A/N: I HAVE NO REGRETS
AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Reflections
Chapter One: Connection
Tesla was in the middle of thinly slicing Kaiju intestine for testing when she felt her brother's frustration spike from Oh My God Shut Up You Moron/I Know What I'm Doing straight into his almost calm/fury/arrogance of I'll Show Them/Fuck The Rules mindset. Immediately, she set down her scalpel and gestured at the nearest goon, this one she'd taken to calling Mango for no other reason than he answered to it and he smelled like one.
"Mango, watch my shit," she ordered him; he blinked and bobbed his head, not even twitching as she plopped herself down onto the ground and laid there. She'd done this a couple of times when she got very tired, and especially when her brother got in this mood, just in case she ended up getting sucked along for the ride, like the one time he decided to try Acid when they were in college (Boy, was that a trip). And that time he hadn't slept for over a week and had hallucinated so bad she started tripping and they'd both ended up in a small coma for about three days to recover.
Her boss had been told about their Twin Drifting, as they called it, before he'd hired her (Actually, he'd known about it before approaching her, and wasn't that annoying, Patient Confidentiality didn't mean shit anymore, apparently). He knew the risks, the rewards, some of the quirks (Well, everyone had been surprised that one day she'd gotten lost in Newt's head and accidentally found out that using that Kaiju Bone shit actually did increase libido, you just had to mix it with Kaiju Saliva and some chocolate. She'd gotten a raise even though, in her head, she'd been Newt, and he'd been making a sandwich out of god knows what had been in his fridge, the Twins sure as hell didn't know. It had tasted amazing and she'd ended up fucking some poor guard unconscious and passing out two hours later to wake up feeling decidedly exhausted and chafed to her boss grinning down at her naked self in the middle of the lab on a clean table, congratulating her on a job well done. Whatever, it worked out in the end, she supposed, although that guard was terrified of her from then on...)
Hannibal Chau was nothing if not thorough about his workers. You were either his completely or cannon fodder, and she had known that as well, before she'd accepted Trespasser's Liver and a down-payment of a thousand bucks even (Although she would have taken the job anyway, I mean, Trespasser's Liver! Figgy had never gotten to touch any of Trespasser's parts yet!)
Still, when her brother got into this sort of mood, she knew better than to do anything else but lay down and make sure no one would touch her shit.
Closing her eyes, she reached out to him, trying to sooth his angry, hurt heart, but she recognized this edge to his thoughts. Obviously, that lab partner of his had gotten under his skin worse than a louse, and had jabbed his smart cane into her brother's ego. Sighing through her nose, wishing Gottlieb was single or at least open to some fun so the two would just fuck already, she shoved her hands into her jeans in case she started flailing, absently acknowledging the chink-click-shh sound of her boss's weirdly awesome shoes.
"That weird-ass brother of yours doing something hinky, kiddo?" the drawling, confidant voice of Hannibal Chau asked from over her, no doubt looming above her head like a wolf over a downed deer, all predatory arrogance well earned and fought for. Tesla hummed, getting vague glimpses of Figgy Macgyvering a bunch of scrap together swiftly, urgency and twitchy anger mixing as he slid pieces together, the constant I'll Show Them flavor to his emotions earning him gentle prods from her own mind, thoughts of Chill Out/Keep Your Cool/You're Awesome/Don't Do Something That'll Kill You Asshole were only enough to get an acknowledging prod back, but not slow him down.
"Damn kid needs a leash and collar," Hannibal snorted; Tesla hummed as the machine her brother was making began to hum.
"He'd like that," She told him absently, before furrowing her brows.
I'll Show Them Her brother felt as he put the PONs unit on his head, glaring towards something out of her blurry sight.
I'm A Fucking Rockstar.
He turned the machine on and, suddenly, she was gone and then They Were One and They Were Connected to Something, Many Things, Hive Whole Single EVERYTHING.
They were a confused mess of Together-Awed-Exultant-Scared, as They Drifted with the Kaiju, the Hive Mind, witnessed the Precursors, the Masters. They Knew the History, the Beginnings and Plans and Weapons, what the Kaiju Were/Are/Could Be, and They Knew the moment the Mind Sensed not them as individuals but THEM, the almost-startled feel of Like-Us-Together-But-Separate, What-Are-You?
They answered instinctively, unable to stop the feeling/thought of Human-Newton-Tesla-Brother-Sister-Family even if they wanted to.
Anger and curiosity and possessiveness echoed from the Hive as many Minds reached for them, the Precursors and the Kaiju, separate in thought but reaching as one: How-Dare-You-So-Strange-Little-Insects-Similar-We'll Destroy-Keep-You-Where-Are-You?!
And, suddenly, They were Separate again, the Drift disengaged, and Tesla was abruptly pulled into her own head top find herself pinned down by he Boss's weight, choking on her own tongue, vision blood red and a sound chirruping out of her aching, scream-torn throat that wasn't human at all and suddenly, she went limp and could only lay there, gasping for breath.
"What the fuck was that, Geiszler?" Hannibal growled, glaring down at her, but she could only shudder and curl into his heavy hands on her shoulder, shaken to the core and feeling ghostly tremors of The Hive twisting through the back of her thoughts, an edge of alien fascination and anger.
"I... Don't... Like... This..." She gasped out, wheezing for breath as her Boss pulled away, leaving her to curl into a ball and cough and shudder and shove weakly at the alien thoughts and images ricocheting around her head even as she could feel her brother trying to weakly focus and do the same, a weak feeling of Oh My God/I did It/I'm Amazing/Fuck That Was Scary/AWESOME reaching her and making her giggle weakly with a sharp hiccup.
God her head hurt, and blood was pouring out of her nose and dripping bloody tears out of her right eye, making her vision red-tinged on one side.
"...God damn it, Figgy," she muttered to herself, and weakly accepted Mango's cautious help up, as Hannibal Chau grabbed her face and twisted it this was and that, ignoring her blood on his hands with ease.
"Your brother go Drifting with the wrong partner or something, kiddo?" He asked, poking at the swelling tissue around her eye without a care about her hissing grimace of pain.
"He was trying to prove that you could Drift with a Kaiju brain," she told him, blinking her vision clear as her Boss went tense, focusing double vision on the massive man's scarred, rough face, blinking blood and Kaiju-blue afterimage's from her eyes. "He was right... They were beautiful," she murmur/crooned, feeling the world start to tilt, only to be straightened as her Boss literally plucked her from the ground and held her up and away from himself by her armpits, like a dirty puppy, as he began to walk briskly, the Chink-Click-Shh of his shiny shoes echoing as he went.
"Kid, I like you, you do good work and sometimes your crazy ass mad-scientist thing brings me a lot of good money," he told her bluntly as he carried her in his outstretched arms without even a hint of strain. "But your fucked up kid brother just screwed the pooch on all of this, because now, the Kaiju know you, know what you know, and they'll be hauling their blue asses outta the water to come find you. You're a pretty nasty liability, and that's a damn shame, but I didn't cut my way up to the top just for a kid like you to get me killed, understand?" Tesla tried to nod, but her head lolled, and she grudgingly mused that, maybe, she should have just told him that her brother was an idiot and leave it at that...
Speaking of her brother, their minds slid together as one briefly, sliding apart again without a twitch, but it had her lifting her lolling head to squint at her boss carefully.
"Pentecost is callin' in his favor," she told him with a slight slur, making him paused, the beautiful, terrifying Yun sliding her bald-headed way out of the shadows to walk silently off to the side, eyes cold and dark like a hungry sharks without any hunger. "Sendin' my brother over to get himself a Kaiju brain," she muttered, blinking slowly again as Hannibal grimaced. "Gonna save the world, I guess," she sighed, letting her head loll slowly back again, trying to get her body to refocus.
"Well, damn," Hannibal muttered before sighing and hauling her over one shoulder, making Tesla grunt as her head bounced off his middle-back (Christ he was big. Big hands, big body, big feet, big everything probably. Damn it all, brain, focus.)
"Looks like we're goin' ta give the Scarecrow a brain, if he makes it that far," she hears him mutter as the blood in her head makes her vision begin to gray out. She barely manages to mumble out the response that makes him chuckle as he starts walking and she passes out.
"Does that make me Toto?"
A/N: (Runs away cackling to work on next chapter already, because this is going to be a short fick and I don't have work tomorrow)
SLEEP IS FOR THE WEAK AHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHA