Cohost writing prompt: @Making-up-Mech-Pilots — Mech Pilot who wwwwwwwWWAAAAOOOOOWWWWwww wwwwwwwWWAAAAOOOOOWWWWwww wwwwwwwWWAAAAOOOOOWWWWwww
She'd been dragged here on the promise that watching 'Dette's latest awful girlfriend — Cheryl-spelt-Zheryl — doing a practice race would be fun.
"I mean," Jules says, not looking up from her Superphotic Physics homework, "when someone says mechs you think buzzsaws and flamethrowers and smashing the opposition beneath hydraulic foot-pounds of steely claw—"
"The fuck," says 'Dette. "You're a vegetarian."
"Well I'm not planning on crawling into the twisted wreckage of downed machines and licking the spilt blood of defeated pilots off hot metal," Jules says.
"Thank god I never wanted to fuck you," 'Dette says. "I'd have ended up chainsawed into bits and dumped in the canal."
Jules neatly jots down the constraints of a drive field envelope. "I wouldn't dump you in the canal," she says. "That's pollution, and anyway it seems forensically inadvisable. If I chainsawed you small enough I could get the bits in the Drive Lab's space compactor and reduce you to a monomolecular carbon layer in the filters."
('Dette had extremely wanted to fuck her, once, but 'Dette had also been losing a staunch firstyear "totally straight, actually" rearguard action, and Jules had decided that could be somebody else's problem.)
"What is wrong with you," 'Dette says, a heatless whinge. She's as bored with the race as Jules is.
"I don't know what people see in NASMEC," Jules rubs in, tone light and distracted, jotting down another couple of steps of working-out as the mechs blare past on another interminable lap.
"Shut uuuup," 'Dette whines, then nudges her and waves to someone. "Look, that's one of the team mechanics, down by the track."
Jules glances up, sees a long braid and ridiculous buff shoulders in a frankly unfair tank top, and nearly bites the end off her pencil.
"Really?" 'Dette says disapprovingly. "That's not your type," as if she'd know. "She's a player, anyway, you don't want any of that. She'd chew you up and spit you out."
"I could be chewed up and spat out," Jules says.
"What," 'Dette says. Which, fine, Jules is usually the one saying the sensible things. Shoulders that shouldn't even be allowed, though. "No you couldn't, you're a romantic, you'd cry for weeks."
Annoyingly true, but, "Probably worth it," Jules says, only half to annoy her. She tears her attention away, back to her homework, because between Jules and these drive problems, only the homework is going to get done. She eyes the newly-mangled end of her pencil, and the mechs annoyingly howl past again, so she jabs it in their general direction. "Are they nearly there yet?"