“How about that,” Lowball says, angling his martini glass to indicate across the bar. “Kelpie’s flexing her little baby-gay flight muscles.”

They all look.

“Ooh,” Dodger says, wincing.

They’re mingled with a handful of K-Mac’s armour pilots; which is fine, because they’re not currently on the opposite sides of a contract, so there’s no more than bog standard outfit rivalry in the air, and that can be dealt with via some posturing, trash talk, drinks, and occasional ill-advised bathroom-stall fraternisation.

“Ooh?” Lowball says, looking around for intel.

“That’s Notch,” Pigeon says drily, keeping her eyes on her drink.

“Oh,” Lowball says. “…Like bedpost?”

“Yeah,” Pigeon says. “A lot like that.”

“Ooh,” Lowball says. “You think you should....”

“Oh, that’s a good look, ain’t it,” Pigeon says. “Haha fuck off no, Kelpie. Bee Tee Double-Vee, also don’t screw the first girl you try your hand at afterwards, either, because I said so—”

(cw: teenage sex, dubcon, lesbophobia for fun and profit)

“Ellie?” I ask timidly as we cut across the tennis courts. “Where are we going?”

She flashes me a sly smile. “Someplace fun. C’mon.” I can feel a pulse pounding in our clasped hands as she tugs me along; I’m not sure if it’s mine, or hers, or both. Eventually, I see she’s leading me to the sports equipment storage shed on the edge of the grounds, and my cheeks flush redder as a hundred clichéd porn plots flicker through my head.

We come to a stop just outside the door of the squat concrete building. My heartbeat’s echoing in my ears; we’ve never done it at school before. Ellie cradles my face in her hands, fingers twining through my hair, and leans in for a long, slow kiss. I melt into her, arms wrapping around her to press my sweaty palms to her back. Her mouth is soft and warm on mine. The way she teases me with her tongue always feels so her.

Subaltern body LT-203 walked down the hallway. I liked LT-203 - it had been made about two years ago, and the "new body" smell hadn't quite worn off of it yet.

Sectors 2, 4, and 7 are lost. Fallback to triage zone Tango-5. Squad Barium-Hydrogen reports victory at L4 lagrange. EVAC EVAC EVAC - target zone Helios under enemy fire. Hive at orbital 7 activity flare.

It was a good thing that the bodies were designed with automatic algorithms to get them around. Being connected to the FleetNet took a lot of attention, and always seemed to interrupt at just the wrong moment.

Tactical analysis of orbital 3 complete - fighting retreat recommended. Establish quarantine zone at high orbit, demolition plan for elevators should they fall to the enemy.

"I don't see what's hard to understand about this," Lunaeris shrugs as the party walks along a market road.

"I just-" Lagakh fumbles for words, trying to figure out what she's missing. "You generally try to keep it under wraps that you're-" she lowers her voice, "-a princess, while we're in Elven lands."

"I do," the princess concurs. "What good does anyone knowing do for me? Do I need a horde of sycophants throwing themselves at my feet? Every noble who wants my father's ear trying to go through me? Huge pain in my ass, if you ask me."

"Okay, perfectly understandable," Lagakh says.

"Glad you think so."

"But," she adds, "Kallixenia still calls you princess all the time?"

"Mm-hm," Lunaeris hums, nodding with a satisfied smile.

Moments pass as Lagakh waits for an elaboration that will never come, before finally shifting her attention to Kallixenia.

"So- It- How do those two things fit together?"

This work is explicit

Shanty was standing over the anvil, hammering away, when a figure cast a shadow over her workpiece. Looking up and seeing a familiar figure, she gave a playful little smile and asked, "How's my favourite wizard doing?"

"Doing good—! ish...", said Lilith.

"Good-ish? Go take a seat in the back, I'll be there in a couple minutes." said Shanty, giving a head tilt in the direction of the door, then resuming her work.

Once done, she took off her apron and grabbed a towel. She was wiping off her arms as she entered the room, to see Lilith holding a book with a bookmark in it.

"New book?" asked Shanty as she pulled her drenched shirt off, so she could continue towelling off.

The wizard had seen her glistening muscle plenty of times before, but she still blushed as she answered, "Yeah. It's probably by the author of 100 Summers at Empire, but not everyone is convinced."

The blacksmith looked at the book in her hand, which was barely a novella.

Sorry for the HTML crimes, hope The Vision still comes through.
Content Warning: mass death, loss of agency, of thought, of self

"And now, ladies and gentlemen..." The gaunt runner-up of last year's televised Who Could Predict You Had This Talent? competition has a slightly manic look in his eyes as he gazes out over the human sea, hundreds of hungry, expectant faces staring at him. No, at the stage he's currently occupying, an elaborate, patriotic centrepiece ensconsed in scaffolding erected by the Ministry of Plenty just for this occasion.

He chokes.
The giant speakers squeal.
Collective tinnitus, mercifully brief.

He's eternally grateful for this opportunity to be a needless — useless — warm-up act, for he knows he is nothing. Nobody.

Ever since... the incident, Crusher had been avoiding her. Sure, it hadn't been the most professional of encounters, but that was not typically a word that went with the squad anyway. She'd need more hands to count the number of times one of them had caught Princess with her pants around her ankles and several inches of mech pilot inside her, and if Gutters had done even a fraction of the things she'd talked about, it was a miracle she could walk, talk, or think on any given day. And that wasn't even getting started on Ket—

Diamond scrunched her eyes for a moment to clear the images bombarding the inside of her skull.

The important thing was to sort this out and get back to, well, normal levels of interpersonal drama. She wasn't getting shot next mission just because her squadmate refused to look in her direction.