbar puncture off "things I never experienced"
would not recommend
two handing my paper cup1 for stability like a baby and still spilling half of it all over myself, the hospital bed and floor is where we're at.
not a fan.
things somehow managed to get even worse
there is no bottom to this hole
just laid my head down too quickly and it was like my eyes were being degaussed for a minute
can I fucking be done please?
