Caffeinated Otter

Is this a writing/drawing challenge for Sapphic September 2024, because I didn't see any, and my brain just waterfalled this all over a page?
It can be if you would like it to be.
No pressure, like, at all.

_{But if you do, maybe tag your works with Sapphtember so people can discover them?}

Cohost Sapphic September 2024 writing prompt: 10 — Girls who are frosty

Solihull staggers into her place with Mary's eldest-of-several sister Magda, her jacket covered in scraps of twitching goo, swearing.

"What happened to you guys?" says Bong Dave's little sister, sitting on the edge of Solihull's kitchen table swinging her legs, soy-chew stick dangling from the corner of her mouth.

Solihull makes a disgusted growling noise, and stomps off in the direction of her room.

"PR stunt," Magda says. "Company giving out free goobot drones, little fist-sized guys, advertising — I dunno, but PR, you know? Lil' useless guys with a fifty-cent D-pad remote with a sealed-in button cell. Swung by to bat our eyelashes and pick up as many as we could score each."

"They don't sound much," Bong Dave's little sister says.

"Started handing them out in the morning," Magda says. "Someone online had the control scheme cracked within an hour; you can drive them off a real wireless connection. It's free hardware!"

Bong Dave's little sister tilts her head in the direction Solihull disappeared, eyes wide.

"But of course, someone had cracked them entirely by lunchtime, so at about that point, kids started coming back with the fuckers reprogrammed," Magda says. "Yeeting them at passers-by. They hit, they stick like velcro, they blow up into pulsing multi-chamber air pumps, just these — wobbly air blisters, all stuck to people's clothes, their faces, in their hair...."

"Ick," Bong Dave's little sister says, wide-eyed.

"Then they sprout hollow cilia all over and start venting the airflow through them. Just—" she holds boths hand out together and frantically wiggles all her fingers. "Ibblebibblebibblebibble! Like a dollar-store made-for-streaming movie monster!"

"Oh man."

"I tried to tell her not to pull it off — we can just go back to the car, fire up a laptop, reflash it to let go! — but noooo, Solihull grabs it, shreds it, now it's going to be a real ass-pain getting it out of her clothes."

"That sucks," Bong Dave's little sister says.

"Oh yeah," Magda says, and smirks. "I'd make yourself scare, Solly goes like cold murder like this." She links her arm ruthlessly through Bong Dave's little sister's, tipping her off the table. "You're the one my littlest sister is screwing, yeah? Let's go talk."

"Uh," Bong Dave's little sister says, meek and slightly plaintive, as she's towed out of the room: "uhhhhh...?"

Mech Pilot who, wait. Where’s the Mech Pilot?

read more of my writing here

I am not naturally so fluid as this. How am I running at such an easy gate? What commands 100 tons of metal to weave between trees? To take a knee behind buildings that barely cover my head, and to be so precise with the aim of my rifle?

It's a vile thing.

My pieces could move only through such an incredible series of physics that the odds of a single step are a million to one. Yet right now I am catching a stumbling comrade in my arms, lowering my sister to lie upon the grass while gallons of oil spill from her severed leg. A blissful non-existence was supposed to be my fate, separate and unanimated. The alloy of my body and mind is a miracle. I should be utterly impossible.

Yet, of all the stardust that boiled into the metal and fluid and electricity that comprises my body, not an atom, not a quark, was ever so unlucky.

Mech Pilot who has copy + paste politics

"Alright honey, let's go over it again and see if any of that stuck," said Kath, shutting the dusty spiral notebook on the desk as she looked Mehr in the eyes. "The northern nation is...?"

"A bunch of bastards," Mehr finished.

Kath's face went flat. "They have a name, and that name is...?"

"Mud."

"Kerlaugar. They're the Viscountcy of Kerlaugar," Kath corrected. "And we're technically living on their border, so you're going to have to learn not to dismiss their refugees out of hand."

"We're living in a bomb shelter made of repurposed pillboxes and supply tunnels, in a base that we blew to kingdom fuck years ago," said Mehr with only the barest hint of complaint. "Personally. We were there."

"We were acting on orders, Mehr. Orders that we've since forsaken. We defend this place now, and all of its refugees. South or North doesn't matter here. Only innocents and those who would threaten them."

"I realize that, but it's because of the damn North that this place is in such rotten shape to begin with."

"The damn North, you say. Whose greatest crime was, let me check--" Kath made a gesture of flipping through her notebook very fast-- "defending themselves against the impending assault by the Sunnr Army?"

Mehr slammed a hand on the table between them. "They're not innocent, damn it!"

"Neither were we, and that's why we're here now!" shouted Kath. "And there's so many refugees and innocents here that just happened to be from the North that I want to make sure you're not going to piss them off by saying the wrong thing to a client!"

"You have any idea how hard this shit is for me?"

"I know it all too well, remember? We were in the same unit in boot camp, we both got the drills and the screaming and the programming."

"So how come you're fine and I'm a nervous wreck?" Her eyes began to develop a wet shine.

"I'm gonna let you in on a secret, honey. I'm not fine. I only stopped myself from having a complete breakdown by latching on to the only person that was doing worse than me. Who was there with me, even when she wasn't. I'd checked out from being the perfect little soldier as soon as I knew they thought I was irreplaceable. I didn't keep an infraction log, never showed up to KP duty, and I'm sure you remember that thing with the washing machine and the Colonel's mess uniform."

"And they still let you be the star. The hero pilot." Mehr's voice betrayed a hint of jealousy that, while no longer relevant, still hurt her.

"I kept telling them what they wanted to hear, any time they'd ask me up front. You remember all that shitty loyalty pledge daily affirmation stuff from boot camp? I got real good at repeating it back to them even though I never believed it."

Mehr remembered so well that it felt like the loyalty pledge had overwritten a portion of her childhood. I am a subject of the Sunnr Principality. My value to the South is in my own strength. I will use my strength, and all of my strength, in service to the South.

"Think about it. Your thoughts about geopolitics aren't your own. They're a template, that was fed to us all by the drill sergeants and COs. They wanted our undying loyalty, so they'd hammer into us what we were supposed to be feeling. And they especially preyed on impressionable young minds like mine and yours. They'd have us believe that our cities were great and powerful, and the North's cities were built on matchsticks and prayers so their nobility could pour the tax money into... I dunno, gold velvet whoopee cushions or some shit."

Mehr was noticeably shaking in her chair, failing to hold back her tears any more. "A-and I'm just supposed to stop thinking those things because we made enemies of them? I'm supposed to buy in to the monarchist garbage that the North would feed us?"

"It's all the same monarchy, all the way up. Sunnr and Kerlaugar? They all answer to the High Queen at the end of the day. Hell, I'd bet money they're all related."

"So what the hell do we do, if both of them are awful?"

"We reject them both. This place is a symbol of autonomy. We're not a part of their squabbling. If they're the ones that would fight each other to prove that they're building the better cities for the better people, then we'd just as soon live in this hole in the ground to prove them wrong."

"Listen. There once was a doll owned by a minor noble family, whose house became diminished by cruel circumstance…"

Diminished all the way, in fact. The lord and the lady and their two grown sons and their doll servant, on their way back from wintering in the capital, drove onto a bridge and did not make it to the other side. The ravine was deep, the meltwater in the mountain streams in the spring was cold, and no one in the carriage could swim. These tragedies happen on treacherous mountain routes. However, while dolls are heavy and cannot swim, neither can they drown or suffer hypothermia, and the doll servant's story did not end there. She attempted to rescue the family that owned her, and when rescue proved impossible, she succeeded in burying them. It was her last duty to their line. Afterwards, as she sat in stillness on the bank of the very river that had claimed her household, the realization came to her that she was free.