Saturday, May 30, 2015
3:27 PM

Ivor's jaw clenched in irritation, as he surveyed the motley crew in front of him. Roderick had once again shifted his duties onto Ivor with the excuse of being in urgent meetings with their superiors. This may or may not have been true, but they both knew at this point Roderick's own general unwillingness to act with authority had made Ivor the de facto squad leader.
 He didn't like acting as their commanding officer either- he didn't particularly feel like he had any control over them in the first place, Was he really their leader, or just a babysitter lamely barking orders at children? The whole thing felt like a giant game of pretend. The DOUCHELIONS were arranged in only the most satirical imitation of standing at attention, Mercedes and Evgheni the only vaguely professional ones, Monique, Wallace, and Owen earnest but hardly in their comfort zone, and the rest of them with actively recalcitrant attitudes. Of course Ernie was perpetually sour, Tara had some deepseated and childish disdain of authority, why the hell had she joined the military anyway, and Gail was sporting a most petulant look.
But he might've felt most out of place himself. Because the two countries were on the verge of an international incident, the higherups were, more than usual, trying to keep the DOUCHELIONS antics to a minimum, if, at the very least, to put on a good face for the cameras. Make them remember who they answer to, Roderick had said. At least long enough to get through this crisis. But after basically letting them run amok for years and years, what did they expect at this point?
There were a handful of complaints levied at the squadron. Quite a few of them were using social media inappropriately. Tara was endless in her political assessments of the situation, not always pro-Varaddish, certainly not things appropriate to the moment. Gail had taken to complaining about the food that they were forced to eat, the food that every other soldier had; although usually they had the red carpet rolled out for them, the generals were quite adamant that at least now the DOUCHELIONS should be in solidarity with the rest of the troops. Wallace took that a bit too far. He'd gone out drinking the night previous with some buddies in infantry.
Honestly, most of it was the usual BS the prima donnas put out. But two things in particular were especially bad: besides her usual impudence Gail had been posting pictures of destroyed mechs onto her account; it certainly wasn't as bad as the streaming debacle, but it left a bad taste in the mouth of the liberal population who balked at the glorification of violence. On the other end of the spectrum, according to SOMETHING Soorayn, Wallace had let an enemy pilot go out of some misguided sense of respect.
"...Private McKinnon."
"Sir," she replied blithely.
"You've been warned about your FANTASYTWITTER account before. Frankly, if you were anyone else you would've been discharged by now. Even court martialed."
"Permission to speak sir?" Gail's bored and irritated look sharpened as her gaze fixed on Ivor.
"...Not granted."
"Frankly," she ignored him, "if I were anyone else I wouldn't be here. I'm just doing my job well, aren't I? And if anyone has a problem in the troop, it's Wallace." (idk if this really sounds like Gail)
"...I'm actually inclined to agree with Private McKinnon," Mercedes intoned.
Ivor's eyes glanced sidewards. CORLAPLL Sooyrayn was basically on equivalent ranking, and he couldn't exactly ignore her opinion here, both due to her implicit pull within the squadron and the actual substance of it. He was inbetween a rock and a hard place here. To be completely honest, Private Wallacelastname's infraction was a much more serious matter, at least technically. But even though he disagreed, Ivor could sympathize with the sentiment. McKinnon, meanwhile, should a complete disregard for authority and the kind of brusque attitude toward war that the media would bite onto. But in the end it was small potatoes. (wow thisp aragrah sax)
"I think Private Wallaceakjfd should be recommended for bvlah blah blah punishment."
Wallace looked down at the ground, feeling the weight of Mercedes' accusation. Orwhatever.(whoops switched perspective) He felt a little betrayed, somewhat irrationally. blahblah blah rthis paragraph sucks
"Permission to speak sir?" Monique said.
Ivor was a little taken aback. Monique normally stayed quiet, and he didn't think she'd have anything to say in a situation like this.
"blah blah blah maybe we should write in the scene where the mech gets away. It wasn't a threat."
"...right. But we're still sending back an easily reparable mech for the enemy to use."
"We're not even at war though," Monique contested. "Just because the higherups are haranguing us to act like we're... we're..." she trailed off.
"Like we're what," Mercedes said, raising an eyebrow. "Soldiers?" Mercedes wasn't trying to be mean about it, but it wasn't exactly fair to the rest of the squad. Or at least the other drivers.
"We can pretend we're hard, grizzled vets, but blah blah blah making a fuss about nothing."
"I'm not talking about grit here, Monique. As far as I'm concerned, some of our most important people sit behind a monitor with a joystick all day, and as long as they shoot when they need to then everything else functions smoothly."
this sucked. where was ivor? Whatever, just to show you i'm workin