CW: Self harm, Scarification
There’s a ritual among certain groups of Mech pilots. Usually ones who are a bit more, esoteric. Pilots who’ve maybe spent too much time in the cockpit, but are too skilled for command to remove them from duty.
It’s a known fact that the more time a pilot spends in the cockpit, the more attached they become to their Mech. Each mech is practically tailor made for its pilot after all, with the hours upon hours of synchronization training that their IMP goes through. Swapping pilots between Mechs is not only unheard of, but almost impossible given how they work.
Pilots that fall into these groups are often so skilled and highly valued, that command assigns a units most skilled mechanics and technicians to their fireteams. This means that nearly every scratch that one of these Mechs receives on a sortie is repaired as quickly as possible, to keep the Mech in top shape for its next deployment.
Initially, the pilots hated this. Pilots have always held onto scars and scratches like badges of honor, marks to prove that they survived a particularly harsh engagement. But the boost to performance and mission success was such that command wouldn’t budge an inch. So the pilots pivoted to a different tactic.
The first time you saw it happen you almost called a paramedic, but then you noticed there was actually one standing by, and no one else in the hangar was paying it any mind.
The returning pilot was kneeling in front of their mech, combat knife dripping blood in their hands, carving the lines of the wounds their mech had taken into their own flesh.
There was a reverence to it. No one impeded on the pilots space, even the paramedic standing by was staying a few paces off. The mechanics were moving slow with the repairs, giving the pilot enough time to memorize the scars on their machine before they were buffed away.
You realized then why so many veteran pilots are covered in brutal and jagged scars, despite the cockpit being the most well protected part of a Mech.
And maybe on your next sortie, you carved a line into your skin where a stray round had nicked your machine.
The metal may heal, but the flesh remembers.
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