A/N: Ugh Work...

Also, the rant last chapter was just a pre-emptive strike for planned later scenes and chapters... And just so you know, there will be porn, just, you know, after the main storyline, so, like, epilogue-porn (Shrugs) Again, if you want more info you'll need to check my AO3 copy

Now,

ONWARD!

Reflections

Chapter Three: Otachi

Once, when they were children, Tesla and Newton had gotten separated during an accident at the mall. There had been some kind of explosion in the far end of the mall, something about a gas-line going out and gas leaking into the air and immediate evacuation required, she couldn't quite remember, but the swarm of panicking people had swept the Gieszler family up, pulling Uncle Illia and her Dad away, and tearing Newton's hand from her own, leaving her only able to scream his name as the almost abstract fear they'd been feeling suddenly became very, very real.

She'd still been screaming his name, trying to claw her way through the crowd to where she could Feel him, when a well meaning, off-duty EMT had scooped her up and out of the way of the mob, bloody faced and yowling like a feral thing as he carried her up and away, outside to safety.

As soon as she'd gotten loose, she'd been gone, darting around legs and grasping hands, ignoring calls and shouts and just throwing herself desperately forward, grasping and clinging to Their Link until finally, finally, she'd found her brother, curled up in a tight ball, bloody and bruised and sobbing into his knees in an area where unattended children were being watched by fiercely protective looking women (especially the tiny, pregnant Asian woman who had hissed and brandished her shopping bag at the almost-seven-foot-tall hugely muscular black man who had stepped too close, up until one of the little girls had screamed "Daddy!" and thrown herself out of the protective nest and at the massive man, who had just collapsed with relief).

She could still remember the terror and nightmares and overly clingy days after, the waking up holding onto one another so tightly they'd given each other hand-shaped bruises. Their Dad and Uncle had made it a week-long slumber party, the four of them pulling their two, adult-sized mattresses into the living room and the Twins had spent it cocooned between two sleepless, twitchy adults, but they'd all eventually gotten better.

That fear, though, that horror of watching her brother disappear into a crowd, it came swarming back to the forefront of their conscious as it happened again, the crowd of terrified, screaming civilians wrenching the two of them apart as they tore for the nearest underground shelter.

"Newton," she whispered, throat gone tight, before throwing herself after him, unable to get even a foot before the press of humanity forced her onward. "Newton!"

"Tesla!" she heard him shout back over panicked Cantonese and Mandarin. She punched someone in the face, got an elbow to the bad eye by someone else, but everything grew to tight, tense and silent seconds later, everyone, even her, going still and breathless as they waited, the feel of I-Know-Where-You-Are almost a sing-song edge to the back of her panicked head and, frankly, she deals with fear by getting angry, just like she deals with her own form of the Gieszler Mania (Their Dad would go days playing his piano or violin or cello feverishly, until his hands shook too hard and he'd finally collapse. Uncle Illia would get dark and cold and depressed and desperately search for isolation that usually lead to him grimly contemplating long falls off the edge of their large house in Berlin. Figgy would go days in constant motion, without sleep and barely anything to eat or drink, mind jumping from idea to idea. She'd brood and snarl and get into fights, although she'd, once in a blue moon, grow the same level of depressed as Uncle Illia, but that was rarer.)

So, when she heard her brother shouting, panicked, that Otachi was after him, and the people listened? Shoving him out into the open to be sacrificed, she sort of lost her shit.

"Get the fuck out of my way or I will slit your fucking throat and walk over you," she snarled, low and horse and deadly serious in Cantonese as she moved forward, and people moved, moved too fucking slow, watching her with wide eyes as she struggled towards her brother, as glowing, blue tendrils slowly coiled down the ceiling opening towards her terrified Brother.

Oh God/I Don't Want To Die/Tesla Where Are You?!/Oh God/Help Me!/So Beautiful/Oh Shit/I'm So Scared was all she could feel and, as the tentacles curled towards him, her brother screamed.

She just...

Lost.

Her.

Shit.

"BACK THE FUCK OFF YOU STUPID, BLUE BITCH!" She roared, rage and fear and protectiveness tearing through her as she lunged that last bit through the crowd and bitch slapped the curling blue tendril away from her brother, grabbing him with her other hand and yanking him behind her. She snarled up at the tendrils, which had actually recoiled away in response, a feel of indignant surprise flashing from the alien residue in Their heads, and she didn't care about the acidic burn on her hand, didn't care about the horrified, disbelieving stares of the survivors, or even her brother's sudden flash of Holy Shit/Such A Badass/Jesus Christ.

She cared only about the fact that the Kaiju in Their head was getting curious again, and, with a snarl she flailed her injured hand at what she could now see were tentacles coming out of Otachi's tongue, and bared her teeth as she reached for that alien connection in Their head, she reached for it, and plunged her metaphorical hands into it and wrenched it into herself, away from her brother, and tried to keep it trapped there.

You Will Not Touch Him, she Thought at Otachi, snarling through the link as the tentacles recoiled in startled shock again, an edge of wariness adding to it, but she didn't care. You Will Not Touch HIM! The scream that tore from her throat wasn't quite human, edged with the same Kaiju-trilling challenge they emitted at the Jaegers, and, through her hold on Otachi's suddenly wary, but even more fascinated, mind, she could feel the edge of the Precursors, Their sudden nerves, Their edge of How-Did-It-Do-This-No-It-Cannot-Be, and the feral, vicious satisfaction coiled through her head and into her brother's.

You Fucked With The Wrong Species Assholes, she thought, the snarl on her mouth half a dark grin that looked best plated in gold, as Gipsy Danger attacked. Feeling Otachi's pain and fury at being attacked, Tesla was tempted to yank at the bitch's brain, distract her and egg her on and hurt her but, then, Figgy's mind is there, coiling around hers and prying her jagged, raging claws away from Otachi's mind, soothing, adoring, awe-filled love coiling tighter than a spring around her triggered instability, coaxing the rage into a low simmer even as her body seemed to slowly sink into his suddenly tight hug.

Her lungs were heaving as she struggled to catch her breath, teeth clenched in a snarl still and throat aching from the not-quite-human scream she'd called, and Figgy's breath is purposefully deep and slow in her ear, his scruff tickling the edge of her neck.

"Dude," He breathed shakily as the watching crowd seemed to slowly come out of their stunned stupor, gaping at the two of them. "You are such a fucking bad ass, oh my God, Sparky." Tesla let out a low, huff of a laugh and closed her eyes, trying to let the anger seep out of her but too high on Adrenalin and the pain slowly rising in her left hand as the burns began to blister, but a glance showed that they lacked the gray-blue edge of the poisonous acidity of the Kaiju.

"Let's go get you a brain, Figgy," she told him hoarsely, and his startled, hysterical cackle made those nearest eye them in awed terror. Figgy's grin was edged with terror and the oncoming Bad Days of mania, no doubt he'd be up and twitchy for the next few days.

"Fuck yeah, Sparky. Let's go find that one-eyed bitch." And Tesla can only bare her teeth in that familiar, dark grin as they rise from the ground together.

"Fuck yeah," she growls, and the two wait impatiently for the All Clear to come through.

A/N: Happy Thanksgiving!