Cohost writing prompt: @Making-up-Mech-Pilots — Mech Pilot who is in the unfortunate position of having to orchestrate a ceasefire so that everyone can slay the dragon
"Everyone! Please! No dragon has ever been defeated without the combined powers of all four elements." Muntjac Bravura holds her hands out beseechingly, looking around the table and meeting every eye in turn. "We have to stop this infighting."
"Until we all saw with our own eyes at Mount Hathaway, dragons were considered mythical for centuries." Gunlord Fortissimo folds her wiry arms, eyes flashing. Stylised fireball tattoos run from the backs of her long hands, finally vanishing into the arm holes of her tough hide vest. "Nobody's defeated a dragon at all within reliable history; you can't say a damn thing about what we need or don't."
"I am certain, honoured Gunlord, that we need the powers of your people," Muntjac coaxes, and Fortissimo snorts.
"Oh, I don't doubt that," she says.
"Oh, a Gunlord thinks the only thing that wins battles is a Gunlord, how surprising," snipes the Quartermaster Ultra, Vingtième Brume. "What powers of yours do we need, Fortissimo? Braggardry? Arrogance?"
"See what you win by treating the dragon as an endless navel-gazing exercise in bloodless chess, then," Fortissimo says, making to rise, and Muntjac lunges to put a hand over her forearm.
"Please," she says, a touch desperately. "Please." She looks for help at the fourth in the room, the stout-legged and taciturn Vanguardian Echo Hibiscus. Please? she mouths, and Hibiscus silently sighs.
"The Aviator has a point," they say. "None of the powers of our people alone can stop the thing; we've seen that for ourselves. Do we want to waste our time, peoples' lives, on re-fighting the battles we already lost? Shall we try all the lesser combinations, waste more time and lives, until we drag ourselves back to this table, bitter and bleeding and depleted, and do as we ought at last?" They roll up their sleeves, hold hands out to either side of them, face tight and resigned. "Quartermaster, I would join my people's force of arms to the craft and cunning of your own. Gunlord, I would join with your people's fiery might. My people will do this for all our sakes. Will you do this?"
Fortissimo and Brume stare each other down across the table.
"Well, I will," the Gunlord says abruptly, and raises her chin just a hair, challenging, as she clasps the Vanguardian's hand.
The Quartermaster Ultra quietly hisses his displeasure at being upstaged by a Gunlord. "Of course," he says, venomous.
Thank you, Muntjac mouths, reaching her own hands out to clasp with the Gunlord and Quartermaster on her own side of the table.
You owe me, Echo Hibiscus mouths back wryly, and Muntjac can't help the tug of her mouth toward a secret smile.
"An oath, then," she says aloud. "By all the elements combined: by the fiery might of Artillery, by the cool-headed planning of Logistics, by the steadfast myriad of Infantry, and by the swift sight of Air Support: our peoples combine to swear the Dragonpact!"