Melthusa sighs. The trip to the factory had been wrought with danger. Her team got there by traveling miles behind enemy lines, severely outgunned, and with entirely too little support. At any time she kows that a random patrol of enemy mechs could wander too close, spot one of her friends, and immediately get them all killed. She stays anyway because she knew the mission was too important.

And more than that...because she wanted her there. Mane wants her there, and that's enough for her. 

Melthusa, or Melty as her girlfriend called her, commands the hulking metal frame of her mech to plod forwards. Its thick and massive but otherwise vaguely bird-like feet let it adapt to difficult terrain better

than most machines of its size, which is useful for a long sorty like this one. Her mother's pride and joy, the Emperor, serves a role that few mecha available to the resistance can: that of heavy armor. It is a hulking thing, with thick armor in two layers with a bit of air between them like the plating of a tank. A hybrid of heavy all-terrain transport, defensive front line mech, and heavily armed defensive gun, it falls short in all of its roles compared to more specialized machines but recoups the difference in role compression. Its arms, which have only rudimentary elbow joints to let each half of each arm double as a thick metal plate, remind some childlike part of her of a penguin.

She briefly finds herself wishing she could go to a zoo. Just once. See all the animals that you'd never see normally, even in the

artificial green of the empire's parks. She misses those, but her heart remains unwavering, because Mane never wavered. 

Mane is so cool. So confident. Even as a teenager Mane had been unyielding and uncompromising, a veritable north star that allowed Melthusa to see what a person could look like standing on their own, for principles one chose for themselves. She had opened the door to let Melthusa...be. She is the reason Melthusa was a woman. Maybe...the reason Melthusa is alive. Melthusa knows she'd follow her to the ends of the earth. Nothing could seperate them except death, and only temporarily. 

The Emperor waddles along on short but slow steps. Moving it without alerting every living thing in an area the radius of a

small nation takes time and focus. The screen in front of her reflects that by showing mostly the ground for about forty feet in front of her. No point looking anywhere else. Not yet. Not for her.

"Factory sighted. Scouts deployed," says a voice over the Emperor's com system. It's somewhat crackly and a tiny bit garbled- the machine was built on a budget and most of that budget went to arms and armor.

Several smaller mecha go out ahead to investigate. Dread creeps in the dark alleys of Melthusa's mind like a big shadowy cat.

Breaths. Deep breaths. Even if they do get ambushed, they have almost reached the factory. They can only fail so badly now. Their mission will be much simpler very,

very soon. 

"Keep an eye on the blonde. If she tries anything funny perforate her cockpit," comes another voice, a grizzled female one who sounds like you could slice her lungs open and discover a new chemical in the tar. 

The words sting at Melthusa. She knows their suspicion is unfounded. She knows her beloved Mane would sooner die than risk the lives of the ones who agreed to this mission. She knows that the mission is suicide if anything goes even slightly wrong, potentially even if nothing does, and she knows Mane would have little to gain even if sshe did betray them. In spite of all this, Mane is quiet, so Melthusa forces her mouth shut as well.

Mission first, she reminds herself with great effort. Complete the mission.

She sees a radar map in the corner of her vision. She follows it towards the labratory. There's more chatter but she zones it out. An argument could get her killed. 

A red machine stops next to the door. Unusually for a mech it isn't humanoid. Okay, well, it's a featherless biped, but instead of arms it has wings, and the face is shaped like a dragon. One of an experimental line of robots created by...well...

By Mane's father and uncle. Who both lay dead. The others, the fruits of the two men's more experimental labor, are all inside the factory. They are the objective. Supposedly they are dangerous, borderline

supernatural things, walking superweapons capable of things no ordinary mech could do no matter how skilled the pilot inside of it. Melthusa doubts this, but one of a kind machinery is one of a kind, and there is value still in destroying it. Especially if Mane's father left notes as useless as Mane makes them sound. 

"Remember," a voice rings out from the communications array, "take as many mecha for the resistance as we can and blow the hangar to hell behind us. If we get greedy we die and this whole fucking mission becomes a waste." This time it's Kelsey speaking, the one ace present and the most capable pilot in the team by miles. If not for her Melthusa feels certain she would have physically dragged Mane out of her mech before she allowed this

mission to happen. 

"First objective-locate and enter the factory- complete. But the alarm will sound soon," comes another voice, one Melthusa doesn't really recognize. "So we gotta be quick. Come on!" A massive shutter door slides up and open, which the Emperor's cockpit stops Melthusa from hearing. She has now walked it close enough to see, though, and is no longer staring at the ground in front of her. She watches as it comes open to reveal what was behind it. Next to her, the red mech- the winged one- puts a signal out before moving into the building. 

"We're here..." says a voice that has been silent so far. It's her voice. Mane's voice. It's the first time hearing it in hours and it lifts Melthusa's spirits. This is not the

beautiful, lilting, motherly one she uses when Melthusa is depressed or the chipper, little sister adjacent one she adopts subconsciously when excited. No...

This is her default voice. The "male" one. It passes better than anything Melthusa can muster but even so, she knows her girlfriend doesn't like using it. But using the others on a military excursion complicates things for a few reasons, which she wants not to think about now. And again, even this voice could conceivably be taken as femme. It's a beautiful voice, a caring one, a passionate voice. It is the first voice to ever speak the words "I love you" to Melthusa the woman. It is the only single voice she'd pass away hearing given half a choice (except for its owner's other, more feminine voices of course). 

Emperor moves through the now-gaping garage door of the factory's hangar. The facility triples as a production line, an R&D division, and a combination warehouse/hangar, so it's positively massive even by Imperial standards. A line of standard Imperial mecha with sleek black and white paint stand at attention, various catwalks offering access to their limbs and cockpits. Emperor moves further inside. The smaller mecha begin planting bombs and delayed incendiary devices, while the red wyvern-looking mech lifts its head to one catwalk. A hatch in its spine opens and a blonde girl with a red coat hanging from her shoulders like a cape runs out and hesitates fearfully while struggling not to look down before jumping onto the platform. That moment of weakness aside, she moves with purpose. Melthusa watches and tries not to feel depressed.

The version of that girl in the coat which isn't on a mission is relaxed, easygoing, and snuggly. Mane is at heart a warm, deeply civillian thing who loves everyone and especially loves women and, above all else, singularly, beyond reason, beyond justification, fucking LOVED Melthusa. It's a different Mane in control right now though.

The version of her girlfriend running across the catwalk is the focused one. The one going around a crisscrossing platform up to a computer panel that stood next to the biggest mech she'd seen in her life isn't the one she fell for in high school. It's the other version of Mane.The angry one. The one that would hunt anybody who wronged Melthusa across the world, pursue them to the ends of time, follow and punish them

even if she had to climb to the stars to do it and arrived armed with nothing but her hands. It is the version that howled in anguish over every injustice, heaved her chest with righteous indignation over the empire's misdeeds. The Mane that goes literally red-faced with rage sometimes and has pantomimed strangling her father to death at least twice. 

It isn't the version of her girlfriend who promises Melthusa the sea and the stars, who will literally brainwash Melthusa into seeing the beauty in herself as she exists, the one got her bullied less by virtue of association when classmates learned they were dating (an especially powerful feat given the all male, religious nature of the school they attended). It is, however, the one that helped Melthusa learn to

want better from the world. The one that showed her it's okay to be angry. To demand better. Which is why it used to break her heart to hear how the other version felt about this one. 

Regardless of which version of her it is, though, Mane stands near a cockpit. It's attached to one of a few machines that really, REALLY stand out. This one has a head shaped like a wolf, and its chest is also shaped like a wolf's head, complete with rows of metal fangs. Oddly conical ones. It is also, again, freakishly fucking big even for a mech. It looks like the very laws of physical space should punish it for its hubris the moment it even tries to stand. 

"BOMB. NOW." One of the rebels- she thinks this one is named Nisiq- snarls over

the radio. Melthusa watches as two rebels- one in a loader armor and one on foot who had been riding a mech's shoulder- both clamber into place in a spot beneath the catwalk network-standing roughly under the spot where Mane is-and begin work assembling what Melthusa knows to be an especially powerful bomb. She considers dismounting the *Emperor*-she has a role to fill that she can't from here-but she knows something could go wrong at any time. As safe as one is inside of Emperor, it lacks anything remotely resembling an easy way to quickly go from inside or outside the cockpit to the other. The pulley system she has hooked up to a harness on he hip can only do so much for her. 

She watches as progress is made on the main bomb. It's set to be a big one- as it

will have to be- and while the other explosives are there to destroy an Imperial facility- might as well, being there and all- they aren't as important. This is the one meant to butcher the machines built by the late Dr. Charlam (pronounced Shar-lumm). Seeing such expensive and irreplacable war machines destroyed isn't exactly an inheritence or a dowry, but a part of Melthusa's mind wryly quips to herself that she'll take it. 

Her coms array sparks to life again as the primary bomb is finished and set into motion. "Payload armed. Status report." A second later another rebel's voice speaks up.

"Mane is using the panel to boot the mech. Seems to be going as anticipated." Instinct turns the gaze of Melthusa's machine

towards Mane. She's there, typing at a panel like they said. It lights up. The blonde continues typing. Next to her a rebel in a basic pilot's suit and a helmet holds up a rifle like they're holding her a gunpoint. It sickens Melthusa. She can hear the countless times Mane reassured her that it was okay, she understood, they had every right not to trust her. But it hurts. Melthusa knows it hurts her girlfriend. And it hurts her, too. The fucking gun is too far. 

"Trigger discipline!" Melthusa protests over the com. She prays they don't shoot. Her pleas are met...for now. She knows why they trust Mane so little- these mecha are state of the art Imperial prototypes, superweapons, that supposedly only Mane's family can pilot without heavily tampering with them first. The story is suspicious but the rebel cell's leader

trusted Mane and that was enough to get them this much help. Especially since Melthusa probably had enough skill and experience to try and remove that peculiar lock, so that the mech could be piloted by anyone. Would they have time for that though?

"Don't point your gun at anything or anyone you don't want shot," a voice chides her and yanks her mind back into the present. She fights an urge to remark that her beloved is not a thing. "Which part of that am I violating?" There's a second reason for the aggression, one that nobody has pointed out but that Melthusa isn't dumb enough not to notice. Mane's father wasn't just the scientist that built these things-his family is both both military and nobility, and with a long history of loyal service to the Empire in both fields. In spite of being

her own person, Mane's last name alone calls forth the image of butchered comrades, ruined lives, and Imperial weaponry. 

Melthusa grits her teeth. She knows her girlfriend's family are evil, awful, terrible people. She knows she and they are both imperials, and that her girlfriend is nobility by birth. She knows that the machine with the wolf head was built by her girlfriend's family, for her girlfriend's family, to kill the gunman's family. She knows that. She knows that they probably won't shoot. She knows they know that her girlfriend is more useful alive. She knows that they know if they shoot, she does. And she doesn't need to. Stealing some-stealing even one- of these super prototypes is arguably a bigger deal than destroying them all. But they can only pull this stunt

once, so killing Mane ensures the rebels will never have any of them. Kelsey's voice rips Melthusa out of her head.

"Radar's picking up a patrol. Door's shut so they don't have visuals of us but if they run any kind of scan of the building we'll have to fight." 

"How far are they?" asks the man with the gun.

"Twelve snarls," Kelsey responds. Melthusa has no idea how far that is- she assumes it must be some kind of thieves' cant- but she judges based on tone that it must not be far. 

"Copy. We only have time to hijack one machine."

Melthusa's heart drops. They can't stand their ground, only fight their way out and then retreat. They have the means, but if they can only steal one mech, that means they won't be able to get out without abandoning one. Her girlfriend's machine the Vortigern is too valuable to abandon and too gangly to be transported without hobbling the combat ability of the one carrying it. That would have been less of an issue if they could slip away unnoticed, but as it stands that's not an option. None of the others know how to pilot it and would be dead weight from inexperience trying to pilot something so divorced from conventional mecha. And that means...

Tears well in her eyes. The familiar swell of Emperor's innards, the comforting feeling of knowing her mother's engineering is preserving her, keeping her safe, like a

womb built from solid steel, warm and alive with a mother's love...

The first machine she ever commanded...

The one that vaguely reminds her of her favorite animal from childhood. The gift from her mother back when she was slated to join the military. The one thing she took with her from her old life. The only thing in the world that served and protected her with loyalty surpassing even her girlfriend. The iron wall that would throw itself in front of Armageddon for her. The champion that would face god, raise its arms, and weather all the swords of heaven before it would even think about leaving her behind...

No...

Was this the only way...?

"Hey, wake up. Set up your mech and switch to the red one," Kelsey says again over the com system, clearly directed at her. "Unless you feel like dying a hero." Melthusa tries not to think about how absurd it would be to ask Kelsey to abandon her Abbadon, with its countless scars and mismatching metal outer pieces and custom-rigged weapons. 

"Or don't. You choosing to die like a hero might be better for us."

Their words are so...callous. These are rebels! They're not supposed to be like the Imperial footsoldier douchebags in their mass-produced, chrome finished, zero identifying features-ass minion robots! Each mech in her platoon is a walking ship

of Theseus, a custom build with scars and compromises and upgrades and salvage and bits that don't quite fit but saved too much money to justify other options or which were the ONLY options! Each machine invading that hangar has a history, a life. Her beloved Emperor shouldn't have to die! They didn't need to be so...cold about it! 

"I...I..." she whimpers in her seat, the sting of tears assaulting her eyes. No...

The Emperor marches faithfully towards the garage door, each of its arms deploying a triple-barreled heavy machine gun. She changes the settings of its cameras to maximize its ability to spot and calibrate for aiming at targets, while shutting off all other occular function. It essentially becomes that specific state of

blind where one cannot actually see but nevertheless still detects motion with their eyes. 

The iron beast's legs change shape, spearing platforms into the ground to anchor it. Superior stability, lessened recoil. 

No mobility. No retreat. Even in victory, the bomb will slay it. The anchors have more or less turned the ground beneath Emperor into its grave. 

Each switch she flips. Each lever pulls. Each of the commands she rapidly types into the computer panel by her right joystick. All of it feels terrible. She programs the most loyal being she had or would ever have...to die for her. While she discards it. Her heart twists into a

contorted pillar of guilt. She is killing it. She is killing him! 

Her poor Emperor!

No program was going to activate from some unknown part of the machine. It wasn't going to open the cockpit and give her permission to retreat before arming its self destruct switch and marching proudly into the hail of enemy fire to protect her. It wouldn't suddenly begin to speak after catching fire and tell her it dreamed of carrying her just one more mile. This was it. 

"Good...bye..." she choked out. War came with casualties. She knew this. Losing Emperor was morally better than letting a person die and the superior tactical choice compared to losing Vortigern. She can't

escape in it and if she fights she will be overrun. Her hands still shake as she yanks up on the brake, then pulls back the lever that releases the cockpit. 

"We got the machine open!" One of the rebels cries triumphantly. The sound follows Melthusa out of the Emperor and hangs heavy on her shoulders as she rappels down from her friend's chest cavity one final time. It's going to be the last thing she ever hears out of Emperor's speakers. Forever. She gently sets her feet on the floor and clicks a button at her side. Snap!

The cable disengages from her hip and retracts. She can't help but watch in a sad daze as the steel titan closes its torso and transforms even further. It's like watching

a predator's attitude change when it feels cornered. All the friendly roundness of her chunky hero- that reminded her of herself, of her body- disappears. It's still a chunky bitch but the bulk seems less alive, less inhabitable. It is as though the machine sees its master abandoning it and has cannibalized its own heart.

"For...give me...!" She whimpers as she scampers across the room to Vortigern. Another mech lifts her and tosses her body carelessly into the cockpit. She barely has time to get herself situated before the chatter fills her ears. 

"It won't start! The damn thing is broken!"

Vortigern doesn't feel like Emperor. It's cramped- built for her much smaller partner, and designed to be compact even

then. It lacks a traditional seat, its cockpit instead designed like a motorcycle. Her back practically brushes the dim chamber's roof. The display surrounds her and moves uncomfortably fast, owing this quality to the machine's nimble head and long neck. She manipulates the controls to wake up her muscle memory, directing her new steed to stretch its winglike appendages and shake its head. 

"It'll only work for you, huh? Awfully fucking convenient. We risked all our necks so you could get a fancy new ride, is that it?"

Fuck. Melthusa is supposed to hack these things and alter their boot sequence to get around the limitations preventing the rebels from using them. But there's no time, and danger is moving closer! 

"I can fix that once we escape! But we have to escape!" Melthusa pleads. She can hear the agitation in the com, which comes through sharper and clearer thanks to the sleek, superior technology built into Vortigern. "Just let her pilot it to freedom!" Something inside her cracks. She can't lose Emperor and her beloved on the same day! She rears her new mech's head to point it up towards the cockpit of the much larger one, where the rebel with the gun is inspecting and punching the controls. The small arms beam weapons integrated into its eyes can easily spear the insurgent without harming her girlfriend. It locks onto him. "NOW." 

"Is that a threat?" Answers one of the others. She can feel them arming their mechs. There's a chance this ends with a

full party kill without even getting blood on Imperial hands. 

"If you're asking us to trust that bitch, you're even dumber than you sound," spoke the meanest one. It's Marie, a chronic bully with an ego.

The voices cut deeper when it's this different, new, wrong suit of armor. Everything is wrong. This space wasn't built for her. Being built for her girlfriend didn't matter when her girlfriend is a hundred thirty pounds and stands at five feet ten, making her three inches taller and about sixty pounds lighter than Melthusa. It is a hostile space, a cramped one. It jostles too much. It isn't built with a mother's love. It's a capricious machine built to fly high and kill with precision, not to protect. She doesn't point its head

where the voice came from. She knows that the Calcified- Marie's mech, which is painted with skull decals- is standing with its massive anti-mech rifle primed and ready. Its arms aren't even the same length, no close, and the reminder of how much she and Mane's unmodified Imperial machines stick out wouldn't help. 

"Sir, we are going to DIE! Let her pilot the damn thing!" Kelsey yells through the coms. Her voice makes all the difference. As the only ace pilot there, and their best bet at escaping alive, nobody wants to piss her off. Plus she's quiet so when she barks an order the others fall in line. Suddenly all of the mechs lower their weapons-all except Melthusa. The armed rebel stares into Vortigern's visage and sighs, then crawls out. Mane boards. She takes a deep breath and then says...something. A family

secret, even to the Empire. The wolf mouth that juts out of the experimental mech's chest clamps shut around her and the glinting behemoth's eyes glow a glacial blue. 

"This one is my brother's mech...C3B3, dad called it. Cerberus," Mane says into the coms. Her voice sounds wistful. Sad, almost. "The only one in here with actual field experience. It was only used twice though. Not sure why..."

The machine walks forward on calamitously heavy legs. Every inch of it is decked out in armor, polished and bright white with details and accents that are dark blue and gold. The catwalk bends like twine and loudly splinters apart before the weight of this monster- which looks even bigger than Emperor. It's taller. And less

rotund, but even more armored. The mech's limbs are like tree trunks constructed from steel. Its arms look like they could crush a sperm whale with only moderate effort. The idea of even designing such a thing to hold up its own weight- let alone move or provide power to itself- seems completely impossible. And yet, there it stands. It WALKS.

"Holy shit...we would have to fight that thing?"

"Yes. Now let's get moving. Radar says the enemy is-"

Rockets plowed through the thin garage door and slammed into two rebel mecha, blowing them apart. One had been the speaker- the voice naturally cuts off. 

"There are other exits!" Cried the ace. "This way!" The Abbadon rushes deeper into the building and all at once the other rebel machines rush after it. If Melthusa remembers the map correctly then they're headed down a hallway that leads to a bunch of wide open spaces and corridors- weapons testing, possibly?- that then connect to a few side exits. As open as they are though, those spaces are more confined than the hangar, which has a roof so high it might as well be outside. 

------------

Sicily loves her Tempestra. It can't fly, obviously, mecha don't fly. But it can DANCE. Its nimble, agile body and arsenal of missiles and beams and blades make it a havok for the foes of the Empire.

Which...she hates. She always had. She loaths the Empire and its cruelty, but she is also a realist and a lover. The Empire will never lose this conflict, not in a million years. She knows that. Its resources, its manpower, the gulf in technology between itself and the scrapweaving punks of the rebellion, all ensure that it cannot be beaten. And it is merciless. Its beaten foes never get mercy, never ever.

Except when she intervenes. The young woman sighs dreamily, and a thin trail of spittle leaks from her mouth. She is fantasizing about her beautiful blonde handler. 

Unlike most of them, her handler is soft. ALWAYS soft. So soft. Softer than the rebels, softer than anyone. So gentle, and patient, and forgiving. She knows that her

handler can spare her friends, so she knows what she has to do. Without her help, all those poor helpless rebels will die pointlessly in long drawn out struggles, their bodies and futures splattered across the dirt like trash bags raided by raccoons. The thought of such wasteful bloodshed has always brought tears to her eyes. The Empire's cruelty knows no bounds, and that's why she MUST save its enemies from it. As often as she can.

They took the bait, a voice buzzes from her machine's sound system. She remembers, somewhere in the bad uncomfortable fog of her time with the mean rebels, that the Tempestra's speakers used to be much shittier. Before her handler spent so much money out of pocket not just fixing it but upgrading it. An adorable new coat of pink and white paint, a custom-commisioned

pinup of herself in a candy cane-themed bikini, and a whole new set of the same kind of weapons and parts it had already used, but newer and better models of the same. Mostly. The rule of the AK persists even to this day, after all: sometimes a weapon is just good, and you can't improve on it that much. She overhears a command through the communications device: "Send the dog." Then she hears her squadmates snicker and laugh but that's okay. She knows they're mean. The Empire is. Not like her handler.

Not like Cane. She needs to be a good girl. She needs to bring her prey back alive and preferably unharmed. 

"Rodger that!" Sicily squeaks, her mech gliding into place as a pair of missiles sprouted from the launchers in its

shoulders. Smoke billows from their slots as both munitions fly forwards and crash cleanly through a thin sheet door. Each one, guided by a computer, jams its front end into the neck or torso of a rebel mech and both detonate, reducing two human beings to splatters of gore. It doesn't make her feel bad. They died fast, without suffering. If only more dead rebels could say the same...poor things. 

The other rebels retreat into the yawning abyss at the back of the oversized hangar...all except one. A bulbous, unproffessional looking heap of armor stares her down from the entrance and three long barrels whir to life on each of its large-plated arms. Suddenly the air turns into a violent light and the roar of bullets shrieks in her ears as the enemy mech opens fire. 

Combat brings her no thrill but the feeling of agility afforded by Tempestra is another matter. The Tempestra nimbly zooms in a curved line and dodges one stream of bullets. She opens a radio relay with it- which works- but hears nothing, not even breathing. The machine is empty. On one hand, that means she can be as brutal as she has to. On the other, she hates fighting unmanned machines. It's like fucking a vibrater when its batteries are dead. In any case, she dodges the attacks of its basic, predictable AI and poorly articulated limbs with ease, twirling about the clumsy mech's flank. As something opens in the mech's shoulder to reveal another gun she revels in the stimmy sound of a blade going shink! It's the sound of the  Tempestra deploying a close-quarters blade out of its arm, a blade which she

promptly jams into the unmanned mech's shoulder to destroy its newly revealed weapon. The gun splits open, ruined, but the iron of her own blade gets stuck, which the enemy mech tries to use to its advantage by twisting its weight. It seeks to drag her back in front where it can fire on her with something else.

Too bad. Killing people is wrong. But breaking weapons is every human being's obligation. Her mech leaps and twists, its sleek body sliding the blade free as she wheels in an arc over the disgusting mech's side. It's so ugly...! 

"Things like you are why people have to die!" She shrieks. The Tempestra lands gracefully on the eyesore's shoulders and a pair of harpoons launch from its hips, each embedding itself in the enemy

machine alongside dozens of electrodes. Sicily smashes a button with her fist and lets loose with an inhuman yowl as countless volts of electricity flood the mech beneath her, looking up its joints and frying its circuits. With one last fit of thrashing and just a few seconds firing one last volley of rounds, the mech beneath her goes limp and impotent. It is no more able to harm human beings than a paperweight, anymore. But...the asshole made her waste nonlethal rounds on a war machine...RRRRGG!

"THOSE ARE FOR PEOPLE YOU FUCKING COCKSUCKER!" She shrieks as an unforseen rage floods her body with wild, sickening heat. All she can imagine is the poor little rebel she can't save anymore, crushed into paste beneath Imperial weapons more merciless and wicked than

she could dream of being. "DAMN YOU! DAMN YOU! DAMN YOUUUU!" 

The screen went black. A soothing voice wafted through her mind like the smell of french toast lovingly prepared with plenty of cinnamon. The anger leaves her instantly as thoughts of its owner render her unable to harbor violent thoughts. 

"It is alright, darling. Breathe."

"Breathe..." whimpered Sicily, her delicate body trembling as she inhaled. She feels like a swaddled kitten.

"There. Much better. Remember the mission." 

"Yes..." Sicily moaned emptily to herself,

eyes wide. Motivation, cause, ethics, reason, common sense...all disappear under a soft safe fog. They will still be there later. She just has to bring home results. Her mind narrows to a singular goal, imposed from outside. Sicily the person ceases to exist. Instead her body becomes an instrument of Sicily the idea, Sicily the ideal- for a time she is her handler's pet no more. Instead she is a weapon.

"The...mission..." she mumbles as the Tempestra shakily rises to its feet with a shambling, shoulder-wiggling motion like a zombie lifted from the ground by wicked magic. She turns towards the innards of the facility, knowing she has to get to her target before the black-plated generic machines of her squadmates do. The screen lights back up, revealing that her

"allies" must have gotten ahead of her in the last few seconds. She hears the paint-by-numbers mecha of her squadmates trundling forward, comparatively sleek but still modestly built. they all look identical though, because they are identical. Only the rich can personally afford a mech meaningfully better than what the Empire provides to a pilot and it shows. She knows this is a group that got their mecha through skill, and that they tolerate her only because she is cute, skilled, and disposable. That doesn't matter. She sees but doesn't see the remains of two small mecha blasted open by some bastard Imperial's rockets. The pilots' remains rest awash in puddles of blood and oil that mix until they become the same fluid. That doesn't matter. 

"Have to...bring her home...to her family."

The Tempestra launches itself past its more uniform fellows with wild abandon. Its own body is more akin to its prey than its pack, but the candy-colored new shell makes it look more like the soldiers than the rebels. The pilot isn't thinking of that. She's thinking of the girl she has to bring home. She HAS to. Even if she dies in the process, she HAS to. She will not be the reason a woman has to bury her poor idealist baby in a closed casket. But even that idea gets swallowed again by the haze filling her head. The girl is all that remains. The TARGET. 

The laughter of the others fades behind her. Her mech's engine blazes to work its magic, pulsing red light around the beautiful, nimble Tempestra as it gains momentum faster and faster. An overlay radar/map pops up in front of her to let her

know exactly where she is and what the Tempestra's sesensory devices are picking up in the immediate area. She navigates like a panther patroling its turf, the minotaur haunting its labyrinth. She barrels towards the nearest exit, and before long another blip lights up on her radar. She must have a better one than they do because she gets the drop on them. Sicily unholsters, loads, and fires her sidearm-a shotgun-straight at the cockpit while the mech is still turning to face her.

Not the target. 

The rebel opens their mouth to scream but lead finds their mouth before their breath does. Buckshot half the size of a man's leg punctures their cockpit and tears away eighty percent of their head. The mech veers wildly as rigor mortis changes its final command from a simple turn into a

wild, mindless spin that topples it. She keeps moving, having not even slowed down to aim. As she bounds on past and down a hallway she holsters the gun again. She sees a corner coming up and hears a mech around it. She comes to a screeching halt just as a dusty-white mech with mismatched arms peaks around the corner and aims a truly massive gun at her.

Not the target. 

The Tempestra fires first, a light machine gun in its head mangling the shoulder joint nearest her. The rebel mech's arm locks up and throws off its shot. The recoil jams the machine's elbows, which look overused and undermaintained. Easy prey. The Tempestra rushes it down and slams its arm blade through the mech's other shoulder to sever its arm. The gun falls

away and the mech- which Sicily now sees has skulls painted on it- reaches for some other weapon. She fires directly into the cockpit with a small beam weapon built into Tempestra's hand, cooking the pilot alive. The mech falls dead. She sprints past. She sees a thin wall and the map in front of her tells her that going through it is faster than around it. She smashes a wall open with another rocket and surges into the dust cloud like a starving beast. 

Three more blips. 

"IS THAT-"

"IT CAN'T BE! "

"WHAT DID THEY DO TO THE TEMPEST!?"

To her left there are three small mecha.

The smallest has two humans riding on it, one holding onto each shoulder like garbage men. It stands in between the other two. All five hostiles reach for weapons but she's faster and draws a small machine gun that serves as her other sidearm. She fires a spray of bullets that targets the smallest mech, shredding its insides and horrifically bursting open the bodies of its two extra riders. All three victims howl in agony as her stream of violence turns them into corpses. Evidence of Imperial violence. Evidence of the danger of rebellion. The fog protects her from feeling guilty. Even if it didn't, she would know she had no choice. 

"How...DARE YOU!"

"THAT WAS YOUR FRIEND!"

None of those words register. She doesn't care. They aren't her target or her handler. She arms and fires two rockets from her shoulders which nail both remaining mecha's torsos before blasting them open. Two iron masses collapse, sparks sizzling across the open wounds that dominate their front ends. When they hit the floor they lay totally limp, parts of their cockpits peeled radially open in layers away from the blast like mutilated onions. Gasoline pools from their devastated guts almost like machine piss. Much like everything that isn't her mission, Sicily does. Not. Care. She catapults the Tempestra forward, dead set on finding her target. She keeps moving in the direction of the nearest exit and must be on the track. As she bounds down yet another hallway her com device lights up with enemy

broadcasts.

"The Tempest turned traitor!"

"It got Ivan!"

"That FUCKER!"

She directs her mech closer to the source. She follows the hallway to the end and right as she gets there-

One mech busts through a wall- must have been too thick for her radar- and points a gun. She fires first with the submachine gun still in her arm from her last encounter, blowing off the mech's leg and toppling it. It hits the floor arming something on its shoulder but Tempestra plunges a bladed heel into the cockpit. The pilot dies shrieking. Two more mecha round the the

corner at the other end of the room she was about to ender and aim their guns but she hears them coming. Rockets leap from her shoulders to meet them before either can pull the trigger. They become unrecognizable meat. The Tempestra retracts the killing blade from her ambusher's ruined corpse smoothly, almost suavely back into its body. All the gore and oil is starting to ruin the Tempestra's adorable new paint job, but its pilot isn't present to care. Only her skills, directing the mech to secure its targets. It sprints again, in the direction of her last attackers.

It has almost reached the end of the next hallway and turned a corner when two new blips appear behind her. This must be an attempted pincer attack. She likely killed her first three assailants faster than

anticipated. Two mismatched machines leap out from the direction she'd just come and shoot at her. 

"I'll kill you!"

"Traitor bitch!"

They are in heavier mechs than the previous few, sturdier ones. A pair of boxlike weapons slide out from the Tempestra's back as it lunges behind cover just in time to avoid heavy machine gun fire. Holes get punched in the walls as the two walk steadily closer. But that won't matter. The Tempestra launches a barrage of rockets that swerve around the corner. Bullets shred a few and detonate them early, but more follow and spread out. The rockets find their targets and blast them down to the floor. They try to stand but are

pummeled by more ordinance. Steel buckles sickeningly with a god-awful crrrrrunch under one impact after another. It resists with all its might but eventually gives way. Both mecha go limp where they lay, horribly sheared steel swirling in like a vortex towards the cockpit- where the pilots gurgle on blood, injured not by her rockets but by the sharp, inward-folded metal of their own rebel machinery. An ooze of blackened ichor pours from each of their impaled jaws. She moves on without a thought. She reaches the end of the hallway where another mech jumps out at her. 

"WHAT DID THEY DO? HUH, SICILY? GO TO HELL!"

The mech lunges straight for her, the taletell glow of its self destruct sequence

active. That one proves simple-

She trips it and then hauls the Tempestra away, down the hallway she'd just come through, around the corners. A wave of flame and kinetic energy chases after her but being channeled across a hallway like that down the distince involved nueters the blast, and it doesn't hurt her beloved mech. That one wasn't the target either, she notes to herself. She sprints back down the bend, too out of it to feel annoyed she has crossed the same corridor this many times. Once she gets there two pips appear in the radar. One is...massive, though. She clicks a button, alerting her handler. Almost instantly she is reassured. 

"I see, little Sicily. They got a prototype working. Ignore that one for now."

"So no new target?"

"...no. Bring me the red one's pilot alive. Do not engage the prototype." 

"Copy." 

Sicily lunges forward with newfound abandon, eager to take home a new playmate. She hopes she or her..."allies"...can handle the other one. 

------

Melthusa feels scared. Of course she does. There had been a whole patrol of Imperials bearing down on them and just one of their machines is killing HOW many of the rebels!?

Melthusa white-knuckles the controls of her craft, eyes and entire body trembling with horror. She can hear the the joysticks rattling from how bad her hands are quaking around them. Another beep. Another comrade dead. 

"I'll have to bust out through a wall! HERE!" Cries Mane. As always, hearing her love's voice soothes Melthusa. 

The sound of the new giant super mech smashing a wall open by charging through it, less so.

Her girlfriend's mech- Cerberus, apparently- crashes into the ground like a mountain. It takes the towering metal monster considerable effort to stand back up. 

"Impractical disaster," remarks the ace. "I think two or three of us could probably handle that thing if it didn't catch us by surprise on its home turf." Kelsey is bragging but Melthusa knows from experience that she might be right. Still, with the number of dead bodies in the facility behind them it comforts her little. "Hey, why didn't you do that before?"

"Didn't want to leave anyone behind," Mane remarks. "But now basically everyone is dead from the sound of it...!" The Abbadon slouches over and some kind of advanced, weather dish looking device extends from one of its shoulders and then twirls. 

"Sounds like it. There's only one of our comrades still moving." Well, at least they had one left-

The Abbadon beeps.

"...fuck. It's just the three of us now," Kelsey grimaces audibly. "I just bought that fucking upgrade, it was super expensive! I had to smuggle some of the pieces in on trucks!" 

"Leave me," Mane says abruptly. It isn't retaliation, or even an order. It almost sounds like an observation.

The ace complies upsettingly quickly. 

"Blow yourself up if you gotta, you prick!" Kelsey taunts over the coms as her Abaddon rushes off. Malthusa feels an urge to shoot her down. She could easily cook the bitch's mech's knees with a single beam...

Wait. Leave? Her girlfriend hadn't specified that she meant Kelsey. She...wanted...?

"No...no! I'm- I'm not!" Melthusa sputtered, feeling like an overgrown child. "I'm not leaving you! Never again!" Twice is enough. Once when Mane ran away from home, a second time when she took off to defect to the rebels and she changed. Twice is too many. Not a third time. Not for good. "We can escape together!" 

"It's me they want, Melty," Mane speaks in her voice. Her warm, wet, caring voice. The motherly one. The one that turns Melthusa's knees into goop. Mane's real voice. Melthusa heart cracks under the heat of the moment. 

"But...I can't! Till death do us part!" Melthusa whines in protest. Of course, she knows what rebuke is waiting for her. It's a dad joke. She's heard it before. 

Cerberus...no. Mane takes Vortigern's...no. She takes Melthusa's head in her hands and points it towards the brilliant blue eyes of the machine. Towards its pilot. Her lover's face isn't there on the screen but Melthusa can see it. The gesture is so deeply ingrained in her that the mere image of even a war machine taller than her home acting it out makes her see all the previous times it's been given to her. Their history churns in her chest. 

"We're not married," Mane chuckles. "Go. Save yourself. It'll be okay," Mane purrs gently from all around Melthusa. The higher quality of the mechanical dragon's

speakers mean that it's like being in a waterfall of Mane's voice-a shame it had to happen like this. The voice changes, though. The affection is gone, replaced by determination. Mane sounds brave. Melthusa isn't fooled. She isn't a high schooler anymore. "You have to go. I'll survive. I'll find you." Melthusa's girlfriend has talked her down before, exactly like this. From throwing her life away. That's exactly what Mane's doing, she realizes, in her own eyes. But that's not right. That isn't actually what Mane is doing.

"No! Never, never! I can't! Please-"

A blip appears on her radar coming from inside the facility. Cerberus' feet thunder against the earth as it plods towards their attacker. Then more from the other direction as a cadre of black mecha appear in a circle, closing in on them from

outside. It looks like they must have encircled the place while a select few advanced into the building to smoke out the rebels. 

An ace that veritably doubles as a horror movie monster on one side, and a force of competent enemy pilots wielding the Empire's millitary grunt mecha on the other. 

"Go!" The voice on Melthusa's com cracks. The woman is acting brave but she's struggling not to cry. Melthusa hears it in her voice. The red, dragon-like mech housing her rears up and arms its weapons as she sizes up the enemy. How many can she kill? 

"No." She's standing up for herself. Like her girlfriend taught her to. Back in college,

when she hadn't learned to say no yet. It had taken time, patience...literal brainwashing. Most people would have exploited that weakness. Most boys that age, certainly. "I left...Pen Pen behind. I left everything behind, to come with you. That was hard enough. I can't lose you too!"

There comes a pause. The blip comes closer. For the last time, she hears the love of her life. For the first time, she's glad to be in a cockpit that catches radio coms as well as this one does.

"I love you Melty, forever." The young woman's tone makes it clear she's made a hard decision. It puts a pit in Melthusa's stomach. "Fly, you fools." She hates how tender the voice is. How...maternal. She wishes somewhere deep inside her that she could listen to that voice, saying those

words, forever. The war, the rebellion, suddenly she questions if that's...worth it. She doesn't want to go back to the empire obviously, but...couldn't they have just run away entirely instead?

The controls stop listening to Melthusa and her mech- the one that isn't hers- takes off. Engines lining both sides of its wings scream to life as it launches itself into the air. 

"NOOOOOOOOOOO!"

The mech doesn't care. She smashes at the cockpit, she cries, she begs. She doesn't care anymore. All she wants is her girlfriend. Not even her own survival makes a difference to her. 

"TURN AROUND YOU BASTARD! DON'T

LEAVE HER! SHE'S YOUR PILOT! YOU WERE MADE FOR HER! DON'T YOU FUCKING CARE ABOUT HER!?" Melthusa screams and gulps and sobs. She continues pounding helplessly on the interior of the cockpit, hurting her fragile human fists.The machine climbs higher-

And then shudders. Electricity crackles all around her, shocking Melthusa severely. The camera feed goes black and she feels herself lurching.

No. The enemy...got her? 

"FIGHT! DON'T SURRENDER!" Melthusa starts screaming. She won't be a hostage. 

Not if she has a say in the matter. Her borrowed mech slams into the ground, and the safety foam encases her. She passes

out from the impact. All goes black.

She does not feel as human hands gently scoop her into an enemy cockpit, or hear as the enemy force retreats. She does not hear the explosives go off, destroying the factory. She does not hear her "rescuer" cooing words of reassurance to her, that her mother was waiting for her back home or that she was going to be eating warm healthy meals from now on.

She has no idea the scene of carnage the woman cradling her made getting to her. She doesn't know that in order to keep from crying, her partner bit her lip until it bled. She doesn't know that even as the Tempestra rockets away, the Cerberus roars loud enough to give goosebumps to the devil, or that her love's mech is firing weapons never before seen

in combat and narrowly missing her captor multiple times as the Tempestra nimbly weaves and runs.

She just sleeps. And dreams of her lover caressing her in their soft, perfect embrace. Purring in her ears. Those wonderful, intoxicating words in that wretchedly, sweetly, intimately final tone. It is the kind of thing that a girl can die happy knowing she's heard it once from someone who meant it. I love you, forever. I love you, forever. 

She whimpers helplessly in her sleep.

"I love you too, Mane..."