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She was second-guessing herself again. Rimau, the social media darling who had been graced with the highest honor Gyrland, could not help but wonder if she was finally going to be revealed as the fraud she felt she was. Ten years doing hit-and-runs, building a reputation for bravery under fire and a willingness to put herself in harm's way for her comrades, couldn't shake the feeling that she shouldn't have been assigned to this ultimate drive for victory.

It was a war between the intellectual and the emotional, the clinical soldier in her pushing against the nervous kid who had just wanted to find a fight with meaning. She was one of the most veteran Framers the Homeguard could dig up, her hours in the cockpit outnumbering nearly all of her peers. She was fast, she was smart, she knew the Chop Shop in and out and was prepared for an arduous offensive.

But what if she wasn't? The medal that said she was worth pinning the people's hopes and dreams on had been at least partially manufactured. You didn't give your propaganda producer a medal without expecting them to use it as propaganda, so how could she know that it hadn't been the only reason? 

Well, at least she wouldn't be the only unqualified person on the team. The legendary Phantom Brigade now recruited untested greenhorns it seemed. Klara had been an officer allegedly, but not one valuable enough to try and get back. Ingram was a vet but an infantry one, and the twins Rimau had no real sense of. Royce was supposed to be well-trained, but apparently, he hadn't mastered the art of knowing when not to fall asleep.

That left Ramshackle as the resident old woman of the team, a position she didn't much care for. 

The din of the monsoon wasn't particularly disconcerting, the thrashing of rain against the crawler's decks almost reminding her of home. Temasek was a wet country, with rain a constant companion to daily life. As such its troops practiced in mud more often than not, giving her an advantage over those poor Ruzi bastards and their love of solid ground. 

[color=Cornflowerblue]"Ramshackle here, all green my end. Chop Shop's good to go."[/color]

The cockpit was cramped and barren, crammed with panels and instruments torn out of at least five different frames from across two different decades. 'Green' was not an adjective people often applied to machines in that condition, but Rimau had worked hard to figure it all out. She couldn't sabotage the pride she felt in her ride, as much as she might have tried.

[color=Cornflowerblue]"Chop Shop's not going to do great in the water but once we get to land I'll be taking off soon enough. Shikari, I'm going to stick with you until I get out of the waves."[/color]