Bilbo was seventeen when his world went to hell in a hand-basket.
The war with the Kaiju was not a new one. It had been raging for many, many years, if it could be called a war at all. The Free Peoples of Middle Earth had been hanging on by their fingernails, but the month leading up to Bilbo's fifteenth birthday marked a shift in their fortunes. The newly-conceived and newly-forged Jaeger began to stem the tide of destruction, much to the astonishment of all - few had expected their last, desperate bid for survival to work. More Kaiju than Jaegers began to fall. Wiped off the map had once been a phrase all-too often used by reporters and journalists, but the Jaegers brought with them a renewal of hope, storming out onto the battlefield in armour that had barely the time to cool. Some were now daring to suggest - in whispered undertones - that they were winning.
And yet, to a young hobbit growing up in a still-sleepy and miraculously untouched Little Hobbiton, it all seemed so very far away. The war was nothing more than a front page to be read by his father and mother at the breakfast table, a game to be played in the school playground, a topic to gossip about over the garden fences of Bagshot Row, and Bilbo had never stopped to consider why even the Shire, with its bounteous lands, had been rationing its food for years. Arda had found its heroes, and Bilbo would play with their toy figurines in the thriving front garden of Bag End. The Jaegers would never fail under the careful guidance of Bilbo's chubby fingers, because to Bilbo that was simply the way the world worked.
Bilbo was not alone in his absolute certainty of the Jaegers' victory; Belladonna and Bungo shared his confidence. They both felt safe tucked up in their smial, and neither had ever set eyes on a Kaiju outside of the news, but such a feeling of security had little relation to reality, and in the case of Bilbo's family, it bred complacency. During a lull in the fighting, they felt safe enough to undertake a journey to the capital of Gondor, to the delight of the insatiably curious Bilbo. No Kaiju had broken through the Jaeger defences of the White Tower stronghold for six months, and restrictions on non-essential travel had been tentatively lifted.
On the third day of their visit, the first-ever class three Kaiju all but decimated two Jaegers and continued, unchecked, into the city of Minas Tirith.
In the aftermath, Bilbo sat huddled up on himself in a camp set up for the injured, the lost and the displaced. His tightly-clenched fist held a white handkerchief. He could still feel the brush of his mother's hand against his cheek where she had attempted to wipe off a particularly stubborn streak of dirt. Bilbo scrubbed the skin as if to wipe it clean of the ghostly touch, eyes dry and red, chest hollow.
'Well, Bilbo Baggins,' said the old man who had come to sit beside Bilbo. He was smoking a pipe, though it was against the strict rules of the camp. On one shoulder was emblazoned the mark of a doctor. 'What would you like to do now?'
And Bilbo remembered the way the sun had glinted off the shoulder of the Jaeger that had saved his life, the way the golden rays - hazy with dust – had set the surface of its black armour alight with glossy flames. He thought of how the Jaeger had met the fearsome, tectonic blows of the Kaiju with a power all of its own, the reverberations from their fighting resonating in Bilbo's chest, in the bones of his ribcage, even as he trembled in terror.
He raised his head and said, 'I want to fight Kaiju.'
Bilbo would never return to the Shire.
His fervent wish was granted. He came to be a part of the Jaeger programme, whisked away from the ruins of Minas Tirith to the glittering towers of Lothlórien, that most stalwart of strongholds. The old man, whose name was revealed to be Gandalf, proved his value almost immediately when he utilised his apparently endless web of contacts to provide Bilbo with a new home. Bilbo took his place in amongst the spires whose tops seemed to be gilded in gold, rising high above the forest that clustered at the city's feet, and felt strangely glad that Lothlórien was nothing like the Shire.
Bilbo saw Elves for the first time, and it took many months to overcome his obvious awe of the elegant race. There was an abundance of Humans in Lothlórien, too, working hard alongside their allies, the strain of fighting and building far more apparent on their faces than it was on their Elven counterparts'. The Dwarves, though, were nowhere to be found. Bilbo found this strange and worrying, and more than a little disappointing. He had wanted to meet the makers of the Jaegers - or better still, to watch them at work, bending raw metal into armour and twisting steel wires - each one wider than Bilbo was tall - into tendons. When he inquired as to their absence, he was met with blank-faced stares and patronising non-answers.
Bilbo buried his grief under hours upon hours of training and teaching, under the careful guidance of Gandalf, who was always on hand to provide tea or assistance over a particularly difficult passage. Although, it had to be said, he more frequently confused Bilbo than helped.
Bilbo delved into Jaeger mechanics and Kaiju biology, reading anything and everything that he could get his hands on, his previous love for reading transformed from an everyday pastime to an insatiable thirst for knowledge overnight, and when Bilbo took the entrance exams at twenty-seven, his scores were the second highest of his class.
He was still too young for the Jaeger pilot tests, but he was content for the most part with his role as a data analysist and linguist. There were always reports to be written, information to be disseminated, and transmissions to be translated, and Bilbo quickly became a valued member of his team. He was now all but past his automatic awe of the Elves, and frequently took his breakfast with them, watching the news as he ate, casting a critical eye over the form of whatever Jaeger had been recorded that day. When the Jaeger of Lothlórien were deployed, Bilbo was always, without fail, the first in the command centre, even if he wasn't on shift. His presence was usually met with a few tuts or fond eye rolls from the Humans and Elves on duty, who had become used to the nuisance that was their resident Hobbit.
Gandalf presented him with an invitation into the Jaeger simulators on his twenty-ninth birthday. He was still too young, but the twinkle in Gandalf's eye suggested that his age would not be a problem. Giddy with excitement, Bilbo almost failed his first test, his sweaty hands slipping on the controls, but after a long and bloody battle, he managed to take down the incumbent Kaiju.
The elf in charge of Bilbo's test that day had frowned in obvious irritation when Bilbo had emerged from the simulator. He had demanded that Bilbo retake the test. Bilbo, shaking with adrenaline, was only too happy to agree. Bilbo stepped out a second time to find the elf bent double over his console, muttering to himself and dropping in the odd swearword or two in Sindarin. Bilbo had attempted to catch his attention, but the elf ignored him, and Bilbo had simply left him to it.
Word of Bilbo's scores quickly spread. Bilbo's assertion that he would one day be a Jaeger pilot had always been met with gentle teasing from his teammates. No one had honestly expected him capable of it, but hard numbers had proved otherwise. Not a single candidate in amongst Lothlórien's numbers had ever made a kill on their first drop. Bilbo overnight shifted from a strange little Hobbit who had his uses to a serious contender for a Jaeger partner. He found himself inundated with offers to train and study by other candidates desperate for anything that would improve their chances, and if this had one advantage, then it was the fact that everyone seemed to have forgotten the barefaced breaking of the rules.
Gandalf had merely sat back and laughed at it all, but an exasperated Bilbo had not expected any other reaction from him. As best he could, he began to sift through the piles of offers from ambitious Elves and Humans, removing the ones that he could see, even on paper, would not be a good match, until he was left with eleven possible partners. The need for Jaeger pilots was not desperate, but Lothlórien's Marshall – more often called the Lady of Light – approved Bilbo's application to begin compatibility tests all the same. She'd always had a certain fondness for Bilbo, it had to be said.
Bilbo's renewed hopes of being a pilot did not last long. Every single partner proved incompatible, and Bilbo was left feeling as though he were adrift at sea, sitting on the steps of the training room, wondering what was wrong with him. Gandalf passed him a cup of Earl Grey and promised more candidates, suggesting that Bilbo look again at his pile of rejects, but Bilbo knew the outcome would not be any different.
At night he began to routinely dream of the cockpit of a Jaeger, lit up with cool blue lights. He would fight, recreating battles he had analysed and taken down for reports, going through technique after technique. The pilot suit next to him would be the perfect partner, their every move in sync with Bilbo's, but the helmet of their visor would always, always be blank.
Bilbo's own troubles were swept aside when the unthinkable happened: the legendary and untouchable Jaeger Seventh Durin was destroyed by a class four Kaiju, one of its ace pilots ripped from the console and killed mid-Drift. It was the first time a Jaeger had been defeated in years, and its fall heralded a turn in the tide. Three other Jaegers were destroyed within just as many months, and soon whole cities were following.
Erebor fell. Osgiliath fell. The cities of the Iron Hills were on the verge of collapse, and as a result the supplies for Jeager creation – the plutonium, the metal alloys, the specialist Dwarven engineers - all but vanished overnight.
Jaegers no longer seemed like the solution. A separate alliance between New Greenwood and Gondor sprung up, the two countries pouring their money into the construction of a colossal wall. The workers in Lothlórien muttered that it was only a temporary solution, but despair lead many of them to volunteer for the project.
As the walls rose, the fortunes of Lothlórien and the other strongholds began to fall. Jaeger construction and deployment had been all but wound down by the time Lothlórien was declared no longer useful, and all but disbanded within six months. Bilbo found himself in the ruins of yet another city, with the strangest feeling of déjà vu.
'My dear Hobbit,' said Gandalf, 'do not look so sad! There's still hope. Here, I'd like you to meet someone. Come with me, if you're quite finished staring into the distance.'
The someone turned out to be a Dwarf, the first of her kind that Bilbo had met. She was taller than Bilbo, but only by a few inches, with long dark hair swept away from her face, plaited back into a business-like twist. A single braid, shorter than the rest of her hair, framed the right side of her face. Bilbo recalled a passage of a book he had once read: it is said that Dwarves of either gender will cut a single braid to half its length when in mourning.
'Bilbo Baggins,' Gandalf said, 'I would like you to meet Marshall Dís.'
'It's an honour to meet you,' said Bilbo politely, and it was – the provision of her name had allowed him to recall what he had read on the Marshall Dís. She had once overseen the mighty Ereborean stronghold to the East, and before that-
'You are mistaken, Gandalf,' said Dís, speaking with a smooth, even voice, 'I have met Mister Baggins before, though not in person.'
'You have?' said Bilbo, surprised, 'forgive me, but I think I'd remember meeting you.'
Dís graced him with the slightest of smiles, 'oh, but you have. I don't expect you to remember it, Mister Baggins, for I was piloting a Jaeger at the time.'
It took a few moments for Bilbo to process this. The revelation was like a shot to the heart, and Bilbo could only stare at the Marshall, mouth open, likely looking very foolish until he managed to stutter,
'Then I owe you my life, Marshall. I can't tell you how grateful I am for what you did...for what happened in Minas Tirith.' Bilbo swallowed. His chest felt like it had been hollowed out. 'I...simply wouldn't be here,' he continued quietly, 'you inspired me, that day.'
'Thanks are not needed,' Dís said, her sliver of a smile widening a fraction, 'I did my duty that day, and I will continue to do it, even if those at the top think that Jaegers are of no further use to the world.'
'We have a proposition for you, Bilbo,' cut in Gandalf, 'an offer of employment, if you like.'
'Though we have little to offer in terms of salary or benefits,' said Dís dryly.
'And what, exactly, is this proposition?' asked Bilbo, looking to and from Dís and Gandalf.
'Oh, just a desperate bid to save the world, with little to no chance at success and a huge probability of death,' Dís said, grinning suddenly and fiercely. 'How do you like the sound of Ered Luin, Mister Baggins?'