#mech pilot au

[cuppajj]

Get in the robot, Drillburst!

So I had a literal 3am au idea that fuses both humanformers and normal transformers into a cool mech pilot au (it's not directly evangelion or gundam but instead its own thing), not to be confused with my main humanformers au where the humans just have power armor that resembles their transformer selves. I was going to write a big lore dump under the cut but it went on for too long and I don't trust the read more sometimes, so it'll be its own post later. But for now here's a bit of info on Drill:

Drillburst pilots a repurposed 90-110 ft Bastion Class Velux Harvester, KRAN subset, one in a series of mega-drillers manufactured for deep space resource mining. His mecha is said to be defective and prone to violent explosions, making it practically a ticking time bomb that will kill its pilot if they're not careful. But Drill is in tune with it, and had it modified to better suit its destructive capability. Along with being equipped with massive drill halves on each arm that can serve as weapons, it can also charge up energy to produce electric shocks or miniature explosions from the its palms (it's a fusion between drill's current frame and drill's future v frame). He works part-time in an organization for mech pilots, where pilots complete certain tasks either in teams or by themselves. Drillburst is technically the name of the mecha, but pilots can call themselves by either their human or mecha names.

[draworlive]

DNDADS LINCOLN MECHA AU

inspired by that one time lincoln and taylor combined to become a force of nature in episode 37 does anyone even remember that

[screamingwiththewolves]

It would be really dumb, but I can't help but like imagine a Pacific Rim AU of Glass Scientists. And the only because imagining how the logistics of Jekyll and Hyde's situation would work with drifting, is incredibly fun. Like tHAT is truly a fun thought process.

[yuwuta]

You know I’m here to listen to you ramble about every AU ily give us the pacific rim NGE 🤲🏽

- @yuutito

aleks beloved, thank you for always enabling my rambling 💞 this is the kinda ask where i wish i could draw because there are such vivid images of what each jaeger/mech would look like to me but for now consider the following in the yuuta verse: 

hiromi and kento used to be co-pilots on the same jaeger, and despite having average drift compatibility, they had a near perfect streak. there were theories that judgeman would be even more successful with a single pilot, and ultimately hiromi was the better fit, which works out in the end because it turns out kento and satoru are a near perfect match in terms of compatibility, holding the record for a co-pilot duo. kenjaku is a much less predictable jaeger, but satoru and kento are the only pair to co-pilot it and survive. 

the zenin family has snuck their way into jaeger mechanics and government control of them. they almost exclusively build and fund mechs for their own family members, and have their own training program they put their pilots through to ensure that they are the only ones able to pilot the robots. other big families and government sectors don’t like this, but the zenins fund so many refuge relief and engineering programs, that nobody can say anything. 

the only good thing is because they tailor the mechs to their pilots, the drift compatibility of the co-pilots matters much less. 

toji is the first person in history to solo pilot a jaeger, and proves that solo piloting is possible, but only in extremely rare cases. he piloted alongside megumi for a while until playful cloud was put out of commission and toji retired to focus on stealing the zenin’s training regiment and teaching it to other pilots in training. megumi’s co-pilot is now yuuji, and sukuna was a jaeger was sponsored by the gojo family (which the zenin’s are still mad about)  

the zenin’s wormed their way into the financial and political side of things, but the gojo family is famous for their pilots and engineers. satoru’s mother and father were hailed as one of the greatest pilot duos, and even though they never wanted satoru to become a pilot, their deaths inspired him to take his training seriously. his cousins and aunts and uncles are a mix of co-pilots and engineers. it’s expected that yuuta become one or the other, but after rika’s death, he decides on the pilot route. it seems to be the fate of the gojo’s that the death of a loved one leads the path to pilot training. 

rika’s parents were scouted by the gojo family and the government to help build mechs. they packed up everything to move to sendai and begin their research and construction. rika was that little kid running around the hangar and yuuta was much less enthusiastic and much more scared one tailing behind her. even though her parents were brilliant engineers, rika always loudly proclaimed her dreams of becoming a pilot. when she dies, her parents memorialize her dreams by designing and naming a jaeger after her, and they only think its right that yuuta be its pilot. 

yuuta and rika have always been a special pair, and so even though their actions concerning you are far from normal, it’s not a surprise either. yuuta was asked to be rika’s pilot, but he also did it because he thought it was the right thing to do. but now, as yuuta watches you recover after he/rika saved you after an attack, he knows that wanting you is the wrong thing—but if he found you through piloting, if he found you through rika, how wrong could that be? how bad could a pilot really be—they’re the heroes after all, right?

anyways enough about yuuta’s pacrim au, time to talk about other ones teehee

there’s a pink wolf in your dreams and it always saves you from whatever impending doom is heading your way: a pack of hungry coyotes, the unstable ledge of a cliff, a group of angry huntsmen with arrows and pitchforks. it’s been this way every since your last co-pilot died in battle, while you were still connected to him. you try to make sense of it, try to find comfort in the savior of your dreams, but the natural human response is to scream and shout and wake up in cold sweat when face to face with a wild animal in your face. so, the instinct kicks in when you tiredly roll into the sparring room and the newest recruit has a head of pink hair and scar over his left eye that mirrors the one of the wolf in your dreams, is to run away as fast as you can. it’s futile though, because itadori yuuji is more than the wolf in your dreams and your destined co-pilot, he’s your soulmate. 

in a sort of post-war world, you and kento are very comfortable in your retirement. you have the respect of the entire world, support from every government, enough money to last multiple life times. the jaeger program is kept in effect, but at a much smaller scale due to the reduced likelihood of an attack; so, when the radar picks up the possibility of another attack years after the last one, kento isn’t happy to hear you’ve volunteered yourself for the war efforts. there are new recruits, younger recruits, even other experienced recruits who never fully retired—he doesn’t understand why it has to be you. he just got happy with his life with you. it turns into a whole argument, and ends with you leaving for your old base by yourself. your old jaeger has long since been retired, and you feel nervous stepping into the cockpit of a new mech after all these years, but much of it dissipates when you step in to find kento already suited up and waiting for you, because there’s no way he’d let you go out to war without him by your side. 

it’s a poorly kept secret that you and megumi are soulmates. with an almost perfect drift compatibility and a lifetime of friendship to solidify your coordination and teamwork, the only mystery is why you two refuse to actually date each other. your argument is that there’d be no privacy or true intimacy in that relationship—you and megumi are already, always, physically in each other’s minds; dating wouldn’t leave room for anything more. megumi’s argument is that he’s simply waiting for you to realize that you’ve been in his head long before your first drift sequence. when people aren’t wondering about the status of your relationship, they often take note about how even though you and megumi are co-pilots, you resemble pilot and mech more often than not: you have the controls and megumi seems to carry out your every command. 

[greenerteacups]

hi GT!

Lionheart had me the moment you kicked it off with “it’s a nice day to start again.” Might i ask why you chose that particular line?

And, if you havent already answered to this emoji:

❄️

P.s: you have my eternal gratitude for creating the most brilliant piece of writing i’ll ever read. I shout about it from the rooftops, share it on my socials, requested my spouse to read it so we may discuss it together (in lieu of a present for my 30th birthday), et cetera.

I see from your URL you are a fellow lad of taste.

There's a couple things going on in the epigraph for Book 1. On one level, it's a lyric from the first muggle song I picture Draco listening to on his walkman at the end of the book, so there's a cute full-circle thing there. The second layer is the theme of change and redemption, which, in Lionheart, doesn't so much come from major moments or self-sacrifice, but from the slow, grueling, everyday work of living, and living better. It's a nice day to start again because every day is. You always have the opportunity to start making better choices, no matter what lies behind you. That's the thesis of any Draco redemption arc, right? You have to imagine that he could have chosen to be better.

And then thirdly, there's the audacity of doing a full Hogwarts canon rewrite, a good 30 years after the original books came out, millions upon millions of words of fanfic later, and basically asking everyone to read the same story they did the first time around, only different. So it's a kind of winking entreaty. It's saying to readers, many of whom are understandably wary of doing it over, zeroing out the characters to starting positions, and starting from the beginning with 11-year-olds all over again. It's going: "hey. That was fun, right? Why not do it again?"

[wereshrew-admirer]

thinking vaguely about the affliction cleave

[ghostbeam]

I am in fact cooking up pilot!touya who’s reckless and arrogant and does not think he needs a handler doesn’t think he needs anything actually he’s his own mechanic no one touches his mech but him he’s gone through so many handlers he’s stopped counting so when u arrive as his newly appointed handler he thinks he’ll give u a week at most except something about u makes him want to keep u around the longer he spends with u and as much as he shows u every rotten inch of himself u don’t run away which is more than anyone’s really ever given him before

[amethiosspouse]

Aquamarine sibs theme but instead of if I can stop one heart from breaking, it's the day you vanished with the stars from hi3 😭

Or worse: NIGHTGLOW. 💀

STOP NOT NIGHTGLOW NOOOOOO 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭

ISTG IF WE LOOSE HSR HIMEKO TOO IM GOING TO DIE. WELT DIDNT DIMENSION HOP FOR NOTHING!!!

But like....I have an idea for a possible AU outcome.

ok this is such a long explanation but:

This takes place after Amethio ends up joining the RVT and leaving Mari to fill in for him as an Admin. Mari becomes so mentally unstable they need an AI of some sort to help them pilot their body. During one of their battles with the RVT, Mari's robot thing gets impaled (YET AGAIN! BROSKI CANNOT ESCAPE THE IMPALEMENT DEATH!!!) while Mari is INSIDE the robot, asleep! :3

Originally, I was gonna have Amethio's Ceruledge do the impaling but it would be angstier if it was one of Aqua's Pokemon.

AND BONUS: NIGHTGLOW IS PLAYING IN THE BACKGROUND WHILE MARI GETS IMPALED :3

[magical-art-blog]

An AU Kato I have... the girl ever....

[cuppajj]

Overlord (human name Olivio Lordizabal) in this AU is the pilot of one of the largest Commander Class mecha to be forged from the core of Primus, linked to it by a special spark only 0.1% contain. His incredible strength and dangerous prowess had him specifically chosen for the P6 program, which gave a select few pilots and their mecha cybernetic enhancements as well as exoskeletons made from impenetrable material. With his new upgrades, Overlord went from a formidable foe to a terrifying force of destruction, though he would ultimately go rouge toward the end of the war.

Post-war, Overlord has been known as a rogue terror throughout Cybertron and its colonies. He slips in and out of the public eye, and it's unknown if he has an ulterior motive or causes the chaos he does just for the fun of it.

He's an avid enjoyer of "mech-shucking," a disturbing practice in which a mech is attacked by another mech, and is bound, pinned, or subdued. The attacking pilot springs from their cockpit, and with a special weapon that cuts through metal, breaks into the cockpit of their victim and kills them. Other forms include the attacking mech plunging its fist into the chest of the other mech, ripping the cockpit and thus the pilot out with it. It's mainly practiced by bandits, but Overlord has targeted unfortunate souls himself for his own pleasure.

He's about 85% cybernetics, with a shell of synthetic skin and impenetrable metal covering most if not all of his body.

[daily-linkclick]

im gonna miss xixi every day until forever, lowkey want the og timeline to be restored so that she can live

oughgh... sometimes i delude myself into thinking she can still be alive through qiao ling NOT in the sense that her powers transferred to ql (i actually hate that idea) but in the sense that her soul transferred to ql but not in the intrusive way it's like now ql has a little tianxi ai who she can talk to . for fun

[hawnks]

HANDLER HANDLER HANDLER

i'm imagining handler!reader x pilot!gojo and I am foaming out the mouth, thanks for the new brain plague mint

Pilot!Gojo is pompous, callous, and mercurial.

You’ve got your work cut out for you

[h-didanart]

It's not nexus but he would be proud

Sent this twice

Still, awwww

:3

I could actually see Nexus (pre evil arc) building little gadgets for the baby and having them run around to test them or something, it’d be cute and slightly terrifying

[howlingmoon08]

A Sonic Au based off a Godzilla movie from me??? Crazy!!! anyway very loosely inspired by the mechagodzilla duology from the millenium and maybe pacific rim? I got to see Tokyo SOS in theaters a few months back and I couldn't resist. Fun Fact, Mecha Sonic is based off of Mecha Godzilla so, I'm suprised I lasted this long. Sonic is a mech pilot working in sync with Mecha's AI through a mind link helmet and they fight giant monsters together c:

[comradewodka]

so sometimes things in LANCER get a little weird?

a little funky?

and your squad ends up stuck into an alternate dimension where you're misfit teens playing D&D in a spooky small town in the 80s?

just as a treat

[whatudottu]

Something about Altered Loyalties CYLAS just really makes me want to include him in the first place but also makes me really really REALLY think that with the more supernatural elements of AL based off of the original TFP pilot (or just first episode/s?) that CYLAS as a ‘dead man walking’ would actually let him stay around longer AND also be a very significant contributing factor to Megatron’s downfall in Decepticon favour!

Of course it’s not as if I have the pieces of the TFP rewrite au firmly put into place, CYLAS in canon shows up just over halfway into season 2, and many of my most established changes occur in the first like… including all the parts of ‘Darkness Rising’ 8 episodes of season one; I have no idea if the environment CYLAS presents himself in is the same one canon CYLAS does.

But with the dubiousity between s1 e8 all the way to s2 e19, I’ll establish the basic context… I think in story mode maybe…

Looking at the general timeline for the Aligned Continuity, it says that the first contact of cybertronians on Earth is dated to about 500 years before the show, give or take a decade. I’ve been listing Skyquake’s little EHP pitstop to have existed at least 50 years before the war reached our planet, but what if I pushed it all the way back to 500; if a vorn is 83 years, that’d be about 6 years on an entirely different planet not knowing truly if your twin is going to make it, a planet which by the way presently has no established radio systems that it’s horrifically quiet for a terrestrial environment.

That means that Skyquake’s EHP Comms Array has been transmitting a signal long before humans had developed radio, which also means that what might’ve been blatantly an anomaly in the system if discovered 50 odd years previous to 2012 (which would’ve been in the 60s give or take which would not have been good in the literal middle of the cold war era) has been going for centuries because it had always been there, there is no anomaly because it is a signal that has existed ever since humans were able to manipulate radiowaves into sending messages and translate them into detectable noise. It helps that cybertronian language and code (both code lang and like literal programming code) is a system unknown to humans developing their own language.

And you may be asking, why did I divert this post from talking about CYLAS and how he’d outlast his canon alternate to radio shit? Well, if you were a paramilitary organisation who is pretty good at erasing signals and you discovered a signal that has been actively running for the entirety of human radio has suddenly been silenced, what would you begin to suspect at that?

Aliens may potentially be a stretch but MECH didn’t just name themselves after the cybertronians fighting war on their planet, and once the cybertronian conflict touched down on Earth, the Decepticons hadn’t a need for an intergalactic communications array and in fact was specifically instructed to switch it off in an effort to prevent the Autobots from using it. That would’ve been about maybe 6 years ago for the show (wow just enough equivalent time to match what Skyquake felt he spent grounded to one radio tower look at that) and though MECH would not encounter their first cybertronian until ‘Convoy’ (haha wait that’s s1 e9 the next ep to cover - if necessary - for Altered Loyalties lmao), they would’ve had 6 years to find that missing signal and stumble across some very definitely alien technology.

That is one of the reasons why the rewrite of ‘Masters and Students’ which is less masters and students focused - rather the point is Skyquake, a team of Nemesis stationed vehcions and Starscream investigate the comms array and set it up manually - why the radio tower wasn’t switching on from a remote position.

The other reason was because the Guardian unit stationed at the comms array - the very ones that had accompanied Skyquake all those stellar cycles ago - had gone missing. Why?

Because of Megatron’s flagrant use of Dark Energon.

Points 1 and 2 listed above leads to the explosion of the comms array, the death of Skyquake, and MECH either being alerted to the point of alien contact or just in general going to the site for more study only to find a dead specimen. After the discovery of the Autobots with the body of Skyquake, MECH begins their initial study and dissection of cybertronian physiology, though without a live subject they couldn’t exactly see what parts function in what way, especially the t-cog.

The discovery of Skyquake led to the discovery of terrorcons which lead to the discovery of how to take down a cybertron and how to take it apart without it screaming. MECH would learn the programming of a cybertronian through vehicon terrorcons since, even with DE corruption, their processors are still somewhat being maintained. While probably not able to access memories (they are fickle things, memory centres, easy to damage storage or to corrupt files) there are still systems responsible for pain and other more processor based responsibilities that aren’t centred in a physical organ that reads in fine print it’s function.

Breakdown being MECH’s first fully functional living mecha for their study is so exciting for them (even if Breakdown is very much less enthused) because they can put what knowledge they’ve pieced together to be far more efficient with their time and focus on the elements they could not decipher from either corpse or zombie and potentially try and prod at Breakdown’s brain for some cohesive coding. Good think Bulkhead still shows up when he does even with Breakdown walking away with the dreadful thought of ‘how the hell do these fleshies already know so much’ boring into his head… mainly through the optic that was still drilled out-

Whether or not MECH needs to get another living cybertronian to get caught up in their understanding of the biomechanics of them (aka would 'Operation: Bumblebee' take place as it does) or they skip right onto making a remote control Prime having gotten a headstart on their knowledge and scaring the scrap out of any bot unlucky enough to be unconscious around them, eventually Silas gets smooshed and MECH scientists are reliant on their alien dissections to get the human puree back to the land of the living.

I'd assume that this was the case in the original since if Silas' biomatter was able to be collected from a pile of robot drone induced rubble the RC truck would've been able to be recovered as well, but MECH discovers that using Nemesis Prime as a lifesupport system does not work given all it's functionality is focused on visually replicating another cybertronian, rather than using it to create life. There's a lot of parts and systems to a cybertronian's biological ecology that wasn't put into consideration for a mimic toy that prove detrimental to creating a suitable ah... skin suit essentially for Silas' blood pudding, but MECH has an abundance of corpses ready and raring to be used just so long as they piece them back together again.

Amid MECH's collection would no doubt be a mass of vehicon bodies - some untouched by energon others taken down explicitly by MECH because they were terrorcons - some terrorcons made up from the bodies of the previous conflict pre-show (and not just a hypothetical ancient war, but explicitly the conflict that culled a lot of Autobot and Decepticon officers amid the show expected vehicon death), and the very first cybertronian sample they started studying, Skyquake himself! Being at the origin of the blast at the EHP Comms Array he wasn't kept in perfect condition for one, the arm he loses as a terrorcon in the Shadowzone is still lost - it's been buried under rubble after being severed with radio tower pieces - and the monochromatic glass over his optics has long since been shattered so you can see the 'pupil' aka sensor, but seeing as how CYLAS makes Breakdown's corpse somehow look worse than what Airachnid left it as MECH probably has to suture that fucker back up because there's not way his organs have been left untouched!

And once CYLAS has been successfully integrated into his new cybertronian shell (some sort of arm, either being a loaner from another corpse or straight up just one MECH invented, it could even be a copy of the missing arm but where's the fun in that) instead of getting all high and mighty about 'being of a superior species' Silas actually bloody thinks on MECH's plans going forward. With a literal army of paramilitary personnel, from the scientists that melded human flesh with cybertronian wires to the average grunt soldier fighting between the battles of iron giants, CYLAS has something that Megatron (at least the Altered Loyalties Megatron I have written previously) has wanted from the start of the series...

An undying force.

For as large as cybertronians physically are their numbers can never match the scale of humanity, I can't remember if the books mentioned only thousands of the dead or up to a million over the course of like... a long fucking time but, that's not even the number of the human population if you're caught up with the number (nearly 8 billion alive today). And with the dead of previous battles already roaming the Earth, in a world where Megatron still being only like one dude can't command a planet wide population of zombies, the only reason he doesn't turn his blade to the weakest denominators of his forces in his plagued state is because their conscious decision to serve him is worth more than mindless servitude.

CYLAS introducing himself and MECH as a solution to this issue, and providing a show of bountiful body horror, makes not even the Decepticon high command quite as safe as they had been; not that it's been proven to be safe standing by Megatron's side given his track record of wanting his SiCs beaten or killed but...

The fact that CYLAS just so happened to have given and then promptly brutalised Dreadwing's hope that Skyquake may have been actually alive, just severely damaged (and, bond weakened from distance and prior injury, clinging to the last shreds of 'my spark didn't kill me with him' reasoning) and broke him out of the spell of blind loyalty to his once great leader.

CYLAS in this version has a little bit more longevity to his existence within the Decepticon forces, not actually a Decepticon soldier as the canon CYLAS pledged himself as but 'The Human Factor' the episode so calls itself akin to the way the American government and the human children are to the Autobots, but being able to physically go toe-to-toe with cybertronians. Megatron might be a little tired of dealing with independents after Airachnid's escapade (I do intend to make her more into a poacher/torturer type character than another Starscream so she might act out a little differently), but Silas isn't one for licking boots anytime soon and as CYLAS, Megatron is no different; you'd think he wouldn't have even done that in the first place given he's already an ex-military 'take-no-nonsense' bitch, but the Breakdown in him probably made him a lapdog...

Anyway that's a whole big post about Altered Loyalties CYLAS... or at least the in depth reasoning behind why he could still integrate himself into the story and why he'd probably have more opportunity to lasting- i prommy it's not bc i like torturing skyquake likers *wink*

I guess this is now a canon event or at least I'll try to make it canon ;)