Cohost writing prompt: @Making-up-Mech-Pilots — Mech Pilot who is actively suppressing their inner foppish failson
"War," Reginald Harold Blenkinthrop Senior, Segeant Major, Retd., grates, looming over his soup, "war never changes. And the solemn duty of a Blenkinthrop remains as solid and steadily unchanging as war itself. War is fought, and a Blenkinthrop fights in it. A Blenkinthrop distinguishes himself within it. A Blenkinthrop is a leader of men."
"Yes, Father," Reginald III says, queasily probing his own bowl with the diligently correct spoon, back consciously straight, in his uncomfortably starched uniform.
"You are a disappointment and a waste," Reginald Senior says stonily, "but at least you've finally set aside your vulgar distractions and entered the only acceptable profession for a Blenkinthrop. Minimised your disgrace of the family line."
"Yes, Father."
"War will be the making of you," his father says, in a tone that makes it a distinct threat.
"Yes, Father," Reginald III says, turning over his spoon so that its aliquot of lukewarm, muddy fluid dribbles viscously back into the bowl.
At least, he thinks, no concerned family friend has yet smirkingly forwarded photographs of the Forces Entertainment Division pantomime to his parents; Reginald in lipstick, wig and dress, tap-dancing a modified infantry walker with huge armour-plate bosoms welded to it across the floodlit stage of a cleared-out mechanics' hangar.
The old man, he muses glumly, might finally and entirely succumb to apoplexy.