January 4, 2025, 3:00 AM

Haven City

Captain Holly Short of the LEP was not very happy. She'd been woken up rather abruptly by a call from Foaly, telling her she needed to get to the Ops center. Groaning, she got up and dressed, hoping this wasn't just Foaly trying to impress her with one of his new gadgets.

"Holly!" the centaur exclaimed, rushing up to her as soon as she entered the room, "we have a situation. I detected a fairy signature on the surface... one which hasn't been detected in years."
"Foaly, calm down!" Holly tried to calm the nervous centaur, failing miserably as he turned to bring up the signature on the screen.
"At first, I thought it was you, actually, then I realized it was slightly different. It appeared as soon as it left the dead zone caused by the destruction of Atlantis, and along with it is a human signature... and another one which I cannot identify."
"Why did you think it was me?" Holly asked. The centaur brought up a second signature, one almost identical to the first.
"This is your signature. The color combination is exactly the same, but the order is off. Yours goes blue, green, orange, red, yellow, white. This one goes blue, green, orange, red, white, yellow." Something in Holly's mind clicked.
"That combination... It can't be! She was in Atlantis when that monster attacked! There were no survivors!" Foaly nodded.
"Or so we thought."

January 4, 2025, 9:00 AM

Hong Kong

Holly landed outside the city, engaging her shimmer suit to help her hide. Foaly had perfected the shimmer suit's cloaking technology, completely removing the "shimmer" part of it - though that kind of made the name redundant - and Holly was thankful that it hid her from prying eyes. Her destination was a large facility located on an island in the middle of the bay. Foaly had called it the "shatterdome" - and that was where she would find her sister.

January 4, 2025, 10:00 AM

Hong Kong Shatterdome

Chris opened his eyes. Something wasn't right. He shifted out from under the covers of the bed, making sure not to wake Emily, and donned his armor. The suit he wore to interface with his Jaeger was the only thing he really felt safe in - possibly because it was designed to withstand anything from knives to nukes. He put on the helmet, activating the optical filters almost as a reflex. He was startled when he saw what could only be a fairy, standing just inside the slightly open door with a gun pointed at him. He raised his hands.
"Easy, I don't plan on hurting you," he said in Gnommish. The fairy, disarmed by the fact that he could not only see her but could also speak her language fluently, slowly lowered the weapon.
"Would you mind unshielding so I can take off my helmet?" he asked, continuing to speak in Gnommish. The fairy obliged, and he took off the helmet , placing it on the bedside table. The fairy also took off her helmet, and he was startled to see that her face was almost identical to Emily's. Auburn hair flowed down to her shoulders, framing her heart-shaped face with nut-brown skin, hooked nose and plump, cherubic lips. Her eyes were what really drew his attention, however. One was hazel, with green sclera - exactly like Emily's - while the other was quite clearly a human eye - blue, with white sclera. Chris glanced down at her name tag, and did a double take.

Holly Short, Captain

"Short?" he whispered. Holly stared straight into his eyes as he mused.
"What did you just say?" she asked. he pointed at her name tag.
"Captain Holly Short," he read out. Her eyes widened.
"Not only do you speak Gnommish and can see shielded fairies, you can also read Gnommish?" he nodded.
"A friend taught me." Holly narrowed her eyes.
"Who?" she asked, her voice filled with malice.
"Her name is Emily. Emily Short." At the sound of her name, Emily groaned before sitting up.
"Whaaaat?" she asked groggily before freezing as her eyes met her sister's. "Holly?" she asked, rubbing her eyes. Holly pushed past Chris, dropping her helmet in her rush to pull her sister into a hug.
"I thought you were dead!" she exclaimed, clutching her sister as if she'd never let go. "Why didn't you try to contact me?"
"She did," Chris interjected, "but nothing got through. We tried internet, cellphone, sat-phone, smoke signals, short-wave, radio, landline, morse code-"
"Wait, wait, wait, what was that one?" Holly asked, confused.
"Morse code?"
"No, the fourth one you said."
"Smoke signals?"
"Yeah. Why would smoke signals get through to a race who lives underground?"
"Satellites. I assumed you'd have hacked into them, so we waited for the Google Earth satellite to pass over then burned the message 'Emily Short is here, send a shuttle to pick her up' in Gnommish into a paddock. Almost got arrested for that one, actually." He chuckled. "Did you even check Google Earth?"
[Why would we check Google Earth, Mud Man?] Foaly asked over Holly's helmet communicator.
"I don't know, possibly in case a fairy got stuck somewhere without any way to communicate other than burning messages in Gnommish into a field?"
[What were the chances of that?]
"Actually, surprisingly high. Did you even check the nearest landmass to Atlantis to even try to find lost fairies?"
[No. There was a nuclear explosion, we didn't think there'd be any survivors, Mud Man.]
"And quit calling me Mud Man. My name is Chris."
[Sure thing, Mud Man.]

"How exactly did you find my sister?" Holly asked. Emily sat up, beginning to explain how Atlantis was attacked by two Kaiju. She had reached the last evac shuttle just before the water did, and she narrowly missed being killed by the Kaiju themselves, who destroyed every other shuttle. She thought she was doomed when a strange, delta-wing submarine latched onto the shuttle.

June 5, 2020

Near Atlantis

[Remember your job, Chris,] came his father's voice over the comm channel, [search for survivors, let us take care of the Kaiju.] Chris sent back a green light, to busy attempting to avoid the Kaiju to respond further. After he escaped the creature, he 'flew' his submarine - designed to function like an aeroplane, allowing for greater speed and maneuverability underwater - over the ruined, flooded city, scanning for heartbeats. His face fell as the sensors responded with only five heartbeats - his own, the two Kaijus' and his parents. at the same moment, however, his father was back on the comm.
[Behemoth is down! just one Kaiju to go!] Chris sat bolt upright. The fifth heartbeat was still there - and it wasn't a Kaiju's heartbeat. It was beating very faintly. Whoever it was, they were clearly running out of air. He 'flew' the sub toward the heartbeat, pushing the throttle forward as fast as it would go and angling the wings so that he'd arrive at the same depth as the craft. He slowed as he neared it, switching on his floodlights as the depth made it almost impossible to see.

The hull was cracked, and water was flooding in to the small shuttle. It was never meant to go this deep - the pressure was slowly crushing it. Emily jumped when there was a loud CLANK from the hull. A bright, white glow formed as someone began to melt their way through the side of the shuttle. She grabbed the nearest thing at hand, which happened to be an Omni-tool, and pointed it at the circle of metal which was being formed.

Chris finished cutting through the metal and called out to the lone occupant.
"Stand back, I'm kicking this in!"
Emily understood what he was saying, of course - being a fairy, she had the gift of tongues - but she also recognized it as English- a Mud Man language. She backed away hurriedly as the metal circle fell to the deck with a loud CLANG. Chris climbed into the shuttle and offered a hand to the frightened girl.
"Come on, we have to get out of here. This thing is about to implode, and you really don't want to be inside when it does." His kind voice calmed the frightened girl, and she hesitantly took his hand. Immediately, he picked her up and placed her in the airlock before following himself. Engaging the airlock, he detached the sub from the ruined shuttle and watched through the strengthened, transparent acrylic doors as it compressed down to a crumpled ball roughly the size of himself as if it were made of paper. The inner door opened and he led the girl to a seat behind his, asking her for her name at the same time.
"My name is Chris Falco. What's yours?"
"Emily Short."

January 4, 2025, 10:15 AM

Hong Kong Shatterdome

"So why was there a nuclear explosion?" Holly asked. Chris sighed sadly as Emily patted his arm.
"His parents were in a nuclear submarine, trying to kill the Kaiju. they got one, but the other... It damaged the submarine to the point where the pressure would crush them before they could kill the Kaiju or escape. In desperation, they told their son to get as far away as possible before they activated their final option," Emily explained.
"And the final option was..."
"They blew up their nuclear reactor. It completely obliterated Atlantis, and we are assuming it also took out the relay nearby, since I couldn't get in contact with Haven City. I eventually had to explain the whole concept of fairy society, Haven City, etc. to him after he promised not to tell anyone. He learned Gnommish from me, and he tested the filters on his helmet on me to see if he could see shielded fairies. When I told him about the wings, he became a bit infatuated with building some. We pilot a Jaeger together and-"
"Jaeger?" Holly asked. Chris immediately perked up, beginning to speak rather quickly.
"A Jaeger is a humanoid anti-Kaiju combat robot roughly 30 stories tall, controlled by two pilots linked through the 'drift' so as to take the neural load of controlling a machine that is easily fifty times their size using their brains. 'Jaeger' comes from the German word 'Jäger,' which translates to English as-"
"Hunter, I know. Gift of tongues, remember?" Holly interjected. Chris nodded, slightly put off by Holly's interjection, before continuing.
"Jaegers and their pilots are often considered a single entity, under the name of the Jaeger. So when Emily and I pilot our Jaeger, Sanguine Shadow, we collectively become known as Sanguine Shadow. The stronger the neural handshake, the better we fight - and the quicker the Kaiju die. Jaegers are also equipped with various weapons. Sanguine Shadow is equipped with two CF-081 LPAs - or Linear Projectile Accelerators - which I designed myself. It also has two retractable Claymore swords, a LASER with a beam temperature of 3000 degrees celsius, a 400mm six-barrel chest-mounted minigun, a cold fusion reactor which can be vented to freeze whatever it is facing, eight CF-172 ITSGs - Impact-Triggered Shockwave Generators - which I also designed, and which have a force output of one point two five million Newtons per knuckle, and a multitude of nuclear thermal rockets to aid in jumping and other movement, including two overcharged rockets mounted on the elbows to help deliver even more force. I've seen a Kaiju's head crumple like tissue paper under a few blows from Shadow." Holly simply nodded before turning to Emily.

*1"Est-ce qu'il vous force à rester avec lui?" she asked in the first language which popped into her head - French.
*2"Non, Il est mon ami. Si quoi que ce soit, je le forçant à rester avec moi," Emily replied, *3"mais nous n'avons pas à parler français. Il peut nous comprendre, peu importe la langue que nous utilisons, vous savez. Lui et j'ai réussi à débloquer la magie dans ses veines, et qui inclut le don des langues."
Holly looked at Chris in surprise, and he nodded.
*4"Oui, elle dit la vérité. Je peux vous parler en français, latin, hongrois, chinois, japonais, anglais, espagnol, portugais, et toute autre langue que vous souhaitez." Holly felt her eyes bulge out of her head before Chris jerked bolt upright.
*5"Там в Kaiju в Shatterdome! Небольшой, инфильтрация класс. Холли! Хватай пистолет, я получу мой CF-081 LPA(H)!" he shouted in the first language which popped into his head - Russian. Emily immediately grabbed her Neutrino as Chris dragged a large case out from beneath the bed that Emily was still sitting in. He opened the case, revealing what appeared to be a gun in five parts. He threw the strange-looking barrel onto the main body of the gun before screwing it on and attaching the pin, the gel stock cover, the sight/vent and finally slamming the magazine into the bottom, pulling back on the pin to chamber the first projectile and grabbing three spare magazines. Holly stared at him in shock - the method for assembling the gun was clearly so complex that an expert would take five minutes at least to put it together, but Chris's hands were a blur as he threw it together, taking less than half a minute to finish. He looked at her and grinned before speaking in Gnommish:
"Time to go hunting."

*1 Est-ce qu'il vous force à rester avec lui?

Is he forcing you to stay with him?

*2 Non, Il est mon ami. Si quoi que ce soit, je le forçant à rester avec moi.

No, He's my friend. If anything, I'm forcing him to stay with me.

*3 mais nous n'avons pas à parler français. Il peut nous comprendre, peu importe la langue que nous utilisons, vous savez. Lui et j'ai réussi à débloquer la magie dans ses veines, et qui inclut le don des langues.

but we don't have to speak French. He can understand us, no matter what language we use, you know. He and I managed to unlock the magic in his veins, and that includes the gift of tongues.

*4 Oui, elle dit la vérité. Je peux vous parler en français, latin, hongrois, chinois, japonais, anglais, espagnol, portugais, et toute autre langue que vous souhaitez.

Yes, she's telling the truth. I can speak French, Latin, Hungarian, Chinese, Japanese, English, Spanish, Portuguese, and any other language you want.

*5 Там в Kaiju в Shatterdome! Небольшой, инфильтрация класс. Холли! Хватай пистолет, я получу мой CF-081 LPA(H)!

There's a Kaiju in the Shatterdome! Small, Infiltration class. Holly! Grab your gun, I'll get my CF-081 LPA(H)!