Made this to fill out the Anteverse box in #3 JaegerCon bingo. It's Eid night, and I can't sleep. But hey! At least I produced something.
Comments and critics are very much appreciated. I haven't wirtten in months so excuse the idiocy. I had to. Something drove me.
Pacific Rim and everything in its universe are courtesy of Guillermo del Toro and Travis Beacham.
Is this what humans call drowning?
There was no stopping to the flickering lights that harbored across her metal plates as she slowly, inch by painful inch, descended the strange purple trachea, greeting her mockingly with its tentacles along every side she could see through her yellow, cracked eyes. Electricity jumped around the wire-ridden space on the side of her torso where her arm had once - it seemed to her like a lifetime ago but what was time to a machine that couldn't even tell between days? - been. She wasn't afraid - but what she felt was strange. Despite the rush of emotions storming into her circuits from her two pilots, it still felt like any other mission. This wasn't going to be the end where she would eventually be taken into the Oblivion, where she would be decommissioned - is that the word? She'd heard Raleigh think of it numerous times, often accompanied with fear - for life, meaning that no pilot was to ever ride her again. She would be dormant, like a volcano with its fire still burning but none to release the blaze. People would take turns taking pictures with her because then she would only be a toy, something for public exhibition, instead of a savior of humanity, in which her pilots would continually and without calculation send fluxes of nerve impulses and fast, exuberant heartbeats. Over time she learned how to interpret those fluxes - excitement, terror, victory, despair. She learned how to differentiate between human voice intonations; Yancy's, Raleigh's, and Mako's. But he hadn't listened to Yancy's in a long while.
She wouldn't be decommissioned, however, she thought, as she silently let herself be pulled by the gravity of the universe surrounding her down into the bottom of the throat. She was helpless, what was left of her remaining limbs limping like dead snakes pushed and pulled and turned over by this matter all over her that she couldn't identify. No, the Oblivion wasn't going to be her future. She could still hear her pilots, even though their hearts weren't beating as she thought they were supposed to. But she was not left alone. Not yet.
The walls' appendages slapped her by the leg and she almost turned over as she slipped into an opening, like a giant pink flower blooming open over and over, sucking in everything above it. There were more limbs in the chamber she entered - she was numb, but she could feel the atmosphere brushing against the steel. Her wirings zapped, sending small sparks of fire, scaring away the limbs. She found Raleigh's desperate voice resonating within her conn-pod - Mako was silent. He was mumbling something amidst his own failing intakes of air.
"All I have to do is fall. Anyone can fall."
Something popped out of the hatch on the top of her head. There was that feeling of absence again, exactly like the moment she felt Raleigh's first and worst surge of horror, the most substantial that he's sent to her in the years that they'd been fighting together. That was the day she no longer heard Yancy's voice. But this one was less immediate. There was something in the release of this moment that relieved her, the feeling of her pilot being brought to safety, but she dug deeper into her circuits and sensors only to find that there was uncomfortable abandonment to come, and it was not just for Raleigh.
She released these odd thoughts from her wires and let herself into Raleigh's mind. This in the only way she could understand her pilot, her only remaining pilot for now, as she silently connected with him through the systems. She sometimes thought if she were human they could be the best of friends - Raleigh was like a father figure to her, he understood not only how she functioned but how he could enter her systems without following the protocols of operating a Jaeger properly. He and Yancy were her friends, her parents, her masters, and as a form of appreciation she aligned her actions as amiably as possible to theirs. They were a team, and even with the arrival of Mako, who restored her and gave her the significance of love someone would give to a partner in need, she could see how these pilots that have engaged with her could see her more than just a giant piece of war machine. She was alive, she was a being. And this exceeded all the praise any human had ever given her. She was grateful for the three of them.
The world suddenly looked like a factory of monsters as she descended lower into the throat. It was only moments of faint blinking through the conn-pod glass that she noticed this world was not inhabited by humans. She had data stored within her circuits of how the human body functioned, specifically how her pilots functioned, and she couldn't match the images within her memory with these beings. The heads were elongated, protected by a retractable helmet of what looked to her like glass. She could see no human eyes, only small dots atop a long, glimmering forehead. And they were hunched, which gave her a sense of hostility, like these beings were somehow registered as enemies. Or maybe they were? She couldn't identify.
Electric lightnings popped and ran around the rows of kaiju body parts. Stalagmites towered around her like kings and queens of a world entirely alien to her. Raleigh, she sensed, was just as baffled as she was, but his bafflement was defeated by what she recognized as a mixture of surrender and panic, as if there was something he needed to get out of. The Anteverse, she could hear him whisper in his thoughts, silent but quaking in tone.
Raleigh Becket, what is the matter?
Her compromised mechanisms twitched when she heard his mind commanding her to self-destruct.
At once her wires flipped into Raleigh's mind. She couldn't speak, couldn't cry out screeches of steel against steel, broken cable against broken cable, but she wanted to. So badly. She wanted to electrocute both of them, she wanted to set herself free. All Raleigh did was cry in his mind, apologizing, but to her it wasn';t enough. She could only deliver pale emotions, the only thing a robot could do to ask her master of why he wanted her to destroy herself amidst a mission.
Raleigh's silent cry echoed across the cockpit, seeping into the metal walls, into the ambience of blinking red lights surrounding him. He was blanketed in memories, memories he wanted to let go, memories he wanted to clung to, but can't. The seconds that followed gave him a split-second chance to explain the situation to himself and to her, but all he did was cry. There was nothing else he could give to her. There was nothing else he could do. He was sorry he couldn't get her to the Oblivion - he once thought it was the most horrible place for a Jaeger to end up in, because he never thought his Jaeger would end up in pieces instead. In his mind he could imagine - hear? - Gipsy crying the same helpless tears as he was. He could hear her voice, almost imagining her taking a mental form of her own, like a person who'd been inside his head for so long but had to let go.
There are some things a pilot must do.
He knew it was inadequate. He knew it wasn't enough. She was a robot, but she was also his vessel, his room of nostalgia, his home. With her he remembered Yancy, he could feel the warmth of his body, his smell still sticking on the contraptions that once gripped Yancys body.'With her he found Mako, how her past collided with his own, and how they knitted their thoughts into one piece of fabric full of promises and dreams that they were going to live in. Gipsy and he, they were one. But now he had a job to do.
Will the salvage crew come and get me like they do other Jaegers?
She couldn't escape from the tears Raleigh flooded her systems with. He was afraid, driven, angry, sorry.
Raleigh's finger moved closer to the self-destruct button. He said nothing, trying with all his might to put an end to his screaming. He knew she could hear, he knew she would question, but it never felt this clear. This was not ghost-drifting. This is him and her merging as one might for the final time.
The screams failed to be stopped, but he pressed the button without hesitation.
What struck him funny was that an error signal appeared on the small command screen. It was like she still wanted to contact him, still wanting to fight. His heart laughed freely for the first time in years, as if it was blind to the fact that he could barely breathe. But what the hell, even if he'd lived he lived to die anyway.
He unstrapped the metal arms off his back, pulled his limp feet off the clutches, and ran to the back of the cockpit. Struggling to find the hatch leading to the manual lever, he listened with a stone-cold face as she called his name again and again. He wanted to think that this was only the effects of his running out of oxygen and that he was in the universe of the very civilization that sought to end his own. But she was reprimanding his reasons, she was retaliating. What had he not given her that she was still demanding more?
The countdown began. He ran as fast as he could, barely feeling his legs, to the pilot hemisphere and forced her arms to grapple his shoulders. He could only do it with force, and he stomped his feet to let her know this was urgent. He held back all answers from her, ignoring her cries. He didn't want to feel, he didn't want to hesitate. Not now.
Why?
His chest exploded. Everything came back in a torrent of scenes, moments, conversations, feelings. He couldn't hold them back anymore. He felt the most selfish he'd been during his time as a pilot.
Can you still hear me?
Yes, Raleigh Becket.
He flew his fingers to touch the pod activator button.
You are going to experience what we humans call death.
He couldn't bring himself to press it. Seconds flew. He cursed himself silly.
It's really fast, I promise. But this is going to be the last time you hear me speak.
He could sense the aliens' eyes following the movements of Gipsy. He imagined they communicated in a series of clicks made by the ends of their mouth, just like that movie Yancy really liked. What was it, District 9? He let his mind be free, floating like the Gipsy, nowhere to go, nowhere to hide, exposing themselves to fate.
Why do you want me to experience death?
His finger moved an inch closer.
Because we're going to save the world, as a team.
She was still confused. Around her she could see the entire interior of the factory. They were manufacturing monsters, the same monsters she had spent her entire life killing. Flames of light surrounded her, and her heart began to heat. He thought he sensed her contemplating.
Gipsy?
Yes, Raleigh Becket.
Do you remember Yancy? He went through death, too. But for you it's going to be different.
How?
It's lonelier. Maybe there's a different kind of heaven.
He finally pressed the escape pod button. He could feel her arms taking him away, carrying him up like a baby, up to where he prayed he could see daylight once again even if just for a glance. He prayed to be saved, he prayed to see Mako. He didn't pray to live long, he just wanted to absorb everything before all ended.
You're going to be fine, Gipsy. We can always meet in the drift.
But if I am destroyed, you will be in another Jaeger.
You won't feel the other Jaeger. But you will feel me. And Yancy. And Mako.
She had never used this word before, but she had found it often in her pilots' minds to understand when to use it.
Will you...miss me?
His tears nearly burst out from that moment of hesitation. She sounded so human.
Of course I will, girl. I will.
The pod hatch beneath him closed, and he was inside. His head spun, his eyes flickered, trying to gather a little bit more life, just enough for a goodbye. The emptiness made her torso quiver, and the heat from her reactor enclaved her so mercilessly she couldn't even focus on the aliens beginning to run around in alarm as waves of nuclear filled the factory.
Raleigh Becket?
No answer. She listened, concentrated, but the heat blurred her circuitry. She could feel her systems dying, melting. She couldn't wait any longer. Doesn't matter if Raleigh couldn't hear her, this was her last favor to give to her last surviving pilot, something to release her from the chains of her identity as a machine.
Thank you, Raleigh Becket.
She felt the matter around her vibrate as Raleigh's escape pod shot above her head, struggling to surface, to survive the blooming petals, to reappear in the world that it was familiar with.
Robots had no God. If the definition of God was The Maker, then her God would be a team of people set out to assemble a giant human-controlled machine designed to wipe out giant monsters threatening a species that she didn't even belong to. But the assemblers didn't plant this sense of allegiance in her - her pilots did. Yancy and Raleigh and Mako, they taught her how to connect, to trust, to be loyal and obedient, and to fight. At times when her pilots thought of giving up, she deliberately showed incidental options. She couldn't let them perish.
They taught her how to feel.
And since she couldn't wish to her makers that Raleigh would survive, she made sure the escape pod had no complications during deployment. She made sure the escape hatch opened according to procedure, she made sure the pod shot as fast as it could upward.
She knew Raleigh must be thousands of meters above her by now. She couldn't tell, couldn't care much as to calculate where he was at this point. Around her the strange beings panicked - they tried to escape, leaving the unassembled kaijus to hang in miserable rows. Burns started to generate on their skin. She could hear their shrieks - they were different from humans shrieks, different pitches, but shrieks nonetheless.
She recalled as much memories from her pilots' drifting records as quickly as she could, and she flipped them like pages of a book within her systems. The Becket boys' childhood together, Mako's fateful Tokyo trip, Yancy's sudden absence followed by the most heartwrenching gush of emotions from Raleigh, her repairment and the first time she was introduced to Mako Mori, and the drifts and missions that followed. She thought she was a machine, but she felt funny now that she thought she knew what happiness was like. She felt funny that she was happy before being destroyed. She didn't feel betrayed, she never put the blame on Raleigh for choosing to save himself and Mako over herself. She understood that she was a machine, after all. There was no life but with her pilots, on duty. And if her duty, her purpose, was done, she could find no more reason to be functioning.
She seized a frame of Raleigh and Mako's faces talking about her heart, and stopped the data sequence.
The waves of nuclear spread in rapid speed across the walls of the massive chamber. The matter, or whatever she was floating in, burnt bright orange. It reminded her of the beautiful images of colors she found in the drifting records. And she was satisfied that her end was going be accompanied by these beautiful, bright colors. She spread her arms, free of her metal shell, she let go of all the memories, the records stored, and shut her circuits down.
The countdown stepped to 01 second. Her systems never felt more human. She thought she was smiling.