shadow_vector | Victory

PG
G1
Onslaught/Vortex
slightly slashy, FLUFFY

written and posted over on Dreamwidth for three-weeks. Prompt given by the amazing

caia_comica

Onslaught swiveled from the Tactical Data console to grab for his input log, optics still on the screen as his near hand tapped the ‘pause’ on the TacDat display. The room fell into a sudden silence, that seemed to yawn down the corridor outside. He sighed, shoulders slumping slightly.

They always rush to celebrate victory, he thought. Run off to overcharge their processors as if trying to wipe blank their memory caches. As if combat were something best forgotten, best put into the past, files locked and closed.

Onslaught disagreed. Combat itself was unsettling—too many variables in flux. Too much could go wrong, among all very many things that had to go right. After combat was the best part: the time for study. Analysis. Understanding. Rendering the chaos of war into comprehensible data, strategic exempla.

He didn’t begrudge them their ‘fun’. Let them find their own joy. There was, in a war, precious little pleasure to be had—he would not prevent or frown upon them grabbing what little they could. He did worry, sometimes. He could not help it: simple analysis, simple statistics told him that one day, he might be gone. And then who would take charge? Who would put in the hours after combat to study who did well and who needed corrections on combat protocols before they became dangerous errors? Who would take the time to plan a battle, to strategize, to research the enemy, dig through these TacDat files. Who would, in the end, honor the dead by watching, and logging their deaths, trying to turn their suffering into useful data that might one day save another mech?

He owed them this. He didn't mind the burden. Not when it saved mechs. Not when, like tonight, their victory let them feel they could, for once, take some comfort in still being alive, that it was *worth* being alive, to work off the cybadrenaline that came as the last rush of combat, the heady knowledge that one had survived. Victory over the odds.

His hand closed on empty air where his input log should have been.

His optics left the TacDat screen.

Vortex stood on the opposite side of the console’s surface, the input log held loosely in one hand. “I think you’re done for the night,” the copter said.

Onslaught beckoned with his hand for the log. “Needs to get done.”

“It can wait.” He withheld the log, his optical visor flickering insolently over Onslaught.

“Just because it ‘can’ doesn’t mean it ‘should’.” His visor stared down Vortex’s—the copter grudgingly handed it over. Onslaught made a show of flicking it on, and beginning an entry header.

“Not fair that we won, and because of you, and you’re sitting out the celebration.”

“Since when do you worry about fairness, Vortex?” A glimmer of amusement in Onslaught’s voice; his optics never leaving the input log.

Vortex shrugged, knowing Onslaught would pick up on the movement from the shifting of his hands. “I don’t.”

“Maybe,” Onslaught said, sardonically, “I want to revel in the fact that nothing went wrong this time; that you slaggers actually followed the plan for a change.”

Vortex laughed. “Yeah, we thought it would be a nice surprise for a change for you.” He leaned forward over the console, playfully swiping at the input log. Onslaught made an irritated noise, yanking it out of the copter’s reach. “Came to make sure you didn’t offline from shock.”

“Awfully kind of you,” Onslaught said blandly, turning his back to the copter, his optics back on the TacDat screen. Vortex, overcharged. Again. A familiar game—that it took Vortex liquid courage and cybadrenaline to work up the courage to play.

“Not really,” Vortex said, dryly, leaning further over, running a coy hand down one of Onslaught’s back-cannons. He laughed softly as Onslaught shivered with a sudden rush of desire. “I’m just pursuing my own kind of victory.”

Victory

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