Hey everyone, the name's Sophia (she/her). I'm a relatively stereotypical transfem hound. 18 years old and absolutely, totally ready for the horrors of war. Unprompted biting is a risk you run around me, unless you've got a muzzle ready.
Standing in the middle of the Imperial council chambers, Rear Admiral Leyna Davis looked up at the politicians who sat behind their desks, her expression unreadable. The normal crisp white uniform she wore on deployment had been replaced today by the navy blue dress uniform of an Imperial high officer, contrasting heavily with her pale skin and the dirty blonde and silver of her hair. Reporters, or more accurately, propagandists, stood ready to turn the words spoken within this room into the next big rousing stories for the state-owned papers, broadcasts, and radio.
Davis would take a deep breath, before she would begin to address the council members.
“Councilmen and women, Mr Grassley, and others, I thank you for your time. Unfortunately, today I do not bring the news you had hoped for. As much as it pains me to say, the special assignment given to the 9th Peacekeeping Fleet, has failed. Due to unexpectedly heavy resistance, and improper tactics from the late Handler Anika, we were repelled and forced to evacuate under threat of a Meridian fleet.”
She would pause to let that information settle in, before continuing.
“While we had initial success in our advances, rebel terrorists and mercenaries using ‘Hound’-type pilots ended up overwhelming the ground forces and inflicting heavy casualties. Improper reconnaissance had failed to give the Army and Marine officers an accurate estimation to their force numbers and composition, which we suffered greatly for. The initial tally gives us a rough estimate of eighty combat frames lost, twelve fighter aircraft, four transport shuttles, and over one hundred ninety servicemen and woman.”
“Among those losses, I regret to say, were Lieutenant Shariin Grassley, and First Sergeant Raylin Engelmann.”
Being used to delivering news like this, Leyna would pause her address so she wouldn’t be drowned out by commotion or questions from those in attendance.
(moots who are involved with this whole plotline feel free to jump in as apart of this scene however you want<3)
*Councilman Engelmann stands, jaw set firmly, expression stony.*
"Why."
"I want to know the detail of how a peacekeeping mission with an 11 ship strong fleet, failed to dispose of some rats in rusted chassis. My daughter was assigned to that unit of yours, Miss Davis, so tell me: How did she die, and how did Handler Anika fail this so miserably?"
.....who the fuck is gonna take the pilot with a macaroni and cheese pun as a username seriously.......MY FUCKING CALLSIGN IS ALREADY HOT SAUCE. fml...
It's a shame that porn games and sim games don't have a lot of present overlap, because I feel like "horny mechsplo game where you have to actually win the fights to get to the sexy bits and it's one of those hyper-detailed 1990s era mech piloting sims that uses every single key on the keyboard" would do numbers with a very particular audience.
Some of the comments/reblogs imply military service, and while I concede that could definitely be one way of doing it, I think there’s another equivalent.
Be a professional e-sports gamer(pilot) while living with your coach(handler). Do matches(sorties) and hop on your pc and in your gamer chair(pilot a mech)
They call me Hound because of my amazing skills in combat, the way I slaughter my enemies, and because of my exceptional tracking. It’s definitely not because of my personhood being broken apart and being reshaped until all that is left of me is a loyal tool, happily following my Handlers orders like a trained dog.
Me, a mech pilot trying to negotiate my release and joining the imperial side: Look, ill join you. Just please make sure my best friend is kept safe, Im kept away from my family, and I get lots and lots of sour treats.
The handler, making notes on how she can exploit my weaknesses and turn me into one of her loyal hounds: Yes yes, we’ll make sure your friend is kept sa- wait what do you mean sour treats??
Me, happy to share any information: Oh I’d kill for anybody that gave me a sweet or sour candy.
Handler, now furiously scribbling down ideas to have my conditioning involve sour candy: Reward new hound with candy.
If there's a mech type i love to maintain, it's sniper mechs.
The Hounds that pilot those things actually know how to do repairs, unlike those raging stim addicts that pilot melee blenders. I actually let them help out because they know their machines better than most of my mech techs, plus I convinced the Handlers that letting the scrawny little gunners have some enrichment is good for their mental stability.
Plus, all the little customizations they do inside their cockpits are adorable. One of the Hounds I work with turned her cockpit into a mobile gunsmith bench, mostly because she packs an anti-tank rifle inside a compartment for when her mech gets bricked but she still needs firepower. I've seen her take out a heavy chassis with a few well placed shots, she's a wonderful gal.
Also those gals are FREAKS. It's always the quiet ones who outfreak their Handlers. Anti-Tank Rifle gal? Total pervert, has a closer relationship with both her rifles than most have with a vibrator.
I'm sorry that happened to you, you didn't deserve that, no one deserves that I would burn the world to the ground if I could add even one moment of happiness to your past
I'll hold you as long as you need, it's OK, I've got you, you're safe in my arms if hurting others healed your pain I would bathe you in blood daily
I love you and I'm proud of you there is an inferno of anger within me and every day and every moment I fight to keep it in because I know what you need is comfort not more violence
My other half. I hated her, she was an annoying bitch. Over comms when either of us were deployed, or in person on those rare times when we weren't active due to vacations, short breaks, deployment issues, or being transported.
Jaw was a foul fucking goblin woman. I remember one time coming back from a shift to find her jerking off in MY bed while huffing the stench of my fucking pilot suit I'd just changed out of!
...in hindsight thay may have been a sign that she wanted more than to be bickering partners. I was just... not used to it. I come from a very different place, and the only reason I'm here is because of Fist saving my life.
Heh. Bet he fucking regrets that now. Should've been me and he knows it. Everyone always liked Jaw, I'm just the prissy rich bitch who got programmed. No one would miss me.
Especially now. The med techs aren't happy that I snuck out(again) and got drunk while recovering. Fist still hasn't come to visit me, make sense, it's my fault.
If I'd just kept being a bitch, maybe Jaw wouldn't have gotten so close to the kamikaze mech. I could've just been mean, made her angry for the fighting, kept her one edge but...
When she brought me down to Foliage that night to talk, I-
I needed her. I was scared, scared to lose another home, and she offered to show me how she cared. She was, apperantly, better at showing through actions instead of words. Yeah we fucked in a mech, who hasn't?
Gods she is so annoying, hiding my stuff, going through my brower history, jerking off audibly in mic range, the list goes on. But fuck she's-
She was hot. She was kind. She was, admittedly, funny, but I never told her that. I put up all these walls, AND FOR WHAT?!
She's dead. And I can't tell her all that I wanted.
I made you promise to come back to me, so I could tell you how I felt.
Me, the lovely @thehangarqueen, and my dear @c00lgal07 have created a Discord server for all your mechsplo needs! It’s heavily focused on text-based roleplay, but there is still space to discuss your writings, works you’ve read recently, and also just, have fun and vibe!
Please note the server is still an active work in progress, but we’ve decided it’s time to officially start inviting people!
Check out the Vanguard: Those On The Front community on Discord - hang out with 9 other members and enjoy free voice and text chat.
Kaya has hidden herself better – her Mudskipper is invisible amidst the mud and roots, buried below the waterline with only its sensors showing. Royal Oak is not so well concealed – a keen eye could pick it out from the dank water and overgrowth, spot the barrel of its autocannon, the camouflage netting soaked with mud and slime. It is well hidden enough though, and it has concealed its reactor emissions and made itself invisible enough to sensors that no one could blame the Andriosi patrol for not noticing it. For not noticing them.
They’ve been hidden here for three months now – verging on four, but there are still two weeks to go before that mark is hit and they are ordered back to base. Both girls have been cocooned in cables and pipes for so long they almost can’t remember what it is to breathe fresh air, or eat real food. It’s the food that bothers them the most – after a while, you get used to the smell, to the stale air tinged with sweat and oil, but not eating? That’s the challenge. If she could think those kinds of thoughts, Rosie would now be understanding why Kaya ate so hungrily during her recovery period. Being awake for so long is a challenge as well – every synapse of her brain is telling her to sleep but the cocktail of stimulants and implants prevents her from doing so. She has to stay awake, alert, on guard. Her focus is unbreakable while she is hunting, just like her partners. Two predators, waiting in ambush for their prey.
It’s hard – to stay focused, to keep herself from spiralling, alone in her mech, unable to even truly move. She can do it though, because she’s with Kaya. They don’t talk much, now, holding radio silence like they are conditioned to, but knowing that she’s out there, in the swamp as well, that brings Rosie peace.
The patrol here is larger than the last that challenged Kaya – seven strong, and their sergeant, enough to give an attacker trouble. Their mechs are the same though – the angular, plated armour of Andriosi footsoldiers, the sergeant in a heavier frame, better protected and better armed. They’ve been making their way through the swampy morass of the Cos’ swamps for almost two days now, and they are getting careless – once they would have swept the area before them properly, sensors wide and eyes sharp, but two days of buzzing insects and swamp gas setting off their motion trackers and emission detectors have made them lazy.
Kaya watches them through her augmented eyes and punches a message through to command.
>> Eight targets. Moving west southwest.
She waits. Watches the patrolmen picking their way through the swamp. They are in knee-deep water – seven and a half feet deep – and clearly have no wish to find themselves falling into the deeper pools like those that Kaya and Rosie are submerged in.
>> Mudskipper. Confirm. Clear to engage.
She is already moving. Mudskipper bursts from the deep water in a crashing wave of breaking roots and foetid water. At the same time, Rosie hefts her autocannon and rears up, the bulky frame of Royal Oak surfacing like a crocodile to open up with her cannon into the rear of the Andriosi formation.
The patrol is forced to break into two. Four mechs facing down Mudskipper’s thunderous charge and four making to close the distance on Royal Oak and silence it’s support fire. The four near Mudskipper, led by their sergeant level their halberds, and loose a volley of missiles as they charge, which catapult up before roaring to life and spearing in towards her mech’s lanky frame. She should be finished, but the low trees and hazy air confuse the targeters, and with a loping dive Kaya is able to put herself under and through the wall of projectiles, and then she is upon them. She catches a halberd strike against her left arm’s armour and repulses the blow, turning quick to level a strike with her axe against the halberdiers midsection. She doesn’t have time to stop and see if he’s downed though, because the other three are close now. She has the presence of mid to bring up her shotgun and send a slug into the man to her right, but it misses its target and deflects off the sloped armour around his mech’s chest, spanging off into the water, though the impact is enough to stop him in his tracks, reeling from the force of the blow.
She uses the moment to retreat, ducking below the officers sword as she scuttles back, to put distance between her and the two mechs pursuing her. She’s faster than them, able to move more easily in the deep water and mud.
As she moves, she launches her missiles – not at the charging foes, but into the water before her, in a wide arc. Their detonation finishes the injured mech and throws up a high blast of spray and a wave of muck that masks her repositioning, and when the two are upon her she has already strafed to the left and put herself away from the heavy officers mech and the stunned man. The lone halberdier is easy prey for her as she pivots and plunges forward bringing down her axe on his unprotected back and mangling the mechanics there as he struggles to slow and turn amidst the swamp. She leaves his mech for dead as the sergeant and the stunned man continue their assault, regrouping while she claims her kill.
Rosie is laying down suppressive fire on the four attacking her, using wide pulses to keep them separated and fearful as they try to close the distance. One man has already fallen, his cockpit mulched by a concentrated stream of shells that pulped the armour at his front and crunched into the cockpit behind. His mech’s smoking remains have given the other three a healthy sense of caution, but now they overcome their fear and make for a combined charge, splashing through the water towards her from three directions.
Rosie takes her hand from the trigger and engages her reserve core, allowing it to squeeze off groups of shots at the two mechs on her left to zone them away from her as she unhooks the mace from her side and stomps forward out of her pit to challenge the rightmost foe.
He’s fast, stepping back away from her blows and jabbing at her shoulder with his halberd, quick, sharp strikes to test her armour and peel apart the seams. He would be better served slicing at her autocannon – if its fire were cut off the other two would be able to close and three are more than a match for one. But he doesn’t take that course, focused on the mace and the mech. She feigns a continuation, swinging slowly and pathetically, stepping forward to bait an overcommitment.
He takes the bait, stepping in and swinging a powerful strike towards her elbow. Unfortunately for him, Royal Oak is faster than it looks, and she spins her arm up and around to bring down her mace’s flanged head on the centre line of the Andriosi mech, crushing its sensors and leaving it blind as she draws back her arm and finishes the thing off with another strike.
Away to the left, one of the halberdiers tries to strike forward, sensing a break in the firing as her autocannon finally overheats and she swings it away to her back. He is foolish though, and overeager, and does not pay enough attention. His foot slips as he strides into the area where Rosie had hidden herself, falling into the pit she created with her mechs weight and disappearing past the waist into the mud, before falling forward, off balance.
The last mech turns and runs when she begins to make for them.
Rosie thumps over to her hiding place and uses the clamp to pull the floundering mech from its watery grave, before smashing its hip joints with her mace and dumping it on a hillock. She pays no mind to the pilot as they eject and flee into the swamp on foot.
Poor fool won’t make a day in here.
She unslings her autocannon when she hears the tone to signal it’s barrel has cooled enough to fire again, settling into a firing position as she draws a bead on Kaya’s last foe.
The halberdier is dead – a shotgun shell through his reactor sent him down in a plume of fire and shrapnel, but the officer is still alive. He’s a very good swordsman, driving Kaya back in a cage of flashing steel that seeks her vulnerable joint and connectors. It’s all she can do to deflect his strikes off the sloped armour of her forearms and shoulders; to keep his wicked swords away from the places it will deal real damage.
She won’t last forever against a fighter like that.
But she doesn’t have to. Rosie sends a stream of explosive rounds crashing against his back plate, knocking him off balance and disrupting his attack. Kaya is quick to take the opportunity and slams her axe down into his sword-arm’s shoulder, before dismembering the heavier chassis piece by piece.
>> Targets eliminated. One fled. Position compromised.
>> Confirm. Reposition and watch for guard sweeps. Good girls.
The two mechs thump into the swamp. They need to reposition, what with their hiding places compromised, but that’s ok. They won after all. Together.
There is no patrol sweeping the swamp, at least, not in the next two weeks. After that they are recalled, back to base, beyond the reach of the foe, where the two dogs hear their Mistress voice call out over their comms the magic words. Their coded commands.
“Kaya, Rosie, disengage from guard duty.”
Rosie surfaces from the trance she has been in, four months of exhaustion crashing down on her mind as she returns to reality, the thing coiling back up inside her. Kaya remains conscious as she is removed from the metal womb of Mudskipper, but Rosie is still green. The stress and exhaustion that wash over her are too much and she passes out as she is pulled from her mech and shipped into the medical wing to be stabilised.
Fox will celebrate later – she has after all just proven that she has successfully shifted Kaya’s damaged Ego Pillar to focus on her relationship with Rosie, and obtained a new hound in the process. She will produce a write-up on her findings, her methodology, she thinks.
Deep down, she is relieved – she had no wish to terminate Kaya, and Rosie was a very lovely girl, even if broken now. She’d make a good partner for her gator. The success of her project is a boon – for her and Kaya, at least, even if the girl does not know it. Fox leans back in the darkness of her office and laughs.
When Rosie wakes, she has been returned to their shared room. The sheets are fresh, changed in preparation for their return, and the lights are still low. They will be for the next few weeks, to let the two gators rest. She is nestled in the warm, heavy confines of the wall of duvets and blankets that Kaya has gathered, her head buoyed by a sea of pillows. She is still too weak to move, too tired. Next to her she feels something stir, something big and hot and wonderful. The landscape of fabric and stuffing shifts as if struck by an earthquake as Kaya rolls over in her sleep, a faint murmur escaping her lips as she drifts through unconsciousness. Rosie is still tired, and she won’t be awake for long, but she musters the strength now to drape her arms about her girlfriends shoulders. They will both sleep almost all day for the first three days, only waking briefly to eat. Soon they will be recovered, and sent back out to keep watch, entombed in their mechs again. This rest will only be short. But neither care - they are together, and that is all that matters to them.
<- previous
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Well, that’s a wrap, folks! I’d like to give a big thank you to all the people who have read through this mess, and given their love to Kaya and Rosie! I might post more on these two at some point but for now I think I’ve hit a natural end for their story.
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