mecha likers of tumblr!! If you have any ocs/humanoid designs for fics/etc in your mind and don't have an artist, I would love to help out and draw your vision for free. I've recently taken an interest in the works surrounding this and I'd like to do more with it ^__^
Hound that is so hopelessly addicted to combat stims that it instinctively reaches for its injection cable whenever it feels stressed.
More often than not, it ends up desperately grasping onto empty air; plunging it against its neck with the same ferocity that it carries into combat. But on rare occasions, the hound is unfortunate enough to be in arms reach of objects just small enough for its little addict paws to grapple on to.
Wandering personnel have noted, on several occasions, observing its Handler comforting and gently rubbing the side of its neck. Some have gone as far as to state, that beneath the thin leather gloves, the hound’s neck appeared to have small punctures or bruising only capable of being caused by the penetration of fork-like instruments.
New story in the same settings as my mechsplo stories. Hope you enjoy! I've put it up on AO3 too if you'd prefer to read it there
Ten years ago Carla witnessed one god kill another god.
Now she's doing her best to get by. She paints, she listens to music, she drinks coffee, she counts five things and maybe she's getting better.
Turpentine
Carla normally remembered her dreams. They were nightmares fairly often. That morning however, once the sunlight pulled her out of sleep, she found she remembered nothing.
The attic smelled of turpentine, old wood and dust. Those were Carla's smells. They meant she was at home, they meant she was safe. She felt her shoulders relax as she acknowledged the scents. She had been tense. Maybe she had been having a nightmare. Good then that she did not remember it.
The floorboards creaked as she rolled herself up into a sitting position. The attic, which was better described as an art studio than a bedroom, was bathed in that golden warmth of a summer morning. The lighting was why she had decided to rent this space: great for painting, less good for sleep. She woke when the sun did.
Carla glanced around the room. Easel, lightbeam, coat, door, shoes. Count five things. She listened to the birdsong, trying to identify the individual singers. Bird, another bird, a third kind of bird, neighbours, shouting in the distance. Count five things. Her hands tapped against the floor, against her bedroll, and so on. Wood, bedding, clothes, my hair, a shoe.
Some mornings it was easy, some it was difficult. The trend was in the right direction though. More good days than there used to be, still a lot of the bad. That morning was fine.
Or at least it started fine.
She pulled herself to her feet and caught a glance of herself in the mirror. She'd slept in the same clothes she'd been wearing last night. A blowse with uneven stripes of blue, white and green. It wasn't really hers, belonged to a girl she'd slept with months ago and hadn't seen since. A lot of Carla's clothes weren't really hers.
She rolled up the bedding, bundled it away in a cupboard by the door. She set a little paraffin stove alight to heat some water. The coffee smelled bitter. It smelled cheap, something like sawdust at the fish market. It didn't taste that great either but it was what got her up in the morning and for that she was thankful.
After some time just basking in the morning light and with a second mug of coffee in hand she followed the scents of breakfast down the stairs. She exchanged little greetings to the other tenants as she descended. Here was Mr. Cross, a clerk. There was Mrs. Greene who worked for the fire department. Mr. Kellam, who everyone thought was some kind of spy, gave her wave too.
In the kitchen the vague notions of savoury and frying were replaced by a concreteness in her nose's conclusion: eggs and potatoes. She should have guessed. It had been the same thing all week. She called out the the young lady who was engaged in a pitched battle with a cast iron pan "Good morning, Mrs. Halalat. Eggs and potatoes?"
"Eggs and potatoes, Carla." She responded without looking up. "You have post too."
The wait wasn't long and soon she was climbing the stairs to her attic once again with a delicious oily bounty in one hand and a half-dozen letters shoved in the waistband of her skirt. Once the many flights of stairs required to ascend the Victorian townhouse had been conquered Carla scurried back into her space and shut the door firmly behind her.
She breathed out, closed her eyes and leaned against the door. She put down her coffee on the floor and with the now free hand reached to brush against the nearby surfaces. Wood door, metal hinge, wool skirt, paper envelope, skin. Count five things. She was safe here. This was her space and in her space she was safe.
She walked over to one of the benches and placed the breakfast and letters on it. She pulled a stool from underneath it and sat down. Perspiration rolled down her back, those had been a lot of stairs and the summer was so hot. They kept saying that the summers were getting hotter. Carla didn't mind that. She loved it actually: that heat that lingered in the air, the feeling of the sun on your face.
As she opened the letters she turned on the small radio at the back of the bench. Every few seconds she would find herself tuning to another frequency, looking for something that could get her in the mood for the day. She stuck mostly to the various pirate stations that operated in Liverpool. They played the sort of stuff you could dance to and that was what she liked listening to.
Eventually she found one that maintained her attention. She didn't recognise the disk jockey. He was speaking jovially in an Indian language. She could recognise a handful of the words here or there from the Fiji Hindi she had learned as a child on her visits to Suva. Not enough to understand him. That didn't matter though, whoever he was, wherever he came from, he had great taste in music.
She didn't dance but her head did lightly bob along as she read her correspondence. There was some business, for that she pulled out the heavy typewriter that lived under the bench. It wasn't the fanciest thing but it felt more professional than her handwriting. There was nothing exciting in the business: requests for old paintings, she had to order in some new supplies, that sort of thing.
The contents of the bowl on the other hand were quite excitingly delicious. Potato, vegetable oil, cumin, egg, salt. Count five things. Her fingers were getting greasy but she typed away anyway. She didn't worry about that sort of thing. The old typewriter had seen much worse than breakfast.
It didn't take long to have all her business correspondence done. She also composed a couple of letters to send out to people who would be sitting next week, to remind them to show up. All this would be given to Mrs. Halalat who would take it to the post office in the evening. She took the letters downstairs along with the dirty plate and fork.
Once she was back up Carla made herself a third cup of coffee. It was still early, correspondence hadn't taken long and it would still be an hour before the day's client arrived. She sat for a while in the warmth of the sun and listened to the music coming out of the radio. The four was on the floor and she found herself counting the instruments she could hear: horn, keyboard, bass, saxophone, vocalist. She stopped counting after the fifth and stood up.
She walked over to the wall where several canvases were stacked and pulled out the one on which, depicted in the warm tones of the imprimatura underpainting, sat a lieutenant of the Royal Navy. The woman hadn't wanted to give her name which was, as Carla understood, quite normal and fashionable for Royal Navy officers. She had been rather beautiful and Carla had captured some of that beauty in the monochrome. When she added colour that red hair and those green eyes would leap out of the composition. It would be radiant. She knew she was going to be proud of it.
Once it was set up on the easel she sat for a while on her stool, sipping her coffee and gazing at the underpainting. Planning is crucial in portrait work. Once she had a plan firmly in her head she started preparing her paints. She was just about ready when she heard a knock at the door.
"Please come in." She called out.
Maybe it was just the warm lighting of the morning sun but seen now in person the lieutenant was perhaps even more dashing than Carla had put to memory or had been able to put to canvas. "Good morning, Carla." Her words were soft and precise.
"Good morning, Lieutenant." Carla was about to give a gesture for the woman to sit but as she turned she saw the lieutenant was already moving to the prepared seat. "How was your journey?"
"Perfectly fine, I took the eight forty-six from Lime Street. Actually my first time going through the tunnel." The woman had remembered exactly the position she had been sitting in last time. It was uncanny. That was something Carla had noticed about her previously: precision, attention to detail. "Do you go through there often?"
"I don't travel by train." It was uncomfortable to admit. Shining buttons, white trousers, black leather boots, floorboards, my own shoes. Don't let it get to you, this is your space, you're safe here.
The lieutenant made a noise. Was it acknowledgement? Amusement? Disappointment?
Initially the work began in silence. That was fine by Carla, she could chat a bit if a client wanted to chat but the lieutenant had seemed content with the quiet and Carla was not about to create extra work for herself. It meant she just got to paint.
That was Carla's favourite part. It was the part where she got to lose herself in the craftmanship, where the world collapsed down to her, her subject and the canvas. Each stroke of the brush spoke truth onto that world and one by one the story would emerge. A miracle of turpentine, pigment and linseed oil. It was beautiful to paint with such purpose, to let your whole life become slave to uncovering a perfect truth.
That's how it continued for around an hour. A perfect hour of perfect painting.
Then the lieutenant spoke.
"I'm told that you've witnessed it?"
Broken out of her reverie Carla tried hurriedly to parse the question. "Witnessed what?"
"The violence magnificent."
"Oh. Yes." Carla replied, she kept her eyes focused on the brushstrokes, on the tone of the lieutenant's skin, several shades lighter than her own.
"Tell me about it."
She let herself glance away from the canvas. She'd had clients ask her about this before, it made sense, they didn't understand. Just need to get her emotions in order and then politely refuse. Floorboard, ink bottle, hairbrush, roll of twine, coffee mug. Count five things. "I'm sorry, I'd rather not. It isn't easy to talk about." It was her space. She didn't have to talk about it.
"We must all sometimes do things we are uncomfortable with." The woman said. She had a calm, almost paternal way of speaking. It didn't do anything to soothe Carla though, she could already feel a knot forming in her stomach.
She half turned away from the lieutenant, looking out of the window. She could feel herself slipping, she could almost hear those horrible roars that haunted her nightmares. She knew she just had to do what she was taught, keep herself here in the moment, in a place that was safe: count five things.
"It's just it was a long time ago..." Just count five things. Clouds.
"I'd rather leave it in the past, you know?" Trees.
Horizon.
She snapped shut her eyes. She wasn't fast enough. Looking out at that skyline she had pictured it again, just like it had been those ten years earlier: a god of death stalking the horizon, silhouetted against the sky. Tyrant. The horror of the violence, of death crystalised into the form of a metal predator. It let out a blood curdling cry that bounced around her brain and--
"Look at me Carla."
She did. She looked right into the Lieutenant's face. That woman so striking, so handsome. Hair. Cadmium and vermillion. Skin. She had studied the woman's face so thoroughly through every step of this process but had she ever really looked at it? Had she ever been so enchanted?
Eyes. Count five things. Dark green, with little flecks of gold. Carla had identified those eyes a focal point for the painting at the first sitting. There was something about them that—
Eyes. That you couldn't look away, you couldn't ignore.
Eyes.
"You are safe here Carla."
Eyes. Carla nodded. "I'm safe here." She parroted back.
Eyes. You could get lost in them. Winding paths of green and gold. They were like something out of a children's book and she was the little princess entering the maze.
"I want you to go back to the painting, Carla. Then I want you to keep talking about what you saw." The lieutenant said. "I make things easier. That's my job: making things easier. I know you'll manage."
Eyes. Carla nodded. She took a deep breath, it did somehow feel like it was going to be easier. She picked up the paintbrush and turned back to the canvas.
"It was ten years ago. It was when we were moving against the Tsar in Varna." The words spilled out of Carla's mouth. It was just as the Lieutenant had said, it was as if there had never been a problem. "It was the first time we had deployed that class of tyrants, the deltics. They were new, everyone was excited."
"It was a big moment, the Admiralty wanted people there to capture it. There was a poet, a kinematographer, a composer. I was the youngest, I would have been twenty. That kinematography guy, he was the oldest, he showed me some pictures he'd taken back in the forties. You know, those old tyrants. He was nice, helped me feel at home with the team." Carla had been the only woman and the only one of the four who wasn't white. Important details at the time, but not the sort of thing she would ever say aloud.
"The three of them were all men, they were all white. I felt out of place at first."
Alright, maybe she would say it aloud. Around this woman things just seemed to slip out. Things she wouldn't say. But what did it matter? It was like the lieutenant had said: she makes things easier.
No. No, it did matter. There was some other little voice in her head that was screaming out a warning. Howling at a half memory that tickled at the edge of her brain. Something that she'd forgotten.
Count five things. Memories shouldn't be listened to, they hurt and they lie. Carla pushed aside the warning. Hog hair, emulsion, brushstroke, canvas, eyes.
Eyes. "It was early evening, we were on a ridge just north of this village called Aksakovo, looking out across the lake. It had taken a while to get the kinematograph all set up. The poet was drinking some local thing like whiskey. I—"
Carla's hand reached out, tapping and brushing against anything it could find. Wool, wood, canvas, oil paint, glass. Count five things. What had once been a tool that she had used to stay grounded had long ago become compulsion. As she felt the fear rising from her gut into the stomach and then the throat her hand started grasping again. Cotton blowse that isn't my own, wooden stool that I am sitting on, glass jar filled with turpentine, paintbrush handle, skin.
"Carla." The voice of the Lieutenant was like a scalpel, cutting through the noise of Carla's thoughts. "Carla, look at me."
Frock coat, waistcoat, lips, freckles, eyes.
Eyes. Calm. The lieutenant was perfect and beautiful and safe. No, no! She isn't safe.
"You're having difficulty, aren't you Carla?"
"Yes." Nightmare shapes framed against the horizon. The sounds of a battle between gods.
"I want you not to worry. I understand, it makes sense that it is difficult." The lieutenant didn't move and inch from where she was sat. Did she even move her lips as she spoke? It was hard to tell. Nightmares were creeping in through the cracks in the roofing. "Pilots spend years training to be able to compartmentalise the violence. It was unfair that they sent you out there like they did."
The Admiralty hadn't made that mistake again. They'd made it with Carla though and now she had to live with the— My own hair, the wood of the easel, the the the paintbrush, skin, clothes. Count five things.
"You don't catch the train, Carla?" The lieutenant asked then, seeing that Carla was still struggling, added "Carla, please look at me."
Carla looked up again. Eyes, eyes, eyes, eyes, and eyes.
"You don't catch the train."
Eyes. Jade and gold and endless black. "How can they do it? How can they ride on coaches pulled by death? How can they unsee the violence?"
"Newton-le-Willows works tirelessly to ensure that passenger rail is safe." The lieutenant placed each word like a mosaicist. Carla didn't take her eyes off her.
"I've seen it though."
"Tell me what you saw, Carla."
"The first one I saw was the—" Her hand grasped at things but she couldn't count them, there were too many stars. "It was the Russian one. It came up from the south, silhouetted against the horizon. It looked such a way that you knew it had to be divine. It had the look of a thing from religion. An angel perhaps, a figure in stained glass? It was beautiful at first. You might think it, in those moments before, you might think it a benevolent thing."
Carla turned away from the lieutenant as she continued. "You couldn't say the same for ours though. It came from the west, from the lake. It was metal and and it was machine but it wasn't just that. It slouched towards the Tsarist tyrant in a way that felt... It was an animal. But not a normal animal: unnatural gait, gangly, it was ungainly. You knew it was death. There wasn't any mistaking it. I remember watching it lumber closer and closer to the Russian. I remember the shadows it cast across the land."
How many times had she tried to recapture that moment on canvas? How many times had she failed? No image could recreate that creature. It's divinity transcended any human medium but violence.
"We were about fourteen kilometres away. That gave us around forty seconds before we heard the sound. The Russian one was quick, too quick for something that big. It fought like a cat, clawing and contorting. Ours was bigger, hunched over, it made jerky movements like a thing possessed.
"I remember the composer said something, called them bastards of heaven. Bastards of heaven. I think about that. I never listened to it, the thing he wrote. Didn't need to, did I? I was there. I was there, the day our death killed their death.
"We didn't see the killing blow, they say the battle lasted just over a minute but those fourteen kilometres only bought us about forty seconds." They hadn't know what was coming. In those forty seconds they had all been so blissfully ignorant. The four of them could see the horror, they were captivated, terrified and awed in the way that people must be when faced with a god, but still they didn't know what the violence was going to do to them, not yet.
As she tried to start talking about that sound Carla's voice really began to tremble. Even with whatever art the lieutenant was wielding nothing could make this memory easy to relate. "It was the sound of metal on metal so loud and that you felt like your teeth were going to fall out, your bones turn to water and your... We bled out of our ears, we threw up, the ringing didn't go away for weeks."
She closed her eyes. She could still hear it in there, that ancient echo still bouncing around her skull years later. Birdsong, my own breath, a couple arguing, a crying baby...
Her voice. "I'm going to be deploying to Arctica soon, I'll be there a long time. They wanted a photograph of me, to hang up in Greenwich. I told them that I wasn't going to allow anyone who hadn't seen the violence for themselves to photograph me. You came up in conversation. I looked up some of the paintings you did of that day. I think you captured it quite well."
Carla's hand kept grasping, kept searching, like a desperate panting thing, for things to touch. This was her space, she was safe here. If only she could count five things... "Those would have been the ones that I did back in Bulgaria. As soon as I got back here I... I've tried lots of times to get it right, to try and paint what it was really like to be there that day."
"But you never really can, can you?"
"No. You can't." Carla opened her eyes and turned back to the canvas she was nominally working on. To what extend did this painting really capture the lieutenant's essence? That thought in the back of her head, that voice that had been trying to warn her, came back to tell her that the painting was incomplete. Where was the danger? "You've seen it too, haven't you?"
"Yes, during the emergency."
The emergency. That meant violence, it meant Malaya, it meant that this woman in front of Carla had seen, and likely done, many abominable things. That word, emergency, it smelled of herbicide, cordite, petroleum, blood and lies. Maybe that's what was missing from the portrait? Maybe it needed to smell of those things too.
No that wasn't quite it. The voice in her head insisted again and again of the danger on the need to get out, to run out of this room and to never look back. But it was her room, she was safe here, she had to be. This woman had done horrible things and she would do so again but Carla knew she was safe. She told herself she wasn't going to panic. She told herself to count five things. Windowsill, coffee mug, postcard...
It wasn't calming her down. Warm and earthy paint, lingering swirling sweat, dust in the background, turpentine at the front, danger all around. Count five things.
"Carla? You can look at me. I can make this easier."
It would, she knew it would. It had made it easier, each time she had done it that morning. She knew it would. And that screaming voice at the back of her head? What did it know? What did it remember? It felt like hands were clawing at her, pulling her flesh in all different directions and she didn't understand. She wanted to look in the lieutenant's eyes, she wanted it all to be better.
"What have you done to me?" Carla cried out. She wasn't safe, this wasn't her space anymore. Fingers on wood, on skin, on cloth, hair and tears.
"It was ten years ago you were in Varna, right?" The lieutenant's voice was so calm, so dripping with... something. Something not good, something Carla had heard before. She knew she'd heard it before, ten years before. It wasn't this woman who had done anything to her it was...
"Right." Don't look at her, don't look at her! Paper, matches, ink bottle, skin...
"You must have met Walter."
Eyes. And then there was calm. It was tharn, the calm of prey caught by its predator. Of course. It all suddenly made so much sense. "Yes." Carla replied.
The sun on the lieutenant's face curdled. The shadows fermented. Revelation cut out of a truth she hadn't seen in years. She could taste the danger now, its all too familiar notes of vanillin and musk. She was the same thing he had been, the same old danger.
And it meant that everything was going to be alright.
Carla looked from the figure before her to what she had been painting. It wouldn't do. She had failed. It could have been a fine painting, it would have looked radiant hung in the esteemed halls of Greenwich. Young men and women would have stopped and looked up and wondered who that magnificent lieutenant was. They would wonder but whatever conclusion they'd reach would be wrong. Carla could see that now. This painting didn't really capture who this woman was.
The gaze of that figure on the canvas suggested a superior looking down with a reassuring countenance on her crew the night before battle. It was a painting of a woman who led people into battle, who stared down the elements with those same eyes. That was a lie though, that's not how this woman looked at anyone. As Carla glanced back to the sitter herself she could see the mistake. The way the lieutenant was looking at her could only be described in one way: a master looking at her dog.
"When did you say you were going to Arctica? I feel I need to change the composition slightly. It might mean delays." She wasn't safe but it was going to be alright. She didn't need to be afraid anymore. There was work to be done.
"Don't worry," said the handler "We'll make the time."
Some of my favorite parts of mech media is the use of callsigns and the naming of mechs. It's just so cool ya know? But I have been seeing a distinct lack of that in mechsploitation. I mean there is a few with callsigns and more with numbers to represent the pilot and naming mechs is much more common but I think we are not taking advantage of this as much as we could.
Consider a legendary rebel pilot know for his skill and ferocity who's callsign is Lion and their mech is called Pride Talks who is then captured, presumed dead by the rebels, and goes missing for months as she is reconditioned. The rebels then start seeing a new hound with the same skill as their missing pilot and the mech looks almost identical with only a different paint job but the pilot ID on the comms is Bunny and the mech is called Meekness.
They might eventually rescue her but the once boisterous man who was always quick to make new friends or tell a joke is now a girl who can not get 5 words out without stuttering, has a hard time speaking higher than a whisper, and is entirely reliant on her handler to do anything.
She does not even remember being Lion and can't even remember his actual name even when told and will only respond to Bunny or another more degrading name. As far as she is concerned she has always been this way. This once great leader of the rebel cause who could get almost anyone to work together can now only get anything done if she is ordered to do it by someone she considers having authority over her, which is almost anyone as she was conditioned by the imperial to think of herself as not a person.
no eraser doodle of my engineer oc! kira has been sabotaging a hound's mech for a while, and that hound's handler is catching on. however, she can't be disposed of—it'd mean the handler's execution, too. so they engage in homoerotic battles of wits with each other
Mechtech Coffee is the lifeblood of a workshop, keeping mechtechs on their feet until their mechs are shiny, ready for combat and emitting the happy bleep bloops. Each mechtech has a closely-guarded recipe unique to their workshop, but the traditional recipe can be found in the Pilot’s Handbook:
- 3tsp instant coffee
- 15mls hard liquor (traditionally rum)
- sugar to taste
- a pinch of red chilli flakes and cinnamon
- 100mg of dextroamphetamine
- boiling water
(Having tried making this to the best of my ability for this post, I can confirm that it would keep me going long enough to clean a 15m tall weapons platform <3)
Engineers in mecha. Despite regulations, some engineers secretly modify mechs to reduce pain feedback or enhance combat stims. It's illegal—it can cause cascading psychological damage—but a knowledgeable enough engineer with a favourite Hound will do it anyway.
When a mech is destroyed, the engineer often grieves more openly than when the pilot dies. The pilot is replaceable by corporate logic, and the engineer has internalised this. But that mech? They knew every rivet. Hell, they knew it like a lover. Out of all the ways to lose a lover, total destruction is—perhaps—the cruellest.
