When the first attack happened, Annabeth Chase was seven and staying with her mother is New York. She remembered the last time she'd seen her father, back in San Francisco right before she'd gotten on the plane.
"It's only until we get settled into the house, Annie," he'd sworn, kissing her forehead. "A couple of weeks, at most. I promise."
The footage of that first Titan tearing through the Bay had been plastered all across Time Square. The screams across the city as people watched on in terror, that look in her mother's eyes as she held her tight to her side, would haunt Annabeth to her dying day.
Six days and thirty-five miles later, they managed to nuke the beast out of existence, but three cities had already been destroyed, crushed. Tens of thousands of lives had already been lost.
Her mother had changed after that day. Something had broken in her.
The world mourned their loses, but eventually, people had to move on.
Annabeth enrolled in a school in Manhattan, her mother returned to work in her research facility, and life went on. It was only a matter of time before life had to return to normal.
Until six months later, when a second monster attacked Manila, and then a third in Cabo, until finally the world realised that these demons weren't going to quit.
They set up Shatterdomes all along the Pacific Rim, mainly one in San Francisco.
Athena Chase put all her time into research, trying to find something, anything, that could make the slightest difference to help the humanity win. She ended up being called to San Francisco and was charged with inventing a weapon to defeat the Titans with.
That's when the Jaegers were born.