Mech Pilot who is trying to get this “Gastropod leg option” greenlit by corporate for the engineer they’re dating.
"Lucia, if you corner one more marketing executive in the break room to quote-unquote subtly enthuse about how much your Fellow Youths would like to see limbless radula-powered designs in the field, I will poison your donuts."
Lucia makes a living Huge Wet Pleading Eyes emoji over her break room coffee. "I just think they're neat," she says, in breathless-edged pantomime innocence.
"The boffin from R&D with the inexplicable bad taste to gonk you thinks they're neat," Frankie says dryly. "You're trying to score fuck-me points."
"I'm not," Lucia says, and Frankie spots, just for a second, something approaching a genuine facial expression on her. "They are neat. Ev talks about the footmesh a lot when she's decompressing after a shift. I'm not smart about that stuff, but you can tell when someone else really is, you know, it's — it's nice to listen to."
"Whatever greases your weasel," Frankie says, and Lucia hesitates and puts her coffee down.
"If corporate puts a prototype production order in," she says, "they're guaranteed get to field demo the second-gen footmesh. The one you can drive straight over anti-mech minefields. And if corporate don't— another corp tried to headhunt her, couple of years back. She's smart, Frankie, why would she stick around where they're gonna dead-end her work?"
Frankie sips her own coffee. "Thought for sure this was over your LD50 for emotional honesty," she says gruffly. "Does your boffin know you're all Shakespearian over her?"
"Fuck off Shakespearian," Lucia scoffs, in a No you can see from space.
