The Shell Shock of ShelLancer's Pilot...

[actuallyselfish]

[1]

In the wake of the attack by the dimension conquering Indalph, Dido Sybil, previously an unassuming Solaris technician chief, piloted the ShelLancer machine so that Mizuki and Ken could form the combining mecha known as Sol-Savior.

A few days after the attack, Dido is walking through the hanger bay in orange mechanics overalls, carrying a roll of artificial muscle fiber looped around her shoulder.

She stops for a moment, and stares up for a time at the machine she rode in, scorched and dented here and there by the fury of combat.

Goosebumps stand out on her exposed arms. Her throat works, and she clamps a hand desperately over her mouth with a moan.

"Nope." She says. "No Way. No No No No..."

She turns around, on the verge of panic, and starts speed-walking away, breathing rapidly.

Help her calm down?

Comments

[herodrawing]

Ahh! Are you okay?

[Izuru does his best at trying to calm people, which is running up to Dido really quickly.]

[actuallyselfish]

"Whoah!"

Dido sees you charging at her out of the corner of her eyes and twitches. That twitch turns into a trip, and she goes tumbling right onto her rump.

"OwOwOw..."

[herodrawing]

Oops...

[Izuru realizes he's doing the opposite of helping.]

Are you hurt? Sorry, I didn't mean to scare you or anything...

[actuallyselfish]

"Well, you did." Dido say, grumpiness taking the place of her panic attack for the time being.

She brushes some dust off her coveralls. "So what exactly were you hoping to do?"

[herodrawing]

Sorry...

I thought you were having some kind of nervous flashback like veterans sometimes do.

[actuallyselfish]

“That couldn't possibly be it!" Dido says, grimacing. "I mean, I'm not exactly a veteran. Hell, you've logged more combat time than me, and you're a kid! I just-"

She wrings her hands together. "I just was thinking about the battle with the Indalph, and felt, well, a Chill."

[herodrawing]

It was really harsh out there, wasn't it? I heard the enemy was strong.

[actuallyselfish]

"Strong, yeah." Dido says. "Cruel as well. They were–"

Her hands clench at the air as she tries to find a good metaphor.

"You know what? That Fateshifter lady was like a snotty high school queen! A dimensional conquering snotty high school queen!"

Her hands drop. "And she crushed Sara Harper vehicle in her hands. Like a kid knocking over someone's lunch."

[herodrawing]

Those kind of people are the worst! They think they can bully the weaker? I won't forgive that!

Wait!

[Izuru suddenly gets much more worried.]

Ms Harper wasn't in her unit when that happened... was she?

[actuallyselfish]

"No!" Dido says hastily, raising her hands. "No she wasn't."

She lowers her hands. "Of course, that means she's either languishing in some alien jail cell, or being tortured for what she knows–hell, maybe they're dissecting her!"

She clenches her teeth. "But we just. Don't. Know."

[herodrawing]

We need to rescue her somehow! Why did they even abduct her, do we know?

[actuallyselfish]

"Because they're eee-evilll?" Dido says, making quotation marks with her fingers

"Seriously, I don't know. The actions of the Indalph just don't make sense! Are they looking for resources to feed their empire? Well, if they can scour other dimensions to get them, surely they can find empty realities where there's no sentient life to get in their way."

Dido grits her teeth. "If they're as advanced as they seem to be, there should be no reason for them to have to hurt other people. It...just doesn't make sense."

[herodrawing]

It's the same like with others. They are so advanced, you'd think more aliens would be friendly like ms Hetepheres. But all of them want to fight us for some reason.

Maybe they just hate humanity?

[actuallyselfish]

"Or maybe they're worried we're a threat?" Dido muses.

"We do have some pretty advanced military technology, and we've definitively got a warlike nature. Maybe the Indalph are attacking us preemptively so that we don't threaten them in the future!"

Dido pauses in thought. "Wait, no." She says suddenly. "That's stupid."

[herodrawing]

Yeah...

Maybe they are just, I don't know. Stupid aliens?

[actuallyselfish]

"The stupidest." Dido agrees.