"So, it turns out that the rumor about Shira was completely bogus. But that sex tape for Michelle Cohen is completely legit!"

Gipsy had been pestering Striker with gossip for the entire ride. Striker wasn't interested in that kind of thing, but Gipsy kept going nonetheless. After all, she knew from experience that having someone talk to you when you were down meant a lot. Striker seemed to have dealt with her near-death experience much better than Gipsy had (even if none of her pilots had died), but she might still need a bit of cheering up. Besides, Gipsy couldn't just fly in silence, now could she?

"Anyway, can you believe that they didn't even give me a new coat of paint after all that? I mean, double event! And I beat both of them senseless! I really think I deserved something for all of that."

"Don't get cocky," Striker scoffed. "I could have taken them both in a second if my allergies hadn't flared up."

"And I've been waiting years for some new boots! They could have given us a matching set. Wouldn't that have been wonderful?"

Striker sighed. "It's our last mission. New boots would be pointless. Besides, the ones we have now are just fine."

Gipsy pouted. "And that's why you'll never be as fashionable as me."

Striker smiled. "And that's why you'll never have as many kills as me."

"Hey! There's still two kaiju left!"

"And even if you got both of them, you'd still be two short of me."

"No, because then I would have-Oh, right. I feel dumb all of a sudden."

"You're not dumb," Striker asserted. "You just don't bother to think, because you don't take anything seriously. Honestly, I have no idea how you managed to win in Hong Kong with that attitude."

"I guess I'm just that great!" Gipsy replied.

Striker sighed again.

Soon afterwards, the Jumphawks released them, and the final two Jaegers began their trek into the ocean depths.

For the longest time, the two marched in silence. Gipsy decided to give Striker a break and began thinking of all the things that she would do once they retired after this mission. With no need to run simulations or diagnostics, she would have more time for television and social media. Maybe she could even figure out how deactivated Jaegers were able to connect to such things in the first place! Or how pilots could influence Jaegers without being in them! The future held so many possibilities (not to mention the bliss of victory over the Kaiju).

It was a while before she noticed that Striker seemed to be just as deep in thought as she. And her thoughts were probably much more meaningful than Gipsy's.

"Hey, what are you thinking about?"

Striker looked over at her and hesitated for a moment, as if deciding whether or not Gipsy was worthy. Apparently, she was, because Striker began to explain.

"I was thinking about how this is our last mission."

"Yeah, me too! After this, we get to retire to Oblivion Bay!"

"But have you actually thought about what that means?"

"...We get more free time?" Gipsy was confused.

"It means no more fighting Kaiju, no more pilots, no more moving, no more repairs. We sit in our retirement home, celebrate our victory, and slowly fade away."

"Wait, you're not having second thoughts about our mission to destroy the breach with that ugly bomb on your back, are you?" Gipsy questioned, even though she knew the very idea to be absurd. This was what they had been fighting for all this time, after all.

"Of course not! I'm just saying, if you actually think about it, as long as there are Kaiju, they keep fixing us and giving us pilots. Once we win, we lose that. You'd think it would be a bad thing for us. And yet, I still want it, more than anything else. I want to win this, even though it'll end up resulting in our deaths down the road."

The tone of the conversation gave Gipsy pause. Striker usually wasn't this philosophical. Maybe it was the influence of that new pilot she had been given, since one of them had been injured in Hong Kong (but thankfully not killed; Gipsy knew full well the horrors of having a pilot die).

After a moment of thought, Gipsy responded "A short, fulfilling life is better than a long, empty one."

And then the ideas came like a flood.

"Besides, a Jaeger's luck doesn't hold out forever. I should know; mine almost did in Anchorage. Same for you in Hong Kong. Even if we could fight the Kaiju forever, eventually they'd get us. And if they didn't, we'd just keep changing until we weren't ourselves any more. And if we didn't change, well, that wouldn't really be a life at all. And then there's the fact that our memory cores would eventually degrade someday no matter how well they maintained them. So, no matter how we look at it, we can't live forever anyway."

"All very true," Striker agreed.

"And it's not really that weird, when you think about it," Gipsy continued. "Humans do things that shorten their lifespan for the sake of making it more fulfilling all the time. Like sunbathing, or eating more than the bare minimum they need to survive, or running less than twenty miles a day, or letting their skin be exposed to the air. Did you know exposure to air is one of the main causes of skin aging and wrinkles? I read about it in this article the other day."

Striker laughed. "See?"

"See what?"

"You're not so dumb after all."