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fredrin — SavePoint: Ping Decompressing
#bombergirl #megatokyo #miho #ping #savepoint
Published: 2017-05-01 01:07:27 +0000 UTC; Views: 4088; Favourites: 202; Downloads: 81
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Description
An illustration from the SavePoint Bombergurls world series of drawings... Ping is the crew tech and who is the longest serving member of this 'crew'. Mechanical accessories like Ping are the continued memory of these flights of Dead Girls Flying. THe night before every mission, Ping will unload a backup. If her plane is lost the next day, she is downloaded into a new shell and continues with a new crew and plane. 26 times she has woken up learning she was with a new crew. This helps preserve her knowledge of previous missions and makes her the old lady of each crew (which is vastly difference than her 'new to the world' existence in Megatokyo. A lot of details in this drawing, which I guess i'm going to have to write out this story entirely for everyone to see them all...The idea of a more mature Ping is kind of interesting and is yet another aspect of how these SavePoint drawings are a really odd kind of developmental exercise for the main Megatokyo story.
Note: both the original pencil and original color art for this illustration is now up in the MegaGear store: www.megagear.com/category_s/14…
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Comments: 14
Wrote a little something related to this piece a while back, Fred. I thought I'd share it.
Subofficer (Radio) Ping sat on her bunk, staring at the book before her. The pages were covered in hand-written notes and sketches, depicting the details of each mission she remembered flying, the various aircraft that had tried to stop their payloads from being delivered, the crew members she remembered.
Amidst all the scribbles and scrawls, twenty-six pages were empty. Each represented a mission she had no memory of, and a crew that had not returned home. She could only name the members of twenty-three of them, the remaining three being their first mission together, her addition to their roster last minute.
At least that would not be a problem this time. She and her latest crew had flown together twice now, successfully delivering their belly full of death and returning safely both times. Today’s mission had almost had a less satisfying conclusion, both engines damaged, one by flak, one by a fighter that had gotten off a lucky shot before being chased away by Sgt. Sawatari’s determined counter fire.
She made an additional note in the book detailing that little victory, then sighed and tipped the eraser end of the pencil against her lower lip. Sawatari was, frankly, a problem. She’d seen far too many crews since her first, seen far too many people broken by what they’d seen and done. Sawatari, however, had been the first to not just be unfriendly, but to actually pull a gun on her.
The crazy twin-tail’s aunt, Flight Bombardier Sawatari, hadn’t even bothered setting down her cigarette, let alone doing anything to stop the younger Sawatari. It had taken Ping herself to calm the 16 year old girl down enough to let the MPs take the .45 away. Perhaps the elder Sawatari woman had been just as offended by Ping’s casual question about her wedding ring as the younger, but simply hadn’t felt the energy needed to do something about it. Not when a crazed teen seemed happy to test Ping’s ability to be downloaded into a new body.
Ping supposed that dead girls didn’t like being reminded of what was going to be left behind when the inevitable happened. Especially by an artificial life form who had already completed her thirty-five missions, twice over. Few at the base liked Ping, considering her to be some sort of cosmic cheat, and never taking into account the personal hell that was remembering twenty-three crews, and knowing that the “Artificial Lifeform Exemption” meant she didn’t get to go home after thirty-seven missions, or seventy. Or the eighty-three successfully completed currently under her belt.
She leaned her head back to contemplate the hooch, the thrown together wooden shack that the Save Point crew shared together. The walls were covered with calendars and photos, almost none of them in anyway personal. They were simply collections of beefcake and movie stars, people who would never have known you existed, and wouldn’t miss you when you were gone.
The blackout curtains were tied open in blatant violation of regs. She’d mentioned it once, and gotten looks of open disdain from the rest of the crew. She’d taken the hint and not brought it up again.
Next to the door rested two bundles. One was Flight Officer Nanasawa’s parachute, brought back with her rather than left back at the hanger with the rest. Ping had no idea when it had been stowed here. She wasn’t sure she’d ever seen Nanasawa in the hooch. The woman had basically taken to living in the hanger even before Ping had been added to the crew. The other bundle was her own duffle, only partially unpacked. Between the less than positive welcome she’d received from the Save Point crew and her own knowledge she’d be waking up with another missing mission soon enough she hadn’t seen the point of emptying it.
She supposed she was, in her own way, a bit jaded as well. After all, if one person could tear her crewmates up this much, she supposed remembering ninety-two in photographic detail could potentially disturb even her logic circuits.
The bunk shifted around her, and Flight Officer Tohya’s head rolled off the edge to dangle upside down, staring. “What’s that?” she asked, her words carefully controlled and her breath reeking with cheap alcohol.
Ping eyed the pistol she’d left near at hand a moment, then realized that even if Tohya was inclined to be angered by anything Ping said, the Irish woman was too drunk to shoot straight anyway. She set down the pencil and flipped the book around. “Notes on previous missions.”
Tohya stared at the book a second with watering green eyes, her cheeks turning redder by the second. “No, not the book.” Her hand came down and pointed at Ping’s shoulder. “That.”
Ping glanced over to take in the tattoo her bare shoulder sported. She supposed she should probably have kept her uniform sweater on rather than stripping down to her government issue skivvies, but even an artificial girl sometimes wanted a little air. Even if that meant exposing the tattoo painted on her synthetic skin.
“That was my first bird. ‘PL4YWM3”. She sighed, her memory automatically dredging up the faces of the four women she’d trained with, flown with, and died with on their fifth mission together.
“And the marks beneath?” The pilot sounded genuinely curious, and Ping set the book down, rolling to show her shoulder to the upside down woman.
“Each bird since then.”
“Don’t see the Save Point…”
“You won’t,” Ping muttered quietly.
“Nach í An Bhitseach í?” the pilot muttered. “Why not?”
Ping pinched the bridge of her nose. “You don’t bury the living.”
Tohya stared at Ping’s shoulder a moment, then pulled her head up. Feet appeared a moment later and the woman dropped from the bunk, staggering in her landing, then lurched for the door. A moment later she was outside, the sound of her retching coming in through the opening.
Ping glanced at her own shoulder, at the bare patch of synthetic skin at the end of the bottom row of miniature nose art. Her finger game up and briefly rubbed at the spot before she slid down on the bed, pulling the covers over herself, and set her processors to their sleep mode. Tomorrow was another mission. Would it be number eighty-three? Or twenty-seven?
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I am not going to lie, I want to know what she is studying.
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Remembering 26 lost crews... it's a wonder she can still function. Gods, I feel for her.
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I wish Ping existed outside of MT. I'd definitely have a good time with an eternal gaming partner like her!
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I dunno, the whole "lifts telephone poles and swings them at people who offend her" problem is a little dangerous, especially if you're a bit of a smart-ass.
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Holy cow! The DETAIL though. I love how you put so much into the back ground. I find myself scanning through it all.
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At first I thought that HDD was a pack of cigs.
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