PACIFIC RIMJOB
Afternoon in the Shatterdome. The great floor was awash with a milling fervor as thousands of technicians and other staff slaved under the four hulking behemoths of humanity's last hope. The wei tang brothers were busy playing three-man basketball, because clearly there was no other way they could be helping out. The Kaidonovskis walked ahead of Cherno Alpha, looking very stoic and purposeful, and generally making everyone they were near feel the same. At least they were being useful. Wei Tangs.
Pentecost was leading Raleigh through the hubbub, letting him get in peoples way, and explaining the current state of affairs to him so that the less attentive members of the audience wouldn't get lost. Really, they didn't need to be here for him to tell Raleigh all this, they could be in his office. With his moat. Stacker liked his moat...
The shatterdome was really cool, though.
Presently, the duo happened across our favorite Aussies, Hercules and Chuck Hansen. I suppose, if this scene had taken place in Pentecost's office, I wouldn't have been able to introduce almost all of the main characters well within the first 200 words. You may have then become confused as to whether or not this story was actually about Pacific Rim, which would have been a shame.
Luckily for us, for now, the younger member of the Hansen family unit was being angst-y and bitter elsewhere. After Raleigh dutifully reeled off one of the most weirdly shoehorned pieces of unnecessary exposition, they got down to business.
"You haven't even told me what I'm doing here, yet"
Pentecost drew a breath. "We're going for the breach, Mister Beckett."
"The Pacific Rim?"
"Yes. We've got a two thousand, four hundred pound… wait, why am I using imperial? I'm British, and this is Hong Kong! Sorry. An american wrote this script. We've got about a one tonne thermonuclear warhead that striker's going to stick in the breach. Detonation equivalent on one point two million tonnes of TNT. Have I done my conversions right? I don't know. You get my drift. I'm an ex-Jaeger pilot with terminal cancer, not a mathematician."
"Yeah. Numbers. Thermonuclear. Sounds powerful."
"Certainly. A big enough boom to do a real job on the breach. We think. Did I mention that we've already tried this, and the bomb just bounced straight off? We think that maybe using a bigger bomb will make it work… I say 'we'. Both of my experts will tell you that this simply is not going to work. Honestly, I'm the only person that pushed for this idiotic suicide mission, and I'm not sure why. In most other respects I'm a pretty reasonable character."
Stacker looked pointedly at Mako. She pouted.
"Sorry, Sir. You've lost me." Raleigh said "What do you mean by 'do a real job on'? I couldn't get anything you said afterwards because I was so confused by that statement. Don't worry about explaining it again, I get the feeling both I and the audience need to not know this until later so that more suspense can be manufactured in the third act because that comedy duo I met in the elevator need some narrative reason to be in the story other than goofy humour"
"...Okay. Well, 'Do a real job on' is a turn of phrase in some parts of Britain. To be fair, most selections of random words are a turn of phrase from somewhere there…" Pentecost coughed. "This one means something like break, or generally mess up."
"So you want to do a job on the Breach?"
"Yes. You lot are my A-team."
"The Breach. Which is in the Pacific Rim. You want us to do a job on it"
"Yes"
"A job on the Pacific Rim."
Mako smiled. Raleigh glanced at her, and grinned.
"The A-team are going to perform a… a Pacific Rim Job."
Raleigh couldn't quite finish the sentence without cracking up. Hercules roared with laughter, and from a little way across the bay, Chuck giggled like a little girl.
"You're a funny one, mate!" He shouted, tears in his eyes.
Then Pentecost got it. He almost lost his balance, and had to steady himself against striker's foot. His face was creased up with silent laughter, his entire body shaking.
Mako had turned away, her hand had flown to her mouth and she was doing her best to conceal the fits of giggles. Everyone was laughing hysterically.
The laughter propagated away from it's epicenter, through the entire Jaeger bay. technicians fell from their perches and swung on their harnesses, cackling madly. The Wei Tangs were rolling on the floor in stitches, their basketball bouncing away from them across the bay floor. Several service vehicles were crashed. The laughter echoed off the high walls of the bay, making a sound which only made people laugh more.
Sasha Kadonovsky smiled ever so slightly, and Alexis even let out a small "Heh".
The entire bay laughed, and laughed and laughed.
They laughed so much that they all died. Every single one of them. Even the Kadonovkies were killed after an unarmed missile due to be loaded into Striker fell on them in the chaos.
And just like that, humanity's fate was sealed. There was no-one to pilot or maintain the only remaining Jaegers, and humanity was ultimately eradicated by the Kaiju and their masters.
~fin~