Drama queens.

As they slid their way to their respective MAS units, Tom did his best to ignore the confrontation happening behind him. As soon as it was clear which unit she'd be piloting it was inevitable, but it didn't stop another tic or irritation from rising. Astelion could at least [i]try[/i] to be professional about the affair--if their fucked up little group wasn't known for playing by the rules, Trent would like to think they were at least better than throwing tantrums about the matter. Not a one of them owned the machines that they used, could afford to put a tenth of one together out of their salaries combined. The only thing that bought a pilot the right to call a machine his own was performance, and even that could be ignored in the right hands. Whatever it was Eric had hoped would happen with his sister's MAS, it was quite literally out of his hands.

Better to focus on the present.

In the same way, it wasn't that Tom was attached to the Mosquito because he thought it his. It suited him very well, admittedly, and he'd done some incredible things with it, but primarily it was his because anyone else piloting it would have been a liability. Never mind the explosive potential in the experimental core if calibrations weren't just so or the risks of ionization and plasma technology in the Arbalest--the thing was practically a screaming metal death trap, lightly armored and intensely responsive. Anyone without significant light-chassis experience would get themselves shredded under anything resembling concentrated fire, to say nothing of the dangers of a Tesla Drive to the uninitiated. Calibrated as he had it fire-fights were finger-twitch instant responses, the mech reacting practically at thought and requiring intense concentration to keep aligned, active and in order. The Astelion, with its intense speed capabilities, would require similar concentration and precise handling.

Still, he'd done it. Combat had come naturally to him, so perhaps it would to her as well.

Tom and Wes shared similar levels of communication between themselves and their mechanics, but where Wes was able to simply allow them to do their jobs Tom had to let them fiddle and fuss over this suboptimal stabilization rod or the amount of lithium currently in the cooling solutions. They ran endless strings of numbers and made an endless series of adjustments, the end result always being that he had to re-calibrate his damn self. [i]Yes[/i], he knew that under lab conditions the Tesla Drive could run at optimum speeds with only a 15% energy draw--he [i]also[/i] knew that the stabilizer struts and the Tesla Drive ran through the same relays and, without upping the allocation to at least 18% there was a loss of in-flight stability for the first second or so of Tesla initiation. [i]Yes[/i], the Arbalest required at least a 35% ED budget in order to operate at optimum efficiency for maximum range, but the thing's maximum range was several [i]miles[/i]--it was significantly more efficient to cap it at 30% and pull the remaining energy towards the maneuvering vents, which needed to be responsive at the drop of a hat to handle high speed performance. And so on and so forth, little kinks and alterations that were necessary for [i]performance[/i], not ideals. So it was that by the time he got to his machine and waited, deadpan, for them to finish fawning over the reactor, that he [i]finally[/i] managed to draw himself up into the machine proper and settle himself in.

It was enough to drive a guy crazy.

"Mr. Wizard up and running, booting up the optimization suite. Combat ready in five." He offered mechanically through the vocal feed, eyes already flicking through lines of holographic data as they filled themselves in around him. Fingers flicked out to adjust a statistic here or there, an endless string of corrections and calibrations. He took the ribbing about his slow start ups in stride, bitching good-naturedly about meddling R&D and statisticians, but when it came down to it he'd be ready to go with the rest of them.

And you couldn't argue with results.