Damnit I should be writing on my novel but FANFICTION:
Freetown is like any other town. It is a small, close-knit group of people united by a cause. No one knows this better than Cobb Vanth. He’s been mayor of this town most of his adult life. He’s never been offworld, and only very rarely gets reckless enough with a speeder to make the town chatter for weeks about it before they move onto the next gossip.
Today is a fairly standard day. He’s back home, and the people, bless them, are acting as though nothing has changed for him, or them. Truth is, everything has changed.
They lost people, good people, he himself almost died. He’s lucky he has such a good town, they went to fight for him, on his behalf, that means the world to his heart, and his mind. He sits at his usual table at the Freetown bar. One of the younger women, Maria, sets a plate in front of him. “Gotta eat, Marshall.” Almost like a mantra these days. Gotta keep going. Gotta move. Gotta smile. Gotta eat.
“Thanks.” He nods at her, he remembers when she was born. That memory stings, because now, damnit, he feels old. He’s hitting the front side of fifty in just a few cycles, that scares him more than the food at the bar does.
He looks down, at the faded plate holding his dinner. The plate has a meat, some sort of grassy salad imported from somewhere that’s probably not this dust ball, and a roll. He sighs and picks up his fork. That makes him look down at the dark mechanical hand he’s got. He’s right handed, and sometimes he doesn’t even think about what he’s doing until he remembers that his hand, arm, and most of his shoulder are in fact, gone.
“Show us your arm!” a boy in the corner says.
“Bale, no.” His mother hushes him up. “Sorry, Marshall.”
“No, it’s fine.” he looks at his plate and decides he can’t eat, and pushes it away. The fork he drops closer to the table. He’ll get better use of fine motor skill later, or so they told him. He turns and smiles at the boy and waves his hand, his right hand, that is no longer his hand but a mechanical mod, one he didn’t ask for, but that saved his life.
“That’s so cool!” The boy says and smiles.
“Kinda is.” Cobb pushes up off his knees and stands up. He drops some coin, more than needed, on the table for the food he can’t bring himself to eat, and then tips his head. “Excuse me, business.” he wanders out of the bar, making sure to act like he knows where he’s going. Even if he has no idea where he needs to go. This must be what drifting feels like.
Standing there on the wood decking, he leans on the building and sighs, looking down at the grey arm staring back at him. It’s a mod of an old K2 unit. He sighs and flexes the fingers, and while it feels a little too big for his body, the modder made sure to slim down the palm, but extra lanky fingers, that’s just something he’s got to live with unless he wants a different mod put on, but that costs money. Credits he just doesn’t have.
The mod extends up into his shoulder, across his front color bone, and into his shoulder blade. He doesn’t know how they did it, that modder, he barely can remember the man’s face, hair. He remembers green, a thread of yellow, or something like that, but his memory is very unstable. Boba told him the tank might do that. Boba said a lot of things might happen….
I have no idea what this is-