>>4332631
>‘What does your House say about you more willing to march into a city of elite enemy mech pilots than down the aisle to your bride?’ (“Best Friends”)
Emilio is our worst friend.

>>4332631
>>‘What does your House say about you more willing to march into a city of elite enemy mech pilots than down the aisle to your bride?’ (“Best Friends”)

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You can’t help yourself.

‘What does House Reinweld have to say about their Scion being more willing to march into a city filled with enemy mech pilots than down the aisle to their own bride?’

‘Bride?’

‘That’s quite the development.’

The grumbles and gasps are communicable even from here. It’s just too bad that the Hellion didn’t have any peer-to-peer visual comm capabilities. You would have liked to have seen the look on Reinweld’s face.

'I thought you were above that sort of thing,' he mumbles into the comm, amid the sudden barrage of inquiries.

>‘Oh, right … you haven’t told the others yet.’ (Clueless)
>'If it makes you feel any better, the four of us will all be dead before you see a single strand on her head.' (Morbid)
>‘Cheer up, why don’t you? You actually have something to look forward to if we get out of this alive.’ (Joke)
>‘If that’s over and done with … radio silence and routine until we’re within city limits. Received?’ (Back to business)
>Write-In

>>4332701
>‘Cheer up, why don’t you? You actually have something to look forward to if we get out of this alive.’ (Joke)

>>4332701
>>‘Cheer up, why don’t you? You actually have something to look forward to if we get out of this alive.’ (Joke)

>>4332701
>>‘Cheer up, why don’t you? You actually have something to look forward to if we get out of this alive.’ (Joke)

>>4332701
>>‘Cheer up, why don’t you? You actually have something to look forward to if we get out of this alive.’ (Joke)

>I'll make it up to you and be your best man or a groomsman.

>‘Cheer up, why don’t you? You actually have something to look forward to if we get out of this alive.’ (Joke)

>>4332701
>>‘Cheer up, why don’t you? You actually have something to look forward to if we get out of this alive.’ (Joke)

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‘Cheer up, why don’t you? You actually have something to look forward to if we get out of this alive,’ you answer right back, sparing the sensors and readings a passing glance.

‘You’re a lot chirpier than I’d expected you to be in the context of our current circumstances … Acting Lance Commander,’ Reinweld mumbles, the formality and protocol threatening to burst at the seams with every quiver of his voice.

‘Perhaps,’ you concede, although not at all reluctantly, ‘but it’s hardly good leadership quality to make a dour situation outright depressing, what with the part that involves all four of us marching into inconceivably terrible odds.’

‘I wouldn’t say that they’re inconceivably terrible,’ Lucion muses, making his opinion heard. ‘At least we have ammo and the ODF holding orbit.’

That was a good point. Being out-numbered was one thing it would have been thoroughly hopeless an endeavor at all if the lot of you hadn’t managed to get Rhysode’s network in an active state again. Fortune, for whatever reason, hadn’t quite abandoned your efforts quite yet … but being born into the world of power squabbles with the only vector of hope being that of cold, hard mathematical models and spreadsheets on predictive behavior, there was only so much stock that you could put into that of an improbable, incomprehensible victory.

You keep your pessimism to yourself, however.

‘In any case,’ Reinweld starts again, ‘I suppose that if there’s any bunch of idiots that I’d have to ride alongside to my doom … I could do worse than you three.’

You can’t help but wear a smirk at that.

>‘You never struck me as the emotional type, Reinweld.’ (“Super Best Friends”)
>‘I suppose you could.’ (Poignant)
>‘At the risk of risking Wray’s wrath … For The Imperium.’ (Patriotic)
>‘Silence on the comms. Routine and protocol until we’re within Rhysode Alpha’s limits.’ (Back to business)
>Write-in

>>4337621
>‘I suppose you could.’ (Poignant)

I have to apologize. I promised that I'd run at 7 PM my time last night, but I got engrossed in Football Manager and before I knew it, 12 hours had gone by and it was midnight.

>>4337621
>>‘You never struck me as the emotional type, Reinweld.’ (“Super Best Friends”)
ah the good old ham and cheese before we plunge into life or death battle

>>4337621
>>‘You never struck me as the emotional type, Reinweld.’ (“Super Best Friends”)

>>4337621
>>‘You never struck me as the emotional type, Reinweld.’ (“Super Best Friends”)

>>4337621
>>‘You never struck me as the emotional type, Reinweld.’ (“Super Best Friends”)

You don't need to ask. You know what's going on.

‘Never had you down for the type to get sappy, Reinweld,’ you tease, half a chortle tickling your tonsils.

‘Take it however you wish,’ he responds, his voice barely above a mumble. ‘I don’t care whether you fold it into insult or take it as sentiment … sir.’

‘If I weren’t Acting Lance Commander you’d have more for me than that,’ you chuckle, reaching a hand to the console and running a brief diagnostics check on your Hellion.

‘Would you believe that I don’t?’

‘No.’

‘You know me well.’

You let out an almighty snort. ‘Damn right I do.’

‘Unfortunately.’

‘Yes … unfortunately.’

Your face threatens to split into a grin the rest of the way, even when you return to the mundane routine of protocols, check-ins and diagnostics. There is still dread, fear, anxiety, doubt … but you are, ultimately, not alone. You are alert, steady; the verification of the nature of the connections that you had built, insignificant in the grand truth of the greater universe, leaves you with a confidence, a belief: a proper, intangible determination. You do not believe that you will live to see the end of the day, even if victory is grasped by your two hands. The odds are stacked against you: fortune, such a lovely mistress on her best days, must have rolled that dice dry hours ago.

There is no grand burial that awaits. As you had dealt death, now … it would come for you. The scythe is being sharpened and the noose being tied.

But it is as Emilio had said:

There’s no group of idiots that you’d rather punch your last ticket with than the ones beside you right now. None at all.

The updates on Rhysode’s defense are sporadic, but the fact that there is a defense at all surprises you enough that it gives you hope. There is no news regarding Fisher or the Academy; what you’re able to discern through occasional bites and infrequent interjections is the established shelter protocols being conducted where they are able. News of resistance on the ground, as opposed to the air, however, are dire. Complete intelligence regarding Rhysode Alpha’s current state of capture are scarce beyond your Squadron’s own input and assumptions, but you settle at a number between six and ten enemy pilots and whatever support crew that had completed the entry with them … plus whatever stragglers that you hadn’t eliminated prior.

It’s not long before Rhysode comes into view.

As you cross the city limits and key in the contact broadcast details for your rendezvous, you muse that they were one Bartholomew down, at least … so that was something.

A pretty good something, actually—

‘You’re late.’

It’s the first thing that rumbles through the general reception channel.

In all likelihood, this was probably the Chief Engineer.

>>4347486
>‘You’re still alive, aren’t you?’
>'What's the situation?'
>‘Apologies.’
>Write-In

>>4347488
>'What's the situation?'

>>4347488
>>'What's the situation?'

>>4347488
>>'What's the situation?'

>>4347488
>>'What's the situation?'

>>4347488
>>'What's the situation?'