The Kaiju, although defeated and gone, never fully left Earth. Skeletal remains, scattered body matter, lingering blood pollution, and the ever present and long-lasting destruction were what was left behind. With the clock stopped, humans were left to pick up the pieces and deal with whatever came next. Rebuilding cities and society from the crumbles was something that wouldn't happen in a day, and finding a new norm would be difficult for everyone in the world- difficult, yes, but not impossible. Yet, there was only problem Newt was concerned with.

What would be his purpose in this new world?

He had never thought about what would happen once the apocalypse was overcome, nor what he would be left to do for that matter. He didn't have the time to worry when monster's ran amok and threatened his very existence.

Yes, there were still Kaiju parts and matter lingering around, but once those were gone (if they weren't gone already because of unprofessional handling) where was he to go from there? Gottlieb would be fine- he was mathematician, a math geek- someone who could be needed for his simple facts and figures.

He, on the other hand, was useless in this new era (What was a Kaiju specialist without Kaiju?). Unnecessary. Expendable. Obsolete.

The moments of silence that came from the lack of work and attacks led him to wonder whether or not he'd be needed in the future and that itself set his normally happy mood sour and uncertain.

Now the V-Day celebration, it pushed aside all the worries from Newt's mind. After years of humanity fighting against giant, raving monsters, it was long overdue for an event where they could throw caution to the wind and live.

And, well, he was all about living.

The Shatterdome had explode the moment the clock stopped and the fight with the Kaiju ended, years of fighting for the survival over; with so many voices screaming and yelling all at once, it was a wonder none of them were deaf. It had been years since something this big was worth celebrating, and the party in Hong Kong was not going to end anytime soon.

It was the perfect chance to ignore the harsh reality of unemployment, he felt.

At one point of the party, Newt had lost sight of Gottlieb- they'd stayed together for the beginning, graciously taking in all the compliments and praise from men and women. During their separation, Newt had taken upon himself to drink whatever was handed to him, spotting Gottlieb after his third- no, fourth… fifth, definitely his fifth drink.

Newt tackled the man, both of them tumbling forward. Whatever he had been drinking spilled everywhere, but mostly all over Gottlieb (what was a little stain after the end of the apocalypse).

He'd never seen the man drunk and, at that moment, made it his duty to change that. If he was going to drink, so was his personal nerd, friendship dictated.

"No thank you," was the gruff response, Gottlieb politely yet forcefully pushing the bottle away. "I have no intention of throwing away all my self-respect for one night of regret. It's a wonderful occasion, Newton, but one I'd rather remember."

Just as the words 'party pooper' crossed Newt's foggy mind, Gottlieb roughly nudged him. "I am most certainly not!"

The man seemed to realize something, confusion settling onto his face. He stared at Newt, who stared back.

Then Gottlieb hastily and abruptly excused himself from the celebration, prying Newt's arm from his shoulder. With the amount of alcohol Newt had consumed, there was no hurt from the rejection (maybe he was a bit confused, but he was more than sure that was the buzz finally kicking in). He kept on with the other partying Shatterdome occupants, screaming and dancing about, while his fellow scientist made his way through the rowdy crowd.

And although he was wholly focused on drinking his troubles and stress away, determined to let nothing get in his way of having a great time, something was off.

He had been fine earlier, but then it wasn't fun anymore. The alcohol wasn't doing it for him and everyone around him seemed inadequate.

The feeling stopped when he glanced at the retreating figure of Gottlieb, who somehow managed his way through the sea of moving bodies. He didn't know why there was a pull in that direction, but he refused to let it sway him. If nothing, he was stubborn and adamant, determined that he get his party time whether it felt right or not.

He'd think about it later, he told himself- when he wasn't on the downward spiral of getting plastered. He could deal with it when he was sober and the world wasn't spinning, Gottlieb there to yell angry yet sensible things.

Because right then and there his head started to hurt, like a bunch of bees were buzzing inside his skull, and he needed to get incredibly drunk if he was going to get rid of it and have fun.

He tried to not to hold Hansen in a tight-and-not-so-manly hug for too long and refrained himself from blabbing on about how glad he was that the Jaeger program was still continuing under the new Marshal's watchful eye. With the paranoia that the Kaiju may come back (improbable) or that another extraterrestrial species may just decide to pay the human race a visit (slightly less improbable), their jobs were set in stone.

It didn't matter that he'd be stuck with Gottlieb, or that he'd have to deal with the man's lack of musical taste and fun. He was needed. He had a purpose.

He celebrated the moment he got to his work station, blasting out his killer music and dancing about. And when Gottlieb came in covering his ears, yelling to "turn down this blasted music or you'll make everyone within a mile of hearing permanently deaf," Newt took it upon himself to continue on and start singing, loudly.

It was only when everything was beginning to go right and some normality was achieved that he noticed.

A constant buzzing, ever present in the back of his head, demanding to be noticed. It wasn't overbearing most of the time (he could easily drown it out with his tunes when working); sometimes it was a muffled trilling inside his ear similar to that during the party and other times it was a tingling sensation beneath the skin.

More often than not, he'd suddenly realize he was clawing at his hair, a migraine forming. The twitching of his right eye, hand, or any other part of that side of the body that went along with the buzzing became more common.

He only half-noticed that Gottlieb would be twitching and clutching his head as well, but with his opposite.

But he didn't take it into account and he continued to ignore it (and he barely considered it strange that his symptoms seem to dominate whenever Gottlieb was around). Instead, he mulled over his samples, tried to get the new scientists over the fact that, yes, they're holding part of a Kaiju spleen, and secretly hoped that it would pass and fade into a distant memory.

And it did as he added more to his to-do list.

Not only was he helping Gottlieb in getting the newbs accustomed to the way of life in the Hong Kong Shatterdome and finding their own way of contributing to its cause, but his research had been enlarged. Hansen, under pressure of the paranoid government officials, tasked him with the job of finding new applications for the Kaiju matter. His purpose was even bigger than before and he relished it- so much, in fact, that the odd feelings and symptoms were pushed to the back of his mind.

It was more than satisfactory to rub it into Gottlieb's face. Boy, Newt loved getting the nerd close to looking like a vein was going to pop- life was more fun that way.

And during this time of his basking in his own importance, he seemed to know what kind of mood the mathematician was in, telling him whether or not the time was right to bother the highly tempered man.

He, of course, used it to his advantage, getting out of sticky situations concerning spilled Kaiju parts and a raving mathematician on more than one occasion. He had occasional feelings that somehow corresponded with the man at the time, leading him back to his earlier symptoms- random thoughts and emotions that sometimes revolved around him duct-taping his own mouth shut were strange, but he figured that Gottlieb was finally getting to him.

("Newton, I swear, if your Kaiju brain juices have ruined my equations-"

"Chill, Hermann, it'll come out- maybe.")

Really, he didn't want to think too hard about why he seemed to know how the other man ticked, or why they both could get into a familiar argument without much thought and knew exactly what to say. These arguments were more comfortable than those during the Kaiju period, less hostile and more friendly. Newt was always sure of himself when the mathematician entered or exited a room, or when he was in any kind of proximity. But, he figured that was from years of working together than anything else.

And the times were he just knew what the mathematician was going to say we're strange, but expected (kind of). They'd gone through a hell of a ride together, hadn't they?

After the clock stopped, Gottlieb hadn't once made any inclination that he was going to speak of their dive into the drift and their newfound compatibility, so Newt made no attempt in return. Thus, their abnormal knowledge and resonance with the other was ignored and smartly avoided by all who noticed. Talk by Raleigh and the Marshal about testing the two was brought up, but the idea was soon left to gather dust, silly and outrageous as it was.

Although the thought of compatibility crossed his mind on more than one occasion, along with probabilities and statistics of symptoms and results that could've derived from the drift, he would shake the thoughts away.

That kind of math was more Gottlieb's boat than his.

What Newt couldn't ignore was the recurring flashes of the Anteverse.

For the first couple of instances he'd been alone in his room, fast asleep. He'd go from lying in bed peacefully to jolting awaking with gasps and drenched in sweat, the fading images of grotesque Kaiju faces and distance roars and screams echoing in the back of his mind. They would linger only a few minutes at most as he got his bearings, then vanish from his memory.

It was an obvious side effect of his first drift, one that he took on alone, he reassured himself. The symptoms weren't haphazardly bad, the buzzing acceptable, the migraines passing, and the flashes only temporary. Raleigh had mentioned similar things after coming out of the fissure, he and others commenting that it would pass and it was expected. It was a tough ordeal after all. Though the Jaeger pilot hadn't had the entire access of information that Newt had received during his drift, they'd both seen the Anteverse in its warped appearance.

It was fine- he was fine.

But then he found himself zoning out while working, one minute assessing whether or not a piece of Kaiju matter was reliable and the next finding himself standing next to a towering Precursor on a warped piece of rock. The creature would gaze at him with opal eyes, blank and vaguely reminding him of an endless abyss of nothingness, reaching out for him with spindly limbs to tear him-

And a loud and precise snap! would bring him back to reality, a prissy Gottlieb in his face going on about how he should at least have the appearance of actually doing work.

He started worrying about the abnormalities when he woke up a werewolf one morning.

Okay, not a werewolf (not the hairy part anyway). More like the sharp-teeth-to-eat-grandmothers-with wolf, with big claws and eyes to boot.

Last time he checked, he had bitten his nails down to the nubs, as was his habit of doing when working. He didn't gnaw on bones regularly to get his teeth as sharp as he had then, noticeably longer than they had been the day before. And call him crazy, but he was a hundred percent sure that he was born with brown eyes- not a blue so striking that it looked like they were glowing strobe lights at a rave.

He looked like a madman, eyes bulging at the sight of his reflection, hands wringing through hair as he did a mini freakout in his bathroom. He swallowed a lump in his throat, unable to stop the strangled noise that escaped.

No matter how many times he rubbed his face, hoping that the image would change miraculously, he was dismayed to find that he wasn't dreaming, wild eyes apprehensively staring right back at him every time. Examining his teeth, prodding and tugging at them repeatedly, didn't help convince him of his sanity.

In fact, glancing at his tattoos, he finally took to the concerns that others had for him and wondered whether or not if he was ever truly sane.

Moments passed where he just squinted at the person in the mirror.

Then, for whatever reason, he found himself becoming incredibly giddy. The features were not unlike the Kaiju and he couldn't help but let the excitement overpower the fear and confusion (the geek in him was having a holiday). Never taking his eyes off his reflection, he let out a weak laugh, astounded at his glinting teeth.

"This is insane." Getting the words out was different and strange, his tongue being blocked by his lengthened teeth, unsure where to settle. He raked his hands through his hair again, wincing at the unexpected pain that came from his nails scratching his skull harder than he thought

"This is incredible." He laughed like a madman, "Absolutely insane."

He couldn't stop himself from doing a small jig, internally screaming like the fan boy he was. He didn't know what had happened, but it happened and it was beyond cool.

There was the strange feeling of something in the back of his mind, replacing the buzzing. It was awe, somewhat more revered and cautious than his own. It was...

He bolted out of his bathroom and through his room (he stumbled over his scattered furniture, stubbing his toe, and dear God, he really needed to clean up), yanking the door open to-

- find Gottlieb outside his room.

Newt grinded to a halt, barely avoiding a collision. "What are you-?"

Catching sight of blue irises stopped him short, his brain backtracking.

He looked at Gottlieb, stunned, while the mathematician stared right back.

"Dude..."

Despite the situation, Gottlieb rolled his eyes. Newt felt the hint of annoyance at his less-than-respectable greeting, but that was normal. And this normality, this familiarity, it was nice and relaxing; draining his excitement and calming his inner child, it turned out to be what he needed.

"Please don't 'dude' me, Newton." The white of elongated canines glinted as the mathematician spoke, capturing Newt's attention; vampire-like, it was definitely on Lugosi's level of awesome. Strange, weird, and... cool.

He wondered whether he could drink blood, like Dracula. Did any Kaijus ever show signs that displayed that possibility? Yes, they had been cloned scouts and not the Precursors, but did that matter? Speaking of the Precursors-

"Stop that!" Gottlieb snapped at him. "Don't fill my head with your unbearable groupie nonsense! I'll go mad!"

At that Newt raised his eyebrows, surprised. Then his brain processed what those words meant, what they implied.

His eyes widened, unabashedly staring at the man before him. "I'm in your head."

Gottlieb didn't look pleased, only irritated. "And I'm in yours, so you best remember that. I don't have time for the stupid that goes on in there." Before Newt could retort, the mathematician sighed in exasperation, "Enough of this side tracking! I came here for reason, Newton. This is obviously a s-"

"-ide effect of the drift we did with the Kaiju specimen. The Kaiju had a hive mind and so, like one, were connect neurologically," Newt finished, testing out the connection he felt, having the information pop out of nowhere and spur his mouth on. The earlier excitement came rushing back, overwhelming despite the dampening presence Gottlieb attempted to suffocate him with. Newt laughed somewhat hysterically, "See what I just did! I read your mind, Hermann! Your mind! Th-this is beyond- it's-"

"-awesome, yes," Gottlieb dead-panned, "I realize it's extraordinary, but you're not focusing on the problem."

"What problem?"

"Look past the initial excitement, will you! We have to explain this!"

"Oh c'mon! What will they be worried about?" Newt received a glare from a pair of newly blue eyes, the full expression blatantly telling him how idiotic he sounded. "OK, so it's a big deal. So what? Are you expecting torches and pitchforks?"

"How are we going to explain this?" Gottlieb hissed, "It's compl-"

"Don't worry," Newt interrupted, waving a hand in a noncommittal manner. Then he was bouncing again, throwing Gottlieb's caution to the curb. "Just think about it! We'll become rock stars!"

"I highly doubt that."

But Newt ignored Gottlieb and his more than sarcastic attitude, opting to think. This type of information had to be shared, had to be researched. How could they study this phenomenon if they didn't inform people that it existed? When concerning when and to whom it would be shared with, Newt knew exactly what he was going to do that morning (it was a an easy walk to the Marshal's quarters).

Gottlieb got the inkling of the thought before he could hide it away. The mathematician frowned, smacking the butt of his cane against Newt's side. "Don't you d-"

Newt dodged and grabbed it before another attack could be let loose. The cane was in his grip and he slung an arm around the man, stopping him from stumbling face first onto the floor. "Oh c'mon! You said we have to explain this, so we will. It's now or never."

When he was feeling the beginnings of a rebuttal, Newt reach out with his mind, wanting to skip the argument for once in his life. The covering keeping his thoughts inside his head shifted so that a crack was open, his consciousness seemingly fine with sharing information with another. It came with ease and Newt only needed to stare at his colleague while he simply thought hard at what he wanted to convey.

Damn, it was beyond cool.

A smile was already forming when his message finished, the peak inside Gottlieb's mind already telling him how everything was going to go down.

Gottlieb wasn't fazed by the prolonged staring or the mental connection, only squinting at Newt after seeing the rash and blunt manner he wanted to display their change in his head. "Seeing as I can't stop you and you are your own proof... might as well." The mathematician massaged the bridge of his nose, muttering about the stupidity of fanboys and cursing his luck of knowing one. "But I know I'm going to regret doing it your way."

Newt slapped him on the back, handing his cane back and leading them to the Marshal's quarters. "That's the spirit!"

He sensed the small smile before he saw it, the only physical inclination that his friend was with him. A resigned feeling came off the man, giving Newt the prompting to settle his arm around his shoulders.

It was grudgingly allowed to stay.

He could see it now, their future. What other side effects would resurface? Were their brains tricking their bodies that they were Kaiju and so, forcing these changes? If there weren't going to be anymore physical changes, what about internal? Could they be immune to the Kaiju blood and other toxins? Maybe they could-

"Newton."

"Fine, fine- no, I get it," he pacified quickly, adding a skip to his step and forcing the other to do the same. He grinned, an idea bursting forth and traveling the length of the nerves crawling along the tissue of his brain, message sent and received quicker than any machine build by man. He opened his mouth to-

"No." Gottlieb dug a sharp elbow into his ribs. "I know what you're thinking and I'm going to say it once more. No."

Undeterred and smile permanently etched on his face, he continued thinking, imagining, dreaming. Newt heard Gottlieb's sigh and, if possible, smiled wider. For behind it was the almost whisper of amused resignation.

"This is gonna be awesome."