Ser Alexander didn't quite know what to expect as he walked into the studio in Kandor. A Human-scale Awesome greeting him, weapons deployed made him jump.
"Oh!" A female voice said over the "'Mech's" speakers, and oddly echoed from a back room of the shop. The weapons quickly stowed. "You must be Captain Harris for the Naze Nani Fenspace meeting. Please follow me and we'll get properly introduced."
Bemused he followed the miniature mech, which seemed to be expertly piloted, through a diorama of a Tellurian city he wasn't quite familiar with and into the back room the voice had come from.
As the Awesome powered down in a way obviously designed by someone who'd never seen the real thing, he looked around and realized he was in a puppeteer's workshop. Foam and fabric filled one wall, strange Tellurian machinery filled another corner, odds and ends of electronics components scattered across the tables. And some of the finished puppets made his skin crawl. They reminded him of some of the more gentle corpses he'd seen in his life, but corpses nonetheless.
A sudden hiss of hydraulics drew his attention to a mock-up of a Battlemech cockpit, and the girl sprightly slipping from it. Everything about her seemed to scream "wholesome holovid sitcom daughter," from the conservatively feminine hairstyle to the "entirely impractical for an actual Mech cockpit" outfit she was wearing.
'She looks like a {Insert the silly location for the arena matches} cheerleader...'
"Hello!" She chirped brightly. "I'm Eljay, this is my Puppetworks, and we're going to work together to educate Tellurians..." Her eyes seemed to dance in merriment at the term. "...about the Inner Sphere... and vice versa!"
Alexander looked down at her. "Sweet Lady, I feel like I should be vetting your boyfriends."
She beamed. "Give them the 'shovel speech,' hm? Well, you won't have to worry about that overmuch." She reached over to a hook and pulled a bright white cape trimmed with gold over her shoulders. "So, how'd I do with the 'Mech? I only had battle footage from Detroit to go from..."
----
Meh. Just a bit of scene chewing as VF works up some "Hearts and Minds" vids for XCOM.
''We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat
them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.''
-- James Nicoll
"Oh!" A female voice said over the "'Mech's" speakers, and oddly echoed from a back room of the shop. The weapons quickly stowed. "You must be Captain Harris for the Naze Nani Fenspace meeting. Please follow me and we'll get properly introduced."
Bemused he followed the miniature mech, which seemed to be expertly piloted, through a diorama of a Tellurian city he wasn't quite familiar with and into the back room the voice had come from.
As the Awesome powered down in a way obviously designed by someone who'd never seen the real thing, he looked around and realized he was in a puppeteer's workshop. Foam and fabric filled one wall, strange Tellurian machinery filled another corner, odds and ends of electronics components scattered across the tables. And some of the finished puppets made his skin crawl. They reminded him of some of the more gentle corpses he'd seen in his life, but corpses nonetheless.
A sudden hiss of hydraulics drew his attention to a mock-up of a Battlemech cockpit, and the girl sprightly slipping from it. Everything about her seemed to scream "wholesome holovid sitcom daughter," from the conservatively feminine hairstyle to the "entirely impractical for an actual Mech cockpit" outfit she was wearing.
'She looks like a {Insert the silly location for the arena matches} cheerleader...'
"Hello!" She chirped brightly. "I'm Eljay, this is my Puppetworks, and we're going to work together to educate Tellurians..." Her eyes seemed to dance in merriment at the term. "...about the Inner Sphere... and vice versa!"
Alexander looked down at her. "Sweet Lady, I feel like I should be vetting your boyfriends."
She beamed. "Give them the 'shovel speech,' hm? Well, you won't have to worry about that overmuch." She reached over to a hook and pulled a bright white cape trimmed with gold over her shoulders. "So, how'd I do with the 'Mech? I only had battle footage from Detroit to go from..."
----
Meh. Just a bit of scene chewing as VF works up some "Hearts and Minds" vids for XCOM.
''We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat
them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.''
-- James Nicoll