Hello all!
So, this isn't a full return to The Sentinel, Jonny Quest, OR the Temple Steps Alight series. However, it's very much an AU of TTSA. It's also a crossover with the movie "Pacific Rim." If you haven't seen it, I highly recommend it. On the surface, it's robots versus monsters; but peel away that one thin layer and you have a LOT of story about identity and trust and what it means to form a bond with someone. Pretty fertile ground for TTSA or TS, really.
Sorry this is going up 3 at a time – I'm a few weeks behind. The last 4 chapters will go up every Monday for the rest of the year.
No spoilers for TTSA per se, but a lot of crossover ideas.
Enjoy!
"Lightning, your presence from ground to sky. No one knows what becomes of me, when you take me so quickly." – Rumi
"Jim, I need to reactivate you."
Jim didn't bother to quell the wash of rage that rose in his chest. Even knowing that it was insubordination, he crossed his arms and glared across the table. "No."
"That wasn't a request." Simon Banks was one of the few people who could match a full-power Ranger Jim Ellison Death Glare without flinching. Even other Marshals had been known to wither when Jim turned that concentrated, icy coldness on them. But Simon had lived a life surrounded by people just as fiery and stubborn as Jim and had learned to hold his own long before being caught up in a war of monsters.
They were friends, too, not just Marshal and Ranger. However, when Simon's easy smile fell and his expression went as hard and unmoving as a mountain, being friends didn't mean he cut Jim an inch of slack he wouldn't give to his other Rangers.
And today he couldn't afford to offer him any slack at all.
Jim never looked away from Simon, though his shoulders rose with his fury; like an apex predator, he tensed as if to launch an attack of claw and fang.
"You can't reactivate me, Simon."
"I can and I will." Simon leaned forward, meeting Jim's unspoken challenge evenly. "Dammit, Jim. You know better than anybody how badly we're undermanned right now. All the PPDC analysts say the same thing – when the currents change we're going to get an increase of Kaiju hitting too far south for Alaska to back us up."
That made Jim blink. "Whatever happened to us being just a reserve shatterdome? Research only, right?"
"As of this morning, we're being promoted to full, active service." Simon didn't sigh, but he wanted to. "We have to keep up our research and advanced training, but the PPDC wants us to take some of the pressure off Los Angeles until the next couple of shatterdomes are fully operational."
"That'll take years!"
Simon gave him a dour, unamused look. "You think?" He shook his head. "Like it or not, we're a shatterdome and we have to start pulling our weight full-time."
"Then request support from somewhere else."
"From where? Nobody's approved budgets for the year. Nothing's getting done until the UN resolves the energy negotiations. But you know that isn't the real problem. I've got two Jaegers. What I don't have is even one functional pilot team."
Jim could feel the trap closing around him and he only barely held back a growl. "I'm retired, Marshal." He made Simon's title as much of an insult as he dared.
Simon sat back. "Let me put it to you this way, Ranger. Either you suit up, or your star cadet is going out there with someone just as green as he is the next time we're attacked. How do you think that'll end?"
Jim's hands curled into fists. "Who would you even send? There isn't anyone else who's ready!"
"Yes. There is."
Jim pushed to his feet, horrified by the realization of what Simon meant. "Over my dead body."
Simon stood as well and met Jim's glare eye-to-eye. "I don't have any other options, Ellison. Either you suit up with the kid, or I'll do whatever I have to in order to keep Cascade safe. Including recruiting the only reserve I can. Your choice. Dismissed, Ranger."
Jim shoved out of the Marshal's office and slammed the door, making the metal squeal and echo down the stark corridor.
My choice? Dammit, Simon. That isn't a choice at all.
Jim headed off to find Blair.
-==OOO==-
"Five points to one." Jessie scowled at the pair on the mat. "Again."
Beside her, Race picked up a pair of boots and flung them at the losing candidate. "Hit the showers. You're gonna be in here for twelve hours tomorrow if that's what it takes to get you in shape."
The young man caught only one boot, poking himself in the leg with his hanbo while he flailed to retrieve the second from the Kwoon mats. He managed a messy bow before he fled the room.
The remaining candidates were almost too disciplined to laugh, but Race turned on them with a frown anyway. "All of you! Out!"
As the room cleared, Jessie shoved herself upright, catching her weight on her crutches and hobbling to the edge of the mat. She glared. "That was pathetic."
Jonny rolled his shoulders. "You're telling me. Somebody must have been asleep at the Academy to let Marc through like that."
"I mean you." Jessie balanced carefully so she could point an accusing finger. "You should have ended it in the first sequence!"
Jonny smirked. "Jealous, Ace?"
"Enough." Race joined Jessie at the edge of the mat, though his eyes were not so cold now that they were alone. He'd had to perfect his brusque, unapologetic style with cadets and newly-minted Rangers without letting any of his personal affection for a certain set of students show.
Everyone made the connection, of course. Jessie Bannon had all of her father's fire, his unforgiving standards, and his skill – the last name only confirmed what was obvious from the start. It took longer, and more 'dome gossip, for new arrivals to figure out that those whose uniforms said 'Quest' were just as much a part of the Bannon family. Or, rather, that Race and Jessie Bannon considered themselves full Quests and had since before any of them had joined Cascade's shatterdome.
Jonny quirked a smile at Race that went back to his childhood, back when Race was Jonny's tutor and his father's bodyguard, back when their world had been science and discovery instead of war. The first landfall of a Kaiju had changed everything for the world, and it had changed everything for the Quests.
Given the choice, Race wouldn't have signed up to put his family on the front-line of defending the planet. But Doctor Benton Quest hadn't given him one.
"How will they improve if I don't give them a chance?" Jonny asked, blinking his blue eyes with the same false innocence he had learned from his father.
"While there may be merit in your question," came a new voice, "I do not believe that is the true spirit with which you engaged your opponents, my friend."
Jonny turned and grinned as Hadji and Benton entered the Kwoon Combat Room. "Hiya Hadji! Calling it a day?"
"We are," Benton said, an arm comfortably around Hadji's shoulders. "I was politely reminded that we've missed dinner twice in the last three days, and encouraged not to do so again."
Race grinned at Hadji. "Nice goin', kid. Glad somebody's making sure the Doc remembers to eat."
Hadji merely inclined his head.
"We've got a few minutes," Jessie said. "Hey, Hadji. How about you remind Jonny that he's not invincible?"
Jonny turned and gave Jessie a dire look, but then spun back and jogged to the middle of the mat. "Yeah, c'mon! I could use a real workout!"
Hadji gave a tiny, serene smile and stepped out of his shoes and his working jumpsuit, revealing the soft, loose pants and shirt he wore beneath the sturdy coveralls which were usually stained and smeared with grease and oil. He folded the jumpsuit and set it on the concrete to one side, his shoes beside it. Then he moved onto the mat and faced Jonny.
"I shall be sure to challenge you sufficiently." Hadji's words were calm and polite, but there was a fierce light of challenge in his eyes.
Race tossed him a hanbo and Hadji caught it out of the air without looking.
Jessie grinned at Benton who moved to stand beside her. But she did not call out a start to the combat as she had for all the others, nor would she bother keeping score. Jonny and Hadji, when they fought together, never needed it.
Race winked at Jessie and Benton, watching as the two boys he had guarded for so long settled into their stances. They had yet to look away from one another, yet to break eye-contact, and they were already breathing in rhythm. All the sets of biological siblings that came through Cascade for additional training, even sets of twins, needed time to learn the synchronicity that had always come so naturally to these two.
It had never mattered that Hadji had been adopted into the Quest family from Calcutta as a child. It had never mattered that Jonny was as fair as his mother, blond and blue-eyed, and Hadji was equally dark skinned and dark eyed. It had never mattered that Hadji wore the dastar turban of his Sikh faith and Jonny wore nothing but t-shirts and jeans given the option. It had never mattered that Hadji had only taken the name Quest in secret, using Singh as his surname in the public eye. It had never mattered to Jonny that his adopted brother was adopted, was so different from himself.
Hadji had said it himself a year after his adoption – born in another country, culture, and creed, he was a Quest as surely as if he had sprung from Doctor Quest's very bloodline. He and Jonny were brothers, united by a common spirit, years of adventures and dangers and escapes, and a bond of trust that ran deeper than the Kaiju Breach.
Of course, the entire Quest family was surpassingly close, tightly knit and steeped in a loyalty that had only grown with the family. First it had been Benton and Jonny (and Rachel, lost so early that Jonny had no memory of his mother besides his father's deep sorrow), then Benton and Jonny and Race, and then Benton and Jonny and Race and Hadji. The four men had not thought they were incomplete until a few years later when Jessie, Race's daughter from a dissolved marriage, came to join them.
Jessie was different from the boys. Jonny was as brilliant as his father but took after Race in almost every way; Hadji was uniquely wise and highly intelligent and followed in Doctor Quest's footsteps quite closely – saving only for his studies into his metaphysical interests. But Jessie was equal parts Race and Benton, a fierce fighter and also a deep thinker. She was less likely to jump into danger than Jonny, more likely to reason through Hadji's mysterious wisdom, but she never failed to stand beside them when danger called.
As it had in the Kaiju War.
The instant the first Kaiju, a Category 1 later named 'Trespasser' had emerged from the ocean in San Francisco, there had been no doubt that the Quests would be needed. Benton was a world-renowned scientist in multiple fields, from phenomenology to computer science, and all his expertise and brilliance would be required to understand what had happened and try to recover from it. At first, the Quest family had simply investigated the attack as they did all others. But when Hundun appeared in Manilla six months later, they realized that this would not be like every other strange creature or sighting they had tracked across the world.
Instead, this was the beginning of an invasion, and the entire human race was in grave danger.
So they adapted. Benton was among the first scientists to officially create a division of study under the UN to try to unravel the mystery of the Kaiju before another could take more lives. When the PPDC was formed later that year, they absorbed Benton's division and split it into halves – K-Science to study the Kaiju themselves and J-Tech to find ways fight them. Benton disseminated his information to every scientist willing to work toward the cause. After the breakthrough in Jaeger technology was proven, K-Science and J-Tech divisions moved into the emerging shatterdomes to share resources, information, and ensure those on the front lines had the best possible science to support them.
By the time the PPDC founded the Academy to bring in as many pilots as they could possibly train to battle the Kaiju threat, Jonny and Jessie and Hadji had already been deep in the planning for the Ranger program. They were among the earliest cadets through the Academy, though they did not jump straight into piloting Jaegers right away; instead, they worked with Benton to improve the Drift system and the Jaeger OS. It wasn't that Jonny and Jessie would never ride a Jaeger against the Kaiju, though; it was that they were waiting for the right Jaeger to be built.
Hadji had not intended to become a Ranger, and he did not consider himself one even after he finished the Academy. He went through the training because Jonny and Jessie were there and he would not abandon them to any trial or fight. But as soon as he was finished, he returned to Benton to put his mind towards helping his adoptive father design the best possible Jaeger for Jonny and Jessie to pilot someday. Hadji also stepped into the void left when Benton could not be in two places at once, easily navigating both the K-Science and the J-Tech divisions and becoming a formidable partner to Benton; what he lacked in sheer brilliance he made up with tenacity, creativity, and an ability to decipher Benton's illegible notes.
As the Kaiju War sped up and more Jaegers were needed, Benton's work slowed on his own personal Jaeger, which he refused to release to any pilots other than Jonny and Jessie, so that he could contribute to others coming off the line around the world. Questor Storm was Benton's finest work, even before it was completed – a sleek, highly-maneuverable Jaeger that was a far cry from the bulky Mark 1s and early 2s.
It was also probably the safest Jaeger that would ever be built, though Benton tried to put his designs to work on as many units as possible.
Jaeger pilots tended to have short active careers before injury or death required them to be replaced. Benton was adamant that he would not lose two of his three children to the monsters who had claimed so many other lives. The PPDC was interested in safety, but not if safety compromised the speed of producing new units or increased the costs too much. Questor Storm was the only Jaeger Benton could afford to build to his exact specifications and he paid for most of it himself – and finally it was very nearly operational.
Of course, as fate would have it, two weeks before Questor Storm got the green light for a test run, Jessie fractured her leg while doing some routine work on Cascade's only other working Jaeger. Now Benton had his Jaeger which his son was eager to pilot, but Jonny had to find himself another copilot until Jessie healed.
Thus the long days in the Kwoon Combat Room while Jonny tore through the recent graduates of the Academy in search of a pilot with whom he would be Drift-compatible.
Jessie waited until the stillness between Jonny and Hadji shattered and the pair moved together like poetry before she spoke – they would be too caught up in the fight to overhear anything now.
"Doctor Quest, I still don't get it and they won't tell me. Why won't he do it?"
Benton exchanged a look with Race before he shook his head at her. "He isn't willing."
"Hadji's no coward. And he's Drift compatible with Jonny, more than I am by a longshot."
"Ponchita." Race put a hand on her shoulder. "It's his decision."
"But it doesn't make sense!" Jessie flung a hand out to the pair of boys that were her brothers and her family and her best friends, moving with such fluid oneness that they could have been a single mind even without the help of the Drift. "Look at them!"
Race couldn't help but recognize what she saw. None of the other candidates to Drift with Jonny were even in the neighborhood of the level of compatibility Hadji would have shared with him. Jessie and Jonny were a conventionally strong pairing and had successfully Drifted together in training at the Academy; by all possible pre-Drift test results, Jonny and Hadji shared a compatibility that was literally off the charts. But they hadn't ever run a test Drift.
And no one knew why. Neither would speak about it, no matter who asked or how loudly. Hadji had almost been court-martialed by the PPDC and still refused to participate in a trial Drift with anyone, including Jonny. And Jonny had backed him the entire time. They had stood shoulder-to-shoulder before the PPDC brass and had never relented.
"I think," Benton said after a moment, "that your real frustration isn't that Hadji won't Drift, but that you can't. And you don't approve of the other candidates for Jonny."
"Of course not." She snorted. "They're awful. They don't understand anything."
"And Hadji does," Race said softly. "He knows you both and you trust them both. Heck, the three of you kids might be able to sustain a stable three-way Drift if you tried."
Jessie nodded. They'd considered it – right up until Hadji refused to Drift. "So…"
"So I think we have to trust them," Benton said. "Hadji would not willingly endanger Jonny, no matter what. But he will let him choose a partner other than you as a copilot, in spite of your deplorable assessment of the candidates." Benton looked at his sons with an apprehension that he tried to hide under warmth. "I think we must trust Hadji's reasoning and Jonny's willingness not to fight him on it. We must let them choose whether or not to Drift and let Jonny find a different partner."
"Or," Race said, arching an eyebrow, "you can keep scaring the candidates until you get better and keep Jonny grounded in the meantime. You're doing a good job of that."
Jessie blushed but didn't flinch. "I've got two months until the cast comes off. Up to a year before I'm back to full strength. I'm not going to be able to stall that long."
"But it won't stop you from trying."
"Nope."
On the Kwoon mats, completely ignoring them, Jonny and Hadji were lost in a world of their own. They moved together effortlessly, striking and retreating, circling and evading, a constant push and pull between two perfectly balanced forces. Even when one hit the floor and struck upward, rolling into a new position, they rarely broke eye-contact and never broke rhythm. There was challenge and strength and fierceness and loyalty in every motion, in every breath.
Even so, their match had to end eventually. Most times, no one but themselves could tell if it was 'won' by one or the other or if they simply decided to stop at a natural point. Neither was typically 'defeated' and points were impossible to compare.
Tonight, Hadji spun and expertly swept Jonny's feet from him. They both hit the mats in a matching crouch, poised as if to leap at one another like cats. Then the tension fell away from them and Jonny sat back, laughing.
"Good one! Where'd you learn that new rotation?"
Hadji did not slump like Jonny, but he moved so that he could sit beside his brother and took down his turban to retie it after the combat had mussed its crisp lines. "Blair taught me."
That got Benton's attention. "You've been training with Blair Sandburg?"
Hadji looked up and nodded. "Even we must take breaks from our endless discussions, no matter how fascinating."
"Cool," Jonny said. He climbed to his feet and offered Hadji a hand, which the latter took without even looking up. "Think he's gonna actually step up as a Ranger?"
"Not a chance," Race said, shaking his head.
"Why not?" Jessie asked. "He should be on our list of candidates. He's passed the Academy, he's already familiar with everything J-Tech and K-Science have ever put together, and if he can handle the combat…?"
"Simple." Race shrugged. "Jim won't let him. Not in a million years."
The rest of the Quest family all nodded in sudden understanding.