Snippet #2646505

Thunk.

Positioning himself beside a Drastonian pilot, the area fell silent as Relic loudly slammed a knife into the table he was at, the blade mere inches away from the pilot's hand as two other occupants of the Nightengale's messhall held the poor man in place. Relic positioned his left hand over the pilot's, slowly spreading his fingers to match the position of the hand underneath. "Trust me," he murmured, the helmet's external speakers cracked as he pulled the knife from the table. As he started slowly stabbing the areas between each adjacent finger, he hummed the once familiar tune that veterans had once enjoyed as a favorite pasttime, before speaking those daring words after a few beginning rounds as he gradually picked up speed...

"Oh, I have all my fingers,
The knife goes chop, chop, chop.
If I miss the spaces in between,
My fingers will come off.
And if I hit my fingers,
Blood will soon come out.
But all the same I play this game,
'Cause that's what it's all about..."

The pilot's eyes widened with both anticipation and terror, that single wish that this "Spectre" wasn't going to miss and stab them both in the hand. By this time, Relic was accurately hitting each area at nearly lightning speed, evoking a fearful scream from the pilot, each knife strike staying within the tempo of each word.

"Oh, chop, chop, chop,
Chop, chop, chop, chop.
I'm picking up the speed,
And if I hit my fingers,
Then my hand will start to bleed!"

With that final word, Relic slammed the knife down to finish up, moving his hand away from the table as the pilot quickly withdrew his hand as he was released. The air was still quiet, the few murmurs being the only few sounds other than the passive hum of the ship's systems piercing the unnatural silence. "You can keep the dagger, cadet. Think of it as a momento, you've earned it," The legendary pilot commented as sights were cast upon this nearly unbecoming behavior.

~~~

Minutes later, after Relic had excused himself from the ship's messhall, word about this little "event" had quickly spread throughout the Nightengale, and that certain high-ranking officers weren't exactly thrilled about this kind of activity happening on "their" ship... But Relic held little regard for their opinions. While the Drastonian military could be considered his employer, he didn't care much for those that had inaccurately declared themselves his superiors, as to date he had only bothered to listen to the orders from two distinct individuals: the Nightengale's (actual) commanding officer and "Commander" Rastin.

As he strolled through the corridors, his movements almost holding a graceful slinking definition to them, his personal commlink hummed to life with a message from Rastin himself, alerting him that they have orders to rendezvous with a returning undercover pilot. While he acknowledged the call, he didn't bother to respond, instead sprinting towards the direction of the hangar, dodging and weaving past technicians and officers alike, approaching the stairwell that separated the the messhall from the hangar bay two levels down.

Ignoring the various threats of punishment from pushing aside officers (and calling them ingrates while calling to make way for him) as he reached the stairwell, Relic vaulted himself over the railing down the stairs, dashing through a maintenence shaft to reach the hangar's catwalks instead of entering through the main doors. He had located his personal mech, the Goblin, without much difficulty, stored with other GMNE frames, as other pilots and their associated mecha were being queued for launch.

Quickly approaching his mech from above, he grabbed the guard-rails and launched himself over the railing before reaching his mech, soaring over the opening cockpit of a familiar frame before catching a grip on the upper ledge and repositioning himself for a precise and soft landing into the seat and the cockpit sealing itself shortly afterwards.

"Identification Spectre. Initiate command sequence."

The Goblin roared to life, the HUD within Relic's helmet streaming the necessary information through an overly encrypted signal between man and machine, synchronizing the two together into one. The small mech sprung upwards from its previous position, no longer crouching with its arm and hand servos around its legs. Despite being roughly half the size of the other Drastonian mecha and its inability to hold similar payloads as its bigger cousins, Relic's personal mech was more agile and manueverable than them, due to it being equipped with lighter armor, capable of being able to move around the Nightengale's hangar bays without much assistance. The technicians outfitted the small mech with a standard autocannon and a 10-count missile pod, before Relic headed out towards the launching bay to join up with the two others that would most likely be waiting for him. "Rastin, Jiovia, Spectre here. Reconfigure and update IFF codes before heading out to rendezvous point. We don't want to accidentally turn our returning agent into a pin cushion, do we now?"