Inktober 21 Da Glass Plane (handle With Care)

Mav: Would you punch your best friend in the face for $100?

Ice: I would punch you in the face for free.

Mav: *tearing up* I'm your best friend..?

Iceman: Don't do anything stupid, Mav.

Maverick: Define stupid.

“Boom. Butterfly effect.”

One of the things that got brought up this past week over at the Thunderbirds are Go chatroom was EOS and videogames. I personally see her as enjoying many different types of games, with a special emphasis on simulation games (in an effort to understand humans better), but if she’s forced to play it like a human without messing around with the code, she tends to be somewhat…bad at them. And since I’ve recently been watching LPs of Until Dawn, which is basically an interactive horror movie and not a simulation game but the core mechanics of the game mean that you can finish the game with the entire cast dead (I don’t think that’s really a spoiler), I ended up with this.

I think EOS is probably on her third or fourth accidental death. That’s what happens when Alan refuses to let her use her wi-fi when preparing to play the game (and when EOS is woefully ignorant of horror movie tropes.) However, her mobile platform is spectacular when it gets to the “don’t move” sections.

@callsign-daydream haha nice 😂

Rooster: I don’t like sand. It’s coarse and rough and irritating…and it gets everywhere.

Top Gun Headcanons #3

After his death, Slider replaces Iceman as COMPACFLT.

When he enters the office for the first time, there is a neatly written note left on the desk:

Dear Admiral Kerner,

Have fun with Maverick.

- Ice.

Slider: GODDAMNIT, TOM!

She almost looks like she could be a young Sarah Kazansky?

I remember reading an interview with Jean Louisa Kelly where she said that she imagined Tom and Sarah met when they were pretty young, and it’s cute to have a visual of what that might have been like!

Mav: I have always wanted to be a pilot! Since I was six years old.

Ice: And before that?

Mav: I wanted to be an aeroplane.

Viper: Trust me, Lieutenant, Maverick would throw himself in front of a moving car for you.

Ice: ...

Ice: With all due respect, Sir, Maverick would throw himself in front of a moving car for fun.

EOS stares at the soft, fluffy white material covering the ground at her feet. She must be making a face without realizing it, because almost immediately she hears John laugh.

“It’s snow, EOS! You know, frozen–”

“I am very well aware of what it is!” EOS snaps, mildly hurt that John didn’t think she knew what something as simple as snow was. “Snow is precipitation that has frozen into crystalline ice flakes and collected upon the Earth.” She’s still staring at it, however. Of course she knows academically what snow is, but she’s spent most of her existence on Thunderbird Five, or on a tropical island that never truly sees winter.

She’s never been this close to it before.

Cautiously, EOS takes a few steps forward, listening to the scrunchy noise the flakes make when ground together when stepped on. It’s strange, almost like hearing someone squeezing styrofoam, although not as squeaky. Her eyes are still fixed on the ground when something cold and slightly damp impacts the back of her head and breaks apart, spreading chunks of wet coldness through her hair. In shock, she turns back and is surprised to see a sheepish expression on John’s face, along with quite a lot of snow clinging to his knitted gloves.

“What–?” she says, that one word filled with so much meaning that it doesn’t truly need more added to it.

John’s face is very pink all of a sudden under the brighter red at his nose, ears and the tops of his cheek from the cold. Still, he’s smiling even with the apologetic bend to his eyebrows. “It was just a snowball– I’m sorry, I forgot– It’s just… the timing was perfect–” EOS still looks confused, not quite understanding the humor he’s taking from it. His eyes soften at how utterly lost she looks, and he walks over and gently brushes the snow from her hair.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to upset you. Here, let me show you.” He places his hand on her back, and she stoops down as he does, watching, then imitating how he scoops up a handful of snow. “You pack it together like this,” John says, demonstrating the motion, then dropping his own handful to guide her hands through it. When her first snowball emerges at last, lumpy and slightly misshapen though a good first effort, he stands up and gestures at himself. “You get a free hit. It’s only fair.”

EOS shakes her head vigorously. “I can’t throw something at you! I could throw too hard or I could hit you in an unprotected spot or…”

John raises his hands in surrender. “Fine, throw it at the ground then. But snowballs are meant to be thrown, EOS. It’s a game.”

Her eyes flit to him, then the ground, and then back again and he can practically see her processors working. After a few more glances, and even some off to the side in mild distress, she pulls her arm back and throws the snowball as gently as she can at him. It doesn’t even sting as it hits his coat and breaks apart, strewing bits of snow all over his chest.

“Was that so hard?” he asks, a kind smile on his face and in his voice. EOS shakes her head, a smile crossing her own face as she stoops down again, hands reaching for the snow below her.

When John finally tells her they have to go back inside before they’re missed, a good fifteen minutes later, both are lying on the ground, half-covered with snow and grins on their faces.

“When I look at John, I recall how he risked his own life to preserve me. I would risk non-functionality for him.”

I managed to pull actually sketch something last night, or at least finish an idea I’ve had kicking around for a bit. If I ever get the idea to write more about the “Let’s steal Thunderbird Three” story, I may end up using this quote that I’ve shamelessly stolen from Mass Effect and tweaked to fit my own purposes. I feel like it really does work for EOS though.