Mech Pilot who's ejecting so they can break into your cockpit, just so they can look you in the eye after what you did
The sound from outside abruptly returned as my rotary cannon spun down, still glowing red hot. That cleared this wave of grunts, but there'd soon be more on the way to defend their precious bomb factory. "Dragonfly, what's our status?"
"Green to go, Barricade! Time bomb's set, I called in evac, it's time to get out of here!"
Her mech emerged from the facility at a dead sprint. It'd take me a moment to catch up to her speed, but before I could, something pinged on my point defense sensors. I dove in front of her and my shield arm took an explosive shell that had been meant for her center of mass. The unbraced impact knocked me back into her, even with the heavy armor plating, but at least the arm still worked. "Go! Go!!" No time for worrying about who was hurt when I could see the countdown clock ticking on my HUD.
"Fireteam Cain, this is Albatross-6-actual, painting evac zone. No time for a full stop so you two had better be there!" A bright red hologram appeared on the ground in front of us with a different ticking timer.
Dragonfly was already ahead of me. I pushed my reactor into the red zone, urging my titanic mech to keep up. Albatross-6 dropped out of the sky, catching itself just barely before crashing into the ground - right on time. It hovered in place while Dragonfly deftly climbed onto it, her lighter support/e-warfare rig having no issues with the jump. I arrived just a moment later, reactor shoving all kinds of warnings into my display.
Which is why I missed the second point-defense alert.
Another explosion rocked Albatross-6, and knocked me to the ground. By the time I'd sorted the reactor errors and damage reports into a buffer that threatened to overflow my memory, Albatross-6 had managed to right itself - over a hundred-foot-deep drop. Smoke rose from the engines as Dragonfly lay flat on the floor, barely pushing herself up to look at me. "Barricade! You can still make it! Jump!!"
I staggered upright, legs mostly working, only to take a glancing sniper shot to the shoulder plate. Another group of reinforcements had arrived, as promised. I started to move towards the transport while firing off a volley of my own in their direction.
Albatross-6's voice cut in on the comms, haggard and wheezing. "Be advised, Barricade, we cannot maintain this position. Quit screwing around and get on!"
I grimaced, eyed the gap one more time, boosted my reactor and leapt.
It wasn't enough. I flailed in the air, watching in slow motion as the transport slid further and further up in my vision, when Dragonfly shouted in the comms, "Barricade! Take my hand!"
I reached up, and fifty tons of steel wrenched Dragonfly's arm out of its socket, but the connectors held. She screamed in pain and reached for me with her other hand as Albatross-6 tilted precariously. Her titanic body shifted forward towards the yawning abyss below us as the bomb's timer neared its end.
"You'll never make it!" I yelled into the comms. "There's no way! You gotta cut me loose!"
"I'm not leaving you behind!"
"My mech's too heavy! You can't save me!"
"If your body's too heavy, just get rid of it!"
"What?" It came out as more of a breath than a question. This mech had been my home for years. Decades, really. With it, I'd survived hundreds of missions. I'd protected countless people.
A connector snapped in Dragonfly's other arm, and I dropped another meter. "Come on! What are you waiting for?!"
"Without this body, I can't help people!" My buffer of reactor failures was starting to overflow. I thought of all the missions I'd run with Dragonfly. "Without this body, I can't protect you!"
"We'll get you a new one! It'll be okay, I promise!" Another cable snapped. "You can survive this, but you have to trust me!"
The countdown clock was ticking. My reactor was melting down. I looked up at her face, and made my decision.
My hand let go on its own, as it ceased to be my hand. My shield that had saved so many friends fell away. My armor plating that had surrounded and protected me from the outside world bloomed like the petals of a flower and fell to pieces as my capsule sped out of the chest cavity. The body fell forever, and crashed to pieces on the stones far below us.
Dragonfly's arms were still damaged, useless. My trajectory was wrong, as Albatross-6 righted itself, free of the terrible mass of metal and death that had been dragging it down. My thrusters ran out, just in front of Dragonfly, with a long drop beneath us. Well, I thought, naked and vulnerable in just my capsule, it was a good try.
"No!" Dragonfly's own chest cavity opened up, her own capsule extruding, opening, revealing her biological torso, fused into the control system as mine was. Her face was more square than I'd thought it would be, her hands rougher, her voice more gravelly. She tore a hand out of the control integration and reached out to me, centimeters away from my capsule. "Come on! Reach!!"
For what felt like forever, I looked into her eyes. Her real eyes. Desperate to save me. Why? I could just fall. She'd get another fireteam. It didn't matter; she couldn't reach me.
Not unless I reached back.
My capsule opened, and I activated every emergency measure I could think of. I tore myself out of my sockets, and reached.
And then, two components of a system that were never meant to touch embraced each other.
I felt blind as Dragonfly's capsule closed, limited only to the visual information on her HUD and what little I could hear of the comms through her implants. I saw, but couldn't feel, the bomb go off, destroying the arms facility completely. All I could feel were the raw nerves of my implants scraping against the metallic cockpit, and the warmth of her arm holding me to her.
As Albatross-6 flew us back to safety, I slept, and dreamed about new bodies. Slimmer, maybe. Wider hips. Soft curves instead of hard lines. Like Dragonfly's. A body I could truly call my own.
