If anyone asked Crimson if whether he would rather face a Kaiju or an angry female Jaeger he'd say he'd take the Kaiju any day.

Gipsy did not take the news he was going to cut off her arm very well. Not. At. All.

Following Striker's unwanted confession of their plan about what to do with her, Gipsy had practically exploded. Crimson swore he could see her visor flash red for a moment before she charged them with her swords. After that it had all been one mad chase around the apartment with Gipsy screaming at the top of her speakers about what she was going to do to them.

It wasn't at all like the brotherhood squabbles he remembered the Weis having, chasing each other with form swords and saying that they'd cut each others head off. No. This was a Jaeger, with a real sword saying she'd shove it up his ass so far it would come up his throat. And even worse, she could do it if she really tried, and for half sensible reasons too. In fact, if it had been him in the same situation he'd probably be mad about losing an arm too.

But it wasn't him, and Gipsy, when she was mad, was terrifying.

It suddenly occurred to him that he'd never seen Cherno move that fast before... Come to think about it, why was she chasing Cherno? He had nothing to do with it other then stand to the side and offer support.

Or maybe Gipsy was so scary he'd just been scared into running along with them and not risk her wrath by standing still. When he thought about it, he hadn't really heard any threats directed towards the Russian. They were mostly towards him, all related to cutting off her arm along with other things he didn't catch. There were a few directed at Striker, mostly about him being an ass but also about reviling the dreaded news in the first place.

They had tried to reason with her, but then she started to catch up to them and they forgot about it in favor of keeping ahead of the raging death machine.

Eventually they managed to make it into the bathroom and lock the door, leaving Gipsy to pound on it while they huddled in the shower. It was then Crimson was thankful that Gipsy wasn't as technology acute as he was, at least, not enough to hack the door. After a good hour of screaming, the noises behind the locked door quieted down before disappearing all together. It was another half hour before they worked up the courage to take a peek outside.

She was lying on the broken couch, visor dark and turbine thrumming peacefully as she slept off the rage.

Rather then stay and risk her waking up still in a bad mood they decided to take a quick walk around Omega and wait for her to wake up and confirm she wasn't going to rip their arms off. As they had descended deeper into the station they unconsciously split up, content to go their own way and be with no one else but their thoughts.

As he walked alone down one of Omega's rusting hallways, Crimson couldn't help but admit to himself that Gipsy's sudden disappearance and, even more sudden, reappearance had forced him to reevaluate what he thought about... well, everything.

Ever since they'd woken up on Omega he'd been familiar with death. He'd felt the lives of the Wei triplets through the Drift as they slipped away. At the time it had been the most traumatic experience in his short life but... somehow he'd come to terms with it. They were gone and, sadly, nothing was going to change that. He missed them, yes, but he accepted it. His mind was always set solidly in the present and looking to the future. He was careful to make sure that his... yes, his brothers and sister were kept safe. It felt only right to call them that. If not siblings by blood... or oil, but brothers and sister in arms. By all due rights they'd been through hell together and even though they'd only been awake for less then two weeks he felt a deep bond to all of them. He wanted to make sure they were alright, that they could keep on living on.

When Gipsy had been injured... it was like his whole world came crashing down. When she first screamed he didn't hear her, he'd heard the Weis screaming as they were crushed in his conn-pod. In that moment he was so scared that she too might slip away into that darkness that was always there in the corner of his mind. It was where the Weis had gone when they slipped away, falling into that blackness of which there was no escape.

He felt so hopeless as he helped her back to the apartment, and when he tried to fix her the hopelessness seemed to swallow him. He knew that nothing he could do would help, and it made the decision to cut it off all the more difficult. Lose her going mad with pain, or fade away with the loss of her arm.

And when she vanished... his core nearly stopped. He'd been so afraid that she'd gone, just... drifted away into that darkness, both body and mind together.

Though they didn't show it, he could tell Striker and Cherno thought the same: That they had just lost their sister.

Then she came back, and his core nearly stopped again, this time out of shock.

What on earth had happened?

Sure he was happy, overjoyed even, to have her back but... how? She had been missing for two hours and then, miraculous, came back fully repaired. How that was even possible Crimson didn't know. But if there was one thing he was sure of it was Gipsy hadn't told them everything.

He could hear it in her voice, she was hiding something. But more then that, he noticed... something coming off of her. The others hadn't been close enough to see it, but when she moved thin trails of a bluish gas would leak from her joints before dissipating into the air. He'd been more worried about her at the time and never cared to mention it, but now it all came back.

Then he realized he'd seen it before. When he'd been trying to fix her before she vanished, he could see it leaking out with the coolant.

What was it?

It suddenly occurred to him just how little they knew about themselves. More then the obvious question of how they were alive, but how did they keep on functioning? They were Jaegers, sure, but in his time with the Weis he'd never heard of a Jaeger that remained active for more then two days without needed to return to their Shatterdome for repairs of some kind. Here they'd been walking for almost two weeks and he felt just as good as when he'd first woken up, if a little strained and tired. But still, two weeks? He wasn't complaining or anything, but something in their bodies would have snapped by now.

Again he thought back to the tools he'd gotten when they first arrived and sighed at his own naivety. Nothing he'd gotten could help them, that was what he, or rather Gipsy, had to learn that the hard way.

It sparked a new urge in his mind. To learn about themselves, to see what made them tick and how to repair them when the time came. Though Gipsy had made both a mysterious and miraculous recovery, he didn't want to leave something like that to fate again.

In that light, and after he'd scanned the extranet, he decided to get his hands on one of those full body medical scanners, one that could get through their thick armor. That idea was crushed, however, when he read the specs given by a hospital. You needed to be in one of those patient gowns without any metal or else it would screw up the readings. That went for all the medical scanners he searched for. None of them would work on a Jaeger.

He groaned as he thought about it, kicking at a random piece of trash in the street. This was harder then that time the young Wei triplets tried to get on a plane. They had wanted to bring their toy guns on a vacation to Hawaii, toy guns that just happened to full metal. Where they'd gotten them Crimson had no idea, neither did the luggage scanners that found them in their bags. One explanation and two SWAT teams later the entire situation was explained and then...

His eye brightened. He had it! Doubtless technology would have advanced since 2024 so cargo scanners would have too. The kind that they had at docks and shipyards of the old water base craft, now they would have the same thing for the space faring craft of the future to see through the alloys that made up the standard shipping crates of today. If he could get his hands on a real powerful one that could get through their armor he'd well on his way to understanding their biology.

Now all he had to do was find one.

He reached to activate his omni-tool when he looked up and realized he was just outside the door to the GI-7's headquarters. The inconspicuous warehouse hadn't changed since last he'd been here.

Giving a mental shrug, he walked up and waved his omni-tool over the door switch, the password Kriln had sent them working it's magic and unlocking the entrance. He didn't have much else to do, and maybe one of them could help him with finding one of those cargo scanners.

He quickly stepped inside and headed down to the briefing room. As the door opened he found himself staring down the barrel of a Vindicator assault rifle with a glowering Turian looking down the sights.

"Jaeger?" Kriln asked, surprised, lowering the rifle slightly.

"Kriln," Crimson replied, noticing his arms had unconsciously transformed into their buzzsaw form. "What's with the gun?"

"Oh," the Turian said, shifting his weapon into it's compact form before stowing it on his back. "Just a precaution. We got the door wired to a silent alarm after you left. It's keyed to our IDs but we forgot to get you four signed in."

"Aren't you afraid this place will get hit again?" Crimson asked, putting away his saws.

"Not really. Since that first attack we've got nothing else sent our way, so it could be safe to say they didn't get our location out to their buddies."

"And you're really taking that chance?"

"Hey, I'm still alive aren't I?"

"True."

"Yeah," Kriln nodded, crossing his arms. They stood in awkward silence for a moment before he cleared his throat. "So, what are you doing here?"

At that, Crimson sighed. "Can I ask you a question first?"

The Turian shrugged. "I guess."

"Do your females ever try to kill you when you do something... well, against them? Something they don't appreciate?"

Kriln raised an eyeridge in surprise. "They could... if you get them angry enough. They got the training to make it happen and a strange phenomenon known as feminine rage to back it up. They can calm down though, giving enough time. Why?"

Crimson sighed, stepping forward and resting all three of his hands on the table. "Let's just say I did something I shouldn't have and now Gipsy is out to turn me into scrap."

The eyeridges narrowed. "Gipsy? Which one of you is she again?"

"The one with the turbine."

"Oh. And you are?"

Crimson looked up at him, incredulous. "You mean we never told you our names?"

"No."

"Oh. Well you can call me Crimson, I guess."

"Well then, Crimson, what are you doing here? Just trying to escape?

"You could say that." Crimson groaned. "I don't what Turian females are like but if you saw one of them running at you with a sword and saying she'd shove it up your rear would you run?"

Kriln winced. "Well, I don't envy your situation if it's any comfort."

"It's not, but thanks anyway."

"So just to clarify things you're here to hide until she calms down?"

"Partially," Crimson said, pushing off the table. "You see, while I was... fixing her, I came across an unusual... anomaly in her systems. I'd like to see what it is but I don't want to cut her open to do so, she really would melt me into slag if I did that. So I was looking for a cargo scanner of some kind. You know, the kind that can scan through thick crates and things like that."

"Speaking of your friend how is she?"

Crimson stared at him, incredulously. "She tried to kill me. How do you think she's doing?"

"Right, dumb question," Kriln said before scratching his jaw. "As for the scanner... Hmm... You know, I have a friend, well, not really a friend, an old employer who owes me a few favors. He runs an auction house down below and is paranoid about the things he takes in. He has these scanners, the ones I think you're looking for, just so can make sure it is what they say it is. Just recently he got his hands on some new used ones but is keeping the old ones in storage, probably hoping to resell them. I could get one for you, if you want?"

Crimson's eye brightened in surprise. "You'd do that for us?"

"You are the reason I'm still alive," Kriln replied with a small smile. "If we had gone against that outpost by ourselves without you and your friends we'd been torn apart. To me, this is just a good investment to make sure we stay above ground."

Crimson nodded. "I can understand that. By the way, what are you doing here?"

"I work here," the Turian answered with a grin before dropping it in exchange for a more serious air. "We had a breakthrough with the data we recovered. Apparently the Rising Maws are in the slave market. They payed a group of pirates a lot of money for three, very particular slaves. Phil managed to find their names and we found out they were all weapon and armor makers who were too deep in debt and couldn't make the money. The transaction took place months ago but we got the name of the place where the Maws took them, somewhere called the Chop Shop."

"Does that mean anything to you?" Crimson asked.

"No. It's a fairly common name among the Blood Pack. It could be referencing more then a dozen places on Omega alone. We got Aniya working down in the lower levels trying to identify their command structure and leaders and seeing if she can find this place. Phil is going through the data, getting anything he can and looking for that ID. But Jrel found something very interesting."

From under the table, Kriln pulled out a Krogan helmet and set on the table. It's black finish and yellow eye sockets stared balefully at Crimson as he examined it.

"That's from one of the Krogan that got into our base," Kriln continued. "Jrel went over their equipment and found tactical cloak modules in their armor, along with several different hacking programs in their omni-tools. What's more, judging by how silent they were we and guess that these Krogan had special training. Top it off with their special weapons we can only assume they were infiltrators, if I dare say so."

"Is that unusual?" Crimson asked.

Kriln gave him a funny look. "The only way you couldn't hear a Krogan was if you were deaf. I mean, you've seen how big they are. It's almost impossible for them to move without making some kind of noise."

"You said almost impossible," Crimson pointed out.

"Well, I have met a few that could take five steps without bursting out into song. But he found something else." Kriln said, giving the helmet on the table a tap. "All armor that comes from the big companies has a special tracking code so it can be identified. We couldn't find any on these, same with the Revenent your friend brought back. By the way, we put it back together if you want to take it."

"Thanks. But for the codes, couldn't they just scratch them off?" Crimson asked, leaning in.

"They wouldn't be able to find all of the places where they print them. What's more, the armor was still in good condition. If I had to make a guess I'd say it was less then a month old. Same problem with the serial numbers: as in, none."

"So they ordered them in specialized from somewhere?"

"Don't think so. The manifests didn't say anything about these. Plus, with the cloak modules, getting one of these made custom would cost at least a hundred thousand per suit. No, the Maws couldn't have ordered this in. At least..." he trailed off, scratching his chin before he let out a sigh.

"Damn this gives me a headache," he said, leaning on the table. Then he looked up at Crimson. "You want to come with me and get that scanner you wanted? I need to get some fresh air anyway."

Crimson nodded and Kriln led him out of the warehouse and into the station beyond.

-Linebreak-

Though he would never admit it to anyone, Striker slowly began to realize just how much of an effect Gipsy's disappearance had on him. It was very subtle, slowly creeping into his mind like living slime. He tried to ignore it at first, but soon he couldn't put it away any longer.

He... cared about her.

He slouched as he walked, angry with the fact that his own mind was siding with the enemy.

Sure he cared about her, in the soldierly kind of way. It was something he'd picked up from Herc. You lose someone, you move on, simple as that. He was a soldier, you got used to it over time. At least, that's what he told himself.

When Gipsy had been shot... well, it woke up something in his memories he never wanted to think about. A memory of Herc and Chuck in a helicopter, flying away from an expanding mushroom cloud while Chuck screamed in the back for his mom. He understood what was happening, what the cloud was, and that everyone inside it was already dead.

He would never admit it, but Gipsy's scream... it nearly brought him to the brink of panic. For a single moment he was there, in the back of the chopper, looking back and screaming for her. It was something he never wanted to experience again: That feeling of being helpless, unable to do a thing as your world was blown apart.

His dad, Herc, had been a soldier, and he liked to consider himself the same. They would fight, and, when the time came, they would die. It was a simple philosophy, and he like it. Simple and to the point. More then that of a soldier, it seemed to fit the life of a Jaeger. They were created for one purpose, to fight Kaiju until their last breath, till their legs were torn to shreds and their heads ripped off.

When they had first woken up, in those first twenty minutes before the realization that they had died settled in, he had been excited. Not like Gipsy, of course, but his excitement had more contained. Admittedly he had thought very little about the future at that point, content to only live in the now. But then Crimson had reminded them all of what it had taken to get there: The deaths of both them and their pilots.

When that happened, he had been thrown back into that instant. Chuck and Pentecost at his controls, priming the bomb with resolve stronger then steel. Then it had gone off and they just... drifted away. There was nothing else to describe it. They had fallen into a black pool in his mind, never to see the light of day again and he was left on the surface, holding on by a thread, watching as their faces vanished into the dark depths.

It had terrified him.

In that moment he wanted to swear it would never happen again, if only so then he wouldn't feel like that again. The thought of being left behind as his friends fell into that blackness... it was worse then the actual dying part. But he knew that promising something like that was foolish, and he'd only feel worse if it ever did come to happen. The feeling of both failure and fear would be too much.

He might have thought of himself as a soldier... but that was just too much.

So, he made a rather selfish decision. He didn't want to get too attached in case they... went away. Gipsy, Cherno, Crimson, yes he considered them as brothers in arms but he just couldn't go deeper. He couldn't bare the thought of losing them as close friends. But lose them as soldiers, people who died in the line of duty, that he could both accept and understand.

The insulting and, as Gipsy so kindly put it; assery, was all just to cover his fear that one day they go and leave him here, alone. He did it so that he could just move on without crippling himself with their deaths... like a soldier would.

When he had heard Gipsy scream he thought, for one terrifying moment, that she had... died. His relief on learning she was alive was short lived as Crimson laid out their options. He'd been so angry he almost lost it. They were suppose to help her, not make her worse. But as Crimson explained, his anger, frustration and fear only grew. It seemed that no matter which way they took, Gipsy would be lost.

He felt hopeless as Crimson had moved to proceed with the operation, racking his mind for any solution that could save her. Then they found out she had vanished, and he could feel an emotion he'd never felt before: Despair.

Despite all he'd done to try and keep her distant, he couldn't help but come to appreciate her. Now that she had gone... he didn't know what to do.

He may have been a jerk and an asshole in their eyes, but... he just couldn't bare to watch them die. It was why he charged into the fray, his sting-blades bared and tore his enemies a new one. He didn't want to lose them like the way he lost Chuck. And at the same time, he didn't want to go mad if he did lose them. That wasn't what soldiers did. They mourned their dead, then moved on. More then that, the good ones would gladly lay down their lives so that a friend could live.

Again, he might have been a jerk and an asshole, but deep, deep down he cared about them, more then they could understand.

Then when Gipsy came back... he didn't know what to feel. Relief? Joy? Anger at her running off and leaving them worried shitless? Eventually he just settle on falling back into the regular flow of things because he just couldn't pull his emotions together and just tell her he had been scared. Also, he admitted, he had a reputation to keep. Why spoil it now with the mushy stuff he knew he'd never live down?

Then, when trying to slip back into his act of being an ass, he let slip about Crimson's original plan, that of cutting off her arm.

The next few minutes were terrifying in a whole other way.

If he learned anything, cowering in that shower with the others, it was to never push her over the limit. He didn't think he'd survive the next time if that happened when Crimson wasn't around. Locking the door and all.

Eventually his aimless wandering took him to the door of a familiar, yet unfamiliar, establishment. It was Afterlife, only the entrance to the gambling section of the club.

A grin slowly graced his visor.

There was one thing that Herc had left him with that he hadn't tried yet.

Three hours later found him sitting in a reinforced chair meant for Krogan at the head of a table covered in green velvet. The chips piled before him were denominations in the thousands, and some even higher. Meanwhile, around the table sat a very frustrated crowd of poker players of various species who's piles were significantly smaller then his.

He glanced at the cards, real playing cards, clutched in his hands, then back at the four on the table.

Around the poker table, the other players all watched him for any twitch that could reveal his intentions. Striker almost felt like laughing. He stood in a hanger for months on end without twitching a servo. Sure he hadn't been in control then, but still, same principle.

His biggest competition sat at the opposite head of the table, who, despite his best efforts, couldn't hide the vein pulsing on his forehead. The human had been the current champion of the game room, almost a hundred games and countless credits won. It all came crashing down as Striker made his appearance. The Jaeger had gone in with only five thousand credits worth of chips and was about to walk out with about... oh, seventy hundred thousand.

The joys of having no real face: Not having to worry about your poker face.

A smirk slowly crossed his visor, the other players none the wiser, as he pushed a large pile of chips into the middle.

The whole table seemed to groan as they forced to hand over the last of their own chips just to meet the first quarter of the amount. They must really thought they had a chance. To bad they didn't. It was almost like kicking puppies.

The champion appeared to be on the verge of a stroke... or he was just constipated, as he too pushed in his meager supply.

And now, let the raging quitting begin.

The dealer put down the last card and the other all began to show their own. Striker's smirk only grew as he saw the results. In their defense, they did have good hands, even the champ had a four of a kind with the twos.

If they hated his guts... bolts already they certainly did now as he turned over a pair of kings, making his own four of a kind.

Most just slammed their drink glasses down and stormed off while a few stayed sitting, watching ruefully as he gathered his new fortune into a big pile, then frowned.

His arms, while being strong battering rams of power, weren't so great at holding such a large pile of chips without losing at least a hundred thousand credits worth. Then he saw his solution staggering through the tables that filled the gambling room.

"Hey, jackass," he called once the drunk was close enough, holding up a chip worth a hundred. "Want a drink?"

The man nodded, staggered to side caught himself on the table and held out a hand.

"First," Striker ordered, "gimme your shirt."

The Asari at the exchange booth started as a thick, smelly bag of chip was slammed on the counter with a grinning Jaeger behind it.

"Pay up, bitch!"

-Linebreak-

There were few things that could worry the massive Russian known as Cherno Alpha, but this was one of them. Comrade Gipsy's false death sent his nuclear core pounding in his body, spiking his thoughts and making him think like nothing else had done before.

As he stomped down one of the abandoned hallways of Omega, his mind churned with unanswered questions. It was in times like these that he appreciated being alone in peace and quiet. He had claimed a long stretch of hall as his own, walking back and forth along it's length as he pondered the growing maelstrom in his mind.

As a principle, he found himself a Jaeger of simple pleasures. He enjoyed the fellowship of his comrades, even they did annoy him sometimes. The rush of battle and feeling of things breaking under his fists, he enjoyed that a lot. And just... thinking in a quiet space, free from the troubles and worries of life.

Usually one of the most prominent questions he thought about was why they, his comrades, could talk like humans and he couldn't? It was an answer that always kept alluding him.

But now that was pushed to the back of his mind as he mulled over the false death of Gipsy.

To him, death was something he had grown very much accustomed to. Being the last Mark I to last until the end of the war, he had fought beside many Jaegers who had fallen to the beasts. It grieved him, yes, but he didn't alloy himself to wallow in it.

Enemies, animals, friends, they all had one thing in common: Death waited for them at the end of the line. Much was the same for Jaegers. They were destroyed, torn apart by the Kaiju, facing their own unique kind of death. That was what he understood when he first woke up. The death of mama and papa cemented that fact in his mind. Though this whole concept of this new life, being alive and having his own will was incredible, he felt lukewarm over the whole thing. On one hand, he was alive, a living being of metal and servos, oil flowed through his veins like blood and his core pulsed like a beating heart. On the other hand, he had no one. Well, that was not entirely true. He still had Gipsy, Crimson and Striker, but that paled in comparison to the relationship he could have had with pilots. They who had shared their thoughts and emotions with him to give him the template for this new life would never get to see their child 'grow up' like they always dreamed.

He was saddened by it, but again, he didn't let himself wallow in self pity and regret. There were more important things then wondering what he could have possibly done to save them. To him, it was a waste of time. What had happened, happened, and there was no changing it.

Gipsy's false death, however...

He rumbled deep in his frame as his theories came back.

He called it a false death because that's what it was. While he had been worried, scared even, when their friend disappeared, that she had followed his parents into that everlasting dark. But then she had came back, good as new.

Call it a bit philosophical, but death never made a compromise. No one could come back, not the highest king to the lowest slave, death would never let them go. It seemed odd to Cherno that if she did 'die' then how did she come back? No one could. Therefore Gipsy didn't die, hence calling it her false death. But what really happened?

For that, he had no answer.

She couldn't have wandered away, Crimson said she was near paralyzed, and they would have heard her the moment she opened the door.

Something was going on, and he didn't like it.

There was something wrong with her return, even if she did come back better. She seemed frightened, jumpy, reluctant to answer Crimson's questions about where she'd been. She was scared, not of dying, but something else, something that had happened to her while she was away.

He stopped, raising a hand to where his conn-pod rested in his chest and scratching the metal underneath. He remembered papa used to do it when he was thinking, but it didn't seem to help. He resumed walking.

Gipsy's disappearance was unexplainable, and where she'd gone was even more so.

He didn't like that either. Not knowing things. The wires under his plating itched when he couldn't think of an explanation. Then again, the itch was always there. Ever since they got here he'd been pondering the big question of how they were alive and how they got there. He still no closer to figuring it out then that time...

He stopped dead, mid step as he made a connection.

They appeared here out of nowhere. He and the others appeared, seemingly out of thin air, the same way she disappeared. The two instances were unexplainable and to Cherno that made them connected. The same force that brought them here also kidnapped Gipsy from them, repaired her and sent her back.

But who had the power to do that?

Certainly no one he knew.

Then a thought occurred to him, a terrible one, but a good one none the less.

The Precursors. It was the Precursors that did all this.

He shoved the idea out of his mind and resumed walking. What would those unknown beings want with their greatest enemies? What could they possibly gain by giving them life and dropping them in a place like this? Maybe to get rid of them, so they could invade their earth without interference. But the more he thought about the less likely it seemed. Gipsy had said she had killed them. Dove down into the Breach and detonated her core.

To top it off, Cherno found it unlikely that they would go grave robbing. It was unsettling to imagine himself rusting in Oblivion Bay, but he would prefer that to being turned into an experiment at the hands of the enemy. Then another thing occurred to him. How could Striker or Gipsy be here? They both blew up in some way and there shouldn't be enough of them left to fill a teacup. So unless the Precursors could pull atoms from the air and glue them back together they were hardly the guilty party, but it didn't take them off the suspect list.

There were too many unknowns for Cherno to count, and didn't like it. The mere fact that Gipsy was hiding something about her disappearance was frustrating. She held a piece of the puzzle and wouldn't share it. It almost made him want to run back to the apartment and push her for answers.

Almost.

Angry female Jaegers with swords were terrifying, even when they weren't gunning for you. They could kill you as easily as a Kaiju, that was for certain.

But more then that, he didn't want to upset her. He could see it in her visor that she was scared of whatever she'd seen. It melted his core to see her like that, and he didn't want to upset her further.

They may have been Jaegers, unrelated by country or make but they were all brothers and sisters in arms, and brothers and sisters cared for each other. Even now, he wanted nothing more then to help Gipsy through her hard time, even if that meant staying silent.

Her being hurt earlier brought up such a rage that nothing but the utter destruction of the oppressor would make it go away. If they hurt his friends, they died, simple as that. Gipsy, Crimson, even Striker, he all cared for them, maybe even more then then the battle hardened soldier way. More like the old war veteran, who watched the young fight and die beside him, unwilling to let another one fall under his watch... even if it meant his own life.

He rumbled as he thought about. The thought of death worried him, but it was the thought any of his friends suffering through that which scared him even more.

As he submerged himself even deeper in his mind, the outside world began to go out of focus, so much so, he forgot to turn around at his usual rotation point, his feet carrying him forward into unknown territory. Looking back, he should have been paying more attention, meaning he should have seen the signs that were plastered on the walls. Written in various language, one of witch he could understand, and painted a bright red, they were hardly hard to spot and the overwhelming number of them would make it almost impossible to miss them. Unfortunately for the Jaeger he missed them completely, stepped on a rusted piece of flooring and uttered a startled yelp as the floor caved in beneath him, sending him falling into a ten foot deep pit with a tiny mushroom cloud of dust and rust particals.

As the cloud settled, all that was left of the Russian giant was squarish whole in the floor. Then a growling farting sound echoed up, the representation of one word:

Fuck.

Okay, took me a bit longer to upload this, but it's up now, obviously. Yay.

Not a lot of story here this time, just a little bit more characterization on the Jaegers before the main events start happening.

Now to the reviewers:

Sgt. Nolisten: Thank you for the info. I honestly didn't know that.

Destructo Wolf: It never really occurred to me what kind of measurement system I was using. I just went with the first thing that came to mind.

Tha Shadow 750: Just wait and find out.

To everyone else who reviewed: Thank you very much!

DJ out!

(I don't own ME or PR, sadly.)