yippiehaw:
Yippe laughed heartily at her final comment. “I’m too old to be bettin’ against kids these days. Plus, yer too smart for me. Never had the pleasure of understandin’ those probabilities. My line of work included pointin’, shootin’ and gettin’ reallucky,” He clicks his tongue before waving with his pointer finger, voice venturing into a questioning pitch. “Guessin’ from yer record in the games… I’d say ya got the same job. Amiright?”
There was nothing wrong with being a hired gun. Without a war, many pilots had gone into the route of bounty hunting. Yippie was no exception. He made good money that way, but with his old, beat up clothes and casual attitude, nobody would be aware of how much he actually brought in per head. The pilot kept all his money close to his chest, both for Sonic’s upkeep and his own medical needs.
His Titan stood there impassively the whole time, gazing down at Monark with yellow optics, alert and friendly. The sword snapped to her back was thin and barely curved, possessing a too sharp edge from honed metal and engraved with the words ‘Pilot, Meet Sword’ running down its length. Her yellowish coloring had faded into a pleasant amber one, dulled with age and scratched from many battles.
The pilot lifted his chin, a grin spread across his face, cheshire-like. “Yer pretty brave, offerin’ to bet with a pilot. Most people think I bite or somethin’, but the probability of that happenin’ is pretty low. Actually, ya know what… I’m willin’ to bet that a lotta people think ya bite. Nice mask, by the way.” He shifted his weight, standing straighter, “Eerie.”
She was relieved when he turned down the offer to play, dismissing the possibility he was going to attempt to scam her, but out of the shadow of that possibility stepped an even more terrifying one: He simply wanted to talk.
In contrast to his ease, she sat stock-still, a cathedral’s gargoyle standing and waiting to strike. He spoke of his age, commented on her intelligence, smiled easily. Every action he took seemed to try and shed away the suspicion that he was at all a threat, which only solidified in her mind that that’s exactly what he was, even if not in this very moment.
He looked like a man who knew combat, from the scratches on the Titan and the prosthetic arm (an uncomfortable mirror of her own), and nobody who knew that life was that ‘lucky’. She would wager he must have been a pretty decent one to keep with the upkeep of that Titan and his arm, she knew from personal experience how much money gets poured into those. Even now, the occasional twitch and slower reaction of her own prosthetic betrayed that it wasn’t as kept as it should have been.
“Correct on both fronts.” She spoke finally, after allowing him his spiel. “Seventeen years now,” —four months, 13 days, four hundred and seventy-eight marks— “But not lucky. Skilled. And smart enough to acknowledge that the numbers aren’t any different for you than they are for me, pilot or not.”
She notably said nothing to the comment on her mask.
“Were you ever going to say your name, or were you going to continue dancing around until I asked?”
