April 7th 2025

Shatterdome, Hong Kong

The Wards

0300 AM

"Warning. Hull strength at 72%"

A huge saber like protrusion stabbed through the pit that the two pilots controlled the Jaeger from. It narrowly missed gouging the right hemisphere controller from the harness but only succeeded in knocking her out as her right arm and spinal gantries splintered.

"Hull strength at 42%."

The left hemisphere pilot disengaged and raced over to his partner, his section of the cranium faded into itself from a devastating overhead smash from the huge wedge of bone. As the Knife-head tore through his portion, he immediately engaged his partner's escape pod. She lifted awkwardly in the crippled mechanism.

Then everything was flashes, screams, one ear-splitting boom -

…

Tooth bolted up at once. Her heart hammering, hair dyed verdant green and peacock blue clung to her sweaty face, and her tears fresh on her cheeks. She panted as she gathered the sheet around herself trying to recapture some of her fleeting body heat. She reached over, and grabbed her clock in a death grip.

'0300. AM.' She groaned inwardly. She set the clock down, and went to the bathroom to get ready for her inevitable day. Work was at 0600, but she was never getting back to sleep now. Nothing worth doing happens between three and four a.m.

'At least we have a new…' She froze midstream. She didn't know what to call them anymore. Jaegers? Two-ton suits? Maybe, somehow alive? She sighed as she stared at herself in the mirror, before slipping into the shower. Maybe they were right about her going crazy.

Darkly tanned skin, lovely magenta eyes. And her short-cut hair; when it wasn't dyed carnelian, peacock and jade; was a rich chocolate brown. You'd never have known she worked seriously on the Cherno Alpha from dawn till dusk. Squeezing into impossibly tight spaces and completing repairs that would have taken days, in a matter of minutes. Seeing ways of improving, and making her adoptive parent's Jaeger the strongest Kaiju busting tank in the line of duty.

Tall, beautiful, slight. You'd never have guessed she was THE Jaeger mechanic, every pilot wanted to have crawling on their Jaeger. Or in their bed, in the case of some mech jockeys that had cruder intentions. Pigs.

But for the most part she was left alone on account of her close friendship with the Russian crew of Cherno Alpha. The two pilots had taken her in, and protected her as their own. Their entire crew was like a big extended family to her. The reason being; her parents.

They dropped with the crew on and off for five of the six years the Cherno was in service, and saved their back more times than any could count. The two pilots treated her as their daughter and taught her as much as they could about their machine.

She stepped out of the steaming water and stretched a sore muscle in her back. She groaned as she dried off her legs. She began running through her head what would have to be prepared today for the newcomer's arrival.

Tooth stretched out again as she slipped on her underwear, then mechanics overalls with the Cherno's symbol imprinted on the back. She rolled her shoulders back into placing hearing the pops as each complied.

Tooth's name was actually an acronym of her full name, which was awkwardly long due to Russian patronymics. To save breath everyone just settled for 'Tooth.'

However there was one name that others still called her, one not so affectionate. Despite knowing who her rather intimidating parents were, the name persisted. 'Jaeger Child.' That name had followed her since her birth.

She once thought it was so amazing to have been born inside a Jaeger, and then it became a curse. People began whispering that she was crazy, or that her mother was crazy to have gone inside a Jaeger to save Chile knowing she was pregnant. As if there was much choice at the time.

Tooth pretended not to mind and convinces her mother she was fine. But when everyone wasn't looking, she'd exhale and let her tears fall quietly. She'd never let them win entirely.

But she was different. Ever since her birth, Tooth couldn't deny the voices she'd sometimes hear in her head. Often times when she was in a throng she'd dismiss it as simple crowd chatter. Yet when she was alone in the hanger with the Jaegers, she'd hear murmuring voices despite the night crew not paying her any attention, and not saying a thing. She'd checked and rechecked they'd never really break the silence except when they let out the odd yawn. That's when she tried something crazy.

She spoke to a Jaeger. What scared her more was when it spoke back. She didn't understand how, but she could 'speak' to the Jaegers, and they to her. Once discovering her gift she hid it away. Never revealing to anyone, even her adoptive parents that she could 'talk' to the huge machines.

She had eventually formed two families to replace the one she lost. The first was her parent's closest friends, Kaidonovskys, who had taught her so much. The other; humongous robots that bashed in skulls.

But this was all history now.

She sighed as she made her way down the hall to the Jaeger Bay. She noticed a few Russian members working on Cherno Alpha, and raced to join them. They smiled at her approach. Despite Tooth's thoughts, she was in fact the crew's morale booster. Never wavering, even in the face of hopelessness. She greeted a few with a wink and exchanged a few Russian 'Hellos,' before helping with the tune up. She heard Cherno greet her and tell her where it felt it needed repairs.

She had finished just as her parents were walking in, suited up in their heavy asymmetrical armor and ready to patrol the Japanese border. Her mother, Sasha gave her a loving rub on her shoulder and walked inside, her father; Alexis noted her tired face and left a mental note to discuss it with her later. Slipped on his helmet and beamed at her in pride, as he slipped in after her mother. As harsh as they could undoubtedly be, had to be to kill Kaiju after Kaiju in the harsh frozen seas of Siberia, they were so gentle with her. Even in all that armor they handled her like porcelain.

Cherno, she could hear rumbling like a landslide, the familiar not-quite-voice of the behemoth machine waking. A great bruiser named after a disaster of times long past and powered by a nuclear heart to spite it, Cherno was not a subtle mechanism. He woke with a great roar of challenge that only she could hear.

Tooth smiled and waved the trio off as Cherno was wheeled into the bay on the massive crawler. Suddenly it canted to look upward as it rolled. She followed her parent's line of sight and saw the newcomer arriving in all its glory, being airlifted by a small fleet of cargo choppers and casting odd shadows in the dawning sun.

All Tooth could think as she saw the massive blue Jaeger placed onto the pallet Cherno had vacated was 'Oh, Wow!'

She gazed at it in awe; it looked like a late Mark IV experimental model. It was slimmer than most, with a figure that was almost gangly. Armor plates thinner than usual and large joint areas meant it was flexible, but not as durable as other Jaegers. What was interesting were the slits in the armor at in every major plate filled with what looked like retracted fins. And the forearms... there was something to them that was odd, like they were shuttered. Maybe a plasma cannon?

She heard a faint prickling at the back of her mind, and turned up to face the Jaeger.

*Call me Blue Winter.* She smiled up at it and turned around shaking her head. «О, ничего себе! » She repeated breathlessly in her adopted tongue as she walked away to tend to an old Mark III named Gipsy Danger, that was getting refitted from the scrap heap.