Australian Shatterdome

+7 hours Kaiju event

Margret stepped onto the dojo floor and was reminded of Foxtrot's bay. The paneled wooden room could easily hold fifty students and be quartered into at least four sizable practice mats but it was almost empty. Two older men worked through kendo forms in a corner and another woman was performed kata as though it was a dance. Instead of harsh aggression, each form flowed into the next one as though she chased some mythical opponent.

None of these appealed to her.

She warmed up on a rope and speed bag and found a wooden dummy in the corner. It wasn't her strongest suit, but the jeet kun do drills felt good. Open hand slaps and knife edge thrusts resounded against the core of the dummy and then again on each of the protruding branches. Speed could be as lethal a trap as pride and Margret focused on rhythm or the lack of it. Each time she felt the urge to settle she would pick drop a beat and change tempo.

"When are you going to tell us the Marshall General's great plan?" Chuck Hansen's voice had a laconic arrogance to it.

Her hand pummeled the dummy and she shifted to an interior attack, using both elbows to strike at the center core. Then she pushed away and faced him. "Tomorrow morning, when we're airborne."

"I want to know what he thinks is so bloody important that we should abandon our post."

"Come." She abandoned the dummy on the side of the room and stepped bare-footed to the center of the black padded mat.

The look in his eyes said that he anticipated the fight. From his personnel files, Margret knew that he was nine years younger than her at 21 and raised by his father Henry "Hercules" Hansen after his mother was killed in a car accident during mandatory evacuations. After Herc joined the Jaeger Rangers it was inevitable that his son, who'd been raised in a Shatterdome, would follow him into the Conn-pod. It still made him an arrogant, handsome, asshole in Margret's eyes but he was a damn good Ranger.

"What style?" He challenged.

"Tui shou," she answered and lifted her hands out towards him. As usual, her weight settled down and her knees bent softly to take the weight.

"Toi shu?"

"Tui shou," Herc answered and Margret was startled to see him there.

Both Hansen men wore black cotton pants and black t-shirts with their eponymous bulldog on the breast. "Sticky hands training. The Field Marshall and Yoshi Nagata trained intensively in Asian style martial arts, aikido, judo, jiu-jitsu. Foxtrot Alpha is the only jaeger capable of that kind of movement. Has to do with those plastic muscle cables she uses."

"Oh," Chuck answered. "The thing on your knees."

"Shikko, it's normally used to strengthen the musculature of the legs and in instances when a fighter cannot stand. I did not know that Foxtrot could do it before we tried." She tried to keep her response emotionless.

The conversation had turned away from her and memories of knee-walking brought back Yoshi's face and the smell of his blood as it had poured out of his nose. It smelled pale and slightly off, anemia read the final report, but the odor always reminded her of motor oil with its biting and unhealthy flavor on the back of the tongue.

"I box, that's my style. A little muy thai mixed in, but even Dad likes old school best. Takes kaiju down every time."

Margret reached out her hand again. "Tui shou is not about beating your opponent or even gaining mastery. It's about learning how your opponent moves. Sometimes its about learning your own weaknesses."

"I think I'm good. Ten kills, remember?"

Margret's hands were still up. Herc pulled his son to the side and took his place. She wanted to hesitate but forced herself to meet his eyes calmly.

"Stand there, maybe you'll learn something." Herc lifted his hands to hers and Margret immediately began a standard pushing tactic to see how he'd respond to aggression. He accepted it and turned the movement of her pressure back towards her. The press of their hands on each was followed by the movement of their bodies: forward onto the toes and then back again to the heels. Like the woman doing kata, sticky hands was a dance between two fighters who moved with patience as they tested the limits of balance and tried to use movement against the other. Then faster. Herc's hands ran along the backs of hers, caught her wrists and tried to open her defense.

"When I first learned this, Sensei Ovechkin would duct tape our hands together and make us put one foot under the mat so we couldn't move."

The description made her smile. She turned the gambit vertical and took it back to him. "He died two years ago, but I trained with him. He super-glued me to Yoshi one day when we weren't listening."

"Listening?" Chuck said and hey'd both forgotten he was there. Herc tried to pull her high and she let him go without following, off-balancing him, and then she retook the momentum and drew him back to her position of strength.

"Match. Listen. Disrupt the center." His hand shot forward towards Margret's shirt but she had already twisted her hip and his momentum carried him forward and to the ground. She followed him with her hand and before he'd even bounced on the mat she was pulling him back to his feet.

"Deception too. Just because you think you're fighting as one, out here, compatibility is a choice." Her answer was to Chuck but her eyes were on another memory entirely. She shook her head to dispel it. "It took Yoshi and I over a day to peel off the super-glue without losing skin. Tui shou is a good drill. Reemphasizes the drift."

"Obviously you needed more of it then."

"Chuck!" Herc snapped.

"It's the truth. Shoddy pilots can't handle the drift or the neural feedback. The data recordings show the truth. Their handshake was crap." The younger man snorted heavily and faced her straight on. "No offense, ma'am. Just calling it like I see it. You and your co-pilot were going to kill each other sooner or later."

"I will not disrespect your co-pilot by saying that your views will change when you've lost one." Margret's voice was tight. "I have fought as a Ranger for seven years, first in Tango Caribe and then in Foxtrot Alpha. Yoshi was a pro in every sense of the word. It's my jaeger who likes to eat pilots for breakfast. She skull fucks them quite spectacularly and that has nothing to do with mediocrity."

She stepped forward, cognizant of Chuck's height. A part of her wondered if she would have ended up as arrogant had Foxtrot been successful, but she didn't really care, the only problem now was his ability to function as part of a four jaeger team instead of the solo victories he enjoyed at the cost of other's lives.

"I will not threaten you, Mr. Hansen, but I will not coddle you and pet your ego either. Your father makes up for your weaknesses but you are not a balanced fighter. Some day that will cost you your jaeger and maybe the war. My job until that point is to try to function as the Field Marshall - which means your weaknesses, fuck-ups, and general inability to take direction are my fucking problem. Are we clear?"

He was silent.

Margret got a hold of his clothing and let him fight against her balance before deciding to retreat to what he knew best. He tried to hammer down to break her grip but she sank her weight into the floor, pulling him off-balance and forward into a throw. As he hit on his spine she used his weight to carry her with him, kept hold of his arm, and slid out into an armbar before he'd taken the first breath after hitting the mat. She let him struggle against it for a second and then torqued her hips just enough that he tapped.

She let him up and climbed back to her feet. Chuck was red and veins popped on his forehead as he rounded on her again. This time she used Hane Goshi using his momentum to help lift his weight up over her back. He hit the mat hard and instead of the armbar dropped her knee into the vee of his shoulder. With a short jerk she stepped back and let him rise again.

He snapped an ill-timed punch out and caught her on the cheekbone. Herc said something but they weren't listening. Chuck attacked again with a vicious and fast roundhouse but she side-stepped the blow and moved just out of his reach. He attacked harder, faster. His punches lacked control and she easily evaded them.

His father grabbed a hold of Chuck mid-swing. The two men grappled for a moment. Chuck had height on his dad, but not the same wiry strength and decades of experience. "You. Go take a cold shower and try to listen to what the Field Marshall said. You could chase her around all night because you're too stupid to admit you could use a little work."

"I…"

"Go." Herc followed Chuck to the edge of the mat and then to the door where the two men spoke briefly out of Margret's earshot. She ignored them and grabbed her towel and water bottle to leave the dojo. Even the few other practitioners had left during her fight. She knew how Pentecost would have handled it. He would have wiped the floor with Striker's pilot and asserted his immediate male dominance.

She hurried out of the west entrance and back towards her temporary quarters when she heard the footsteps behind her and turned to confront Herc. The walls in the Sydney Shatterdome were not like Hong Kong's. Someone had gone through them with elaborate chalk paintings that seemed to be a mixture of Native Peoples inspired art and a story about how the kaiju had changed the world.

A chalk picture of Yamarashi reared up just above his shoulder but Margret looked away from it and back to his face.

"He's a good Ranger." Herc struggled to find the words. "I hope you won't hold that against him. He doesn't like to leave this place undefended."

"Striker is unsurpassed." Margret answered softly. "But we're all soldiers when it comes down to it, and if Pentecost thinks that there's a chance to destroy the Breach, I will drag him unconscious if I have to."

"You're a good match for him."

It took her a moment to realize what Herc had said and then disbelief flooded her and she shook her head with a laugh. "You don't know me very well and I'm no longer on the active Ranger list."

"What?"

Her hands moved of her own accord and tightened across her chest as she tried not to let the distress on her face show. "I'm grounded."

"Bullshit. Pentecost would never, not if he really has a plan."

"I told you that we had four jaegers. That's true. I was already battling the clock with Foxtrot and the Marshall gave me more time and money than I had the right to use. She…" Margret couldn't help it, her voice broke letting her accent back out and a lump grew in her throat making it hard to breathe. "She is going to be melted down for scrap soon enough. The bio-mechnical polymer sends too much feedback to the pilot, Herman ran the numbers, he says I have neural scarring that precludes me from additional duty."

"Margret." Herc reached out and rested his hand on her shoulder but did not move closer to her and she was struck by the feeling of the space between them. It seemed unbreachable now.

"I don't need your pity." She pushed his hand away and for a moment, it was as though they were back in the dojo. He absorbed the movement and began to turn it, capturing the energy, and taking it back towards her –he disengaged abruptly. It felt like something was lost and before she could embarrass herself further she turned and kept walking towards her room. The echoes of her footsteps chased her all the way.