a/n: Alexa and Lin talk politics and skells and behavior and skells and skells.

All the good things belong to Monolith Soft.

Apriltober 25 Uppity

Lin hung over the edge of the thermal missile launcher, resting at the foot of the skell and waiting to be installed. She peered up at the woman dangling from the great machine. "I'm not really uppity, am I?" she asked worriedly.

"Pass me that wrench, Lin," replied Alexa distractedly. She had one arm wrapped around the neck of the skell but freed her other hand to reach down towards the ground.

"Why don't you use a ladder?" asked Lin, standing on tiptoe to pass the tool. She had to toss it the last half meter.

Alexa caught it neatly, then smacked the skell along its jaw, i.e. the upper edge of the pilot's capsule. A small window popped open and Alexa reached in and rummaged around. She leapt off as the skell knelt and the door to the capsule opened with a hiss. She gave a satisfied snort. "I keep telling 'em to leave their skells unlocked, but some of the big city guys just can't break the habit. I could always ask Tika for an override, but this is faster. What were you talking about, Lin?"

"About the meeting today. You don't think I was talking too much, do you?"

"Lemme think. The meeting with Sakuraba? If I recall correctly, you were talking about skells. So ... I'm going to go with ... ARE YOU JOKING WITH ME BECAUSE NO YOU WEREN'T TALKING NEARLY ENOUGH DUHHHHHH!" She bent down to replace the wrench, subject settled.

"But I was the only one talking. No one responded."

"We talked plenty, Lin, mostly asking the important questions: What do you need, how's it gonna work, how much is it gonna cost, how high do we have to jump, and how fast can we get it. So, how fast are we gonna make flight modules standard equipment anyway?"

"I wasn't clear enough about it then, I guess," said Lin worriedly. "You see, if we can gather..."

Alexa interrupted her. "I'm just messing with you. You were perfectly clear, and I have the timeline stamped onto my brain, Lin."

"I was so nervous. I'm sure I missed something."

"Nope. You covered everything, in glorious detail. And don't worry that people didn't get the important parts, because the Commander had his own little prayer meeting right after you left. It was shorter and more pointed. Everybody is on the same page, trust me." Alexa stopped fiddling with the skell long enough to examine the young Outfitter. "What's gotten up your nose?"

Lin didn't meet her eyes. "Out in the hall, I overheard somebody saying other people should have gotten a chance to present," she muttered, tapping the skell's treads gently with one shoe.

"Snore. Next meeting can be all about the new and improved photon beam sabre that Doug drools about or the swisher bang-bang of legendariness the Nopon keep promising. Today was skells. SKELLS! FLYING MOTHER OF MERCY TAKE MY HEART ALREADY SKELLS!" Alexa grabbed Lin's hands and jumped up and down.

"You're just biased," Lin said, jumping along weakly, but there was the beginning of a smile on her face.

"Straight up I am." Alexa released her dance partner and spread her arms wide. "I am here to spread the good news about skells, any day of the week. But let's be real." She shifted her hands to Lin's shoulders. Her voice was utterly serious. "If we had your module when we were defending NLA, we wouldn't have taken the same number of casualties. We could maybe have kept the battle from taking place in our home. That's last week's news, but it isn't any better today. Our number's up on the tower for everyone to see. Flight is cool, so very cool, but more importantly, we need it bad."

"So I wasn't uppity," Lin asked, needing a little bit more reassurance.

"Girl, lemme say one last thing: Hector Freaking Uppity Birtwhistle, aka HFUB. Compared to him, we are all Downity Down McDownface."

a/n: I'm running out of ideas and have started doing mindless easy stories. But I can see the light at the end of the tunnel.

next up: Line 86. Mindless, stupid story, mostly making fun of the boys. Then Frye makes me cry.