[Open][TMoMC] So. That just happened.....

[Black Aeronaut]

In: Private Messages ? Inbox
From: BlackRider (Needs No Introduction; confirmed ID)Date: April 23, 2025

Ben,
I meant to tell you in person, but we missed each other on Odyssey. Duty called. 

Doesn't it always?

Mackie's body was destroyed on impact. 'Most of his core chips and mainboard survived. Thank Shoei for good helmets. To cut a long story short, Gaige Kisaragi is Mackie, jerry-rigged to pilot my old puppet body while we tracked down who shot him down. The reason why I did it should be clear. I know a lot of people care about Mackie - I know I put a lot of people through some very uncomfortable days. Whether the ends justify the means I'll let you decide. For what it's worth, I'm sorry I put you through that

.....  Holy.

Fucking.

Shit.

Jet, I don't know if you have any idea of how much better that makes us feel over here.  How much longer do you intend to keep this under wraps?  Because I can't just go and tell everyone here without it getting out.

He's doing fine, all told. After Gaige's gunkill, the 588th offered her a place. He's thinking long and hard about it - as much as he'd love to be the fighter ace, there's a reason the 588 are called the Night Witches. Whatever choice he makes, he's going to regret it and he knows it. The 588 are an opportunity that comes only once, but he can be Mackie anytime. Maybe someone who isn't used to treating their body as a thing should talk to him on it - I can only look at this thing from a cyber's perspective and that's skewed at the best of times. 

Huh.  Well, Gina and I will be more than happy to drop by for a bit...  All the better to hash out the other stuff  More on that later, though.  But I definitely think Gina should talk to him, too, her being an infomorph that went through an emotional wringer as well.

If nothing else, we can offer him a seat in one of our Valkyries or even a Blackbird - just to give him a few more options.  Hell, it's probably about time that Mackie started hanging out with girls closer to his 'age'.  Mayonaka's handling adolescence really well, but conversely there aren't many boys her age around her.  The oldest boy here is about six.

Of course, that is only if we wind up resleeving Mackie into a male body again.

Really, knowing Mackie, I'm worried for the poor guy now.  I know that you've been giving him options... But now that the danger has passed, he needs even more options.

Besides, the Night Witches aren't the first ones to do what they do.  People put them up on a pedestal, but only because they don't like the idea of me being there.  Besides, the Belters out here prefer we keep things on the down-low.  They tend to be rather private people, and we respect that.  So beyond the quietly filed reports to Great Justice, we don't advertise the achievements of our Aces.

I think we're all scared of the next big bad. It's not a healthy way to be. Prepared, fine, but not scared. We can handle the big bads - I'm more scared about the Big Good. In a war between two Rights, a lot of people are going to be stuck in the middle, while both sides try to curry favour. Or eliminate anyone who might be too dangerous to risk going over to the other side. Self-organised criticality applies to Wars too. Everyone's networked and linked by alliances and agreements.

Like I said, Jet.  I'm a huge optimist.  I dream big things.  That's why I started up BAT - not just to make money, but to create things that inspire people.

But at the same time, I'm also the The Night Watchman.  People call me paranoid.  I might be.  But can we honestly afford to be wrong when death is so fucking cheap out here?  The art of war teaches us to rely not on the likelihood of the enemy's not coming, but on our own readiness to receive him; not on the chance of his not attacking, but rather on the fact that we have made our position unassailable.

You know that I breathe, eat, and shit Sun Tzu.  

I'm all for training people up if you have them. We've got everything set up to go here still. I had planned on blasting a rubble-pile and pulling the resulting nargles into near orbit before the Millennium moved in. We could do a lot more than we can just using the old tunnels. It'd let us replicate some more realistic environments, and build environments actually designed for training - including combat flight training. We could simulate whole mission profiles a lot better. For n00b's, or for the veterans.

Okay, now this...  This is something that I am definitely up for.  If you're amenable to the idea, I'd like to make this a joint venture, because the more resources we can throw at this, the better it's gonna be.  And I think some of the others might be as well.  Would you mind terribly if I put out some feelers to see if anyone else might want to contribute?

It'd also give me an excuse to try make the Zenith of Things Tournament a thing again, to really push the training system.

....  OH HELL YES.

And Gally would probably kiss you for it.   

We're just waiting for the prize paperwork on that Boskone Raven Gaige sniped, then we can do some proper Have Doughnut stuff with it. 
It's the sort of thing they can't do out on the moon.

Yeah, they did pitch a huge fit over it the last time someone tried to do something like that.  Some BS about preserving the natural environs.

But yeah, we'll be over in a few days... Date to be decided - things are a little ruffled here.  You can't scramble a force that big without upsetting some things in the organization.  It's weirdly like an ecosystem in that way.  But at least this will give you a chance to make sure that bounty is nice and settled into your account.

Benjamin Rhodes
CinC Roughriders
We break things so you don't have to!


OOC:  WHEEEE!  I'M HELPING  

And yeah, Ben sees a lot of other fighter outfits as young upstarts since Haruhi originally came to him first and foremost.