The celebration

[srwu_mods]

"Hey guys, the place feels like a morgue today. Glum faces everywhere... someone died or something?"

Look who's back at Sakihama - FightSaber is in the hangar, and Loni is walking around the base corridors. He seems to be heading towards the kitchens, in search of cake and other festive foods.

"Me and friends just took down a big cell of those Good Men weirdoes, so I'm here to resupply. Our victory calls for a celebration, let's party!"

Comments

[ugyuuya]

[Stella happens upon Loni during his declaration and looks at him with an upset look on her face. The general tone of Stella's lecture is composed but surprisingly cold towards the exuberant pilot.]

While I'll congratulate your victory I think this is a rather poor time to choose to try to start a party in our facilities. To answer your first questions yes, several hundred civilians, two pilots, one pilot is MIA and the other is in the med-bay undergoing evaluation for feedback from having the second pilot in a linked piloting system forcibly removed and killed while the link was active.

Most of these occurred in the last twelve hours and due to the circumstances of the death we are having to plan funerals in abstentia because there were no bodies due to the nature of the deaths.

If you were so quick to read the poor mood among the pilots and staff it would have been better to refrain from your declarations of victory and celebration in favor of finding out what was wrong first just to prevent any further agitation of base personnel.

[srwu_mods]

"That bad, huh..."

"In that case, don't you think a party will make everyone feel better?"

[ugyuuya]

[Stella's face shifts from being upset to disappointment with a bit of pity.]

Is it really so hard for you to empathize with others even when given so clear a description of the situation? It's sad that you'd be so quick to continue in your own self-indulgent celebrations when everyone else is obviously still in shock over what occurred.

Perhaps you'd understand better if I were to propose another scenario, that you're team was on R&R and one of these cells you're so obsessed over ambushes you with their mecha. In the ensuing chaos hundreds of people are killed around you while you struggle to make it to your machines alive. When you do they have a new gift that makes most of your weapons useless and only by self-destructing can one of your teammates buy you enough time and space to escape and complete evacuations. You finally stagger back to base and less then four hours later one of our teams comes in jubilant over another unrelated victory before the proverbial body has a chance to cool or you can perform a proper memorial for your fallen comrade.

Would you be particularly enthusiastic about said party or would you be more inclined to have the other party restrain themselves or leave?

[srwu_mods]

"I'd be pissed off... okay, I see what you mean."

"So the timing is really bad, I get it. Think I'll just come back later after people cool down. But I still need resupplies and that's mostly why I'm here."

[ugyuuya]

I appreciate your understanding, if your team were to want to hold a more private celebration of your achievements I'm certain a proper location could be found or you could wait until after the proper funerals have been completed and we've had a bit more time to mourn.

[srwu_mods]

"Yeah, we'll do that in private. We're a small circle of friends anyway, it's better that way."