Trans Pat (Possum/Rat) Girl that loves tabletop games and making things with my hands. I ran out of spoons like, 3 years ago and haven't gotten any back since. Learning how to properly girl, please be patient. I sometime post 18+ content.
Plural, but still She/Her pronouns please.
Hana, Aibou, Rose, Loop
∍⧽⧼∊
My Cashapp is cash.app/$TarotCard2

You can find me on PokefarmQ at this link!

https://pfq.link/TarotCard2

Creator of Cohost Radio! Tune in at the tag!


Tumblr(don’t post much)
www.tumblr.com/tarotcard2
warframe username (Friend me!)
TarotCard2#320
Neocities website( this links to the site profile.
neocities.org/site/tarotcard2

Making-up-Mech-Pilots
@Making-up-Mech-Pilots

Mech Pilot who prefers negotiating with the artifice instead of changing it.


caffeinatedOtter
@caffeinatedOtter

"Hey, Aliz?" Ghislaine says, half-distractedly, a smudge of grease on her nose and a pin-release awl tucked behind her ear as she rounds her mech's foot.

They're done here for the day; they've already covered Ghislaine's technical questions about the new gear. Something above and beyond that? The hairs on Aliz's neck rise. It's way ahead of any rapport-building she's projected. "Something else I can do for you?"

Ghislaine makes a face Aliz hasn't seen before, and despite everything, what the Martians do isn't magic; she's off her map of the pilot's responses, here, and she doesn't quite know what she's looking at. Embarrassment? Resolve? Amusement? Shame? She's guessing, and it's scary and sort-of thrilling—

"You know the mutation that lets people clock when they're bursted isn't that rare, right?" Ghislaine says, and Aliz's breath catches, because first, if Ghislaine has that someone in Intel fucked up and missed it, and also she's been so fucking careful with Ghislaine—

"All I'm saying is, look, we all know this is a charm offensive," Ghislaine says, shrugging awkwardly and deliberately not catching Aliz's eye. "We're— I'm not fine with the idea, but we're all on the same side, these days, I understand how it looks different to you and it's expedient to the tech programme's success."

Fuck, she's been made. Maybe they all have? How did Ghislaine— was it Ghislaine? How fucked are they—

"If your high command didn't have, at the very least, a tacit okay from ours, you wouldn't still be deployed on us like this after this long," Ghislaine says, and wipes her hands on a rag. Keeping them busy, Aliz thinks. Nervous, Aliz thinks. Oh my fucking god, Aliz, Aliz thinks, get your fucking head in the game, you're a frontline psych operative and you're making subject observations on the fucking level of cow says moo—

"Um," Aliz says, which is the polar opposite of getting her head in the game, and Ghislaine shoots her a look that's something like relief that she's unnerved, tempered by the universal and unavoidable suspicion that everything she does is fake.

"It's not just weapons," Ghislaine says. "Sugar's been rationed since the middle of the IPC, and we still haven't seen the end of that. I don't want to look easy, but I could probably find more common ground with Martians if I get to do it over frycake, is all I'm saying—"

"Are you—" and Aliz really, really needs to get a fucking grip, she thinks that came out two octaves above her usual tone. She clears her throat. "Are you asking me to bribe you not to blow the whistle on me?"

Ghislaine is quiet and Ghislaine is funny and Ghislaine is deeply scarred by things in the war that aren't, Aliz is sure, all in her file. And Aliz notices, suddenly and inescapably, as Ghislaine hurls the wadded rag across the room and takes a long step into Aliz's space, that Ghislaine is tall and her eyes are so dark when she's fucking pissed and Aliz had thought she'd seen that already but no. No. This is Ghislaine, angry.

"Oh, fuck you," Ghislaine says, and Ghislaine is also, under that, hurt. "I'm trying, here. I meant it. They've obviously let you loose on us to check how it works when you use your spooky Martian mindfuckery to accelerate integrating our forces and I am fucking trying to remember that you're just a soldier like me and we're on the same side now and you're not going to fucking talk me into blowing my own cockpit open to space or turning over the keys to HQ or any of those stupid fucking urban legends from the war and you made a good call, food, it's universal, it's bonding, and you could take that as a fucking compliment if you wanted instead of accusing me—"

Aliz steps forward into Ghislaine and catches her in a hug, without the intervention of most of her brain, let alone any of her tacticals, and even her brain is yelling at her about it.

"...What," Ghislaine says, in a more controlled voice, after a long pause, "the fuck. Are you doing."

"Fucked if I know," Aliz says shakily. "Getting busted and shipped home, probably?"

"I do not know what to do with my hands right now," Ghislaine says, after another pause, still a monument of stress and adrenaline, but cooling, and Aliz gives her back a little pat — oh for fuck's sake, Aliz! Get a fucking grip what are you even — and steps back.

"I am so sorry," she says, and meets Ghislaine's dark eyes and shivers, and Ghislaine gives her a long, long stare, and sighs and consciously relaxes her shoulders.

"I don't think I've ever seen one of you lot look really, actually fucking rattled before," she says quietly. "I don't think you can fake that. You have no fucking idea what you're doing right now, do you?"

Aliz shrugs helplessly.

"Yeah, well." Ghislaine makes as if to resume wiping her hands as a distraction, then visibly realises she doesn't have the rag, eyes whipping out to locate it on the floor. "That's. Not to sound unsympathetic, but the constant calm? The way you always know you're in control of the situation? It's really fucking unnerving. This is humanising."

Aliz clears her throat, and then has to do it again. "More than swapping war stories over cake?" she jokes feebly.

"One star. Emotionally rough. Preferred the frycake," Ghislaine deadpans, and fuck.

Ghislaine is funny.

"Would they seriously yank you for this?" the mech pilot says, and Aliz is so fucking out of it that the abrupt change of tack surprises her, she didn't even read any of the body signals telegraphing it, Aliz is — Aliz is hopeless.

"Yes," she says, and good fucking god, she deserves it.

Ghislaine shrugs. "So just put it down as uncovered new exploitable weakness: Airman de la Rue is a big ol' whore for snack cake." She doesn't look at Aliz. "I can work with you," she adds, slowly, reluctantly. "Don't...don't make me have to work through my knee-jerk shit with a new one."

"Oh my fucking god," Aliz says under her breath in something like panic and something like prayer, because she is so compromised and she so can't do her actual job on Ghislaine any more and she is so going to do this anyway. Obviously.


You must log in to comment.