A Poor Mirror
#11 of Flavor Text
New art from SShurArt on twitter! They did a lovely job, and I wrote a short for it!
Mallory had never hated her own face as much as she did right now.
Perfectly illuminated by studio lights, touched up by real makeup and digitally post-processed effects alike, it was truly flawless on that poster. Not a single red hair out of place as she held the Federation's battle flag.
Here in the hot cargo hold of a pirate freighter she was significantly less composed.
The smartrope did a great job of imitating the roughness of real hemp biting into her skin and leaving marks, her hair had been unfixed and askew since her capture, and the heat and humidity of this vessel left her fair skin coated in a thin sheen of sweat that made her freckles even more vivid. The poster downplayed them, but here in the real world things weren't just how Federation graphic designers imagined their ideal top ace to look like.
Here in the real world there wasn't a full squadron flying over her head. Here in the real world she was alone. Separated from any allies. There was no rescue in sight, nothing but the kind of people she'd been hunting down for years. Pirates with friends dead by her hand as her face smiled at them from the same propaganda that now graced the closet she'd been stuffed in.
They'd want revenge. And with how they'd stripped her she knew exactly what they had in mind.
In spite of the heat, Mallory shivered.