[RFC] Being You is Deculture

[classicdrogn]

Thanks for all that. With all this, I shouldn't have TOO much trouble filling out the squadrons... Just trouble finding time to do it.

T'ain't no thang. Actually, do you have any suggestions back for my MC's callsign? Here's the scene:

"Hey Butterfly, we've got these guys contained, right?"

"Pretty much, but stay alert. Woofer already had one get out of the 'inescapable' capture rounds."

"Cover me for a minute to go E.V.A.?"

"E.V.A.? Why would you even... STAY IN THAT COCKPIT! What the hell are you playing at, Rookie?!"

"I want a laser sword, boss, even if I have to lash it to the side of my Dryad with rope. Well, I have the rope and there's a perfectly good laser sword in that Medusa's detached arm, all I have to do is keep the accel down on the way home."

"... you are the craziest bitch I have ever seen, and that's including my ex-wives. All right, M.O.M. agrees it's worth a try, so you're cleared for E.V.A. you lunatic."

"Acknowledged, Butterfly, depressurizing cockpit and matching velocity to prepare for extravehicular activity. Exiting the fighter in six-oh seconds."

"No risks, if you can't get it secured like an admiral's asshole or any of the tangoes so much as twitch you abort and get back on board. And just so you know, if you pull this stunt off we'll be calling you 'Jedi.'"

No they won't, Jedi is too cool. I don't have any better ideas at the moment, though... and traditionally, you don't get to pick your own callsign anyway A few other points of explanation:

* 'Medusa' is the reporting name of an alien unit with beam swords. Humans don't have energy weapons yet.
* the 'Dryad' is a pumpkin-seed-like fighter that can have a limb kit attached and transform into a humanoid mode, or just turn into the torso on its own for better agility (or in gravity, VTOL operation) at reduced speed due to how the thrusters and attitude control rockets are rearranged.
* M.O.M. is the Mecha Operations Manager, basically Misa's job on the SDF-1. Generally you don't do anything in the mecha/fighter wings without permission from M.O.M.
* the capture rounds... heh heh. In Butterfly's words at the briefing before they launched: "Sentinel's fighter wing has had their Hellfire cannons modified to accept a new type of specialty ammunition codenamed 'Happy Tentacle.' The round is similar overall to the standard self-forging explosive used by PDF and SF mecha, but the charge is much smaller and the shell is made of fullerine-laced polymer that shreds into thousands of long strands when it hits and then coils tightly around anything nearby, binding limbs and fouling thrusters and weapons like a fish caught in a net." They have to be basically handmade at this point so each fighter only gets five rounds, but they're so starved for intel right now the expense is seen as justified, and the guns have three magazines selectable at the flip of a switch, for HTs, standard ammo, and the signature Hellfire rounds, which burst into a 50m cloud of thermite-napalm-hatred to eat enemy armor and generally prove that no matter how much something is already burning it could explode more and be more on fire. It's so valatile that the gun doesn't actually have a magizine for them, instead they invented a programmable-matter fabricator to make each one just before it's fired because they're too dangerous to store intact. Adapting that system to the Happy Tentacle rounds is a work in progress.
* MC does in fact have actually have psychic abilities, though not particularly Jedi-like aside from TK and a danger sense that doubles as a semi-reliable bullet time dodge. Levitation, kage-bunshin expy clones, and telepathy otherwise. She hasn't made a lot of noise about them but they're not a secret, the UC Berkley Electro-Psychic Phenomena lab having made considerable advances in studying such abilities recently, to the point of a telepathic piloting interface being plausibly within reach for a prototype for operational trials within a month or two.