Chapter Text
“DON’T YOU GET IT?! COMPATIBILITY TESTING ISNT SOME FUCKING JOKE TO US! It Hollows You Out- Rips Your Mangled Shell Open- And Then Puts Whatever Is Left Of You Back In As If You Could Ever Be The Same.”
Sideswipe panted, he sounded wrecked, like this was something that tore its way out of his voicebox throat instead of being spoken.
“It’s like pouring liquid slag into your engine instead of fuel, and pumping it throughout your body like it’s your damn blood.”
Jazz looks away, quietly muttering something about lead and anthills.
Sideswipe begins to say something else- Hound cuts him off.
“Enough Sideswipe,” not Simon, not Simon anymore, never Simon “they didn’t know and we didn’t tell them. Nothing was meant by it.”
Hound sounded calm (but his hands servos were shaking.)
“Sure, Yeah, just let them Keep Talking About 'Living A Long Life' AS IF WE HAVEN'T ALREADY TOLD THEM WHAT IT MEANS TO BE A PILOT!? As If We Haven’t Already Signed Our Death Warrants In Red and Walked To The Guillotine With Our Hands Unbound? As IF WE DIDN’T CHOOSE THIS?”
The room was silent save for Simon’s Sideswipe’s panting.
…
“as if any pilot in this room could live to see another 20 years?”
Prowl flinched.
It wasn't Sideswipe who said it.
"He's right, and it's been driving all of us insane. Having it rubbed in our faces that we're not going to get an after. Pilots have no happily ever after. The closest thing we get is being allowed to die how we want.
What was done to us is irreversible and painful. There are consequences of becoming a pilot. One of them is that we won't live long enough to see the end of this war unless we can carve it out for ourselves."
Jazz spoke softly, but his words weighed more than the judgment of a hundred thousand people.
...
"Fuck it" Hound murmured.
"Blurry vision," because your brain can forget what it's like to have eyes, "disassociation," because the strain sometimes means that your brain needs to step away even if your body doesn't, "memory loss," people can't always handle more input than their bodies give them, mecha are too much, "paralysis," pilots like that weren't accepted even if they were compatible, "altered personality," aggression, mood swings, depression, "brain death," pilot after pilot who went too far into the drift and never came back, "shortened lifespan," most pilots don't live long enough for that to matter, "trauma, PTSD, trouble breathing," nightmares, waking up screaming and unable to draw breath because a mecha doesn't need to breath "part rejection," pilot's bodies being unable to process the difference between mecha and man and losing life and limb(s) over injuries that didn't even touch them, "and more, there's always more."
"Only 0.3% of pilots have ever retired or been retired, 2/3 of them have already chosen to find salvation through the loop of a noose rather than die in bed or end up on shockwave's table."
Hound sat down on one of the chairs in the room.
"There's a reason pilots prefer to die fighting."
...
Sunstreaker stepped onto the soapbox next.
"Sides and I have been pilots for six years. To you, that's nothing. To most pilots? That's a hundred times longer than they expect to live after compatibility testing.
We have more experience than most pilots because most of those who came before us are dead, and most who came after us are also dead."
...
"I did not choose to be a pilot," Breakdown said, "I was conscripted. All the same, I choose to continue, and I choose to fight."
...