Mako's helmet bounces on the gated metal floor and rolls few inches before being kicked by the feet that stand in his line of vision, the view with which he's greeted as he gasps for air and opens his eyes. "What the hell," he hears, and he lets his head drop to the floor almost hard enough to bruise.

"Pilots disengaged."

Heavy footsteps echo through the cockpit, but Mako remains lying where he is until a hand grabs his shoulder and jerks him upright. Somebody tugs at his eyelid; Mako pushes, rubs a forearm over his face instead. There's a pounding just behind his temples, but otherwise he feels fine—he only doesn't want to be touched, hands cold against his body that begs, as he lies on the ground, for a moment to itself. Mako listens instead, keeps his gaze down and watches feet pace back and forth across the ground loud taps and clunks that reverberate against his skull and in his ears. These are not memories, they tell him. This he can share.

"What the hell," he hears again, repeated from further away this time. The voice is louder than necessary in the small space of the cockpit, even above the whirls of machinery and the murmur of the A.I. as it shuts itself down. Mako needs to time to place it. "Did you see what happened? Because I sure didn't. I told you this would—"

"Shut the hell up, Hasook," Mako says loudly, and his mouth is so dry that his voice almost cracks.

He places gloved hands beside him and pushes himself up now, once again shrugging off assistance from the J-Tech officer kneeling beside him. The world is unsteady, a reel of blues and blacks, but he sets his feet and lets the film play.

Hasook hasn't left the cockpit, his helmet dangling from two crooked fingers on his right hand. "I could have been wiped," he complains, and just for an instant Mako hears the screech of leather and talon, and he thinks that this way, at least, Hasook would have died without screams on his lips.

"Good thing you weren't, then," Mako mutters instead. He wipes a hand across his mouth, where a copper tang wells against his tongue before being spat onto the ground.

Attempting a neural drift with Hasook had been a pointless exercise, in the end, the rounds run by J-Tech and LOCCENT for no other reason than they had no team for the Basco Thunder. It had been an act of desperation, though, founded on a essential similarity in the drift candidates: memories of rings of people, fists wrapped in white tape dirtied with mud and blood and coins tossed in bets at their feet—a fighting style only one other candidate shared.

Desperation, however, did not guarantee compatibility.

The J-Tech officers shuffle them out of the cockpit before any retort can be made, and Mako gazes over the heads of technicians bent over equipment, over the LOCCENT officer that grips his arm and the medic that rushes towards them. No rangers, he notes; and with that, a pocket of air released from his lungs, he deflates. Hasook has stopped talking, at least for the moment, resigned to a sullen turn of his lips and arms crossed over his chest as the medic gives him attention.

"Where is the marshal?" Mako asks.

"Communications." A technician fumbles with his drivesuit. "You're to report immediately."


Marshal Toza Bogdanovic is a man permanently bent by his own muscles, built and scarred under the weight of metal and the world. Mako is more than a foot taller, but in the presence of a man who does not know how to rest, even long after his body has grown too old to bear the pressure, he stops and listens. It's easier to stare at the water-damaged spots along the wall or the cracks in the concrete floor of the marshal's bunker than to look, really, at the pinched scowl on the old man's face.

"This is getting ridiculous, Iwamoto, and you know it."

Mako doesn't respond. There is no correct answer, so he doesn't try at all.

"You knew that was a shot in the dark, a drift that would never come to shore. I let you do it because you're the best damn candidate we have, but you know of all the harebrained decisions when we have another person who matches all the tests, all the requirements—and don't you start your protesting, son, I don't know what your problem is—" Toza taps a finger against his head and leans in, only inches away from Mako's face so that Mako can count the lines in the old marshall's eyes—"but we needtalent right now, and you need to get over it. Your brother's doing everything he can."

And there, it's said. Mako can feel the muscles in his back seizing but he only stiffens more, pulls his gaze away from Toza's to the dank concrete floors, the faint prints of his boots wet from the rain still visible in the dim light of the swinging overhead lamp.

Toza sighs and takes a step back. "I don't have a choice, Iwamoto. There's nothing left for you in Tokyo. You'll never get in a jaeger here."

Mako looks up now, a chill running down his back—a trace along the neural interface that ghosts over his skin from the circuitry suit removed less than an hour ago. "Sir, you—"

The marshal raises his hand. "Panama City's been truly lost, one jaeger down and the other completely destroyed. Technicians and rangers are being relocated to Hong Kong while the jaeger that remains is moved for repairs. Hong Kong has the strongest defense line, overseen by Grand Marshal Gyaltsen, they're lowering the wall for new incomers. It's just good timing. You need to go. I've already made the decision: you and your brother are flying out at 0600 tomorrow morning."

Mako feels a breath catch in his throat; he can't swallow, and he can't let it go. "Bolin's coming, too, then?"

"Of course, you fuckin' idiot." Toza turns, makes a heavy drop into a chair as though something has pushed him down. He tilts his head back, eyes half-shut but trained, still, on the boy before him. "Now get out of here. Maybe Gyaltsen will be able to knock some sense into you."

Since the first kaiju landing nearly fourteen years earlier, rain has become the pan-Pacific standard weather—some effect of the so-called "Kaiju Blue" phenomenon, perhaps, or, according to the more superstitious, earth's cry for the future. Mako thinks it fitting as he rests his forehead against the cool glass of the helicopter window and watches the wide expanse of ocean roll beneath them. Bolin sleeps, his head tucked against his chest, and the Hong Kong skyline grows closer ahead; but Mako keeps his gaze below. The sea is not quiet, smooth nowhere he can see from horizons across, but nor does it toss and roar. It rumbles, prowls, disturbed only by the pounding rain, and he wonders just what waits beneath the surface. Would they know it was coming if monsters from their dreams and memories rose to greet them?

It is, as it turns out, a question with blessedly no answer. The grey waters below only roll over beneath them to give way to the expanse of blacktop and crowded umbrellas below. Mako leans over and nudges his brother's shoulder as the helicopter hovers and slowly drops. Bolin lets out a low groan, shifts and throws an arm over his eyes.

"Bro," Mako says, "wake up. We're here."

Bolin jerks upright, and both unclip their belts and shrug canvas backpacks over their shoulders, all they need to carry their belongings in a move from one country to another. "It's bigger than the one in Tokyo," Bolin shouts over the helicopter blades as they power down, and he steps out into the weather.

The hangar is full of people running: some attempting to push box-laden carts twice their size, some with coat jackets held over their heads, others with umbrellas who race for closing double doors, but all around is a sense of people's fleeing. Only one slows amidst the rush, boots splashing through the puddles as she turns her collar up against her face.

"She's gorgeous," says Bolin—no quieter than his last shout—and she comes to a halt in front of the copter and smiles.

"You must be the Iwamoto brothers," she says in Japanese, and she holds out a hand that takes Mako a moment to realize he's supposed to take. "I'm Asami Sato, of J-Tech. I'll be showing you around."

Her eyes are green, a single flash of color against the drear of the hangar and the rain.

Mako listens, only half-heartedly, as she leads them inside the high concrete walls and points out places or names: the combat room that way, tanks on their way to K-Science, rangers on their ways to and from training. Bolin keeps up at her side, an animated receiver to her every word, and Asami listens and laughs; Mako watches, instead, the tumble of her black curls, keeps his eyes on the heels of her shoes and the tracks of the floor they walk.

He looks up only when the doors slide open to a room at least twice as large as what Mako thought encaptured the whole shatterdome from the outside. All the people fleeing from the docks must have come here, he thinks; he nearly trips three times as people shove and hustle through the crowds, and when Mako looks to his left, he nearly stops dead at the jaeger that rises, menacing, above the room.

"The marshal is that way." Asami is pointing, and Mako cranes his head to see. "I have to meet my father to inspect a new shipment from the inland, but if you need anything, you can usually find me in the control room or in Kwoon Combat." She leans back on her heels, twists her hair over her shoulders with a quirk of her mouth. "I'm not a pilot, but Dad likes to make sure I'm still sharp, no matter what."

Bolin is slicking his hair back and waving goodbye when he gives Mako a huge, hard elbow the the chest. Mako doubles over, wraps his arms around his stomach—"Bro, what the—?"—but Bolin is already hurrying forward, dragging Mako behind him.

"That's not Korra Grey, is it?" he asks, and Mako finally sees what he thinks he's supposed to see.

The Grand Marshal is even taller than Mako, who stands just over six feet, and with his shaved head and PPDC blues cuts an intimidating figure. Next to him, though, is someone much smaller, her hair pulled back and dog tags swinging as she gestures something emphatic. Hers is a recognized face, Mako realizes with some shock—one he's seen on television, even years before, blue eyes against brown skin and arms that look as though they alone could hold back a kaiju's claw.

A child who crawled into a jaeger—

The conversation does not seem to be a pleasant one. The marshal's face is almost a purple against the pale of his skin, and Mako can hear the end of the argument in English as they approach.

"—else here even comes close to what I can do and have done, you can't tell me I need—"

"Korra, we are not having this discussion right now!" Marshal Gyaltsen cuts her off over the rest of the crowd that hustle by, and she opens her mouth to protest. "In fact, we're not having it at all. My decision is final, and you will listen."

She clenches her fists and continues to glare at Gyaltsen even when he notices Mako and Bolin and turns to greet them; Mako keeps his eyes on her instead of the marshal, too, as she makes no indication of drawing to attention at their arrival. "Misters Iwamoto," Gyaltsen says, and he dips his head briefly in response to the brothers' short bows. "Welcome to Hong Kong. Walk with me."

He takes over where Asami left, polished shoes clicking against the hangar bay floor. Mako looks over his shoulder, and Korra follows, sullen, her arms crossed over her chest as she kicks her feet while she walks. "I'm sure Marshal Bogdanovic led you to no false expectations about your move here. While we have jaegers in repair you're to continue training under my officers and await assignments. Japan is nearly an empty island; Hong Kong is a very different story. It won't be what you're used to."

Korra perks up for the first time at that, taking two quick steps to close the gap between herself and the group. "I'll make sure they know what to expect," she offers, a lilt in her voice as she raises one eyebrow and lifts her chin. "It'll be easy enough to lead them through orientation before we turn them over to Beifong."

"Ranger Grey." Tenzin stops and turns, almost spinning on his heels, and Mako notes the change in address. Korra seems to notice it as well, as she straightens in response, drawing her shoulders back and dropping her arms. "With two of our jaegers in repair and in need of new pilots, Iwamoto and Iwamoto here are going to be joining you in returning to drift training in addition to physical. I think you'll all agree you're set in that department, as long as you stay on top of it, but youparticularly—" His gaze shifts briefly from Korra to Mako—"could use the training."

"But after five—!"

It sounds like the beginning of a much-repeated argument, and Tenzin seems to think so, too, as he begins walking again before Korra can finish. "If you can sustain a connection without putting any lives in danger, then we'll have this conversation again, Ranger."

Something tenses in Korra's face, a blanch in her eyes and a twist of her lips. There's a piece missing, Mako thinks, that he should know, and he strains to remember the newsreels, the interviews, the fallen jaegers and humanity pushed to the brink; but he can only remember the blink of blue eyes and a tiny figure against the backdrop of a monster.

"Breakfast is served at 0530…"

Once again Mako turns off one ear and leans back against the flow of movement and information, the passing of time before his eyes. Bolin walks by Tenzin's side with a question for everything, and Korra—a set to her jaw and a gaze that never settles, as though searching for a place to jump—vanishes into the hangar crowd. But Mako settles back in his memories, dim television screens and looming bodies.

And when they leave the noise of hangar bay into the close, bare walls of the bunker wing, his body lets it go.