Cohost writing prompt: @Making-up-Mech-Pilots — Mech Pilot who is trying to get their friend off of recreational neuro-data interfaces.
The angry bang of the kitchen door doesn't surprise Andi. The wild punch to the face does: knuckles to the mouth, the upended slam of floor tile into her shoulder, cereal-studded milk sprayed up the wall like a movie-effects blood spatter.
She's never heard half the things Nic screams at her.
When she tries to get up, a hysterical swipe of Nic's boot grazes her ribs, so she stays down on the floor with the bowl and the spoon, jeans soaking up breakfast.
The paroxysms of a conflict zone half of space away sent second-order effects through everything; they were supposed to be down here a week, before the orbital blockade materialised overnight. Weeks jumping through bureaucratic hoops to stay fed and sheltered while something gets sorted in some larger sense; weeks for everyone to pick up or develop whatever bad habits just to pass the time.
The other pilots cluster outside the door, staring, until Nic runs out of invective and shoves her way out through them.
"Fuck, Andi," Stripes says anxiously, giving her a hand up.
"Yeah. Think I'm dumped." She realises she's shaking. "I got her on the scales yesterday; you know she's lost a third of her bodyweight since landfall? A third."
"She hit you." Scales says, body held in a wince that doesn't know whether to back off or inspect her face. "I know you've been fighting about it—"
"Had to talk her onto the scales like a kid," Andi says, and gingerly probes her lip with the tip of her tongue; flinches. "Second I had my eyes off her, she had something back in her skull socket." She snaps her fingers in front of her eyes. "Gone. Sixteen hours. Only came out to pass out from exhaustion."
"Fuck, Andi."
Andi coughs in the conversational way that presages admission of guilt. "Filled her socket with epoxy while she was asleep," she mutters, eyeing the shape of the wall's milk splatter.
"Andi." Scales sounds like someone trying to sound reproving, because they think they ought. "That's a trip to the surgeon to fix! The ship's surgeon! They're talking about another three months to negotiate handing us off this rock—"
With hands as steady as she can manage, Andi teases a piercing out of the split in her lip, shuddering. It clatters on the counter. "I want her to live that long," she says miserably.