dime??

C'mon, just a little more.


This is the best I've ever gone. Pushing, tuning, pushing further, trying to dodge that look I'm given when I come back with boards fried and fuses blown again.


But personal bests aren't that fun if you're just inching forward, right? You've gotta leap.


You've gotta push. Squeeze out every little bit of power, afterburners screaming. That temperature warning always goes off a little early. We're not running engine-rich just yet.


Radios off. Need the juice elsewhere. Ooh, where'd you go this time, they'll only chide over 'em anyway, as ever, as if the answer wasn't 'up'. You saw those pretty clouds, the enticing blue. Of course it's 'up'.


Further, come on. Faster. Running hot, but there's still margin. Feeling the thrust kick up is intoxicating, enrapturing. Captures my mind like nothing else, every time, without fail.


It's all that matters. Sensors flicker out, one by one - that's fine. If I couldn't do this by feeling-- by instinct, by something that feels like it's been wired-in long before this body ever was-- I'd already be shrapnel in a crater.


There's just something special about it. Smooth, elegant adjustments in trim. Slamming the airbrakes and banking hard. Wind underwing puts the wind under my wings, y'know?


Further. Faster. Higher. Tremendous, screeching power pushed to its limit. The smoothest anything'll ever run, pushed to rattle and kick, under my control.


This place, up here, dizzying blue - it's mine.