So, I was looking over my FFXIII/ Pacific Rim story's first chapter the other day, and I decided I wasn't happy with it. So, for the sake of easing my OCD, let's see if this is a better take on my story, huh? Also, just to be picky and particular, I'm swapping the Eidolon I used in my first post, the Gundam Exia I mentioned, to an actual Jaeger. I'm just going to borrow one from the upcoming film, Pacific Rim Uprising, none other than Gypsy Avenger. And to make things even more picky and particular, I'm changing the name! After all, my story, my rules. I'm naming my new 'Eidolon' for my main characters Athena Bravo. Yes, I know I'm stealing from yet another Jaeger from the upcoming film, but guess what! I don't care! So, either enjoy, or get your pitchforks and guns and torches and have yourself an angry mob! I know Jiu-Jitsu!
Chapter 1: The Storm
We always wondered if we were alone. When the answer came, it didn't come from the sky, or the stars. It came from the ocean, from the deep, dark depths of The Breach.
It came in the form of the fal'Cie. Monsters, the size of skyscrapers. The first of them made landfall at Palumpolum's shore on August 18th, 2014, at around 5pm. Needless to say, the military was unprepared; no, they couldn't have been prepared for what they faced. But no matter the time, the preparation…it was a slaughter. A full three days of tanks, jets, artillery, and with thousands and thousands of people dead, and the first of the Category I's, Trespasser, was finally dead.
We ran it on the news, mourned our dead. Moved on. Until it happened again. And then again. And then a fourth time, even more devastation than any single event before. The world had had enough. People rioted. It didn't take fal'Cie to make entire cities burn. And so, the governments of the world worked together. For the first time in a long time, we found unity. And we found something else. We found our weapon to fight the fal'Cie.
The Eidolons.
Behemoth war machines, monsters of steel and nuclear fire. They gave us our outlet: our hate, our rage, our frustration and pain made into a weapon, a blade to cut down the fal'Cie. We armed them with the best technology, and to control them, we would give them only the best as pilots. And the pilots in our Eidolons need a connection; to control something the size and power of an Eidolon, you need more than just a screen and some controls. You need a real bond, you need to feel what your Eidolon feels; every bite, every punch, every claw tearing into your armor. You need the Drift.
If you knew us both, you wouldn't peg me or my big sis as heroes. We weren't ever really in the popular crowd, back when we could worry about something like that. Sis was a track star, and I'd been MVP on my school's volleyball team, but aside from those meager, unimportant things, neither of us was ever at the top of the class, never up and ahead of our peers in anything too crazy. But we knew how to hold our own in a fight. And, we discovered we shared a unique skill. Anya and I…are Drift compatible.
The Drift is Eidolon tech, mind melding between two pilots. A neural bridge, designed to connect the pilots to the Eidolon. A bond formed through memories, fed through each pilots' mind. The stronger the bond…the better you fight.
Year Thirteen of the fal'Cie War, Oerban Shatterdome, 0400 hours…
"Athena Bravo, alert, alert. Breach activity detected. Prepare to Deploy. Category IV fal'Cie, designation, Malice."
Hana's eyes burst open as the computer behind her head whirred to life to give its announcement. The teenager practically threw her blanket off of her shorts-and-tank top clad form, hopping off of her place on the top bunk and crouching beside her sleeping sister.
Her hands drummed up and down her sister's arm as she slept on her side, in a bid to wake her.
"Hey hey hey! Wake up, wake up! Come on, we're being deployed!" She shook her by the shoulder, finally getting a reaction as Anya stirred and rolled onto her back. The brunette stretched as she blinked her eyes into a more open, awakened state. Hana threw her drawer open, pulling her clothes out as she turned to her sibling. "We got a Category IV, Malice~" She drew out the ending sound of the name, and got to dressing.
"Mm, what time is it?" Anya asked. Her sister had already thrown on a pair of fatigues and her socks. "It's 4." She replied simply. Anya made a sound of displeasure.
"Ugh, in the morning?" She asked, scratching the back of her head as she stood to her full height of five feet and eight inches. She pulled her hair back and slid a hair tie from her slim wrist around it, putting it up in a ponytail. Hana stopped dressing to look up and nod. "Yup." She replied, popping the 'p' before going back to lacing her boots. Her sister strode to the bathroom, sliding the door shut as Hana slid her leather jacket around her shoulders. They'd gotten matching ones together on Anya's birthday, with "Athena" sewn onto the back, along with the goddess herself, imposed over the Oerban Flag.
"Okay baby sis," Anya emerged from the bathroom dressed, aside from her jacket. She slung it around her shoulders and stretched her neck, earning a slight, satisfying pop.
"Right. Let's go, kid."
The two began the brisk walk that would take them to be fitted for their Drivesuits. It was easy to tell they were pilots, or at least very close; their gait was nearly the same, although Hana seemed content to put a bit more spring and sway in her step. It would be easy to tell for any onlooker that Anya was the mature, cooler head type, while her sister was the energetic, cocky one.
Before long, they'd been fitted for their Drivesuits and moved into being fitted for Battle Armor. The white, heavy-grade polymer was scuffed from use and age. Hana and Anya lifted their arms and stood legs apart as each piece snapped onto their suits. The metal spine snapped into the armor last, hissing as it sealed tightly against the armor, metal locks snapping into place along their backs.
The Conn-Pod looked much the same as their armor. Lightly battered with age, and smelling of machine oil and industrial cleaner. Hana and Anya stepped one foot at a time into the Eidolon's control pedals, each one snapping maglocks over the toes and heels of their boots. The techs hooked up their harnesses, and as they left, Athena's control panels and viewport flickered to life. The sisters' pilot visors flickered on, displaying power levels and hydraulics systems performance.
The command center buzzed with activity as the combat technician, Rikku, swung her swivel chair in front of Athena's startup controls. Her fingers ran across the keys and the Eidolon's power core came online, whirring louder than a hundred jet engines as it glowed orange.
"Alrighty, Athena. Preliminary systems diagnostics and startup programs running. T-minus one minute to Drift. How's it going, girls?"
Hana lifted her arm and held the comms receiver down with her thumb. "Good to be in the 'Pod. So, how did your date go last night, Rikku?"
Rikku smirked and chuckled. "O, well I don't mean to brag about my…exceptional feminine wiles, but he likes me more than he wants to admit. His girlfriend, ehhhh, not so much."
"A-hem? Initiate Neural handshake, Mrs. Rikku." The voice from behind her was none other than Marshall Cid Highwind. Without another word, Rikku's hands flew across the keys again. "Marshall on deck! Initiating Neural handshake in ten seconds."
Anya and Hana shared a knowing look at each other before facing forward and shutting their eyes. In a fraction of a second, they felt it; the pull on each other's minds, and then they were in the Drift, falling through each other's memories. Being siblings, nothing seemed too unusual. Their eyes widened, opening as the connection stabilized. In the command center, Rikku looked over the readings, nodding to herself as she swiped them away. Stable and steady, as always.
"Neural handshake is strong and steady, ladies. Marshall Highwind will provide your orders for today's mission." Rikku slid her swivel chair away as Cid stepped over to the comms, leaning into the microphone to speak as the mega-lifts beneath the Eidolon's feet rolled toward the hangar doors, which opened to the stormy, choppy water.
"Athena, your mission is to take up position twelve miles off the coast, along the northern cliffs. Category IV fal'Cie Malice is your target. Uploading coordinates and map scan now."
Hana and Anya's HUD's pulled up a detailed map of the area. Cliffs directly behind their designated position, and large, towering rocks jutting through the water further out, where they would engage. It was shallow, easier fighting for an Eidolon. Hana frowned as a single ripple on the map, a civilian craft; was displayed. How had a civvies' boat gotten stranded so far from shore?
"Sir, there's a civilian boat still stuck out there, six miles east of the combat zone- "
Cid cut her off, "Athena, you are defending a city of sixteen million people. You joined this program to protect Oerba, yes? I trust, and expect, that you will put the lives of those sixteen million innocents, your kinsman, above the twelve lives on that boat. You will go to your post and wait for the fal'Cie to make contact. Follow your orders; prepare to deploy."
The Eidolon shook as the restraint bolts were released. The magnetic locks would peel away soon, allowing Anya and Hana to walk their Eidolon into the rain and lightning, and the churning ocean. Hana turned to her sister, switching off the comms for a moment.
"You already know what I'm thinking…" she trailed off. Anya rolled her eyes.
"Of course, I do, Squeaks. I'm in your head, of course I know what you're thinking."
Hana smiled, ignoring the use of her most hated nickname, and the two faced forward. The magnetic locks beneath Athena's feet slid away. Her power core flared to life even brighter than before, a blue star blazing in her chest as Anya and Hana took their first steps of the day in the behemoth's shoes, into the icy water….
0600 hours, the Oerban Sea...
"How far are we?"
"I don't know! The instruments are all over the place!" The first mate shouted over the din of thunder, lightning, crashing waves and pouring rain as the small boat rocked in the deluge. They'd gone further than their usual fishing waters, hoping for a larger catch. Instead, they'd been caught in a mammoth of a storm.
Suddenly, something else was on the instruments. "Sir, look at this. Something…moving to the northeast, and coming in quick. Six miles. Wait, wait five miles? Three miles! Captain, I don't- "
His words would be cut off as a massive wave shook the boat, and a shadow rose, tall above the waves and the water, over the boat. A pair of blue, beady eyes sprang open, followed by the gaping maw, glowing a radioactive blue. It looked like a dragon, standing high above the boat, easily 70 meters in height.
"A…A fal'Cie! Maker, it's a damn fal'Cie!" The men aboard could only stare as the beast rolled its shoulders, black scales sliding along one another, sending water rushing off of it in little falls. The beast roared, sounding for all the world like a monster in a fantasy movie. It's arms, rippling with muscle, ending in clawed, three fingered hands.
And then, bright, blinding light erupted behind them. The sound of a whirring engine deafened the air as the crew spun, screaming. What could it be now?
And then they all saw, rising from the water like an angry god. The searchlights gave way to a head, chest, arms; The eyes glowing green, flashing as lightning crackled across the sky and lit its features.
An Eidolon. And a fal'Cie. The two were about to fight, and the small boat would be caught right in the middle.
0610 hours, the Oerban Sea
Anya reached Athena's right hand down to take the small boat, the fingers curling ever so slightly to grip it in their palm. Her head snapped to her sister.
"Engage the torque, do it!" Anya shouted. Her sister needed no reminder. A brief tap on the control pad, and a quick bracing stance, and Athena spun as Malice came for them, swiping at their back as they turned. Anya released the boat, the momentum of the turn propelling it away from the titanic battle about to unfold.
The Eidolon surged back around, just as Malice came for them again. The Eidolon's right arm swung, the fist whirling through the air with the momentum of the turn, and catching Malice in the teeth with titanic force. The fal'Cie staggered to its right, only to be met with another hook under the chin, snapping its' head sideways.
The fal'Cie had no time to recover as the Eidolon's left shoulder rammed into Malice's neck, throwing the beast into the water.
The Eidolon's arms rose as the beast tried to recover, higher and higher above her head with a series of clanks as her mechanical muscles tensed, fists closing as Malice's head rose above from the water. With one thunderous drop, the pair of fists fell, smashing into the fal'Cie's skull and driving him beneath the waves once more. Athena backed away as the fal'Cie rose again, eyes glowing with hate. The towering fal'Cie surged out of the water like a monster in a nightmare, razor-sharp teeth clamping onto Athena's left wrist as the two fought for the dominant stance.
"Plasma Cannon, Engage!" Anya lifted her arm, cocking it like a gun before swinging it forward. Athena's right hand twisted, fingers folding backward inside her fist as the plasma cannon extended from the forearm of the Eidolon. Her finger squeezed the trigger on the control module, firing a bolt of plasma that loosened the fal'Cie's grip. She shot it again, and again, and again, before the beast flew onto its back, landing in the water and sinking beneath the waves.
The cannon folded away as Athena's fist re-formed. They'd won.
In the command center, Rikku's instruments flared, and her fingers swiped across the holographic screen projected in front of her face. "Discharge reading, sir! Plasma cannon, six miles off the coast!"
Cid's frown deepened as he took hold of the microphone, his eyes flicking over the readings and holographic map. "Athena, what the hell is going on?"
Hana's grin stretched from ear to ear as she pressed her thumb into the comms button.
"Job's done, sir. Lit it up four times, bagged our fifth kill!"
Cid took a deep breath before shouting, "You disobeyed a direct order!"
Anya was next to answer. "Respectfully, sir! We intercepted a fal'Cie and saved everyone on that boat!"
"Get back to your post, Now." Cid seethed, pushing away from the control panel and turning his back. He stepped away, rubbing his temples in frustration.
"Yes sir!" Hana answered, as she and her sister turned the Eidolon back to the boat.
Rikku had relaxed already, grinning from ear to ear as she prepared to track the Eidolon's approach back to base. Her grin died as a ping on her holographic map sent her heart racing. The readings flashed across her screen. There was no mistaking it. "Marshall, fal'Cie signature rising!"
Cid spun on his heel and checked the controls on the holographic map, squinting at the readings as Rikku slid to another set of monitoring equipment. She turned to Cid suddenly, leaning over the back of her chair "It's still alive…" Cid grabbed the microphone.
"Athena, we're still getting a signature! That fal'Cie is still alive!"
Anya and Hana fell into a boxer's stance as Athena's searchlights scanned the surface of the water. Neither of them listened to Cid's order to grab the boat and leave.
"How could that thing still be alive- "No sooner had the words left Hana's mouth than their charge darted from out of nowhere, teeth snapping at the Eidolon's Conn-Pod. Anya and Hana shouted in surprise as the Eidolon stumbled backward.
"Hana, I'm holding him! You got this?" Anya shrieked the question, grunting as she forced the biting jaws of the fal'Cie back, digging the Eidolon's steel fingers into the fal'Cie's jaw as it continued to try and bite the metal titan's head clean off. Hana nodded, grinning as she cocked her arm. "Yeah, I got this!"
She pushed her arm forward, plasma cannon charging to fire-
Only for Malice to wrench itself free and grab both arms, twisting the right arm away as its teeth clamped around the Eidolon's left wrist and its claws dug into her shoulder. With a moment of hesitation, the steel began to groan and creak, until one final tug ripped away the limb as the fal'Cie's claws ripped through the shoulder, separating the Eidolon's left arm as sparks showered the water below, and metal parts fell away.
Hana could only scream as she grabbed at her arm, energy pulsing up and down her left arm in blue sparks. Piloting an Eidolon meant getting hurt; that was the consequence of operating a two-thousand-ton combat robot via neural bridge. But the agony that raced along her arm was something else entirely; it felt like her actual arm was gone.
Rikku's eyes widened as the entire left arm's share of her on-screen Eidolon model turned red, warnings and error messages flaring one after another.
"Sir, the left arm has gone cold…" she said, her mouth hanging open as she tried to run troubleshoots, diagnostics, systems check. Something had to be wrong, anything but the Eidolon actually losing an arm!
The Conn-Pod shook as Malice tore at the armor on Titus's chest and arms, until his claws scraped across the surface of the Conn-Pod, one claw puncturing the hull, mere feet from Anya's harness. It curled under the frame of the harness, bolted into the ceiling above Anya's head. The two pilots could only stare at the intrusive appendage. Hana's eyes widened. In all their fights before, never had a fal'Cie even come close to penetrating the hull of the Conn-Pod. Malice had done it in minutes.
Anya, ever the quick thinker, turned to her sister. She was the pillar, the rock. Hana locked eyes with her, waiting. Her sister could come up with something. She always did.
"Okay now Hana, listen to me. I need you to-AAAAGH!"
Hana's eyes widened, and her mouth opened in a silent scream as metal screeched and cracked. The claw withdrew, and with it came the right assembly of the Conn-Pod. It had taken seconds. Just a few seconds.
She screamed after her, only to stammer and shriek as the system forced the neural load onto her body. Sparks danced along the battle armor's spine as the control panels centered around her. Hana shakily swapped her control module from her left to her right hand, biting her lip as pain burst in her left arm. Her heart pounded in her chest as she blinked the tears away. She had a job to do. And it seemed like it would be her last.
Malice wasn't giving up. The fal'Cie tore away at the armor on Athena's chest, and settled his claws on the Eidolon's midsection. His claws began to squeeze, tearing into the machine's torso as warnings and damage control readings flashed across Hana's pilot visor. She gritted her teeth and lifted her arm, cocking it once. She cursed as the depleted charge warning flashed across her visor; she'd have to endure whatever punishment the fal'Cie had in store while the gun charged. 12 percent…17 percent…25 percent…
Malice's claws bit deep, and another set of warnings appeared before Hana's suit pulsed again. Her right side crackled and popped, and after a moment of frozen shock, she sputtered, blood pooling at the corners of her lips and dribbling out. Her nose started bleeding, and she had to blink the darkness away from her the edges of her eyes as she tried to keep her arm straight. Her vision darkened at the edges, but she refused to lose consciousness. 38 percent…44 percent…59 percent…
Malice tore into the left shoulder anew, ripping away layers of armor and mechanical parts and tossing them into the sea. Hana felt her teeth sink into her lip, tasting iron anew. 67 percent…75 percent…84 percent…
She shouted her rage at the monster as the charge built higher and higher. The charge filled out, and Hana shut her eyes as she rammed the plasma cannon into Malice's chest, shrieked her rage into her helmet until her lungs hurt, and pulled the trigger.
The world turned white and disappeared, everything turning to blinding light and thunderous noise…
0630 hours, Oerban Shatterdome
The command center was quiet as the plasma discharge pinged, and then the map went dead. Rikku tapped uselessly at the keys. Nothing. Not a Maker-damned thing happened. The connection was dead. She couldn't get anything out of it.
"Second discharge shorted the comms sir, I'm not getting any signals." She held her breath as she checked the scanners. The area came back dead. The sensors weren't functioning. She scooted her chair to another station. Nothing. No readings at all?
"I'm not getting any signatures, sir!" she yelled. She spun in her seat. Cid was walking away, his hands behind his back as he stared at the door.
"What do we do now, sir!?"
0700 hours, Northern Oerban Shoreline...
"Now, I want you to just keep your eyes on those readings, there," Amodar pointed to the meter on his metal detector for Noel. The boy was accompanying him for the weekend, while his mother and father went on a…romantic retreat. Naturally, he'd been pretty bored at first, but Amodar had found that he liked looking for metal along the shore almost as much as he did.
He hadn't always been able to afford such lax hobbies. He'd worked for most of his life, first as a cadet, and then officer, and then Captain of Eden City's Guardian Corps, and then as an Eidolon pilot, and then a Marshall. He was too weak for any of that now; he was retired, and given that, he had time for small leisure like going hunting for trophies in the sand.
The icy shore was beautiful, he thought, taking a look across the bay and then going back to watching the meter on his metal detector as it scanned the ground. Eden's northern coast could get exceptionally icy and cold during winter. The border to Oerba wasn't far, he mused. Cocoon was a large continent, and so was Gran Pulse. Over time, countries had been annexed and merged and melded together, and now, along this disjointed area, he could just make out the silhouette of the Oerban coast. It was across the water, most of it blocked from vision by thick fog. His eyes blinked as he returned from that thought, and he focused anew on the meter. It started beeping, the dial flinging into the green, and he grinned.
"Wait, wait…right…there! That's it!"
Noel fell to his knees and dug in the snow, until…until!
Noel pulled the object, an old, dented, rusted pan, from the snow, frowning as he turned it over in his hands and handed it to Amodar. The teen sighed. "It's just an old pan, Uncle Amodar. We never find anything really good out here."
Amodar hadn't cared much. He just gave the boy an open-mouth smile, chuckling excitedly as he slid the pan into his pack.
BEEPBEEPBEEPBEEPBEEP
Amodar scrambled to move the detector. There was no way it could have gone off so suddenly, when they hadn't even moved...unless a ship was coming! He lifted the device, shushing Noel. "Wait! Listen!"
He lifted it gradually, until the dial of the meter bounced again and again against the red line at the meter's end. He heard the sound of the approach before he saw the source of the detector's beeping. He dropped the device almost as quickly as he saw what was silhouetted through the icy fog behind the detector's rounded bottom.
"Sweet…Sweet Maker." He whispered. Lumbering towards them on unsteady feet, a familiar-and haunting-, sight. The armor was torn and ripped away in places, the Conn-Pod torn nearly in half on the right side. The right arm was deformed and slightly melted near the forearm and right hand, and the left arm was gone entirely. The bright star of its massive chest flickered and dulled as each step shook the ground beneath their feet.
An Eidolon. A battered, dying Eidolon.
Amodar had barely a moment to process what he was seeing before the Eidolon fell forward onto one knee, then the other, and he moved to shield Noel as the right arm crashed into the snowy ground just a half-dozen yards away, sending a spray of snow and dirt over them. It crashed chest-first into the ground, unleashing a crack of twisting metal and crushed earth.
It took a moment before he could look back. The Eidolon's systems groaned and whirred, dying breaths of a titan as Amodar broke into what he could manage of a run. He wasn't in the same shape he'd been as a young man anymore, and radiation and neural damage hadn't helped.
"Stay here!" he shouted, holding his palm out to Noel. The boy nodded, stopping and waiting as Amodar slowed his pace, walking with held breath toward the ruins of the Conn-Pod. His lungs demanded air before long, and he stopped, holding his chest as he angled his head for a better look. The Eidolon's head, and thus the Conn-Pod, had slammed into the sand and thrown a mound of the stuff up around it in a cone. He was about to start forward again when a small, gloved hand crept over the edge of the sand, followed by an arm, and then a head. The pilot stumbled over the mound, her armor scuffed and covered in dirt and blood. It had stained the white polymer around her left shoulder and forearm, where her armor had broken and split. Blood had spilled between the plates on her abdomen, and numbly, he pointed to the wound as she stumbled toward him.
Her eyes were empty as she staggered on her feet, turning to look up at the Eidolon behind her before she even bothered to acknowledge him. Her hand went to her side, and it didn't even seem to register that she'd been hurt, not even when the blood on her hands stared her in the face.
"Anya…Anya…" she whispered, turning her back on Amodar as she stumbled further away. He followed her until she collapsed, falling onto her side in the snow. He fell beside her, turning to Noel, who'd approached cautiously.
"Go, get help! Hurry, Noel, hurry!"
Amodar turned back to her, bracing his hands on his knees and looking her over. She was a mess, blood and bruises on the few bits of exposed skin where her armor and drivesuit were damaged.
"We're getting help…It's…It's going to be okay." he said. He smiled reassuringly, but he wasn't totally sure who he was trying to reassure more.
She blinked once, looking into Amodar's eyes with a brokenness that made his chest tighten. And then her head lolled back, her body slackened, and she was out like a light.
Amodar bit the inside of his cheek. Help was coming.
But he could only pray that they would make it in time.