Oh Moonshine, oh moonshine [open]

[Meister]

zoey alleyne

No matter how many times Zoey slung her tattered messenger bag over her shoulder and clambered up Bravo Gipsy's metal exterior to settle in the mark six's unmoving arm, she never overcame the thrill of being so close to the gorgeous machine. Her name was on Bravo's ownership papers, and she was even working on getting the little jaeger bio-locked to her the same way Doctor George Hawkeye had locked Flaming Hawk to his daughter. Zoey itched to figure out how he'd done it, itched to ask his daughter about it now that she was at the Shatterdome.

But her pride wanted her to do it alone. Her pride wanted Zoey to come up with her own bioengineered lock, wanted the techs to salivate over it as she dangled the knowledge over their heads and grinned. She wasn't heartless, and she knew she'd share the information just as soon as she was done preening and gloating. To have Bravo all to herself, with no risk of anyone stealing it or being able to get at her when she wanted to curl up in the familiar cockpit and ignore the world... it was quite the dream.

Shifting to lie with her back against Bravo's metallic upper arm, Zoey drew the bag into her lap and flipped the cover away. Inside sat three squat, thick mason jars filled with a clear liquid. A fourth jar contained a cloudy yellow liquid flecked with amber. She drew the yellow liquid's jar out and unscrewed the cap, inhaling the scent of the liquid. Apple Pie, as close to a South Carolinan recipe as somebody could get with old engineering equipment and a sterilized fifty gallon drum.

She raised the jar to her lips and drank from it, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand and screwing the top back on after. Zoey rested the jar on her leg and gazed out over the jaeger bay, absently noting that she could feel the chill of the glass through her cargo pants. The ranger tipped her head back and let it loll to one side, so that she could see Bravo's face.

Six years of tinkering with it and hemming and hawing back and forth over the design, and she'd settled on something she thought she'd outgrown in high school. Identical in shape and scaled dimensions to Gipsy Danger's head, Bravo's instead sported a black stripe with a white magnolia painted just over the viewing panel. The jaeger's black-and-white design was far different from a typical mark six's, lacking the usual neon colors and flashy decals. Despite working in construction like most mark six pilots before the rift reopened, Zoey had tended toward the stark contrast of black and white.

And, with ownership firmly in her hands, all her employers had been able to do was tut and sigh. Now, Bravo stood out only because of the white, tiny against the looming height of the mark sevens, eights, and nines. They were all gorgeous in their own rights, incredible pieces of machinery that had once bested an organic race evolved and genetically designed to be big, brutal killing machines. Bad Wolf's tapered, economic design; Samurai Dark's sharp, dangerous edges; Ocean Titan's stalwart thickness; Flaming Hawk's brilliant paint job and state-of-the-art ranged weaponry; they were all beautiful to her.

But Bravo was special, because it was her baby, crafted by her own hand, lovingly and with the requisite blood, sweat and tears. Zoey unscrewed the mason jar's cap and took another swig of the potent alcohol. It tasted like apple pie on her tongue and was deceptively gentle on the way down. She knew that the amount in the jar would give her alcohol poisoning if she drank it all in one sitting.

Her free hand traced over the contours of the metal plates covering the mechanisms of Bravo's arm. Each dip, rise and rivet was familiar, was something she'd spent hours puzzling and wringing her brain about, and the six years spent perfecting Bravo had eventually blurred into a haze of tugging at her hair while staring at its blueprints and screeching at the tv while Mario Kart continued its unbroken record of defeating her before she switched to a Fast and Furious game for some easier play.

Then, things were simpler. Jaeger, programs, designs, video games, and whatever booze she could get her broke paws on. Now, the only reason she felt able to drink was the knowledge that Calypso and Samurai were next on deck. Even if there was need for a third, the Marshal'd probably want to test Flaming Hawk. With that jaeger's design, she knew that it'd be best at the back of the pack, pummeling kaiju with its ranged weapons and providing support and assists.

Grumbling under her breath, Zoey kicked at Bravo's lower arm. The messenger bag tilted, and she lunged for it. Her steel-toed boots clanged at every impact on Bravo's metal, and she mentally cringed and prayed for the safety of its paint job. Catching the bag and managing to save all five jars, Zoey resettled in her position. Saving the jars and bag had been noisy, and garnered her a few looks. She just waved at the ones she recognized and grinned like she'd totally meant to do that. Cause she had. Ish. Except that one bit where she totally hadn't. Eh, details.