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[Kiiyor]

With gentle finesse, Stalkerdude coaxed his crosshairs until they pointed just over the heart of his target. Muttering a final prayer to the gods of convergence, he squeezed the trigger. Half a heartbeat later, 6 recently buffed azure blobs of death screamed out over the landscape and impacted spectacularly in the general area he was aiming at. With a comically large hole in its chest, the enemy Hunchback toppled slowly to the ground.

Stalkerdude cheered jubilantly as the sudden heatspike caused the paint to peel from his mech. A heartbeat later, the crippling heat overwhelmed the piteous attempt at containment made by his not-quite-double heat sinks, and his giant walking phallus offered one final whining groan before it shut down... as Stalkerdude knew it would.

You can't be a member of the Hexa club without being prepared.

First things first; extinguisher. Most Hexa pilots panicked the first time they caught fire, but for Stalkerdude it was old-hat.

With a resigned sigh, Stalkerdude then flipped the catch on his harness and reached for the duffel he had packed earlier. Passport, spare clothes, three days of food and water were all as he left them, but he checked them again anyway out of habit.

Stepping to the rear of his cockpit, he threw the internal locks on his boarding hatch, and stepped out into outside air that was still oppressively warm despite the near freezing ambient temperatures. Careful to avoid direct contact with any still glowing surfaces, he gingerly made his way down the boarding ladder on his mech and jumped the last few feet, his boots crunching through sand that had been blast heated to glass, or 'Alpha glass' as his fellow Hexa pilots referred to it.

Any other pilot in the same situation would likely have run sprinting for cover at that stage, as the battle still raged fiercely around him, but Stalkerdude was more than familiar with this kind of danger. Familiar enough to have bred contempt for it. Whistling a jaunty tune he had picked up after his last alpha strike, he set off in a bee line towards the spaceport his lance had arrived at only hours before.

The return trip took three days, but he wasn't in a hurry. He passed the time on his trek using his ancient six shooter to fill the local wildlife with holes, fantasising that the almost-squirrels he was dispatching were Goons, and cheering in particular delight whenever he managed to bring down any of the local bird life. "EAT LEAD, LOWTAX!" he would cheer, then chuckle at his own cleverness.

Eventually, he walked into the spaceport, bypassing the front desk, as he had purchased his ticket in advance. He was excited; it was a long time since he'd last been to Solaris.

Months passed, and turned into years. Eventually though, his chrono beeped at him, telling him it was time. So he returned.

He traced a return path that almost exactly mirrored his boot prints from before. He was mildly surprised to see that some of the bird carcasses remained. Big suckers, he thought, but seeing their bones still made him chuckle.

All too soon, he was back at the foot of his mech, with the original battle still bizarrely raging around him. He tucked a picture into his pocket, and as he began to climb, the faces of his new children and beautiful wife warmed him almost as much as the still hot armor plating on his mech.

Settling into his command couch, he fastened his harness just as ol' Betty informed him that heat was back below shutdown levels, and settled his mind back into war mode as his displays flickered to life around him.

An instant after his HUD appeared a priority target was designated; there was a Centurion less than four hundred meters from him, STANDING STILL. Mentally chastising himself for using capital letters (even in his own head), he nonetheless coaxed his crosshairs into place, a familiar excitement building in him as he took half a breath and held it before he gently squeezed the trigger...

And missed.

With a dramatic sigh, he rolled his eyes (which is difficult to do when their moisture has been flash-evaporated) and reached for his duffel again. He had heard that Luthien was lovely this time of year.