srwu | She got an idea! An Awesome Idea! A Radical, Awesome Idea...!

[1]

A few weeks before Christmas, as snow drifted and fell, as families went shopping and store Santas rang bells, the Unity Group was in a pinch and poke, for they'd little money for Christmas: in fact they were broke! A greedy teenage miser had stolen their cash, to get a new super robot after his old one's crash! Twas few funds for wreaths, for trees, or mistletoe: towards mecha repairs it all had to go!

In light of this, the stalwart tech Dido Sybil slipped on her parka, and packed her wrenches and drill.

She drove to a junkyard by an SDF base, filled with rusty machine parts from the army and aerospace. With a clatter and clang, she dug out one pile of rusty limbs and jet engines, seeking something worthwhile.

Perhaps you followed her, or were already there: would you like to say Hi, or continue to stare?

[2]

[Locked to Ken.]

A week before Christmas, when duties were light, with no Kaiju to slaughter or alien empires to fight, Brave Ken Torao, teenage Ninja supreme, stepped in ScarleTiger's cockpit, to train for his team.

But it's a horrible sight he's happened upon! His cockpit's motion capture harness is gone! Removed from it's wall mounts, nowhere to be seen, what criminal could have done a deed so obscene?

The thief can't have gone far, or escaped from the base: how will this teen ninja decide to give chase?

[3]

[Shortly later, open to everyone]

A quick search soon reveals the culprit most cruel...

...the thief of the mo-cap was Dido Sybil!

She stands by a table stocked with needle and thread, and spindles of yarn dyed in white, green and red. Ken Torao's control harness is strapped to her hands as she knits festive scarves for any who demands!

Behind in the hanger, hooked to the harness she'd climbed in, the robot ShelLancer mimics each single motion! With a heat rod spike needle, it knits and ties with care, using parachute cloth to make scarves mechas can wear!

Dido notices you starring, and nods with a wink, then stifles a yawn, rolls her neck and then speaks: "Want free scarves for your necks and for your machine too? Oh, and what's your religion…? Screw it, Merry Christmas to you!"

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"I remember." Dido says wistfully. "The funny thing about that? We had to reinvent the wheel for so many things while designing the Solego. After the Void went ker-plump, Solaris's engineers were scattered to the four winds, and the technical know-how was lost for a lot of the Sol-tech."

She rubs at her chin with one of her needles. "Back then I was making phone calls to ex-members, digging up old blueprints from hard-drives...that's when I realized just how much Solaris had done over the years...and just how suddenly their dream ended."

She sighs. "Looking back...I think I can get Sara's despair. Not condone, but understand."

Edited 2014-12-23 23:56 (UTC)

Yeah...

I... still remember my first Christmas. She'd gotten me an old picture book, something she could get for cheap from a library during an end-of-year book sale.

[She smiles weakly.]

It's the story of this little old lady. And every day this traveling salesman came along and offered her an animal to help her with her daily activities. A bird to sing for her while she cooked, a turtle with a big shell that she could ride on after a tiring day in the nearby village, a beaver who would cut down firewood for Christmas...

Edited 2014-12-26 20:02 (UTC)

... But every day she insisted "But no elephants." And of course an elephant was always with the salesman.

Come the start of winter, the salesman has to leave and the elephant's the only animal he has left. Not even the salesman wants to keep it so he just leaves it outside the woman's house. She ends up taking pity eventually and lets it in... but it's so heavy it breaks through the floor of the house and all through the winter it just sits around her house as things get colder and colder. And it's so big and hungry that it quickly eats all the food that was supposed to last everyone through the whole winter, so...

[She blinks, a grimacing smile twitching up every few moments.]

So everyone ends up in a painful situation. They either stay and starve, or try to leave for somewhere closer and freeze en-route.

Edited 2014-12-26 22:32 (UTC)

... And it's not like the elephant's a jerk or anything. It didn't choose to be big and bulky and always hungry either! And it tried to think a way out and it thought and it thought, and finally what it did was it pushed the house up and carried everyone to some place warmer and safer. And the old lady makes it become a refuge that's always welcome to elephants, in return for what it did for her.

That elephant was my first hero.

"Mizuki..." Dido says softly.

She smiles softly. "That little old lady in that storybook was foolish, wasn't she? I mean, elephants are good for lots of things! If you need someone to stomp grapes, or spray things with water, or haul a house around, or offer a nice bit of shade...or save the world...."

She ties off the end of the black and yellow scarf, and works the needles free. She reaches out and wraps it around Mizuki's neck.

"...there's no better friend to have than an elephant."

Edited 2014-12-27 03:40 (UTC)

... Or an elephant-bird.

[She looks down at the scarf, letting her hand wind around it. It feels... reassuring.]

Thank you, Dido.

[And now she's going to give you a hug.]

Dido returns the hug, awkward as it is with the exoskeleton harness she's wearing.

"So...like, the elephant was a metaphor for you, right?" She asks. "I'd be super embarrassed if was actually a metaphor for global warming."

She got an idea! An Awesome Idea! A Radical, Awesome Idea...!

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