First and foremost, this is my belated Christmas present to the AMAZING and AWESOME Roo – I hope you like this, even if it isn't 1920s era criminals. Bo and Lauren in a jaeger, at least, is fun? Secondly, I have chapter 1 already written and chapter 2 half written, so with some encouragement I hope the wait won't be too long..
"Kaiju approaching the Bay of Fundy." It was a loud electronic voice, accompanied by a loud, repeated beep. Bo groaned and burrowed under the blanket, trying to avoid the red flashing light that tore her out of sleep.
"Come on, Bo! Kaiju attack!" Dyson hopped out of the bunk above her and bounced on the ground, giving her a hard shove before he approached the sink in their room and splashed freezing water on his face. His cheerful excitement was disgusting, Bo decided, rolling over. The beeping continued.
"Fucking Kaiju's," Bo sighed angrily, giving up and flicking down her cover. She slowly straightened up, cracking her neck artfully. Their cabin was freezing. "Did you turn down the heat again?" She asked, narrowing her eyes at Dyson's retreating figure. He skipped into their bathroom.
"We have to conserve energy!" He called gleefully.
"I hate you," Bo mumbled, rubbing the sleep out of her eyes and forcing herself to get up. Kaiju butt-kicking time.
There was something intensely warm and familiar about the skin-tight jaegar suits. Dyson followed Bo in to the cockpit, bouncing on his feet again. "Good morning, losers," came the bright cheerful voice through the speaker as two technicians hooked the pilots' suits to the monitor.
"Kenzi!" Bo laughed. "How was your evening going? Before we were interrupted, obviously."
"Wonderful before this alien motherfucker decided to invade my waters," Kenzi grumbled. "I was watching Adventure Time!"
"That show is still on air?" Dyson sounded incredulous.
"You bet your ass, Wolfy." Dyson chuckled at the affectionate nickname and Kenzi sighed dramatically. "And I was having a great time watching it. No one likes it when these Kaijus interrupt our evenings."
"Oh I feel you, Kenz," Dyson agreed.
"It's like, why don't you bother the Americans, right?" Kenzi asked. Bo snorted and shook her head, checking her jaeger suit connection carefully and firing up the neuro-systems.
"Blue Tempest is just better equipped to deal with those bastards than anyone else," Bo clarified, tightening the snap at the back of her jaeger suit. She watched Dyson do the same. Kenzi laughed.
"Good point Bo," Kenzi agreed. "They give their jaegers stripper names anyway."
"Weird stripper names," Dyson chimed in.
"Whatever." There was a serious of button presses and suddenly Kenzi's voice was back, calm and in command. "Initiating protocol for neural handshake." Dyson glanced over at Bo.
"Ready?" He asked, grinning.
"As always," She said, grimacing as the countdown ended and suddenly she was yanked into the drift. A pool of emotions, angst and loneliness - a child crying alone in a corner; clinging to a friend's hand as he died; the beautiful girlfriend lost and then found and then consumed by the Kaiju cancer. Dyson's memories, all mixed with Bo's own isolation in warm golden wheat fields and her own escape and fights and stealing. Their army days together pulled them together, alternating memories between them helping, fighting and kissing and then suddenly she was back. Back in her own body, but also in Dyson's.
It was a warm feeling in the drift. Dyson stretched his right arm; Bo's arm stretched with him. Bo stretched her left; Dyson's followed suit. Their synchronization was a comfort; their power suddenly transcended their bodies.
"All calibrated." Kenzi's voice had a different echo from the drift; Bo always thought her voice sounded huskier.
"Sexier," a stray thought from Dyson supplied. Bo laughed and let the thought fly off, ducking through foxholes and disappearing as their jaeger was dropped into the freezing Atlantic Ocean.
The fight was short; the Kaiju was small, but surprisingly agile and quick, constantly weaving in and out of their sight line. Bo tracked it on their radar, quickly tearing it out of the sky as it tried to take flight. Together, in a smooth action, they slammed its head into the Tempest's open palm. The movement twinged in Dyson's shoulder: a boyhood injury that echoed in Bo's arm.
The Kaiju fell back, swallowed by the waves. "Done, and dusted," Dyson told Kenzi triumphantly, though the words seemed to ghost across Bo's lips too.
"Good job, losers! Now get your asses back to anchorage!" They turned around, towards land, when suddenly another blot appeared on the radar.
"What's tha-" before Bo could finish her remark, a tearing pain bloomed across her shoulder. The dead Kaiju that wasn't dead – it had torn off Blue Tempest's right arm. Its sharp teeth were digging into the wiring of the shoulder joint and tearing each wire individually; Dyson writhed in a pain that blotted out every rational thought. Bo's eyes widened in terror as instinct interjected and she slammed the beast away with her left arm.
The electricity in the cockpit flickered as the beast howled and dug its claws into the metal work of the jaeger. "What's happening? Bo? Dyson?" A panic voice, more high pitched suddenly, crackled through the radio as Bo hit the beast again, and again, and again until it finally fell away, bright blue blood trickling through a cracked alien skull.
Dyson was motionless, hanging from the framework, limp. "Dyson? Dyson!" Bo begged, panic entering her voice as the heaviness of the jaeger suddenly settled on her, pushing itself into her brain.
"Dyson!" She called, panicy as the headache overtook her.
"Bo? Dyson?" The radio was stuttering, crackling. "Co- back - anchorage! Come- to land!" A command. A command that Bo could understand, and follow.
Breathing felt harder, but Bo concentrated, and concentrated hard, slowly placing one giant robotic foot before the other, stumbling like a drunkard. A drunkard captured in 4 tons of Canada's best steel, desperately reaching, grabbing, hoping for land before she collapsed.