Author's Notes: Since I forgot to post a preview on my Tumblr, here's your chapter a little early! Just a reminder that previews, an original character master list, and some fanon/headcanon blogs on the Pacific Rim/Generation K fanverse are all up there at 3Fluffies dot Tumblr dot com. (Check the "Generation K" tag. There's also a link on my author profile page.)

Canon Note: Keunsango is an original kaiju character, and that attack (November 2015, the third after Brawler Yukon's first deployment) is also headcanon - but for those who have read Travis Beacham's blog about the pilots of Korea's Nova Hyperion, this was that attack. If there is interest, perhaps I can be persuaded to write a short story/blog fic or two about those early battles and the fledgling Jaeger Program's discovery of "drift shock."

Chapter Twenty-Five: Learn By Experience

Los Angeles Shatterdome…
October 18, 2017…

Part of the training for Team Gipsy had included post-engagement recovery. Yamarashi marked the ninth Jaeger-versus-kaiju event, and each one got analyzed to death not only by the tacticians and the K-Scientists, but by the psychs. Tendo and the rest of the support teams had dutifully read the material and recognized its purpose: "The Care And Feeding Of Rangers," as Penny Jefferson snarkily put it.

But in practice, after Yamarashi… they finally got it.

Carolina earned her pay and then some managing the questions and demands for information on how the fight had gone, the condition of the Beckets, and the repairs to Gipsy Danger. Somehow amid fielding all those calls and e-messages, she was also frequently in the infirmary with Raleigh and Yancy. Tendo was happy to do whatever jobs she gave him, whether it was fielding calls from within the Corps or checking in with Team Yankee.

"There is something I've been wondering," he remarked to Penny as the two crews got to work on the Post-Engagement Investigation. "Tanisha and Caleb. They'd never done combat drift before, but last night… they knew exactly what was going on with Raleigh and Yancy." Yankee's Support Chief frowned at him, and he explained quickly, "I mean, drift-wise. I didn't, uh, didn't think it was just from combat."

The ex-Marines were sometimes touchy about their history, especially when it came to whatever trauma they'd carried from their human battlefields. Tendo hoped he'd phrased it tactfully, but he still half-expected Penny to inform him that it was none of his business.

To his surprise, after a long silence, she told him: "Keunsango."

He stared. "Say what?!"

Keunsango had been… late 2015, Romeo Blue's first combat and kill after Brawler Yukon was disabled. That had been a scary few days for the whole world, now that he recalled, pulling up the PPDC reports he'd studied. Brawler Yukon had been attempting his third kill, backed up by the not-even-officially-launched Coyote Tango, but then the kaiju had nearly destroyed him and damaged Coyote before diving into the Sea of Japan and heading for South Korea. Romeo had taken the bastard out nearly thirty-six hours later.

"What'd Keunsango have to do with Team Yankee?"

Dumb question, from the way Penny rolled her eyes. "There was no Team Yankee back then. The brass was still debating who should get the Mark-2, so we were all Romeo's support crew." With a thin smile, she explained, "Jaeger Strike Troop teams were still in the works, so it was just Marine, Coast Guard, and National Guard R&R companies doing the post-combat cleanup and getting the Rangers out of the Jaeger."

"Oh." Tendo tried to recall what he'd read about the condition of the Gage twins after that first fight. There'd been nothing said to the public at least, but the twins hadn't joined the public celebrations right away. One or both of them might have been hurt.

He looked down at the crew manual. Drift shock: extreme post-combat disorientation and distress. Pilots should not be physically separated unless absolutely essential to lifesaving treatment. Bruce and Trevin Gage were Army Rangers, no strangers to combat stress and injury even before K-Day. But if the shock after fighting a Jaeger had been half as bad for them as for Rals and Yance… yeah, their support crew would definitely have learned how to deal with it. Marshall Pentecost too had known exactly what was happening to Yancy when Raleigh was hurt, and he'd known how to calm him down afterwards.

"So it's not just something that happens to first timers?" he mused.

Penny shook her head. "Medical assumed it was just Lightcap, the first couple of times, civilian with no combat experience freaking out and it bleeding over into D'onofrio. After Keunsango, they realized different. It happens to all of 'em, especially if someone gets hurt."

"Your guys looked pretty cool last night," he pointed out admiringly.

But Penny gave him a wry smile. "You don't know 'em like I do. They weren't hurt, not like your boys, but… it changed 'em. Believe me."

Tendo did.

Though Tanisha and Caleb had come through with few injuries, they spent the first forty-eight hours in the infirmary with their fellow Rangers… in a rather similar sleeping arrangement. Late in the evening after Yancy had fallen asleep, Tendo returned to a scene so goddamned cute that he would've made a fortune selling pictures of it.

Two pairs of beds were pulled up against each other so the occupants had unimpeded access to their partners. Raleigh was nestled up against his brother's side, half-buried in blankets with Yancy's arm still over him and Yancy's cheek against his hair. Both were calm, at last. In the other pair of beds, Tanisha Davis and Caleb Mitchell were honest-to-god spooning, with Caleb wrapped around his partner and his chin tucked over her shoulder.

Tendo nearly melted into a puddle on the spot, but when he pulled out his phone, Tanisha muttered (seemingly without opening her eyes), "You point that thing at us, Choi, and I'll break your jaw."

Figured. Carolina came in a moment later and booted him out. "Go call their classmates, especially the Hassans and the Hydra girls. They'll be desperate for news."

Since it was semi-official business, he commandeered the rec room interface (not that the few crew off duty complained), and found over a hundred messages, texts, and missed calls. Note to self: Establish a phone/text tree for people who are actually Raleigh and Yancy's friends, he thought.

It was pre-dawn in Brisbane, but Tendo caught the Hassans still awake. "Thank GOD!" Suze exploded, appearing to have pounced on the webcam. "We were about to swim across that bloody ocean and kill you all! Now what the hell is going on?!"

"They're fine, guys," Tendo said urgently. "Raleigh and Yancy are fine."

Devi looked suspicious. All accounts had her fling with Yancy being just casual, but that didn't mean she wasn't worried. "The reports said Raleigh inhaled Kaiju Blue."

"He got some fumes in his O2, but he's almost done with detox. I've been in and out of sickbay all day; he's having no trouble breathing. They had a rough first night because he sprained his knee in the rig and couldn't get painkillers, but he's on the good stuff now."

The sisters let out their breath in chorus, a lot like Raleigh and Yancy probably would. A pop-up on the screen announced another incoming call. "Oh, hang on, that's Steffie and Kennedy." He patched their classmates in. "Hey, guys!"

"Why doesn't anybody in LA answer the fucking vidcomm?!" Kennedy roared.

"Well, dunno if you heard, but we had a big, green uninvited guest here in town," Brandon Pines called from behind Tendo. "We've been a little busy."

"Too busy to text Raleigh and Yancy's friends and just tell us they're all right," Devi Hassan huffed.

Tendo raised placating hands. "I promise, we'll do it better next time. I'll put a listserve together. Cut us some slack for the first round, 'kay?"

The grumbles were a little more playful now. "Dr. Lightcap says Raleigh's going to be okay?" Steffie asked anxiously.

"He is. Physical therapy for a few weeks for that knee, and all those nasty anti-toxins for the Kaiju Blue keep making him puke, but the medics say he'll be back on his feet before Gipsy, at this rate."

Kennedy bared her teeth. "I'm gonna yell at Yancy for letting him get hurt."

Brandon dropped his tablet with a hiss, and Tendo lost all humor. The younger girls blinked, while Devi and Suze both stiffened. "What? Tendo, what?!"

He sensed Brandon and several of the others now coming to flank him in front of the webcam. "If you say anything like that to Yance, I will have your head," Tendo informed all four of them.

Devi, the elder sibling, was the one who worked it out. "Oh, God. How bad?"

"Bad," said Brandon. "I think he's okay now, but last night? Shit. He was in complete meltdown. Raleigh was calmer than he was."

"He seems to be better now," said one of the other guys hopefully. "Raleigh's still pumped full of drugs, but one of the Marshalls had a talk with Yance, and he doesn't look ready to off himself anymore. Mitchell and Davis have been sticking really close to them in sickbay."

"Team Yankee's okay?"

Tendo nodded. "Raleigh was the only one who took any major knocks." He smiled, his own tension easing. "Here's a tip for you up-and-coming jockeys: you know that stuff about post-drift grounding through physical contact?" The women nodded. "After combat? Quadruple it. There is serious snuggling going on in the infirmary."

"Aww, you should send a picture around!"

"Sorry, I tried to take one, but Tanisha caught me. I value my manhood too much to try that again."

"Good on Ranger Davis," said Suze, grinning wickedly. "I'm glad she keeps your boys' club on their toes."

"Seriously, Tendo, as soon as they're feeling up to it, call us," Steffie urged. "No matter what time it is. And tell them we're thinking 'bout them."

"Will do, my girls. Promise." Tendo crossed his heart for good measure. "And if there's any change, I'll get a mass email around. Bear with us, okay? Everyone's in one piece, it's just been a little chaotic around here. We'll smooth it out next time around."

"You tell them they were fantastic," Devi ordered. "All four of them. We've been watching that fight over and over. All the asses who complained about Yankee and Gipsy being untested? They can stick this in their pipe and smoke it."

"Amen," Brandon agreed, slapping Tendo on the shoulder. They ended the Skype call with lighter hearts.

Raleigh woke to a foggy, off-kilter world… but still feeling incredibly safe. It didn't take him long to work out why: Yancy was right here, so close that Raleigh could hear his heart beating, one arm draped around him. They hadn't cuddled like that since Raleigh was seven, and they'd shared a sleeping bag while camping. Well, there'd been one time during a trip when they were eleven and thirteen, and the house they'd been renting in Sweden had lost its heating, but that had been awkward, just desperation to stay warm overnight.

This was strangely wonderful. He drowsily recalled the things Psych had told them about combat drift recovery. He and Yancy had noticed the tendency to hug tightly or sit close together after sims, but hadn't expected actual combat to be that different. Apparently, it was.

Over Yancy's shoulder, a few feet away, he noticed Tanisha in the next bed with a tablet… and Caleb in the same bed, dozing with his arms around her. So, obviously it wasn't just Raleigh and Yance. Caleb stirred and saw Raleigh looking at them. "Hey, kiddo. How you feeling?"

"Kinda…woozy," Raleigh admitted.

Yancy sighed and began shifting like he was waking up. Tanisha put her tablet down and said softly, "You be nice to your brother, Becket. You scared him."

"I didn't mean to." Raleigh's memories of their arrival in the infirmary were pretty fragmented, but he remembered feeling Yancy's fear and anguish more intensely than the pain in his leg. It had been horrible. So he shifted himself as much as he could with one leg in a brace to get even closer, so Yance would know he was here. It didn't really hurt - whatever meds he'd been given had it pretty well numbed - but his lower body was clumsy. "It's okay, Yance," he murmured. "Everything's okay."

"Raleigh?" His brother's arms tightened convulsively around him. Raleigh saw Tanisha and Caleb getting up, waving a quiet farewell and shooing the medics out of earshot. "Rals?"

"Hey, I'm here. I'm okay." He wasn't sure how long it'd been since they'd engaged Yamarashi. But wow, had Yancy been hurt after all, or had the medics just decided to drug him too? He looked like hell, as groggy and exhausted as Raleigh felt. It took a few minutes for him to focus as Raleigh rubbed his arms and shoulders. Then he stared, looking his brother up and down as if he wasn't convinced by Raleigh's reassurances. "Are you okay?" Raleigh asked.

Yancy shut his eyes and tugged Raleigh against him. "I am now," he sighed. There was an edge in his voice that Raleigh hadn't heard before, and it made him feel awful. "Kiddo... don't you ever scare me like that again."

"Sorry," Raleigh whispered. "I didn't mean to." But Yancy looked at him, and seemed to really see him now... and he smiled. The knot of anxiety inside Raleigh loosened, and Yance brushed his fingertips over the stubble on his face. "We did it. We got the fucker."

"We bagged a kill. First kill," Yancy agreed. "You..." he faltered, blinking in confusion.

"What?"

"Dunno, I... I've been kind of out of it." Yance scrubbed at his face as if trying to rub his memories back in. "Someone told me. You did everything right. You saved yourself." Now there was no missing the pride in his voice, and Raleigh felt warm all over. The kiss Yancy pressed on top of his head didn't even make him self-conscious. "I'm so proud of you, Rals. More than I've ever been, and that's really saying something."

Raleigh grinned. "Had a good partner," he whispered around his tightened throat.

"Me too."

There were people coming towards them, looking reluctant to interrupt, but Yancy sat up, keeping a hand on Raleigh's shoulder. "How's the leg feeling?"

"I'm not really feeling it at all at the moment." Raleigh had to disentangle his IV lines and oxygen before he could sit up with Yancy's help. "It... you said it's not broken, right?" He was pretty sure that was just a brace, not a cast.

The approaching medic nodded. "Torn ACL was the worst part. We'll have to keep it immobilized for a week or so, but physical therapy and rest will take care of it. Any trouble breathing?"

Raleigh shook his head, and obediently huffed and puffed into their various instruments, and inhaled some nasty vapor that made him cough and gag. "That's disgusting!"

"Sorry, Ranger. You're very lucky, you know," the doctor went on as he rinsed his mouth. "Not a lot of people can keep their heads around Blue vapor even when they have portable oxygen available. You didn't get it into the deep lung tissue, and that's why you're only at risk for a little bronchitis."

"Is it always fatal if it goes that deep?" Yancy asked quietly.

"Not always, but Kaiju Respiratory Syndrome is not something to mess around with." The doctor gave Yancy a knowing look. "And he does not have that. KRS means the vapor is in alveoli tissue and interfering with the gas exchange - operating like rapid-onset pneumonia from influenza."

Ick. They'd all seen and read the descriptions of KRS in training; victims drowned on dry land like deaths from swine flu or tuberculosis in the movies. It was the first thing anyone in the Jaeger Program thought of when they saw blue vapor. Raleigh let himself lean against Yancy again. "Are Tanisha and Caleb okay?"

"Yep. Bruises, a few wrenched muscles, but you were the only major injury." The doctor smirked at them. "And Southern California is eagerly awaiting your recovery so it can throw itself at your feet. So much for Yankee Star and Gipsy Danger being rookies!"

It was all downhill from there. It was another day before Raleigh was released from the infirmary, but the medics didn't give Yancy a hard time about staying with him. His leg hurt like hell once the painkillers got cut back, and the brace was really annoying, especially when he was trying to sleep. Raleigh liked to curl up, and keeping that leg extended made it impossible.

Forty-eight hours after Yamarashi was declared dead, Tendo brought them a tablet and set them up on a video call to Anchorage. "HEYYY GIPSYYYY!" roared the Gages, Steffie and Kennedy, and the D'onofrios.

Raleigh and Yance, piled into their improvised double-bed with Tanisha and Caleb, could barely stop laughing enough to talk. Leave it to Bruce and Trevin to be the blunt ones. "Man, Baby Becket, you look like shit!"

"What'd you do to yourself?!" demanded Steffie.

Raleigh affected innocence. "I got into a fight."

That sent everyone into whoops of laughter, and Caleb added for good measure, "This is nothing. You oughtta see the other guy!"

"We rearranged his ugly face," Tanisha agreed.

"And ripped his head off," added Yancy.

"Man, remind me not to get on Gipsy and Yankee's bad side," said Kennedy, shaking her head. "You LA Rangers are hard core! Although... Rals, seriously, the unshaven scruffy thing really doesn't work on you."

"Geez, I kill my first kaiju and all I get is critique about my grooming," Raleigh huffed. He got his cheeks pinched from two different directions. "Hey! Hey! Invalid here! You're not allowed to pick on me!"

"He's milking that for all it's worth, isn't he?" chuckled Lightcap.

"Believe it, Doc."

"It's Caitlin, Yancy. And Sergio. If we'd had our way, it would've been long before now. We've been getting swamped with gifts for you four up here too, especially from the locals. The hometown crowd is beside themselves."

The Gages were nodding. "So what's your poison? Jon Stewart or Oprah?"

"How 'bout Ellen DeGeneres?" suggested Tanisha.

"Talk to Brady and Carolina. I bet she'd jump on it. Craig Ferguson is our personal favorite. He's fun, and doesn't pick you apart," said Bruce. He eyed the four of them. "Yancy, wash your face first. Raleigh, shave. Tani, comb your hair. Caleb, brush your teeth."

"Yes, Daddy," Caleb and Tanisha chorused.

"I'm serious! You four are famous now! Gotta look the part!"

"Does this mean the cheap shots will stop now?" Yancy asked dryly.

He was being rhetorical, and everyone knew it since all ten of them joined in the answer: "No."

There were still assholes in the world making bitchy comments about affirmative action towards Yankee Star and referring Gipsy Danger's pilots as dumb jocks, even after Yamarashi. However, the crews of both Jaegers found themselves far less often moved to anger, since the assholes and armchair quarterbacks quickly ended up as the targets of backlash from a much-larger adoring public.

The only really big disappointment after their victory was that Raleigh and Yancy weren't permitted to go to Australia for the launch of Vulcan Specter two weeks later. Raleigh did come down with the predicted bout of bronchitis, and the medics flatly refused to consider letting him fly anywhere, let alone across the Pacific. "You'd also be really uncomfortable making that trip on that leg," LA's chief medical officer pointed out.

The Hassans were completely understanding, and talked the Beckets down beforehand. "We weren't active duty when you two launched," Devi insisted. "Let alone two weeks out of combat and injury."

Raleigh was still down about it. "Kennedy and Steph are going. We thought it should be a tradition."

"Kaiju have a way of derailing traditions," Suze replied. "Cheer up, you two. We know you'll be watching, and that's all we'd ever ask. Who knows where the four of us will be stationed when Kennedy and Steffie launch next year. They wouldn't hold a grudge if we can't make it then either. We're all Rangers now."

The first post-Yamarashi interview took place three days before Vulcan's launch, and Tani and Caleb were very on-board with plugging that event.

Tani got her chosen interviewer, and the staff had apparently kept it quiet that one of the heroes of the hour was injured, because Ellen got all worked up when Raleigh came out on crutches. "What - what happened here?!"

Raleigh threw out his "I got into a fight" line, which brought the house down and spawned a whole series of "you oughtta see the other guy" memes around the Internet.

On Vulcan Specter's Launch Day (appropriately, Halloween), the four of them were out on the Shatterdome grounds with Yankee and Gipsy, facing southwest towards Australia. The media presence at LA was huge, and enormous throngs gathered outside the fence, many bearing signs that simply read "THANK YOU."

"LONG BEACH LOVES YANKEE AND GIPSY!"

"KAIJU: STAY AWAY FROM LA!"

They caused a buzz when a daring reporter asked them about the "concerns" people had over the newest pilots being "from a Muslim country." All four of them visibly bristled.

"That's a complete crock," Raleigh snapped, and only just managed to keep from swearing. "Devi and Susanti Hassan were the same class at the Academy as Yancy and me, passed the same tests we did in the same training. If we could, we'd be in Australia with them. They came back to Anchorage when we launched."

"And dunno if you've done your homework, but the country they're 'from' is Australia," added Caleb. "They were both born there!"

"What, you want to see their birth certificates?" Yancy added.

Carolina and Brady ushered the reporters back to the press lines before violence could erupt, but the foursome were muttering and growling amongst themselves for several minutes.

There were a few other close calls with the media, like when some reporter repeated the complaint that Yankee Star hadn't pulled her weight in the fight. Raleigh almost went nuclear, but Yancy, though visibly fuming, put the asshole in his place without even raising his voice.

"You think so? Okay, let me show you something. Stand here." He steered the blowhard to stand next to a news van. "That's your kaiju." He tapped a letter on the van's decal. "These are its eyes. You're us - Gipsy Danger."

Deftly doing the calculation in his head, he walked fifty meters away and called, "This was Yankee Star. You want to tell me how easy you think it'd be for me to shoot that kaiju's eyes out without taking your head off too?"

"Yankee Star did what she was built to do, and her pilots did what they were trained to do. They're marksmen," said Marshall Ramirez, as Carolina and Brady once again corralled the agitated pilots. "Every kaiju is different, and because of that, so is every Jaeger. We've formed our teams with the intention of putting different strengths together because we still can't predict what will come out of the Breach. Gipsy Danger's pilots did what they were trained to do with a Jaeger that was built for close combat. This was a team effort and a team kill."

"And if that asshole from Fox talks shit about you two again, I'm shoving my crutch up his ass," Raleigh growled.

"Shh! Rals!"

Anchorage Shatterdome...
November 2017...

Romeo Blue was transferred down to LA for the winter while Gipsy and Yankee went back to Anchorage for repairs and refitting, much to the glee of the Gages and the dismay of Caleb and Tanisha. "So this is what it's like to be heroes," Penny Jefferson grumped as they all packed. "All-expenses paid trip to Igloo-land for another winter."

Raleigh was cleared to start physical therapy, but both he and Yancy were bored and frustrated with being unable to do simulations for weeks. The engineering crews did have them in Gipsy's conn-pod fairly often, going over and over the progress of the fight and figuring out how to reconfigure her systems so the Kaiju Blue wouldn't endanger them again.

"The air supply needs to be completely rerouted," Dr. Schoenfeld insisted. "And the portables should be in arms-reach of the rig even if the rig is locked."

"Agreed," said Priya Katwal, fiddling with a massive hologram of the pod schematic. "Raleigh had to deactivate the handshake before going for the tank. That took twenty-three seconds. Jumping to his tank and activating it took another twelve. If he'd been in worse distress or at all disoriented, he might not have made it."

Yancy didn't talk much during the crisis analysis conversations, and Raleigh wasn't the only one who sensed why. He found himself putting an arm around his brother after (and sometimes during) the meetings. Carolina and some of the others from Team Gipsy who didn't actually need to be there still came, and he was grateful for that.

"Every engagement teaches us something new," Carolina told Yancy. "The system wasn't perfect, but you both still got through, and now it will be better."

"And Raleigh's now the Academy's poster boy for how to handle a conn-pod crisis," added Tendo. "The trainees are all being taught to react just as he did. He did exactly what he was supposed to do."

"I know." Yance mustered a smile and ruffled Raleigh's hair. "I know."

To be continued...

Coming Soon: The Beckets face an unpleasant ghost from the past during their recovery from Yamarashi, but a new year begins with another triumph for the Jaeger Program in Chapter Twenty-Six: New Heights!

PLEASE don't forget to review!

Original Character Guide

Tanisha Davis and Caleb Mitchell: The pilots of Yankee Star, America's Mark-2 Jaeger. Former US Marines, late 20s. Tanisha is African-American from south central Los Angeles, while Caleb is white from a small, rural town in central Oklahoma.

Penelope "Penny" Jefferson: Yankee Star's LOCCENT Support Chief, former Chief Warrant Officer with the US Marines. Mid-30s, African-American from Los Angeles.

Brady Harris: Yankee Star's Public Relations Representative. Late 30s, African-American from San Diego.

Carolina Olivares: Gipsy Danger's Public Relations Representative. Mid-60s, Mexican-American from San Francisco, survived K-Day and came out of retirement to join the PPDC.

Brandon Pines: Gipsy Danger support chopper pilot, early 30s from Monterey, CA, transferred from the US Air Force.

Devi and Susanti Hassan: Pilots of Vulcan Specter, Australia's Mark-3. Indonesian-Australians, ages 26 and 24, graduated the same class as the Beckets.