Cohost writing prompt: @Making-up-Mech-Pilots — Mech Pilot who is excited to report to the Branch Manager
Karabas Vang is seven feet tall. Karabas Vang has a sheet of hair that shimmers with rainbow-anodised colours over blackest black, all the way to her feet. Karabas Vang has a gravity coil implanted around her spine so that she can fight with six degrees of freedom in any ambient gravity. Karabas Vang has a diadem of five glittering hyperspectral eyes implanted across the sweep of her brow, and they whisper she has 360×360° terahertz radar in the back of her head. Karabas Vang! She fought six cyborg duellists at once for the single once-a-decade prize of passage off the hellmoon of Ashrak! Karabas Vang! She founded the Sparklarks and forged them from five mechs and a dream into the single most feared independent fighting force in the universe! Karabas Vang! She returned to the hellmoon of Ashrak to free all the gladiators and glass the Governor's palace!
Karabas Vang!
She's swooped in from whatever sanity-defying campaign she's been waging on the edge of space to personally conduct a sample of first-year-from-signing rookie performance reviews!
Karabas Vang!
You feel personally attacked by the universe!
"Tell me why you wanted to join the Sparklarks," Karabas Vang says, her biceps gleaming with scented oil in the dim lights of her personal ceremonial shuttle. "Not the college-admissions stuff from your intake interview; I can hear wanted to make a difference or be the best a million times a day. Tell me the truth."
"I had a Karabas Vang action figure when I was kid," you admit. "I made all my Magic Friendship Equoids worship her as a god."
Karabas Vang steeples her fingers, and says in a voice of silken golden doom: "One of the Waifu Zaibatsu figures, or one of the Toyco ones we never fully managed to sue them out of manufacturing?"
"No," you say, because this is one test at least in which you're worthy. "The first one. The original Neo Newcastle Plastics ones with the poseable arms and the accessories."
"Damn," says Karabas Vang, sloping a perfect eyebrow. "I've heard the Equoids thing before, but the Neo Newcastle Plastics figure? They made less than ten thousand of those."
"I drew dots on with a Sharpie when you got the—" you gesture across your forehead, and blush, because the maths correctly suggest you were too old for toys by then.
"Hmmmm," says Karabas Vang.
You squirm.
"Have you heard the rumour that from each cohort I take the most nervous one-year rookie who'd otherwise pass muster, and use them for a single night of terrible and unspeakable sexual gratification that leaves them dead as a doornail?"
"Pretty sure Alpha Unit cooked that up to fuck with me, ma'am," you say.
"Oh, no, that one's older than you." Karabas Vang smiles. "I restart it every so often because I hate paperwork and it's fun to watch and see which little fish it works on. Fortunately for you, good managers don't waste personnel."
"Yes ma'am!" you say, and snap a salute. "...Fortunate!"
Karabas Vang smiles a smile full of sharp teeth and sharper amusement.