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Jace hisses as the mech jolts to a stop, his freshly injured skin scraping against his uniform making the sensation harsher, the uniformly sized harness cinching uncomfortably against his large frame. Hands slipping as he unbuckles himself, his ears ringing loudly as he blinks frantically and tries pulling himself from his seat. The exposure hurt, something so agonizingly painful and shocking to his system that his movement was stumbling and stuttering even as the hatch clicks and releases him into the controlled atmosphere.
He blinks heavily, again, as he looks down to the walkway from so high, knuckles white gripping as he haltingly steps out of the cockpit. Every breath he took seemed to hurt and singed across his chest, something raw and stinging spread across his sting - likely from that bad hit earlier, the ether an unexpected blow he moved too slow to avoid. Slowly, he made his way out and down to the ground, slipping from his own sweat coating him thoroughly and stopping to cough harshly in a nonsense rhythm, hissing with every sharp jolt as he stepped down to each panel.
Loathe as he was to admit it, if Renn hadn't been there… he didn't know what would have happened. That's a lie. He knew exactly what would have happened, but he didn't want to think about it, and even less so about the save. The exposure was still so fresh in his mind, the searing phantom pain throbbing against his skin in tandem with his heart and the residual stinging echoing it like an afterthought. Every movement he made reminded him of that split moment where Renn swooped in and just… tore that thing apart. The noises reverberated in his brain, his breath heavy in his broad chest as his heart pounded in his ears and he relived the moment in flashes over and over as he finally met ground.
That drone, that serious, unfeeling machine programmed by some real person and being such a vicious enemy bearing down on him to where he pushed his own so far past where it's supposed to operate at… it was terrifying to be so outclassed in that situation, using everything he'd scraped together and still falling short. If that's what the first test was like, how much better at fighting were the Empire’s enemies?
It didn't help that his head had been in chaos, hardly processing anything between the concerned yells through his comms as he was nearly killed… being nearly cooked alive just after facing the exposure, struggling to breathe from the hull crack and the too-tight pressure of his harness on his burning chest. Every blare of alarm, the glaring red lights that had screamed at him and flashed in his vision, the sight of Renn’s mech through not only his screens but through that terrifying hole in front of him - it struck such a feeling into him that only now he could describe as fear, seeing the sheer destruction wrought in front of him and knowing how close he would have been to an end far more gruesome than that. To be saved so much by that pompous solari, the immense gratefulness conflicting against his still-lingering uneasiness about the man and his own self-doubt beginning to brew, it grated against him in a way he couldn't really describe.
He knew he was safe now, the fight over, his team safe and alive against all odds, but even then his limbs moved in a way he wasn't really thinking about, still trying to use those colossal limbs of his mech even as he was no longer piloting it. The dissonance between the weight he was expecting and his actual size was not so intense to completely disorient him but it was barely enough to make his movements more choppy and jolted than his regular ones, made more irregular by his hands slipping on surfaces and leaving behind trails of sweat. Reaching the ground was a good thing, leaning heavily on the large metal behind him as he caught his breath through aching coughs.
Mylo rushes forward to him, his acrobatic movements buoyant as he all but bounds over to crowd Jace. The smooth and high voice of his teammate barely managed to cut through the deafening ringing in his ears as he quickly brushes aside his question and congratulates him, as he knew he was supposed to do and as everyone had quite justly earned, his thick arm easily slung over the smaller man’s thin shoulders while his breath stutters and he lets out another harsh cough.
He can feel Mylo’s hand flitting up to flutter over his chest where he was struck before pressing at his shoulder, his other arm coming around to press in the same spot on his back. The clawderan’s ears are pressed back, his hair similarly stuck to his skin and rumpled from the action, and his tail flicks either anxiously or from cooling adrenaline behind him. It's easy, so incredibly easy, to let this smart cat look him over when he asks; the level of trust Jace would give to him has exponentially increased thanks to the dedication and skill that he had shown in battle to protect his teammates and eliminate the enemies.
The sting on his chest returns, his neck straining as it's bared to air and the pressure from his collar is relieved. His coughing spikes for a brief moment before it subsides, the ice of the cold air against his sweaty skin versus that previous sweltering metal box a shocking switch, made even more by the small man pressing his hands gently to the wound across his torso, his muscles straining further with every breath.
His lithe hands - such thin, delicately long fingers; artists fingers, perhaps, being the creators of the beautiful works he had given away so freely earlier, but covered in thin callouses surely from his craft and from years of piloting sims - pressed into Jace’s heated, heaving skin, cool flesh against his own and still warmer than the chilling air. The sweat gathered across his body, that plastered his hair against him and dampened his uniform, shines gaily on his chest in comparison to the dry and pale hands ghosting over his injuries. Mylo’s big eyes, so bright and shining, sweep across his face and upper body almost as smoothly as those lithe hands do; they touch the base of his jaw, dragging down to his neck before pushing aside his uniform more to bare his broad body to the clawderan.
It's hard to distract himself, to breathe through the check, especially when his focus is torn between the sting of pain still rocks across his nerves and the searching, desperate eyes that rake over him and the oranged and rough skin of his injury. It's easier to continue praising his teammate, to thank him for his excellent work in making sure they all came back alive. Even more so easier when Renn, who clearly knew there was more to a real mech and how to get down more gracefully, slowly lowers from his cockpit to join the rest of his squad. The cable rises smoothly behind him as soon as he steps off, and though his face contorts strangely for a moment he pulls his attention back to his temporary-doctor.
It's a relief, of course, to hear he'll be fine, that the exposure wasn't as bad as it could have been, to know he'll live without anything lasting - but it also puts a stutter in his breath beside his cough. If anything happens again like that it might last, it might stick around, it might affect him for the rest of his life. He can't be a great knight if something like that happened, and the only reason it didn't today was thanks to the efforts of his squad mates. Even, unfortunately, Renn.
The thanks he gives to his team - the well deserved thanks, and the praise, and even the begrudging recognition for Renn and his skills - is heartfelt. While it's difficult for him to accept the realization that he'd need to depend on these three, it's easy for him to acknowledge it and be glad that they had been there to help him. And that he had been there to help them, too, even if he lagged behind in some areas compared to each other.
But that was why they were a team; they all had different skill sets, and they needed to use them to cover each other’s backs in situations just like that test. They weren't in the simulations anymore, and taking it seriously was the only way to the top.
It was with determination, tired as it was, that they all went out to seek out the rankings board. He couldn't tell what caused the tightness in his chest as they passed the other squads, be it the lingering pain and effects from the exposure or from his own swirl of emotions, but it quickly became a thought for the afterburn as they all realized exactly where they were on the board.
They had done it! The top 12, the big dogs! And in second place, no less! With a point difference of only 15, it seemed like the chasm Jace imagined they had to cross became only a jump across a gap. And with how that other squad acted, there was absolutely no way they'd stay in first place for long. But, even then, another issue caught the team’s attention.
To know that despite the deaths that happened today, people were still going home - that teams were shuffling to maintain their personnel quota, bodies left in space even as different people, the survivors, were moved into their bunks to replace them - and that it could happen to them if anyone fell short or made the wrong move in the mech… It was a revelation that put all of their hackles on edge, and even Mylo’s ears were turned back as he prayed for the ones lost that day.
That board gave them all something to think about, something to compare themselves to. Even worse, it gave them the looming threat; when they said not everyone would make it, they didn't mean in just the program. The loss of life would escalate, ELIMINATED spelt out across the bottom of the board to denote four lives lost in a single swoop, reduced to a single squad number and a gray tone on a wall presumably until Project Waltz was complete. All of the families of those students praying they raised their pilot good enough for success having to hear that they outlived their child due to a training accident; twenty-eight families that had to hear that after the second day of this program the next time they see their loved ones it would be at a funeral.
Jace tried desperately to avoid those thoughts, the dourness not matching with what should have been glee at being one of the best on only the first battle. It seemed instinctive, then, that to ignore them he turned his head to look to the stars. Another ship of thought came to him, seeing the debris out of that window, watching the bots and even other mechs cleaning up the destruction from so many simultaneous battles. Every movement those giant mechanical marvels made cemented another thought in his head.
That fight alone was everything like what he expected - and nothing like he'd ever experienced. Being in a real battle like that, despite it being a test, despite not being quite good enough for all he was great, staying right in the thick of it… it was somehow both exhilarating and utterly terrifying. Nothing in the sims could have prepared him for that. Nothing in his life could have prepared him for that. Despite all of the death he knew others had faced; full squads gunned down and slaughtered, piecemeal members of other teams losing their lives, the twenty-eight dead cadets littering the cosmos until the Empire could safely prepare them for transport to their home worlds…
…He wanted to go again. And was that so horrible of him?