Cohost writing prompt: @Making-up-Mech-Pilots — Mech Pilot who only operates with peak E-fish-MC
"This is. Uh. A lot of stuff."
"Special interest," Divot says breezily, in the practised way of someone about to sharply pivot toward haha aren't I a dismissible weirdo, right? Laughing at me is so relatably the right thing to do! Haha let's never have an emotionally vulnerable conversation ever again! "Let me just grab my jacket—"
The moment feels fragile in Poptop's hands, like weeks of gently coaxing Divot into any genuine openness are crumbling in her clumsy fingers.
"There were TV ads, right?" she says, trying not to sound desperate. If she fucks this up, she's pretty sure she's never getting invited into Divot's quarters again, relegated outside an invisible, impenetrable forcefield that keeps out everybody Divot thinks is dangerous to her emotional safety, which is everyone. And Poptop wants — dunno. Poptop doesn't want to think too hard about it, yet. But she knows it's not on the outside. "Must have been, I dunno, when I was eight or so? The Powermeister Fish. Fish-ency! Ba-da-da-ding!"
She might just have made this worse. Divot is tense like a compression spring.
"I'm probably remembering it wrong," she says, wishing she could take Divot's arm and soothe her. "I mean. I don't remember the fish looking like—" and she lifts her chin toward the cardboard cutout of the corporate mascot, hanging from the ceiling.
"They redesigned him a couple of times," Divot says slowly, nearly but not quite looking at Poptop out the corner of her eye. She digs around in her pocket, draws out her keys, cautiously shows off a chipped enamel keyring.
"Yeah," Poptop says. "Like that. That's how I remember it."
"They gave him a name, later," Divot says. "But for the first few ad campaigns he was just the E-fish. E-fish-ency. When people liked the first ads, they did a DJ gimmick for a bit — E-fish MC, yeah? Did some collectibles with him posed with turntables."
"God," Poptop says, startled by memory. "I think — I think Dad had a bumper sticker like that? From collecting points on fuel or something?"
Divot hums a satisfied note, giving a tiny, decisive nod. "Hard to get hold of, now," she says. "They only ever did them as a promo giveaway, and obviously most of them got stuck on peoples' rigs."
Poptop looks at the room, at the standees and posters and stuffed toy fishes and vinyl bobbleheads. "You've totally got one," she says confidently, and wants to kiss Divot's little pleased smile. "You gonna show me?"
Gas-powered chrome messiah, but she's pretty when she infodumps.