KAIJU (怪獣kaijū, Japanese) Giant Beast.
JAEGER (ya'gar, German) Hunter.
My name is Felicity Smoak…
I loved monster movies when I was a kid – especially the old black and white classics. I'm not talking the Dracula or Frankenstein type things, but the real all-out Godzilla on a rampage type movies. For some reason watching those giant lizards tear through cardboard cities used to make me laugh. My mother never understood the draw, but she would gamely take me to see them when a theater had a flashback weekend. I would tell her stories about how I wanted to be the scientist who figured out how to beat the monster. She would laugh and remind me that monsters like that didn't exist, but she hoped I would still become a scientist. I would lay in bed that night staring out my window at the stars and wish I could see a real monster, just once…but then I would roll over and go to sleep, comfortable in the knowledge that monsters weren't real.
Then my wish came true…and everything changed.
I was eight years old when the first kaiju made landfall in San Francisco on August 11, 2023. I remember watching the big screens in the casino as it showed the monster destroying building after building, monument after monument, city after city. It was the first time I'd snuck onto the game floor and not gotten scolded. My mother, a cocktail waitress there, just collapsed into an empty chair and pulled me onto her lap. Tears etched their way down her cheeks. That frightened me more than the monster on the screen. To me it had been just another monster movie, but when I saw my mother crying, I realized something was very, very wrong.
Only much later did I come to understand that tens of thousands of lives were being lost as we watched.
The kaiju continued to come, one at a time, through the Breach. At first there were months between appearances and cities were being decimated – if not by the kaiju themselves, then by the only force humanity possessed that seemed capable of taking them down. Regular weapons didn't work – jets, tanks, nothing. Only tactical nuclear missiles seemed to do the trick. It was like killing the patient to cure the disease. There had to be a better way. Governments all over the world began to put aside old rivalries and shelve current disputes to try and figure out a different solution.
Thus evolved the Jaeger Project.
Humanity came together in an unprecedented fashion to deal with the kaiju and their threat to all life. The best minds from engineering, robotics, and the military united to create a force capable of fighting the kaiju. Giant mobile robots commanded by Rangers were built – each robot becoming an extension of their pilot's body thanks to the neural interface. The Jaegers could go toe-to-toe with the kaiju, standing up to them in a way conventional weaponry could not. There were set backs of course – there always is with new technology. The sheer power of the neural interface overloaded the first test pilot. It was discovered that two pilots could bear the load together, but it required them to be compatible to an unusual degree. They would need to be locked into a bond that came to be known as a neural handshake. That level of trust would not be easy as it required the sharing of one's mind with another person, or 'Drifting'. Pairs able to reach this level were called 'Drift-compatible'. Partners would share a Headspace no one other than another pair could comprehend. There were even reports of 'Ghost Drifting' – when the link between partners would remain active, though muted, after being disconnected from the machine. This is how tight the bond between partners could be. It deepened the trust between them even as it compounded the potential for psychological trauma should one of the partners die.
Most Rangers don't survive if their partner is lost during battle – the overload from suddenly piloting solo combined with the traumatic psychic backlash overwhelms them.
I was nine when the first Jaegers began to take back the seacoasts of the Pacific in 2024. Growing up in Las Vegas kept me isolated somewhat from the ongoing war with the kaiju as they continued to come through the Breach. I would watch every news report and read anything I could get my hands on. I actually built up an extensive set of files on the Jaegers, their pilots, and the kaiju they defeated. That was as close as I got. Then, when I was thirteen, a group of Jaeger Rangers came to the casino while on Las Vegas for leave. They were like rock stars. Everyone wanted to see them, to talk to them. I recognized them of course – like I mentioned, I had files. Still I think almost anyone would have recognized these guys – the Rangers were the new media elite. Brothers Yancy and Raleigh Becket, childhood friends Oliver Queen and Sara Lance, plus a handful of others. Most of them were technically too young to be in the casino proper, but who was going to say no to them? I didn't bother them, mostly tried to watch them surreptitiously whenever I could slip past security…which wasn't all that often by then. It's hard being halfway between a cute kid and a grown-up. I did get to meet Sara Lance though and promptly managed to make a bit of a fool of myself when I stumbled over my words. She laughed, but not in a mean fashion, and told me I was 'cute'. Looking back, I'm pretty sure it was 'cute in a naïve little girl' sort of a way, but she was friendly and even showed me a new way to sneak around the casino. I liked her.
Two years later, the kaiju evolved.
Or at the very least they figured out the truth behind the Jaegers. On February 29, 2030, Yancy and Raleigh Becket stepped into the Conn-Pod of their Mark III Jaeger Gipsy Danger to face off against the kaiju labeled AK-20, colloquially known as 'Knifehead'. During the subsequent fight, Yancy Becket was killed in action, leaving his brother Raleigh to finish the battle on his own – Raleigh Becket defeated the kaiju despite the overload and trauma he suffered during the battle and at his brother's death. It was determined that Leatherback somehow knew the Rangers were there. It knew before it actually saw them…and that meant the kaiju knew. The conclusion gained even more evidence a year later when another kaiju fought Green Arrow, killing Sara Lance. As with Raleigh Becket and Gipsy Danger, Oliver Queen managed to continue piloting his half-shattered Jaeger long enough to defeat the kaiju. Both men left Ranger service – scarred in every way, physically and psychically. The war turned – Jaeger losses began to stack up and the world leaders decided they no longer provided adequate protection for their cost – not enough 'band for the buck'.
Then in April 2030 came the trifold plan to sunset the Jaegers.
Great walled fortifications would be built along every coastline along the Pacific Ocean while citizens would be evacuated and relocated further inland. At the same time there would be undersea barriers built in the South Pacific to prevent the kaiju from moving into either the Atlantic or Indian Oceans. Humanity ceded the Pacific Ocean to the kaiju invaders and chose to build their walls. The wall designers promised everyone that the fortifications would be 'unbreachable'.
History alone should have told everyone that such a promise was hard to keep.
I graduated high school a year later at sixteen and went directly into college. Although I had always been fascinated by computers and technology something prompted me to choose a different line of study. I chose to study the Breach itself – physics, tectonics, anything that might relate to the Breach and how it worked. Not that I gave up technology – it just became more of a support to my main tract. My mother thought I was choosing a dead end line of study. She continued to hold faith in the walls and thought I'd never get the chance to pursue anything more than shadows and unprovable theories. I, with all my teenage hubris, huffed at her and said I had more faith in science and technology than any wall ever built. We fought about it and I moved out completely at age eighteen, transferring to M.I.T. to finish my bachelor's degree at nineteen. Thanks to a lot of luck with mentors and financial aid, I decided to remain at M.I.T. and continue my education. Most of my teachers and fellow classmates tended to shake their heads at me, but a handful agreed it was stupid to think we could just ignore the kaiju and trust them to stay trapped like overgrown fish in the fishbowl of the Pacific. We were proven right on December 27, 2034 when the kaiju known as Mutavore broke through the wall at Sydney, Australia.
The barriers proved to be nothing more than a child's blanket – something we pulled over our heads to convince ourselves we were safe from the monsters lurking in the dark.
The Jaegers were called back into action – what few remained. The Mark IV's Crimson Typhoon from China and Cherno Alpha from Russia along with the first ever Mark V Striker Eureka from Australia were all in Hong Kong, readying for decommission and becoming part of a museum to humanity's effort to defeat the kaiju. Another 'relic' had been restored and upgraded – the Mark III, Gipsy Danger. No one outside of the Pan Pacific Defense Corps knew why it was allowed to be upgraded before becoming a museum piece, but everyone was thankful for the unexpected foresight of the PPDC. In an unprecedented double attack on the city of Hong Kong, all four Jaegers once again fought for the survival of humanity. Crimson Typhoon and Cherno Alpha were both lost in battle against Otachi and Leatherback while Striker Eureka was rendered temporarily inoperative by an electro-magnetic pulse let off by Leatherback. The unexpected EMP rendered all digital systems inoperative, even affecting the Hong Kong Shatterdome. Gipsy Danger then entered the battlefield. Once considered a relic, the old Mark III had not suffered from the EMP since she wasn't digital – she was analog, nuclear. Piloted by the recommissioned Raleigh Becket and newly commissioned Mako Mori, Gipsy Danger took down both kaiju and walked away from the battle – scorched and battered, but not out.
Four days later, on January 12, 2035, Gipsy Danger and Striker Eureka did more than any other Jaeger ever created to prove the worth of the Jaeger project – they sealed the Breach itself.
I found myself at twenty years old feeling torn about the Breach being sealed. On the one hand, I was ecstatic. No more kaiju, no more death and destruction due to these monstrous sized beings from another dimension out to claim the earth for their own. On the other hand, I faced yet more derision and exasperation at my chosen field of science. Several of my mentors, formerly quite supportive, tried to redirect me to other fields. I remained stubbornly defiant, continuing my research into the Breach and any field I felt related – such as seismology and volcanology. I received my Master's degree at twenty-two. In my chosen fields, however, I would need a doctorate to be taken seriously, so I remained at school. As part of my education I began to compare various energy readings at all points of the Pacific Rim, everything and anything released by the movement of the various tectonic plates. I still kept up with the various news reports of the former Rangers, but they grew more sporadic as the threat began to recede. While still considered heroes, they were allowed to fade into the background as each anniversary passed. Life moved on, along with most of the people in my field of study. Although Jaegers were still being built, they had different functions now and the people who drove them would never have made the cut as Rangers. Everyone began to settle back into a pre-kaiju sense of superiority. Hints of old rivalries and jealousies began to raise their heads once more.
In the spring of 2040, everything changed…again.
…and I'm the one who told the world to reset the clock.