This was probably the longest conversation Olivia had had with another human being who [I]wasn't[/I] a psychiatrist [s]or dead[/s] in the past month. She wasn't sure what to make of it. Ribsy seemed perfectly content to do all the talking for them, which was likely the only reason their talk had yet to fizzle. Olivia had never been good with words. She'd had friends, of course, but that had been before the world had decided to go to hell. Most of her friends had died since K-Day. Fighter Pilot was not a job with a long life expectancy these days.

Ribsy mentioned testing the Jaegers and it was like the world had dropped out from under her feet. Olivia focused her attention on unpacking her gym bag. She swallowed, tried not to think about the unmarked grave. Red shirt, Ribsy had said. It was horrifying how accurate that was. Expendable red shirts, scurrying about to meet their end at the hands of their own salvation. Little nameless red shirts. God, she was going to go insane before she could even die in a cockpit. Olivia wasn’t sure which one was worse.

"First test pilot went in about a week ago," she said evenly, rolling her now emptied bag neatly. Fiddling with her locker, she slid the compacted pink bag into its designated slot. Locking it, she turned and leaned against the locker. The cool bite of metal against her back was grounding.
"There were complications,” it was the understatement of the century, but it was honest. “Which are supposedly fixed. I don’t think we’ll be waiting much longer before pilot testing starts up again.”

Ribsy’s confidence was…it was strange. The world was ending, and she was pleased she could beat up boys from childhood. Olivia didn’t quite know what to make of it. Part of her yearned to snap at the taller woman, but most of her was amused. The world wasn’t any less horrible, but there [i]was[/i] something to be said for putting the old boys in their place. That, Olivia suspected, would never be any less fun. Her lips twitched into a smirk, her dark brow quirking at the thought. She’d never gone back home after joining the Navy, but she could imagine how good it would feel to walk her hometown in her dress blues in a giant [i]fuck you[/i] to her detractors.

“Indeed,” she agreed. Back home implied there still was a home to go back to. Olivia couldn’t help her curiosity. “Where’s home?”