Ride the Drift
Viridicus
A/N: So this is a Pacific Rim meets Adventure Time AU. Essentially I'm going to tell the story of Pacific Rim with the characters of Adventure Time - but because the AT peeps are different, with different personalities and so on, things may (will) change. I'm warning you now, so you can't get mad at me when your favorite bits of the story aren't exactly the way they were in the movie. Rating starts at T now for language and character death, but may go up in later chapters.
Chapter One
She was dead asleep when the alarm began to blare, but she'd always been a light sleeper, so she had already dropped out of her bunk and started beating on his shoulder to wake him before he'd even registered the noise. "Hey fuckface! Category 3 surfaced just off the coast of Alaska! We're on!" Whooping, she made her way – tripping over two pairs of boots, his and hers – to the closet, where she began pulling on her coveralls.
It was hard for her to conceptualize just how a pair of misfit orphans like Marshall Lee and Marceline Abadeer had come to this – to being the pilots of the Pacific Northwest's top jaeger, the Scream Queen – and she wasn't really one to ruminate. She was kind of the action type – she usually let Marshall do the thinking, which was funny because he wasn't really the thinking type either. The difference was largely that if she took it into her head to jump into a volcano, Marshall would be a step after, not before. She usually put it up to her being two minutes older – he had to take a couple of minutes to think about it first.
It had gotten them in no small amount of trouble growing up, but ultimately the attributes that had driven teachers and foster families crazy – their willingness to take on all comers, and their unwillingness to ever be parted from one another – coupled with the kaiju apocalypse that had turned the world into a war zone meant that the Abadeer twins were the Pacific Northwest coastline's first and best line of defense. As Marceline shrugged into her leather jacket (patched on the back with an image of a snarling vampire, and notched with four confirmed kaiju kills) she pictured the day ahead of her: suiting up and driving out in the grey predawn light to where the head of the Scream Queen was waiting for them, waiting to be brought to life by the joining of two minds. The perfect synchronization known as the Drift.
Marceline swatted Marshall's ass with her towel to get him going and then charged out into the corridor, knowing her brother wouldn't be far behind. Pepper Butler, the jaeger station's mission coordinator, met her on the way to the bay. "Good morning, Abadeers! Got a live one for you today. Sensors indicate that our latest buddy, a Category Three we're calling Knifehead, surfaced about five miles out from the Alaskan coastline. Your orders are to patrol the Miracle Mile until it gets here and then prevent it from making landfall." Pepper allowed himself a grin. "Meaning, of course, kick some ass." Marceline let out a whoop, and heard her brother's echoing voice.
They trotted into the hangar and took the elevator to the top of the Scream Queen's head and climbed into the cockpit. There Marceline pulled on her armor, worn, scuffed, scarred, and perfectly broken in. Hers. Tightening the straps on the body armor and tapping each piece with a closed fist to make sure it was on fast sent a thrill through her stomach. Glancing over her shoulder she met her twin's bleary eyes with a toothy grin, and saw him sleepily return it. Slow to start he might have been, but he loved this just as much as she did.
"Ready to get into my head, little sister?"
"Ready to step into mine, baby brother?"
Their pit crew bustled around, attaching the drift mesh to their spines and testing the connection. As Marceline pulled on her helmet, she felt the familiar coil of fear and excitement in her gut. This could be the day they notched their fourth kill, and this could also be the day that ended their lives. Kaiju were getting bigger and stronger and, some whispered, smarter with every breach. But: they were the Abadeer twins, piloting the Scream Queen, the biggest, baddest jaeger on the Best Coast! There was no way they could lose.
"Engage neural handshake. Drifting in three…two…one…mark."
The familiar flood of shared memories filled their minds as they meshed – chasing puppies in the park, standing up to bullies at school, various foster families and homes all crowding in one after another – and then they were looking through the same set of eyes, and those eyes were the eyes of a jaeger. Their jaeger. Pepper's voice filled their ears: "Sir, we've established a connection. Neural handshake strong and holding."
"All right!"
"Let's do this!"
They felt the swooping of their stomachs as the Scream Queen's head dropped a hundred feet along the rails onto her shoulders, and then the thunderous crunch of metal as the clamps locked them in. They glanced at each other, seeing with mirrored gazes – Marceline looking at herself through Marshall's eyes, and feeling himself looking back. They shared a private grin, and then both snapped to attention as Marshall Petrikov's voice cracked like a whip through their helmet speakers.
"All right, Scream Queen, listen up. The kaiju you'll be meeting today, Knifehead, is by all accounts one of the biggest we've ever seen. It's about twenty tons so you'll be evenly matched. Patrol the Miracle Mile and keep Knifehead from making landfall. Fight hard, fight smart, and take no chances, and you'll bag us a win today."
"Yes, sir," Marshall said, nodding, but Marceline frowned. That was the second time today she'd heard something about not taking chances and sticking to the plan, and that stuck in her craw. She heard plenty about it all the time and usually ignored it, but today seemed different: the Marshall and Pepper had both seemed pretty keen on it. The thought was driven out of their shared heads, however, when the helicopters transporting the Scream Queen began to hover, and the lead pilot's voice crackled through their headsets: "Destination reached. Prepare for drop." Marshall and Marceline braced themselves.
Scream Queen dropped into the icy ocean with a thunderous crash. Marceline and her brother had braced for the impact and so the Queen hit with bent knees, absorbing most of the shock; it still rocked them around in the cockpit, however. They swiveled their head, taking a moment to get their bearings, as an icy storm roared around them, lashing the unfeeling Queen with rain and sleet. Waves lashed at their waist as the Queen began to wade with ponderous steps to the point where she'd begin patrolling for the kaiju.
Not more than ten minutes into their trek Marceline realized the reason for Pepper and the Marshall's twitchiness. "There! Ten o' clock!" The Scream Queen's head swiveled to take in the reason for a ping on their sonar: a fishing vessel tossing in the massive waves, estimated to contain about five souls. Petrikov heard her too.
"Scream Queen, you do not engage. Repeat, do not engage. You'll be risking the lives of two million people to save ten."
"But sir, we're nearly at our destination!" Marceline said, feeling her face heat inside her helmet. "We can make it, I know we can!"
"Scream Queen, that's an order!"
Marceline muttered something that could have approximated "yes sir" and then turned to her brother. "You thinking what I'm thinking?"
"Duh, dumbass, I'm in your head!"
"So…wanna go fishing?"
Marshall sighed, but he didn't need to say anything: Marceline already knew he'd agree. Slowly but inexorably, the Scream Queen adjusted her course to intercept the fishing boat. When she'd reached pickup distance she bent down – slowly, slowly, a miracle of coordination complicated by the fact that Petrikov was barking into their headsets to head the fuck back to their post – the Queen reached down and closed her fist gently around the boat. And at that exact moment, the kaiju breached the surface of the Pacific Ocean, driving its massive body into the jaeger.
They were both thrown against their restraints with the impact and screamed with it, hearing the crunch and groan of the jaeger's metal body and cursing themselves for letting the monster get the jump on them. But Marshall had the presence of mind to wind up and chuck the fishing vessel as far as he could towards the coast – if they couldn't make their way from there, nothing could save them. Then they had both arms free to turn and fight the kaiju.
It was big – Jesus god it was big, like nothing they'd ever seen before. There was once a time when jaegers had been sized similarly to kaiju, and when jaeger builders has been able to keep pace with the beasts' ever-increasing expansion – but this thing dwarfed them almost hilariously. The Abadeers had never backed down from a fight, though, and they didn't intend to start. Burning with her brother's determination and her own, Marceline swung the jaeger's left arm to crack satisfyingly against the monster's jaw.
Beside her, Marshall was already firing up the pulsar – she was shouting at him, and he heard her, and they weren't entirely certain whether it was out loud or in their heads – and he was telling her he needed twelve seconds, twelve seconds until the first pulse would be ready, so she wound up for another swing. But Knifehead had recovered and was surging towards them through the water, the sharp spur of bone for which he was named swinging dangerously close to the jaeger's cockpit. She curtailed her swing and used it to catch at the kaiju instead, holding it back and positioning it perfectly so her brother could land one, two, three pulses directly into its chest.
The monster fell back into the ocean, squalling, the blue glow of its mouth harsh against the swirling black waves. They could see the glow of its body under the surface, but it didn't move. Marceline let out a whoop, pumping the Queen's left arm against the sky. Marshall's echoing elation thrilled through her entire body.
Of course, just like a damn spoilsport, Marshall Petrikov's voice filled their ears, cutting short their victory dance. "Scream Queen, what the hell is going on? You're miles off your post!"
Anger snapped through Marceline and Marshall Lee, but it crackled out of her first: "Sir, Knifehead's down! We lit it up twice, bagged our fifth kill! And saved the civilian vessel –."
"You disobeyed a direct order! You could have gotten yourselves killed!"
"Sir," said Marshall hotly, "we intercepted the kaiju and saved everyone on that boat!"
Never one for congratulations, Petrikov snapped, "Get back to your post!"
"Sir yes sir," Marshall replied, his mouth quirking. Their commander would probably have them out there in the cold and wet for another hour patrolling just to show them who was boss, and then it'd be back to base for a celebratory beer or ten. They'd made certain nobody would ever say the Abadeers didn't fight hard; nobody would ever dream of saying that they didn't party hard after.
Knifehead surged out of the roiling surf, rearing its insane bulk over the jaeger's head and bringing it all crashing down with twin screams of fury and rending metal. The pilots had had no time to brace themselves – the impact drove the Scream Queen to her knees and nearly over, and the screaming kept on going and going. Marceline eventually realized it was her own: the creature's claws had sheared partway through the cockpit and into her own left arm, rending it down to the bone. As she stared at the ruin of the jaeger's hemisphere controls she noticed she could see the sky through the hole in the cockpit, and the waves…and the beast.
It probably had four or six eyes, all slitted and piglike and in a row along its head, and half of them were focused on her. She'd never been one to fear a kaiju before but the alien fury in those burning orbs made her think it might be a good time to start. So instead she screamed, "Marshall! Kill it!"
Her brother swung himself around to grapple with the monster, yanking it away from his sister and landing solid, thudding blows against its head and neck. It roared, an oceanic, titanic sound, and swung its vast knife-like head against the jaeger again, ripping at more metal and making sparks fly in the cockpit. Marceline could hear the grinding and whining of gears and knew the Scream Queen couldn't take much more of this. They had to stop Knifehead for good…somehow.
Her mind raced as Marshall struggled to hold off the kaiju with only one arm, and as it battered the jaeger mercilessly. They had discharged their pulsar, and hers had been the arm with the spinning blades…there was only one weapon left. "Charge chest cannon!" she screamed with everything she had in her, punching the controls furiously with the arm that still worked.
"Charging!" Marshall worked alongside her, grappling with the kaiju at the same time. It was seriously impressive, to split your attention that way; usually you needed everything you had to keep your focus in the fight. Marceline had never loved her brother more.
And then it happened: the thing she would see in her dreams every night after, the thing she would remember as though it were happening for the rest of her life. Knifehead drove the jaeger to its knees and, with one claw, reached into the cockpit – shattering the panes of bulletproof glass that were their eyes – and ripped Marshall Lee out of the harness, screaming, his pain and fear echoing a thousand times over in Marceline's head.
Until it didn't.
Until he was gone and his loss left an aching hole inside her, like the hole in the jaeger's body where her left arm had once been. But there was still a kaiju staring down at her, a kaiju that held her brother's lifeless body in its claw. And she was still drifted with what remained of the jaeger.
Drawing on every ounce of mental and physical strength she had left in her, Marceline turned the Scream Queen's body so its charged chest cannon faced the kaiju dead on. Screaming wordlessly with the pain of her brother's loss and the effort of controlling a jaeger solo – like the world's worst headache a thousand times over – she reached out her hand and punched in the detonation code, just as Knifehead began reaching for her too.
The Scream Queen's chest cannon punched a gaping hole into the kaiju's chest. It almost immediately began to fill with the thing's glowing blue blood, but the damage was done: the furious alien life left its eyes almost immediately, and it slowly began to topple over into the surf. And now Marceline was left drifted with the remains of a jaeger, with rain lashing in and making the instruments spark and crackle. Shore was a mile off. At this point, simply sinking to her knees and letting the ocean take her seemed preferable.
But somehow, screaming with pain and grief and effort, Marceline made the Scream Queen take a step, and then another, in the direction of the coastline. Just one more step, she promised herself, and felt tears begin to course down her cheeks at the lack of Marshall's answer. This step's the last, I promise. Just one more. She kept going.
When she felt the jaeger's toes dig into turf she finally let herself do what her mind, brain, and body had been begging her to do since the kaiju had torn half of her away: she let the Scream Queen fall to her knees, and then collapse face first to the sand. Shaking and crying and screaming a little she wrenched at the straps of her harness to fall free herself. She wanted to just lie there, letting the relief of the suddenly relieved pressure of the drift thrill through her. But she was missing something, something terribly important. She had to find it.
She struggled to her feet, eyes wild, casting about for the thing she had lost, not entirely sure what it was but just knowing she needed to find it. What was it? It was so important…had stayed by her side her whole life…had come into the world with her…and now she'd never hear his voice, feel his warm and comforting presence inside her head again. She collapsed to her knees. "Marshall," she choked out, through sobs. "Marshall."
There was somebody there, some entirely unimportant person putting his hands on her shoulders and shaking her, saying something about getting help. It didn't matter what he did, or she did, or anybody did. All she knew was that Marshall was gone, gone forever into the ocean with that kaiju, and as far as she was concerned, she was gone too.